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Politcal Conventions And Electoral Debacles · Conversations: Special Guests with Preston Scott

• 0:12
  Speaker 1: Good morning and welcome ruminators, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls,
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: males and females only. It's the Morning Show with Preston Scott.
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: That's Jose Can you see I'm Preston and joining me
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  Speaker 1: in studio is our resident historian. He is doctor ed
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Moore a little more history. Hello, good friend, how are you?
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  Speaker 2: I'm good? Yeah, happy to be here.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Every day is a.
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  Speaker 1: New day, you and I are. We're in that era
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  Speaker 1: and stage of life where you know, I just explain
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  Speaker 1: to people, if I wake up, sit up, and stand up,
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  Speaker 1: it's a good day.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. I hear the birds chirping, and it's like, okay,
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  Speaker 2: I'm here another day. I'm here.
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  Speaker 1: You know. We've got, obviously in the rearview mirror, the
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  Speaker 1: Republican National Convention, which I thought was one of the
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  Speaker 1: best they've rolled out in a very long time. We've
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  Speaker 1: got the Democrat National Convention disclosure I can't bring myself
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  Speaker 1: to watch yet. But the subject of political conventions and
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  Speaker 1: this thing that happens every four years, where does it
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  Speaker 1: get its roots?
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  Speaker 2: Well, it really doesn't have roots. It's you know, you're
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  Speaker 2: familiar with the Bible, Ecclesiastes. What has been will be again,
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  Speaker 2: and what has been done will be done again. There
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  Speaker 2: is nothing new under the sun. Right, Okay, Political parties
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  Speaker 2: and conventions in America have been a mess since John Adams. Basically,
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  Speaker 2: if you want to go back that far, George Washington
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  Speaker 2: won two elections relatively unopposed. There were no parties. He
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  Speaker 2: was just an independent guy, pushed by congressman, pushed by
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  Speaker 2: people in the back room. John Adams took second place
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  Speaker 2: in both of those. So under the old rules, John
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  Speaker 2: Adams was the vice president.
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  Speaker 1: Whoever came in second.
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  Speaker 2: If I said, yeah, it's kind of funny if you
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  Speaker 2: go back to seventeen ninety two, which was the second election,
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  Speaker 2: George Clinton. I always get a laugh out of his
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  Speaker 2: name because George Clinton locally here parliament funkadelic. Yeah, came
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  Speaker 2: in third. Yeah, he got fifty electoral voting, no way, Yeah, yeah,
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  Speaker 2: it's kind of So that's why I loved reading all
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  Speaker 2: this history stuff, because you find these little quirky things
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  Speaker 2: and go, hey, George Clinton, that's a cool name.
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  Speaker 1: Well let me And obviously we might be guessing at
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  Speaker 1: some of this, but maybe history tells us was George
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  Speaker 1: Washington the go to for the simple reason he was
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  Speaker 1: the military leader, and that's kind of been a default
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  Speaker 1: of history.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, he was the most well known, nationally respected person,
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  Speaker 2: if you will. I mean there were a lot of
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  Speaker 2: other people all around. Ben Franklin, Samuel.
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  Speaker 1: Adams, Sure, I meant.
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  Speaker 2: I mean Samuel Adams did more than have a beer
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  Speaker 2: named after him. You know. Yeah, there are all kinds
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  Speaker 2: of people around, but he was the guy, and we
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  Speaker 2: haven't had any of those the guy really since then.
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  Speaker 2: And part of it is we've started. I guess what's
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  Speaker 2: not new is where we have now, where we're just
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  Speaker 2: so divided, and the divisions really started back in the
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  Speaker 2: eighteen hundreds. The election of eighteen hundred was very difficult one.
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  Speaker 2: It's it's been here partisan. Actually, politics used to be
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  Speaker 2: a lot nastier. I mean it was very nasty. You
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  Speaker 2: had conventions, forget which one it was. There's one in
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  Speaker 2: New York, a convention in New York that won one
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  Speaker 2: hundred and three ballots before they determined who would be
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  Speaker 2: the presidential nominee and with the audience throwing things and
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  Speaker 2: spitting on the delegates and delegates I think one hundred
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  Speaker 2: delegates from that convention went home. You know, it's politics
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  Speaker 2: have always been a messy sport. The nest didn't start
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  Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty eight in Chicago. It's been here.
