In terms of his unpopularity I mean.
As the primary season is about halfway finished, the media is starting to pick up on the fact that Donald Trump isn't all that popular outside of the Far Right voting base that makes up the Republican Party.
And we're still talking about Trump as the likely nominee because he's still got a big lead on the delegate count, and because the Number Two in the race - Ted Cruz - is polling about as unpopular as Trump with the general electorate.
We're looking at a potential Presidential candidate in Donald Trump whose possible Popular vote for November is going to be around 33 percent, the way things are tracking.
Which got me to thinking: What was the worst Popular vote performance by a Presidential candidate in the whole of our nation's history?
We need to make the distinction for a 2-person race. A lot of multi-candidate (three or more) races split the Popular vote in weird ways, so the drubbing John Davis gets in 1924 has a lot to do with the Third Party guy La Follette more than Calvin Coolidge (although Coolidge did get a sizable majority 54 percent). The fights between four candidates in 1824 and 1860 and 1912 make it impossible to say the Second Place guy got drubbed. So for it to be utter humiliation, it has to be a mano-a-mano showdown.
There's been a few bad Electoral College vote performances - Mondale in 1984, McGovern in 1972, Goldwater in 1964, Alf Landon in 1936 (before Mondale, one of the most mocked under-performances of all time), with the earliest going back to Charles Pinckney in 1804.
Ah. Who?
Exactly. Pinckney in 1804 not only suffered one of the worst Electoral College results ever, he gave the singular worst Popular vote performance of all time. While there's been a few candidates who struggled in the low 30s for head-to-head matchups, Pinckney set the record for fewest Likes at 27.2 percent of the voting population.
So here we've got a measuring stick. Can Trump equal Pinckney's dismal performance?
Probably not in terms of the Electoral College (although if Nate Silver is right about the women's vote, the possibility is there for a total wipeout), as the Republican Party is still popular enough in regions to earn a few states like South Carolina, Alabama, Idaho, parts of the Midwest (everything else right now - I'm not joking - is up for grabs) just by being the Red candidate. It's doubtful he'll sink to the minimum two-state (plus DC) requirement of matching the humiliating nights that Pinckney, Landon, and Mondale endured (McGovern tends to get excused because of the Watergate scandals of Nixon's dirty tricks people messing with the primaries).
But the Popular vote for Trump can well hit the lowest levels that a candidate for a major party can sink to. Trump's unpopularity is suddenly becoming a major revelation - as the focus on the early stages of the primary season was on the state primary numbers - and the fact that he's already burned more than a few bridges to a lot of the voting blocs is starting to hurt the GOP.
Right now the polls have him bouncing between 41 to 38 percent losing to either Clinton or Sanders. Granted, there's room for Trump to bounce up especially if the Democrats stumble out of their convention mid-summer: but given the polarization between the two parties and the unlikelihood of party voters switching, it all comes down to how the Independent voters go.
And Independent voters right now don't like Trump at all.
My own personal view is that if Trump survives this very contested convention - he pretty much HAS to win the delegate count beforehand, and that's starting to look harder to do - he's going to come out of it bruised and angry and unable to change his tune to a more moderate stance. Depending on how his Veep selection plays out - if he does go with Palin begin headdesking - the poll numbers can really drop. If he's under 40 percent by August - hell, if he's under 33 percent by September - he's probably going to lose more voters who will just run away from the stench.
The way things are going, I've got Trump finishing around that 33 percent as he turns into an incoherent raging mess as October rolls around. Not enough to match Pinckney's despair, but it'll do... it'll do.
Showing posts with label jefferson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label jefferson. Show all posts
Friday, April 01, 2016
Saturday, January 19, 2013
Presidential Character: Week Three, It's All Jefferson's Fault
It's a hell of a way to open up a blog post, you think? Blaming Thomas Jefferson for everything?
Well, not everything. But still...
We're up to the example of Presidential Character for the Active-Positive types. The one word to describe this type is Adaptive: these are the guys who enjoy not just the perks of being the President but also the duties, self-deprecating but also self-confident, self-starters who seek accomplishments and problems to solve before anyone else even realizes there's a problem, and someone willing to compromise with others in politics to get things done.
The perfect example of Jefferson's adaptive style was the biggest event during his tenure: the Louisiana Purchase. By Jefferson's administration France fell under the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte, and during his reign building up to Emperor Napoleon had negotiated Spain - then a vassal state under his brother's rule - to hand over the Louisiana Territory that took up the middle third of the North American continent. His intent was an overseas empire combined with French holdings in the Caribbean. However, ongoing disasters with Haiti including a slave uprising discouraged Napoleon to where he decided against keeping it. At the same time, Jefferson had sent envoys to France to negotiate either a lease or the purchase of the City of New Orleans, the key trading port of the Mississippi River. Jefferson feared that if Napoleon secured Louisiana, he could tie up a major waterway route for the western edge of where the United States then reached.
