elections

Fascinating Politics

George W. Malone: The Silver State Nationalist

I have covered George Wilson Malone (R-Nev.) a little bit in the past as one of Joseph McCarthy’s closest allies in the Senate, but he is rather interesting to me because of his parochial and somewhat odd record in the Senate. Malone, although known by the effeminate nickname “Molly”, was actually rather masculine, having been an amateur boxer in his youth. An interesting personal detail, a bit of a bombshell you might say, arises about him upon research. He was married since 1921 to Katie Moslander, who was fifteen years his junior. They had a daughter in 1920, when she was 15 years old! The age of consent in Nevada was 18 years old at the time (today it is 16). Professionally, Malone was a civil and hydraulic engineer, and as the state water engineer of Nevada from 1927 to 1935 he was involved in the planning and construction of the Hoover Dam. During World War II, he was an engineering consultant for the U.S. Senate.

His first try for the Senate was in 1934, and a newspaper ad for him pledged that “A Vote for George W. Malone will be a Vote For The State of Nevada, First, Last and All of the Time” (Nevada State Journal). As his Senate career later would prove, this was a truthful ad, as he would be criticized for focusing too much on the interests of Nevada. Nevada voters would not go for his pitch this time around, as Republicans were deeply unpopular generally nationwide and Key Pittman was a giant in Nevada politics. Malone would get only 33.4% of the vote. He would try for the Senate again ten years later, this time against Democrat Pat McCarran on a staunchly pro-tariff platform, but McCarran was far too powerful, and Malone was not a better alternative for liberals displeased with McCarran, and thus he netted 41.6% of the vote.

1946 – The Year of the GOP…and Malone

For Malone, third time was the charm, and it greatly helped that 1946 was an excellent year for Republicans, who had not held a legislative majority in either chamber since the Hoover Administration. Also helping was that the Democratic primary was bitter, and enough Democrats who had voted for incumbent Edward P. Carville were unwilling to back Berkeley Bunker, and Malone won with 55.6% of the vote.

In the Senate, Malone was considered an Old Guard Republican, which included support for income tax reduction, high tariffs, and a resolute opposition to internationalism. While his colleague, McCarran, had been non-interventionist before World War II, he voted for aid to Greece and Turkey as well as the Marshall Plan, this was not so with George Malone. In his career, he never met a foreign aid measure he liked, and this contributed to his low influence in the majority internationalist Senate. He opposed the Marshall Plan on the grounds that the United States was harming its international goodwill by backing European “colonial” powers (Evening Star). Malone’s strong focus on tariffs and regional issues did not help him either in influence. His parochialism resulted in Time Magazine regarding him as one of the Senate’s eight worst members in 1950 alongside Kenneth McKellar (D-Tenn.), Pat McCarran (D-Nev.), Harry P. Cain (R-Wash.), William Jenner (R-Ind.), Glen Taylor (D-Idaho), William Langer (R-N.D.), and Elmer Thomas (D-Okla.). Time Magazine’s (1950) entry read, “His Senate office is a rat’s nest of statistics on the West’s mineral resources and little else; his chair on the Senate floor is often vacant. Fifty-nine-year-old “Molly” Malone once represented the Western mining and industrial interests in the Capitol lobby; as a Senator, he still does”. One must admit, however, that foreign aid is generally far from the priorities of landlocked Nevada voters. However, Malone was not a down-the-line conservative. Contrary to what his entry on One Nevada Encyclopedia states, he was one of three Republican senators to vote against overriding President Truman’s veto of the Taft-Hartley Act and he backed extending rent control in 1950, although for the latter issue he had voted to cut funds for rent control enforcement the previous year as well as for a “local option” amendment strongly opposed by the Truman Administration. Regarding organized labor, Malone voted for the Americans for Democratic Action position on both votes counted on union reform and against the Americans for Constitutional Action position on five of five votes they counted on the subject in 1958. His record on civil rights was not terribly favorable. Although Malone voted for the Civil Rights Act of 1957 (as did all Senate Republicans), he supported both the jury trial amendment and striking 14th Amendment enforcement by the attorney general from the 1957 act, which served to water it down.

In 1950, he succeeded in killing a bill that would have permitted the interstate shipment of slot machines with an 11-hour filibuster, and after he was finished, he said, “I could still go 10 rounds and if they bring this bill up again, I’ll talk against it again” (Evening Star).  That year, Malone weighed in on two civil rights issues: army desegregation and the Fair Employment Practices bill. For the former, Senator Richard Russell (D-Ga.) had managed to get an amendment in the draft bill that permitted “voluntary segregation” for drafted troops. Majority Leader Scott Lucas (D-Ill.) motioned to delete this amendment, which carried 42-29, and essentially serves as a vote to continue army desegregation. Malone voted with the majority. However, on voting to end debate on the Fair Employment Practices bill, a vote that was about breaking Southern obstruction on civil rights legislation, Malone was one of six Republican senators to vote against. Senators from the west most of the time voted against ending debate as a way of protecting themselves from what they regarded as domination from the east. Nevada senators had a state-specific motive for this, as there was always the potential threat of a federal crackdown on the casino industry. 

Malone was also notable as a figure who was a pain for most senators to hear speak, as his speeches tended to be dull, verbose, and lengthy. As columnist Holmes Alexander (1950) wrote while noting that Malone did make some good points in his speeches, “Agoraphobia – fear of open spaces – does not afflict George W. Malone, junior senator from Nevada. Whenever Senator Malone takes the Senate floor, its inhabitants run for the cloakrooms and leave him there talking to the vacant seats and a fistful of Midwest isolationists. He doesn’t seem to mind. At least he’s used to it. The Nevadan always talks too long – seldom less than three hours. And he usually talks on the same subject – the bipartisan foreign policy. He is against it”. Although I hesitate to use the word “isolationist” to describe opponents of internationalism, it does seem to fit in Malone’s case. In 1956, he proposed that the United States remove all its troops from abroad and deploy them for defense in North America (Evening Star).

The cause for which Malone was identified with the most regarded one of the oldest planks in the history of the Republican Party, and that was support for high tariffs. His fundamental belief on trade was that relying on goods produced by low wages in other nations would in the long run wreck American business and labor alike (Evening Star). Malone was perhaps the staunchest protectionist in the entire Senate, going as far as to be one of only two senators to vote against a compromise extension of the Reciprocal Trade Act in 1951 that included a “peril points” (setting a floor on tariff reduction) provision GOP senators had unanimously pushed for.

The 1952 Election and the Eisenhower Years

Malone’s election in 1946 could perhaps be seen as a fluke given that he was prone to extreme stances on certain issues that set him apart from political modernity, such as trade and foreign aid. However, the Democratic primary didn’t go the way Senator Pat McCarran wanted, with Democrats voting to nominate liberal Thomas Mechling, an opponent of his machine. Thus, McCarran surreptitiously lent campaign staff and resources to Malone, and he won reelection while several of his 1946 Republican freshmen lost. As a consequence, the Senate was Republican-controlled.

Malone’s stances, while opposed to most of what President Truman stood for, were not that much better aligned with the Eisenhower Administration. In 1953, he was one of 13 senators to vote against confirming Charles Bohlen as Ambassador to the USSR, a group comprised of Joseph McCarthy and his hard-core supporters. He would support McCarthy down the line, voting against his censure and in 1957 called for striking his censure from the record. In 1956, he had a notable outburst when he leapt over a table at a British diplomat in San Francisco in response to an insult during a dignified luncheon (The Evening Star). That year, Malone was noted by internationalist Paul Hoffman as one of the troublesome senators who should be read out of the GOP, with columnist George Sokolsky (1956) writing, “Senator George Malone is opposed because no one can control him. He goes his own way really not belonging wholly to one side or another. Independence of that sort is not welcomed and although George Malone spoke well of the Russians after his visit to their country, it has not won for him the support of those in our government who prefer Zhukov to Khruschev, which is none of our business”. He could sometimes go his own way through persuasion. Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson (D-Tex.) would occasionally court Malone for his vote on issues he wasn’t known to be a hardliner on. Some instances of him changing his mind included on the prevailing wage for the Interstate Highway Act in 1956, having initially voted against applying the prevailing wage but then voting for it. In 1958, Malone voted against an effort to kill the anti-preemption bill being considered (I have discussed this bill in an earlier post), but then voted to send the bill back to committee for the session. He also could be persuaded to vote for some social welfare measures, including being one of six Republicans to vote for Senator Walter George’s (D-Ga.) 1956 amendment starting disability payments under Social Security at age 50, which passed 47-45. In 1958, Malone was one of only three Republicans to vote for Senator John F. Kennedy’s (D-Mass.) amendment to expand coverage of unemployment compensation and weekly payments as well as mandating 39 weeks of unemployment benefits for states.

The 1958 election year was terrible for the GOP, and Malone faced a strong challenger in Las Vegas city attorney Howard W. Cannon and did not have the benefit of Pat McCarran being around. Although Eisenhower cabinet secretaries Fred Seaton and Ezra Taft Benson backed his reelection and Malone touted his seniority as well as his opposition to a federal tax on gambling, he lost reelection to Las Vegas’s city attorney Howard Cannon, getting only 42% of the vote, being one of 12 Republican senators defeated. His DW-Nominate score was a 0.312, and his Americans for Democratic Action scores were overall low with a cumulative of 14% when counting pairs and not counting absences against, with him thrice scoring zeroes. Malone’s Americans for Constitutional Action cumulative score was, including counting pairs, a 68% based on his record from 1955 to 1958. After his time in the Senate, he would achieve a dubious distinction; being the only former senator to ever work for Willis Carto. Like Malone, Carto was a protectionist, and he brought him on as a trade expert for Liberty Lobby’s Trade Policy Committee, where he lobbied for the adoption of a “scientific tariff”. Carto would later write glowingly of Malone in his book, Populism vs. Plutocracy: The Universal Struggle, in which he praised numerous figures from American history who opposed internationalism and/or banking interests, which also included Andrew Jackson, Robert La Follette, and Robert Taft.

Malone attempted a comeback in 1960, running for Nevada’s at-Large Congressional seat held by Walter Baring, but he was easily defeated. The following year, he was diagnosed with cancer, and died on May 19, 1961, after a week of hospitalization. Although not influential, Malone was far from unpopular, as 27 of his Senate colleagues attended his funeral. One thing that is clear to me is that the current Republican Party has a far greater home for Malone than the one in his day had.

