(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.)
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 their
Participation in America book pointed out many 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 and
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 the 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. He won despite
two Democrats running as third party candidates- liberal Henry Wallace, and segregationist
Strom Thurmond (protesting the pro-civil rights party platform).
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. Republicans won despite their Vice Presidential candidate
Richard Nixon being accused of having a secret slush fund as Senator from
California, forcing Nixon to plead for support in the famous Checker’s Speech.
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 the 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 very different 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? Likewise, President Biden was 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),
Democratic Senator John Kennedy beat Republican Vice President Nixon. Kennedy
unified the majority Democratic party by picking a southerner as Vice
President, Senate Majority Leader and Texan Lyndon Johnson. 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, and 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, and
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 (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 if necessary “crawl to Hanoi” (capital of communist North Vietnam) to
bring our POWs home. He wanted to slash defense spending and he 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 combined the messages of 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, the
more centrist Georgia governor 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 rates).
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 of the debate, 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 Vice President Walter Mondale laughed. Mondale
picked the first woman Vice Presidential running mate of a major party, New
York 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 1st 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 an effective 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 his tough-on-crime past.)
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 21st 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 19th 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 the Harry Potter
books. 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 Saddam 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. To balance his more liberal image,
Obama chose Delaware Senator Joe Biden as his Vice President. 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? How did you feel
about his life and legacy?
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 Romney pleaded 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 which 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 and property taxes).
President Trump in his first term repeatedly made fun of Romney, saying that he
had “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, as 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 an energetic
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). New
York Senator and former First Lady, Hillary 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 to open up new ones. So, do you remember
anything from that campaign? What did you think about the Trump open mike
comment years earlier, where was quoted as bragging about being able to grope
women since he was rich? When that story 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 or assault 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, but he loses the popular vote though he wins the
electoral vote.
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 to 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 liberal 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??