As strong as it was in New York City. the Popular Front was not the only political voice in New York. The Popular Front newspaper PM, for instance, had a small fraction of the circulation of the Right Wing tabloids,the News, Mirror and Journal-American, the most widely read dailies in the city. More of New York's working class got its political opinions, news and world view from Walter Winchell, the Daily News, the parish priest and Fulton J. Sheen than from PM, the Daily Worker or New Masses. PM was not financially successful, depending ironically, like many media and cultural organs of the Left, on the philanthropy of wealthy, sympathetic capitalists, in this case the department store heir Marshall Fields.
At this same time a competing narrative, that of the American Century, as promulgated by Henry Luce and his magazines, increasingly captured the public imagination. It saw the postwar world as the triumph of American corporate capitalism and democratic political system. The goal for many working class Americans became less about a workers revolution than about finding opportunities to rise into the middle class. Even many ardent union members were concerned only about higher wages and better benefits and not looking to transform society.