News and notes from the American Presidential election campaign. Pictured: GOP Vice Presidential Nominee J.D. Vance. Photo Credit: J.D. Vance/X.
With the GOP convention behind us and Labour Day a few weeks away, here are some of the latest tidbits surrounding the endless 2024 campaign for the White House.
VICE PRESIDENTS
A lot has been said and written about vice presidents in recent days. With former president Donald Trump having selected his running mate and President Joe Biden’s recent withdrawal and endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris to take over as the nominee, it might be instructive to remember how the vice presidency used to be filled.
In the early Republic, the runner-up in the presidential election became the vice-president. John Adams finished second to George Washington and became second fiddle. Thomas Jefferson lost to John Adams in 1796 and served as Adam’s backup. Can you imagine some of the implications of that in modern times? While Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy were not far apart ideologically it would have been interesting to see how they managed an administration. How about Trump and Hillary Clinton or Biden and Trump? This parlour game can get silly because the parties would have figured out a way to ensure their leader would avoid being saddled with his or her opponent for four years. The fact that many of the more recent vice presidents have been former nomination foes of the president should be a reminder that in a democracy all elected officials have to learn to work with people with whom they do not naturally agree, even when they share party affiliation. Who can forget the vicious attacks Harris made on Biden in the 2020 campaign, suggesting the former vice president was a racist and a sexist? And we all know how well rewarded Mike Pence was for his loyalty to Trump during the latter’s term in office.
ELECTORAL COLLEGE MUSINGS
This scribbler has been subjected to much criticism for defending the Electoral College. Some have intimated the College is a relic of a racist past and should therefore be dissolved. Others have attacked it because every citizen’s vote should be weighed equally, not predeterminate of a quirky system designed to protect landholders and slaveowners. As with every shift in time, Democrats don’t like things that prevent them from gaining, holding, and maintaining power. In recent elections, the Electoral College has not reflected the popular vote. In response, progressives and Democrats have howled about the unfairness of its design and its systemically racist origins (as if that has not been applied to the Republic itself and why the country continues to suffer from great division).
On a recent podcast of Commentary, Steve Kornacki, the NBC poll consultant, suggested that in 2024, Trump could close the margins in states like California, New York, and Illinois and fall short of winning the electoral votes. At the same time, Biden could pull out some close victories in the blue Rust Belt states and squeeze out an electoral college victory while losing the popular vote to Trump. The fallout from that scenario boggles the mind. Still, I would love to hear the machinations at Democratic Party Headquarters as they toast the old men who wrote the Constitution and celebrate the genius of the Electoral College. As in all walks of life, victory has a thousand fathers and defeat is an orphan.
HOW OLD IS JOE BIDEN?
Biden will turn 82 on November 20th. Born in 1942, that means the following facts are true about the span of Biden’s life:
- Biden’s birth is closer to Lincoln’s assassination than today.
- There were Civil War veterans alive when Biden was born.
- The population of the United States at the time of Biden’s birth was 135 million people. Today it is 330 million people.
- Biden lived through 14 presidencies before occupying the top spot. That is almost a third of all administrations. No one has lived that long before becoming president.
- Jackie Robinson had not yet broken the colour barrier in Major League Baseball (that happened in 1947).
- A person born before Abraham Lincoln took office would have turned 82 when Biden was born.
- If Biden serves out a second term, he would be in his 87th year, closer to 90 than 80 and by far the oldest person to have ever served in the nation’s highest office. He will have surpassed Ronald Reagan by almost a decade. Reagan left office in his 78th year.
ASSASSINATION FACTS
On July 13th America was nearly plunged into a dramatic political crisis when an assassin almost killed Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania. Assassination has held an unwelcome and threatening historical presence in American politics. Five sitting presidents have been victims of assassination with only Ronald Reagan surviving the attack, and that barely.
Other than Kennedy, the presidents shot and killed were all Republican. Reagan and Trump survived, also both Republican. The political affiliation of these men and assassination may point to coincidence more than anything, but the facts should be noted. Political violence exists on both sides and any narrative that attempts to blame one side more than the other does not serve the nation nor help create a solution. Fortunately, Trump only suffered an injury to his ear and quickly recovered. The political upheaval his murder would have meant days before the Republican National Convention can only be compared to the turbulence during the days and weeks preceding the 1968 Democratic Convention when Robert F. Kennedy was murdered just after winning the California primary.
TRUMP’S VP PICK
- D. Vance at 39 years old is the youngest vice-presidential pick since Dwight Eisenhower selected Richard Nixon in 1952. Vance, author of the best-selling book, Hillbilly Elegy and a graduate of Yale Law School, was selected because he would help deliver the Rust Belt states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. If Trump had wanted to make a more interesting choice, he could have chosen Governor Youngkin of Virginia, putting Virginia, Minnesota, New Hampshire and a few other “lean” Democratic states into play.
If ensuring the Hispanic vote fell his way, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida would have fit the bill. Governor Doug Burgum of North Dakota was also considered. He would have done Trump no harm, but reinforced the ticket as business oriented. The Vance pick means Trump has someone to offset his age, a person able to articulate comprehensive policy initiatives. The generational optics will play to the ticket’s advantage and has the potential to be a home run.
KAMALA HARRIS
Regardless of her position as vice president, Harris remains unknown to most Americans. Harris spent many years in Montreal from the time she was twelve (1976) until she attended Howard University in Washington, DC in 1982. She will turn 60 years old a couple of weeks before the presidential election, making her eighteen years younger than Donald Trump. That is not the most significant age difference between candidates since John McCain was twenty-six years older than Barack Obama. The younger candidates often have an advantage when age plays a pivotal role. Americans like to see younger generations leading and this could play to Harris’ advantage. As for her background in California politics, there is some scandal (a long-time affair with California Speaker of the Assembly Willie Brown who was married at the time) and some questions about how she rose to power. Her victory as District Attorney in San Francisco left some people dissatisfied because she seemed to zealously prosecute minorities when many had thought she might be more even-handed as a minority herself. She won a Senate seat from California in 2016 and then Joe Biden selected her as his running mate in 2020 after her unsuccessful candidacy ended before the primaries began. Her poll numbers are mediocre, but she will likely be the Democratic nominee and could well be the first woman to hold the presidency and the first African-Asian to do so.
Dave Redekop is a retired elementary resource teacher who now works part-time at the St. Catharines Courthouse as a Registrar. He has worked on political campaigns since high school and attended university in South Carolina for five years, where he earned a Master’s in American History with a specialization in Civil Rights. Dave loves reading biographies.