References

Alexander, H. (1950, March 8). Unheard Talk. Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

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https://www.newspapers.com/image/638165950/

George Malone. Online Nevada Encyclopedia.

Retrieved from

http://www.onv-dev.duffion.com/articles/george-malone

George Malone Dies; Ex-Senator of Nevada. (1961, May 20). Evening Star (Washington, D.C.).

Retrieved from

https://www.newspapers.com/image/871152400/

Malone, George Wilson. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://www.voteview.com/person/5944/george-wilson-malone

National Affairs: The Senate’s Most Expendable. (1950, March 20). Time Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://time.com/archive/6796166/national-affairs-the-senates-most-expendable/

Political Ad for George W. Malone. (1934, August 29). Nevada State Journal (Reno, NV).

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https://www.newspapers.com/image/78816810/

Sokolsky, G.E. (1956, December 28). GOP at Odds With Itself. Ledger-Dispatch and Star (Norfolk, VA).

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https://www.newspapers.com/image/952390129/

Fascinating Politics

Past Attempts to Abolish or Change the Electoral College

Birch Bayh (D-Ind.), the Senate sponsor of both the 1970 and 1979 efforts to scrap the Electoral College.

One thing I think Americans should be thankful for with this past election is that the popular and electoral vote went in the same direction. Although yes, I know technically that the electoral vote is what wins elections, there’s an additional sense of legitimacy if the popular vote goes the way of the electoral winner. Many people favor eliminating the Electoral College, but that requires a Constitutional change, and that is a difficult matter. This, by the way, is far from a new proposal.

Opposition to the Electoral College is older than you might think…in 1823, Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri, later a founder of the Democratic Party, wrote, “Every reason which induced the convention to institute Electors has failed. They are no longer of any use, and may be dangerous to the liberties of the people” (O’Brien). Even a retired President James Madison, the father of the Constitution, had not supported maintaining the status quo of the Electoral College. He supported a district plan in which states would be divvied up into districts for presidential votes, and each district would choose its electors (O’Brien). President Andrew Jackson was the first to call for its outright abolition in favor of the popular vote. So just remember, when liberal Democrats push for the popular vote over the Electoral College, they are, in fact, acting as traditional Democrats. Some 20th century efforts to abolish or alter the Electoral College were pushed, as direct democracy grew in popularity.

In 1913, Senator Robert Owen (D-Okla.), a progressive and one of the fathers of the Federal Reserve, proposed substituting the electoral college with the popular vote, but this proposal failed on January 31st 32-36 (R 12-27, D 20-9). The Southern vote, perceived as particularly strong against changing the Electoral College, was 6-8 on this proposal. The conservative wing of the GOP overwhelmingly voted against.

In 1934, Senator George W. Norris (R-Neb.), one of the GOP’s most celebrated progressives, pushed for the popular vote of the president and vice president. He had been at the forefront of several movements towards direct democracy and was the father of the amendment to the Constitution that eliminated the “lame duck” session of Congress, and had the presidential term start on January 20th rather than March 4th. This proposal failed to achieve the necessary 2/3’s on a vote of 52-29 (D 40-9; R 11-20; FL 1-0) on May 22nd. The Southern vote was 15-5 for this proposal, the opposition making up 56% of Democratic opposition. Among the Republicans, there was a clear split with the party’s moderate to liberal wing voting for and the party’s conservative wing voting against. This was the high watermark of Southern support for scrapping the Electoral College.

1950: The Lodge-Gossett Amendment – Electoral College with No Electors

In 1950, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. (R-Mass.) and Representative Ed Gossett (D-Tex.) proposed an amendment to the Constitution that abolished electors and maintained the electoral numbering system, with electoral votes allocated proportionately to the vote. This is known as the fractional-proportional method, and everyone would have had motivation to vote in their states as the electoral vote of a state was no longer to be winner take all. Lodge, a moderate, thought this a good compromise between those who would want to abolish the electoral college and those who wanted to retain the power of states and wanted the GOP to make some headway in the South. His colleagues largely thought the same on the merits of the amendment, and it passed 64-27 (D 46-4; R 18-23) on February 1st. The Senate’s opposition, interestingly enough, consisted almost entirely of conservatives. Gossett, however, was a conservative Democrat and had some other motivations, wanting to limit the power of urban areas and of radicals and racial and ethnic minorities to push left-wing policies and civil rights bills. He expressed his views in 1949, “The Electoral College permits and invites irresponsible control and domination by small organized minority groups, within the large pivotal States. It aggravates and accentuates the building up and solidification within these States of religious, economic, and racial blocs. Small, definable, minority groups, organized religious or economic or racial lines, by voting together, can and do hold a balance of power within these pivotal States. As a result, the political strategists in both parties make special appeals to these various groups as such. These groups have become more and more politically conscious. They know their power. In many instances, they have no political alignments or philosophy as such, but are simply up for sale to the highest bidder. To encourage economic racial, and religious group consciousness and group action, is a dangerously undemocratic practice, aside from its other evil consequences” (National Popular Vote, 5-6). The timing of this amendment is interesting too, as in 1948, both major parties adopted pro-civil rights platforms, and some Southern Democrats broke away from the Democratic Party that year to back the explicitly segregationist State’s Rights Party, which ran South Carolina Governor Strom Thurmond. Given the South’s unity at the time against civil rights legislation, this would turn the South into an even more powerful voting bloc. Once Gossett’s motivations became clear, support for the amendment among Northern liberals collapsed. On July 17th, the Lodge- Gossett Amendment was easily defeated 134-210 (D 85-116; R 49-92; L 0-1; ALP 0-1). This reform proposal was not brought up again.

1956 – Electoral College Reform Debate

In 1956, reforming the Electoral College was brought up again. An effort to abolish the Electoral College and institute the popular vote fared badly in a Senate vote of 17-66 (D 16-25; R 1-41) on March 27th. After the failure of this proposal, liberal Senator Hubert Humphrey (D-Minn.) pushed a compromise reform that would award two electoral votes to the winner of each state and the rest would be proportionately represented (Goldman). This proposal was shelved on voice vote, and no proposed reform had 2/3’s support.

The Nixon Era: The Electoral College Comes Closest to Its Demise

In the 1968 election, although Richard Nixon won by 110 electoral votes he had won with less than 1% in the popular vote, and the third party candidacy of George Wallace was fully intended not to win, but rather to try to force the winner into making a deal with him. Much was also made of a faithless Nixon elector in North Carolina voting for Wallace instead. This set the stage for the consideration of the Bayh (D-Ind.)-Celler (D-N.Y.) Amendment, which if adopted would have scrapped the electoral college but not replaced it with an outright popular vote, rather a two-round system akin to how presidential elections work in France. There would be a first election, and if no duo won at least 40% of the popular vote, there would be a runoff election. The momentum for supporting this proposal was quite strong, with President Nixon as well as Speaker John W. McCormack (D-Mass.) and Minority Leader Gerald Ford (R-Mich.) in support. After a last-ditch effort by conservative Rep. David Dennis (R-Ind.) to institute a district plan was voted down 162-246 (D 62-166; R 100-80), the House passed this amendment on a vote of 339-70 (D 184-44; R 154-26) on September 18, 1969. Nearly all Democrats opposed were from the South, but interestingly two members of the Congressional Black Caucus, Charles Diggs of Michigan and Bill Clay of Missouri, also voted against. However, opposition grew when the measure reached the Senate, and there was a much less favorable climate in the Senate’s Judiciary Committee, as the chairman was James Eastland (D-Miss.) and his Republican counterpart was Nebraska’s Roman Hruska. Both men were strongly opposed to scrapping the Electoral College, and a bloc of Southern and some small state senators, notably Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.) and Carl Curtis (R-Neb.), filibustered. Two motions to end debate failed 54-36 (D 33-18; R 21-18) and 53-34 (D 34-15; R 19-19), and the proposal was scrapped after Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-Mont.) gave up in the midst of attempting a third, realizing he didn’t have the votes to proceed. Most of the Democratic opponents were from the South, and the Senate Republicans voting against were mostly a who’s who of its conservative wing.

1979: Jimmy Carter Supports Popular Vote

One of the presidents who supported abolishing the Electoral College was Jimmy Carter, who proposed simply a substitution of the popular vote. This proposal was debated on in the Senate as a Constitutional amendment, again sponsored by Senator Birch Bayh (D-Ind.), but there were some defections among Senate liberals for reasons that are similar to why liberal support collapsed for the Lodge-Gossett Amendment in 1950. These senators were convinced by arguments from black and Jewish groups that the Electoral College would cost them political influence, and the vote was 51-48 on July 10th, far short of the 2/3’s needed to adopt a Constitutional amendment (Weaver). Of the 22 Southern senators, only 6 supported, most of them being “New South” Democrats, a moderate to liberal sort that won with multi-racial coalitions. Another opponent of this proposal was none other than Joe Biden of Delaware.

Other proposals have been made since to abolish the Electoral College, but have not received votes, as attaining the 2/3’s majority is a highly difficult task. Instead, some other movements have been underway, including the National Popular Interstate Vote Compact to try to make the Electoral College irrelevant by granting all electoral votes to the popular vote winner, but this doesn’t go into effect until the number of states that agree to it amounts to 270 electoral votes.

What I found interesting is that although modern narratives surrounding the Electoral College that I’ve read recently seem to like to paint it as a part of historical racism that there were arguments for keeping it as a bulwark against racism. This impacted the 1950 debate on Lodge-Gossett and the 1979 effort to repeal the Electoral College. Furthermore, political journalist Theodore H. White held about scrapping the electoral college in 1970 that a direct election system would produce results that would go “brutally against our black population” and that it would “give the racists a chance” (CQ Press).

References

Electoral College Reform Victim of Senate Filibuster. CQ Press.

Retrieved from

http://library.cqpress.com/cqalmanac/cqal70-1291702

Goldman, R.M. (1958). Hubert Humphrey’s S.J. 152: A New Proposal for Electoral Reform. Midwest Journal of Political Science, 2(1).

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O’Brien, F.D. (2001). The Electoral College: How It Got That Way and Why We’re Stuck With It. American Heritage, 52(1).

Retrieved from

https://www.americanheritage.com/electoral-college-how-it-got-way-and-why-were-stuck-it

S.J. Res. 2. Passage. Govtrack.

