A US election in which two of the candidates were the current president and a former president.
An election in which a third candidate was voted against two others.
Neither the current president nor the former president did much of a job, and the two parties were evenly matched.
One year the Republicans will win, the next the Democrats will win. The Americans were stuck in a loop.
Each party seemed satisfied “if we can defeat the other party without choosing our own candidate.”
It was an “unwanted rematch with an unloved candidate.”
While this may seem to represent the upcoming 2024 presidential election in November, that is not the case.
This was the setting for the 1892 presidential election between incumbent Republican Hoosier Benjamin Harrison and Democrat Grover Cleveland, who served as president from 1884 to 1888.
Cleveland lost to Harrison, who served as president from 1888 to 1892. Cleveland was about to become the first president to serve two non-consecutive terms.
In 1892, there was a fairly viable third-party challenge. Groups from the Grange Party and the Knights of Labor joined together to form the Populist Party. The presidential candidate was Congressman James B. Weaver of Iowa. Weaver received 8.5% of the popular vote, carrying Kansas, Colorado, Nevada, and Idaho, and will also share the electoral vote in North Dakota, giving her a total of 21 electoral votes.
The populist platform included government ownership of the railroads, strict civil service regulation, a domestic currency issued directly by the government to the people without the use of banking companies, free and unlimited coinage of silver and gold, graduated income taxes, state and national included revenue. Limited to necessary government expenses, telegraph and telephone companies are owned by the government, and unless there is actual need, all land owned by railroads and other companies, and all land owned by foreigners, is reclaimed by the government. actually own it. Settlers only.
When Cleveland ran for office in 1884, he was governor of New York. His opponent was James Blaine, then Secretary of State under current President Chester Arthur.
Mr. Blaine defeated Mr. Arthur at the Republican convention (there were no primaries in those days!), becoming the latest example of a sitting president having his party's nomination rejected (a warning to Joe Biden?).
The 1884 election was best known for its muddy fights, with each candidate accusing the other of scandalous conduct, and the conversation turned to personalities.
The election was a close one, with Cleveland winning by less than 1% of the popular vote but winning the electoral vote by 219 to 182 (201 electoral votes were needed for victory at the time).
It was during this campaign that news broke that Cleveland, a bachelor in 1874, had fathered a child with a widow, Maria Halpin. While Halpin spent time in a psychiatric hospital (she was admitted under strange circumstances), the boy, now 10 years old, was adopted and lived apart from his mother.
Cleveland, aware that denying the affair was hopeless, admitted that he had been “illicitly acquainted” with Halpin. His rationale was that Halpin had quite freely expressed his affection for some of the governor's friends, all well-known Buffalo businessmen. Cleveland asserted his paternal authority to protect them. Cleveland said Halpin helped name the boy and place him with a caring family.
Halpin's story in an 1884 interview with the Chicago Tribune was quite different. She claimed that Cleveland came into her room and that the sex was not consensual. According to Halpin, he was forceful and violent. She claimed he was sworn to silence. She later announced her pregnancy to Cleveland, and she said she had no doubts about the father of her child.
This story made headlines in major newspapers in 1884. Was Cleveland really complicit in the “seduction and destruction” of this pious woman? Was Halpin a prostitute trying to make money by scamming a respectable man running on a clean government ticket?
Cleveland's personal life turns out not to be so explosive that Blaine trades Congressional favors for cash. Cleveland won New York in his 1884 election by less than 2,000 votes.
In 1888, former Senator Harrison was nominated on the eighth vote of the Republican convention. Grover Cleveland was unanimously nominated by the Democratic Party.
The main issue was tariff policy. The president proposed significant tariff reductions. Harrison wanted them high. Cleveland opposed pensions and currency gouging during the Civil War, antagonizing veterans and farmers. Although Cleveland won the popular vote, Harrison won with a majority of the Electoral College (this is the only time a sitting president of either party lost reelection despite winning the popular vote).
The 1892 election again centered on debate over tariff rates. As mentioned above, although the populist parties did not win, they forced Democrats and Republicans to think more about issues such as income taxes, direct democracy, and economic reform.
Will this election be a “boring replay” of 1888? Is today important?
Certain ideas arose from the 1892 election. Initiatives, referendums, primaries, and recalls were being experimented with as “instruments of democracy.'' The Muckrakers looked closely at specific incidents such as strikes and lynchings.
These new tools also facilitated unscrupulous innovation. After Cleveland's victory, Southern Democrats emboldened themselves to promote Jim Crow voting laws, creating new obstacles to black voting in the South that had lasted for generations. The 1892 election was the first sign of the shape of the 20th century, for better or for worse.
This election marks the fifth consecutive election in which a candidate who did not receive a majority of the popular vote won. The only time an incumbent has been defeated in consecutive elections was Gerald Ford in 1976 and Jimmy Carter in 1980. Will this be repeated for him in 2024?
Every four years, voters pretend to expect a climate election that will solve all their problems, defeat their enemies, and determine the true meaning of America. We have become good at being scared and bored. Even the “possible death of democracy” seems like a replay.
In 1892, voters began to think they were small when they saw the same two ordinary men running for office again. In 2024, we have to start thinking about other options, perhaps outside of the political cycle.
Perhaps change will come not just from elections, but from those surrounding them. It may take a few more elections before voters get tired of crushing each other. We may have to completely deny our imaginations about these two political parties, even if we prefer one side to the other.
