Thomas Watson got 13% of the Georgia vote on the last Populist/People's Party ticket.
In 1912 Debs beat 10% in seven states. And hit 16% in Nevada and Oklahoma. He basically picked up all the old Populist vote territories in the West and combined it with his Socialist votes. Debs didn't run in 1916 but the Socialist candidate got 16% again in Oklahoma. I think Debs in 1912 in Nevada is the best any openly Socialist candidate has done. Though technically the Socialist Party in some states endorsed (and gave their ballot line to) La Foellete in 1924, and their associated groups were like a third of the Progressive Party's membership.
One thing La Follette ran on was nationalizing cigarette factories but not for any reasons you would think of these days (health effects, targeting kids, etc.) lol
Though of course that's never enough for some purity people:
William Foster, a major figure within the Communist Party, considered La Follette a hopeless reactionary who wanted to break up monopolies and return to an era of small businesses.
The 1912 election was probably the most relative "left-wing" Presidential election the U.S. has had. The "conservative" candidate of "the right" Taft was running (to the extent that you could call his campaign "running") on his record of busting trusts including U.S. Steel (which Roosevelt refused to touch and Taft's actions pissed him off), fighting the railroads with government regulation over their rates, enacting a corporate income tax, supporting free immigration and improving education/business opportunities for blacks, Dollar Diplomacy, etc.
Debs is the most famous because of his stature, but Wilson put all sorts of anti-slavery and anti-war protesters in jail. The funny thing is that Palmer, of the Palmer Raids, later told Wilson to pardon Debs to basically kill off his power as a political prisoner.
Wilson responded:
While the flower of American youth was pouring out its blood to vindicate the cause of civilization, this man, Debs, stood behind the lines sniping, attacking, and denouncing them....This man was a traitor to his country and he will never be pardoned during my administration.
One of the first things Harding did was commute his sentence, which released him, while saying that basically the charges were a horseshit move even if technically legal, which is another notch in my book for Harding's greatness.
p.p.s.
I would also like to point out how fucking retarded it was to the US to get involved in WWI, we tend to gloss on it thinking "oh, we beat those Nazis twice", but really the case for the US entering that was flimsy as hell, and holy shit did a lot of people paid with their lives for that.
I think you mean "everyone" when you say "the US" there.
At minimum it really should have been yet another short-lived Austria-Serbia conflict. It's like, this is the one time all those countries are going to honor their treaties/alliances/agreements?!?
