As the Reagan era was coming to a close, the nation was doing well for the most part with a strong economy and the Cold War was reaching its terminal phase. The Iran-Contra Scandal did not prove to be a major dent in the president's popularity, which remained high.Vice President George H.W. Bush was the Republican front runner early on and had most of the party's money and machinery behind him, but he faced challenges from Bob Dole and several other candidates. After Dole jumped out to a surprise early lead in the primaries, the Bush campaign ran a series of attack ads accusing him of plotting to raise taxes on the middle class, which the Kansas Senator did not try to counter. Bush's lead was insurmountable by Super Tuesday.The Democrats, having failed with Walter Mondale, a traditional New Dealer, hoped to find a fresh approach in 1988 with a new, hip candidate who would appeal to yuppie voters. Iran-Contra and the Democrat takeover of the Senate in the last midterms brought increased confidence to party leaders. New York governor Mario Cuomo declined offers to run, leaving Colorado Senator Gary Hart as the leading candidate. However, Hart was plagued by rumors of infidelity and various mistresses. He denied them, but soon evidence of his relationship with Donna Rice, who would later on become head of a lobbying firm. Hart's approval ratings plummeted and he abandoned the race on May 8, 1987.
Delaware Senator Joe Biden also announced his presidential bid but dropped out September 19, 1987 after it was disclosed that he'd plagiarized portions of a speech made by Neil Kinnock, the leader of Britain's Labour Party (it turned out later that Michael Dukakis's staffers leaked this information). Also contesting the race were Iowa Congressman Dick Gephardt, Tennessee Senator Al Gore, civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, and Texas Senator Lloyd Benson.Michael Dukakis, the governor of Massachusetts, quickly overpowered his rivals in the primaries and Jesse Jackson, the last challenger standing, withdrew after the Pennsylvania primary. At the DNC in Atlanta, Arkansas governor Bill Clinton, who'd also considered running in 1988, delivered the keynote speech. Texas treasurer and future governor Ann Richards accused the Massachusetts-born George Bush of being a carpetbagger and not a true son of the Lone Star State. Jesse Jackson felt that he should be chosen as Dukakis's running mate as the second-place finisher in the primaries, but Dukakis instead picked Lloyd Benson.Bush was nominated unopposed at the RNC in New Orleans; he chose the relatively unknown Indiana Senator Dan Quayle as his running mate.The Republican campaign ran a series of attack ads depicting Dukakis as a dangerous liberal who would compromise America's national defense and pursue soft on crime policies. A bit of inter-school rivalry was also fought when Yale alumnus Bush claimed Dukakis's alma matter Harvard was a breeding ground of liberal ideologies. Columnist Russell Baker sarcastically remarked that the average voter was not versed in the finer distinctions of Ivy League schools and they all seemed to be the same identical brand of elite "daddy's money" institutions.
Republican attack ads also mocked Dukakis's stance on environmental issues by pointing out that Boston Harbor was strewn with discarded waste. Most damaging, they pointed out that he had issued a furlough to Willie Horton, a convicted African-American rapist, who had raped another person while out on furlough. Dukakis was apparently taken by surprise and could not offer any refutation to these charges. Trying to show he was not soft on national defense, Dukakis committed a further fiasco by posing in an M1 Abrams tank while wearing a helmet. The goofy-looking photo was used in a Republican ad with a list of military-related bills he'd vetoed as governor.Dan Quayle was also a source of some trouble due to his relative youth (40) and political inexperience, which made him prone to gaffes. While debating Lloyd Benson in the vice presidential debate on October 13, Quayle remarked "Yes, I'm young but so was John F. Kennedy when he ran for president." Benson replied "Senator, I knew Jack Kennedy. I worked for Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was my friend. You, Senator, are no Jack Kennedy."In the presidential debates, the first one between Dukakis and Bush was seen as a deadlock without a clear winner. In the second debate, Dukakis delived an underwhelming performance. Reporter Bernard Shaw then asked him "Governor, if your wife were raped and murdered by an escaped convict, would you still oppose the death penalty?" Taken aback, Dukakis took a few moments to say "No" before launching into a statistical discussion of the ineffectiveness of capital punishment. The clinical reply he gave harmed his poll numbers.
