Moral of recent presidential elections?

Politics & Elections
1

**1976: **Watergate dragged down the GOP.
**1980: **America wants a president that will make it feel good again.
**1984: **America likes a president that made it feel good again.
**1988: **Attacking your opponent negatively works.
**1992: **It’s hard for a party to win 4 presidential elections in a row.
**1996: **Don’t nominate an old establishment candidate just because “it’s his turn.”
**2000: **It’s hard for a party to win 3 presidential elections in a row.
**2004: **Incumbent advantage + wartime presidency advantage.
**2008: **When it’s change vs. establishment, the change candidate wins.
**2012: **Incumbent advantage.
**2016: **When it’s change vs. establishment, the change candidate wins.

**2020: *** America wants a president that will seem sane and stable again?

2

1976: Don’t pardon a crook
1980: It helps your campaign to sabotage hostage negotiations
1984: We like that free lunch that we’ve been eating
1988: Be very afraid of black parolees!
1992: It’s the economy, stupid.
1996: Peace and prosperity is awesome.
2000: He who votes decides nothing, he who counts the votes decides all.
2004: Wars are great for campaigns
2008: Crashing the economy is hard to campaign on
2012: You have to be able to at least fake sincerity
2016: People believe fake news
2020: We’re sorry we’ll take it back!

3

If you’re looking at actual trends rather than trying to find partisan excuses, I think you have three identifiable ones:

  1. Incumbents have a big advantage. Since 1900, nineteen incumbent Presidents have run for re-election; fifteen of them won.

  2. A party winning the presidency more than three times is difficult. The Republicans won a fourth election in a row in 1908. The Democrats won a fourth and fifth election in a row in 1944 and 1948. Otherwise, neither party has won more than three in a row since 1900.

  3. The voters lean Democrat in recent elections. The Democrats have won the popular vote in seven of the last eight elections. Although if you take all of the elections since 1900, the record is closer with the Democrats winning the popular vote sixteen times to the Republicans’ fourteen.

So assuming President Trump seeks re-election in 2020, the first trend will work in his favor while the third trend will work against him.

4

What I remember of all those elections, doesn’t quite match what’s been suggested here so far.

Just going by the ones I remember:

1960: the existing fear of the Soviet Union promoted by both parties, was capitalized on more adroitly by Kennedy than by Nixon.

1964: I don’t recall much. Goldwater was seen as a war monger, and Johnson benefited from sympathy for Kennedy’s murder.

1968: Very close. Nixon only squeaked by in a time of nationwide tumult, despite a great deal of anger against the Democrats over Vietnam, because Nixon wasn’t an attractive candidate.

1972: A slam dunk for Nixon, because George McGovern was a terrible campaigner, and had only gained the nomination by manipulating the Democratic primary process.

1976: Watergate proved that the Republicans were infested from top to bottom with cheaters, liars, and scalawags. But Carter only barely won, because he was a weak public speaker, and didn’t have much of a program other than “I’m not a cheater.” Hence Carter only won half the country.

1980: The economy was a mess, getting better, but not getting better fast enough. Reagan was a FAR better public speaker than we’d seen in decades, and Carter was crippled by an insufficient response to the Iran mess.

1984: Reagan continued to be a great speaker, the economy appeared to be going gangbusters.

1988: The Democrats chose the worst candidate they possibly could, to run against a relatively weak George Bush, who had both a strong Reagan send-off, and an economy which still seemed okay.

1992: The “Reagan Recovery” was heavily restricted to the upper classes, and getting worse so by the minute. Bush and the GOP in general utterly refused to even think that the American Middle class mattered at all. They were booted out accordingly by a VERY able public speaker in Clinton.

1996: Clinton benefited from the beginning of the Dot Com bubble and the Republicans put relatively weak public speaker Bob Dole up against him. Hard to beat a seeming hard-charging economy.

2000: Snappy speaker George Bush squeaks by (with a lot of help from a mess in Florida and a Republican controlled Supreme Court) against a very poor public speaker, Al Gore.

2004: The weakening economy which would normally have caused Bush to be tossed out, was overshadowed by 9-11 fears and foreign wars which SEEMED to be going well. Democrats helped by nominating lightweight Kerry, who made zero memorable speeches.

2008: Economic collapse was so bad that the Democrats could have handed us anyone at all, and they would have won. Republicans ran one of their worst candidate pairings of the decade to make things easier on the Democrats.

2012: Things got better under Obama economically, though not as fast as anyone wanted (they never do). The democrats tried to give everything away by voting in the ACA, but the Republicans countered by actively trying to sabotage the American economy out of sheer petulance. Republicans ran another upper crust candidate who got caught declaring that he didn’t give a damn about forty-seven percent of all Americans, and would only be President of 53% of America.