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  Speaker 1: Conventions were then a necessary part of the electoral process,
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  Speaker 1: or what was the purpose of them?
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  Speaker 2: Actually, the first convention was started eighteen thirty one. I
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  Speaker 2: think the party was the Anti Masonic Party. Let mean
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  Speaker 2: that was the party, fair enough, Yeah, And it started
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  Speaker 2: up in the Northeast and they were concerned about Masons
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  Speaker 2: and Freemasons and the influence on bart politics. And they
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  Speaker 2: had it and then the Democrats went, h that's not
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  Speaker 2: a bad idea. So later that year they had a convention.
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  Speaker 2: But the conventions were back room. Everything's going to happen
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  Speaker 2: in the back room, and you know, maybe eight people
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  Speaker 2: determined who the nominee was really going to be. So politics,
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  Speaker 2: politics has always been ugly.
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  Speaker 1: The Morning Show with Preston Scott doctor edmore with me
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: in studio. We're talking history and appropriately electoral history. As
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  Speaker 1: we've gone through primary will I will not goad you
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  Speaker 1: into commenting on twenty two percent voter turnout statewide because
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  Speaker 1: that's just as.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, they up that it's actually yesterday was in nineteen percent.
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  Speaker 2: We choose poorly and we do it badly. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: that's all I can say on that.
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  Speaker 1: But if we were just talking broadly speaking, elections throughout
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  Speaker 1: our country's history have been remarkably balanced and appropriate outcomes.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, the elector college works, even though people about it.
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  Speaker 1: How they arrive at it, they just because they made
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  Speaker 1: it up.
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  Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, because there really wasn't the voters back in
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  Speaker 2: those days. I mean if you read it, and I
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  Speaker 2: was involved in the two thousand election here in Florida,
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  Speaker 2: and when people suddenly realized it was like a light
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  Speaker 2: went off. Oh wait, you mean state legislators they can
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  Speaker 2: do whatever they want and selecting who gets picked to
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  Speaker 2: go to the electoral College you don't have to do.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, the law is written and the way it
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  Speaker 2: is in the Constitution. You don't have to take the
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  Speaker 2: popular vote from each state and determine who's going to
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  Speaker 2: be president of the United States. The legislature makes that determination.
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  Speaker 2: There's thirteen states, maybe out of fifty, that require them
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  Speaker 2: that they're bound. I'm not quite sure what the penalty
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  Speaker 2: might be. Maybe a slap on the wrist. Og if
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: you vote for President Scott instead of Ed Moore, you know,
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  Speaker 2: oh boy, you're going to get in trouble now. And
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  Speaker 2: but they do. And traditionally they do send delegates or
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  Speaker 2: electors electoral votes in each state capital. They don't go
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  Speaker 2: I'll go to Washington and vote. Okay, they do it
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  Speaker 2: in the state capitals.
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  Speaker 1: But we're drilling down to add something. And it's and
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  Speaker 1: you know, you listen to the show from time to time,
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  Speaker 1: your schedule allows. It's a point that I'm pretty passionate about.
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  Speaker 1: We're not a democracy. We're constitutional republican republic, absolutely, and
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  Speaker 1: that's a pretty important distinction. It's not popular vote.
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  Speaker 2: Well, it is popular vote down at the base level, right,
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  Speaker 2: you know, but when you start moving up, it's a
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  Speaker 2: structural vote. It's very organized and very structured. There have
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  Speaker 2: been four elections eighteen seventy six, eighteen eighty eight, two thousand,
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  Speaker 2: and two thousand and sixteen where the losing candidate got
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  Speaker 2: more votes than who ended up becoming President of the
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  Speaker 2: United States. Only four out of all of these elections.
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  Speaker 2: That's quite remarkable. Actually, most of them were relatively close.
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  Speaker 2: Hayes be Tillden by two hundred and fifty thousand votes.
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  Speaker 2: Back in eighteen seventy six, Harrison beat Cleveland, who was
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  Speaker 2: the incumbent president at the time, by about one hundred
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  Speaker 2: thousand votes nationwide. Bush beat Gore, actually me, excuse me.
