A History of Presidential Elections, Part Four, The South Turns Republican

[Note: Part three ended with the 1964 campaign heating up. Here the Roseboom book ends, so I am bringing ths narrative up to date with my own account of 1964-2024.]

The 1964 campaign was perhaps the most ideological campaign in U.S. history, with the conservative Bary Goldwater challenging the liberal Lyndon Johnson. Johnson won in a landslide, with Goldwater winning only his home state of Arizona, and the five deep South states. The deep South had been reliably Democratic since Reconstruction, but this election represented an end to this century-old tradition. After this election, only Arkansas remained as the only state voting Democratic in every election since the end of Reconstruction in 1876.

Unlike in many other elections, personality played no role in 1964. Few voters would have preferred the vulgar, brutish Johnson as someone they would want to go out and have a beer with, but they voted for him anyway, due to policy considerations.

Johnson had many important achievements in domestic policy, but his presidency self-destructed due to his disastrous Vietnam misadventure. After almost losing to Gene McCarthy in the 1968 New Hampshire primary, Johnson dropped out and the Democratic nomination went to his VP, Hubert Humphrey. The Republicans nominated Richard Nixon, who had been diligently cultivating his relationships with party leaders all around the country since his loss to JFK eight years earlier.

The race was an ulphill fight for Humphrey, as he was dealing with a hopelessly fractured party due to the Vietnam debacle. Nevertheless, he was closing the gap in the latter days of the campaign, and some analysts feel that he would have won had the campaign gone on for just a few days longer. Johnson had made some peace overtures to North Vietnam in the waning days of the campaign, and things were looking up for Humphrey. What Johnson did not reveal publicly, and which surely would have given Humphrey the election, was that in the closing days of the campaign Nixon had sent word to South Vietnam advising it to avoid particpating in the peace talks, because they would get a better deal after he was elected. South Vietnam did indeed boycott the talks, and Nixon was narrowly elected.

So why did Johnson not reveal what he had found out about Nixon's interference in the peace talks? The answer is that revealing the information would have revealed that he had the phone of the South Vietnamese ambassador tapped, as this was the source of the info. It is quite possible that, absent Nixon's meddling, peace would have been achieved, as the Soviet Union was also pressuring North Vietnam to settle the war, and our similar pressure on South Vietnam to settle could have accomplished a peace treaty. The upshot of this sorry episode is that the war continued for four more years, and 21,000 more Americans died, along with hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese.

The electoral vote for Nixon in 1968 was 301-191, with third-party candidate George Wallace winning 46 electoral votes. Wallace won four of the five Deep South states, plus Arkansas. Humphrey won only states in the Northeast corridor from Maine down to West Viginia, plus the states of Washington, Minnesota, Michgan, and Texas.

Like Johnson before him, Nixon had some domestic accomplihsments, but his presidency was undone by his flawed war policy. After the Pentagon Papers were released in 1971, Nixon formed a Special Investigation Unit, known as the Plumbers, to investigate and stop the leaks. Some speculate that part of Nixon's motivation was his fear that his actions to sabotage the peace process during the '68 campaign might come to light if the leaks didn't get plugged. The plumbers were caught breaking into the Democratic headquarters in June of 1972, and the Watergate saga began.

The Democrats made the same mistake in 1972 that the Republicans had made in 1964, when they nominated a candidate from the fringe of the party. Like Goldwater, George McGovern was a good man with an impeccable personal character, but he did even worse than Goldwater, winning only one state, Massachusetts, to Goldwater's six in 1964.

McGovern tried to make Nixon's corruption a campagin theme, but it never really caught fire. However, in the year and a half after the election, investigations by Congress and journalists brought to light the extent of Nixon's corruption, and he was forced to resign in August of 1974.

VP Gerald Ford took over, and a month into his presidency he issued a pardon for Richard Nixon. It was presented as if he had gone to church, and upon his return to the White House he experienced an epiphany and impulsively pardoned Nixon. In his 1999 book "Shadow", Bob Woodward explains what was so wrong with thsi:

"The problem with the pardon was in Ford's execution. To be successful, the pardon required elaborate orchestration. The public, Congress and the media needed to be prepared. Ford whould have mustered all of his sense of decency to explain his actions to the republic....He should have required Nixon to sign a statement admitting his guilt and released it with the pardon."

Ford ran for the GOP nomination in 1976, but he had stiff opposition from Ronald Reagan. He got the nomination, but came away from the convention seriously weakened. Even so, he came close to beating Jimmy Carter in the general election. Ford was hurt not only by the Nixon pardon, but also by the bruising primary campaign waged against him by Reagan, and by an inexplicable verbal gaffe during a debate with Carter in which he stated that Eastern Europe was not under the domination of the Soviet Union.

The electoral vote for Carter was 297-240. Ford won the entire West, except for Texas, and Carter won the entire South, except for Virginia. Carter's Southern strategy was a successful attempt to appeal to his fellow southerners, reminiscent of Nixon's such strategy in 1968. Carter downplayed his liberalism, and ran a campaign which avoided the issues and stressed that he would return integrity and honesty to the national government, an approach which resonated with voters who were tired of the corruption and turmoil following the twin debacles of Watergate and Vietnam.

