100 years ago: a far more interesting election
By: dgun
September 10th, 2012
7:44 pm
The election of 2012 is great and all, but so far it can't hold a candle to the election of 1912. In 1912 the Republican party had a problem. His name was Teddy Roosevelt. The former President and current incumbent Taft had grown apart. The progressive Republicans left the party and formed their own Progressive party, otherwise known as the "Bull Moose" party.
But there is more. Taft's running mate, Vice President James Schoolcraft Sherman, died days before the election. On October 14 a saloon keeper made a pretty fair attempt at assassinating Roosevelt. (Roosevelt was only saved thanks to a 14 page speech and an eyeglass case.) A Socialist named Eugene Debs, running as an actual Socialist, and with only about $66,000, got over 900,000 votes.
Including the Democratic candidate and eventual winner Woodrow Wilson, the election of 1912 had four candidates who each got a significant number of votes. (Well, the popular vote anyway.) Some of the key issues of the election included tariffs, women's suffrage, wages and labor conditions, and trusts. The Electoral college vote looked like so:
Following the election, the conservative Republicans regained control of their party as most of the progressives left for the Democratic party. The Progressive party faded away and the Socialist party never had as strong a showing. The Democrats held on one more term with Wilson but didn't get back into the White House again until 1932.
The current election has been a real snooze fest since the GOP primary ended. Maybe a fist fight between Romney and Obama, or better yet between Biden and anyone, would add a little more entertainment value to 2012. Or maybe Republicans should consider bringing Palin back in some form. Anyway, I know this much, "Honey Boo Boo Child" could have never competed with the fireworks of the 1912 election.
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7 comments on "100 years ago: a far more interesting election"
September 11, 2012 at 6:47 am
200 years ago we had this type of election with Thomas Jefferson vs John Adams:
The ironic part is that these ads are not far from their actual campaign ads, which wre pamphlets and yellers back then I suppose. To think that the tone of our politics has hardly changed.
September 11, 2012 at 8:55 am
lol, I'm afraid you might be right.
September 11, 2012 at 10:08 pm
lol, I'm afraid you might be right.
September 12, 2012 at 12:34 am
Those guys make all of our modern day candidates look like wussies! lol
September 13, 2012 at 5:14 am
Of course the socialists and "progressives" joined the Democrat Party, Wilson was a "progressive" fascist. He's the one that got this ball rolling in a serious manner, paving the way for the FDR, LBJ, and, since Clinton failed, Obama.
September 13, 2012 at 6:29 am
Of course the socialists and "progressives" joined the Democrat Party, Wilson was a "progressive" fascist. He's the one that got this ball rolling in a serious manner, paving the way for the FDR, LBJ, and, since Clinton failed, Obama.
September 13, 2012 at 1:35 pm
Maybe a fist fight between Romney and Obama, or better yet between Biden and anyone, would add a little more entertainment value to 2012. .
With all the trash-talking and name-calling that goes on during presidential elections, it's high time we go back to the way these things were settled according to what we learned from watching Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York: with fisticuffs.
That's exactly what Esquire magazine and Yahoo! News set out to do when they commissioned Langer Research Associates to conduct a poll asking likely voters who would win in a fistfight between Barack "Velvet Thunder" Obama and Mitt "RoboRomney" Romney.
Arbitrary and childish, you say?
Hey, we're living in the country that invented the Choco Taco, so we can do whatever we damned well please!
According to the poll, 58 percent said Obama to 22 percent for Romney. Twenty percent had no opinion, with an error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.
Asked to place a wager on the hypothetical fight, the people polled made Obama the odds-on favorite with 57 to Romney's 21 percent among likely voters.