image from billtatro.com
And how does this fit in with my blog's purpose -- writing about writing? It's all life imitating fiction. Some thriller. Some Fantasy. Some mystery. Some horror...
I am a registered Democrat. In national and state-wide elections, I have almost always voted Democrat. I acknowledge that there have often been rowdy, even venomous Democrat campaigns, especially on the state level. (I'm from Oklahoma and I can think of quite a few Governor, U.S. Senate, State Attorney General, even Lieutenant Governor and Corporation Commissioner races that qualified as less than genteel, though never so vulgar as today's Republican race for presidential nominee.)
Will Rogers, another Oklahoman, once said, "I don't belong to any organized political party. I'm a Democrat."
I still appreciate his succinct description of my party. It seems that this year's Democrat contestants uphold the tradition of differences of opinion or perception or point of view. Bernie, the idealist. Hillary, the pragmatist.
However, I'm going to have to cede to this cycle's Republicans the mantle of Most Disorganized Political Party. Indeed, they are currently authoring a state-of-being that has accelerated from disorganized to chaotic. Not to mention noisy.
We humans have short memories and think that our own time is either/and/or "the best of times ... the worst of times." Sometimes our collective memory is shorter even than a lifetime.
But division is nothing new.
Not for the Republicans. Abraham Lincoln, the first elected Republican president, was reelected on the National Union Party ticket his second time around. The Civil War was still raging and the Republican Party split in two. The other took the name Radical Democracy Party and nominated John C. Fremont of California, a supporter of general emancipation.
The Democrat Party nominated former General-in-Chief of the Union Army, George McClellan.
The outcome of the Civil War was still in doubt and McClellan supported the concept of union with slavery -- anathema to the abolitionists and the new territories who did not want slavery to spread.
Keeping in mind, all three of these candidates represented only the Union side. The Confederacy was still months away from recognizing theirs was a lost cause.
Talk about a mess!
And then there was the 1912 campaign for the Republican presidential nominee. Teddy Roosevelt had lost faith in William Howard Taft whom he had anointed his successor in the 1908 election. TedRo came back full bore. But, failing to get the Republican nomination, he headed a third party, the Progressive Party, also called the Bull Moose Party.
They lost to Democrat Woodrow Wilson.
Third parties (other than Lincoln's, I suppose) have no history of winning presidential contests in the U.S.
Did I mention that the Democrat Party is not an organized party?
Probably the most exciting multi-party presidential campaign in my lifetime, but before I can remember, was the 1948 election which saw the Democrat Party divided three ways -- the segregationist States Rights' nominee Strom Thurmond; the liberal left Progressive Party's Henry Wallace; and the centrist Democrat incumbent Harry Truman.
A less contentious Republican Party nominated Thomas E. Dewey and with the historical precedents that divided parties lose elections the Chicago Daily Tribune went to press with this:
A victorious Harry Truman! The paper got it wrong.
Twenty years later the Democrat Party splintered again and another Wallace (this time a segregationist) headed the American Independent Party.
1968 was such a chaotic time -- Vietnam, Civil Rights, demonstrations, riots, and assassinations -- the Republican Richard Nixon, promising to restore law and order, won. (And we all know how he worked out in the world of law and order.)
In 1980, incumbent Democrat Jimmy Carter's lagging popularity as President -- oil embargo, the Olympics Boycott, the Iran Hostage Crisis -- had him facing three other Democrats for the nomination.
Smelling blood in water, eight Republicans vied for the nomination. Ronald Reagan got the nod, but fellow Republican John Anderson pulled out and ran as an Independent. His defection hardly affected Reagan's win at all.
In 1992, Ross Perot's run as an Independent with the Reform Party is given credit (or blame, depending on your politics) for incumbent Republican President George H. W. Bush's loss to Democrat Bill Clinton. Perot, a billionaire who ran against Washington insiders. Sound familiar?
Thus endeth the history lesson for today.
So here we are in 2016. For some of us, this election cycle is a thriller with impending doom. Who'll save the day? For some a Fantasy with Utopian ambitions. For others, a mystery -- how is this happening? And for far too many, a horror too scary to even imagine.
Did I leave out comedy? Yes, I did. The humorous aspects have worn thin. I think I'll turn the TV and radio off and avoid Facebook comments.
Looking in from the outside, I'm finding little comfort in the progress of your election. Yet, we have our own troubles with the Europe in/out referendum dominating the news - when actually Scotland and the other devolved nations have elections a full month before. Mind you, ours looks a forego conclusion with Labour and the Tories more or less admitting they are fighting for second place. Interesting times indeed.
ReplyDeleteThe Glasgow Gallivanter
Interesting times is right. Most of us are shocked at the incivility of this election cycle and what I thought was the Trump-joke. Even so, as parochial as we Americans seem, we do hear and pay attention to news of the world at large. All this about Britain maybe out of the EU and Turkey maybe in the EU. Greece's questionable economy. And poor Greece's front-line in the huge migration out of Africa and Asia into Europe. I do have faith in the ability of humanity to endure and overcome. Here's to the future, no matter what!
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