(Note: these learning modules encompass the actual class lectures, and are designed for those students who have to miss class through no fault of their own, and also as a refresher for all students. Bold print in the notes are what the professor writes on the board.)

LEARNING MODULE: WEEKS 9-10, Political Participation, Voting

First of all, it is indeed important to vote and to be active politically in other ways. If you don’t vote, the politicians can ignore your concerns. Verba and Nie in the Participation in America book pointed out many other forms of participation other than voting, such as: campaigning for a candidate; contacting public officials to make your views known about an issue, or seeking some benefit in your own life; and being active in community affairs, such as on school boards, neighborhood associations. Some political scientists have even studied non-conventional activities, such as protests, demonstrations, and rioting. One interesting study found that after the riots in urban areas of the 1960s, government social welfare spending increased in those areas. Voting is the most common political activity, but even there only a little over half of adult Americans generally bother to vote. Barriers to voting include many state constitutions, which often bar felons from voting for life, unless they are pardoned by the governor or legislature. Liberals view voter identification requirements for voting as another hassle, and some progressive states loosen voter registration requirements and let people register on election day. Some states have mail-in ballots, so that people don’t have to stand in line on election day. Have you registered to vote yet? How have you found the experience? How would you improve it?

We’re going to focus on presidential elections, since they are the most important elections, plus many of you are from other states. First, how does the presidential nomination system work? Well, remember that under Jacksonian Democracy the political parties moved to national nominating conventions. Under federalism, each national party just told each state party how many delegates they could send to the national convention (that number was based on state population and how loyal the state’s voters were to the party’s candidates). It was up to each state to pick the delegates however they wanted, and whenever they wanted. At first, most states used a caucus-convention system, also used in building the state parties organizationally. Party supporters would attend precinct caucuses, elect delegates to attend county conventions a month later, those county conventions would elect delegates to attend the Congressional district conventions, and finally there would be a state party convention. Most states still use that system to build their party organizations, such as choosing their county party executive committees and state party executive committee. That is another way you can be politically active- just attend your favorite party’s precinct caucus in the presidential election year. A wave of reform hit the then majority Democratic Party in 1968, and most states moved to primary elections that let the voters choose the presidential candidate delegates. But states control the election machinery, and state law sets the dates for the primaries, so presidential delegates are selected anywhere from February through June, depending on the state. So it is a very long, drawn out process.

Presidential general elections are fascinating, and professors at the University of Michigan in the 1950s proposed a model seeking to explain voting in presidential elections. First, party identification is extremely important; most people just vote for the candidate nominated by the party that they psychologically identify with. Therefore, if you are in a party era with a majority party, like the Democrats were in 1932-1968, that party will usually win the presidential election. Short term forces like candidates and issues can also be important, as the minority party must nominate a very popular candidate or seize on a popular issue to overcome being the underdog. Here’s how this model applies to the presidential elections from 1948 through 1976, when Democrats had the advantage in numbers of voters.

In 1948, President Harry Truman faced high unemployment as our troops had come home, and everyone expected him to lose to Republican Dewey. Truman kept emphasizing the popular New Deal economic issues like Social Security and protection of the worker, and blasted the Republicans as the party of the rich and big business. He ended up winning, uniting the majority Democratic Party on the popular economic issues that had made them the majority party.

In 1952, again there was public dissatisfaction, this time with the Korean War, the spread of communism, and allegations of corruption in Truman’s administration. Republicans nominated the war hero Eisenhower, who accepted the New Deal programs. The issue of dissatisfaction and a popular candidate won it for Republicans.

In 1956, Eisenhower won re-election because of his great personal popularity (I like Ike was the campaign slogan, using Disney cartoon characters carrying signs), and the issues of peace and prosperity. In both years, you can see how the short-term factors helped the minority party win election, the only time they won during this period of 1932-1968. An interesting fact about Eisenhower’s leadership was how he always told his advisors, “Don’t even mention politics or partisanship when we make our decisions; we only do what is in the best interests of the nation.” (This is obviously a far cry from the recent political situation, where President Trump kept talking about how popular he is: “I have the highest ratings in history, 91% approval among Republicans.” Uh, what about the majority of Americans who are Democrats or Independents? President Biden has been criticized as being the captive of the left-wing extreme of his party.)