Retrieved from

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/81-1950/s242

S.J. Res. 2. Joint Resolution Proposing an Amend. To the Constitution Providing for the Election of a Pres. And Vice-Pres. On Motion to Suspend the Rules and Pass. Govtrack.

Retrieved from

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/81-1950/h211

S.J. Res. 31. Electoral Reform. Substitute Proposal to Abolish Electoral College and Elect President and Vice-President by Direct Popular Vote. Govtrack.

Retrieved from

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/84-1956/s132

The Fractional Proportional (Lodge-Gossett) Method of Awarding Electoral Votes. (2021, May 1). National Popular Vote.

Retrieved from

Click to access memo-fractional-proportional-lodge-gossett-v4-2021-5-1.pdf

To Pass S.J. Res. 26, Providing for the Direct Popular Election of the President and Vice President of the United States. (Motion Failed; 2/3 Required). Govtrack.

Retrieved from

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/96-1979/s161

To Pass S.J. Res. 29, Proposing an Amendment to the Constitution of the U.S. Relating to Popular Election for President and Vice President. Govtrack.

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https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/73-2/s198

To Recommit H.J. Res. 681, Proposing an Amendment to the Constitution Relating to the Election of the President and Vice-President, to the Committee of the Judiciary with Instructions to Report it Back Forthwith with an Amendment Incorporating the “District Plan”. Govtrack.

Retrieved from

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/91-1969/h82

Weaver, W. (1979, July 11). Senate Rejects Proposal To End Electoral College. The New York Times.

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Fascinating Politics

Cabinet Nominations That Lost a Senate Vote

President John Tyler, whose nominees were most rebuked by a vote of the Senate.

At first, the people president-elect Donald Trump announced he would nominate after being sworn in seemed like the sort of picks you’d expect, Marco Rubio for Secretary of State or Elise Stefanik for Ambassador to the UN. However, three of his recent announcements have provoked shock, doubt, and opposition. These are Matt Gaetz for Attorney General, RFK Jr. for Secretary of Health and Human Services, and Tulsi Gabbard for National Intelligence Director. Gaetz has been a bomb-thrower in Congress for Trump and has made many enemies in the GOP for his leading role in the ouster of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), not to mention there was a House Ethics Committee report due to be released on his personal conduct before his resignation from the House. Kennedy has had a history of expressing many views that are out there, but most notorious have been his anti-vaccine stances. Furthermore, his personal record regarding marital fidelity makes Donald Trump look like a saint by comparison. Gabbard has in the past expressed support for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and has previously repeated Russian propaganda surrounding the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War. These announcements have certainly given some who would otherwise be supporting Trump nominations pause. Leading Senate Republicans have pledged that Trump’s nominees will go through the regular Senate vetting process as opposed to recessing the Senate thereby allowing Trump to install his cabinet for a maximum of nearly two years without Senate scrutiny. Believe it or not, only nine people have ever been rejected for a cabinet post by a vote of the Senate.

The first cabinet nomination in the history of the United States to be rejected was none other than Roger B. Taney, who would be most known as chief justice from 1836 until his death in 1864. Much like Trump is proposing to do, Andrew Jackson used a recess appointment to confirm Attorney General Taney as Secretary of the Treasury. However, as Treasury Secretary Taney was Jackson’s point man for the destruction of the Second Bank of the United States, which included advising transferring funds out of the bank and into state banks and authored a lot of President Jackson’s veto message (Encyclopedia Britannica). In retaliation, the Senate rejected continuing him in this position 18-28 in June 1834.

John Tyler’s Nominees

John Tyler has the dubious distinction of having the most cabinet nominees rejected by a vote of the Senate, with four getting rejected. This is certainly a least in part attributable to him considered by his party to be a rogue president. Indeed, him assuming the presidency instead of simply serving as acting president was considered questionable in his time, and some saw him as illegitimate. Yet, this precedent stuck. As a Whig, Tyler was dissenting on a lot of Whig policy, including vetoing restoring the Second Bank of the United States and vetoing two tariff increases. The defeated were Caleb Cushing for Secretary of the Treasury (who was voted on three times as Tyler stubbornly resubmitted his nomination twice), David Henshaw for Secretary of the Navy, James M. Porter for Secretary of War, and James S. Green for Secretary of the Treasury. The defeats of these candidates can broadly be attributed to President Tyler’s unpopularity.

Henry Stanbery

In 1866, the Senate confirmed Henry Stanbery as Attorney General for the Johnson Administration without fanfare or drama. However, relations between the Senate and Stanbery soured. He had backed President Johnson’s Reconstruction policy that gave no focus on rights for freedmen, and he had helped draft Johnson’s veto message of the first Reconstruction Act and on March 12, 1868 he resigned his post to join the defense team for President Andrew Johnson in the Senate’s impeachment trial. After Johnson was acquitted by one vote, he renominated Stanbery for his old post. The Senate, however, wasn’t having it, and his nomination was rejected 11-29 on June 2nd.

Charles B. Warren

In 1925, President Coolidge nominated Charles B. Warren to replace Attorney General Harlan F. Stone, who had been confirmed to the Supreme Court. Something to be understood about the Republican Party at this time was that although conservatives were strongly in the majority in the party, there was a staunch progressive wing and this wing in particular had clout in the Senate as they were able to team up with Democrats to oppose many policies of the Republican administrations of the 1920s. Warren was seen as too friendly to business interests, especially the “sugar trust”. The vote on this was going to be close, and Vice President Charles G. Dawes was going to be needed. Dawes thought he had time to take a nap at the Willard Hotel as he was told by the Senate leadership that a vote wouldn’t be held that day. However, the Senate abruptly decided to proceed to the vote…while Dawes was napping. Although Dawes was awoken and rushed to the Capitol to cast the tie-breaking vote, it was too late by the time he had arrived, as a senator had changed his mind to opposition with the vote failing 39-41. However, when the vote was held again on March 16th, it was rejected 39-46. President Coolidge was quite put off indeed by his vice president. This is also the last time that the Senate ever voted to reject a president’s nominee when the president’s party was in control.

Lewis Strauss

This rejection is the one that certainly has had the most public attention lately, given that it figured in the film Oppenheimer. Indeed, Strauss’s role in pushing of Oppenheimer out contributed to his defeat. However, there were other factors. Strauss’s competence was not in question, rather it was his polarizing personality that had become clear when he was a member and later chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission…while he had the full confidence and friendship of President Eisenhower, he made numerous enemies. Time Magazine (1959) described the variance of the views on him thusly, “Strauss, by the extraordinary ingredients of his makeup, is one to arouse superlatives of praise and blame, admiration and dislike. In the eyes of friends, he is brilliant, devoted, courageous and, in his more relaxed moments, exceedingly charming. His enemies regard him as arrogant, evasive, suspicious-minded, pride-ridden, and an excessively rough battler”. One of these enemies was Senator Clinton Anderson (D-N.M.), who led the charge against Strauss’s confirmation. Anderson made sure that committee hearings on Strauss went on for weeks, and he admitted that this was a strategy, “I thought if the committee members saw enough of him, he would begin to irritate them, just as he has me” (Time Magazine). Another factor was that Strauss, a staunch conservative, had repeatedly worked against public generation of power, supporting instead private industry. Although his nomination survived in committee by a vote of 9-8, this did not translate to confirmation, especially not in the strongly Democratic Senate. Strauss was rejected on a vote of 46-49, with 15 Democrats in support, and 2 Republicans in opposition. Strauss’s high level of defensiveness, an insistence on addressing every point of contention instead of admitting to a few errors, also harmed his nomination (Time Magazine).

John Tower

In 1989, President Bush nominated John Tower to serve as Secretary of Defense. Tower had served in the Senate from 1961 to 1985 as the first Republican to represent Texas since Reconstruction, and he had become an expert on national defense, serving as the chairman of the Armed Services Committee from 1981 to 1985. He had also served as the lead negotiator in the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks with the USSR and chaired the Tower Commission on Iran-Contra, which had issued a strongly critical report of the Reagan Administration. Tower was not known to suffer fools, and this made numerous senators on the Democratic side less than sanguine about his nomination. However, an unexpected opponent of his nomination came to testify before the Senate in Heritage Foundation’s Paul Weyrich. Weyrich opposed his nomination on the grounds of his moral character, stating, “I have encountered the senator in a condition lacking sobriety as well as with women he was not married to”, and adding to this Tower’s second wife, Lila Burt Cummings, alleged “marital misconduct” in her divorce filing (Los Angeles Times). The nomination became a highly partisan issue, and on March 9, 1989, Tower was rejected 47-53, with three Democrats (Dodd of Connecticut, Heflin of Alabama, and Bentsen of Texas) voting for, and one Republican voting against (Nancy Kassebaum of Kansas). The odd man out in support was Dodd, who although he denied it, it seems likely that he had Tower’s vote against his father’s censure in 1967 in mind. Tower’s defeat by vote of the Senate is the only one to have happened at the start of a president’s time in office.

I find it possible that the Senate rejects one Trump nominee in a vote, but more likely that a far more common event occurs: the nomination is withdrawn, either by Trump or the nominee him or herself. Indeed, there is a long list of announced nominations that were withdrawn during the first Trump Administration, including Andy Puzder for Secretary of Labor and Patrick M. Shanahan for Secretary of Defense. Count on some of those rather than a series of dramatic Senate rejection votes.

References

Conservative Tells of Seeing Tower Drunk: Senate Panel Hears Activist Oppose Defense Nomination. Los Angeles Times.

Retrieved from

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1989-01-31-mn-1492-story.html

Kelly, R. (2017, February 7). A Nap Got in the Way of the Last Tied Cabinet Vote in the Senate. Roll Call.

Retrieved from

https://rollcall.com/2017/02/07/a-nap-got-in-the-way-of-the-last-tied-cabinet-vote-in-the-senate/

List of Donald Trump nominees who have withdrawn. Wikipedia.

Retrieved from

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Donald_Trump_nominees_who_have_withdrawn

Presidents Have Failed 8 Times to Win Cabinet Confirmations. Deseret News.

Retrieved from

https://www.deseret.com/1989/2/24/18796378/presidents-have-failed-8-times-to-win-cabinet-confirmations/

Roger B. Taney. Encyclopedia Britannica.