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  Speaker 2: Gore beat Bush by five hundred and forty thousand votes,
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  Speaker 2: yet he lost in the electoral college. And then Clinton
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  Speaker 2: had just a little less than three million votes more
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  Speaker 2: than Donald Trump did, but she lost in the electoral college.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, it's happened four times, not that often. There's
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  Speaker 2: been some remarkable elections. But you know, we're in the
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  Speaker 2: middle of a convention right now. You finished the Republican convention,
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: now in the middle of the Democrat convention, and people, well,
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  Speaker 2: look it's it's a coup. You're seeing a coup occurred here.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: When you know coup's there's much ado about a coup.
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  Speaker 2: There's been way more adventurous things happened in political parties
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  Speaker 2: over two hundred years of our country than what just.
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  Speaker 1: Happened twenty one past the hour. You think we've done
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  Speaker 1: this once or twice? How many years has it.
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  Speaker 2: Been now we're approaching twenty so probably yeah, but I'm
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  Speaker 2: not sure where.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, you'd think we knew what we were doing. He
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  Speaker 1: kind of set us up, brilliantly doctor edmore with us
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  Speaker 1: we're talking about the electoral process. Elections conventions in American history,
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  Speaker 1: a couple of notable you know, you think it's bad now,
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  Speaker 1: but you should have been.
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  Speaker 2: We should have been there.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Actually the very first real one the Anti Masonic
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  Speaker 2: Party where they were around for about a decade and
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  Speaker 2: they went away. But the Democrats under Andrew Jackson. Andrew
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  Speaker 2: Jackson had my distant cousin, John C. Calhoun as his
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  Speaker 2: vice president and wanted to get rid of him. So
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  Speaker 2: he said, I'll do what those guys did. Let's have
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  Speaker 2: a convention. They had a convention, dumped Calhoun as the VP,
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  Speaker 2: and Martin Van Buren, who then became president, became the
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  Speaker 2: vice president under Andrew Jackson.
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  Speaker 1: A little machination, now, was there a little skullduggery going
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  Speaker 1: on and dumping his VP? Or I mean, because you
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  Speaker 1: could just drag him out in the back and shoot him.
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  Speaker 2: Well, and a lot of it is if you an
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  Speaker 2: in rejection was known for that.
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  Speaker 1: I'm just saying.
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  Speaker 2: But John C. Calhoun, if you know anything about him,
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  Speaker 2: I don't. He was a pretty bad dude.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's a relative of yours. Of course.
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  Speaker 2: He was from South South Carolina. He was one of
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  Speaker 2: the first big secessionists, and if you go through all
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  Speaker 2: of that time frame really up into the twentieth century,
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  Speaker 2: a lot of it had to do with the racial
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  Speaker 2: politics and the Civil War related kinds of stuff there.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, there are a lot of elections. If you
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  Speaker 2: look at the maps, the election maps that shows who
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  Speaker 2: won which states, right where there would be like seven
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: or eight southern states went to this guy and the
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  Speaker 2: rest of the country went the other way. I mean,
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  Speaker 2: it wasn't just George Wallace. This stuff had been going
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  Speaker 2: on for two hundred years, right r. I mean, Wallace
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  Speaker 2: won with five or seven states across the South in
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  Speaker 2: that election and the Nixon election. So there's always been
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  Speaker 2: that kind of tension going on across America. The South
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  Speaker 2: has changed tremendously in the last fifty years.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, that has.
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  Speaker 2: But prior to that, it was what it was, and
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  Speaker 2: it affected a lot of the elections, start starting say
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  Speaker 2: with the eighteen sixty election right on the eve of
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  Speaker 2: the Civil War. I mean, you were right there the.
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  Speaker 1: Democratic He doesn't mean me personally, by the way as
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  Speaker 1: he looks at me, just saying yeah, yeah, no, no,
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  Speaker 1: that's Joe Biden. That was there, But go ahead.
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  Speaker 2: Well, the Democrats of all places had decided they were
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  Speaker 2: going to have their convention in eighteen sixty. Guess where
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  Speaker 2: in Charleston, South Carolina.
