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HISTORY REPEATS? - While Grover Cleveland like Donald Trump both hailed from New York, but from opposite political parties, their paths to the White House are different, as we have the first showdown of two presidents seeking a second term like we had in 1892 when Cleveland, the ex-president narrowly defeated incumbent Benjamin Harrison in a three-way race that saw Cleveland surge back to the White House with just 46% of the popular vote, but a large lead in the Electoral College as an astounding 75.8% of Americans casted ballots.
In 1880 James Garfield was elected president defeating Democrat Winfield Scott, only to be assassinated in the summer of 1885 and Vice-President Chester Arthur filled the remaining three and a half years.
Arthur would be denied the Republican nomination by James Blaine in 1884, and many believe denying Arthur the nomination cost Republicans the state of New York which put Cleveland over the top with 219 electoral votes.
Cleveland’s running-mate was Thomas Hendricks, who also served as Samuel Tilden’s vice-presidential running-mate in 1876, which saw Rutherford B Hayes squeeze out a victory despite losing the popular vote and a disputed Electoral College win.
Cleveland was the first Democrat to win the White House since 1856 when James Buchanan served a single term.
Hendricks would die in office in the summer of 1885 and Cleveland would have no vice-president for the remainder of his first term. There would be a vice-presidential vacancy until Levi Morton assumed office in 1889.
Cleveland would win the Electoral College 219-182.
In 1888, Republicans would nominate Benjamin Harrison, the grandson of the country’s shortest serving president, William Henry Harrison who contracted pneumonia during his inaugural address and died weeks later.
Harrison, the former Indiana senator defeated Cleveland in the Electoral College 233-168, as the incumbent this time lost his home state of New York and its 36 electoral votes. Cleveland’s running-mate was Allen Thurman, as he won the popular vote 48.6% to Harrison’s 47.8%. Cleveland became the first Democrat to be re-nominated since Martin Van Buren in 1840. Cleveland became the first incumbent to lose for reelection despite his narrow popular vote win.
In that race the turnout was an impressive 80.5% with nearly 11 million Americans casting votes.
For Cleveland would seek to take back the presidency from Harrison in 1892 in a race where 75.8% of the electorate casted votes and Cleveland again carried New York and selected Adlai Stevenson, the Postmaster General as his running-mate. Stevenson’s grandson Adlai the second would serve as governor of Illinois, and the 1952 and 1956 Democratic presidential nominee being defeated twice by retired General Dwight Eisenhower, the head of Allied Forces during World War ll as well as the architect of the invasion of Normandy in 1944.
For the third presidential contest Cleveland would win the popular vote again with 46% versus 43% over Harrison and roughly a 4 million vote margin. The third candidate was the US Representative from Iowa, James Weaver who carried five states, and 8.5% of the popular vote. Harrison replaced Levi Morton with Whitfield Reid as his running-mate in a mutually agreed decision that neither Harrison or Morton liked each other very much.
Unrestricted by mandatory term limits, Cleveland opted not to seek the Democratic nomination for a fourth time, making way for William Jennings Bryan of Nebraska who would be defeated by former Ohio Governor William McKinley. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who sought and lost the vice-presidency with James Cox in 1920, would run for president in 1932, 1936, 1940 and finally in 1944 being one of two people to be on a national party ticket five times.
The other was Richard Nixon in 1952 and 1956 for vice-president, and as the GOP presidential nominee in 1960, 1968 and 1972.
While Cleveland won the popular vote three times and the Electoral College twice, Donald Trump has lost the popular vote both times, once to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Joe Biden in 2020.
In 2016 only a paltry 60.1% of voters casted ballots as Trump received 46.1% of the vote to Clinton’s 48.2%, but Trump carried 30 states to Clinton’s 20 plus the District of Columbia. Clinton captured some 65.8 million votes to Trump’s 62.9 million. The electoral count was 304-227 in favor of the former president, and it was the first time since 1944 when both nominees were from the same state (New York).
In 2020 Trump changed his residency from New York to Florida and was challenged by former two-term Vice-President Joseph R. Biden of Delaware. Biden became the second Roman Catholic to become president since 1961 with the election of John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK).
A larger turnout (66.6%) and no third-party hopefuls (Gary Johnson & Jill Stein) helped the Biden effort as he captured 51.3% of the popular vote and carried 25 states including DC for a total of 306 electoral votes. Ironically, Trump slightly improved his percentage of the popular vote to 46.8% or 74.2 million votes and 232 electoral votes. Biden received the most votes ever by a presidential candidate with 81.2 million and if reelected, would be the first President since Nixon to be elected and re-elected to both the presidency and vice-presidency.
Nixon would resign midway through his second term of office.
While Biden will be seeking reelection with Vice-President Kamala Harris, the former California Attorney General, Trump has yet to pick his running-mate.
Trump’s running-mate in 2016 and 2020 was former Indiana Governor Mike Pence who sought the GOP nomination this year only to dropout. Trump and Pence parted ways over the January 6th riots where Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol and tried to disrupt the electoral college count which Trump to this day denies he lost despite no evidence to bolster his claims that are largely regarded as false.
With third-party candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr. trying to make his way on the ballot as James Weaver did in 1892, no independent party hopeful has received any electoral college votes since 1968 when Alabama Governor George Wallace ran as an American Independent hopeful against Nixon, and the Democratic nominee, Vice-President Hubert H. Humphrey.
Most observers seem to believe a Kennedy presence on the ballot in all fifty states and a 15% threshold in the national polls might qualify him for the remaining scheduled debate in September as it appears there will be no debates in October and no vice-presidential debates in this cycle. There is some interest in scheduling a vice-presidential forum in July once a Republican nominee is selected by the GOP at the RNC next month in Milwaukee.
While the comparisons to Grover Cleveland are noteworthy and interesting, Trump’s path to a second term is centered around winning back the rust belt (Michigan, Pennsylvania & Wisconsin), while Biden seeks to expand his hold on Arizona and Colorado while retaining Georgia and possibly winning North Carolina as Florida is considered more red than ever before.
For this Trump/Biden rematch makes for one of the nastiest, negative and controversial presidential contests in American history.
(Nick Antonicello is a thirty-one-year resident of Venice and covers politics and government on the Westside. Antonicello is a member of the West LA Democrats. Have a take or a tip on the presidential contest? E-mail him at [email protected].)
