Posted on 11/07/2004 9:48:25 AM PST by Armedanddangerous
Larry O'Donnell running his silly mouth again..now talking a new civil war..a real one..!
That's the point, capitan. Wallace's campaign was effectively over on May 16th. Through May 16th, though, with Muskie out of the picture, Wallace had won 5 states at the time his campaign ended due to an attempted assassination to 3 for McGovern to 4 for Humphrey. While the race remained a closely divided contest it cannot be denied that Wallace had the lead in states won through the assassination attempt. Only with him out of the picture did McGovern start racking up wins
That's the point, capitan. Wallace's campaign was effectively over on May 16th. Through May 16th, though, with Muskie out of the picture, Wallace had won 5 states at the time his campaign ended due to an attempted assassination to 3 for McGovern to 4 for Humphrey. While the race remained a closely divided contest it cannot be denied that Wallace had the lead in states won through the assassination attempt. Only with him out of the picture did McGovern start racking up wins
That's the point, capitan. Wallace's campaign was effectively over on May 16th. Through May 16th, though, with Muskie out of the picture, Wallace had won 5 states at the time his campaign ended due to an attempted assassination to 3 for McGovern to 4 for Humphrey. While the race remained a closely divided contest it cannot be denied that Wallace had the lead in states won through the assassination attempt. Only with him out of the picture did McGovern start racking up wins. Before Wallace was shot McGovern won 3 out of 15 primaries (including Maryland and Michigan, which were the day after and thus weren't impacted by Wallace's halt in campaigning). After Wallace was shot McGovern won 5 out of 6, or EXACTLY what I said - the remaining primaries swung to the hard left!
The underlying story is, however, that the south did not solidly support Wallace. Most southern states did not even hold primary elections. Of those that did not, Texas, Georgia, Virginia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Arkansas supported another candidate over Wallace. Both McGovern and Humphrey had already shown strength in the south and elsewhere.
From a May 29, 1972 Time magazine article: "As a sheer political happening, the shooting of George Wallace was melodramatically timed. The very next morning, the voters of Michigan and Maryland went to the primary polls to give Wallace two of the most impressive victories of his career. In Maryland, Wallace took 39% of the vote, trailed by Humphrey with 27% and McGovern with 22%.
"In Michigan, the two major candidates had all but conceded the primary to Wallace. The busing issue was too hot. But the surprise was the extraordinary breadth of Wallace's victory. He came in with 51% of the vote, v. 27% for McGovern and a humiliating 16% for Humphrey.
"In a survey for TIME by the attitude research firm of Daniel Yankelovich, Inc., 66% of voters interviewed at the polls said that crime and violence was one of the primary issues of the campaign -- which may have been in part a reflection of the Wallace shooting the afternoon before. The poll also disclosed that, as seemed to be the case in Maryland, there were a few voters who switched to Wallace in sympathy over the shooting. Reports TIME Correspondent Gregory Wierzynski: 'Interviews with Wallace voters left me with the impression that the man had grown into something much bigger than the regional candidate he was in Wisconsin. An impressive number of people expressed genuine admiration, almost reverence, for Wallace.'" "Humphrey was the day's big loser. In two states where labor and blacks -- his old allies -- are important, he averaged a meager one-fifth of the vote. It was a bad omen as Humphrey looked forward to California on June 6. His coalition showed at least some signs of disintegration."
it's amazing that man has any mouth left.
Not all cities are owned by the democrats. I think it is simplest to think of blue and red counties.
I followed several counties in Ohio and Florida throughout the election evening. Once returns started coming in, a county's margin could be predicted to within one point. I have to believe that Rove worked right down to the precinct level to get the turnout he needed.
In spite of our fears, I have seen no evidence of massive double voting. It does seem possible that in some states a few dozen extra votes per county could have shifted the state's results. It would be safer and easier, however, to get a few more legal votes, which is what Rove seems to have done.
And that he did, capitan. Did you not bother to read your own source again? Before he dropped out because of the assassination attempt Wallace had won more states than any other candidate. McGovern had won only 3 states out of 15. With Wallace gone, McGovern won 5 of the next 6 giving him a strong boost toward obtaining the nomination at the convention.
The underlying story is, however, that the south did not solidly support Wallace.
How so? Save the tiny border state of West Virginia, there is not one single southern primary that Wallace lost. I suppose there are dates somewhere on the non-primary state's conventions which would tell when they happened, but so far you have failed to provide any. Since the date of the assassination attempt is key to understanding where his support came from the absence of that information would seem to undermine your argument.
