PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION ANALOGIES – THIRD PARTIES AND FORMER PRESIDENTS

By Ken Grossberger, PhD

There is much discussion about how the 2024 US Presidential elections will play out, and media types have pushed several comparisons to prior elections, seemingly in an attempt to predict the future from the elections of the past. Analogies are usually not perfect, but there are a few that might be instructive. Three-way presidential races, where there are viable third party candidates or independents, and races between current and former presidents, upset the balance between the two major parties and lessen the predictability of the outcomes. The “third” candidate becomes a mediating variable that is hard to analyze. A brief review of the history of such elections sheds light on such unpredictable contests.

The election of 1860 was a 4-way contest between Abraham Lincoln and 3 Democrats at a time that the country was seriously polarized due to sectional differences arising from the slavery issue and the states’ rights argument. Sen. Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois (against whom Lincoln ran in 1858 for the Illinois Senate seat) represented the northern Democrats, John C. Breckenridge (incumbent Vice President of the United States) drew support from the southern states, and John Bell of the newly formed Constitutional Union party gained electoral votes from the border state region. Lincoln won almost all the electoral votes in the north, the three Democrats split the rest, and Lincoln won the presidency.

In 1892 former President Grover Cleveland, Democrat, came back to challenge incumbent Republican President Benjamin Harrison (who beat Cleveland in 1888). In this return contest Cleveland won back the presidency, the only person in US history to have 2 unconnected terms in the White House. The third party candidate in the race, James B. Weaver, representing the Populist Party, won almost 9% of the vote and carried a few western states, which may have hurt Harrison.

The 1912 election was the race of the 3 presidents, one past, one current and one future. Former President Theodore Roosevelt ran against his old protégé William Howard Taft and won 27% of the vote. President Taft, the incumbent Republican, ran third with only 23% of the vote and only 8 electoral votes. Socialist candidate Eugene V. Debs won about 6% of the vote. Roosevelt and Taft split the Republican vote, and New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson, the Democrat, won the election with only 41% of the popular vote but an electoral landslide.

The presidential election of 1948 was famous for the biggest media faux pas in American history when the Chicago Tribune prematurely published a headline that stated: “Dewey Defeats Truman”. Incumbent President Harry S. Truman beat New York Governor and former prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey by a fairly comfortable margin in the electoral college. Truman was not that popular and the third party candidate, Dixiecrat South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond denied Truman a sizable portion of the southern Democrat vote. After attempts to get him to drop out of the race the Democratic Convention nominated Truman, who went on to win by waging a strong campaign.

There was a similar outcome in the 1968 presidential race but this time the Democrat split gave the election to the Republican former Vice President Richard M. Nixon. Democrat Gov. George Wallace of Alabama ran on the American Independent ticket and won 5 southern states, denying Democrat and incumbent Vice President Hubert Humphrey the electoral votes of those states and a significant portion of the popular vote.

In 1992 independent Ross Perot, a Texas billionaire, won 19% of the vote, most of it from incumbent Vice President Republican George H.W. Bush, giving the election to Democrat Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton. Perot scored one of the highest third party totals in US history. Ironically Bush had a national approval rate of 81% following the 1991 Gulf War, only to see his popularity dwindle to only 37 percent of the vote in the election.

The election of 2024 may be a mix of these scenarios. There is a viable third party candidate I Robert F. Kennedy, Jr, who is drawing about 10% in many polls, but not enough to be in contention for any electoral votes in the swing states. He appears to be taking more votes from Biden than Trump as we see a shift of a few points in the 5-way polling (including 2 other third party candidates), as opposed to the head-to-head data showing Trump with about a 2 point lead over Biden.

The post June 27 debate polls show a slippage in Biden’s support, most notably in the swing states, where Trump now leads outside the margin of error in 8 of 14 critical states. Worse for Biden is that New Hampshire, Minnesota and Virginia, which have voted Democrat in recent elections, are now within the margin of error. There will be more to come with the polls following the assassination attempt on Trump.

Predicting the future from the past is always a lesson in objectivity and thought, and this election is no different.

SOCIALISM, SNICKERS AND SNARKINESS: THE HATE OF THE UNION SPEECH

by Ken Grossberger, PhD

Article II of the constitution requires the president to deliver “from time to time” “information” on the state of the union. In recent memory we heard the soaring rhetoric of Ronald Reagan, the eloquence of Barack Obama and the incisive words of Bill Clinton. Joe Biden’s speech on Thursday was none of that. Give-Em-Hell-Joey came out blazing in what amounted to more of a campaign rally pep talk than a state of the union address.