The Carter presidency was a complete disaster. It reminds me a lot of the Polk presidency; what Roseboom said about Polk could equally apply to Carter: "He had serious defects as a party leader. He was drab, rather susp[icious, self-contained, self-righteous, always on his guard, trusting no one overmuch and inviting no confidences." It was also reminiscent of Benjamin Harrison, about whom it was said that "He was ungracious and frigid in his dealings with people. He had been elected with the help of party workers, but now he failed to reciprocate properly."

In "Shadow", Woodward ends his section on Carter by saying that "Carter regularly broke his most basic promise made when he campaigned for the presidency. He did not always tell the truth." To me the worst Carter lie was when he claimed that he let the Shah of Iran into the country for medical treatment because the Shah could not get the treatment he needed elsewhere. Carter did this despite intelligence reports warning him that our embassy in Tehran would be in jeopardy if he let the Shah into the U.S. He ignored the intelligence reports, and the hostage crisis resulted.

But here is "the rest of the story". Much later the U.S. doctors revealed that they were willing to go down to Mexico City to treat the Shah, and said that he could have had the same treatment there as in the U.S. So, Carter's excuse was exposed as an outright lie.

Examples of how bad Carter was can be illustrated by two incidents involving House Speaker Tip O'Neill, which bookended the Carter administration as one occurred at the start and the other at the end. On Inauguration Day, Tip could not get tickets to the Inaugural Ball, an inexplicable slight to the top Democrat in Congress. And on election day of 1980, Tip pleaded with Carter to not concede until the polls were closed in California. Carter ignored the plea and conceded early, and two incumbent California Democratic Congressmen lost as a result, as Democratic voters left the polls in droves after the concession became public. Tip O'Neill got along better with Ronald Reagan than he ever did with Carter, which pretty much tells you all you need to know about how bad Carter was.

One of Carter's many problems was his penchant for micro-managing. An example is that White House personnel had to make reservations to use the White House tennis court directly with Carter. Staffers even had to call Carter on Air Force One to make a reservation!

In the convention era, the party would have turned to a different candidate in 1980, just as the Democrats did in 1848 when rejecting Polk for a second term, and as the Republicans did in 1880 when rejecting Hayes for a second term. But since we were now in the primary era, the electorate was stuck with a hopelessly flawed candidate.

The Republicans chose Ronald Reagan as their 1980 nominee. Reagan had primary opposition, but prevailed over all of his opponents and by the time of the convention the party was united behind him. Carter, by contrast, had strenuous opposition from Senator Ted Kennedy, a battle which Kennedy took all the way to the convention. The party remained so fractured that over 700 of the Kennedy delegates walked out of the convention after Carter was re-nominated for a second term.

With the Democratic Party hopelessly fractured, Reagan won the general election in a landslide. Carter won only six states: the home states of him and his running mate, Georgia and Minnesota, plus West Virginia, Rhode Island, Hawaii, and Maryland. Raegan was re-elected in 1984 by an even greater landslide than in 1980, as the Democratic candidate, Walter Mondale, won only his home state of Minnesota.

The 1998 campaign was one of the most despicable in U.S. history. VP George H.W. Bush got the GOP nomination, running againt the Democrat Michael Dukakis. Bush ran a despicable campaign, totally out of character with his basic sense of decency; he repeatedly attacked Dukakis for being a "card-carrying member of the ACLU", for vetoing a bill requiring the Pledge of Allegiance to be recited in Massachusetts schools, for overseeing a prison furlough program in Massachusetts which led to a murder, and for being against the death penalty.

The tragedy in this election was that Dukakis did not punch back. He simply ignored the attacks, and naturally he lost the election in a near-landslide. He won only ten states plus the District of Columbia, and lost the electoral vote 426-111. Columnist Jimmy Breslin famously chasstised the Democrats for giving us a "busted computer" as a candidate, a refernece to Dukakis's wooden and uninspiring campaigning style.

Bill Clinton learned from the Dukakis debacle, and in 1992 he set up a war room which was responsible for anticipating GOP attacks and having responses ready. This worked wonderfully, as the Clinton responses to attacks were so timely that they were reported out on the news at the same time as the attacks. Clinton was an unusually adept campaigner, with an ability to connect with voters which his opponent, Bush running for a second term, lacked. With third-party candidate Ross Perot muddying the waters, Clinton won 370-168 in the electoral college. Perot got an impressive 19% of the popular vote, but won no states, and finished second in only two states--Utah and Maine.

Clinton was re-elected easily in 1996, beating the GOP candidate Senator Bob Dole. While Dole had been an effective Senator, he did not measure up as a viable presidential candidate. Ross Perot was again in the picture as a third-party candidate, but his share of the vote dropped to 8%.

And now we come to the infamous 2000 election. The outcome came down to Florida, and when the Supreme Court refused to allow the recount to proceed in Florida, George W. Bush was declared elected, winning Florida by a paltry 537 votes.

This abysmal decision threw the Supreme Court into a state of disrepute, a state which has continued to this day. The Consitution says the electors of a state are to be determined in a manner chosen by the state legislature, so the federal government has no role in this process. And yet, the Supreme Court thrust itself into the middle of the Florida election recount. The Court's disapproval rainting, which stood at 24% in July of 2000, is now at 58% according to the latest Gallup Poll.

The Supreme Court has always been a poitical institution, but up until 2000 the American public clung to the notion that the Court was above poitics. But the 2000 election decision was so blatantly political, with the five conservatives, people who were always considerd to be strong supporters of states' rights, acting to deny Florida the right to run its own election.

