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Few doubted the outcome of the election as Coolidge won an easy landslide with 382 electoral votes (one newspaper editor remarked "We already know Coolidge is going to win, so let's just cancel the election and damn the Constitution.") Davis won 136 electoral votes and no states outside the South. LaFollette won his home state and its 13 electoral votes. The popular vote percentages were 54%, 28% (a record low for a major party candidate), and 16%, respectively. Total voter turnout was also anemic, with just 48% of eligible voters, including for the first time all Native Americans, turning out on Election Day.

Within a year of Coolidge's landslide victory, the titans of the progressive era were all gone--Bob LaFollette, Eugene Debs, and William Jennings Bryan each died during 1925. Woodrow Wilson had passed away a year earlier, and Theodore Roosevelt died in 1919. Some progressives looked warmly on LaFollette's 1924 campaign as a last burst of reformism in a very reactionary decade.

>>18380872
>>18380875
>candidate named J. Davis
>carries each of the former Confederate states, no more, no less

>>18380875
>>18380872
>still voting based on Civil War sectional lines nearly 60 years after the war ended

>>18380872
This was the smallest popular vote percentage for a Democrat presidential candidate in history if you discount 1860 for effectively having two Democrat candidates running. Even James Cox got more popular votes, if less electoral votes.

Davis is surely one of the most literallywho major party candidates ever.

>>18380909
so what went wrong with this dude anyway to win all of 28% of the vote?

>>18380914
For one thing Davis was a very boring nonentity with almost no personality, he was little known outside his state, and he ran a totally inept campaign. But mostly he was a Southerner who favored segregation and minimizing the Federal government's power and simply had no appeal to Northern progressives or urban ethnics.

Coolidge also ran a good campaign that exploited the lack of appeal Davis and La Follette had outside their own sections of the country and made a point of how voting for one of them over the Republican ticket might cause an electoral college deadlock that forced the election into the House of Representatives, which might end up choosing one of the two, or even worse cause Davis's running mate Charles Bryan (William Jennings's little brother for those who don't know) to become president with no votes. As a result, many voters were afraid of the potential political crisis if they didn't vote for Coolidge. He was also effective at using the new medium of radio and had Herbert Hoover, then an extremely popular figure, to campaign for him.

Aside from that, Coolidge had strong approval ratings, had cleaned out the corruption of Harding's administration, cut taxes, and most people weren't eager to have three presidents in as many years. The Democrats really didn't have much to use against him.

The Democrat Party was also suffering from the disaster of Wilson's second term; many of their core voting blocs were still pissed at the late former president and either stayed home on Election Day or voted for Coolidge instead. The party was also in chaos with no leadership or a real platform to run on. La Follette also siphoned off a lot of Davis's votes, especially in the West.

tl;dr is boring as shit candidate nobody's heard of and who only got picked as a compromise candidate after more than two weeks of floor fighting at the DNC running against an incumbent who is popular and working to clean up the shitfest the previous Democrat administration caused, who is adept at using radio to promote his campaign, and on top of that a third party candidate grabbing a substantial chunk of Democrat votes

>>18380933
>But mostly he was a Southerner who favored segregation and
Davis actually was not a Dixiecrat; as Wilson's Solicitor General he had argued against grandfather clauses in United States v. Guinn and ruled that Alabama's convict labor program violated the 13th Amendment. During the campaign he also opposed the KKK and it appears that this cost him a degree of Southern votes; the Black Belt of Alabama and Georgia had noticeable Republican shifts.

>>18380872
Most of the Democrat base outside the South voted for La Follette. The only states in the Northeast/Midwest that Davis did ok in were Indiana (if winning 38% of the vote can be considered a decent performance) and Missouri where he got 43%. Interestingly, he carried the black vote in Indiana because the state Republican Party was affiliated with the KKK.

Coolidge was running as an isolationist conservative candidate and didn't claim otherwise.

The real funny thing is that Davis pretended to be a progressive to get back urban voters and it failed miserably.

>>18380872
Hey, I remember this thread from years before.
https://desuarchive.org/his/search/text/Warren%20Harding%20died%20unexpectedly%20in%20August%201923%20while%20on%20a%20vacation%20cruise%20along%20the%20West%20Coast%20/
Are you reposting, anon?