In 1960, in a very narrow popular vote win (but a more comfortable electoral vote victory), Democrat John Kennedy beat Republican Vice President Nixon. Kennedy unified the majority Democratic party by picking a southerner as Vice President. He defused his Catholicism problem by winning the West Virginia primary (a very Protestant state) and speaking at a conference of Protestant ministers in Texas and pledging a separation of church and state. He also came across very well in the televised debates, being cool, calm, articulate, thoughtful; Nixon had shifty eyes, looked pale with too much makeup, had a 5 o’clock shadow, and didn’t even use all of his time.

In 1964, now President Johnson won a landslide over very conservative Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. Goldwater was viewed by voters as too conservative, as he threatened to repeal the New Deal by making Social Security voluntary, selling the TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority electric generating system) to private industry, eliminating farm price supports; he wanted to win in Vietnam; he talked loosely about the possible use of nuclear weapons. So, the majority party won, and even the issues were with them as Goldwater was seen as too conservative.

In 1968, our nation faced a bloody Vietnam War, campus protests against it, urban riots, rising crime, and rising inflation. Republican Richard Nixon played on this issue of dissatisfaction with how things were and beat Johnson’s Vice President, a liberal from Minnesota Hubert Humphrey (interestingly enough, Humphrey had been mayor of Minneapolis, the author of the 1948 Democratic civil rights platform, and then a U.S. Senator). A third-party candidate was segregationist Alabama governor George Wallace, who carried a few Deep South states like Mississippi based on his being even tougher than Nixon on protesters. So the issues of dissatisfaction helped the minority Republican Party; but Democrats were still the dominant party, as they kept control of Congress until 1980.

In 1972, Democrats moved left (liberal), and nominated liberal anti-war Senator George McGovern. He pledged to end the war immediately, and said he would “crawl to Hanoi” (capital of communist North Vietnam) to bring our POWs home. He wanted to slash defense spending and condemned our more authoritarian allies. The Republicans called him the Triple A candidate- in favor of acid, amnesty (for Vietnam draft evaders who had fled to Canada), and abortion. Even the AFL-CIO labor union for the first time in their history refused to endorse the Democrat. Nixon won re-election. The minority party won because the majority had picked a weak candidate who was too liberal. (Trump has tried to combine these two elections, being a tough law-and-order candidate, and blasting liberal Democratic mayors who wished to de-fund the police or harbor illegal immigrants.)

In 1976, more centrist Jimmy Carter reunited his Democratic party and beat President Jerry Ford. His running mate was Minnesota Senator, liberal Walter Mondale, so this was a nice balanced ticket with Carter being a southerner and centrist. Indeed, not only did Carter win the more liberal northern states, but he also won all except one of the southern states. There was also some dissatisfaction with Ford’s pardon of Nixon, and with a weak economy (Carter called it the misery index, which added the inflation and unemployment rate).

We now move into the more modern age, as Ronald Reagan upended Carter, Republicans gained control of the U.S. Senate for a while, and Republicans closed the gap with Democrats in terms of the public’s partisan identifications (especially among likely voters). Therefore, issues and candidate factors became central in shaping the outcome of elections. The next section is a likely exam question.

The 1980 election was a clear case of dissatisfaction, as the issues of the Iranian hostage situation (they held our diplomats for a year), the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, high unemployment during the recession, and 13% annual inflation obviously hurt President Carter. In the one televised debate near the end of the campaign, Carter kept trying to paint the conservative Reagan as an extremist. Reagan just grinned, did an aw-shucks routine, sighed and responded, “There you go again,” and rebutted his claims. He said that in the 1960s he had supported an alternative free market Eldercare plan instead of Medicare, and he later sought to eliminate nuclear weapons from the face of the earth. At the end, he summed it up as: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago? Can you buy as much for your dollar as you could then? If so, vote for my opponent. If not, give my program a chance.” Reagan won a landslide.