Nothing that has happened since has acted to restore the Court's credibility, despite the heroic efforts of Chief Justice John Roberts, who has genuine and well-founded concerns about the Court's lack of crediibility. The Dobbs decision, overturning Roe v. Wade, was a blatantly political decision, made possible by the justices placed on the Court by President Trump with the express purpose of overturning Roe. One of these justices was there only because Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused for a year to take up Obama's nomination to fill a Court vacancy. Just so sickenly and blatantly political.

And now we have election cases coming before the Court, with the Court's lack of any ethical rules coming into the spotlight. Justice Thomas's wife was an active part of the effort to overturn the results of the 2000 election, and yet Thomas refuses to recuse himself on cases involving that election. Further problems for Thomas are the huge gifts which he has received from his billionaire friends, gifts which he has failed to disclose on required financial disclosure forms. And now it comes to light that Justice Alito had an upside-down American flag displayed at his residence, and also at his beach house, after the January 6th insurrection, this display of the flag being a symbol of support for the election denial movement. Congress has the power to impose a code of ethics and otherwise regulate Court activities, and it needs to act now, before the Supreme Court descends into complete irrelevancy.

But the 2000 election should never have gotten to the point where it was so close that the Supreme Court was able to step in and decide the outcome. It is demonstrably true that third-party candidate Ralph Nader's presence on the ballot cost Al Gore the election in Florida. And it is also demonstrably true that the infamous "butterfly ballot" used in Palm Beach County was so confusing that 2,000 voters voted for Pat Buchanan, when they intended to vote for Al Gore.

But the real villain in the 2000 election fiasco was not the Supreme Court, nor Ralph Nader, nor the butterfly ballot. The real villain is Al Gore himself, for turning his back on Bill Clinton. Instead of distancing himself from Clinton, he should have embraced Clinton, and allowed Clinton to campaign for him. Bill Clinton ended his presidency more popular than any presidnet since such ratings were begun in 1952. For the record, here are the final approval ratings for all presidents starting with Truman. Clinton-66%, Reasgan-63%, Obama & Ike-59%, JFK-58%, Bush Sr.-56%, Ford-53%, LBJ-49%, Carter & Bush Jr.-34%, Truman-32%, Nixon-24%.

But what was not simply wrongheaded, but was also totally despicable, was the issue on which Gore chose to break with the Clinton Administration. On March 30, 2000, Gore released a statementy saying that Elian Gonzalez should have his future decided by a Florida family court. Just think about what this would have meant? Elian's father would have had to come to the U.S., a country he'd never been to, speaking a language he did not speak, and litigate his right to his own son! This would have been unbearably cruel to Elian's father, and, thankfully, the Clinton Administastion realized how wrong this would have been and returned Elian to his father in Cuba. Basic famiy law in this country says that a parent has priority over third-party relatives when deciding custody, aslthough there would have been no guarantee that a Florida family court would have decided the case accordingly. It would have been a complete circus, and quite traumatizing to this six-year-old child and his father. After Gore's statement, I realized I could never vote for such an inhumane man.

What Gore was doing was pandering to the anti-Castro Cuban-American voters in Florida. This crowd was advancing a right-wing narrative that Elian's mother was fleeing to the U.S. seeking freedom for herself and her son. This was a totally false narrative. The truth is that as recently as the night before the trip, she was unsure she wanted to go. At the last-minute she decided to accompany her boyfried to avoid losing him. Kudos to the Clinton Administaton for doing the right thing, and thereby taking a positive step to reversing forty years of a foregin policy based on anti-Castro hysteria. And boos to Gore for showing hinmself to be a despicable human being.

Today Elian Gonzalez is an industrial engineer and a member of Cuba's Congress. He is married with a young child. His father protected him from undue media attention during his childhood, enabling him to have a normal chhildhood. There can be no doubt that his life has been better than it would have been growing up in the U.S. as a pawn for the radical right-wing.

In 2004 the Democrats nominated Massachusetts Senator John Kerry to run against the incumbent George W. Bush. Kerry was not a bad candidtae, but his thoughtfulness caused him to come across as wishy-washy, when, like Ed Muskie in 1972, it was just a matter that he could see multiple sides of an issue. His inartful statment that "I voted for it before I voted against it" led to him being called a "flip-flopper", even though it made sense to anyone who understands the arcane Senate rules.

Democrats hoped that Kerry's military service in Vietnam would be a plus running against Bush, who used family influence to get into the National Guard, thereby avoiding going to Vietnam. However, a group of veterans formed a group which ran $22 million worth of negative ads against Kerry, and the term "swift-boating" entered the lexicon, meaning an unfair political attack. Most of Kerry's fellow service members disputed the Swift Boat narrative, but the damage was done.

Despite all the GOP dirty tricks, the elction was quite close. The electoral vote was 286-251, with the result not decided until the day after the election when Ohio was declared for Bush. Bush won 50.7% of the pooular vote, the only time since 1988 that the GOP candidate has won the popular vote (both Bush in 2000 and Trump in 2016 lost the popular vote though winning the electoral vote).

The most noteworthy thing about the 2008 election was John McCain's odd selection of Alaska governor Sarah Palin as his GOP running mate. Palin had no accomplishments to brag about, and was virtually unknown outside her home state before she was thrust into the national limelight by McCain. McCain had wanted Joe Lieberman for his running mate, but party leaders vetoed the idea. This idea of "balancing the ticket" turned out horribly for the GOP, as the right-wing hated McCain and the moderates couldn't stomach Palin. With the GOP incumbent president (Bush) at an approval rating of a paltry 25% on election day, the GOP ticket was likely in big trouble anyway.