Instead of negotiating over New Orleans, Napoleon offered up all of the Louisiana Territory. For $15 million. Even in that time, this was effing dirt-cheap (roughly 3 cents for every acre) and essentially the biggest land deal of the millennium (well, for the U.S. For the native tribes already living in the Territory, they never saw one red cent). Napoleon either didn't know the value of land, or simply wanted to get rid of what he then saw as useless (he also probably sought to buy off American neutrality as his war against Britain was kicking into high gear again).
This quickly became a major dilemma for Jefferson, for two reasons: One, he simply wasn't prepared for such a major land-mass addition to the nation's frontier; two, there wasn't any rule for this anywhere in the Constitution.
I need to back up a bit and note how Jefferson was the leader, the banner carrier of the Democratic-Republican Party. Unlike the Federalists who used a loose interpretation of the Constitution to establish laws and precedence, the Democrats believed in strict interpretation of the Constitution, including the limitations of powers on the Executive and ensuring the states had rights nearly comparable to the federal government. Jefferson's original view of government was opposed to a strong Federal system.
But now here was something challenging that view. He may have had power to conduct treaties and leasing arrangements, but there was no authority in the Constitution to make a land purchase from a foreign nation of this size. Jefferson could have gone to Congress, explained the deal Napoleon was offering, and wait for Congress to give him the political authority via amendment to get the deal done. But that meant working with a Congress that could bicker over every detail, delaying what was clearly an impulse buy: Napoleon could well change his mind within another week or month waiting for something to happen and kill the offer.
So Jefferson did what any Active-Positive would do: he broke his own rules. He authorized the purchase without first securing Constitutional authority to do so, pressing Congress to get the funds lined up as quick as possible.
And so, thanks to Jefferson's A-P attitudes, we went from being a decent-sized nation made up of states into an expanding pre-formed empire with enough territory to double in size and to equal the same land-mass as most of Europe. Before this, no one had any notion of Manifest Destiny: the Pacific Coast seemed so far off. After this, reaching the Pacific was now a genuine possibility (and the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery proved it, although their original intent to find a Northwest Passage water route didn't pan out). And now all of a sudden the issue of slavery, which was confined to southern states and territories and could have moved no further than the Mississippi, became a bigger hot potato... underlying the passions under the colonization of Texas by southerners, leading to their rebellion against Mexico... leading to Texas annexation into the U.S. and soon after stirring up the Mexican-American War, solidifying our nation's reach between two oceans... adding even more territory that slave-owners sought to acquire for their ever-growing reliance on slave labor economics.
This kinda needs to be pointed out that Active-Positive Presidents are NOT always good things, no matter how... positive... the wording seems. A-Ps are active and very aggressive with their powers... and while they resolve a lot of challenges they never take into consideration the consequences of their actions (political axiom: Every political action generates an unequal and disproportionate reaction (pa < dpr) ). In short, they are quick to act, but fail to plan ahead (Active-Negatives tend to at least put more thought into what they're doing).
Another example is Jefferson's attempt to engage Great Britain for transgressions during the Napoleonic Wars. The United States tried to remain neutral but England kept impressing - raiding American ships and taking crewmen the British claimed were deserters - to the point of the Chesapeake-Leopard Affair. Rather than pursue the threat of war - Jefferson knew as his predecessors did that the U.S. was in no condition for war - Jefferson tried instead a series of embargoes blocking off all trade with Great Britain. He figured that the lost trade would hurt England enough to force them to terms. He failed to figure that the American traders would also get hurt in the process - and that England had other trade partners and colonial holdings to keep them stocked with supplies. The embargoes failed quickly and spectacularly, causing major rifts across the U.S., and Jefferson ended his term of office repealing those acts before they caused more damage.
Jefferson's two terms of office were very active indeed, more than the administrations of the first two Presidents Washington and Adams. But a lot of those actions had unintended consequences, which led to things like the War of 1812, the march of Manifest Destiny - which Natives, Mexicans, and even Americans would come to loath - and the increasing debate over slavery. Whether or not Jefferson's actions were good, the positive aspects of his actions are obvious... and the negative aspects are obvious as well. The debates will not end here. Not until much later...
Well, not everything. But still...
We're up to the example of Presidential Character for the Active-Positive types. The one word to describe this type is Adaptive: these are the guys who enjoy not just the perks of being the President but also the duties, self-deprecating but also self-confident, self-starters who seek accomplishments and problems to solve before anyone else even realizes there's a problem, and someone willing to compromise with others in politics to get things done.