In 1984 Reagan won re-election with a booming economy. His campaign ad was an optimistic “Morning in America” film that highlighted this booming economy, and a stronger America militarily. Reagan had also become personally popular. He worked with Democratic House Speaker Tip O’Neill, a fellow Irishman, and granted interviews with hostile media outlets (“Well, I don’t think I changed any minds, but at least I tried.”). When Reagan stumbled over his words in the first debate, and was then asked in the second debate whether he was too old to be President any longer, he joked: “I am not going to make age an issue in this campaign. I am not going to make an issue of my opponent’s relative youth and inexperience.” Even Democrat Mondale laughed. Mondale picked the first woman Vice Presidential running mate of a major party, Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro. It didn’t help.

In 1988 Reagan’s Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush beat Massachusetts governor and the son of Greek immigrants Michael Dukakis. Bush staged a come-from-behind victory by tearing down his opponent, labeling him as being too liberal. Dukakis was a member of the liberal ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), he had vetoed a pledge of allegiance bill for public schools (fearing a 1^st amendment establishment lawsuit), he had a furlough program for inmates (one of them, Willie Horton, had terrorized a young couple on his furlough), and Dukakis made defense spending a low priority. Even reporters felt he had an image problem, and one of them asked him at a debate: “Governor Dukakis, if your wife Kitty were raped and murdered, would you still oppose the death penalty.” Dukakis while smirking responded, “Yes, I would. I don’t think it is a deterrent to crime. We’ve done other things to reduce crime in Massachusetts, such as….” Bush’s response with emotion was: “I disagree with my opponent. I think there are some crimes that are so heinous, such as the killing of a police officer, that they merit the death penalty.” (Trump in 2020 tried to paint Joe Biden as an extreme liberal. Did it stick? No. Biden had a more moderate liberal history in the Senate, and he had to spend a lot of time apologizing to liberal interest groups for it.)

In 1992, as we continue this modern era of issues and candidates being the dominant forces deciding elections (since the two parties are tied in adherents), the key issue was public dissatisfaction over the economic recession and high unemployment. The media kept talking about the bad economic news, even though things were starting to recover. Democrat Bill Clinton stressed this issue with the campaign slogan, “It’s the economy, Stupid!” The aloof President Bush didn’t help his case; in a town hall debate when asked about how he could understand the plight of average people, he said he didn’t understand the question, and then glanced at his watch. Clinton walked into the audience, and said, “I feel your pain. I come from a small town in Arkansas, Hope. I know people personally affected by the recession.” Clinton won. It was also kind of interesting that he didn’t seek to politically balance his ticket geographically, as he picked a Vice President whom he thought could actually be President, Senator Al Gore of Tennessee. It is also interesting that Clinton projected a more centrist image compared to previous losing Democratic nominees, as he supported the death penalty, criticized radical protesters, and called for rare abortions (though legal and safe).

In 1996 Clinton won re-election with a booming economy that was so great that even some Republicans were asking themselves, “Why should I vote for a change; I have money in my pocket?” Clinton talked about his domestic programs as being a Bridge to the 21^st Century, kind of a knock on his opponent Senator Bob Dole who was so old that people thought of him as a Bridge to the 19^th Century. The 73-year-old Dole didn’t help himself when he was bending over a wooden railing at a campaign rally to shake hands and the railing broke and he fell into the street; lying on his back, his eyes looked stunned, but he got up pretty fast. Saturday Night live had some great skits about Dole! Another problem is that Dole had a history of being sarcastic, bitter, and mean. In the 1976 Vice Presidential debates (Ford had dumped V.P. Nelson Rockefeller and put the conservative Dole on the ticket) he accused the Democrats of being “the party of War. Every war in this century, started by a Democrat. World War 1, Wilson. World War 2, FDR. Korea, Truman. Vietnam, Johnson. All Democrat wars started by Democrat Presidents.” So issues and candidates made the difference. (Personally, I liked Dole; he was a war hero, lost the use of his right arm, always carried a pencil in it so people wouldn’t try to shake it; he was in the Senate so long that he became Senate Republican Leader, and his fellow senators rated him as the most effective senator in that body.)