Retrieved from

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Roger-B-Taney

The Administration: The Strauss Affair. Time Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://time.com/archive/6827665/the-administration-the-strauss-affair/

Fascinating Politics

The 12th Amendment: A Controversial Constitutional Correction

The 1800 election marked some firsts in American history. For one thing, it was the first time a president lost reelection and the smooth transfer of power in this case was an important precedent in American as well as world history. However, there was a significant complication that could have derailed the public’s will in electing Thomas Jefferson.

Background

When the Constitution was adopted in 1788, the Founding Fathers were largely of the belief that political parties were to be avoided. President George Washington, who never identified with a party, certainly thought so. However, factionalism developed from the beginning with groups we retroactively call the Pro and Anti-Administration factions. The Pro faction of course sided with George Washington and was also supportive of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton and Vice President John Adams, believing in the use of federal power to grow the nation through the funding of internal improvements to grow commerce and imposing tariffs to finance such developments. The Anti faction sided with Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, who idealized an agrarian society of the people and disliked the Hamiltonian system of government of protective tariffs to fund internal improvements. However, because the Constitution had it that the winner would be president and the runner-up would be vice president, it created a situation in which the president would have a political foe in the vice presidency, as happened with John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. By the 1796 election, America’s first two parties had developed in the Federalist and Republican parties. For the purposes of avoiding confusion, however, historians and others call the latter the Democratic-Republican Party, as today’s Republican Party traces its lineage to the Whigs, which traced their lineage to the Federalists. Despite the wishes of many Founders, the seeds for political parties had been planted from the very beginning. Although both Adams and Jefferson had their picks for vice president, the tickets were not official and the results made it so that under the Constitution Adams was president and Jefferson was vice president, creating a rather awkward situation in the White House. Imagine this applied to recent politics in addition to the greater role of the vice president, and you can imagine how well this would go over. Electors cast two votes each, but there was no distinction as to president and vice president in these votes.

The 1800 Election

In the 1800 election, the Federalist and Democratic-Republican parties officially selected president and vice president. Jefferson’s running mate was New York’s Aaron Burr and Adams’s running mate was South Carolina’s Charles C. Pinckney. In that election, the tides decisively turned against John Adams, with the Administration being unpopular due to numerous factors, including their support of greater relations with Britain, their tariffs, and the Alien and Sedition Acts, now widely regarded as an unconstitutional overreaction to fears about the influence of revolutionary France. Thomas Jefferson won with 60.6% of the vote as opposed to Adams’ 39.4%.  The problem was that in the casting of electoral votes, the electors gave Jefferson and Burr 73 electoral votes, and because the electoral votes didn’t distinguish between president and vice president a Burr presidency was now possible! The Adams electors had been careful about this; his VP nominee Charles C. Pinckney received one less electoral vote than Adams, but this didn’t matter as the ticket hadn’t won. The conundrum had to be resolved by Congress, and the Federalists initially sought to make life difficult for Jefferson by voting for Burr and producing a stalemate, resulting in 35 ballots without a winner. Because state delegations were what mattered in the voting for president, this had the result of giving Delaware’s single representative, the staunchly Federalist James A. Bayard, the same power as the considerably more populous Democratic-Republican state of Virginia in determining the president. Burr, ever ambitious and far from the most ethical politician the US has ever had, was during this time accused of campaigning for himself being president as he did not rule himself out as a candidate for president. As a consequence, Burr would be completely frozen out of the Jefferson Administration’s inner circle. However, Alexander Hamilton realized that Jefferson was the preferable president. He didn’t like the idea of Burr being an instrument of the Federalists throughout his career. In 1804, Hamilton’s opinion on Burr reflected his views on him in 1801, asking, “Is he to be used by the Federalists, or is he a two-edged sword, that must not be drawn?” (Thomas Jefferson Monticello) He managed to convince some Federalists to switch their votes to Jefferson, and on the 36th ballot, Delaware’s Bayard cast his vote for Jefferson, thus producing the intended outcome of the people. An election being decided in the House of Representatives is, to say the least, not ideal as Americans would find out in 1824 (the election of the alleged “corrupt bargain”) and 1876, the only time in which a presidential candidate lost who got the majority, as opposed to the plurality, of the popular vote. Thus, Jefferson and his party proposed the 12th Amendment to the Constitution regarding the elections of the president and vice president. This amendment distinguished electoral votes for president and vice president, held whoever should have the greatest number of votes for vice president would be the vice president, and prohibited electors from a state for voting for more than one candidate from their state. The latter has had some relevance in decisions surrounding presidents; in 2000, Dick Cheney had to legally change his residence from Texas to Wyoming to still be Bush’s running mate, and this issue certainly factored in Trump declining to pick Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as his running mate this year. In a close election year, it is best not to risk loss because Florida’s electors can’t vote for the ticket if there are two Florida residents. The Federalist Party strongly opposed this proposal, as they saw it as a way to benefit Jefferson and his party and to further reduce their influence in politics. Senator Samuel White of Delaware argued that “we have not given it a fair experiment,” that “we should be cautious how we touch it”, and cautioned that the measure had potential to increase corruption, holding that the result would be to “more than double the inducement to those candidates, and their friends, to tamper with the Electors, to exercise intrigue, bribery, and corruption…” (Alder).

However, the Federalist Party was quite weak in representation and the Senate voted for the amendment on December 2, 1803, by a vote of 21-10, with all Federalists opposing and one Democratic-Republican joining them. On December 8, 1803, the House voted to ratify the amendment 84-42, or with 2/3’s of the vote. All Federalists and five Democratic-Republicans voted against, but the Jeffersonian majority was strong enough to ratify. Among the opponents was future President John Quincy Adams.

The 12th Amendment, it is true, did serve Jefferson and the Democratic-Republican Party, but it also adjusted to the reality of the existence of political parties, which with 20/20 hindsight just seems inevitable. That being said, Federalists were understandably self-interested in their opposition to the 12th Amendment, trying to stave off their long-term decline. The 1804 election turned out to be a cakewalk for the popular Jefferson, who had a new running mate in New York’s George Clinton and won in a massive landslide against South Carolina’s Charles C. Pinckney, who only won Connecticut and the staunchly Federalist outpost of Delaware. The Federalist Party would gradually die out, but it would ironically technically outlast the Democratic-Republican Party. The Federalist Party was finally dissolved around 1828 while the Democratic-Republican Party fell victim to its own success as the party’s tent had become far too big and it was split over the candidacy of the populistic General Andrew Jackson, dissolving around 1825. That partisan politics didn’t end with the “Era of Good Feelings” that characterized James Monroe’s administration should be demonstrative that the “end of history” will not come without the end of humanity itself.

References

Alder, C. (2016, March 3). A Far Superior Method – the Original Electoral College. In Search of the American Constitutional Paradigm.

Retrieved from

https://www.freedomformula.us/articles/a-far-superior-method/

Election of 1804. Thomas Jefferson Monticello.

Retrieved from

https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jefferson-encyclopedia/election-1804/

The Twelfth Amendment. National Constitution Center.

Retrieved from

https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/amendments/amendment-xii/interpretations/171

To Adopt a Resolution, Reported by the Committee, Amending the Constitution. (P. 209-210). Govtrack.

Retrieved from

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/8-1/s16

To Concur in the Senate Resolution to Submit for Approval to the Legislatures of the States, an Amendment to the Constitution Regulating the Election of the President and Vice President. (Speaker Voting in the Affirmative). Govtrack.

Retrieved from

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/8-1/h24

Fascinating Politics

The 2024 Election Outcome: Donald Trump and the Seven States


The 2024 election was an electoral college sweep for Donald Trump, as he won all seven swing states. It turned out that the fear from Democrats on Republicans having a lot more of the early vote was justified. Since the Senate and House are determined to be in Republican control, it is time to look at what has happened. First, how did I do on predictions?

Presidential

I predicted 5 of the 7 swing states, and in that prediction was also a Donald Trump victory, which occurred. The states I thought would go Harris were Michigan and Wisconsin. I also regarded Michigan as the sick man of the swing states, but that was actually a designation that should have gone to Wisconsin, where Trump had his worst swing state performance. I certainly beat the Google AI prediction of a Harris win and her winning 4 of the 7 swing states (she didn’t get Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina per AI). I never doubted North Carolina would go to Trump, same for Georgia. Nevada was a very close call for me, but I’m glad that I went against the conventional wisdom of Jon Ralston. I pat myself on the head in particular for judging this based on his prediction bias. Some facts and figures that were predictive of this election were that Gallup found this year that there were more self-identified Republicans than Democrats for the first time since it started asking the question, that Republicans led in voter confidence on the top election issue (the economy) per Gallup, that most sitting vice presidents historically don’t succeed the president, and that prediction markets were predicting a Trump win. History has only defied the Gallup voter confidence metric once, and that was in 1948. Furthermore, the prediction markets since 1916 have only been wrong three times. Alan Lichtman’s keys to the presidency has broken whatever way you see it. This election certainly gives weight to Nate Silver’s criticism of a number of his keys as subjective. Another portend I saw for this election that turned out to be valid was that Democratic incumbent senators in swing states were highlighting what they had in common with Trump in their ads. Their internal polling must have indicated something that much of the public didn’t know. After all, if the numbers had been good for Harris, they would have connected themselves with Harris in their ads.

The Senate

I am proud to report that my prediction for the Senate was 100%. I again outperformed the Google AI prediction, which predicted that Republicans would get 51 seats. I predicted that Senators Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania, and Jon Tester of Montana would lose reelection to Republicans Bernie Moreno, Dave McCormick, and Tim Sheehy respectively and they did. The interesting thing about all three is that they had defeated Republican incumbents in 2006. It is a testament to the political skills of these men, especially in the case of Tester given the nature of his state, that they held on for three terms. For Brown, the state’s politics shifted from under his feet.

Although popular as governor in his state, Republican Larry Hogan couldn’t defeat Democrat Angela Alsobrooks. For Marylanders, the attitude towards Hogan for national office amounts to “nice guy, wrong party”.

Republican Mike Rogers in Michigan came very close, but didn’t quite make it as enough Trump voters split their tickets to put Democrat Elissa Slotkin over the top.

Republican Eric Hovde in Wisconsin came within a point, but Tammy Baldwin’s greater knowledge of farm issues likely put her over the top.

