1828 U.S. Presidential Election

[SWE]

1796: 52.4% Thomas Jefferson
1800: 40% Aaron Burr
1804: 80% Thomas Jefferson
1808: 71% James Madison
1812: 68.4% DeWitt Clinton
1816: 46.7% James Monroe/Rufus King (tie)
1824: 32.4% John Quincy Adams

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1828

Ugh. Adams reluctantly, although I'd probably be a Jackson supporter without hindsight

[Goldwater]

Jackson.

[Supersonic]

Adams.

[Cranberry]

Hard, but I guess Jackson.

[TDAS04]

JQA

[Maxwell]

Jackson

[Mechaman]

Other: Working Men's Party Electors

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

Anybody but Jackson!  Jackson was a demagogic, war-mongering, bigot who neither had the right temperament to be President nor displayed even the smallest measure of respect for those governmental institutions which did not rubber-stamp his every command.  He also dabbled in ethnic cleansing, filled government positions with his political cronies, and appointed Roger Taney to the Supreme Court.  A HP's HP and easily one of the most morally bankrupt men ever elected President.

[Mechaman]

Anybody but Jackson!  Jackson was a demagogic, war-mongering, bigot who neither had the right temperament to be President nor displayed even the smallest measure of respect for those governmental institutions which did not rubber-stamp his every command.  He also dabbled in ethnic cleansing, filled government positions with his political cronies, and appointed Roger Taney to the Supreme Court.  A HP's HP and easily one of the most morally bankrupt men ever elected President.

Granted, but as an Irishman in the early 19th century with no hindsight of how genocidal Andrew Jackson would be towards Native Americans in his presidency but with President John Q. Adams backing a system that had for hundreds of years kept my ancestors in a special level of subhuman caste (ie, denial of basic voting rights, nativist immigration laws, protestant supremacy preached and legislated by New England state legislatures, etc. etc.), I would by no means be in any measure at all inclined to vote National Republican.  And I'm not pulling this out of my ass, any learned historian on late 18th-early 19th century America can back everything I've said about the Federalists/National Republicans anti-lower class bigotry.  I guess it's a good thing that we had Working Men's Party around at this time, which was a more principled advocate for expanded suffrage and common man politics than Andrew Jackson.

I would love to think I would back the anti-slavery anti-racist pro-democracy major party, but that didn't exist until 1854.  As much as many of you would like to think otherwise.

Just saying.

[FEMA Camp Administrator]

Should've done 1820 between Monroe, Adams, and Clinton.

[SPC]

I suspect that much of the fandom of libertarians surrounding Jackson is simply projection, based on the same "enemy of my enemy is my friend" attitude that also led Rothbard to Soviet apologia. Sure, the National Republicans were crony capitalists who supported internal improvements, high tariffs, and a national bank. However, Jackson fails to be substantively better than his opponents on any of these issues. He wasn't against internal improvements unless it was political expedient to do so, literally threatened war over South Carolina's refusal to pay a protectionist tariff, and merely put the funds of the federal government in the hands of politically-connected state banks.

I suspect that a more accurate description of the Democratic Party is an organization designed for rentseeking on behalf of landed interests and the lower classes (as opposed to the National Republicans/Whigs who practiced rentseeking on behalf of manufacturers), rather than any philosophical devotion to individual liberty (with perhaps a few exceptions). The perpetuation of slavery is the most obvious example here, along with pushing westward expansion at below-market rates using land stolen from the Indians, and instituting the spoils system to enable urban political machines.