Joe Biden will shake no hands for the foreseeable future. Or kiss even the cutest babies. Nor, for that matter, probably, even depart his basement.
It’s an odd way to compete for any office, let alone the presidency. But it’s not unprecedented.
It’s happened before — exactly 100 years ago. I’m not talking about Republican Warren Harding’s famed “Front Porch Campaign.” Harding, at least, ventured outside and onto his front porch. There he spoke to an estimated 600,000 persons. So much for social distancing.
No, I’m referring to a candidate who didn’t have a porch. He didn’t even have the flu. What he had was a 10-year federal jail sentence. We’re not talking “lockdown”; we’re talking “lockup.”
In June 1918, former Socialist presidential candidate Eugene Victor Debs had run afoul of Woodrow Wilson’s patriotic, anti-subversive dragnet after delivering an anti-conscription talk in Akron, Ohio. Convicted on 10 counts of sedition, in April 1919, he entered a state prison at Moundsville, West Virginia, before being transferred to federal custody at Atlanta.
Debs was popular in both prisons — even among his captors. He was even more popular among his old Socialist comrades, for whom he had served as their party’s 1904, 1908, and 1912 presidential nominee. In 1912, he reached flood tide, receiving 901,551 votes — a full 6% of the national vote. In most far Western states, he polled double digits. In Florida, he ran ahead of both President William Taft and Theodore Roosevelt.
In May 1920, Socialists at Finnish Hall at Harlem’s 127th Street and Fifth Avenue emotionally and unanimously nominated the incarcerated Debs (“The Lincoln of the Wabash”) for a fourth run. Competing to serve as Debs’s running mate were his former defense attorney Seymour Stedman and newspaper (The National Rip-Saw) editor Kate Richards O’Hare. O’Hare, like Debs, remained absent from the convention. She too lingered in the slammer for obstructing the military draft. Delegates recognized the impracticality of having both candidates behind bars and tapped Stedman.
Debs, by the way, had not desired the 1916 nomination. And so, that year’s convention, having to select a new candidate, embarked on a new manner of doing it: not by in-person delegate voting but, since Zoom had not yet gone public, through rank-and-file party members’ mail balloting.
Imagine that.
In 1920, Socialists followed the major parties’ tradition of sending a delegation to notify its presidential candidate. Its members included Stedman and the party’s executive secretary, Julius Gerber. Stedman embraced Debs. Debs kissed Gerber on both cheeks. Stedman kissed Debs on the cheek. Newsreel men realized that they had missed some good shots — it isn’t every day one sees running mates actually kissing — and wanted the event recreated. Atlanta Warden Frederick Zerbst allowed Debs to venture outdoors, so cameras might take advantage of natural light. It took a half-hour to reshoot the events.
In some ways, Debs’s “front cell” campaign was his least burdensome effort. There were no trains to catch, no speeches to deliver, no hands to shake. “I will be a candidate at home in seclusion,” he joked. “It will be much less tiresome, and my managers and opponents can always locate me.”
In September 1920, federal authorities announced that Debs could send out 500 words per week, and so he did. On Sept. 16, anarchists bombed Wall Street. Debs quipped: “Being in prison is not without its advantages. Had I made a speech in New York the night before the Wall Street explosion, there would have been a clear case against me. As it is, I have the perfect alibi.”
In Chicago, on election eve, 5,000 Debs supporters sang “The Marseillaise” and carried banners reading “Free All Political and Industrial Prisoners,” and “Long Live the Russian Soviet.” In Toledo, Socialist leaflets fluttered down from four airplanes. Somewhere in the litter, four lucky leaflets entitled finders to unspecified “cash prizes.” Overall, Socialists issued 5 million pieces of literature. Sixty thousand individuals donated to the campaign. Debs predicted he’d get 2 million votes. Gerber prophesized 3 million.
Debs “Last Call to the Voters in 1920,” however, betrayed his bitterly pessimistic side. “I shall not be disappointed,” he wrote. “The people will vote for what they think they want, to the extent that they think at all, and they, too, will not be disappointed. … I no longer permit myself to be either disappointed or discouraged. I hope for everything and expect nothing. The people can have anything they want. The trouble is [that] they do not want anything. At least they vote that way on Election Day.”
An Atlanta Constitution reporter brought the results to Debs in Zerbst’s office. Zerbst handed out what he called “campaign cigars.” “This is the first campaign in which I participated and not felt all used up on election night,” Debs reflected. “In 1912, I toured the country on a special train for 68 days in which time I made 535 speeches. Election night, my throat was raw: I was so tired I couldn’t rest. Three weeks were required for me to recuperate. It is much easier this time. And if the popular vote increases, I doubt if they will ever let me make another speech.”
Debs’s popular vote had increased, but barely — to just 913,693 votes. It was a negligible, hollow uptick. With women now swelling the size of the electorate, Debs’s share of the vote shrunk to just 3.1%. The Socialist Party was commencing its sunset.
Debs trotted out his tried-and-true concession speech, “Blessed are those that expect nothing.” And with no rallies to attend or speeches to give, he simply went to bed. “In the next hour,” recalled Debs, “I was in dreamland sailing the Seven Seas in quest of new worlds to conquer.”
There’s something to be said for such a low-key campaign. But just be sure it’s “front porch” and not “front cell.”
David Pietrusza is the author of 1920: The Year of the Six Presidents.
