A lot of people have been discussing the prospects of Hillary Clinton becoming President of the United States by running in some future election. It’s possible, of course, but people should remember that my Party in general prefers to nominate people who are running for the first time. We nominated Barack Obama on his first go, and we nominated John Kerry on his first go. We did nominate Al Gore on his second, but before that we nominated Bill Clinton on his first, and Michael Dukakis on his first, and Walter Mondale on his first, and Jimmy Carter on his first. And George McGovern on his second, but I count the modern primary-based nomination process as starting in 1976. Still, if you count George McGovern, rather than one out of the last seven, you’ve got two out of the last eleven, as none of Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon Johnson or John Kennedy had unsuccessful runs before gaining the nomination. Nor had Adlai Stevenson run for the nomination without getting it, nor Harry S. Truman, nor Franklin D. Roosevelt.
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The Republican Party, by contrast, prefers to choose candidates that have unsuccessful runs at the Presidential nomination under their belts. John McCain, of course, ran unsuccessfully in 2000. George W. Bush was a first-timer, but Bob Dole had run unsuccessfully in 1980, as had George H.W. Bush. Ronald Reagan, of course, ran unsuccessfully in 1968 and in 1976. So that’s one out of the last five. Gerald Ford never ran unsuccessfully for the nomination, nor did Richard Nixon (although, like Adlai Stevenson on our side, he had failed as the nominee before), nor Dwight Eisenhower; the run does not go back so far on their side.
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Still, going back to 1976 (which, as I say, I count as the beginning of the modern era in Presidential Party politics), the Republicans have only once chosen a non-incumbent who had not<\/I> come before them as a challenger for the nomination, and the Democrats have only one chose a contender who has.
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Of course, arguing from recent trends shouldn’t really persuade people, as the trends will end sometime, and why not now? On the other hand, I suspect that it would be very difficult for Senator Clinton to get the nomination of my<\/I> party in the future.
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Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In Which Your Humble Blogger fails to provide a reason, other than chance, for this difference between the Parties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[204],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11221"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11221\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18392,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11221\/revisions\/18392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}