Was the raised voice approach evidence of some newfound energy, or a failure of anger management? He came across as a roboticized angry old man. His rant was more blame game than solution oriented as he referred to his “predecessor” 13 times. It was a polarizing, divisive speech that did nothing for independents. He was loud, contentious, confrontational, mawkishly pandering and unpretentiously partisan. It was a baseless attempt to appeal to the base in a transparent exercise to reset his campaign at the cost of reason and civility. After digesting this speech the American people needed a dose of philosophical Narcan. At times it seemed like an exercise class, how many times could the Democrats stand up? You could almost hear the Pointer Sisters in the background. The Jack-In-The-Box Democrats jumped up so often the House clerks almost had to send out for oxygen. It’s the kind of theatrical fawning that renders the political process as appearing spurious and self-serving.

In Biden’s imaginary America the only real problem is “my predecessor,” and his arguments are based on carefully parsed data and reality avoidance. It’s an election year, so he romances the left with a list of expensive giveaways (how all this is to be actually paid for no one knows, maybe “tax the rich” again) but with each promise one could see America’s future fading into the sunset under a growing mass of unpayable debt. Another check-the-box exercise in political manipulation, and he kept coughing as if even he didn’t believe his own jive. In a bizarre moment, he interjects a point about the great snack rip-off (so much for lofty rhetoric and the promise of the great American experiment), which went nowhere. He then perfunctorily proposes a two-state solution for the middle east. Which Israel is he supporting? He pandered to the left, heckled the hecklers on the right, and blew his response to a call to “say her name” with his Lincoln Riley faux pas. Then came they pedantic core values wrap up. Which core was he referring to? Then chants of “four more years” (meaning we want power). He closed with “I’ll always be the president for all Americans.” Really?

So the president uses the state of the union speech to re-launch his reelection bid, as he mumbles, fumbles and stumbles his way into the future. Unfortunately, the antidote to current President Biden is former President Trump, who has his own blizzard of problems. He attacks his friends as much as he attacks his enemies (basically he just attacks) in a desperate attempt to get back what he craves most, power.

It’s a race to the bottom in what we hope is the last of this tawdry exercise in how politics in America is not supposed to be.

The Big Dance

The art of lying is such a staple of politics that we accept it as a natural act, like the rising of the sun. Thus most national elected officials have dismal ratings in the polls: the President, Vice President, the leaders in the Senate (both parties) and the leaders in the House (both parties). Trust is a thing of the past and many of those who vote strain to choose the least damaging of the worst.

The Biden team is an example of such deceit, on steroids (as the President likes to phrase things). So he clearly thinks he conjured up the big rhetorical flip taking the Republican-manufactured sarcastic term “Bidenomics” and now uses it as a symbol for this miraculous economy he keeps touting. As his team cherry picks through the data for good stuff (“it’s working” Biden whispers) and ignores the bad stuff (e.g., huge spikes in the cost of just about everything and the dramatic increase in the national debt), he is performing the rhetorical choreography of the “the big dance” designed only to make his administration look good. So Bidenomics is better termed Bidenoptics. Every time he whips out his Bidenomics double talk, he is dancing. The border is closed, he knew nothing of Hunter’s business deals, etc. He continues to dance through the political tulips.

Even more embarrassing is White House Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s recent statement that the record setting sea of illegal immigration at the southern border in December is typical for the end of the year. Or “we need Congress to pass comprehensive immigration” as an excuse for the dramatic increases in border crossings under the Biden administration. These deflections are in line with today’s political word games, based on the dance, and not the truth. The American public is being waltzed down the proverbial road because the Biden team, like too many politicians, will continue to blame the person who put the cookie jar on the kitchen counter, not the person who put his hand in it. The same goes for the economic scene where Bidenomics has hit the middle class and working poor pretty hard. The White House excuse machine is not going to talk people out of their pain with some not-so-clever reverse sloganeering. Politicians have a political blind spot: all they have to do is get the right frame, the right explanation, the palatable clarification or the rhetorical justification, and no one will notice that what they say just isn’t true. They’re dancing, and we the people get a continuous show.

Is there a day of reckoning coming? Will the voting public finally reject the old school politics of deception and vote the rascals out? Are voters finally exhausted from the dance and looking to demand substance only? Lincoln might not fare well in today’s political environment, Franklin Roosevelt might. Reagan did. Carter didn’t. But those leaders were from different eras where there was at least a modicum of civility and restraint. Not that they didn’t have their own brand of shenanigans, or rhetorical sleight of hand. But nothing like the psychotic rearranging of reality of the Biden-Trump era.

Will this be the election cycle where voters dump the fibbers and elect the truth tellers? Perhaps the adults in the room will manifest themselves in such a way that this election will be more about self-interest and the needs of the county, and not power and cosmetics. But in the meantime time the big dance continues.