For today, a bit of presidential election historical trivia, followed by a little bit of Trump trivia.
Who was the only presidential candidate to win the national popular vote in three and exactly three consecutive presidential elections?
(The exactly three takes Franklin D. Roosevelt out of the running, because he won the popular and electoral votes in four consecutive elections starting in 1932.)
The answer to the trivia question is Grover Cleveland, the Democratic former governor of New York (and mayor of Buffalo) who, I suspect many you know if you know just one thing about Cleveland, was the only person ever to serve non-consecutive terms as president. He won in 1884, lost his reelection bid in in 1888, and came back to win a second term in 1892 (at the end of which, he retired).
The less-remembered fact about Cleveland is that he actually won the national popular vote in all three of those elections, but, in 1888, he lost the electoral vote to Republican Benjamin Harrison by a fairly solid 233-168 margin, even though Cleveland had beaten Harrison in the national popular vote by more than 100,000 votes representing about 1% of the total popular vote.
(I’ve made the case previously, and will probably do so again, that one of the worst features of our system is the ability of the popular vote loser to win the presidency.)
Benjamin Harrison has a couple of cute facts for those who care about such things. He remains the only president who was the grandson of a previous president (William Henry Harrison, who was elected in 1840 but died just 31 days after his inauguration, thus setting the record for briefest presidency). And Benjamin Harrison is one of just five candidates to win the presidency via the electoral vote while losing the popular vote (the fifth being the recently-departed sore loser Donald Trump).
Trump lost the popular vote in both of the last two elections and may be planning a 2024 comeback that might enable him to be the only person ever to win the presidency twice without ever winning the national popular vote, but let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves; this is just a cute little history piece.
Based on the latest New York Times/Siena Poll, a sizeable chunk of respondents hold what you might call a mixed view, or perhaps a crazy or even dangerous view of the future of Donald Trump and Trumpism, whatever that last term might mean.
You might think, at first glance, that a disgraced and defeated former president, who is under ongoing investigation for a seemingly ever-expanding list of alleged crimes, misdemeanors and other embarrassments, would be happy to just stay out of prison, but Trump seems to be still contemplating a future in presidential politics.
To bring matters to the present, Trump continues to lead presidential preference polls among Republicans and shows no signs of departing the stage, nor any signs of gaining in popularity or approval.
The mystery, to me at least, is now he retains the significant following and popularity that he does, especially after his disgraceful mobocratic conduct during the transition to the Biden presidency. Are his followers all in complete denial about his conduct in the aftermath of the 2020 election which amounted to attempted coup?
Perhaps some light is shed on that mystery by a piece in the Thursday New York Times, which led to a strange observation tied to a recent Times/Siena College Poll. Thus:
“… Nearly 30% [of respondents] appeared to hold seemingly conflicting views about [Trump] and his actions — either by expressing a mix of sentiments or by declining to respond to one of the questions.
“For instance, 14% of respondents said they both planned to support him and believed his actions after the 2020 election went so far as to be a threat to democracy.”
The writeup of the intriguing/mysterious Times poll piece from which that excerpt is taken can be accessed by Times subscribers here.
I believe that Jackson won the popular vote in 1824, 1828, and 1832. In 1824 the popular vote loser John Quincy Adams was elected president. A fun fact is that before Trump the popular vote losers who won the presidency were all direct descendants of past presidents Adams, Harrison, and Bush.
In my view it is incumbent upon those who wish to analyze Trump as a political figure not take refuge in his continued popularity as being somehow a “mystery”. His continuing popularity with certain demographics is not because Trump has sold his soul to the Devil, for example. There are explainable and “rational” reasons for it, correct?
I’ve stated my theory dozens of times now, and won’t spend more time regaling the commentariate again. The “conservative” movement (and its wholly-owned Repub party) began flirting with theocratic white nationalism as a means of opposing Obama and fomenting righwing hated of him. The East Coast Manhattan dandy and prominent member of the privileged “elite” saw that the time was ripe for running as an explicit white nationalist “strongman” (with a side of theocracy). That’s what he did, and that’s how he governed and talked. He is now seen as the “one true leader” of white nationalism (to use Margery Taylor Greene’s recent phrase).
And his millions of followers, who support him basically unconditionally despite his impeachment(s) and incitement of violent anti-democratic insurrection and multitudinous crimes, have made clear that being able to affirm the US as a “white Christian nation” trumps any past allegiance to “democracy” (to the extent that the US can call itself such).
I’m open to other theories of National Trumpalism as well. But one needs to have one.
Yet there are more black and Hispanic republicans running for and winning public office than ever before, preceded by more people of color voting for Trump than any republican candidate in history. What they all have in common is that, unlike their democrat counterparts, they don’t define themselves by their race. “But you think of yourself as a colored man. I think of myself as a man.”
The “white nationalist” meme was invented by frustrated leftists who can’t understand why people of color are tired of living on their plantation.
Off the plantation you say, is that is why red states and counties are largely the most dependent on government funds while being more violent, poorer, less educated, and less healthy?
Republicans are associated with white nationalists because they share a philosophy, support the same policies, use the slogans and happily accept overt white nationalists into their party. In other words, they are functionally white nationalists whether all of them have the backbone to admit it or not.
Could someone tell Mr. Black that inflation is destroying the middle class and the poor, we are in a recession, Biden lies everyday, the border is open, Walz played his fiddle for 3 days while the insurrectionist burned MPLS, crime is out of control, and the dept. of trickle down education was involved in a “huge” fraud.
Yet – we read yet another article about the evils of the electoral college.
I think it is time for another “polling” article.
Not to get out of context, however inflation is global, thanks for blaming Biden for droughts floods, hurricanes etc. personally I didn’t think that much of him. Perhaps you can explain destroying the middle class? The “R” folks have been doing that since Reagan with trickle down and supply side economics, so this is new news? So open borders, again, last check we still have border patrol and border crossings and illegal immigrants being deported, please provide some reality and context, seems all those dead folks they peel out of of an 18 wheeler, came through open borders, why hide? Crime is out of control, does that mean it was ever in control? Was 1/6/2021 in control or out of control? We will leave the Dpt. of Ed. for further analysis, the courts have not been know of late to be on the up and up, you know like the one in Florida that got slapped!
“Trump seems to be still contemplating a future in presidential politics.”
There’s a certain rationality to that thinking, from his point of view. His habit in legal proceedings is delay, delay, delay. If he can delay the (many) suits against him until 2024, he might theoretically avoid the courtroom until 2029. At least at the federal level.
It was nice to see the DOJ win on appeal in the document matter.
Trying to decide I’d the panel was laughing or crying reading trumps brief
Or maybe vomiting