Obama won the male vote 49-48, the only time since 1992 that the Democratic candidate has done so. (Even Dole in 1996 won the male vote 44-43.) 2008 is also noteworthy as the only time that both major parties nominated sitting United States Senators for the presidency.

The 2012 general electon was a rather mundane vote for the incumbent Obama over his GOP challenger, Mitt Romney. The most interesting thing about this eletion was the battle for the GOP nomination, which was a case study in how our system of partisan primaries forces candidates to appeal to the extremes of their party. Between 5/5/11 and 2/22/12, the Republican Party had an incredible total of twenty debates! These debates featured combinations of the ten major GOP candidates; in alphabetical order, these were Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich, Jon Huntsman, Gry Johnson, Ron Paul, Tim Pawlenty, Rick Perry, Mktt Romney, an Rick Santorum.

Each of these GOP debates would have the top two candidtaes in the current polling in the middle; these two always consisted of Mitt Romney and whoever was closest to him in the polls at the time. What was so fascinating was to watch Romney pick them off and destroy them one by one, like a sniper picking off his victims. Romney's technique was to insist he was more "conservative" than his competitor; this demonstrates the problem with partisan primaries, as Romney pandered to the extreme right wing every time. At the end he was lambasting Newt Gingrich for not insisting that all people here illegally should be deported. Newt was advocating allowing grandmothers who've been here for decades and have been productive members of their communities to remain in this country.

On another occasion, Romney characterized himself as "severely conservative", an odd phraseology that was totally false. To the "charge" that the health care plan he signed into law as governor of Massachusetts was similar to Obamacare, he responded that the problem with the federal law was that it imposed a "one size fits all" system on the states. The natural follow-up to this would have been to ask Romney what was so different about Massachusetts that the same plan which worked so well there would not work in other states, but nobody ever pressed him on this.

The problems with partisan primaries came into full prominence in 2016 when the two major parties selected the two most unpopular candidates since Gallup polling in this regard began in 1956. The final Gallup favorability poll of the candidates before the election showed Trump with a 61% unfavorability rating, and Hillary Clinton with a 52% unfavorability rating. This travesty is being repeated now, in 2024, when the two candidates poised to get their party's nomination both are highly unpopular.

The evil of identity politics reared its ugly head in 2016 when liberals opposed to Hillary Clinton were labelled misogynistic. I experienced this personally when a prominant Mennonite feminist, someione who I had thought was a friend and a kindred spirt, called me a misogynist for daring to criticize Hillary's campaigning style. I was absolutley correct, as events have proven, and yet I was vilified. When Trump recently opined thst Biden hates Jews and added that “If Jewish people are going to vote for Joe Biden, they have to have their head examined”, his criticisms of Biden differed in degree, but not in kind, from my critic's castigation of me. The principle is the same: if you criticize a Jew, you must hate Jews; if you criticize a woman, you must hate women. This identity politics and poitical correctness nonsense is despicable and must stop! It's getting so that one cannot express an honest opinion anymore for fear of offending someone or being labelled as some sort of a hatemonger.

As one might expect, Hillary, whose wooden and passionless campaigning style turned off most voters, lost the election and we got stuck with Trump, who turned out to be easily the worst president in U.S. history. Boos and hisses to the Democrats for not rising to the occasion and giving us a viable candidate in 2016. And boos and hisses to Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, who was revealed through leaked emails to have had her thumb on the scales in favor of Hillary Clinton over her primary challenger, Bernie Sanders, in the battle for the 2016 Democratic nomination. She was forced to resign in disgrace on the eve of the 2016 Democratic convention, and has been living in relative obscurity ever since.

As one might expect, Trump lost his bid for re-election in 2020, and now in 2024 it looks like we are in store for a rematch of the 2020 race between Trump and Biden. The issue here is going to be whether Biden can mount a competent campaign which highlights his acheivements as president. To do this he will need to make generous use of Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, two of the best surrogates a candidate could ever hope to have. If he does, the voters will love it and overlook the age issue. If not, Donald Trump will join Grover Cleveland as the only presidents to serve two non-consecutive terms.

"The Primary Solution", by Nick Troiana

The author convincingly demonstrates that moving to nonpartisan primaries is the way to alleviate the extreme partisanship which infects our politics in this country. Currently there are only five states with nonpartisan primaries: California, Washington, Alaska, Nebraska and Louisiana.

The 2022 Senate election in Alaska illustrates the value of the nonpartisan primary system. Lisa Murkowski had voted for the Trump impeachment, and so she was being "primaried" by Trump in her race for re-election. Trump even went to Alaska and personally campaigned against Murkowski before the August primary, calling her a RINO. On the same day that Liz Cheney lost her Wyoming primary by a margin of 66% to 29%, Murkowski finished in the top four in Alaska and went on to the general election. In the general election the top four faced off, and, after making use of ranked choice voting, Murkowksi was returned to the Senate over the Trump-endorsed candidate with 53.7% of the vote. Had her fate been decided in a partisan Republican primary instead, she would have been trounced, just like Liz Cheney was in Wyomnig.