If Republican Sam Brown in Nevada had more buy-in earlier in his Senate race, perhaps he could have toppled Democrat Jacky Rosen, but then again, she did have some crossover appeal among Trump voters.

Republican Kari Lake of Arizona is a bad candidate and GOP primary voters should not choose to run her for a statewide office again; Trump won the state and all of the state’s Congressional Republicans won their reelections, in districts that were mapped out by an independent redistricting commission, but Lake couldn’t win hers.

Democrat Colin Allred, although certainly an appealing candidate, couldn’t cut into Texas’s Republicanism nearly enough to beat incumbent Ted Cruz.

The House

In the name of contrariness, I suppose I muffed this one by predicting Democratic control. However, the House has been close, and although Republicans gained or kept important ground in some places, they have lost in others.

Republican Flips

Gabe Evans toppled incumbent Yadira Caraveo in the truly swing 8th district of Colorado.

Tom Barrett defeated Curtis Hertel to win Michigan’s 7th district, held by outgoing Democrat Elissa Slotkin, now senator-elect.

Due to partisan redistricting, Republicans gained three seats in North Carolina. The new members are Addison McDowell, Brad Knott, and Tim Moore. This setup may change for the 2026 midterms.

Ryan Mckenzie defeated Susan Wild for reelection in Pennsylvania’s 7th district.

Robert Bresnahan defeated Matt Cartwright for reelection in Pennsylvania’s 8th district.

Democratic Flips

Court-ordered redistricting in Alabama resulted in the creation of a new 2nd district, a second black-majority district. Shomari Figures was elected to this seat.

George Whitesides defeated Republican Mike Garcia for reelection in California’s 27th district.

Court-ordered redistricting in Louisiana resulted in the creation of a new 6th district, a second black-majority district. Cleo Fields, whose last term in Congress ended in 1997, made a comeback.

In New York, Democrats so far have made their most impressive showing, winning three seats. Their party organization was in a sorry state in 2022, but this is clearly no longer so.

In the 4th district, Laura Gillen defeated Republican Anthony D’Esposito for reelection.

In the 19th district, Josh Riley defeated Republican Marc Molinaro for reelection.

In the 22nd district, John Mannion defeated Republican Brandon Williams for reelection.

In Oregon, the state’s Republican delegation can once again hold their party caucus in a phone booth, as in the 5th district, Janelle Bynum defeated Lori Chavez-DeRemer for reelection.

Unresolved races include Alaka’s At-Large district, in which Republican Nick Begich is leading over Democratic incumbent Mary Peltola.

Republicans John Duarte and Michelle Steel of California’s 13th district and 45th district may lose reelection when counting ends.

Maine has a ranked-choice system, and Democrat Jared Golden of the 2nd district will almost certainly win reelection.

Overall, I did pretty well this time in predicting the presidential winner and all of the Senate races. The House did stay Republican, but some vulnerable incumbents went down, and the GOP’s current numbers make a Democratic majority in the House quite obtainable from the 2026 midterm elections.  

There are overall several takeaways from this election.

  1. President Biden should never have tried for reelection. The Democrats didn’t hold a proper primary, and simply anointing Vice President Harris given the lack of time is a mess the Democrats got themselves into. The seeds of the 2024 defeat were planted in 2020. This being said, dumping Biden was the best of their bad options at that point.
  2. Although certain economic indicators on the surface were good, the purchasing power of many Americans went down under the Biden Administration, and certain policies did the opposite of helping with inflation, namely the American Rescue Plan. Furthermore, the measure that the Biden Administration put forth as combatting inflation, the Inflation Reduction Act, primarily consisted of spending more money on green energy.
  3. The border was a major issue, and whatever measures taken by the Biden Administration to try and clamp down on the situation now, the American people remember that the Biden Administration enacted multiple policies undoing Trump Administration policies on the border, which in sum effectively meant an open border policy, prompting a surge.
  4. Harris was to say the least not a good candidate. She had to consistently dodge based not only on being part of an unpopular administration but also had one of the most left-wing Senate records. The positions she staked out when running for the Democratic nomination in 2020 she also had to walk back, and I believe the 2024 walking back by Harris of her 2020 stances to be as genuine as Obama claiming he was against same-sex marriage when he ran for president in 2008.
  5. Abortion was not the major issue that certain left-wing or left-leaning press outlets were pushing. The shock of the Dobbs decision seems to have worn off after two years and numerous state referendums on abortion policy, so many voters who may have otherwise been motivated on the subject were simply able to vote on the subject in their own state. Unless Republicans should foolishly push for a national abortion ban, this issue is off the federal table save for the matter of federal government funding of abortions.
  6. This election was a referendum on the Biden-Harris Administration, and although Trump certainly figured in people’s minds the voters didn’t forget that he wasn’t the incumbent. The Democrats could run away from Biden, but they could not run away from the fact that they were the incumbent party. The Republicans should not, however, read this as Trump suddenly becoming very personally popular among the American public. Trump was picked by the voters despite having lower personal likability numbers than Harris.
  7. Kamala Harris responding to Sunny Hostin’s question about what she’d do differently than Biden and having no difference of substance was damaging, and I didn’t think that this would be ignored during the election.
  8. Donald Trump had an excellent campaign manager in Susie Wiles, who mostly was able to keep him on focus. Picking her as chief of staff is on point.
  9. J.D. Vance was a far better VP pick than most people thought at the time, and his performance at the VP debate did much to combat portrayals of him as “weird”. Furthermore, he was better at arguing for Trump than Trump was.
  10. Harris probably chose the worst of her options when she picked Tim Walz. By the way, both times Democrats have run women for president they have picked balding upper-middle aged men named Tim from light blue states!
  11. This is the election of the podcast. Podcasts are proving more influential media than declining mainstream media outlets with their packaged thinking talk programs, and as demonstrated by Trump’s appearances on podcasts with young male audiences, most notably the Joe Rogan Experience.
  12. Although this was a secondary factor, far left social issues figured against Democrats, such as “defund the police”, certain trans policies (trans women in women’s sports, state-subsidized sex-change operations, puberty blockers and sex change operations for minors), and racial identity politics.
  13. Trump won the image war. His campaign PR stunts such as his serving food at the drive-thru of a McDonald’s and as a garbageman may be disregarded by some as disingenuous, not real, or unimportant, but everyone knew they were PR stunts, and they were good ones. Furthermore, his narrow brush with death produced a photo that is iconic in American history.
  14. Give the pollsters a break. The outcomes of these elections were well within the RCP poll average margins of error. Some pollsters got it more wrong while others were more on the mark. This is why you look at poll averages to see about where the race is.
  15. Trump’s win in this election changes the narratives about him as well as narratives about where our nation’s politics are at. Grover Cleveland no longer stands alone, to say the least.
Fascinating Politics

A History of Polling and Predictions for This Election

This election is from the information available, going to be a coin flip. I hope to do better than a coin flip in these predictions I will make. First thing’s first, however, a history of RealClearPolitics average polling for major races (President, Senator). Gubernatorial races are not figuring prominently this year, and the only close one to speak of worth attention is New Hampshire, where Republican Kelly Ayotte is slightly leading in polling at the moment. The endorsement of Governor Sununu may be sufficient to put her over the top. Before we carry on here, I want to go over some polling history.

Presidency

Presidential Election2016Net Bias2020
StateRCP AverageActualRCP AverageActualNet Bias
AZR +4R +3.5R +0.5D +0.9D +0.3D +0.6
GAR +4.8R +5.1D +0.3R +1D +0.3R +1.3
MID +3.4R +0.3D +3.7D +4.2D +2.8D +1.4
NVR +0.8D +2.4R +3.2D +2.4D +2.4None
NCR +1R +3.7D +2.7R +0.2R +1.3D +1.1
PAD +1.9R +0.7D +2.6D +1.2D +1.2None
WID +6.5R +0.7D +7.2D +6.7D +0.7D +6

This is indicative of largely Democratic bias over the last two cycles, but 2012 had Republican bias, and as you will see, the 2022 midterms had a considerable Republican bias, but there is a caveat to this one.

Let’s look at some indicators:

Good for Trump:

. Republicans outnumber Democrats nationwide, a new development (Archacki). The independent vote may turn out to be the deciding factor, however.

On November 1st, 538 put Trump at a slight advantage with a 53% chance to win, but greater odds have been overcome, most notably by Trump in 2016.

The betting markets are favoring a Trump victory. The predictive performance of the betting markets since 1916 has only failed thrice: in 1916 itself, 1948 (polling ended two weeks before the election in that one), and the tremendous upset of 2016.

Per Nate Cohn, there isn’t evidence yet that the pollsters’ Trump voter counting problems are fixed.

Nate Silver, formerly of 538, predicted a Trump win up until final projection.

The polling of the election may suffer from a non-response bias that favors Trump (Grover).

Defections from the Democrats in Michigan from Arab American voters, with a possibility that Trump gets more of them than Harris does, with left-wing Arab Americans potentially voting for Green Party candidate Jill Stein.

The Trump campaign, according to Jack Herrera of Politico, has consistently had a stronger ground game in Pennsylvania than the Harris campaign, which could spell victory in the state despite the “garbage island” incident. As someone who has worked in campaigns, I strongly believe in ground game. In 2020, I knew the Democrats were not going to do as well as polls predicted because they were behind on ground game, namely door knocking, and particularly so in Florida. However, although Trump himself survived COVID, his reelection did not.

Kamala Harris is not an inspiring candidate aside from her being a woman and most importantly, not Trump, at least from a standpoint of those not ideologically motivated. Her record in the Senate was one of the most liberal, and she campaigned as a hard California liberal in the 2020 Democratic primary. 

Republicans have higher favorability on the economy per Gallup polling. The last time a party’s candidate for president lost when the party had an edge on the top issue, which is the economy this year, it was in 1948. And I’ve mentioned the issue of polling in 1948.

Good for Harris:

Historian Allan Lichtman’s keys to the presidency system has predicted since 1980 the outcomes of all presidential elections except 2000.

The Des Moines Register poll of Iowa actually puts her three points ahead. This is most likely an outlier, but this poll has had some good history behind it, but an Emerson poll also came out that had Trump up in Iowa by ten points and Emerson is a highly reputable firm. If the Iowa poll is indicative of movement towards the Democrats in Iowa, then that doesn’t speak well for Trump’s ability to win less solid states. But one must remember of course that this time their off.

