There were Democrats who wanted to run Eisenhower in 1948

[starroute]

. . . because they thought Truman had no chance of winning. It seems like a period in history that might be worth recalling.


http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1996/analysis/back.time/9604/01/index.shtml

(TIME; April 5, 1948) -- The Democratic Party was in desperate straits. Until a few months ago, it had been living on smiles and hope. Now its very life was threatened. Unlike the Republican Party, it had at least known who its 1948 presidential candidate would be. Even though nobody was quite sure whether Harry Truman would win or lose, it was unthinkable that the Democrats should not nominate him.

But last week a kind of panic swept through the Democratic ranks. Suddenly Democrats everywhere began to realize that Harry Truman looked like a sure loser in November.

<snip>

Labor leaders, anti-Wallace liberals and machine bosses broke out with anti-Truman fever. The fever, partly induced by the Administration's blundering on Palestine, was especially virulent in such pivotal states as New York, Illinois and California. In these states even the best of local Democratic candidates had small hope of winning on a ticket topped by Harry Truman's name.

From all directions, a Democratic clamor went up for Ike. Nobody knew exactly what Eisenhower's views were on civil-rights, on labor problems, on Palestine. Nobody much cared. Those who now backed him thought that Ike, if he wanted to, could win the presidency in a breeze - for either party. To the disintegrated Democrats, it looked as if he might provide the leadership and the magic touch which Franklin Roosevelt had once given the party.


http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dwight_Eisenhower

For the 1948 election, Harry S Truman secretly told Ike that if he ran for president as a Democrat, Truman would go as his running mate and Eisenhower would get a sure win. Ike refused because he didn't want to be president. For the 1952 election, he was approached again, this time by the Democrats and the Republicans. He still refused, because he did not consider himself a politician. But he changed his mind when "I Like Ike" clubs started popping up all over the country. Eisenhower had never even voted for president before, and had no political affiliation. He ran for the Republicans because he was a strong believer in the two-party system, and there hadn't been a Republican president in over twenty years.