Dukakis became re-invigorated in the last two weeks before the campaign, and answered Republican uses of the L-word by declaring "Yes, I am a liberal in the mold of JFK and a proud one!" But this comeback proved too little too late. Bush won election as the 41st president in an easy electoral landslide on November 8 with 53% of the popular vote and 426 electoral votes.Dukakis won only ten states, but the Democrats' prospects seemed less dim this time around. Democrat control of the House and Senate remained unshaken, Dukakis's share of the popular vote was much bigger than Carter or Mondale's had been, and he gained electoral strength in the Midwest due to depressed economic conditions there--Iowa and Wisconsin flipped blue, the former would vote Democrat in 5 of the next 6 presidential elections, and Wisconsin would not be carried by a Republican again until 2016. In addition, Pennsylvania would not vote Republican again in a presidential election until 2016. This was also the most recent election as of 2024 where the Republican presidential candidate carried California, Illinois, Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut, Vermont, and Maine.Voter surveys showed that Bush dominated all age groups, both genders, and all income brackets aside from people making less than $12,500 a year. Dukakis's support was strongest from lower income voters, blacks, Hispanics, and union workers.
the whole Massachusetts+Texas ticket idea was absolutely cringe
>>18407407Dukakis was going to lose either way, but this classic blunder put the nail into his campaign coffin https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2013/11/dukakis-and-the-tank-099119/
>Make the wrong choice on Election Day and le scary rapist black man will come for your grandmastay classy, Republicans
I think the Democrats found the one guy who was a worse retail politician than GHWB. Despite his age I think Benson would have made the better candidate at the top of the ticket.
>>18407418Then there was Gary Hart. Accused of fooling around (every democrat of that era wanted to be JKF), Hart not only denied it, he said something along the lines of:> heck, you could follow me around 24 hours a day and see I'm not fooling around.Well, one reporter decided to do that; and within hours caught him with one of his girlfriends. Snapping a famous picture, it was made worse by the fact that he was conducting his affair on a boat called the "Monkey Business"https://www.americanheritage.com/content/30-years-ago-gary-harts-monkey-business-and-how-candidate-got-caught
>>18407411i'm German, so an outside observer looking in, but Bush was the last man the Republican party ran that i would have voted for
>>18407409Bush always faced the problem of looking like a geek. Yes he was a WW2 hero but he didn't really convey that well. At one point he was significantly behind Dukakis in the polls and had to resort to cheap negative campaigning to climb ahead. Nonetheless I think the Bush ticket would have won anyway as the GOP was still popular in 88, the economy was strong, and the Cold War was coming to a close.
Dukakis once asked Walter Mondale when the humiliation of defeat goes away. He said "I'll let you know when it stops."
>>18407411Dukakis was just...lame, a boring neoliberal technocrat with no real platform. Also this election was another one where the electoral vote hides the fact that the popular vote was fairly close.
>>18407431He couldn't match Reagan's stature, definitely and his campaign wasn't that exciting (neither was his opponent's though)
i liked Bush but he wasn't actually that dissimilar to Dukakis, neither had really different platforms and it was kind of funny for him to attack Dukakis as an elite New England liberal, as if he wasn't one himself. Despite the death penalty debate, I think people who voted for the Libertarian party was more opposed to Dukakis than Bush, and vice versa the Dukakis voters were more concerned with the end of entitlement programs than a continuation of Reagan policies as there were a lot of Reagan Democrats that needed to be appealed to.
>>18407431The best way to describe George HW Bush would be (in my opinion)... "reliable"In the world (the political world, business world, social world), you have the flashy players; the people who have big ideas and big dreams; the kind of people who inspire great confidence but who lack the basic skills to get the job done.Then you have the boring people, the ones who don't get any attention, but still keep the operation running. The people, in other words, who keep the world running well enough for the dreamers to enchant everyone with their big dreams.GHW Bush was reliable. He was a capable executive, better than average in terms of smarts and personal courage; who was raised not to take credit; and who did his job every day, because someone has to do the real work.
>>18407447Also, the documentary "41" about him is excellenthttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bUM6jgRUUA
>>18407407Every candidate from both parties in 88 was a bunch of circus clowns.>Biden quitting over a plagiarism snafu>Gore trying a Southern strategy that didn't really work>Gephardt thinking he was a lock to win the presidency for one week because he won the Iowa caucus>total shitshow that only required Dukakis to be just smart enough to win the nomination>the Republican campaign was not any better>Bush was basically the anointed candidate and Dole wanted to grind him down as hard as he could while Pat Robertson somehow won four primaries>also Jack Kemp ran on the fact that he was Jack Kemp>Dukakis also completely fucked up what might have been a winnable election>all he had to do was prove he was not the dangerous Liberal with a capital L the Atwater machine made him out to be>he also had a buttfuck retarded campaign team that did everything it could to undermine him>Donna Brazile (yes the Donna Brazile) got fired for spreading a rumor that Bush was an adulterer>they twisted themselves into knots trying to make him look centrist>the death penalty question was one where they convinced him he had to be anti-death penalty and pro-choice come what may>he wasn't all that, but his team was so retarded that in practice Bush had already won the election after the first debate
cont>the difference between 88 and 92 wasn't all the economy, it was that Clinton looked human and personable in a way that Dukakis completely failed at>it was like Grover Cleveland admitting he had an illegitimate kid and people were ok with his honesty over it
>>18407418i remember Mo Rocca saying "Dukakis should have had the straps on his helmet open, 'cause it looks so much cooler that way."