Per 538’s Nate Cohn, pollsters may be overly weary of underestimating the Trump vote, making an undercounting again seemingly unlikely.

Nate Silver’s final projection gives Harris the slightest edge over Trump.

The subject of abortion may be a sleeper factor here that increases Harris’s share considerably with moderate and independent women and wins her the election.

The “island of garbage” line at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, which may tip some needed Latino voters in Pennsylvania.  

Donald Trump has a lot of baggage to put it mildly, and some older voters may be nervous about him being the more chaotic candidate, again putting it mildly.

Michigan Democrats have a stronger ground game than Republicans. Although Republicans have undergone some course correction after the catastrophic tenure of Kristina Karamo as party chairman and this will help them some, early voting is indicating a trend towards an over 50% turnout from Detroit (Massey & Guillen). A 50%+ turnout is an indicator of a Democratic win.

Now…let’s look at the RCP poll averages from Monday evening for the seven swing states. I know Minnesota and New Hampshire were recently added to tossups, but I doubt this is going to happen.

Arizona – Trump +2.8

Republicans have been making gains in Arizona in registration since 2020, and there is no recent poll that has Trump in a polling deficit. The closest one is Morning Consult, which has a tie. In this final stretch, Arizona is the sick man of the swing states for the Harris campaign and the champion for Trump’s. Trump wins the state.

Georgia – Trump +1.7

Most polls have Trump leading in Georgia, with New York Times/Siena being the only one to indicate a Harris lead. NYT/Siena is a highly credible polling firm, but so is Emerson, which indicates a one-point lead for Trump. I think Trump pulls through in Georgia.

Michigan – Harris +0.5

The numbers in Detroit, as I mentioned in the positives for Harris, make me think that Michigan, despite Arab American defections, will stay blue this time. The polling momentum appears going slightly to Trump, but a flurry of polls late in the game pointed to a GOP wave in 2022 that didn’t materialize in most of the nation.  What’s more, the Michigan GOP is still recovering from the disastrous tenure of Kristina Karamo as its party chair. I think ground game matters a lot, and Democrats have a better ground game in Michigan. Much of the ground game right now is through Elon Musk’s America PAC, which is a major push to reach people with a low propensity for voting (LaHut). Harris wins Michigan, the sick man of the swing states for Republicans.

Nevada – Trump +0.6

This one is rather interesting. Although Trump is up, Nevada has had some history of over-polling Republicans. However, it was one of the states in 2020 in which the pollster average was the actual margin of victory for Biden. Nevada political expert Jon Ralston has predicted that Harris will win but by the narrowest of margins with mail-in ballots. Ralston is a credible source, as he predicted the outcome of 2020 in Nevada as well as Republican Joe Lombardo winning in the gubernatorial election in 2022 and Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto winning reelection to the Senate. However, Ralston has also predicted margins of victory, and he has overpredicted Democratic margins in the past. He predicts for this one that Harris will win by 0.3% (Schwartz). In 2020, Ralston predicted a Biden victory in Nevada by four points, but Biden actually won by 2.4%, a difference of 1.6% in favor of Democrats and in 2022 he predicted a 2 point victory for Masto but Masto won with 0.8%. If his being off by 1.2 to 1.6% in favor of Democrats holds up, Trump wins the state. The state’s Democratic registration edge also has declined considerably from 2020 and many of the state’s new residents are from California and may be against their old state’s political leadership. Not good for Harris if true. Ben Margiott of Las Vegas Channel 3 News reports that “Republicans continue to hold a roughly 4% turnout advantage”. I predict a Trump win by the skin of his teeth.

Ralston’s 2020 and 2022 predictions:

https://www.reddit.com/r/YAPms/comments/1gjqsc6/jon_ralstons_2020_presidential_and_2022_senate/#lightbox

North Carolina – Trump +1.2

Trump has been leading in most polls in North Carolina, and the early vote looks good for Republicans and not so good for Democrats. That being said, early voting is not necessarily predictive. It is difficult to see how Harris outperforms 2020 Biden, save a considerable enough migration of college-educated whites from four years ago. I predict a Trump win.

Pennsylvania – Trump +0.4

Most agree that this is the must-win of the swing states. The interesting thing about Pennsylvania is it is one of the two states in which the poll average matched the outcome in 2020! Furthermore, the ground game of the GOP in this state has been outperforming that of the Democrats for months (Herrera). However, there has been more elderly Democratic early voting, which may not bode well for the GOP. Democrats, however, have an advantage in early voting shaved by 600,000 votes. With more Republican votes in, this gives them more room for GOTV on Election Day. On balance, I call this one for Trump.

Wisconsin – Harris +0.4

Harris’s numbers look the second best in Wisconsin, and I think the days of polling discrepancies in the state may be over. I think that Harris is favored to win the state based on Democratic ground game, which is stronger than the Republican game in the state.

Senate

Something to bear in mind about Senate polls historically is that there has always been at least one upset every year. An upset is defined in this post as one in which the opposite result occurs from the RCP polling average.

Races in which upsets occurred over the past ten years:

North Carolina, 2014: Tillis vs. Hagan

RCP Projection: D +1.2

Actual Result: R +1.7

Democrats spent the most money on this race to protect Senator Kay Hagan of North Carolina and she led in most polls, but the midterm went the Republicans’ way and Tillis pulled off an upset.

New Hampshire, 2016: Ayotte vs. Hassan

RCP Projection: R +1.5

Actual Result: D +0.2

Senator Kelly Ayotte was leading in most polls up to the election, but as the state voted for Clinton, Governor Maggie Hassan got enough of the vote to pull a squeaker.

Pennsylvania, 2016: McGinty vs. Toomey

RCP Projection: D +2

Actual Result: R +1.6

Senator Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania won a narrow reelection victory even though only poll put him ahead, this tracked with Trump winning the state, although Toomey ran ahead of Trump.

Wisconsin, 2016: Johnson vs. Feingold

RCP Projection: D +2.7

Actual Result: R +3.4

Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin was thought at the beginning of 2016 to have a DOA campaign. However, despite grim prognostications throughout the year and most polls of the Senate race putting former Senator Russ Feingold at an advantage, Johnson won by 3.4. Feingold’s RCP average was 2.7 up.

Arizona, 2018: McSally vs. Sinema

RCP Projection: R +1

Actual Result: D +2.3

Republican Senator Martha McSally was facing popularity problems and ran a lackluster campaign. Despite late polls seeming to go her way, Kyrsten Sinema defeated her.

Florida, 2018: Nelson vs. Scott

RCP Projection: D +2.4

Actual Result: R +0.2

Democratic Senator Bill Nelson of Florida after three terms was defeated by Republican Rick Scott. Nelson had led in most polls, but there was an increase in the number of polls that put Scott over the top.

Indiana, 2018: Braun vs. Donnelly

RCP Projection: D +13.

Actual Result: R +5.9

Democratic Senator Joe Donnelly led in the majority of polls in the final stretch, but Republican Mike Braun pulled off a victory in Republican Indiana.

Nevada, 2018: Heller vs. Rosen

RCP Projection: Tie

Actual Result: D +5

This may not technically be considered an upset, but Heller had been leading in two of the three last polls, and the result was one point higher than Emerson’s poll figuring Rosen at +4.

Maine, 2020: Collins vs. Gideon

RCP Projection: N/A, but all polls had Democrat Sara Gideon up, although RCP considered the race a “toss up”.

Actual Result: R +8.6.

Although polling was sparse, this one is scandalous, as the margin of victory for Collins wasn’t even within 5 points.

North Carolina, 2020: Cunningham vs. Tillis

RCP Projection: D +2.6

Actual Result: R +1.8

Chuck Cunningham looked good to defeat Republican incumbent Thom Tillis, who was seen as lackluster. I thought at the time Tillis would pull through a win anyway as polls had underestimated him before and Cunningham had an extramarital affair scandal.

2022 saw four upsets, all upsets were polling that favored Republicans but the seats went to the Democrats. The Republicans had candidate quality issues with the uncharismatic and weird Blake Masters, the personally troubled and questionably coherent Herschel Walker, and the comically out-of-touch Dr. Mehmet Oz. Nevada’s Democratic turnout machine managed to secure a victory for Cortez Masto over Laxalt, who made the poor decision to be loud in support of Trump’s election denial in 2020. I have my doubts the poll bias will be this bad this time around towards Republicans, and much of this bias actually happened in the last week of the campaign as a flurry of bad polls came out, and contrary to popular belief it was more widespread than just Republican pollsters.

Arizona, 2022: Kelly vs. Masters

RCP Projection: R +0.3

Actual Result: D +4.9

Georgia, 2022: Walker vs. Warnock

RCP Projection: R +1.4

Actual Result: D +0.9

Nevada, 2022: Cortez Masto vs. Laxalt

RCP Projection: R +3.4

Actual Result: D +0.9

Pennsylvania, 2022: Fetterman vs. Oz

RCP Projection: R +0.4

Actual Result: D +4.9

2022 is an example of why the polls may be biased towards Republicans this time around rather than the Democrats, as they were from 2014 to 2020. This is a possibility, but I don’t see the bias being this much, perhaps a little on the side of the Democrats, and maybe even a bit to the Republicans once again. Now for the Senate races!

Michigan – Rogers vs. Slotkin, Slotkin +2.3

Democratic Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin has led in all but one poll, and that is from Rasmussen Reports, which although did very well in the 2004 election predictions, it has had a bit of a spottier record since 2012. Republican Mike Rogers was a decent pick, but Democrats are on their game once again in Michigan. Like Harris wins Michigan, Slotkin wins. If she loses, Democrats have had an awful election.

Montana – Sheehy vs. Tester, Sheehy +7.7

Senator Tester will be defeated in the election despite late-game optimism from Democrats. There has been no time in the history of Senate RCP polls in which a candidate was this far ahead in polling and lost. It is a testament to Senator Tester that he managed to serve three terms from a state that has repeatedly voted for Republican presidents.

Nevada – Brown vs. Rosen, Rosen +4.9

Nevada is figuring to be a tight race presidentially, but the polling has put Democrat Jacky Rosen repeatedly up, with Republican Sam Brown only leading by one in a Susquehanna poll, without doubt an outlier. Rosen wins another term.

