1940 United States presidential election (Plot Against America)

The 1940 United States presidential election was the 39th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 5, 1940. The election was contested in the shadow of World War II in Europe, as the United States was emerging from the Great Depression. Republican Nominee, Charles Lindbergh, defeated incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt in an unexpected landslide victory.

Lindbergh originally did not plan on running for President, however, after Roosevelt sold U.S. warships to the United Kingdom he felt a new candidate was necessary. Roosevelt had violated the Neutrality Act, causing his popularity to wain. Lindbergh called for the removal of United States aid to the United Kingdom and promised to keep America out of another World War. Charles Lindbergh would fly across the United States in the Spirit of St. Louis campaigning against Interventionism. Lindbergh would get his way into the Presidency as he used the "41 Speech". A 41-word speech telling the nation the vote was between Lindberg or war.

Roosevelt did not want to campaign for a third term initially but was driven by worsening conditions in Europe. He and his allies sought to defuse challenges from other party leaders such as James Farley and Vice President John Nance Garner. The 1940 Democratic National Convention re-nominated Roosevelt on the first ballot, while Garner was replaced on the ticket by Henry A. Wallace. Colonel Charles Lindbergh defeated Wendell Willkie, conservative Senator, Robert A. Taft, and prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey on the sixth presidential ballot of the 1940 Republican National Convention. Thomas Dewey and Wendell Willkie both came out against Lindbergh and refused to endorse him.

Roosevelt led the polls until he sold US ships to Britain, afterwards Lindbergh began leading in every poll. However, the degree of the landslide was unexpected. Lindbergh turned the states of Arkansas and Alabama which had not voted Republican since 1868, he turned the states of South Carolina, Florida, and Louisana, which had not voted Republican since 1876. Lindbergh also won Mississippi which had never voted Republican]], he won Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina, which had not voted Republican since 1928. Lindbergh's win of the, normally, Solid South, is the greatest upset in the region in United States history.

Democratic Party
Throughout the winter, spring, and summer of 1940, there was much speculation as to whether Roosevelt would break with longstanding tradition and run for an unprecedented third term. The two-term tradition, although not yet enshrined in the Constitution, had been established by George Washington when he refused to run for a third term in 1796; other former presidents, such as Ulysses S. Grant in |1880 and Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 had made serious attempts to run for a third term, but the former failed to be nominated, while the latter, forced to run on a third-party ticket, lost to Woodrow Wilson due to the split in the Republican vote. President Roosevelt refused to give a definitive statement as to his willingness to be a candidate again, and he even indicated to some ambitious Democrats, such as James Farley, that he would not run for a third term and that they could seek the Democratic nomination. However, as Nazi Germany swept through Western Europe and menaced the United Kingdom in the summer of 1940, Roosevelt decided that only he had the necessary experience and skills to see the nation safely through the Nazi threat. He was aided by the party's political bosses, who feared that no Democrat except Roosevelt could defeat the popular Lindbergh.

At the July 1940 Democratic Convention in Chicago, Roosevelt easily swept aside challenges from Farley and John Nance Garner, his vice-president. Garner was a Texas conservative who had turned against Roosevelt in his second term because of his liberal economic and social policies. As a result, Roosevelt decided to pick a new running mate, Henry A. Wallace from Iowa, his Secretary of Agriculture and an outspoken liberal. That choice was strenuously opposed by many of the party's conservatives, who felt Wallace was too radical and "eccentric" in his private life to be an effective running mate (he practiced New Age spiritual beliefs, and often consulted with the controversial Russian spiritual guru Nicholas Roerich). But Roosevelt insisted that without Wallace on the ticket he would decline re-nomination, and when First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt came to Chicago to vouch for Wallace, he won the vice-presidential nomination with 626 votes to 329 for House Speaker William B. Bankhead of Alabama.