>>18407578With the helmet looking so large on his head, it didn't help that the movie "Spaceballs" had come out a year earlier. I don't recall anyone making the direct connection, but I bet there was certainly something subconscious going on
>>18407407This was the last election with an overwhelming electoral landslide, 2008 was fairly big but not near 1988.
also it was the last election where working class white men were the largest voting bloc
Last election where a candidate reached as high as 426 electoral votes, won as many as 40 states, or got as high as 53% of the popular vote, and the last time where the same party retained control of the White House for longer than two elections.
>>18407409lol at how they used a black guy to give Dukakis that question so he was immune from any criticism by Democrats
>>18407411Those racist dog whistle Willie Horton ads. Easily one of the lowest points in any election in the modern era.
The county level map shows Dukakis's strength was highest in the Upper Midwest. This may not be surprising as the region was depressed economically and not sharing in the overall prosperous economy at the time.
>>18407436He was too moderate for the left wing of the party but his stances on crime made it easy for the Bush campaign to attack him as a dangerous liberal. Also like Thomas Dewey in '48 he seemed too gunshy and unwilling to fight dirty.
>>18407610Dukakis totally did the same blunder as Dewey by thinking the election was in the bag so he wasn't even campaigning and spent a lot of the election back in Massachusetts attending to his gubernatorial duties. In truth had he won he'd probably be a one term president assuming the early 90s recession happened like it did OTL.
One of the Bush family's greatest hat tricks was convincing everyone they were Texans when they're old line New England WASPs and HW just opportunistically settled in Texas after coming home from WW2.
>>18407620>One of the Bush family's greatest hat tricks was convincing everyone they were Texans when they're old line New England WASPs and HW just opportunistically settled in Texas after coming home from WW2.Dubya lived in Texas since he was 2 years old, calling him a New Englander is an asspull.
>>18407411Dukakis's campaign ads seemed to act like he was running against Reagan rather than Bush. He once said "Bush administration" in a speech in '87.
>>18407409Most people assumed Dukakis would lose since the second debate and thought Bush would win in a 44 state landslide ala 1980. They were surprised that he did a little better than expected.
>>18407628the thing is Bush clearly established himself as his own person during the RNC and debates
>>18407407>The Iran-Contra Scandal did not prove to be a major dent in the president's popularity, which remained high.the average voter never cared about Iran-Contra as much as NPR did
what happened in 88 is that Democrats struggled to find anyone willing to run, the sticking point being not actual policies but the primary system since many candidates did not want to do the caucus system, and Dukakis finally agreed to
Lee Atwater was one of the most evil human beings in American politics in the last 40 years.
>>18407408I was 20 and in the Army back in '88. Everyone in my unit voted for Bush, even my black drill sergeant, and Dukakis was considered as much of a lolcow as Mondale had been four years ago. Nobody took him seriously.
>>18407607the economy in the upper Midwest was depressed at this time, Wisconsin also suffered from deindustrialization and Democrats during the 80s made a big push for the farmer vote wiith Farm Aid and other gimmicks.
>>18407607Iowa is a funny case because the state had always been extremely Republican since the beginning of the GOP in the 1850s. They didn't even desert the party during the 1890s like a lot of the farm belt states and aside from a brief detour voting for FDR during the Depression like everyone did the state went back to voting Republican in ten of the twelve presidential elections from 1940 to '84. The 70s-early 80s economy afflicted the farm belt quite badly and Democrats heavily made a push for Iowans' votes. The state was able to remain in the Democrat column mostly off inertia until 2016.
>>18407421>>18407598>>18407639Shouldn't have let a murderer out on the street you pro-crime cucklord
>>18407656Dubya won Iowa in 2004
>>18407636too bad really because Reagan belonged in a prison jumpsuit for that
>>18407656the eastern half of the state was more Democrat-leaning overall because it had the Des Moines metro in it. but by the time you get to the 2000 election Democrats had really stopped appealing to anyone but rich effete West Coasters.