Ohio – Brown vs. Moreno, Moreno +1.7

Senator Brown has been banking on a number of people voting for Trump and him, but Ohio’s status as a red state and Trump’s coattails look like they are going to push Moreno over the top. Brown was leading up until very recent polls, and it looks like the momentum is on Moreno’s side. I also reason this because split-ticket voting is a less common phenomenon than it used to be. I also don’t see this as a last-minute bad poll flurry as this turn isn’t widespread.

Pennsylvania – Casey vs. McCormick, Casey +1.8

Democratic Senator Bob Casey has been in office since 2007, and this is his toughest race. However, McCormick has been behind in most recent polls although the margins are close. Since every Senate election has had at least one upset, I will boldly offer the prediction that it is this race. Winner: McCormick.

Texas – Allred vs. Cruz, Cruz +4.4

Democrats try again to take down Ted Cruz with Congressman Colin Allred. They have arguably picked better this time than Beto O’Rourke, but Texas’s Republican status is not going to change with this presidential election, and there won’t likely be enough Trump-Allred voters to elect him. Cruz wins another term.

Wisconsin – Baldwin vs. Hovde, Baldwin +1.8

I was torn between this and Pennsylvania as being the shocker, but the ground game is stronger for the GOP in Pennsylvania and they just seem to be polling better. The one hesitancy I have in this is that Wisconsin polls have from 2016 to 2020 underestimated Republican strength. Indeed, Biden won by less than a point in 2020 when he was polled to win by more than six. This being said, the ground game is stronger for Democrats in Wisconsin this year, and I believe in ground game. The days of poll bias for Democrats may just be over, indeed Republican poll bias manifested in 2022, with Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin winning by a narrower than expected margin and Governor Tony Evers winning reelection despite RCP poll averages putting Republican Tim Michels, who denied that Trump had actually lost the 2020 election, narrowly on top. Again, candidate quality matters! Although Hovde is a better candidate and he does have the advantage of being able to self-fund, he also didn’t get the endorsement of the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation based on his lack of knowledge on farm issues, so I think Baldwin does get another term.

Overall, I predict Republicans end this race with 53 seats in the Senate. As for the House, it is, like the presidency, anyone’s game, but I’m going to make a little bit of a wild prediction here. Democrats narrowly take the House because of Harris coattails in blue state House races. Yes, I’m one of the few who is predicting a mixed result in which Trump does not get unified government. There are a fair number of vulnerable Republican incumbents and the legislative chaos caused by a stubborn minority in the GOP certainly didn’t help their image to govern.

References

Archaki, L. (2024, September 28). For First Time Ever, More Americans Are Republican Than Democrat. The Daily Beast.

Retrieved from

https://www.thedailybeast.com/more-americans-now-identify-as-republicans-than-democrats/

Herrera, J. (2024, November 4). Trump’s Gains With Pennsylvania Latinos Are Real. Maybe Enough to Withstand ‘Island of Garbage.’ Politico.

Retrieved from

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/11/04/latinos-decide-election-pennsylvania-00186534

Massey, D. & Guillen, J. (2024, November 2). Black turnout in cities like Detroit is make-or-break for Harris. Axios.

Retrieved from

https://www.axios.com/2024/11/02/harris-black-turnout-detroit-atlanta-philadelphia

Schwartz, I. (2024, November 4). Jon Ralston: Nevada is Going To Be Close, Mail-In Ballots That Come In Late Will Put Kamala Harris Over The Top. Real Clear Politics.

Retrieved from

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2024/11/04/jon_ralston_nevada_is_going_to_be_close_mail-in_ballots_that_come_in_late_will_put_kamala_harris_over_the_top.html

Fascinating Politics

Epic Fail! The Literary Digest’s Poll of the 1936 Election

We are now one week away from yet another election which is called the “most important of our lifetimes”, and the third election in which Donald Trump is the Republican nominee. Many observers, myself included, are regularly checking polls and even trying to be so bold as to predict outcomes. The first election that featured Trump, 2016, was the greatest upset in American political history since Truman defeated Dewey in 1948. The worst example of average polling being off was Wisconsin, in which Clinton, per the RealClearPolitics polling average, was up by 6.5, but Trump won by 0.7. None of the latest polls had put Trump on top, including the Republican firm Remington Research, which found Clinton at 8 points ahead. In fact, none of the polls from August until Election Day had Trump up. In the case of 1948, however, polling ended two weeks before the election. The 1936 poll by The Literary Digest, however, takes the cake. The magazine The Literary Digest issued a presidential straw poll every election year, and this had been predictive of the winner since 1916. Yet, their 1936 poll projected Republican Alf Landon as the winner with 57% of the vote and 370 electoral votes. As anyone with even a cursory knowledge about American history should know, we have not had a President Landon. Landon actually only won 37% of the vote and 8 electoral votes; only the voters of Maine and Vermont (they were very different states back then!) saw fit to vote out FDR. The Literary Digest had predicted 1916, which merits credit as it was a close race, but the others were landslides. All this, however, begs the question: how did this publication blow an even bigger landslide? Let’s look at their methodology.

The Literary Digest conducted one election straw poll per year, and they used three lists as sources: phone numbers, drivers’ registrations, and country club memberships (Emory Oxford College). For 1936, they contacted 10 million people for their survey, and from this they got 1,293,669 people who supported Landon and 972,897 people who supported Roosevelt. This approach had multiple methodological problems. The first, the conventional story, is that The Literary Digest had failed to account for the class polarization that came with the Roosevelt Administration…Americans in previous elections had voted more similarly based on class. Many working-class Americans in the North voted Republican in the past elections, and while the 1920s prosperity was part of it, they also supported the GOP’s high tariff platform, a mainstay as old as the party’s 1856 platform. However, FDR’s New Deal programs were highly appealing to many Americans going through hard times, while many in the upper strata had the luxury to think more about FDR’s growing political power as a source of peril and his policies were coming greatly out of their pockets. That the wealthy were overrepresented among those who had telephones, vehicle registrations, and country club memberships should go without saying.

Thus, wealthy people were way overrepresented in the straw poll, as they were disproportionately represented in their opposition to FDR. However, subsequent research pointed the finger at a much more important factor, the response rate to the poll. 10 million people had been sent the poll, but only 2.4 million responded! This constitutes a mere 24% response rate, which is sufficiently low to make the poll worthless. Substantially compromising the class narrative is that a majority of Americans who had telephones and vehicle registrations also supported Roosevelt (Lusinchi). Rather, it was people who were opposed to Roosevelt who had much stronger motivation to respond to the poll. This research partially debunked this traditional narrative, holding that the poor response rate to the poll was sufficient to produce the off result and that the overrepresentation was a secondary factor.

The error was so catastrophic that The Literary Digest folded in 1938. But with the demise of the magazine was the elevation of the Gallup poll. George Gallup was one of the pollsters who got 1936 right, and through his polling predicted an FDR win, albeit with 54% of the vote (PBS). Gallup had nonetheless managed to get the correct outcome by polling a representative sample of 3,000 people as opposed to The Literary Digest’s sample of 2.4 million people. This case illustrates the value of solid methodology in polling. We will not see an error of this magnitude in the polling averages of these races, and it is doubtful we will get something like 2016, which I regard as a black swan event.  

References

2016 Wisconsin: Trump vs Clinton. RealClearPolling.

Retrieved from

https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/president/general/2016/wisconsin/trump-vs-clinton

Famous Statistical Blunders in History: Literary Digest, 1936. Emory Oxford College.

Retrieved from

https://mathcenter.oxford.emory.edu/site/math117/historicalBlunders/

George Gallup and the Scientific Opinion Poll. PBS.

Retrieved from

https://www.pbs.org/fmc/segments/progseg7.htm

Landon in a Landslide: The Poll That Changed Polling. History Matters.

Retrieved from

https://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5168/

Lusinchi, D. (2016, January 4). “President” Landon and the 1936 Literary Digest. Social Science History, 36(1).

Retrieved from

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/social-science-history/article/president-landon-and-the-1936-literary-digest-poll/E360C38884D77AA8D71555E7AB6B822C

Fascinating Politics

Roger Q. Mills: Free Trade Extremist



The role of Confederates in American political life after the War of the Rebellion is truly remarkable, even if their influence could never translate to being elected to the presidency or vice presidency. One of the more prominent figures in postwar America was Roger Quarles Mills (1832-1911) of Texas.

Early Political Life

As a young man, Mills was an attorney by profession in Corsicana and identified as a Whig, which is strange when you consider his stance on trade in his time in Congress. However, the dissolution of the Whig Party due to both to their devastating 1852 presidential election loss and most finally the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854 had him move into the American (“Know Nothing”) Party, which was common for Southern Whigs. Mills was as a Texas politician a defender of slavery and shifted into the Democratic Party in the late 1850s as the Republican Party overtook the American Party as the core opposition to the Democrats. Even before the outcome of the 1860 election he was supporting secession over the issue of slavery. That year, he voted for Democrat John Cabell Breckinridge, but Breckinridge’s support was largely confined to the South. After this loss, Mills solidly supported secession, and this position was highly popular in Texas including Navarro County, which included Corsicana. 94% of the people who voted in Navarro County’s public referendum on secession were in support (Putman). With Texas’s departure from the Union, he left with it, serving as an officer in the Confederate Army, participating in numerous battles and rising to the rank of colonel.

During Reconstruction, Mills coordinated the activities of Texas’s KKK, but as a very loosely organized group, he may have had no direct hand in its violence. As historian Christopher Long (2021) notes, “Members of every social stratum belonged to the Klan, though the more respectable elite usually shied away from acts of violence”. In 1869, Grand Wizard Nathan Bedford Forrest ordered the disbanding of the Klan, but the Klan continued into the early 1870s.

Although the 1872-1873 elections were a triumph for Grant and the Republicans, this was not the case in Texas. In 1873, Republican Governor Edmund Davis was seeking reelection and in Corsicana a big barbeque dinner was held with a politically and racially mixed audience with black policemen part of the governor’s entourage he delivered a speech defending his policies and advocating for his reelection. Stepping up to retort was Mills. Researcher Wyvonne Putnam (1988) wrote on the impact of the speech, “Paying no attention to the Negro police he broke into one of those extemporaneous speeches so typical of him when roused. He lambasted Davis’ administration up one side and down the other. Especially did he denounce Davis’ use of the Negro police. The crowd was taken off its feet by his oratory, and when he sat down they cheered long and loud. The Negroes, who as a race always know a strong man when they see one, were not a whit behind the whites in the applause. So taken back was Davis by the demonstration that he did not stay to partake of the barbecue dinner, but got in his buggy and headed for Austin. Largely on the strength of this episode Mills was elected to Congress”.

