Minority Rules

 There are limits to what minority rule can accomplish.  Eventually even non elected despots and long reining queens get replaced. 

After the death of Queen Elizabeth II who was by all accounts popular, the succession of her son Charles is still a work in progress. The resignation of Boris Johnson and his replacement by Liss Truss shows that even those in power are subject to policy and personnel missteps that require changes if they are to move forward.

The successions in the United States with periodic elections for Presidents, Governors, the House of Representatives, some Senators and elections for various offices in the fifty states all at the same time make voting an important part of our election cycle whether or not the election of a president is on the ballot.

This year's election is important for the near future and as most commentators speak to on the future of democracy or the acceptance of something very much less than democracy as it has been practiced in the last one hundred years or longer.

It has been my luck to vote for McGovern, Carter, Mondale, Gore, Dukakis, and Hillary Clinton.  Bill Clinton was elected to the presidency with about 43% of the popular vote in 1992. while he won almost 69% of the electoral vote or 370 electoral votes.  In 1996 won about 49% of the popular vote and 70% of the electoral vote or 379 electoral votes. While being reelected he was impeached while in office.

You might guess that Hillary Clinton with Senate experience and being Secretary of State might carry her to win the Presidency.  Eight years of Bill, eight years of Obama and the possibility of another at least four more years of the Clintons was probably as much a poison pill as email issues or calling Trump supporters "a basket of deplorables". And yet the popular vote went in favor of HRC while she proceded to lose in the Electoral College and important battleground states like Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio.

Jeb Bush, third in the line of succession running for the presidencey after having an older brother and father serve a total of 12 years, raised lots of money money and was a mostly respected two-term governor of Florida but lost the race for his party's nomination as did about fourteen other potential republican candidates for the nation's highest office.

Policies for both the Clinton and Bush families would have probably been very moderate in domestic and foreign affairs recycling individuals from previous administrations.  

Fast forward to January 5, 2023.

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