In 2022 Alaska had an equally interesting primary for its only House seat, with Sarah Palin running for the seat vacated when longtime Congressman Dan Young died suddenly. Palin finished first in a field of 48 candidates, receiving 27% of the vote. Finishing fourth with 10% was Mary Peltola, a member of the Yup'ik tribe and a Democrat. But in the general election, Peltola won with 40.2% of the vote, and, after application of the ranked choice process, she beat Palin 51.5% to 48.5%. Palin ranted and raved that the new system was unfair, but careful analysis showed that it was in fact more responsive to the wishes of the voters than the old system was.

Thess examples illustrate how the nonpartisan primary forces candidates to appeal to the entire electorate, not just the ones from their own party. And, since only the most passionate voters tend to vote in partisan primaries, the most extreme candidates tend to win in those primaries, as the extremists tend to be more passionate than the moderates, and therefore more motivated to vote. In fact, analyses cited by Troiana show that Congressional elections are typically decided by only about 8% of the electorate. This is because most Congressional districts have been gerrymandered to be "safe" districts for one party or the other; therefore, whoever wins that party's primary is a shoo-in to win the general election. And due to the usual low turnout for partisan primaries, the actual vote for the winning candidate comes to only about 8% of the total electorate.

The partisan gerrymandering has gotten so bad that today only about 6% of House seats are considered to be competitive. This means that the elections in 94% of the races are decided in a primary, and the vast majority of these primaries are partisan primaries. This will change as nonpartisan primaries gain in favor, but it will be long, hard slog to get there.

Three Takes on the Trump Hush Money Trial

Closing arguments are scheduled for Tuesday (Monday being a holiday) in the Trump hush money trial. Here are three views about what to expect.

Trump will lose. A major factor influencing the result of any criminal trial is whether the jury likes the defendnat. This can even apply to the lawyers. I've been personally involved in two jury trials in which the ultimate verdict was due in large part to how the jury felt about one of the lawyers.

The problem with Trump is that he gave the jury plenty of reasons to dislike him. In the early part of the trial, he repeatedly reacted audibly to witness testimony, resulting in the Judge having to repeatedly admonish him. And then there is his legal team, which turned the jury off with their boorish and improper behavior, behavior mandated by their client. And finally there is the main defense witness, whose behavior was described asd "contemptuous by the Judge.

With such a low likeability factor at work, the jury will likely convict.

Trump will win. There are just too many dots to connect for the jury to convict, at least on the felony charge. Trump himself did not falisfy his busines recoprds, so the state must prove he "caused" them to be falsified. The evidence on this is thin. And then there is the matter of proving that the falsification was done to cover up a crime. The Judge has ruled that the state doesn't even have to specify what crime the defendant allegedly was trying to cover up. What this means is that different jurors can base a vote to convict on different crimes, which doesn't seem right to me. My guess is that Trump would have a good argument on appeal that this violates a defendant's right to be told specifically what he is being charged with.

The whole thing is a big waste of time and resources. Trump is being charged with a nonvolent crime, and has no prior criminal record. The sentencing guidelines would surely make this a case for presumptive probation. So why all the sound and fury; it is accomplishing nothing.

The prosecution should have learned from the infamous prosecution of John Edwards in 2011. Edwards collected nearly $1 million in illegal campaign contributions, funneled the money to support his pregnant mistress, and falsified his campaign records to conceal this from the public during his 2008 campaign for the presidencny. He was charged with six counts of violating campaign finance laws. The trial lasted six weeks, including nine days of jury deliberations. The jury acquitted Edards on one count and deadlocked on the other five counts. The Justice Dept. decided not to retry Edwards.

This illustrates what a waste of time these prosecutions are. The Edwards case was more serious and much more clear-cut, and prosecuted by the federal Justice Dept. rather than by a state, but still no conviction could be obtained.

Only harm can result from the misguided Trump prosecution. Trump supporters will be reinforced in their belief that their candidate is being unfairly persecuted, a belief which is not unfounded. Valuable resources that could be used to prosecute violent crimes are being dissipated.

Four Things Which Annoyed Me Today

1. Partian Primaries. I am reading "The Primary Solution", by Nick Troiano. The author makes a convincing case that the main cause of the bitter partisanship in today's politics is due to the system of partisan primaries. In light of this, it is disheartening that only five states have adopted the non-partisan primary: California, Washington, Nebraska, Alaska and Louisiana. The problem here is that the two main parties are jealous of their power and influence and refuse to give up their status as power brokers. Independents, which outnumber both of the two main parties these days, are shut out of the process, and we get candidates on the extreme fringes of the two main parties instead of candidates who actually want to solve problems. I will write more on this after I finish the Troiano book.

2. The Louisville Police Department. The Louisville Chief of Police read a statement today to the press, but said nothing other than that the policeman who had the run-in with golfer Scottie Scheffler did not turn on his body cam, and has been "counseled" about the violation. The Louisville Mayor made a statement in which he said nothing significant. Neither of the two took any questions from the press.

This is totally unacceptable. Why wasn't the District Attorney there, explaining why Scottie was charegd with a felony. Scheffler, who by all accounts is the most mild-mannerd, and deeply religious, golfer on the PGA tour, surely had no intent to cause the officer any harm, rendering the felony assault charge ludicrous. This is a huge black eye for the city of Louisville, and you would think the Louisville audthorities would be anxiopus to get in front of this issue and defuse it. But, apparently not.

3. Nikki Haley. Haley made a statement yesterday announcing she would be voting for Trump. This after her numerous statements during the campaign in which she explained that Trump was unfit to serve as president. This kind of about-face is not necessarily unusual in our politics, but the substance of Haley's statment defies credulity.

