All the "I will/won't for vote ..." threads: Which actual Democratic presidential nominee since WWII

[pampango]

Last edited Wed Jun 11, 2014, 09:14 AM - Edit history (1)

would you have not voted for at the time?

While not every actual Democratic nominee was (or would have been if I were around then) my first choice but, looking at the list I don't see any whom I would not have voted for in the general election. After their term in office (if they won) I might have questioned my vote in retrospect, but not at the time of the election.

I think Democratic primary voters and convention delegates have done a good job overall in choosing presidential candidates.

1948: Harry Truman
1952, 1956: Adlai Stevenson
1960: John Kennedy
1964: Lyndon Johnson
1968: Hubert Humphrey
1972: George McGovern
1976, 1980: Jimmy Carter
1984: Walter Mondale
1988: Michael Dukakis
1992, 1996: Bill Clinton
2000: Al Gore
2004: John Kerry
2008, 2012: Barack Obama

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. Given the chance to go back in time and change my votes?

I wouldn't have voted for Bill Clinton, who sold us down the river economically as badly as any of Republicans around him, and help exacerbate the bust and boom bubbles with false prosperity, and helped make it seem that supply side economics actually might work.

[DURHAM D]

3. Really?

So if you had to to do over you would have wanted a second Poppy Bush term and Old Dole for a term or two?

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

6. No, but my one vote wouldn't have done that.

But at least I wouldn't have voted against my own interests, even unwittingly.

[frazzled]

14. Your one vote would have done that

People need to get this straight: your vote is not just some individual satisfy-your-own-ideology-or-conscience statement. It has consequences. It's not about you. It's about society and history.

You have to make decisions, some of which are not perfect (like the decisions you have to make in the rest of your life): it's GHW Bush or Clinton, or Bob Dole or Clinton. And it matters. It matters whether you stay home and decide not to vote so you can "feel better." If you think your "one" vote doesn't matter, you're simply naive. Everyone has "one" vote, and each one matters.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

15. I think you have problems with math.

Here's reality. In any vote not won by one vote, no, my one vote doesn't matter to the outcome of the election. That's why I should ALWAYS vote for the person I think will best suit the office.

[frazzled]

17. And I think you have problems with conceptual thinking.

You are not an island and you are not some exceptional being who can rise above the rest to exclude yourself from counting as much as every other individual: if everyone considers their one vote unimportant, each of these single votes--or failures to vote--adds up to SOMETHING.

Democracy is not a personal expression but a societal aggregate of expression. Your one vote always has an impact. To think otherwise is to hew to some conservative libertarian notion of the individual, some kind of Randian ideal of the individual in society. It's destructive to democracy. So use it or lose it, bub.

[Chan790]

23. If he has issues with conceptual thinking, you've missed the point of democracy.

So...even field of play there. We are all exceptional beings.

Democracy is not in the least collectivist...as much as it pains me, it hews a lot closer to the Objectivist persona-of-self than it does to any notion of the societal-aggregate. It's your line of thinking that is destructive to Democracy...it's intrinsic to the downfall of the Republic into majoritarian tyranny. A vote for the candidate that best reflects your values regardless of outcome is the truest Democracy--we may embrace primaries and moderation to insure the nomination of the most supportable candidate and limit the divisibility of the ballot...we should never mistake such for being even remotely democratic.

[frazzled]

36. Frazzled Shrugs

Objectivist democracy ... good luck with that.

And we are in no way discussing primaries: the subject is prior presidential general elections. Knock yourself out with your personal dreams in primaries (always with an eye towards rational generals, however). But in the general elections, your vote or non-vote is a choice between the options the group has already decided. Whether you chose one or the other--or none--it matters.

And no, we're not exceptional. Empathetic social behavior is impossible if one hews to that philosophy.

[Chan790]

37. ...and this is why I accuse you of not understanding democracy.

"between the options the group has already decided" can never be democracy. It's an accepted concession to majoritarian tyranny for reasons I've laid out...but it's in no way democratic or even remotely approaching thereupon. Empathetic social behavior is also impossible if one hews to false dichotomies imposed by partisan ruling classes...it merely makes one the chooser between two puppet-shows both offering the same bread and circuses.

[ecstatic]

28. Unbelievably selfish. You want everyone else to do the hard work

while you remain on a high horse of your own creation. I hope others like you don't cost us the Supreme Court.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

32. I'm doing the exact same thing you all are.

When you demand I vote for your chosen guy instead. Your only claim to 'choosing better' is to say there are more of you. Ie, might makes right.

So puke away, but you've got no moral high ground there.

[Chan790]

38. +1 n/t

[hughee99]

30. If Poppy had won a second term and the WH was open in 1996, Dole wouldn't have been the nominee.

It was "Dole's turn" because more viable candidates didn't want to run against a popular incumbent president.

[pampango]

11. "... I might have questioned my vote in retrospect, but not at the time of the election."

I agree that hindsight is, as they say, 20-20. In 1992 I voted for Clinton rather than Bush or Perot. I'm not sorry I did. There were other Democratic candidates in the primary whom I supported but was hugely preferable to Bush or Perot.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

13. I was far more politically naive back then.

I didn't actually really start paying attention to politics beyond the elections until the late 90s at the earliest.

