How would you have voted, 1900-2016?

[OSR stands with Israel]

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=26467.1050

[OSR stands with Israel]

1900:  bryan
1904:  TR
1908:  Bryan
1912:  TR
1916:  Wilson
1920:  Cox
1924:  Davis
1928:  Smith
1932:  FDR
1936:  FDR
1940:  FDR
1944:  FDR
1948:  Truman
1952:  Stevenson
1956:  Eisenhower
1960:  JFK
1964:  LBJ
1968:  HHH
1972:  McGovern
1976:  Carter
1980:  Abstained for President
1984:  Mondale
1988:  Dukakis
1992:  Bill Clinton
1996:  Bill Clinton
2000:  GWB
2004:  Kerry
2008:  McCain
2012:  Obama
2016:  Trump

The Italicized choices are how I actually voted.  If I had to do it over, I'd have voted for Carter in 1980, Perot in 1992, Dole in 1996, and POSSIBLY Romney in 2012. 

Hmm.. I’m just curious.. why McGovern?

In my youth, I was a partisan Democrat.  I was 15 years old in 1972, and as politically aware as some of our younger posters here.  I was quite liberal, and I grew up in a home where my mother and grandmother were Democrats and Nixon was the enemy. 

I was also very much against the Vietnam War and I believed that Nixon was dragging it out.  The war had been going on for so long in 1972 that many of my graduating class wondered if this thing was ever going to end, and whether or not we'd be fighting there.  That thought was a bit alarmist, but in 1972, the war in Vietnam had been going on since 1965.  I was accustomed to seeing weekly reports of over 1,000 Americans killed in a weak of fighting many weeks.  The older brother of a kid down the street was a long-held POW by the North Vietnamese, and older teens sweated out their draft status.  McGovern promised to end the war.  He'd do the one thing I cared about the most; much of the rest was up in the air, as I wasn't anti-military and I was somewhat conservative for a Democrat on many issues even then. 

I also had a sense of partisanship, and I believed Democrats ought to vote for Democrats if they believed in the party and wanted its objectives to be advanced.  As I was once that way, I'm not going to be critical of people who are hyper-partisan.  I was that way once.  Obviously, I'm not that way anymore.  I've also come to believe, over time, that the McGovern-Fraser commission did more damage to the party with its reforms than anyone could calculate; they cost the Democrats their status as the majority party, as much as anything else.

How would you have voted in elections from 1824-1896

[OSR stands with Israel]

1900:  bryan
1904:  TR
1908:  Bryan
1912:  TR
1916:  Wilson
1920:  Cox
1924:  Davis
1928:  Smith
1932:  FDR
1936:  FDR
1940:  FDR
1944:  FDR
1948:  Truman
1952:  Stevenson
1956:  Eisenhower
1960:  JFK
1964:  LBJ
1968:  HHH
1972:  McGovern
1976:  Carter
1980:  Abstained for President
1984:  Mondale
1988:  Dukakis
1992:  Bill Clinton
1996:  Bill Clinton
2000:  GWB
2004:  Kerry
2008:  McCain
2012:  Obama
2016:  Trump

The Italicized choices are how I actually voted.  If I had to do it over, I'd have voted for Carter in 1980, Perot in 1992, Dole in 1996, and POSSIBLY Romney in 2012. 

Hmm.. I’m just curious.. why McGovern?

In my youth, I was a partisan Democrat.  I was 15 years old in 1972, and as politically aware as some of our younger posters here.  I was quite liberal, and I grew up in a home where my mother and grandmother were Democrats and Nixon was the enemy. 

I was also very much against the Vietnam War and I believed that Nixon was dragging it out.  The war had been going on for so long in 1972 that many of my graduating class wondered if this thing was ever going to end, and whether or not we'd be fighting there.  That thought was a bit alarmist, but in 1972, the war in Vietnam had been going on since 1965.  I was accustomed to seeing weekly reports of over 1,000 Americans killed in a weak of fighting many weeks.  The older brother of a kid down the street was a long-held POW by the North Vietnamese, and older teens sweated out their draft status.  McGovern promised to end the war.  He'd do the one thing I cared about the most; much of the rest was up in the air, as I wasn't anti-military and I was somewhat conservative for a Democrat on many issues even then. 

I also had a sense of partisanship, and I believed Democrats ought to vote for Democrats if they believed in the party and wanted its objectives to be advanced.  As I was once that way, I'm not going to be critical of people who are hyper-partisan.  I was that way once.  Obviously, I'm not that way anymore.  I've also come to believe, over time, that the McGovern-Fraser commission did more damage to the party with its reforms than anyone could calculate; they cost the Democrats their status as the majority party, as much as anything else.

How would you have voted in elections from 1824-1896

1824 - Jackson
1828 - Jackson
1832 - Jackson
1836 - Van Buren
1840 - Harrison
1844 - Polk
1848 - Van Buren (Free Soil)
1852 - Scott
1856 - Fremont
1860 - Lincoln
1864 - Lincoln
1868 - Grant
1872 - Greeley
1876 - Hayes
1880 - Hancock
1884 - Blaine
1888 - Harrison
1892 - Harrison
1896 - McKinley

These selections represent a change of heart over the years.  I have come to see Lincoln as perhaps our greatest President; the burdens he bore were equalled POSSIBLY by FDR, who did not have the sort of civil war and national division Lincoln faced.  At one time I would have favored Horation Seymour and Samuel Tilden in 1868 and 1876.  Nowadays, I believe that to be a mistake; Seymour was one of Lincoln's most steadfast opponents during the Civil War and it is likely that if Tilden had been elected, the deal made with Wade Hampton to end Reconstruction would have been even worse for blacks, and for the North in general. 

I have come to regard Grant as an unfairly maligned President; not the failure he has been made out to be.  I have come to regard Cleveland as a scumbag, a rich man's President who treated women like crap.  Benjamin Harrison was not a good President, but I would prefer him to Cleveland; I would have even preferred Blaine to Cleveland, and Blaine was a scumbag as well.

I like William Jennings Bryan, but I would have voted for McKinley; he was a progressive Republican and rightly considered The First Modern President.  He is grievously underrated by historians, and would be ranked as one of the 10 best Presidents had he not been assassinated less than a year into his second term. 

Pretty surprised about 1876-1896  though I disagree about McKinley .


McKinley was basically a more Hawkish version of Coolidge