She stated that she wanted a president who would "have the backs of our allies and hold our enemies to account, secure the nation’s borders, and curb the national debt." Trump did none of these, and in fact actively worked to undermine NATO, cozied up to Russia and other authoritarian countries, and ballooned the national debt. Haley destoryed any credibility she might have had on the national stage by her moronic comments. So disappoinitng.

4. Samuelm Alito. News came out today that not only did Samuel Alito have an upside down flag flying at his house, a symbol of support for the so-called "stop the steal" movement by Trump supporters seeking to overturn the 2000 election results, but he also had it flying at his beach house. And yet Alito participates in election cases, further disgracing a Supreme Court which has already been discredited almosst to the point of irrelevancy.

Some Thoughts on the Trump "Hush Money" Trial

The current coverage of the Trump hush money trial is so immersed in the weeds of the day-to-day maneuverings that I think it would be useful to step back and look at the larger picture.

The case that is most similar to the current case is the John Edwards case from 2011. Edwards had an affair with a female staffer during his 2008 presidential run, and paid her off with funds solicited from campaign donors. It is not exaclty the same as the current case, but there are significant similarities.

Edawards was charged with campaign finance violations, but at his 2011 trial he was found not guilty on one count, and the jury hung on the other counts. The DOJ decided not to retry him. The charges agianst Edwards seem more significant than the curernt ones against Trump, which doesn't augur well for the prosecution in this case.

In the current case, the prosecution has surely proved that Trump paid the hush money by reimbursing his "fixer" Michael Cohen for the $130,000 Cohen paid from his personal funds to buy the silence of Stormy Daniels. But it seems doubtful that the jury will unanimously find that Trump was guilty of falsifying his business records. Yes, he signed the checks, but where is the evidence that he falsified his records?

Falsifying buiness records is a relatively minor, non-violent crime. It would be alomost inconceivable that any defendasnt with no prior criminal record would be sent to prison for such a crime. This calls into question the wisdom, or lack thereof, of devoting huge chunks of government resources to prosecuting this relatively minor crime.

The same could be said for the prior case in which the New York AG prosecuted Trump for civil fraud for inflating values of his properties. Trump's argument that the loans obtained were repaid in full, and thus there were no victims, is quite strong. The state's response that the victims were other potential borrowers who might have recieved loans but for Trump's fraud, is quite weak. I look for the huge judgment to be reduced on appeal.

The other pending cases against Trump are stronger, but unfortunately it appears none will come to trial before the November election.

A History of Presidential Elections", by Eugene Roseboom, Part Three, The Democrats Find Their Voice

[Note: Part Two ended with the Democrats winning their first presidential election in 28 years, when Grover Cleveland won in 1984. We now enter an era in which the Democrats find their identity as a party espousing progressive ideas. The turning point was the election of 1896; in 1892 the People's Party had received 8.5% of the popular vote, winning five western states. But when William Jennings Bryan won the 1896 nomination with a populist message, the People's Party, which had also nominated Bryan. decided to join forces with the Democratic Party.]

Cleveland ruled well and made some progress in civil service reform. Toward the end of his term he addressed the tariff issue by calling for some reductions, due to the Treasury surplus that had built up through the high tariffs then in effect. In 1888 the Republicans nominated Senator Benjamin Harrison of Indiana, after several ballots and much negotiation (Sherman had received more than twice as many votes as anyone else on the first ballot). The Republicans successfully (and falsely) accused the Democrats of being for free trade, and they warned of wage cuts and unemployment that would result if the Democrats prevailed.

The Republican Harrison narrowly won the election. Cleveland outpolled him by 100,000 votes, but he lost the electoral vote 233-168, due to losing New York's 36 electoral votes by 13,000 votes. Republican corruption in this election had been "well authenticated", according to Roseboom, as the Republicans locked up "floaters", and then sent them to the polls with "Republican ballots in their hands and as much as $15.00 in their pockets". Roseboom states that corruption may have decided the result in New York, and definitely did in Indiana.

Roseboom states that "no resident of the White House has aroused so little enthusiasm" as did Benjamin Harrison. He was ungracious and frigid in his dealings with people. He had been elected with the help of many party workers, but now failed to reciprocate properly.

The 1892 election was a repeat of the 1888 one, between Harrison and Cleveland, but this time the professional politicians were lethargic and it was a dull campaign. The tariff issue was again paramount, but labor troubles had put the lie to the Republican argument that labor benefited from high tariffs. Cleveland was elected by 400,00 votes, making him the only president to date to serve two non-consecutive terms. The electoral vote was 277-145.

Thanks to the masterful actions of his campaign manager, Mark Hanna, William McKinkley was easily nominated on the first ballot of the 1896 Republican convention. The Democrats debated the silver issue, leading to William Jennings Bryan's famous "cross of gold" speech, which was so effective that Bryan was later nominated by the convention. Bryan proceeded to receive the endorsements of various third parties that had sprung up during the previous twenty years to advance the interests of farmers and workers. Bryan campaigned hard, but Hanna raised vast sums of money for McKinley and ran a masterful campaign, winning 271-176 in the electoral college and by 700,000 popular votes.

Roseboom reports that McKinley was an adept politician:

"No president has been more successful in mirroring the composite views of the majority of voters. McKinley's success was due chiefly to his adeptness at the complex game of politics. Nursing no grudges, disarming irate Congressmen by his friendliness, handling patronage with skill, he gained steadily in popular favor, and his party became united and harmonious, despite the anti-imperialism of a few old-fashioned eastern wheelhorses."

