If there is any American politician who Donald Trump resembles the least, it’s Eugene Debs.
Debs ran for president five times for the Socialist Party in the early 20th century, and was a dedicated union leader who helped organize his fellow railway workers into the first major railroad union in the United States. (It was eventually crushed, and he was jailed in the aftermath of the Pullman Strike of 1894.) Debs also was a dedicated opponent of US entry into World War I, convicted of sedition in 1918 and jailed for speaking out against the war. And, from the Atlanta federal prison, he ran for president in 1920 and received over 3 percent of the national vote, with almost a million votes cast for him as Convict No. 9653.
Debs has long been the most prominent American to run for president from prison. But if New York prosecutors have their way, former President Donald Trump may soon follow in Debs’s footsteps, and finally give the ideologically committed socialist and the politically transactional real estate mogul something in common.
The unlikely comparison between Trump and Debs shows how unprecedented Trump’s indictment is in American politics. It’s not that there haven’t been more than a few American politicians who have campaigned under legal scrutiny, but they are often local heroes like Marion Barry in Washington, DC, who was caught smoking crack in a hotel room, or James Curley in Boston, who won one of his four mayoral victories while under indictment for corruption. Instead, the idea of an aspiring head of state — or former president — facing such legal jeopardy and soldiering ahead is foreign to American politics. After all, even Debs was not in prison for any great sin or moral failing but for speaking out against World War I and saying decisions of war and peace were not made by the working class — which was crime enough amid the jingoistic paranoia of the time.
Trump preempted the possible indictment with a Saturday post on Truth…
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