The 2000 election seemed to be all about the candidates. George Walker Bush (the son of the former President Bush) was a Republican, but he was a “compassionate conservative.” Vice President Gore was a liberal Democrat, but he didn’t talk much about President Clinton because of the sex scandal, even though the economy was booming and Clinton was popular! Gore bombed in the debates. In the first one, he acted like Hermione Granger in Harry Potter. Bush would start answering a question, and I would hear a sigh. Then I would hear another sigh. It was an impatient Al Gore who acted like he knew all the answers, and wanted to answer every question, and do all of the talking. Saturday Night Live did a great skit making fun of Gore, and the Gore campaign manager even showed that skit to Gore to try to make him more self-aware. In the next debate on foreign policy, Bush was calmly sitting on a stool and talking, and Gore walked right up to him, and Bush stared him down. Again, creepy! So Gore had a problem of perceived arrogance. But why did Bush lose the popular vote (while winning the electoral vote)? Well, the weekend before the election, it came out that before being Texas governor he had had a DUI arrest; he never publicly admitted it because he didn’t want to be a bad role model for his two teenage daughters. And so the election was so close that it was up to cliffhanger Florida, as plane loads of lawyers from both parties flew down to Florida, and the Supreme Court finally decided the Florida outcome.

Well, the 2004 election was another reality TV program type of election. Bush never did find those weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Saddam Hussein had lost them during the first Gulf War, but he wanted to appear to be the big bully in the Mideast so he never admitted that he didn’t have them. Democrats nominated the liberal Senator from the most liberal state in the nation, John Kerry of Massachusetts. Even though he had served in Vietnam, Kerry returned as a bitter anti-war activist. He even joined with a group that accused American soldiers of committing war atrocities against civilians. The impression I got was that the public viewed Bush as a leader in the fight against terrorism. He would keep America safe. And he didn’t wait on other nations’ support, and wait for their permission. Bush won a narrow victory, benefitting from the anti-terrorism issue.

What a difference 4 years makes! By 2006 Americans had become fed up with our endless seeming involvement in Iraq, and Democrats gained control of both chambers of Congress. Then, the financial community nearly collapsed, as they had made too many questionable loans, and in 2008 we had to begin bailing them out with federal money. Democrats nominated Barack Obama, an articulate, thoughtful (he paused and thought before he spoke), organized, and passionate (“Yes, we can.”) candidate. He was very concerned over income inequality. Republican Senator John McCain was an honored war hero who had been a POW in Vietnam (He showed so much character that he refused to be released early, because others had been held in prison longer; that’s when his jailors crippled his shoulder.), but the 72-year-old looked old as he stumbled around the debate stage. Obama won due to his positive personal characteristics plus the issue of dissatisfaction over the financial meltdown. Obama was also a kind of post-racial candidate, as he didn’t stress the race issue, and his race appeared to have no effect on voters. Do any of you remember anything about President Obama’s elections? How did you feel about President Obama?

Well, in 2012 Obama was re-elected President. Polls showed that his issues supporting the middle class helped him, as did voters’ perception that he cared about the average person. He had empathy. Republicans nominated a rich businessman Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts (his RomneyCare for that state was actually similar to ObamaCare!). Romney was a Mormon who gave a lot of money to his church; he stuck by his wife’s side when she had cancer; he organized fellow business leaders to save the Salt Lake City Olympics. But he was weak in the foreign policy debate, and didn’t counter Obama’s implication that terrorism wasn’t much of a problem anymore (a terrorist attack had just killed our Libyan ambassador in the city of Benghazi), or Obama’s mocking of Romney’s concern over Russia (“Mitt, the Soviet Union doesn’t even exist anymore” said Obama). The rich guy Romney then was caught by a waiter’s cellphone, as he asked for donations from rich people: “You know, 47% of the American people doesn’t even pay taxes, and they’re not going to vote for me.” That 47% comment that gave the impression that Romney thought that nearly half of the American people were freeloaders was the kiss of death (actually, they still pay taxes other than the federal income tax, such as state sales taxes, property taxes). President Trump in his first term repeatedly made fun of Romney, saying that he “choked” and lost the election. (Romney, then a senator from Utah until 2025, was the only senator to break party lines and vote to remove Trump for an impeachable offense in both of his impeachments.)