It should also be noted that Wallace finished a strong second to Humphrey in Pennsylvania and Indiana, second to McGovern by only a few points in New Mexico, second to McGovern in Oregon, and second to McGovern in Wisconsin. It is thus a reasonable summary to state that Wallace was doing the strongest of the major Democrat candidates (having 5 primaries outright, more than any other candidate, and having come in second in 5 others) until the assassination attempt derailed his candidacy.
There were only three southern primary elections, and they were all before the assassination attempt. By the time Wallace was shot, the primary season was almost over, and most of the states had determined the makeup of their convention delegations. More from the May 1972 Time article:
"In any case, Wallace was determined to go on, and his followers across the nation were inspired by adversity. Fresh recruits hurried into his campaign offices to volunteer. With his victories in the Maryland and Michigan primaries, he could go to the Democratic Convention or send his ambassadors there -- armed with some 400 delegate votes. What he might do with that strength is difficult to foretell..."
"Wallace's political future is unpredictable. Last week was certainly the crest of his ill-planned but impressive drive through the primaries. All through the spring, in fact, Wallace has had the air of a man astonished by his own successes; with his ramshackle organization, one basic, evangelical speech and paper buckets to take up the collection, his victories have left him wondering whether he should not have attempted more. There were no primary states left in which he had arranged extensive campaigns even before the shooting -- although last week from his hospital room he ordered his men to go ahead with more rallies and TV ads in Rhode Island, Oregon and New Mexico. In California, local groups have organized a write-in campaign. Where public appearances are called for, Wallace's men are setting up a kind of speaker's bureau of stand-ins. Among the volunteers: former California Superintendent of Public Instruction Max Rafferty, now a dean at Alabama's Troy State University, and Georgia's Lieut. Governor Lester Maddox..."
"It is possible that Wallace's week of pain and victory will recede into comparative political unimportance as the primary campaign swings into crucial two-man contests between Humphrey and McGovern next month in delegate-rich California and New York. McGovern's aides expect their candidate to win California, with its winner-take-all package of 271 delegates, and follow that with a big delegate harvest in New York. Expecting that enough uncommitted and Muskie delegates will join them then, McGovern's supporters hope to muster the required 1,509 delegates on the first ballot at Miami Beach. Says McGovern Adviser Mike Feldman: 'He won't have to deal with Wallace at all.'
"Humphrey's camp plans on roughly the reverse scenario. But a number of Democratic professionals can envision a situation in which McGovern and Humphrey each fetch up 300 or 400 delegates short of the nomination. 'In the absence of a first-ballot nomination for McGovern,' says one Democratic official, 'Wallace and his votes could be a major factor in determining what happens on the second ballot.'
"But it is difficult to imagine what kind of accommodation either McGovern or Humphrey could make with George Wallace. Neither would bend very far to Wallace on civil rights. Some have suggested that one of them might somehow wind up with Wallace as a running mate, but even in a curious political year, the idea seemed farfetched. Yet according to one shrewd Southern observer, the vice presidency may be exactly what Wallace has in mind. Says South Carolinian Harry Dent, a political adviser to President Nixon: 'He'd like to get a platform he can crow over. But he knows that platforms don't amount to much. He wants somebody to bend over him and say `Uncle.' He wants respectability. I think he sees visions of a vice-presidential nomination.'"
"Did you not bother to read your own source again?"
The source for the primary dates and winners is Congressional Quarterly and you can go over to the library and read it for yourself. It also details the results of how the other states distributed their delegates for the 1972 democratic convention. It seems to me that it is your thesis that is entirely unsupported. Your analysis is superficial. You'll never get your PhD that way.
Does this jackhole really expect me to believe that there is a net transfer of payments OUT of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami and New York? Hey Lawrence, good luck trying to get the rural parts of the blue states to go along with your plan.
Does this jackhole really expect me to believe that there is a net transfer of payments OUT of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami and New York? Hey Lawrence, good luck trying to get the rural parts of the blue states to go along with your plan.
Review the delegate count. You place too much emphasis on primaries and forget about party politics. He was in third. "I coulda been a contendah."
Look at the Waco, Branch Davidian fiasco. That is what O'Donnell is meaning by "Civil War" here. The state imposing itself on the dumb rednecks and bringing them back into line.
More like a consolidation of tyranny than civil war. But, he's trying to make it sound righteous somehow.
Correct me if I've missed something, but exactly when did Maryland cease to be a southern state and exactly when did it migrate in time from a day after the assassination attempt to an unspecified date before it?
By the time Wallace was shot, the primary season was almost over, and most of the states had determined the makeup of their convention delegations.
Your own list puts six primaries remaining after the shooting, eight if you include the two on the next day. You're just arguing for the sake of arguing now after being confronted with the fact that, as of the shooting, Wallace was essentially the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination. He had won more states outright than any other candidate and finished second in five more, often by a few percentage points. In short, he had finished either first or second in 10 of the first 15 primaries. You may not like that fact but it's there and it falls under the realm of historical "what ifs" given an alternate reality in which Wallace was not shot.