>>18407656The state did vote for Wilson in 1912, otherwise mostly correct.
>>18407409>Governor, if your wife were raped and murdered by an escaped convict, would you still oppose the death penalty?https://youtu.be/Xm6GiHomqG4?si=SOmvSgpon6p7LKmZ
>>18407657This. What kind of a dumb-ass gives weekend passes to convicted murderers? >>18407661SNL did a pretty funny skit on the Iran-Contra scandal:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5wfPlgKFh8
>>18407656To break it down,>Iowa was a frontier state in its very early years and voted Democrat in the first two presidential elections it was in>the Republican Party quickly establishes themselves in the Midwest during the 1850s and the state is a reliable Republican bastion for decades, deserting the party only for Wilson in 1912 because his populistic message was appealing>after that the state goes back to voting Republican in the next four elections>the Depression comes, Iowa votes for FDR like most of the country>in 1940 the farm belt states go back to being Republican because they have a beef with the Agricultural Adjustment Act>in 1948 Iowa votes for Truman because he made a big push in the Midwest and was folksy and relatable to those voters>in the 50s the state votes for Eisenhower like most of the country did>in 1960 they aren't going to vote for a Catholic>in '64 the state votes for LBJ like the rest of the country did>in 1968 the Democrats implode and the Midwest mostly goes for Nixon>McGovern did reasonably well in '72 because it's his home region>In '76 Ford holds onto Iowa but by a quite thin margin>in 1980 the state votes for Reagan because nobody likes Carter of course, but especially his grain embargo on the USSR>in '84 as the early 80s economic crisis takes its toll the state remains still Republican but only thinly and Mondale performed rather well, not in the least because Iowa was in his home region>in '88 yeah...Dukakis carries the place handily despite being a Greek guy from New England who probably never saw a cow in his life and it will remain Democrat in 6 of the next 7 presidential elections
>>18407578His campaign was doomed from the start no matter how it was run. He was a Northeast Liberal trying to run for president in 88. Anybody who has a memory of the 80s, and a little self honesty, could probably see how that was going to work out. Even the Democrats saw it for themselves, and shifted to Bill Clinton in their next election.
>>18407607as cf. with Wisconsin though that was more of a manufacturing state than Iowa
>>18407689The state didn't desert the GOP during the 1890s depression either, though.
>>18407693Not at all. William Jennings Bryan and other progressive Democrats did fuck-all in Wisconsin. Politics back then was more aligned along religious and racial lines than today. German Catholics employed in industrial jobs were Democrats while German Protestant and Scandinavian farmers were Republicans.
>>18407689Wisconsin voted Democrat in 7 consecutive presidential elections starting in 1988, however in a lot of cases it was extremely close and state politics were quite competitive with the two parties evenly matched.
>>18407689It was the corner center of the Progressive movement in the early 20th century and led the way in regulating railroads and labor rights. It has only become a swing state as the working class is now more of a swing voting bloc.
>>18407705Nixon appealed to the working class and to what he called the “silent majority.” He put in OSHA and knew that the average worker didn’t like the counterculture movement.
>>18407607Population density: A reality Republicans just can't grasp. This is why the electoral college needs to be reformed or abolished. Split the electoral votes by percentages the candidates won or do away with it.
>>18407407Oregon and Washington got completely overrun and colonized by Marin County refugees since the 80s.
>>18407711You know that the number of electors is just the number congressmen (senators+reps), right? If you want to actually fix it, remove the cap on how many reps can sit in the house. At the same time, make every state like Nebraska and Maine and get rid of DC's fake electors
>>18407711You just want go from one extreme to the other. Raw popular vote is not the solution.
this would have been a hard election for any Democrat to win, the GOP was still operating from a position of strength in 88 and Dukakis was a boring guy who really didn't stand for anything
>>18407587Bush's popular vote margin was 7.7%, only 0.5% higher than Obama's, but Bush won 40 of the 50 states+DC while Obama only won 29. Polarization is a bitch.
>>18407722Unwinnable, maybe a hard word but Jimmy Carter won in 76 despite himself. That said, the situation for the Democrats was still not that good in 88. They had lacked leadership at the national level for 20 years. They won in 92 with Clinton when the party solidified their base in the West Coast and Northeast.
This election cycle probably had the most egregiously inaccurate pre-convention polling.
>>18407411>This was also the most recent election as of 2024 where the Republican presidential candidate carried CaliforniaCalifornia was kept in the Republican column during the Cold War because the state had a lot of defense/aerospace jobs, but those workers mostly retired by the 90s and left the state, usually for Arizona or Florida. The SoCal suburbs and the Central Valley were Republican leaning while the granola hippies were mainly found in urban LA and the Bay Area.