And now we come to 2016. Nobody expected a Reality TV star with no political experience like Donald Trump to win the presidency, or even to get the Republican nomination. However, as an outsider he played on public discontent with politicians, so he hung derogatory labels on his opponents- lyin’ Ted (Senator Cruz of Texas), little Marco (Senator Rubio of Florida had desperately reached for a glass of water when giving a televised rebuttal to an Obama speech), low-energy Jeb (another Bush, this time the governor of Florida; again, some truth, I saw a split screen with a Trump rally versus Bush talking like a professor to a small crowd of people sitting in a living room somewhere), and of course Crooked Hillary (Clinton). Clinton was also overconfident, not expecting to lose normally Democratic states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, so she didn’t campaign there much. Trump was not a normal free enterprise, free trade Republican, as his willingness to engage in trade wars and his promotion of American businesses helped him with blue collar workers in these Rust Belt states. Clinton was hurt by her e-mail scandal, which federal prosecutors looked into (without any indictment). Clinton’s final problem was arrogance, as she brushed off many Trump supporters (when addressing an LGBTQ crowd) as “racists, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, basket of deplorables, totally unredeemable.” An interesting contrast- Clinton had had some Hollywood types lined up for her election night party; the next day, Trump was on the phone putting pressure on American business executives to keep their factories in the U.S. and open up new ones. So, what did you think about that campaign? What did you think about the Trump open mike comment years earlier? When that came out, that weekend one third of Senate Republicans called on Trump to be kicked off of the ticket. He fought back by inviting all of the women who had accused Bill Clinton of sexual harassment to sit in the front row of the next debate. So, Trump wins in a dirty campaign where voters get to choose between two relatively unpopular candidates.

Biden’s victory over Trump in 2020 wasn’t a big surprise. Two indicators of likely presidential outcome are presidential job rating and the economy, and Trump always had more disapprovals than approvals of his job rating, plus the economy crashed after the nationwide coronavirus shutdown (though it later improved). Biden was pretty universally seen as a nice guy, who showed his concern for American worries over the coronavirus pandemic by preaching mask wearing and holding socially-distanced car rallies. So weak Trump job rating, weak economy, scary pandemic, nice guy Democrat helped elect Biden. Biden won the electoral vote and the national popular vote. His vice president Kamala Harris made history as the first woman and person of color as VP.

Trump’s victory in 2024 was largely because of public dissatisfaction with high inflation and open borders. Inflation hit 9% in one of Biden’s years, and over his 4-year term inflation was about double what it was in Trump’s first term. While Trump had pretty much closed the border to illegal immigration by his last year in office, the Biden administration seemed to welcome all immigration. They refused to assemble parts of the border wall that was lying on the ground awaiting installation, they accused a border patrol agent of whipping migrants trying to cross the border when the horse-backed agent was just maneuvering the horse reins to head off illegals, and V.P. Harris in Central America showed no feeling in telling people that our borders were closed to illegals. Trump also played on opposing transexuals in women’s sports, a cause of the Biden administration. Democrats tried to play on Trump’s alleged hostility to democracy, but Democrats were the ones who tried to keep Trump off of the general election ballot in three states, and Democrats had dumped the candidate who won the convention delegates in favor of Kamala Harris who had won no delegate votes. So, what do you think about this most recent election? How could the Democrats had done better? Who do you think would be strong presidential candidates in 2028??