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Kennedy was the last Democrat to win in good times. Why?

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Niners 1990

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John F. Kennedy won in 1960 under a peaceful economy.

Since then, Democrats tend to win under crises:

1964: LBJ wins under racial unrest and Vietnam tensions
1976: Jimmy Carter wins in the aftermath of Watergate, government apathy, Vietnam loss shame
1992: Bill Clinton wins in a bad economy, racial unrest
2008: Barack Obama wins in a depression
2020: Joe Biden wins under COVID disaster, mass unemployment

 
At least in my adult lifetime, i’ve noticed that Democrats tend to get elected to fix a crisis, and Republicans manufacture a crisis in order to get elected.

Or in the case of Trump, twenty or so crises.
 
Kennedy was a real liberal is why.
 
There are a lot of easily duped idiots shitting all over everything now and setting the house on fire while locked inside it and yelling take that libs out the window. There were still a couple smart people back in 1960.
 
I've commented on this before - and remember Kennedy won a very close election, despite big advantages. I suspect something accidental - black voters switching to him over an unintended Martin Luther King call - might have been important.

While you refer to it as 'good times', 1960 had plenty of problems. A recent recession, very high cold war tensions, with the nation terrified after Sputnik and Castro. In fact, just as FDR perversely won by campaigning on doing less about the Great Depression, Kennedy won as a cold warrior saying Republicans had been too weak on 'the communist threat', demanding we do more about Cuba and the phony "Missile Gap".

You ask a good question 'why' on the topic. I won't really try to answer it here but I think the answer has changed, to where Republican advantages on propaganda have increased a lot to where the biggest traitor in American in history can say 'eggs cost too much' and get half the country to vote for him.

Probably worse news is that both Nixon and Reagan won re-election with 49 states.
 
Probably because in 1972 and 1984, the country was doing well.....some feel if COVID never happened, Trump would have been reelected in 2020 because of the economy.

Al Gore blew 2000. Hillary probably did in 2016.

A Republican, even Dole probably would have won in 1988 because Reagan was fairly popular in '88.
 

9/11 and the War in Iraq weren't crises?

Everything was awful in 2012?
 
Because Republicans cause crises?
 
Niners 1990 said:
Probably because in 1972 and 1984, the country was doing well.....some feel if COVID never happened, Trump would have been reelected in 2020 because of the economy.

Al Gore blew 2000. Hillary probably did in 2016.
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This is typical Republican warped history, though. It wasn't because the country was doing so well. Without Covid trump might have been re-elected, but not because the economy was doing that well. If that was the issue, Hillary would have won in 2016. trump's economy was worse than Obama's or Biden's.

2000 was not about Gore blowing it, it was about Republicans stealing it. Hillary was bad, but that doesn't explain it, trump was worse.

Niners 1990 said:
A Republican, even Dole probably would have won in 1988 because Reagan was fairly popular in '88.
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A Republican did win in 1988, Bush 41.

Clinton's win in 1992 actually was helped by a backlash to 12 years of bad problems from Republicans, from economic problems (like the S&L crash) to Iran-Contra to the huge increase in the debt.

But Republicans have alternate facts and history.
 
It's trained our shitty democratic party to run constantly as the opposition party. Just to sit back and declare, "we're not them" as their #1 campaign tool. Then very few elections that works because the GOP destroys the economy on the regular. It'd be nice if Dems had the balls to ever run on the policies they dance around to keep their corporate donors happy.
 
@Niners 1990
“Kennedy was the last Democrat to win in good times.”

Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Daley stole the 1960 election, but mainly because it was a close election. Richard Nixon should have won decisively given how good things were and how popular Eisenhower had been, in which case the Democrats’ election fraud wouldn’t have made a difference, but Nixon was a terrible candidate and Kennedy was a good one. Conversely, Republicans stole the 2000 election (with the help of Democrat official Theresa Lepore, who designed the butterfly ballot that threw thousands of crucial Jewish votes in Florida to Pat Buchanan). But in that case, it shouldn’t have been a close election because Al Gore should have won decisively given how great things were and how high Clinton’s job approval rating was, in which case the GOP would have no chance to steal, but like Nixon, Gore was lousy and Bush, though no Kennedy, came off as a more personable candidate.
I disagree about 1964. Things were very good that year. It was 1968 that would be really bad for Democrats.

Mark
 
@Michael Cole
“More nonsense. Kennedy was conservative.”

Not quite true. When Kennedy first ran for the House, he called himself a “fighting Conservative.” But when he got to the Senate and after angling for the presidency (first as the VP nominee in ’56 and then the prez nominee in ’60 and then finally president), he began moving to the Left because that’s where the base of the Democratic party was.

Mark
 
Niners 1990 said:
John F. Kennedy won in 1960 under a peaceful economy.
Click to expand...
The economy was humming, but southeast Asia was anything but peaceful. The Cold War was in full swing, and Cuba was anything but peaceful.


LBJ won reelection as did Clinton and Obama.
 
I want to clarify in my last post, I wasn’t saying Kennedy was the VP nominee ’56; that was Sen. Estes Kefauver. But Kennedy did try to get it.

Mark
 
Nah, Kennedy was to the right of Nixon. There are many articles describing Kennedy's conservatism. Here's an old one from Time.

JFK Was a Political Conservative | TIME.com

His image as a big-spending liberal is a widespread myth that needs correcting
ideas.time.com

Kennedy was a staunchly anti-communist hawk. Very conservative.
 
phoenix2020 said:
At least in my adult lifetime, i’ve noticed that Democrats tend to get elected to fix a crisis, and Republicans manufacture a crisis in order to get elected.

Or in the case of Trump, twenty or so crises.
Click to expand...
Very True...
So, when did Americans become so dumb as to fall for Trump??
 
@Michael Cole
“Kennedy was a staunchly anti-communist hawk. Very conservative.”

Being anti-Communist does not automatically make one a Conservative. During the Cold War, there were MANY anti-Communist Liberal Democrats. Kennedy was one. So was his brother Robert (who once worked for Joseph McCarthy), Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Hubert Humphrey, Joseph Rauh, Harry Truman, and others. There was even a group of anti-Communist Liberal Democrats whose purpose was to fight pro-Communist influence in the Democratic Party; it was called Americans for Democratic Action (ADA).

Mark
 
1968: Nixon wins under racial unrest and Vietnam tensions
1980: Reagan wins and defeats Stagflation
1988: GHW Bush succeeds Reagan
2000: GW Bush wins after dot-com implosion
2016: Trump wins because Hillary sucks that badly.
2024: Trump wins because Bidenflation, skyrocketing deficits and DEI insanity.
 
Very shallow reasoning here.........
 
Greenbeard said:
Better question: why does no Republican ever leave their successor good times?
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Eisenhower did to JFK
Some feel Ford did to Carter, but Watergate took attention from a recovering economy.
 
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I agree with some of that, but I'd say Kennedy didn't follow anyone to the left, rather he was rather covertly to the left and ran more to the right for political reasons. He also evolved more to the left as he was president and learned more.
 
Dem policies are better for the economy so Americans vote for them during recessions. When times are good gop racist policies become more appealing for some reason.
 
Far right dem said:
Dem policies are better for the economy so Americans vote for them during recessions. When times are good gop racist policies become more appealing for some reason.
Click to expand...
I would suggest Republican lies about being better for the economy and a lot of people fall for them and vote for Republicans when times are good. Then when Republicans are in power and screw things up they can get blamed and there's a backlash.
 
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