A Look Back to 1972

The latest voting totals for 2016 presidential election are:
Clinton/Kaine 59,419,852
Trump/Pence  59,233,335.

Electoral College Trump/Pence  279
                             Clinton/Kaine 228

The Senate and the House will remain in Republican hands.

Everybody is ringing their hands about the election results in the "Blue Firewall" that included Michigan and Wisconsin.  There were issues in 2016 that affected the results in these two states.

I would suggest that folks look back at the results of the 1972 Democratic Primary and the vote totals in Florida, Wisconsin, and Michigan.

Wisconsin: George McGovern finished #1
                   George Wallace     finished #2
Michigan:  George Wallace     finished #1
                  George McGovern finished #2
Florida:     George Wallace      finished #1
                  George McGovern finished #6 (also ran)

George Wallace was a southern, populist, outsider who attracted support from the alienated and dissatisfied. He was also a segregationist and was generally against civil rights legislation for most of his political career.

George McGovern won the Democratic nomination by a grassroots organization and as an outsider. 

Faulkner said: "the past is never dead. It isn't even past."


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Two Months and Eight Days

Early voting and mail in voting will take place before November 5, 2024. And on a related front I hope people will notice that it does not take four years of partisan snark and sniping for the voting public to make a decision about who the next president will be.  I voted  in the Florida primary for the November Election on August 20, 2024. Locally, the mood of the electorate in Miami has changed.  A few weeks ago I just couldn't imagine a person born in 1942 running for reelection as president or a person with as much baggage as an ex-president running for office, who could legitimately be understood to be running for office as a strategy for not going to prison.  Assuming he would win, he could, stop any prosecutions and if he lost he could further question what democracy is.  And it is no surprise that the former president has started complaining about an election that hasn't happened and claiming that the opposition will have stolen the election if he does n...
Read more

Internet Dust Ups

 A high school classmate shared on FB, something from a 64 year old commercial pilot who had passed a exam to fly on of the latest jets in their fleet of aircraft.  I was also aware of an FAA rule about retirement at age 65 for commercial pilots.    In the U.S.,  there are no  FAA  age limits for pilots except for commercial airline pilots employed by airlines certificated under 14 CFR Part 121 . These airlines cannot employ pilots after they reach the age of 65. However, these pilots may stay on with a Part 121 carrier in some other role, such as flight engineers. I then went on a digression about the retirement of folks in professions like law or accounting.  From my own experience 30 years at a job or working for an employer is a very good time to start serious planning for the next chapter in your life.   And for my efforts at explaining my work history, working with folks who lost their jobs through no fault of their own.  I wa...
Read more

What Is Official These Days?

 I would guess most people would understand what Official means.  Just because a person holds a public office doesn't mean everything he might do is official and everything he might not do is official as well. “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness". from J. Kenneth Galbraith interview. And oh, by the way, moral justification at times isn't much more than a fig leaf, you can bet someone got screwed or got the proverbial get out of jail free card.
Read more