The economy was improved, and for the first time in a long time, foreign affairs became more significant than domestic politics. America emerged as a world power with the Spanish-American War, the acquisition of Puerto Rico and the Philippines, and the annexation of Hawaii. The silver and tariff issues were thrust into the background.

McKinley was nominated for another term by the Republicans in 1900, and the newly-elected governor of New York, Teddy Roosevelt, was nominated for VP, after McKinley left it up to the delegates to decide. Bryan was again nominated by the Democrats, after insisting on another plan endorsing free coinage of silver, which passed in the committee by only one vote. However, the economy was much-improved from 1896, and Bryan's message was not as effective this time around. His electoral vote loss was 292-155, and the popular vote deficit was 850,000.

McKinley was shot on September sixth, and Teddy Roosevelt took over. Roosevelt had handled the speaking chores during the campaign and had become very popular in his own right by the time of the election. Teddy was unanimously nominated for a full term in 1904, while the Democrats were so lacking in sitting governors and senators that they turned to a judge--Alton B. Parker--for the nomination, and they nominated an 80-year-old man for VP. Cleveland could have had the nomination easily, but he declined to run. As a result, the Democrats were in a state of disarray. Roosevelt won 336-140, with a tremendous 2.5 million popular vote margin. All of Parker's electoral votes came from the South.

On election night Roosevelt made a pledge not to seek another term, although he certainly could have had the 1908 nomination for the asking. Instead, he supported his Secretary of War, William Howard Taft, who was nominated. The Democrats turned back to Bryan, who lost to Taft 321-162, and by more than a million popular votes, while the socialist Eugene Debs raised his total to 420,000.

Taft was not a good president, and when Roosevelt returned from a fifteen-month overseas trip, he was drawn into the political controversies that were raging. At first he supported Taft, but early in 1912 events led to his running himself for the GOP nomination. Taft was fundamentally a conservative, and Roosevelt a progressive; there were also personality differences.

Roseboom calls the ensuing fight for the GOP nomination "the greatest pre-convention struggle in American history". Both candidates took an active part in the pre-convention battle, a sharp contrast from the 1800s when even the general election campaign did not see active campaigning. (McKinley's "front porch campaign" in 1896 was actually a more active role than had been seen previously, while Bryan went all the way and actually made stump speeches.)

Roosevelt personally went to the convention in Chicago, an unusual move. He had defeated Taft 278-48 in states that had direct primaries. However, Taft controlled the convention machinery. With 254 of 1,078 convention seats in dispute, the national committee had to decide who to seat. The committee was controlled two-thirds by Taft, and consequently it gave Taft 235 of the 254 disputed seats.

The control of the convention was evident early on when the battle over the chairman of the convention was won by the Taft forces, 558-501. The Roosevelt forces continued to battle by forcing the fight over disputed seats to the floor of the convention. However, a "steam roller" was in effect; a motion that delegates whose seats were in dispute not be permitted to vote on any disputed cases was voted down, 567-507. Since 74 of the disputed seats were being challenged on the floor, it is apparent that the Taft supporters prevailed only by allowing the disputed delegates to vote on their own cases. This was a blatant conflict of interest, and this heavy-handed approach by Taft showed a serious lack of judgment. How did he expect to win the general election with such a divided party?

On the Democratic side, Bryan was still on the scene and the Democrats had their own party schism to contend with. Unlike the prior recent elections, this time the Democrats were blessed with some good candidates. Democratic victories in 1910 had produced a good crop of governors and had given Democrats control of the House.

At the 1912 Democratic Convention, House Speaker Champ Clark of Missouri was the early favorite, and he had the most votes on the first ballot. When the 90 New York votes then shifted to Clark, he had a majority. However, the two-thirds rule was still in effect, and no such super-majority could be obtained.

On the 14th ballot Bryan stepped into the deadlock and announced that he was changing his vote from Clark to Wilson. Wilson was eventually nominated on the 46th ballot.

After losing the Republican nomination to Taft, Roosevelt decided to mount a run as a third-party candidate. His Progressive Party met in convention and adopted a platform that was "the most comprehensive and detailed ever offered by an American party". It proposed a host of reforms designed "to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics".

However, Wilson proved to be a good campaigner. He "steered clear of extremes and conducted a campaign that kept him safely between the conservatism of Taft and the radicalism of Roosevelt". Wilson won with 435 electoral votes to 88 for Roosevelt and and only 8 (Utah and Vermont) for Taft. Roosevelt polled about 2/3 of Wilson's popular vote total, and Taft about half. The socialist Eugene Debs more than doubled his vote from 1908, to 897,000, which no doubt would have been higher but for the liberalism of Roosevelt and Wilson.

Wilson was an effective leader, and pressured Congress into passing many pieces of reform legislation in areas such as tariff rates, income tax, anti-trust, banking, labor, et al. Roseboom states that:

"Wilson's ascendency over his party evoked comparison with Jackson and Jefferson. Nor was it merely a matter of bills passed. He freed the Democratic Party from its worship of the states-rights fetish, held its discordant elements together in a program of reform, gained the confidence of farmers and organized labor, and refused to let the opposition of business deter him from his chosen course.

