Did George Smathers really defeat Congressman Claude Pepper in a 1950 congressional election?
Campaign distortions often include certain amounts of truth but create false impressions. The classic example of this was a speech made by Rep. George Smathers of Florida in a Democratic primary campaign of 1950 for a U.S. Senate nomination in Florida.Smathers told an audience of rural folk that incumbent Claude Pepper was "a known extrovert," practiced "celibacy" before marriage, practiced "nepotism" with his sister-in-law, "matriculated" with women in college, that his sister was "a thespian" and his brother "a practicing homo sapien."
Smathers carried the rustic vote and won the election.
That sort of tactic works when you have relatively few sources of info and folks aren’t paying close attention.
I believe that Americans make the right choice when they’re both engaged and have the information necessary to base a decision. The internets and social media have taken care of available information aspect. Not perfectly, but good enough. And people are most definitely engaged. Hence Milhous having the problems that he is. I suspect that in the last 2 days he has lost 10% of his support. That’s yuuuuge.