>>18380872
>California has 13 EVs
>same as Iowa

>>18380872
Coolidge was only the second man after Teddy to assume the office of the presidency via the president's death and then win election in his own right
>>18380872
>>18379215
>>18379298
IDK why you keep calling him the mayor of boston. Coolidge was never the mayor of boston, he was the governor of Massachusetts

>>18380970
In fact the electoral vote map in this election was quite off because they'd neglected to reapportion Congressional seats after the 1920 census so they were still using a map based off the 1910 census. The electoral vote map/Congressional apportionments were thus exactly the same in every presidential election from 1912-28 despite inevitable population shifts in that time. After that they fixed the number of Congressional seats in 1929.

>>18380872
the 1952 election was a greater landslide than this one

>>18380896
>>18380885
outside of landslide elections it's literally just civil war lines until W Bush. the only thing that changes is the sides occasionally flip when something like segregation comes up with goldwater, but then they go back, like carter won the confederate states

>>18380914
per-capita income went up by 30% while Coolidge was president. segregation and the economy are always the 2 biggest political issues in any given election

>>18380980
The Democrats had an even worse electoral college loss in 52.

>>18380965
not op, but who cares? it's on topic and isn't retarded haplo group or religion spam
>>18380970
California went from 2 million in 1910 to 10 million in 1950 to 20 million in 1970

>>18380872
>only one generation from Robert La Follette to Wisconsin electing Joe McCarthy to the Senate

>>18380951
>During the campaign he also opposed the KKK
If only he knew the future...

>>18380872
who invited Oklahoma to the party?

>>18380994
OK has always been a Southern-aligned state. In fact so is a lot of the PNW which is why it is a white supremacist hotbed as after the Civil War many Southerners migrated to the booming mining jobs in the region. Idaho probably has the most openly racist population of any state in the modern age.

>>18380997
So basically party allegiance flipped, but at the same time Republicans retained midwest along with the flip.

>>18380997
>>18380994
the PNW thing is what the show firefly was about. it was a space cowboy show but it's based on how a bunch of confederates went out west after the civil war
>>18380992
Wisconsin is weird because all the commies live in one of 2 cities

>>18380951
Coolidge for contrast refused to denounce the KKK because he hoped to get some Southern votes and as was mentioned, the Republican Party in Indiana was a wholly owned KKK subsidiary.

>>18380997
There was the one Mormon sect out there that officially did not accept blacks as church members until the '70s when the church leadership had a "vision" from the heavens to integrate, that coincided with threats to remove their tax exempt status if they didn't.

>>18380997
the PNW region strangely had a black population that was relatively prosperous before all the ex-Confederates migrated there

>>18381000
>So basically party allegiance flipped
not really, carter still won all the confederate state in 1976. most of those states don't flip and stay flipped until reagan but it's hard to say because 1992 is the first election that isn't a landslide after 1976.

>>18381012
There was still a reasonably large Democrat presence in state and local offices in the South until the Obama years. The shift to the Republican Party happened at the national level before it did state level elected offices. As late as the 90s, there were still Southerners, albeit mostly over-50s by that point, who would rage against liberals, commies, hippies, and whatnot while still voting Democrat down the board.

>>18380872
The two parties at that time were a lot more ideologically diverse than today. It is hard to explain how Theodore Bilbo, one of the most notorious Dixiecrats of all time, was also a huge FDR dickrider and supporter of welfare state policies (albeit only for whites).

>>18381021
It's accurate to say that party allegience then was more about ethnic background/religious affiliation and sectionalism than ideology.

>>18381015
kek, grand exalted cyclops Robert Byrd was a democratic senator and president protemp of the senate under obongo in 2010. he had already been a congressman and senator for like 14 years when the feds banned multimember congressional districts in 1967

>>18380872
This was the last presidential election where the Republican candidate carried New York City.

>>18381021
the party thing was more based on region and race than anything else at the time. there are multiple eras post reconstruction but before current year where the 2 parties ran presidential candidates with super similar policies and like manchine was a dem until recently. the parties got a lot more polarized only after obongo got elected

>>18380872
Pennsylvania, New York, and Illinois are the three states that have lost the most electoral votes since this election. California, Texas, and Florida are the three that have gained the most.

>>18381033
if you compare for example 1960, Nixon and Kennedy really weren't that different in most metrics. they were both centrists trying to prove they were tougher on commies than the other guy. Kennedy shied away from civil rights though since he was still afraid to upset the South.

>>18380872
The Democrat coalition in this time was mostly Southern whites and Northern big city ethnics. Republicans were generally Northern WASPs and blacks and both parties had liberal and conservative factions. This tended to keep presidential candidates on the moderate side to have as much broad based appeal as possible.

to be fair, politics in those days were probably more corrupt and shady than today since elected officials were not as accessible or accountable to the voter base, you couldn't go on Twitter and rant about the Teapot Dome Scandal in 1923.