2016: Americans clearly fed up with both Republicans and Democrats. Republicans squeak into the Presidency with a candidate they don’t like, because the Democrats decided to run the worst public speaker they could find, who was also pre-crippled by a non-stop, two-decade old propaganda-based smear campaign, which Democrats and the subject of the campaign (Clinton) failed to deal with competently at any time.

Lessons? I don’t see anything much more than the same basics as always.

  • General perception of the state of the economy is always huge.

  • Good speaking skills and good looks are always a plus. Poor public speaking skills and appearance are always minuses.

  • Scandal mongering can work, but only if the other side does a bad job of responding to it.

  • People are used to POLITICAL lies, and ignore them. PERSONAL lies tend to get people upset.

  • Never ignore the basic factor of voter greed. Promising a tax cut will always be appreciated more than promising “wise governing.”

5

The thread all of these have in common is that elected leaders tend to be chauvinist blowhards, because that’s what electorates elect. In a contest between a thoughtful, experienced professional and an ignorant cocksure outsider, cocksure wins. In a contest between a tall WASP and a short Greek, the USA goes with the WASP. Practically all presidential democracies are like this. Even systems where only an aristocracy vote are like this. Democracy is dysfunctional and voters are stupid, not just here and now, but in general.

6

Actually, one exception: Goldwater was a giant chauvinist dick and lost! But he was a dick to the more populated regions of the country he was running in! Obviously that doesn’t work.

Flatter the electorate, tell them that they deserve [del]Poland[/del] everything; flatter yourself, say that you can fix it with the triumph of your will; and you can be the Leader until you die.

7

1976: Watergate, change
1980: Charisma, change
1984: People reelect the President when times are good. Also, this is about when promising to raise taxes on the middle class became a third rail of politics.
1988: This campaign has had a lot of morals drawn from it, but IMO it was the “fairest” campaign ever in terms of neither party having an inherent advantage going in. Bush just had the better campaign team.
1992: Charisma, change
1996: See 1984
2000: See 1988, except rather than a clear Bush win, it was a tie.
2004: Even unpopular incumbents can be hard to beat if the candidate is someone people are even more sick of seeing than the incumbent.
2008: Charisma, change
2012: This unpopular incumbent faced a veteran flip flopper. Flip floppers bad, something which was also demonstrated in 1988, 2004, and 2016
2016: Change, flip flopping, unlikeability, and the Blue Wall doesn’t actually exist.

I’ll add one moral that Velocity noted in the OP: don’t just pick the “next” person. Also, charisma isn’t something you can seek. When it’s there, everyone knows it and that candidate almost always gets nominated, or comes close and gets nominated next time around. The worst thing a partisan voter can do is go looking for the most charismatic candidate in a field where there are is no Reagan, Clinton, or Obama. It’s even worse to find no charismatic candidates and then just get dejected and disconnect from the choice. Since most races will not feature these types of candidates, go with the best combination of real accomplishments+change+good message.

8

The obvious caveat to the Democrats’ five wins: only two candidates.

The Democrats are sitting on a permanent majority, but one that just won’t vote reliably and is too concentrated geographically. That’s the disadvantage of being the party of the disadvantaged. That kind of coalition works great in a country like Venezuela where the well off are few and the impoverished many, but in the US it’s the other way around. You can’t win elections in the US without winning voters making around $50K and being competitive among voters up to $100K.

9

2017: Ask me in 7 weeks. :slight_smile:
2015: The Tories had a more popular set of policies and promised to hold a referendum on the EU. Plus Ed Miliband. See also 2010 for Scotland.
2010: Labour were bankrupt (see 1997) after the crash of 2007/8 and Cameron had moved the Tories to the centre. Also the left in Scotland moved decisively to the SNP.
2005: See 2001.
2001: The Tories had moved right and the economy seemed to be doing well.
1997: The Tories had completely lost their authority.
1992: A bit of a surprise.
1987: Economy recovering, unions crushed.
1983: Falklands.
1979: Incompetent Labour and a determined Tory party with a competent leader.
1974: Heath was incompetent and had lost to the unions.

10

Every election year: The people elect the candidate they deserve.

Remember, the worst possible system except for the alternatives. Choose your poison.

11

Assuming that we start with elections beginning either 1960 (the advent of TV’s influence on the results) or 1972 (the first election where the primaries were the choosers), I think the morals we can take from elections are as follows:

  1. Incumbents are usually winners.

  2. It’s the economy, stupid.

  3. Dynamic campaigners are dynamite in the fall; conversely, tepid campaigners are in trouble.

There is no set hierarchy among the above. Incumbents can lose b/c of bad economies, but bad economies might not sink an incumbent if the opponent isn’t dynamic. Most of the elections can be explained by seeing if two or more of the three were working against one candidate.

1960 - Dynamic campaigner wins. No incumbent, no economy issue.

1964 - Incumbent wins. No economy issue, no tepid campaigner.