And, tbh, I think that's something political activists on blogs forget all too often - that the vast majority of people simply don't really pay any attention beyond the elections. They'll hear about Republicans doing something stupid, but if it's more than a few months out, they simply fail to connect up the stupidity with how they vote. So time and again, we get votes for Republicans from people who are hurt by the very policies put forward by the people for whom they vote. Because they just don't connect the dots, and vote almost completely based upon 'how they've always voted', 'how their parents vote', or based solely on the campaign soundbites, which completely distort reality.

[liberal N proud]

2. I will NEVER vote republican! NEVER!!!!

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

7. That's not the choice. The world isn't binary.

There have been dozens of other choices for President over the years than Democrat or Republican.

[liberal N proud]

21. Voting for third party candidate is like throwing your vote away

Until there is a strong enough third party, you vote will be wasted voting other than Democratic.

I will repeat: I WILL NEVER VOTE FOR A REPUBLICAN! NEVER!

[onehandle]

4. You've just created another Clinton bashing thread.

Which was 100% what all of that embarrassment was about yesterday.

[DURHAM D]

5. Yep.

[pampango]

16. Really? It was intended as a "The Democratic Party nominates candidates I can vote for" thread.

We have not nominated Bush I or II, Dole, Perot, Reagan, Nixon or Romney. It was not meant as a "Let's bash some Democrats" thread.

[LWolf]

8. There are at least two on that list.

And one of them is someone I voted for and then regretted the vote.

[DerekG]

9. 1948 - Truman the Disaster

The proudest vote I would have cast would be for Henry Wallace, the true heir to Franklin Roosevelt. It would constitute an act of defiance against that hack Truman, whose bellicosity and shallow world-view needlessly sundered American-Soviet relations and doomed us to a permanent state of war.

I wouldn't have voted for Truman if a gun was put to my head.

[ananda]

10. None of em.

I always vote Democratic or Green.

[Rowdyboy]

12. Proudly supported every Democratic nominee since Carter and will continue to do so

Especially if its Hillary Clinton/

[Chan790]

18. These.

1980: Jimmy Carter only grudgingly would have had my vote. He did a terrible job in his first term and should have opted to not seek reelection.

1992, 1996: Bill Clinton...I'd never support any Clinton for public office.

2000: Al Gore...well, I didn't vote for him. So I can't say I would have. Not different enough from the Clinton for me.

[MohRokTah]

20. So you're one of the people who gave us George Bush

I'll look at anything you post with that in mind.

[Chan790]

24. I sincerely doubt any vote I cast for Socialists, Working Families or Greens in CT or MD...

has ever had any outcome on the actual election. Mind you, not apologetic for the outcome of the election...you do that to you by nominating poor candidates. It's more important to me to get 3rd parties onto the ballot since I think this one is bound for the shitcan if we cannot expel the corporatists whoring themselves to Wall Street from the Democratic Party.

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

33. It didn't.

Even if you were to grant the OMG NADER folks their claim, there were only 700 or so Nader voters in Florida they can pretend to blame. Of course there were far more registered Dems in Florida who voted for Bush, but they never seem to want to blame those people, they've always got to scapegoat Nader.

[MohRokTah]

19. Roosevelt was LOATHED by the Left.

Seriously LOATHED.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

22. I didn't vote for Humphrey or Obama.

In retrospect I wouldn't have vote for LBJ or Clinton.

[ecstatic]

29. Why are you on this site?

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

31. Why not? I'm a Democrat.

[IronLionZion]

25. I would have loved to vote for McGovern

but I wasn't born for over another decade.

[vi5]

26. I have voted for all of them since my first vote which was for Mondale.

Dukakis, Gore, and Kerry were hold my nose votes (Remember, Gore was distancing himself from Clinton pretty hard, especially with his Leiberman pick. I thought he would have been a good president but didn't like his direction as a candidate.

[Historic NY]

27. The problem with all these BS posts is...

its the majority of Democrats that decided who or whom the party nominee is. Who or whom is going to lead their banner. If your a member of a party, one tends to support that standard bearer, win lose or draw in the general.

[pampango]

35. That is my point. "The majority of Democrats" do a good job of selecting the party nominee.

They have not nominated Bush I or II, Dole, Perot, Reagan, Nixon or Romney. They have nominated vastly superior candidates than those guys.

[Chan790]

39. One can just as easily make the argument that the majority has done an absymal job.

They may have not nominated Bushes, Reagan, Nixon and Romney...but they did select Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, John Kerry and LBJ over better candidates that better represented Democratic ideals. One can easily argue that they've done a poor enough job to have lost us a culture war we need to win.

[pampango]

40. "They have nominated vastly superior candidates than those guys" (that the GOP nominated).

Perhaps it is simply that the Democratic Party attracts a better class of politicians rather than that the primary voters and convention delegates do such a fantastic job of selecting from among those candidates. Either way our crop of presidential candidates is "vastly superior" to "those guys" which makes my vote and easy decision.

[WI_DEM]

34. I'd have voted for all of them.