US Politics 2

Dannie Lennox wrote:No democratic incumbent without combat experience has beaten someone whose first name is worth more in Scrabble? Really?

I thought that was an interesting, salient and entirely serious observation

Dannie Lennox wrote:There's never been a situation where a Democratic president has had to stand down and another Democratic president has been re elected. That's kind of crazy.

Well there has. Just not for a long time.

Corazon de Leon

Moggy wrote:
Dannie Lennox wrote:There's never been a situation where a Democratic president has had to stand down and another Democratic president has been re elected. That's kind of crazy.

Well there has. Just not for a long time.

It’s quite interesting that consecutive different presidents being elected from the Democratic Party has only happened twice in 230 years though.

Not especially surprising given the way American politics works, but definitely something that warrants further investigation!

Corazon de Leon wrote:
Moggy wrote:
Dannie Lennox wrote:There's never been a situation where a Democratic president has had to stand down and another Democratic president has been re elected. That's kind of crazy.

Well there has. Just not for a long time.

It’s quite interesting that consecutive different presidents being elected from the Democratic Party has only happened twice in 230 years though.

Not especially surprising given the way American politics works, but definitely something that warrants further investigation!

Shush we are winding up Dan.

Corazon de Leon

Moggy wrote:
Corazon de Leon wrote:
Moggy wrote:
Dannie Lennox wrote:There's never been a situation where a Democratic president has had to stand down and another Democratic president has been re elected. That's kind of crazy.

Well there has. Just not for a long time.

It’s quite interesting that consecutive different presidents being elected from the Democratic Party has only happened twice in 230 years though.

Not especially surprising given the way American politics works, but definitely something that warrants further investigation!

Shush we are winding up Dan.

Oh sorry.

Yeah Dan, what a ridiculous, err, nonsense comment or something.

Corazon de Leon wrote:
Moggy wrote:
Dannie Lennox wrote:There's never been a situation where a Democratic president has had to stand down and another Democratic president has been re elected. That's kind of crazy.

Well there has. Just not for a long time.

It’s quite interesting that consecutive different presidents being elected from the Democratic Party has only happened twice in 230 years though.

Not especially surprising given the way American politics works, but definitely something that warrants further investigation!

Out of interest, and because I can't be bothered to look this up myself, how often has it happened for the Republicans?

The stat has much less weight if both parties have been equally crap at getting consecutive different presidents elected!

Corazon de Leon

Jenuall wrote:
Corazon de Leon wrote:
Moggy wrote:
Dannie Lennox wrote:There's never been a situation where a Democratic president has had to stand down and another Democratic president has been re elected. That's kind of crazy.

Well there has. Just not for a long time.

It’s quite interesting that consecutive different presidents being elected from the Democratic Party has only happened twice in 230 years though.

Not especially surprising given the way American politics works, but definitely something that warrants further investigation!

Out of interest, and because I can't be bothered to look this up myself, how often has it happened for the Republicans?

The stat has much less weight if both parties have been equally crap at getting consecutive different presidents elected!

I had a think about this and actually, Dan's stat is a little misleading in the sense that while he's talking about presidents who have served full eight year terms being succeeded by other democratic presidents, the stat misses out some anomalies.

This is a full list of Republicans who have succeeded other Republicans.

Most recently they had the Reagan to Bush changeover in the 1988 election but they've managed it seven times:

Ulysses S Grant to Rutherford B Hayes
Rutherford B Hayes to James A Garfield
(Chester A Arthur succeeded James A Garfield as he died in office after only a few months)
William McKinley to Teddy Roosevelt
Teddy Roosevelt to William Howard Taft
Calvin Coolidge to Herbert Hoover (Coolidge succeeded Warren Harding but he died in office so I wouldn't count that)
(Gerald Ford succeeded Richard Nixon due to the latter's resignation)
Ronald Reagan to George H W Bush

Of those, Reagan served his full term of eight years, as did Theodore Roosevelt and Ulysses S Grant. So the answer to your question is that six Republicans have succeeded other Republican presidents, and three of those presidents had served a full eight year term. Democratically, these are the same statistics:

Martin Van Buren succeeded Andrew Jackson
James Buchanan succeeded Franklin Pierce
Harry S Truman succeeded Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Roosevelt died in office but Truman was subsequently elected in his own right)
Lyndon B Johnson succeeded John F Kennedy (Again, Kennedy died in office but LBJ was subsequently elected)

So of those, Van Buren served a full eight years and FDR served for twelve years, so the Dems had an unbroken line of Presidents from 1933 to 1953. With that in mind, I'd call it four Democratic successions, with two of the succeeded presidents having served a full term in office.

