The Partisan Divide on Issues

[Eric the Green]

(05-19-2020, 09:07 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(05-19-2020, 12:06 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(05-18-2020, 11:59 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: The White House rarely changes possession by a Party after one term by that Party. The last two times that that happened were 1980 and 1932.  It could be that bad for Trump -- but a 270-268 defeat of Trump will be legally adequate for us to get new leadership at the apex of American power. 

1980 and 1992 you mean.

Strictly speaking, 1992 was the end of three terms of Republican Presidents in power. The elder Bush wasn't anywhere near as unlucky as Carter, let alone as counterproductive as Hoover.  It took three "Presidentiads" (Ralph Waldo Emerson coined that term) for America to tire of Reaganism. Bill Clinton fully endorsed the foreign policy of  the elder Bush; anything else would have been foolishness.

Had Hillary Clinton won the right votes in 2016 and barely gotten elected, the analogy this year would be to 1992. Of course, Hoover did not reek of corruption and Carter was beyond any doubt (and still is) a good man, American voters got impatient with both after one "Presidentiad".

That's true, 1992 was the end of three terms held by the same party, and so was 1932. Republicans held on for 3 terms in both cases until defeated by very high-scoring Democrats. So, it's a rare thing. Trump has that going for him. Democrat Grover Cleveland lost after one term for his party to Harrison from the other party in 1888, though only in the electoral college, and came back to win in 1892. Then his party lost again in 1896, in the process becoming the Party it is today. The very-high-scoring dark-horse candidate James K Polk overtook the Whigs in 1844 who had come to power in 1840. Then in 1848 Polk's Democratic Party was turned out in favor of his leading general, who signed on with the Whigs. But the Whigs could not ever hold on to the White House for more than 4 years; they lost again in 1852 and then transformed themselves into the Republicans.