Bush '88 was about equivalent to FDR '44
>>18407730it's easy to understand what went wrong>California lost a lot of its citizens to the AIDS epidemic which Reagan didn't do anything about>Union busting eg. the ATC strike in 81>the national Republican Party also starts appealing hard to the South with the whole macho guns blazing and evangelical Christian thing>this gets you votes in Alabama but it doesn't appeal to Californians at allthe GOP was getting steadily less popular on the West Coast over the 80s for all these reasons
>>18407738>>California lost a lot of its citizens to the AIDS epidemic which Reagan didn't do anything aboutIf anything this would have helped the Republicans by altering electorate, like how Covid deaths in red counties caused seniors to appear to be swinging left when in reality a bunch of the right-wing ones died to Covid.
>>18407738>and evangelical Christian thingUnfair actually, Billy Graham was a big name in the 50s. Except that he backed the civil rights movements and one of his biggest ever rallies was in Los Angeles. Falwell and Robertson otoh were just too fucking extreme.
>>18407738>California lost a lot of its citizens to the AIDS epidemic which Reagan didn't do anything aboutThat wasn't his problem and most of those folks who died of AIDS probably never voted Republican to begin with.
>>18407738You couldn't be more wrong. The evangelical movement, Calvary Chapel, Trinity Broadcasting, Greg Laurie, Saddleback, the invention of the mega church, etc all started in California in the 70s and 80s. In Orange County to be exact.
>>18407742Pardon that anon, he takes his political analysis from NPR, he probably thinks George W. Bush was a hardliner of the "Christian Right"
>>18407625Fun fact: two U.S. presidents are straight outta Compton. The Bushes lived there in 1949 while daddy was working in the California oil bidness. It was a middle class suburb at the time but the apartment they lived in is now a boarded up crack house.
I'm old enough to remember the 80s-90s and how the West Coast went Democrat with Clinton's election like flicking a switch. The state Republican Party in California basically just gave up in 92 and didn't even try anymore, the only people they run for office are 80 IQ retards with no possible chance to win. In fact I have a hunch as to exactly why the Republicans lost the West Coast--they decided by the 90s that the South was more valuable real estate and they had more to gain by using the West Coast states as a boogeyman to scare Southerners into not voting Democrat.
>>18407711>>18407717>>18407718Best format:Divide the Electoral College into 4 brackets. Start with the state with the largest number of electors and count until you reach a cumulative ~25% of the entire EC(it would never be precisely 25% because of overflows). When you crossed the 25% mark(which is a cumulative 134.5 electoral votes) those states make up their respective bracket. Under the 2020 census it would look like this:Top bracket(152 EVs, ~28%) - CA(54) TX(40) FL(30) NY(28) - these states shall allocate their electoral votes on a purely proportional basis.2nd bracket(141 EVs, ~26%) - IL(19) PA(19) OH(17) GA(16) NC(16) MI(15) NJ(14) VA(13) WA(12) - these states shall award 2 electoral votes to the winner(candidate with most votes; alternatively, only award 2 if the winner crossed 50%, if none did award all EVs on a purely proportional basis) and the rest shall be allocated on a proportional basis. 3rd bracket(136 EVs, ~25%) - AZ(11), IN(11), MA(11), TN(11), CO(10), MD(10), MN(10), MO(10), WI(10), AL(9), SC(9), KY(8), LA(8), OR(8) - these states shall allocate 4 electoral votes to the winner(candidate with most votes; alternatively, only award 4 if the winner crossed 50%, if none did award all EVs on a purely proportional basis) and the rest shall be allocated on a proportional basis.Bottom bracket(109, ~20%) - CT(7), OK(7), AR(6), IA(6), KS(6), MS(6), NV(6), UT(6), NE(5), NM(5), HI(4), ID(4), ME(4), MT(4), NH(4), RI(4), WV(4), AK(3), DE(3), DC(3), ND(3), SD(3), VT(3), WY(3) - these states shall allocate their electoral votes on a winner-take-all basis.Under this format in the 2024 election Trump would win 296 electoral votes or 55% and Harris would win 242 or 45%. This is a neat and desirable sweet spot right between their respective popular vote percentages and the percentages of states they won respectively.
