Posted on 07/17/2024 3:44:26 PM PDT by DoodleBob
Two years ago, former President Donald Trump took to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida, and announced his third presidential bid.
"America's comeback starts right now," he said, calling his time out of office a "pause."
Trump, who was the 45th President of the United States from 2017 to 2021, is now the Republican nominee for the 47th presidency.
He is not the first to try and make his way back into the Oval Office. Many have attempted and failed before him, including Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, Ulysses S. Grant in 1880, Millard Fillmore in 1856 and Martin Van Buren in 1844 and 1848.
In all of American history, only one president — Stephen Grover Cleveland — has succeeded in winning nonconsecutive terms. If Trump wins November's election, he will become the second president to leave the White House and return four years later.
Who was former President Grover Cleveland?
Grover Cleveland ended the Republican Party's nearly three-decade long hold on the presidency when he won the 1884 election, becoming the first Democrat to hold office since the Civil War ended.
The former Buffalo mayor and New York governor had garnered the support of the Democrats and "Mugwumps," Republican reformists who opposed Cleveland's opponent, James G. Blaine. Cleveland built a reputation of honesty in politics amid the corruption of the Gilded Age, earning him the nickname of "Ugly Honest."
During his first term, Cleveland angered railroad companies by forcing them to return 81 million acres of illegally annexed federal land in the west and signed the Interstate Commerce Act, the first federal law regulating railroads. He also signed the Dawes Act, which allowed the government to break up tribal lands to eliminate the social cohesion of Native Americans.
He barred special favors to any economic group, vetoed more than 400 bills and called for the Republican Congress to reduce tariffs. When he was told that he had given Republicans something to vote against in the next election cycle, Cleveland said, "What is the use of being elected or reelected unless you stand for something?"
Despite winning the popular vote by more than 100,000 votes in 1888, he lost his second presidential bid in the electoral college to Benjamin Harrison, 233 to 157.
Like Trump's 2020 run, the election had allegations of voter fraud; unlike 2020, evidence of fraud was clear in some states, according to Smithsonian Magazine. Still, Cleveland accepted defeat with grace, even holding an umbrella over Harrison's head as the nation's 23rd president gave his inauguration speech.
"This noble example which he sets will not be lost upon this country," The New York World wrote of Cleveland's concession, according to The Washington Post.
(Trump skipped President Joe Biden's inauguration in 2021 and still maintains that the 2020 elections were "rigged.")
Cleveland and Harrison came head-to-head again in 1892. Voters had lost confidence in Harrison, whose high-tariff policy was seen as unfriendly to labor; this was punctuated by a wave of violent labor strikes at silver mines that summer. Cleveland achieved a decisive victory, making him both the 22nd and 24th president of the United States.
Cleveland's second term was defined by the Panic of 1893, one of the most severe financial crises America has faced. He repealed the Sherman Silver Purchase Act, which had placed silver as the backing of the U.S. dollar, and maintained the Treasury's gold reserve through what critics saw as "collusion" with Wall Street.
During the Pullman Strike of 1894, Cleveland responded with an iron first, dispatching troops against railroad strikers in Chicago. It resulted in the deaths of more than a dozen workers and earned Cleveland a reputation as a union buster.
Cleveland signed a bill declaring Labor Day a national holiday amid the crisis.
His handling of the economic depression was wildly unpopular, leading to the "greatest realignment of voters since the Civil War," according to the Smithsonian. Democrats lost support everywhere but in the Deep South. Cleveland did not run for a third term. He retired in Princeton, New Jersey, and died on June 24, 1908.
Who succeeded President Grover Cleveland after his second term?
Republican President William McKinley became the 25th president in U.S. history when he bested William Jennings Bryan, who had claimed the Democratic ticket after Cleveland did not seek reelection during the 1896 race.
The election largely came down to monetary policy and addressing the aftermath of the depression. Urban voters feared that the free coinage of silver — which Bryan championed — would be the ruin of the country, helping to tip the scales in McKinley's favor.
What is significant about Grover Cleveland's reelection as president?
Cleveland's presidencies came more than a century before Trump's third bid at the White House this November but hover over the 2024 election for some obvious historical reasons.
If successful in regaining the Oval Office, Trump will join Cleveland as the second president to win a nonconsecutive term like Cleveland.
There's also the chance he follows Martin Van Buren, Millard Fillmore and Teddy Roosevelt as presidents who sought nonconsecutive terms but fell short at the ballot box.
Martin Van Buren in 1844
He was almost as mean as the Van Buren Boys.
Trump discussed Grover Cleveland with Bill O’Reilly as Bill was writing
The United States of Trump: How the President Really Sees America released September 24, 2019.
He discussed Trump seeing his hope for return in that historical event on Glenn Beck back then.
What does it take? Just keep doin’ what he’s doin’.
He vetoed $10,000 to assist Texas farmers hit by drought. Charity to individuals or specific groups is not the GOV’s business.
“I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the general government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that, though the people support the government, the government should not support the people.”
Here’s an angle to this that I’ve been thinking about.... We all know folks with TDS and endless numbers who bought into J6 and completely dismissed any concept that the 2020 election was stolen.
One of unintended consequences of the ‘debate’ debacle is that it opened the eyes of millions as to just how seriously they had been lied to by the enemedia and simply sucked completely in. In fact it was a two-four for the price of one since it came with almost simultaneously with the Hollywood fundraiser.....both of these just verified the depth of the lie that Brib’em was cognitively ok.
The speech made by Amber Rose the other night was incredible insofar it could have been made by millions of others. I know from my experience, I’ve heard several say something along the lines of “I thought the talk of the 2020 election being stolen was garbage... now I can see that it was not.”
This has nothing to do with people that would have voted R anyway but I highly suspect that the wakeup that Amber Rose has articulated which is really all about the complete collapse of whatever shreds of credibility that the enemedia had left will translate into votes for PDJT....
Trump should grow a mustache
LOL...One helluva pitcher, if I recall correctly...
Not really the same. Trump won 2020, but was defrauded by a coup/stolen election.
Now he will win a third time.
To win, Trump needs to do what he failed to do in 2020: overcome the Rat cheat machine, which has only gotten worse with the millions of illegals it has registered to vote. Trump’s problem isn’t the demented Rat candidate. It’s the machine stupid.
The problem is that Trump didn’t actually lose last time. So the caparison is not valid.
First president to win a third time since Nixon.
Maybe Don ought to grow a ‘stash?
It takes a hit that was a MISS!
He needs two things to win. Top the 90 million votes that the DNC has rounded up for this election and win both houses. If dems control the house and senate after the election, they won’t certify the win. Kamala counts the votes.
That’s right.
A Near- Great Jacksonian President.
True that.
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