The perfect example of Jefferson's adaptive style was the biggest event during his tenure: the Louisiana Purchase. By Jefferson's administration France fell under the rule of Napoleon Bonaparte, and during his reign building up to Emperor Napoleon had negotiated Spain - then a vassal state under his brother's rule - to hand over the Louisiana Territory that took up the middle third of the North American continent. His intent was an overseas empire combined with French holdings in the Caribbean. However, ongoing disasters with Haiti including a slave uprising discouraged Napoleon to where he decided against keeping it. At the same time, Jefferson had sent envoys to France to negotiate either a lease or the purchase of the City of New Orleans, the key trading port of the Mississippi River. Jefferson feared that if Napoleon secured Louisiana, he could tie up a major waterway route for the western edge of where the United States then reached.
Instead of negotiating over New Orleans, Napoleon offered up all of the Louisiana Territory. For $15 million. Even in that time, this was effing dirt-cheap (roughly 3 cents for every acre) and essentially the biggest land deal of the millennium (well, for the U.S. For the native tribes already living in the Territory, they never saw one red cent). Napoleon either didn't know the value of land, or simply wanted to get rid of what he then saw as useless (he also probably sought to buy off American neutrality as his war against Britain was kicking into high gear again).
This quickly became a major dilemma for Jefferson, for two reasons: One, he simply wasn't prepared for such a major land-mass addition to the nation's frontier; two, there wasn't any rule for this anywhere in the Constitution.
I need to back up a bit and note how Jefferson was the leader, the banner carrier of the Democratic-Republican Party. Unlike the Federalists who used a loose interpretation of the Constitution to establish laws and precedence, the Democrats believed in strict interpretation of the Constitution, including the limitations of powers on the Executive and ensuring the states had rights nearly comparable to the federal government. Jefferson's original view of government was opposed to a strong Federal system.
But now here was something challenging that view. He may have had power to conduct treaties and leasing arrangements, but there was no authority in the Constitution to make a land purchase from a foreign nation of this size. Jefferson could have gone to Congress, explained the deal Napoleon was offering, and wait for Congress to give him the political authority via amendment to get the deal done. But that meant working with a Congress that could bicker over every detail, delaying what was clearly an impulse buy: Napoleon could well change his mind within another week or month waiting for something to happen and kill the offer.
So Jefferson did what any Active-Positive would do: he broke his own rules. He authorized the purchase without first securing Constitutional authority to do so, pressing Congress to get the funds lined up as quick as possible.
And so, thanks to Jefferson's A-P attitudes, we went from being a decent-sized nation made up of states into an expanding pre-formed empire with enough territory to double in size and to equal the same land-mass as most of Europe. Before this, no one had any notion of Manifest Destiny: the Pacific Coast seemed so far off. After this, reaching the Pacific was now a genuine possibility (and the Lewis and Clark Corps of Discovery proved it, although their original intent to find a Northwest Passage water route didn't pan out). And now all of a sudden the issue of slavery, which was confined to southern states and territories and could have moved no further than the Mississippi, became a bigger hot potato... underlying the passions under the colonization of Texas by southerners, leading to their rebellion against Mexico... leading to Texas annexation into the U.S. and soon after stirring up the Mexican-American War, solidifying our nation's reach between two oceans... adding even more territory that slave-owners sought to acquire for their ever-growing reliance on slave labor economics.
This kinda needs to be pointed out that Active-Positive Presidents are NOT always good things, no matter how... positive... the wording seems. A-Ps are active and very aggressive with their powers... and while they resolve a lot of challenges they never take into consideration the consequences of their actions (political axiom: Every political action generates an unequal and disproportionate reaction (pa < dpr) ). In short, they are quick to act, but fail to plan ahead (Active-Negatives tend to at least put more thought into what they're doing).
Another example is Jefferson's attempt to engage Great Britain for transgressions during the Napoleonic Wars. The United States tried to remain neutral but England kept impressing - raiding American ships and taking crewmen the British claimed were deserters - to the point of the Chesapeake-Leopard Affair. Rather than pursue the threat of war - Jefferson knew as his predecessors did that the U.S. was in no condition for war - Jefferson tried instead a series of embargoes blocking off all trade with Great Britain. He figured that the lost trade would hurt England enough to force them to terms. He failed to figure that the American traders would also get hurt in the process - and that England had other trade partners and colonial holdings to keep them stocked with supplies. The embargoes failed quickly and spectacularly, causing major rifts across the U.S., and Jefferson ended his term of office repealing those acts before they caused more damage.
Jefferson's two terms of office were very active indeed, more than the administrations of the first two Presidents Washington and Adams. But a lot of those actions had unintended consequences, which led to things like the War of 1812, the march of Manifest Destiny - which Natives, Mexicans, and even Americans would come to loath - and the increasing debate over slavery. Whether or not Jefferson's actions were good, the positive aspects of his actions are obvious... and the negative aspects are obvious as well. The debates will not end here. Not until much later...
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