"Realigning elections"
J. J.:
Quote from: A18 on October 21, 2005, 11:44:36 AM
No one given just the numbers would pick out 1932 as the high point for this period.
1912: 58.8
1916: 61.6
1920: 49.2
1924: 48.9
1928: 56.9
1932: 56.9
1936: 61.0
1940: 62.5
1944: 55.9
1948: 53.0
As I said, 1940 was a year of higher turnout. Turnout was also higher in 1912.
Where do you get those numbers? There Atlas figures don't show that.
After 1948, the South never voted as resoundingly Democratic again.
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They knew about in 1904 and certainly 1908 when they elected TR's successor. The change occured.
Cleveland was repudiated by the Democratic Party in 1896. Bryan, the nominee three times during this period, opposed it.
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Not important. What's important is that the changes were more drastic than those of 1896-1900, by any reasonable definition.
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Not hardly. The change for the average voter occured in the mid-1930's.
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The Amendment passed Congress on July 12, 1909. Ratification occured in February 1913, about a month prior to Wilson being sworn in. The change occured prior to Wilson.
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If you understood the New Deal, you wouldn't ask thast question. It was was the first large scale intrusion of the Federal Government on private lives.
Wilson was not a proponent of the war, and acturally used the slogan, "He kept us out of war," for the 1916 campaign.
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Reagan was the first president to restrict eligibility requirements, ending aid to children of recipients above the age of 18 and raising the retirement age. No president or nominee (possibly excepting Goldwater) attempted that since 1936. I'd have to really look at Goldwater's position.
A18:
Electoral Realignments: A Critique of an American Genre, David R. Mayhew. Pages 71-74.
Staying the course does not qualify as policy innovation.
Then 1904 is the realigning election.
The Federal Reserve System completely revamped the nation's banking system. The average voter was not on welfare.
It isn't important when the constitutional amendment was passed. It's important when the progressive income tax was enacted.
If you understood World War I, you wouldn't make statements like that. The federal government imposed rationing, product controls, and price controls. It even socialized several industries.
So closing a few holes in Social Security is serious policy innovation? I'm afraid I can't agree.
J. J.:
Quote from: A18 on October 21, 2005, 05:15:27 PM
Electoral Realignments: A Critique of an American Genre, David R. Mayhew. Pages 71-74.
Staying the course does not qualify as policy innovation.
Then 1904 is the realigning election.
If you will look at my first post, you will note that it is a 6-10 year process.
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A sizable majority of the voters are in the Social Security system, or married to someone who is. The Federal Reserve was initially designed to prevent financial panics, like 1907. One of the previous plans was devised by Sen. Aldrich. http://minneapolisfed.org/pubs/region/88-08/reg888a.cfm
This was basically a plan by bankers
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It's incredibly important when the politics changed to permit the passage of the act. There is a lag, always, between legislation is adopted and when it was effective.
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All of which were of limited duration and had no lasting effect. Note that Harding won on a return to "normalcy."
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This was a lot more than closing loopholes. This was a contraction of who would eligible for the largest (in terms of people effected) is about 45 years. Social Security was called "the third rail of American politics." Anyone who touched it, except to expand it, died a political death.
I can still remember the aged Claude Pepper, in the early 1980's, but a Senator from Florida in 1936, taking to the well to scream and about these "massive changes" in Social Security and invoking FDR. This was major because it could not have been done for 43 years.
Take a look at the commentary from that period.
Gustaf:
Realignments are not confined to one election, but usually to a series of elections. 1896 was a veryimportant election because by nominating Bryan Democrats chose to define themselves as the party of the people, of the poor against a Republican elite. Upto that point I think it could have been possible for the parties to move in different directions (i.e. the Republicans becoming the left party and vice versa). By establishing the Democrats as the left party the Progressive element in the GOP was eventually stomped out, a process that really doesn't come to an end until LaFolette in 1924. A left-winged party would eventually be forced to back left-winged economic policies and oppose segregation, something that would eventually drive away the Dixiecrats.
But Emsworth definitely has a point; the elections are more symptoms than causes, obviously (though one could argue that the candidates can sometimes be important, such as Rockefeller v GOldwater or Bryan in 1986).
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