>>18407769Another exciting part is of course third-party candidates winning electoral votes. For example the 2016 resultrs:Trump - 278Clinton - 256Johnson - 3Stein - 1
>>18407409>Taken aback, Dukakis took a few moments to say "No" before launching into a statistical discussion of the ineffectiveness of capital punishment.That's not what happened, he didn't seem to be taken aback at all, just coldly said "no" and went on to his tangent. No sign that the question impacted him in any way. Bush was much more visibly affected when Shaw asked him a moment later if he was confident in Quayle should Bush die in office.
>>18407657Take it up with the parole board. They make that decision, not the governor.
>>18408049Anon, the furlough program was a Dukakis policy.
Dukakis also signed into law a bill abolishing capital punishment in Massachusetts, although the state had not actually executed anyone since the 40s.
a shame about all the deregulation fucking things up for decades
>>18407749>Make the wrong choice in November and you can have the Folsom Street Fair in your town
>>18407411how about when Bobby McFerrin lost his shit at the Bush campaign using "Don't Worry, Be Happy" in a TV ad?
I like how everything wrong with the US now can be easily traced back Reagan
>>18408152It can be traced back to the moment a black foot stepped on American soil.
>>18408149>why does a gay black man not vote Republican I don't get it
gotta put on some Winger tunes to get into that 1988 vibe
>>18407699that is also true of Pennsylvania. the state also consistently vote Democrat in presidential elections 88 to 12 but the vote was close most of the time and state politics were quite evenly matched. i believe the governorship and state legislature have been split since the 70s with only a few exceptions.
Ronald Reagan was a hero who saved millions
>>18408318Democrats were not complacent about Pennsylvania though. They held their convention in Philadelphia and Hillary campaigned there heavily and spent tons of money there. It was Michigan and Wisconsin which they took for granted.
>>18407607Western PA used to be Democrat dominated and the east was Republican but it's now the 180 reverse.
Was 88 winnable for the Democrats? I'd say yes. Run someone undeniably charismatic and fire breathe about Iran-Contra, crime, the debt, the homeless and farming crisis, etc.Still very close, but a win nonetheless.
>>18408336Iran-Contra was just the Democrat version of Monicagate, outside the diehard party loyalists nobody actually cared about that.
The Dukakis tank photo was so dumb that I'm half convinced some Republican plant in his campaign told him to do it.
>>18408342he was a radio operator in the Army in the 50s during peacetime service, no way was he going to compete with Bush who was actually shot out of a plane in WW2
>>18407408>but dropped out September 19, 1987 after it was disclosed that he'd plagiarized portions of a speech made by Neil Kinnock, the leader of Britain's Labour Partyhaha, classic Joe!
Dukakis was a poor candidate but the Republican brand was still strong at this point in time.>hard to break the racist vote Reagan cornered with his "States Rights" Christian messaging from the 1980 election>anyone who questioned his treasonous actions in Iran and Central America was silenced and called a traitor and un-American>neglecting the AIDS epidemic and saying anyone who got AIDS was a promiscuous gay leather daddy out to destroy the American Way (TM) even though tons of people like Ryan White were innocent victims of AIDS>add to that race b8 by charging that Dukakis planned to unleash hordes of black rapists on your neighborhood if elected president>it ultimately took a Southern candidate who was pro-capital punishment and perpetuated the black welfare queen meme to get back some of the racist vote Democrats lost since the 60s
>>18408354fuck off, LBJfag
I find the "Southern" aspect of Nixon's Southern Strategy, strictly inso far as electoral politics are concerned, to be vastly overrated by partisan Democrats. (Policy in office is a different and very interesting story. Note Nixon's Supreme Court choices. Very important in his appeal to the South.) Especially after 1965 when the national focus began to shift from legal codified segregation to economic and structural racism, Civil Rights, the counterculture, and the backlash to both was never simply a solely Southern issue. While it is true that Nixon saw the long term potential of the South pretty early on during the mid-60s, the GOP remained weak on a local and state level throughout the South often into the 1980s and 90s, and Nixon also conceded that Wallace would win a large chunk of the South and didn't bother campaigning there.Nixon in 68 won mainly the Upper South states that had been shifting Republican since Eisenhower, conservative states but which disliked Goldwater for his planks like wanting to dismantle the TVA. The Carolinas did flip but NC didn't vote for Goldwater in 64 while SC was not an electorally important state. Nixon won the latter because Strom Thurmond endorsed him, but he didn't need SC to win.
>>18408374ContNixon carried every state in 72 but MA, had Wallace not been shot he probably doesn't carry the Deep South--there are interviews with locals from news reporters in 72 that show they would have voted for a Dixiecrat if any had been on the ballot to vote for. even if Wallace had been running in 72 it doesn't prevent Nixon from still winning in a landslide. Connally switched parties and LBJ died during the year which guaranteed Texas would go Republican, and although Wallace had some support from union workers up north it still wasn't enough to carry any states there. Nixon comfortably won high population NY and didn't need SC or MS to win.Once Wallace was out, political pundits were saying of the South "Who are they gonna vote for? McGovern?" In addition this time around Wallace was running as a Democrat not an independent.