If any of that makes sense.

And which of those had combat experience?

Wasn't it the case for a very long time that the Democrats were basically what Republicans are today, but then it switched in the last 100 years or so? Sure I read/heard/made up that somewhere.

Corazon de Leon

OrangeRKN wrote:And which of those had combat experience?

Not sure if you're having what I believe they call "a laugh," but here you are:

Ulysses S Grant served under the Union in the American Civil War and was the commander of the army from 1864-69.
Rutherford B Hayes was a Brigadier General in the Union Army during the Civil War.
James Garfield served as a Major General in the Union Army during the Civil War
Teddy Roosevelt did all sorts of stuff. Served in the National Guard and was a volunteer cavalryman who fought in the Spanish-American War and won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1906.
Calvin Coolidge was a career politician - no army service as far as I know.
Herbert Hoover never served, but was heavily involved in war relief and the distribution of food and supplies in Europe during World War I
Reagan was a captain in the USAF during World War II
Herbie Bush was a Lieutenant in the Navy during World War II

Andrew Jackson was a Major General in the US Army who was involved in the Revolutionary War as a youth and the War of 1812.
Martin Van Buren never served - he practiced law before moving into politics.
Franklin Pierce - Brigadier General in the US Army who fought in the Mexican-American War.
James Buchanan - Served as a private in the Pennsylvania Militia and defended Baltimore in the War of 1812.
Franklin Roosevelt - unlike his fifth cousin, FDR never saw any military service. He was the Secretary of the Navy under Woodrow Wilson.
Harry Truman fought in World War I as a Captain in the US Army - there's an old idiom about him firing the final shots in two World Wars as his unit fought more or less right through to the armistice, and he also made the decision to drop nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
John F Kennedy served in the Navy during the Second World War - famously survived his boat being cut in half in an attack and received a purple heart for his actions. His brother was blown up over the English Channel during the war.
Lyndon B Johnson was a commander in the Navy from 1941-42 and won a silver star for gallantry. He was a reservist right through until the 1960s.

Corazon de Leon

Preezy wrote:Wasn't it the case for a very long time that the Democrats were basically what Republicans are today, but then it switched in the last 100 years or so? Sure I read/heard/made up that somewhere.

You're bang on. Here's an article on it:

https://www.livescience.com/34241-democratic-republican-parties-switch-platforms.html

Dat knowledge :datass:

Corazon de Leon wrote:
OrangeRKN wrote:And which of those had combat experience?

Not sure if you're having what I believe they call "a laugh," but here you are...

I was, but now I'm just impressed :lol:

Which president is worth the most in scrabble?

Yep, it's why the republicans can claim to be the party of the minorities even though today they're about as far away from that as they can get.

What I find really infuriating about US politics is how easily they can just kick people off voting rolls and decide to change district boundaries in ways that's amazingly obviously to benefit one party.
I'm very much a 1 person 1 vote kind of guy and I don't give a gooseberry fool what you've done you still get a vote. This idea republicans have that having a police record makes you ineligible to vote is a disgrace especially as minorities are disproportionately targeted by lawmakers and sent to prison more often for often petty crimes that really shouldn't involve a prison sentence.

OrangeRKN wrote:
Corazon de Leon wrote:
OrangeRKN wrote:And which of those had combat experience?

Not sure if you're having what I believe they call "a laugh," but here you are...

I was, but now I'm just impressed

Which president is worth the most in scrabble?

I just had a fantastic idea.
Maybe instead of holding an election in 2020 the 2 main parties candidates should decide the result by just playing a board game and the winner gets the White House? It would be pretty strawberry floating epic TV watching them play something like Axis & Allies or the X-Com board game and they could televise all the practice matches for some juicy promo TV.

It's also tailor made for the US as they can argue for years afterwards about how the dice went against them and must have been loaded or that the cards were stacked and it's all part of a conspiracy. They love endless, soul crushingly stupid political arguments so it's perfect.