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>>>>As a member of the House, "Kefauver began to manifest his concern over the growing concentration of economic power in the United States",<3> concentrating much of his legislative efforts on congressional reform and anti-monopoly measures.>>>>>
Sounds familiar, no? Found out today that Kefauver actually defeated sitting President of the USA Harry Truman in the NH Primary, in '52. Precipitating the latter's withdrawal from the race. How many people know that? Why is the work of real progressives, like Kefauver and Henry Wallace minimized... not just by the media but by our own party?
And establishment, "moderate" DEMS like Truman, Stevenson and JFK, enshrined?
More from Wiki re Kefauver:
>In the House
Following his election to the House of Representatives as a Democrat, he was reelected four more times.
As a member of the House during President Franklin D. Roosevelt's time in office, Kefauver distinguished himself from the other Democrats in Tennessee's congressional delegation, most of whom were conservatives, by becoming a staunch supporter of the President's New Deal legislation. In particular, he backed the controversial Tennessee Valley Authority and was best known for his successful bid to rebuff the efforts of Tennessee Senator Kenneth McKellar to gain political control over the agency. As a member of the House, "Kefauver began to manifest his concern over the growing concentration of economic power in the United States",<3> concentrating much of his legislative efforts on congressional reform and anti-monopoly measures. He chaired, for instance, the House Select Committee on Small Business, which investigated economic concentration in the U.S. business world in 1946. That same year, Kefauver also introduced legislation to plug loopholes in the Clayton Antitrust Act.
In a May 1948 article that appeared in the American Economic Review, Kefauver also proposed that more staff and money be allocated to the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department and to the Federal Trade Commission; that new legislation to make it easier to prosecute big corporations be enacted; and that the danger of monopoly should be publicized more.
The Kefauver investigation into television and juvenile delinquency in the mid 1950's led to an even more intensive investigation in the early 1960's. The new probe came about because people were increasingly concerned over violence with juveniles, and the possibility that this behavior was related to violent television programs.<4>
His progressive stances on the issues put Kefauver in direct competition with E. H. Crump, the former U.S. congressman, mayor of Memphis and boss of the state's Democratic Party, when he chose to seek the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate in 1948. During the primary, Crump and his allies accused Kefauver of being a "fellow traveler" and of working for the "pinkos and communists" with the stealth of a raccoon. In a televised speech given in Memphis, in which he responded to such charges, Kefauver put on a coonskin cap and proudly proclaimed, "I may be a pet coon, but I'm not Boss Crump's pet coon." After he went on to win both the primary and the election, he adopted the cap as his trademark and wore it in every successive campaign.
Kefauver was unique in Tennessee politics in his outspoken liberal views, a stand that established a permanent bloc of opposition to him in the state. Kefauver's success despite his liberal views was predicated largely on his support by the Nashville Tennessean, a consistently liberal newspaper that served as a focus for anti-Crump sentiment in the state. His constituency included many prominent citizens whose views were considerably less liberal than his but who admired him for his integrity.
Despite opposition from the Crump machine, Kefauver won the Democratic nomination, which in those days was tantamount to election in Tennessee. His victory is widely seen as the beginning of the end for the Crump machine's influence in statewide politics. Once in the Senate, Kefauver began to make a name for himself as a crusader for consumer protection laws, antitrust legislation, and civil rights for African Americans. On civil rights, he was ambivalent: he admitted later that he had difficulty adjusting to the idea of racial integration, and in 1960 he held out to the last in favor of permitting cross-examination of black complainants in voting rights cases. But he did support the civil rights program generally and was a consistent supporter of organized labor and other movements considered liberal in the South at that time.>
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