>>18408354he was a technocrat ala Carter not an oldskool 1950s union Democrat like Mondale who was really running on an obsolescent platform that had little to do with 80s realities. although Reagan was by no means perfect, he was still pretty popular--he and Clinton are the only modern era presidents to leave office with a 60% approval rating.
also the Reagan cult the GOP created was a little bit romanticized and not necessarily reflective of his actual policies, they also misunderstood his peace through strength defense philosophy. that is to say Reagan believed in limited, targeted interventions like bombing Libya in 86, not neocon nation-building bullshit.The eventual fate of Duvalier, Marcos, the South Korean military junta, and Pinochet should state that, along with his interactions with Gorbachev: Reagan and Schultz were able to understand Gorbachev and that he wasn't a commie hardliner. The original architects of detente believed the USSR would still exist in 50 and 100 years and the only thing to do was negotiate and learn to adjust to them. As another example, I have a very, very hard time seeing Dick and Henry having a similar conversation with Marcos and General Ver that Reagan and Schultz did in 86.
>>18408385Carter was also inept at politics and passing legislation, even when he had a trifecta. he unlike LBJ or Clinton had no capacity for wheeling and dealing, he couldn't compromise on things. if you can't even get your own party to do what you want, forget the opposition.
>>18408398Still Democrats did have Congress most of that time, in fact without a break 1955 to 94.
>>18408413it should be acknowledged that the two parties at the executive and Congressional levels were not the same thing. The Republicans' Congressional machine mostly got nuked in 1932 and was not rebuilt for decades, all the way until the Gingrich Revolution. Throughout the Cold War, the GOP was primarily just an executive branch party that focused on national defense and foreign policy issues--their biggest donors/support base from the 50s to 80s was the MIC. Ike and Nixon were totally foreign policy presidents who considered domestic issues a sideshow.so during all the years from FDR until Clinton, Democrats largely controlled Congress and most domestic policy. these voters would vote for Republican presidents while still voting Democrat in downballot races. starting in 68 however the Democrats struggled to come up with any ideas for the executive branch and the dudeweed crowd was increasingly influencing the party at the national level. they largely controlled the primary rules so you didn't get nominated unless you pandered to dudeweed voters, and most of these were unelectable to middle America.the change came in 92 when they ran a Southern moderate who appealed to suburban voters which was something the party had lacked for a long time.
>>18407407also last time Republicans win anything in New England
>>18408440One forget that Clinton was a charismatic middle of the road Southerner who carried a lot of states Democrats haven't touched since. Also Ross Perot was the last significant third party candidate and he was idiosyncratic and pulled votes from both parties. But mostly it was because oldschool Yankee WASP Republicans were disappearing.>New England going back to the antebellum era had always been hostile to the Democrat Party, it was the Federalist/Whig heartland, with only New Hampshire being more Democrat-leaning>all the former Whigs become Republicans in the 1850s and outside immigrant-filled Boston the region was generally a very rock solid Republican one>the GOP split in 1912 allowed Wilson to take some of New England>in the FDR era the region goes Democrat excepting Vermont and Maine>outside 1964 New England also remains majority Republican throughout the Cold War years>these Yankee WASP Republicans were fiscally conservative, very elitist, and had a strong social justice streak--they were the biggest supporters of the abolitionist movement>George HW Bush was very much of that mold, his family had been here since the 1600s and were the exemplar of New England WASP Republicans
cont>it's hard to say whether Bush lost his reelection bid due to Ross Perot or not, but Bush had a lot of other weaknesses like the economy and Clinton's youthfulness and sex appeal>nonetheless, Perot was quite popular in New England and his best showing was in Maine where he claimed 30% of that state's votes>also the Republican Party at the national level was increasingly focused on the South and aiming their message at Southern voters, and what appeals to Southerners doesn't appeal to New England>you will also notice that Dubya grew up in Texas and was much more of a Southerner in his aesthetic sense and overall mentality than his father>so in time the party just kind of lost New England, not seen as a big deal though because the South was a growing region of the country while New England was economically dead and demographically stagnant
>>18408456is a good point? New England in the 19th century was rich and a major industrial center. today it's a dead, rotting region no money has been invested in in a long time and time seems to have frozen in 1985 there.