>>18381005
It should be stated that Coolidge for the standards of his day was quite racially tolerant. He granted Indians citizenship and although he didn't attack the KKK during the '24 election, he also offered them nothing afterward and did not appoint any KKK members to any public office. The rate of lynchings also markedly dropped over the decade.

>>18381057
>>18381048
they also didn't have binding primaries until the 1970s. up until 1968 the parties just picked their own candidates with pretty much zero input from the voters

>>18380992
Except that "progressive" in 1924 meant "white and not Italian."

>>18381057
The liberal wing of the Republican Party was pretty weak in the 1920s. They generally agreed to give up progressive policies at the Federal level in exchange for an isolationist foreign policy they mostly supported. But the Republicans had marketed themselves as the conservative party since McKinley and especially since Wilson.

>>18381100
Further as was mentioned before, the KKK controlled some Republicans especially in Indiana and Coolidge refused to condemn the KKK when that led to a Democrat convention floor fight. His running mate Charles Dawes also flip-flopped on the Klan issue. It's safe to say the party in 1924 was conservative and some parts were really conservative. The weakened progressive wing voted for La Follette, although a few remained with Coolidge so as to not split the vote.

>>18380997
The South and the PNW are racist in different ways. Bubba wants to being slavery back but cheers on Ja'Marcus in football. PNW wants TND

>A dour, prim Vermonter, Calvin Coolidge was the personification of Yankee WASP morality and frugality. When informed of Harding's death, he was visiting his father's farm on summer vacation and the elder Coolidge, a justice of the peace, administered the oath of office by candlelight in his barn.

>Coolidge was a notably tight-lipped man, hard to get to crack a smile or tell a joke; some said his mood was permanently darkened by the tragic death of his 24 year old son John in July 1924. John Coolidge accidentally struck and cut open his left big toe with a golf club while playing a round of golf; the wound became infected and killed him.

>He famously said "The business of the American people is business" and this declaration of standpatterism was taken to heart by Big Business, which celebrated record prosperity--some worrying signs such as the farm belt states buckling under ever-decreasing crop prices went unnoticed. Coolidge also seemed to have acclimatized himself to the relaxed moral standards of the era; he removed Harding's crooked friends from office, but did not strain himself to prosecute them for their misdeeds.

>>18380997
it's funny how Carole King has lived in Idaho since the 70s and loves the place despite being a Brooklyn Jew who made her name writing tunes for black singers.

>Motorized tractors made farming more efficient than ever before. At the same time, the boom years of World War I had ended and so did artificially high crop prices. The war had also caused farmers to open new tracts of land, especially in the Upper Midwest, all of which contributed to falling prices. One in four family farms defaulted on their mortages over the decade--a rueful folk tune went "No use talkin' any man's beat/With 'leven cent cotton and forty cent meat."

>Various proposals to aid farmers were made over the decade. A bipartisan push in Congress in 1921 brought about several useful changes; the Capper-Volstead Act exempted farmers' combines from antitrust laws. The McNary-Haugen Bill would have authorized the government to purchase surplus crops and sell them abroad; losses to the government were to be made up with a special tax on farmers. But Coolidge, adverse to the government subsidizing agriculture or meddling in the free market, twice vetoed the bill

>Isolationism dominated US foreign policy in the '20s with the exception of Latin America. US troops sent to occupy the Dominican Republic in 1916 were finally removed in 1924. Another occupying force dispatched to Haiti in 1914 stayed there 20 years. The US had occupied Nicaragua on and off since 1909; Coolidge removed those troops in 1925, but sent them back the following year, where they remained until 1933.

>The left-wing Mexican government began making moves towards nationalizing that country's oil assets in 1926; outraged American petroleum producers called on the president to intervene militarily. Coolidge instead worked out a diplomatic solution with Mexico.

>>18381184
there are still tankies smoldering over US interventions in Latin America, like, 100 years ago

>>18381184
>>18381194
were all of the WWI conscripts discharged by then? intervention and occupation of latinx America is based as long as Americans were not enslaved and forced to do it

>>18380872
>Coolidge was not hugely popular with the conservative wing of the Republican Party due to his relatively progressive record as Boston mayor,
Coolidge was never mayor of Boston.

