Dubious Alliance: The Making of Minnesota's Dfl Party

by John Earl Haynes

Dubious Alliance was first published in 1984. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.The formation of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party of Minnesota took place in a context of intense factional struggle that lasted from the death of Governor Floyd B. Olson in 1936 to the election of Hubert Humphrey to the U.S. Senate in 1948. Dubious Alliance , the first full account of this critical chapter in the state's political history, has wider significance not only because many of the leading figures in the story have played a role in national politics, but also because it deals with issues-chief among them, the origins of Cold War liberalism- that matter far beyond the boundaries of a single state.John Haynes follows the struggle from its inception to the postwar battle within the new DFL between Popular Front adherents and anti-Communist liberals led by Minneapolis Mayor Hubert Humphrey. He makes clear that the struggle with the Popular Front was the formative political experience of Humphrey's generation; those who fought with him, and who became active in national politics-Orville Freeman, Eugene McCarthy, Walter Mondale, Donald Fraser-did not seriously question Cold War foreign policy till well into the Vietnam era.Thorough and dispassionate, this book will help today's readers better understand the DFL's birth and the struggle that surrounded it-complex events long obscured by Cold War fears and political myth-making.John Earl Haynes is a historian by training-he earned his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota-and also a specialist in tax policy. He was an adviser to Governor Wendell Anderson and later served as a congressional aide to Anderson and to Representative Martin Sabo. Haynes is now Director of Tax and Credit Analysis for the state of Minnesota.

264 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 1984

About the author

John Earl Haynes was Modern Political Historian, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress, for twenty-five years.

Reviews

[Andy Smith · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very academic, but informative. Prose a bit dense.

[Kyra]

one of the most information-dense books I’ve ever read but oh boy Haynes cannot write for the life of him <3

[Ayana Smith-Kooiman · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was very detailed and informative but also very dense. I recommend taking notes on names, affiliations, etc. as some people are mentioned and then brought up pages or chapters after, and it can be difficult to keep it all straight if reading straight through.

Overall, it was very informative for someone like me who was unfamiliar with the DFL and Minnesota political history.

[Erik Riker-Coleman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Haynes is known as a Cold War traditionalist, pretty unsympathetic to the American left. That being said, this book is invaluable in exploring the deep tensions that were inherent in the relationship between Minnesota's Farmer-Labor Party and its Democrats, and does a fantastic job of exploring the highly contingent nature of their 1944 union in the Democrat-Farmer-Labor Party. He really does make a credible case that it was, in fact, a dubious alliance from the first, and does a solid job of developing the seeming cynicism of left Farmer-Labor leaders. To paraphrase Lincoln, the DFL could not endure half-leftist and half-liberal--unsurprisingly in postwar America, it became liberal. Gives crucial context to Jennifer Delton's "Making Minnesota Liberal."

[Mark Bowles · Rating 3 out of 5]

John Earl Haynes, Dubious Alliance; The Making of Minnesota's DFL Party (1984)
1. The dubious alliance refers to the coalition between the communists and liberals-this became the Democratic Farmer-Labor party
2. This dissolved in the 1940's but had implications for liberals until 1972