>>18408451Vermont votes for candidates instead of parties, but that aside the state did get invaded and colonized by hipsters mostly in Burlington to whom Bernie Sanders is a living deity.
>>18408440Bush did won NH in 2000s
>>18407407Finally, the Ross Perot Elections near...
>>18407407>Mr. Vice President, if Barbara Bush was raped and impregnated by Willie Horton, would you favor an abortion for your wife?
>>18409169Let me guess, he's an "uncle tom" for asking Dukakis that question? Also he did ask Bush a similar question right afterwards, although it was concerning Bush's own death and I understand you find rape a lot more exciting.
>>18409178sybau
>>18409193Sorry I don't speak ebonics
>>18407687>>18408451I remember reading somewhere that people in 1992 voted for Clinton because he reminded them of Elvis. Sounds like the kind of associative reasoning you see in voter behavior.
>>18408061The furlough program dated back to the 1970s. He vetoed a policy that would have exempted all inmates serving life terms earlier in his term - that was a loophole from the original law. Then the parole board approved Horton for furlough. Had Dukakis not vetoed that bill, it wouldn't have happened, but he had no control over nor foresight of the specific case.
>>18409533>Had Dukakis not vetoed that bill, it wouldn't have happened
>>18408158Which was caused by the wealthy wanting cheap labor.You racists should hate conservatives & you’re too stupid to see it
>>18409590I do hate conservatives for supporting racial diversity and mass immigration.
>>18409592Well ok then
>>18409538Yes, had he not vetoed the bill, Horton wouldn't even have the option to be furloughed. But Dukakis couldn't foresee that case, and as I've mentioned before, his actions had no bearing on the decision to grant furlough to Horton in particular. That rests with the parole board and them alone. They both had knowledge of the situation and could have reasonably foreseen the consequences of granting furlough - a decision that was in their direct control. Ultimately the outcome of his release is more their fault because of those factors. The propaganda just exaggerated the effect of Dukakis' veto to the point that people basically think he signed off on furlough for Horton specifically or granted him clemency, and Lee Atwater admitted as much
>>18409657>we dont need mandatory guidelines, we need to trust our judges and parole boards>ahh you see that murderer was sent out but it was all just human error it's all their fault not the politician who vetoed the mandatory guidelines which the legislature sent to his tableYou are absolutely retarded if you can't see the responsibility Dukakis has over Horton's case.
>>18409680And you're clearly duped by propaganda if you can't even admit that there was someone with knowledge of the specific case, direct control, and a reasonable expectation of foresight, all of which are the criteria for liability, regardless of personal views of what the guidelines "should" be. Lee Atwater later admitted that the ad was propagandistic BS, and anyone with a cursory knowledge of criminal law knows it.
>>18409741Looking at unhinged clown show that is the criminal justice system nowadays where repeat violent criminals can get released dozens of times back into the street, excuse me but I don't give a fuck about established knowledge of "criminal law". Mandatory guidelines are obviously neccessary precisely because human error can happen, so vetoing them made Dukakis responsible. Cry about it.
>>18409749>Looking at unhinged clown show that is the criminal justice system nowadays where repeat violent criminals can get released dozens of times back into the streetback in the 70s that was pretty normal. see crimeanon's threads sometime.
>>18409749Mandatory minimums and restrictions on parole, furlough, conjugal visits, work release, etc are widespread and have been since the 1980s. Regardless, judicial and administrative discretion in sentencing and decision making is a crucial part of criminal law, especially in common law systems. Stuff like furlough and work release was used for decades to prepare inmates for release and incentivize good behavior. Generally it works. I also doubt that serious violent offenders are being released and recaptured dozens of times for offenses like aggravated assault or rape. Even in systems where sentences are more moderate like the UK, if you start racking up multiple serious offenses, you're likely looking at a long sentence.
>>18408440Dubya won New Hampshire in 2000, and while it's kind of cheating Trump has won an EV from Maine every election by winning the 2nd congressional district thereas noted by other anons with other states the final results mask how close most elections were in New Hampshire, it was like a .3% margin in 2016 at the closest for instanceI do agree they've basically given up even trying to compete for the rest of NE besides NH and Maine though
>>18409763Yes, the media distorts things when they report on crime. They get details and timelines wrong or don't mention the relevant laws and norms and the result is a lot of people who think that it's routine in certain states or cities to grant pretrial release to dangerous offenders who go on to commit more serious crimes. It's much, much more common for people to be released pending trial for minor offenses and do something major or commit a serious crime while serving a term of probation or after being granted parole
>>18412406Tell your grandma I'm ready to be her urinal