Coolidge was a Massachusetts state rep, the mayor of Northhampton, the president of the Massachusetts senate, and then the vice governor of the same state before he became governor in 1918.
He did have a relatively progressive record. Though his private statements aired more conservative. He talked about how many reformers and so-called progressives were essentially snake oil salesmen who pretended like legislation could fix all of the world's problems and ignored the value of hard work.

The bigger thing that made party leaders unenthusiastic wasn't Coolidge's progressive streak, but rather him being both not a Washington insider and fully incorruptible.
Coolidge's super shy and stoic personality also won him no friends. Albeit his wife was very popular, having almost the exact opposite personality.

>>18381286
that goes back aways. they were angered at Rutherford Hayes for same reason, not a smoke-filled room good ol' boy and he was also an uptight moralfag much like Coolidge without even a fun-loving wife to balance him out.

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1924 was perhaps the only election where, it seems, neither major candidate wanted to win.
Calvin Coolidge inherited the presidency with enthusiasm and stars in his eyes (or as many stars as his reserved, introverted personality would allow) but a horrific tragedy would strike his family when a blister his son, Calvin Jr, had gotten playing tennis on the white house lawn got infected and took his life.
To quote Coolidge in his autobiography "When he went, the power and the glory of the presidency went with him."

When his son was dying Coolidge ceased to be an active president. He went on early morning walks and long naps. One day he went and personally captured a rabbit from the white house lawn and gave it to his dying son, who always loved animals.
Coolidge wrote to his father, John Coolidge, during the election and said that he hoped that this (1924) would be the last time he would ever run for public office

Later in his presidency a young child, in the wee hours of the morning, came up to the Whitehouse with his face squished between the iron bars of the fence. A guard found him and asked what he was doing up so late.
The young boy replied
>I hear the president likes to take walks in the early morning, I was hoping I could see him.
>I wanted to tell him how I sorry I was that he lost his boy
Hearing this, the guard brought the boy in to see the president. The kid was too awe-struck to say anything, so the guard reiterated his message. Coolidge struggled to hide his emotions. He told the guard that, if any other child wanted to see him, to bring them in immediately and not make them wait.

>>18380958
Coolidge never viewed himself as an isolationist.
He had a decent track record of foreign policy engagements, usually trying to protect peace.
He expanded trade and ties to the outside world, even sacrificed some American business interests to secure peaceful relations with Mexico.
He was certainly more isolationist than people like TR or Wilson, but the whole country was in agreement at the time that the era of either idealism or imperialism had passed.

It's also questionable just how conservative he really was. He had helped out unions get their demands from big business in strikes and was the least racist president of the early 20th century. Actively speaking about the equality of blacks and natives.

>>18381005
Yes Coolidge didn't explicitly denounce the KKK, but Coolidge also didn't campaign. He never talked about the actual issues of the election at all.
Moreover, even the Progressive party didn't denounce the KKK.
The early 20th century was the most racist period of American history since the Civil War. Coolidge stood out, in his speeches, as actually one of the most pro equality people of the day.

He spoke to mostly black graduating classes, talked about the sacrifice of black veterans, and was the first president to give large grants to historically black colleges

>The Allies were also demanding war indemnities to the tune of $32 billion from Germany, which they hoped to use to pay their own debts to the US. The French occupied the Ruhr Valley in 1923 and Berlin responded by catastrophic inflation of the Reichsmark that caused prices to rise over 1000% in a matter of months. Some statesmen called on Washington to forget about the war debts, but Coolidge wouldn't budge. "They hired the money, didn't they?" was his typically terse reply.

>The Dawes Plan was then an attempt to resolve the debt issue by having American bankers loan Germany money which they would use to pay the Allies reparations in a bizarre merry-go-round that ended with the stock market crash five years later. President Hoover declared a one year debt moratorium in 1931 and all the European states defaulted and ceased paying back their debts outside Finland, which finally paid back the last money she owed to the United States in 1976.

>The US was left holding the bag at the expense of hurt feelings. American tourists in Paris were harrassed by angry French superpatriots and Uncle Sam was ridiculed across Europe as Uncle Shylock, trying to extract the last pound of flesh with his knife.

>>18381071
He was "Silent Cal" for a reason, sure he didn't talk about the Klan, but he also never talked about any other political issue.
Outside of talk of lowering taxes, and philosophical tangents about the American spirit and hardwork, no one could get an answer out of the man.

He did speak out often in favor of racial tolerance and equality.
He didn't do anything to actively help them, but yeah Coolidge didn't like doing things.

