1948 Presidential Election Voting Booth. Please vote.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

What was the difference between Truman and Dewey besides whether they had an R or a D next to their name?

At the time and in retrospect, Dewey was considered a leader of the liberal wing of the Republican Party, but he was still very much a Republican and the more conservative of the major party candidates; he campaigned against the New Deal in 1944, and while his 1948 campaign was intentionally devoid of substance, he made a point of portraying Truman as "soft on Communism" and suggested a Dewey Administration would take a harder line on Communists in the government. Truman was in essence running for the fifth FDR term: he campaigned on universal healthcare, farm relief, opposition to the Taft-Hartley Act and other conservative measures passed by the "Do-Nothing" 80th Congress, and a host of liberal economic reforms.

Of course the 80th Congress was nothing of the sort, but why let a little thing like truth get in the way of a good left-populist crusade!