Wrong as usual. He eventually fell to third AFTER the assassination attempt but as of May 16th Wallace had an estimated 320 delegates placing him in a narrow first on that date over McGovern with Humphrey in third (the exact number of delegates was not known yet as portions of the formula had not been decided by the DNC). The only way you can reduce Wallace to third is to look at the convention itself. But to do so is also to employ a skewed count that disadvantages Wallace AFTER the assassination attempt effectively ended his run given that one cannot easily campaign from a hospital bed. It is an open question as to what would have happened had Wallace not been shot. Would the southern and great plains caucus and convention states have rallied behind him on a stronger anti-McGovern drive than Mills and others were able to mount? Would he have picked up New Mexico which he lost to McGovern by only 4% despite being in a hospital bed? Would he have finished stronger in Oregon where he came in a distant second? We'll never know.
With regard to the Wisconsin primary you mentioned, Time magazine (April 17, 1972) reported:
"-- George McGovern, hitherto regarded as a one-issue antiwar champion of the liberal-left, exploited his own superb organization in the state, tapped deep wells of economic discontent and, by winning a 30% plurality, transformed himself at last into a major candidate. In Wisconsin his support was astonishingly broad, bracketing liberals, conservatives, blue-collar workers, farmers, suburbanites and the young.
"-- George Wallace, with the help of 35% of the G.O.P. voters who crossed over to vote Democratic, similarly appealed to a restive mood of 'the little man.' Although he campaigned for only eight days in Wisconsin, Wallace came in second, with 22% of the vote. Adding the Wallace and McGovern totals, 52% of the voters cast ballots for anti-Establishment candidates."
What is your source for your delegate count?
The Washington Post reported a few days after the election in Maryland that Wallace was at approximately 320 (again they didn't know for sure because the DNC had not set the full allotment formula yet). At the same time Humphrey was still in the mid 200's and McGovern was at around 300. That makes Wallace the frontrunner in every sense of the word. He ended up getting nearly 400 at the convention because delegate allottment was proportional and Wallace still managed to finish a close second in states like New Mexico (he lost to McGovern by only 4 points there) after the shooting.
He was not in a position to gain many more, because his campaign had been largely based in the south and industrial mid-west.
Sure he was. When he won Michigan in a landslide the newspapers heralded it as a growth in the Wallace campaign outside of the south. He subsequently finished second in Oregon and narrowly missed McGovern in New Mexico despite being confined to a hospital bed. It is not at all unreasonable to speculate that the anti-McGovern efforts in the remaining convention and caucus southern states would have coalesced around Wallace had he not been shot. Instead they ended up disorganized and without a clear candidate, giving their votes to Jackson and Wilbur Mills among others.
Both Humphrey and McGovern had more deleagtes at that time, because of the distribution of delegates to that date in the non-primary states.
Again you are simply wrong. McGovern trailed him slightly, Humphrey was still in the 200's at that point, and all the newspaper estimates of delegate strength had Wallace at around 320, thus giving him the lead. McGovern overtook Wallace a little over a week later when some western caucus and convention states went for him and brought him up to about 400, but by that time Wallace was completely removed from the campaign trail.
As for your Time Magazine article, I find it unconvincing in that its date is A MONTH BEFORE THE KEY PERIOD IN WALLACE'S CAMPAIGN! The high water mark for Wallace was, ironically, the day after the shooting in which he handedly carried a large northern state and another southern one. By May 15th Wallace was doing substantially better than anybody had ever expected of him. The dynamics in a hotly contested presidential primary can change overnight, to say nothing of a month's time. Just ask Howard Dean.
The three southern primaries I cited were Florida (Mar 14), Tennessee (May 4), and North Carolina (May 6). I used southern in the sense of the old CSA, which included neither West Virginia (which you referred to as a "tiny border state") or Maryland. If you wish to include them, go ahead.
"You're just arguing for the sake of arguing now after being confronted with the fact that, as of the shooting, Wallace was essentially the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination."
You have presented NO evidence or citation at all - merely your rank speculation.
Then specify so. I'm using it on the sense of the Mason-Dixon line. You have presented NO evidence or citation at all - merely your rank speculation.
Go back and reread my post. The figures I gave you were reported in the Washington Post after his Maryland victory, i.e. May 17, 1972. The New York Times reported similar figures a few days later and reported McGovern's jump to the 400's a week later after picking up some caucuses.
"I'm using it on the sense of the Mason-Dixon line."
Then so specify. You earlier use of "border state" for West Virginia could similarly include Maryland.
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