Thursday, February 7, 2008

The Results

All the ballots and raised hands have been counted, the networks have all applied their knowledge of arcane voting procedures, and the estimated delegates have been tallied. So where are we now? Other than Karl Rove now being an election analyst, I mean?

On the Republican side, Mr. “No, I won’t sign your contract!” McCain carried over his South Carolina and Florida wins into a commanding lead. Mitt Romney pussied up and dropped out, confirming that it’s over.

In Romney's defense, he was operating under the handicap that his supporters kept holding up pictures of gloves instead of mitts. That, and he was having trouble getting around with the new asshole Jon Stewart ripped him. Maybe I should have gone ahead and publicly endorsed him, it looks like it couldn't have hurt.

At least the Democratic side remains interesting – in fact, fascinating. Clinton and Obama are in about as close to a dead heat as they could be in pledged delegates, with only Clinton’s big lead in superdelegates – the party machine’s thumb on the scale – giving Clinton a ~100 delegate edge. With Super Tuesday over, we’re in it for the long haul. Imagine all the nasty sniping we might hear! If I could hear a thing over Turd Blossom giggling, that is. Stop it!

I didn’t mention “electability” as a possible criterion on Tuesday. I wonder if that had anything to do with it.

For the first time in generations it could go all the way, we could score an open convention. Ah, the smoky rooms of yore. Riots may be a little too much to ask, but just think: what if Obama has more pledged delegates, but Clinton’s superdelegates give her the majority. Do you think we can call Warren Christopher and James Baker out of retirement again to supervise counting the later ballots?

Salivating aside, some other results: Nobody got my little trivia question from the last two days. Only CTK even tried...

The question: This year, neither party will run an incumbent or former vice president. When’s the last time that happened?

The answer: 1952, Eisenhower vs. Stevenson. (And before that, 1928, Hoover vs. Smith.)

If you’d like a history lesson:

2004 – Bush the Lesser vs. Kerry, Bush was the incumbent
2000 – Bush the Lesser vs. Gore, Gore was the sitting Vice-President
1996 – Dole vs. Clinton, Clinton was the incumbent
1992 – Bush the Greater vs. Clinton, Bush was the incumbent
1988 – Bush the Greater vs. Dukakis, Bush was the sitting Vice-President
1984 – Reagan vs. Mondale, Reagan was the incumbent and Mondale was the former Vice-President
1980 – Reagan vs. Carter, Carter was the incumbent
1976 – Ford vs. Carter, Ford was the incumbent
1972 – Nixon vs. McGovern, Nixon was the incumbent
1968 – Nixon vs. Humphrey, Nixon was the former Vice-President andHumphrey was the sitting Vice-President.
1964 – Goldwater vs. Johnson, Johnson was the incumbent
1960 – Nixon vs. Kennedy, Nixon was the sitting Vice-President
1956 – Eisenhower vs. Stevenson, Eisenhower was the incumbent
1952 – Eisenhower vs. Stevenson

-- Satan

Ask Satan will return tomorrow, but may go on hiatus or at least down in frequency next week, due to lack of questions to answer. So send me more questions! -- by email or in the comments.

7 comments:

Ubermilf said...

Damn!

I thought of this last night when I couldn't sleep!

My other thought was the election after Johnson opted not to run for re-election, but CTK guessed that and was wrong.

Satan said...

Er, CTK guessed Nixon vs. Kennedy, which was 1960. Johnson decided not to run for a final term in 1968, when the eventual nominee was Humphrey. In 1968 both candidates were former Vice-Presidents: Nixon for eight years under Eisenhower, Humphrey for four under Johnson. (I failed to note that Humphrey was the VP earlier, mainly because I forgot, so I just updated the post.)

Looking back at the 1968 primaries there's an amazing contrast between how it all worked then and now. In the first primary, McCarthy beat Johnson - neither Robert Kennedy nor Humphrey were even in the race yet. Kennedy had just won the New York primary over McCarthy when he was shot in June and was well ahead of him in delegates, but both were well behind Humphrey, who had not even run in a single primary. (Though he had surrogates running who would then give him their delegates at the national convention.) Most states didn't have primaries the, the delegates were chosen by the state parties, and in that era the state parties were mostly controlled by machine politicies, such as Daley's political machine in Chicago that put Kennedy over the top in 1960. Though Johnson wasn't running, he still ran the party machine, and in the end he effectively picked the delegate. Had Kennedy lived it might have come out differently, as there were enough non-machine delegates to outvote the Humprey block, but many Kennedy delegates supported Humphrey over McCarty in part due to the divisive primary battles McCarty had with Kennedy. Amazing stuff.

-- Satan

Ubermilf said...

I don't read most things CTK writes.

CTK said...

*weeps*

Satan said...

Ouch. Brutal. Can't we all stop imitating presidental candidates and be nice to each other? Or wait, would that be letting the terrorists win?

-- Satan

Ubermilf said...

Well, if I was to be truthful rather than snarky, I'd have to tell you that I haven't quite slept for two days and when I read CTK's guess, I really thought it said the Humphrey-Nixon one. But before I would answer, I would google it first.

Then I thought of the first post-Truman election. And I would've won! Something or other.

Satan said...

Ouch. When I haven't quite slept for two days it usually means either a) I'm sick as a dog but have to power through anyway, or b) I'm working on a grant proposal. It's hard to tell the two apart.