As a member of Congress, Mills was a loud and proud Democrat, and embraced the label of “free trader”, a label that even many Democrats shied away from in the late 19th century. He supported inflationary currency through free coinage of silver as did many Texans of the time. However, this didn’t mean that Mills always was voting the way his constituents wanted him to. He was highly principled and was an unwavering opponent of Prohibition, a position gaining popularity in Texas in the 1880s. Mills regarded many of its proponents as hypocrites, and in 1887, he delivered a speech condemning such a proposal, “Prohibition was introduced as a fraud; it has been nursed as a fraud. It is wrapped in the livery of Heaven, but it comes to serve the devil. It comes to regulate by law our appetites and our daily lives. It comes to tear down liberty and build up fanaticism, hypocrisy, and intolerance. It comes to confiscate by legislative decree the property of many of our fellow citizens. It comes to send spies, detectives, and informers into our homes; to have us arrested and carried before courts and condemned to fines and imprisonments. It comes to dissipate the sunlight of happiness, peace, and prosperity in which we are now living and to fill our land with alienations, estrangements, and bitterness. It comes to bring us evil– only evil– and that continually. Let us rise in our might as one and overwhelm it with such indignation that we shall never hear of it again as long as grass grows and water runs” (Putnam). After the 1886 election, Mills would become the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and it was there that he proposed his most famous (or infamous by Republican standards) legislation, his tariff reduction bill known as the Mills Bill, which struck at the heart of the tariff system that the Republicans so staunchly embraced. As passed by the House, this bill removed tariffs on wool, lumber, and salt and overall reduced rates by an average of 7%. Although justified as a necessary measure to reduce the surplus in the treasury (which was a problem at the time!), Republican opponents feared that this measure would constitute the first step towards the dismantling of the tariff system altogether (Ann Arbor Register). They didn’t have to fear that measure becoming law in that Congress though, as the bill was DOA in the Republican Senate. It was quite useful to Republicans, however, as a campaign issue, and they even mentioned it in the 1888 party platform, “We denounce the Mills bill as destructive to the general business, the labor and the farming interests of the country, and we heartily indorse the consistent and patriotic action of the Republican Representatives in Congress in opposing its passage.” Mills campaigned across the country for his bill, but Cleveland narrowly lost reelection and for the first time since 1872 Republicans won united government.

Mills for Speaker of the House

Democratic control of the House had had an interruption after the 1888 election but returned with a vengeance in the 1890 midterms, and Mills threw his hat into the ring to be the next House speaker. Although initially he commanded high support and even received enough pledges to vote for him sufficient for him to win, he proved overly principled in his refusal to promise individual Democrats placement in powerful positions in exchange for their votes. Another factor was that Mills had a temper and lost it often enough to give his fellow Democrats pause. On the final ballot 15 representatives defected and he lost to Charles Crisp of Georgia. Although embittered that he didn’t get to be speaker, the resignation of Senator John H. Reagan got him elected to the Senate the following year.

Senator Mills and Retirement

As a senator, Mills largely voted the Democratic line and passionately took up the cause of Cuban independence from Spain and was an opponent of the American form of imperialism, opposing the annexation of Hawaii in 1897. However, it was an act of loyalty to President Cleveland that harmed him in Texas, when he voted for the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act in 1893, contrary to his past free coinage of silver advocacy. Indeed, Cleveland’s signing this law was considered a massive betrayal by many rank-and-file Democrats, who abandoned Cleveland in 1896 in favor of free silverite William Jennings Bryan. By 1899, a coalition had formed against him with House Minority Leader Joseph Weldon Bailey (D-Tex.) and Governor James Hogg as key actors, which resulted in him not running for another term (Putnam). His DW-Nominate score, accounting for his House and Senate career, was a -0.471.

Mills retired from politics after and only became wealthy after oil was discovered on his property, which permitted him to live his last years in comfort. Four years after his wife died, Mills passed on September 2, 1911.

References

Barr, A. (2016, July 2). Mills, Roger Quarles. Texas State Historical Association.

Retrieved from

https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/mills-roger-quarles

Bridges, K. (2022, July 17). Bridges: Political stances regularly derailed Mills’career. Amarillo Globe-News.

Retrieved from

https://www.amarillo.com/story/news/history/2022/07/17/ken-bridges-roger-mills-political-stances-regularly-derailed-career/65372077007/

Mills, Roger Quarles. Voteview.

Retrieved from

https://voteview.com/person/6531/roger-quarles-mills

Putman, W. (1988). Roger Q. Mills of Corsicana, Navarro County, Texas. The Navarro County Scroll, XXI.

Retrieved from

https://txnavarr.genealogyvillage.com/biographies/m/mills_roger_quarrls.htm

Long, C. (2021, May 28). Ku Klux Klan. Texas State Historical Association.

Retrieved from

https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/ku-klux-klan

Objections to the Mills Bill. (1888, July 26). Ann Arbor Register.

Retrieved from

https://aadl.org/node/500499

Republican Party Platform of 1888. American Presidency Project.

Retrieved from

https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/republican-party-platform-1888

Fascinating Politics

My Problem with the Politics of Purity

Although I usually cover historical subjects and often keep my opinions as an undercard at best, this post is an opinion piece that includes historical examples, and it’s about a demand for litmus tests and purity.

For the Republicans, there is a constant risk of a cry of “RINO” (Republican in Name Only) from some troll or hothead much like zombies of the silver screen cry for “brains”, done as a term of abuse that can happen when a single disagreement arises, be it on a policy or even whether Trump’s latest statement is worth a defense. For the Democrats, it comes in the form of the left-wingers not believing many Democrats are left-wing enough or having standards that places them to the left of almost everyone if not everyone in Congress, despite there being a very small overall difference between how Bernie Sanders and the Democrats as a whole vote on major issues: he has voted with the Biden Administration 91% of the time (FiveThirtyEight). But maybe that 9% matters a great deal? Well, how about a more ideological look with the votes that were counted by the liberal lobbying group Americans for Democratic Action. Looking at lifetime average scores adjusted to not count unopinionated absences, Sanders scores a 98% while Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) scores a 95%. I remember attending an event that was about getting liberal and conservative folks to talk matters out, and I remember one young liberal woman talking about how there needed to be a “litmus test” for abortion in the Democratic Party despite nearly all Democrats in Congress by that time falling on the “choice” side in votes on the issue. I internally chuckled that she didn’t know how divided Democrats really used to be on abortion. You too can know by checking out the votes on the Hyde Amendment in 1976, which are located in References.


The demand for purity can go so far as 1 dissent from conservative or liberal position out of 20 votes immediately makes you a Republican or Democrat in Name Only, which should sound ridiculous. Yet, this is how some people think about things! It’s akin to if you regard yourself as a vegetarian yet you ate a single strip of bacon in a year’s period and thus you can no longer call yourself one. Like accident counters in workplaces, a single infraction is back to day zero for you! This emphasis on purity is difficult and for most people it frankly proves unsustainable: 84% of people who adopted a vegetarian diet ate meat after a year (Schultz). Politically, I can promise you, no president in history has been what you would call 100% liberal or conservative. Although FDR is unmistakably identified with liberalism and rightly so given his New Deal policies and internationalist foreign policy, he also vetoed veterans bonus legislation in 1935 and 1936 and ultimately agreed to sign the Hatch Act into law despite reservations in 1939. Ronald Reagan is unmistakably identified with conservatism and again, rightly so given his free market and socially conservative philosophy and actions, yet supported immigration reform that included amnesty, supported foreign aid measures in 1981 and 1982, and opposed a Helms (R-N.C.) amendment to block technology imports to the USSR.

Although Donald Trump is viewed by many conservatives as a great defender of their values and positions, he has on multiple occasions embraced compromise spending packages, opposed by many conservatives, despite his view now that there should be no compromise on spending with Biden (Kapur). As Trump himself tweeted on a 2019 budget deal on August 1, 2019, “Budget Deal is phenomenal for our Great Military, our Vets, and Jobs, Jobs, Jobs! Two year deal gets us past the Election. Go for it Republicans, there is always plenty of time to CUT!” (Grisales) I also promise you that no legislator has truly been 100% conservative or liberal in their record, although there are those out there who come really close. What we must ultimately decide is what constitutes “good enough” for philosophy.

Continuing on the vegetarian metaphor, is the occasional strip of bacon ok? Is being a pescetarian ok? Or must the quest for human perfection continue unabated? Is heaven a sparse place and hell a crowded place? For some, particularly among Americans, the answer to the last question is a definite YES. Such a perspective is completely ignorant of a past that is not in truth THAT long ago in which you had real conservatives and real liberals in both parties. Today who we call liberals in the Republican and conservatives in the Democratic parties are in truth moderates, and their numbers, at least nationally, are small, with their influence being that party majorities in Congress appear to depend on them.


References

ADA Voting Records. Americans for Democratic Action.

Retrieved from

ADA Voting Records

Does Your Member of Congress Vote With Or Against Biden? (2023, January 3). FiveThirtyEight.

Retrieved from

https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/biden-congress-votes/bernard-sanders/

Grisales, C. (2019, August 1). Senate Passes 2-Year Budget Deal and Sends It To Trump. NPR.

Retrieved from

https://www.npr.org/2019/08/01/747219927/senate-passes-2-year-budget-deal-and-sends-it-to-trump

HR 14232 – Prohibiting Taxpayer-Funded Abortions [House Vote]. American Conservative Union.


Retrieved from

http://ratings.conservative.org/bills/US-1976-house-HR14232-HydeAmd

HR 14232 – Prohibiting Taxpayer-Funded Abortions [Senate Vote]. American Conservative Union.

Retrieved from

http://ratings.conservative.org/bills/US-1976-senate-HR14232-MagnusonMotion

Kapur, S. (2023, September 25). Trump breaks with McCarthy, pushing Republicans to shut down the government. NBC News.

Retrieved from

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/trump-breaks-mccarthy-republicans-government-shutdown-rcna117192

Schultz, C. (2014, December 9). Most Vegetarians Lapse After Only a Year. Smithsonian Magazine.

Retrieved from

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/most-vegetarians-lapse-after-only-year-180953565/