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>>18381143
>He famously said "The business of the American people is business"
This is a bit of a misquote. The context of the sentence refers to how newspapers need to be businesses to survive, and how - in Coolidge's view - this was appropiate.
Coolidge would also give plenty of speeches about the need for America to focus on the spiritual and immaterial and to avoid consumerism.
>>18381184
The Mexican situation may have been Coolidge's biggest accomplishment (even if all of the honor should go to Calvin's college buddies he put in charge of the gov't)
People were genuinely talking about going to war with Mexico to protect the 1.4 billion dollars of American investments in Mexico (worth 263 bil today)

But instead Coolidge and his men decided that stability was infinitely more important and came to an appropriate compromise which preserved American-Mexican relations

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>>18381289
The dissatisfaction must have been extra since Coolidge was the first VP in ages who wasn't a plant by the inner party bigwigs.
At the 1920 convention the delegates were so annoyed by having Harding forced down their throats that, instead of picking senator Lenwood - the party's favored Veep, they picked Coolidge because he was an incorruptible outsider.

So by summer of 1923 the GOP had to deal with a man they were planning on dropping from the ticket in '24 being the new president.

>>18380992
Wisconsin is at once filled with extreme voters yet closely divided to this day. Look at who their Senators are

>>18381294
the president had way less to do in 1924. we weren't at war. congress still legislated and like half of the federal departments didn't exist yet
in 1928 they had the departments of
>state
>treasury
>interior
>agriculture
>justice
>commerce
>labor
>war
>navy
>post office
and the marshals, but I think the marshals were under the district courts and the president just appointed them

>>18381289
>they were angered at Rutherford Hayes for same reason, not a smoke-filled room good ol' boy and
Chester Arthur was until he became president and then decided he wasn't. If he wasn't at death's door by 1884 the party bosses were never going to renominate him.

>>18381311
>Some statesmen called on Washington to forget about the war debts, but Coolidge wouldn't budge. "They hired the money, didn't they?" was his typically terse reply.
based

>>18381328
The FBI was just beginning, they moved from a desk outfit to an actual enforcing body in 1927 but were still mostly just there to enforce Prohibition.

>>18381289
>>18381329
garfield was anti corruption

>>18381328
>congress still legislated
Actually back then every item was an individual bill instead of making one giant super bill with 500 provisions in it nobody has read.

>>18381328
>justice

Also had less to do since Federal laws were not as extensive back then, they only mushroomed during the following decade.

>>18381334
they do the gay 500 page omnibus bullshit because they want to fill the bills with pork and not get caught filling the bills with pork

>>18381328
Coolidge was also very much a delegator. He said so in his biography
(I'm paraphrasing but this is in there)
>If there's trouble in Europe, Dawes can handle it
>If there is an issue in Nicaragua, general (forgot his name) can take care of it
>If there is a crisis in Mexico, Morrow is more than able

Coolidge was already a believer in state power and a constitutionally limited executive branch, but he became even moreso withdrawn after his son died. Which really seems to have taken the joy of the job out of hm.

>>18381345
that's how the presidency/federal government should function by Teddy, Wilson, FDR and every faggot from El BJ onwards expanded the federal government and the presidency

Actually there was also the issue of the government mostly shutting down every summer when Washington D.C. was miserably hot and sweaty. It was not possible to function year-round until air conditioning arrived in the 50s.

>>18381338
>Also had less to do since Federal laws were not as extensive back then
Federal crimes were also handled by state prosecutors back then; Federal prosecutors just served an advisory role.

Everyone wanted to go back to 19th century government just then. TR and Wilson were both dead by 1925 and unmourned by many; their reputations remained extremely low until after WW2.

>>18381311
>>The Dawes Plan was then an attempt to resolve the debt issue by having American bankers loan Germany money which they would use to pay the Allies reparations in a bizarre merry-go-round that ended with the stock market crash five years later.
If that's the case, was this just to dupe the general public? Because that would essentially mean that Germany (and France, UK?) defaulted on those debts already. Or am I missing something?

>>18381533
Or was that paid on top what they got from "Germany"?

>>18381533
>>18381543
it was a hebrew scam
>we give germany money
>germany pays off france and bongland and then services the loans we gave them with intrest
>france and bongland get their stuff done so germany would only owe the US debt
and here's the hebrew part
>half of the debt was to the US government half was to wallstreet

>>18381311
>america has to give us free money everytime we destroy our own continent for fun
do yuros really?