once Walter Winchell became the first Democratic candidate to enter the race, and to do so almost thirty months in advance of the ’44 election, in advance even of the midterm congressional elections—and to do so immediately after the noisy fracas that resulted from his having been “purged” from his profession by “the strong-arm putsch tactics of the fascist gang in the White House” (as Winchell described his enemies and their methods in announcing his candidacy)—the one-time gossip columnist became the man to beat, the only Democrat with a name known to everyone and audacious enough to assault
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