Jimmy Higgins
Contributor
- Joined
- Jan 31, 2001
- Messages
- 46,036
- Basic Beliefs
- Calvinistic Atheist
I was pondering about one-term Presidents. The US doesn't have them too often. President Carter just was the right guy at the wrong time. President HW Bush was kicked out due to Clinton's hipness and a recession that had already exited. HW Bush is really the oddest bird as he had a successful military fight, but he would lose to Clinton (and arguably Perot) in part because of a recession that was over but not fully worked through yet. HW Bush would lose 9 million votes from his 1988 totals. Clinton did 3 million better than Dukakis and Perot got 20 million. So the total votes in '92 (55%) were about 13 million higher than '88 (50%). So is that it? Is that change enough? Probably not. Voter turnout was about 55% in '12 and '16. 58% in '08.
So come 2004 and Iraq isn't working well, the surplus is no where to be seen, and the W Admin's foreign policy plan is terrible. But he wins re-election. The GOP get trounced in 2006 though. Turnout increased from 51% to 56.7% between '00 and '04. Again 13 million more voters showed up to the polls to give their voice, but the outcome was even more in W's favor as he'd actually win the popular vote this time by 3 million.
Now we are at 2020 and Trump has waged the most ineffective Presidency since President Buchanan. The only accomplishments are judicial appointments that he has absolutely no involvement in. He is more interested in tossing red meat to his base and having re-election rallies than leading the country (no seriously, he filed for re-election campaign in January 2017 and his first re-election campaign was in February). But he did so well in so many states. While his victories in PA, MI, and WI were very thin (suspiciously thin in MI), he won states like Iowa and Ohio with very comfortable margins. So while it would be enough to take control back from the GOP by simply winning MI, WI, and PA, we've got states like NC, FL, OH, IA that were won by large enough margins,
I wonder whether enough Americans in those states are willing to concede they voted for the wrong guy, the very wrong guy. And whether enough other people can come and vote and overwhelm those that did.
So come 2004 and Iraq isn't working well, the surplus is no where to be seen, and the W Admin's foreign policy plan is terrible. But he wins re-election. The GOP get trounced in 2006 though. Turnout increased from 51% to 56.7% between '00 and '04. Again 13 million more voters showed up to the polls to give their voice, but the outcome was even more in W's favor as he'd actually win the popular vote this time by 3 million.
Now we are at 2020 and Trump has waged the most ineffective Presidency since President Buchanan. The only accomplishments are judicial appointments that he has absolutely no involvement in. He is more interested in tossing red meat to his base and having re-election rallies than leading the country (no seriously, he filed for re-election campaign in January 2017 and his first re-election campaign was in February). But he did so well in so many states. While his victories in PA, MI, and WI were very thin (suspiciously thin in MI), he won states like Iowa and Ohio with very comfortable margins. So while it would be enough to take control back from the GOP by simply winning MI, WI, and PA, we've got states like NC, FL, OH, IA that were won by large enough margins,
I wonder whether enough Americans in those states are willing to concede they voted for the wrong guy, the very wrong guy. And whether enough other people can come and vote and overwhelm those that did.