In 1916 Wilsopn ran for re-election based on his domestic achievements and the fact that he had kept the U.S. out of the European War. And yet, he almost lost the election to Justice Hughes. The electoral vote was 277-254, and the election wasn't decided until Thursday afternoon when California's votes were given to Wilson. The Progressives had a convention, but then didn't nominate anybody when Roosevelt turned down the chance to run.

Many Republican candidates vied for the nomination at the 1920 convention. After four ballots there was no favorite, and the chairman adjourned overnight. That night the infamous "smoke-filled room" saw a committee of men confer and settle on Harding, and he became the nominee. The Democratic convention was leaderless, with Wilson now an invalid, and Ohio Governor Cox was finally nominated on the 44th ballot.

The Republican campaign was "a model of vote-catching banality". Harding won in a real landslide, 404-127 in the electoral vote, and 16-9 million in the popular vote. Harding's shortcomings are well-known, and the Democrats made significant gains in the 1922 mid-term elections. Harding then died on August 2, 1923.

Coolidge took over after Harding's death, and he was nominated for a full term almost unanimously in 1924. The Democrats, by contrast, were hopelessly divided, and finally nominated John W. Davis on the 103rd ballot. Davis was a conservative, and dissatisfied liberals met and nominated Wisconsin Senator Robert La Follette as the candidate of the Progressive Party. The Progressives hoped to win enough states to throw the election into the House, but with the economy strong the Republicans won easily. The Progressives did win Wisconsin's electoral votes, but otherwise Coolidge won 382-136 in the electoral vote and 54-29-16 million in the popular vote.

Coolidge declined to run for a second term in 1928, and his Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover got the Republican nomination. Four-time governor of New York Al Smith got the Democratic nomination, but lost 444-87 in the electoral vote and 21-15 million in the popular vote.

Despite the depression, Hoover was nominated for a second term in 1932 as his friends controlled the party machinery. FDR had sprung to national prominence by winning the governorship of New York in 1928 in the face of the GOP landslide, and he won the Democratic nomination easily. The general election was a Democratic landslide, with the electoral vote 472-59 and the popular vote at 23-16 million.

The most significant thing about the 1936 election was that the Democratic convention finally threw out the infamous century-old "two-thirds rule", which had on occasion denied the nomination to someone who had a majority of the votes. The Roosevelt landslide over Alf Landon in the 1936 election was 523-8 in the electoral vote, and 27.5-16.7 million in the popular vote. The other interesting thing about 1936 is the literary Digest poll which predicted a Landon victory; this drastic error paved the way for the development of more scientific polling techniques in the future.

At the 1940 GOP convention,. Wendell Willkie trailed both Dewey and Taft on the first ballot, but by the fifth ballot his strength had grown and a few states then shifted their votes to put him over the top. Willkie ran a strenuous and more liberal campaign than his predecessors, beginning with a speech in Coffeyville, Kansas, where he had once taught school. The election was thought to be too close to call, but when the votes were counted FDR had won 449-82, with 54.7% of the popular vote.

The 1944 Republican convention was a lackluster affair which nominated New York governor Thomas Dewey. At the Democratic convention, the excitement was in the VP nomination. Henry Wallace outpolled Truman on the first ballot, but Truman eventually prevailed. FDR won the general election 432-99, with 53.4% of the popular vote.

Truman's come-from-behind victory over Dewey in 1948 is well-known. He campaigned hard and won 303-189, with 39 Southern electoral votes going to Strom Thurmond.

At the 1952 GOP convention, there were contested seats between the Dwight Eisenhower forces and the Robert Taft forces, just like the battle in 1912 between Teddy Roosevelt and Robert Taft's father, William Howard Taft. However, unlike in 1912, when the Roosevelt forces were unable to exclude contested delegates from voting on who to seat, here the Eisenhower forces were successful in getting through a motion that delegations opposed by more than one-third of the national committee should not be permitted to vote on the credentials of any disputed delegation. Even though the Taft forces controlled the convention machinery, the motion passed by 110 votes. The credentials committee still voted in favor of seating the Taft delegates, but the full convention overruled the committee by rejecting the Georgia delegation 607-531, and the Eisenhower delegates were then seated in all cases.

The Democratic convention was also interesting, with eleven candidates being nominated. Illinois governor Adlai Stevenson had disavowed the movement to draft him, but his vote total steadily rose and he was nominated on the third ballot, the last time it took more than one ballot to nominate a presidential candidate. With TV now in the picture, the campaign was interesting. Ike won big, 442-89, with 55% of the popular vote.

It was Ike vs. Adlai again facing off in 1956, and Ike again won, with a 457-73 electoral edge, and 57% of the popular vote. However, in an unprecedented result, the Democrats won control of both houses of Congress. Roseboom says the explanation for this is hard to understand, but he concludes that the voters must have wanted divided government:

"Viewed in its immediate aftermath, the election was actually a vote for a bi-partisan administration--a president of one party, a Congress of the other--a perplexing verdict for believers in party or parliamentary government. But the voters wanted peace and prosperity continued and this was their solution. They trusted Eisenhower to preserve the one, and the Democratic party to safeguard the other. In 1956, this seemed to make sense.

The 1960 Kennedy-Nixon contest is chronicled in some detail; in the end the electoral vote was 303-219 for Kennedy, and the popular vote difference was less than 1/10 of 1%. The Roseboom book then concludes as the 1964 primary season was heating up.

[Note: With the Roseboom account now ended, in Part Four I will update the account from 1964 to the present, using my own recollections and research.]