1968 - Tepid campaigner loses. No incumbent, economy not an issue (but there was a war factor).
1972 - Incumbent wins. Yes, economy was poor, but McGovern was a tepid campaigner, mostly because the Democratic Party didn’t rally behind him.
1976 - All bets off, due to Watergate Scandal. No incumbent, economy poor, Carter barely better as campaigner than Ford.
1980 - Dynamic campaigner in a poor economy takes down incumbent.

1984 - Incumbent wins. Economy good, opponent a dud.

1988 - Incumbent (sort of) wins. Economy good, opponent a complete dud. Hard to be more of a dud than G. H. W. Bush, but boy did Dukakis manage it.
1992 - Economy kicks out incumbent. Clinton a better campaigner than Bush, just to tip the scale.
1996 - Incumbent wins. Economy good, opponent a dud.

2000 - Better campaigner ekes out a victory over the sort-of incumbent, with the economy fine.

2004 - Incumbent wins. War had little to do with it. Economy was fine by then. Kerry not dynamic enough to overcome the deficit.
2008 - Dynamic campaigner riding anti-war wave in year of bad economy. McCain was lucky he did as well as he did (and who knows, had he not picked Sarah Palin, maybe…)
2012 - Incumbent overcomes bad economy because opponent is a dud. Though in fairness to President Obama, the economy wasn’t that bad in 2012, but it wasn’t exactly good, either.
2016 - Dynamic campaigner ekes out victory where no other element is present. Economy decent, no incumbent. Like him or loathe him, Trump was a dynamic campaigner, and Clinton was not.

12

I can’t remember before the 2004 election, so

2004: Wartime president, incumbency & 9/11 fever still running strong = reelection of a war president

2008: People are tired of corruption, incompetence, plutocracy and war. Lets elect someone else.

2012: Things are better, but not great. Combined with incumbency, Obama is re-elected

2016: The public do not care if the president is qualified to be president. This bodes very bad for politics in the future if the public don’t understand or care if someone is qualified to hold office.

2020: Ok, the public ‘kind of’ care if the president is qualified to hold office.

13

2016 should be called ‘revenge of the high school educated white people’. As a demographic group, high school educated whites make up about 1/3 of the electorate (another 1/3 is college educated whites, another 1/3 is non-whites roughly).

But those high school educated whites preferred McCain by about 14 points, Romney by like 27 and Trump by 39 points. High school educated white men preferred Trump by about a 48 point margin, something like 26-74. A ~50 point margin is about the margin that LGBT’s give the democratic party. High school educated white women preferred Trump by a 30 point margin.

So I think 2016 was an election that all the social changes combined with feeling left behind culturally and economically has motivated 1/3 of the electorate to lean very far in one direction.

I think the dems will take the message to tone down the cultural politics issues and lean more towards economic programs for working class whites. However this won’t change the working class whites who feel upset that they have to compete with latinos (some illegal) and blacks for lower level jobs. Nor will it change the working class whites who feel that ‘their’ America is disappearing. But it could peel off ~10% of working class whites, giving the GOP a 30 point margin instead of a 50 point margin. The dems can with with only 35% of working class whites on their side.

14

I think we can simplify the moral a little bit:

1976: The more charismatic candidate wins
1980: The more charismatic candidate wins
1984: The more charismatic candidate wins
1988: The more charismatic candidate wins*
1992: The more charismatic candidate wins
1996: The more charismatic candidate wins
2000: The more charismatic candidate wins
2004: The more charismatic candidate wins
2008: The more charismatic candidate wins
2012: The more charismatic candidate wins
2016: The more charismatic candidate wins

*Not so sure about this one. There might be ONE other type of moral in play for this one.

15

But how do you explain 1972? Nixon certainly wasn’t able to match George McGovern’s raw sexual magnetism.

16

In the UK, I think all elections are decided by a combination of Leader charisma and party unity. Party splits are punished by the voters.

17

Our country is broken.

18

Every election: You should have voted. If you didn’t, this is all your fault.

19

Up until 2016, everyone thought it was obvious that that doesn’t work. Turns out, it does.

And I don’t think there’s anything at all to “it’s hard to win n times in a row”. Yes, starting from scratch, it’s hard, but it’s not hard to win three times in a row for a party that’s already won twice in a row, nor is it hard to win four times in a row for a party that’s already won three times in a row.

20

1976: The economy sucks. Get someone new.
1980: The economy sucks even worse. Get someone new.
1984: The economy is booming, just like he said it would. Re-elect.
1988: The economy is doing OK - elect his VP.
1992: The economy is in recession - get someone new.
1996: The economy is booming - re-elect the one who took credit for it.
2000: The economy is doing well - but eight years of that administration is enough to overlook.
2004: The economy is doing much better. Re-elect.
2008: The economy is crashing. Get someone new.
2012: The economy is doing crappy, but he’s black and the national debt hasn’t hurt me yet. Re-elect.
2016: The economy is still just puttering along, and I don’t have to vote for someone just because you will be offended if I don’t. Elect a businessman.

2020: How’s the economy doing?

Regards,
Shodan