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  Speaker 1: No, he did.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, so you got all this tension going on, you
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  Speaker 2: know the places. The whole country is about to get
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  Speaker 2: lit and hey, I know, let's have a big party
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  Speaker 2: in Charleston. Yeah. So the Southern delegates in Charleston, the
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  Speaker 2: Southern delegates walked out. They said, heck with this, We're
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  Speaker 2: going to nominate our own guy. So you ended up
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  Speaker 2: in eighteen sixty. It's how Lincoln actually won because you
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  Speaker 2: had They nominated Breckenridge from Kentucky, who was the VP
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  Speaker 2: under Van Buren. I mean, everybody's related to somebody and
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  Speaker 2: all this stuff. The Northern Democrats picked Stephen Douglas out
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  Speaker 2: of Illinois. Abraham Lincoln was out of Illinois. And then
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  Speaker 2: there was a guy named Bell that was from Tennessee.
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  Speaker 2: I believe interesting when you look at the data from
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  Speaker 2: all these things and what was going on in America.
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  Speaker 2: Stephen Douglass, popular guy, did well across He had the
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  Speaker 2: second most votes in that election. He only got one
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  Speaker 2: electoral vote Missouri, he only got one. But even though
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  Speaker 2: he came in second in the numbers. I mean, that's
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  Speaker 2: where all this tricky stuff starts coming in. Breckenridge got
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  Speaker 2: the second most. Lincoln won eighteen states. Breckenridge won eleven states,
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  Speaker 2: predominantly across the South, and then Bell won three states Kentucky, Tennessee,
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  Speaker 2: and I think West Virginia, Virginia. But here you got
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  Speaker 2: Stephen Douglas, who we know today if you study any
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  Speaker 2: history at all, the Lincoln Douglas debates got the second
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  Speaker 2: most amount of votes and only got one electoral vote.
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  Speaker 2: And that election that was so contentious, Lincoln ended up
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  Speaker 2: winning the Democrats. If you're looking at In nineteen twenty four,
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  Speaker 2: West Virginia congressman named John Davis won the nomination krat
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: nomination on the one hundred and third ballot. He was
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  Speaker 2: the one I was referring to earlier one hundred and
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  Speaker 2: three ballots.
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  Speaker 1: I can't even imagine.
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  Speaker 2: New York City, yeah, one hundred and third. I mean, imagine, okay,
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  Speaker 2: we're going to start over. Imagine the guy up front going,
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  Speaker 2: oh okay, well, let's do it again.
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  Speaker 1: The guy taking role is just like, oh god, please.
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  Speaker 2: It's someone shooting it. You know. He ended up running
• 14:27
  Speaker 2: against New York Governor Al Smith, who was a anti prohibitionist.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: This was, you know, nineteen twenty four, so we were
• 14:34
  Speaker 2: in the middle one of those times where we passed
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: the constitutional Amendment and then unpassed it because you know,
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: you take away drinking, it's just not going to work,
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: especially in politics. Uh. And then the third guy was
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: a guy named William McAdoo, who was a candidate really
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: of the KKK. I mean it's these you know, when
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: you start talking about pastors.
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  Speaker 1: And we're not talking about a Democrat necessarily.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah he was, Oh really, yeah, no way, yeah, oh yeah.
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  Speaker 2: But this is the kind of elections that you have. Well,
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: guess who won that election. Every time there's been a
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: contentious convention, Okay, whether it's primary driven or whatever, every
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: time the contentious party loses in the general election. Every
• 15:20
  Speaker 2: time Calvin Coolidge won that election, you had all that's
• 15:24
  Speaker 2: going on, one hundred and three ballots, all this crazy.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: Stuff, underrated president.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well keeping cool with cal You just kind of went,
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: that's where they keeping cool comes from. Look at those
• 15:34
  Speaker 2: crazy people. They can't figure out what they're doing. I
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: know what I'm doing.
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  Speaker 1: Nice stuff. Good to see it.
• 15:41
  Speaker 2: Good to be here. We've got about eight more to
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: talk about, but not today.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: We can keep talking about this next month because I
• 15:49
  Speaker 1: think we have another election coming up.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: We do doctor, It'll be messy.
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, will doctor ed Moore with me and a little
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: more history on the Morning Show with Preston Scott.
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: Yeah.