What Democratic Presidential Candidate Who Was Never Elected Would You

[DemocratSinceBirth]

Vote For?

[sistersofmercy]

1. Other: Dukakis

[UTUSN]

32. Other: MONDALE n/t

[redeye]

35. Other: Mondale...

...but given that there're only two other votes recorded in the poll, I have to wonder whether the poll has a verifiable paper trial and, if not, whether it is a Diebold product ;).

[Capn Sunshine]

2. Bobby

without interference from the evil conspiracy thet killed him, JFK and MLK, one can only imagine the course our country would have taken........

[VermontDem2004]

3. This is so obvious

RFK by a mile.

[Snow]

34. Not that obvious

My first vote ever was for Gene McCarthy - Bobby got into that campaign only after McCarthy had broken the path. It felt opportunistic to me at the time, and still does. McCarthy was a much deeper, more complex person (still is) who would've made a very non-standard issue sort of president. RFK was mainline east coast crew. Many of their stands do not strike me as liberal.

[KC21304]

4. All of them, except Henry Wallace.

[Zan_of_Texas]

26. Henry Wallace? Funny you should mention him

A friend on another forum posted something he wrote in 1944. I was impressed. I didn't know anything about him.

Henry Wallace, 1944 <http://newdeal.feri.org/wallace/haw23.htm>:

The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.
. . . .
American fascism will not be really dangerous until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information, and those who stand for the K.K.K. type of demagoguery.
. .
Still another danger is represented by those who, paying lip service to democracy and the common welfare, in their insatiable greed for money and the power which money gives, do not hesitate surreptitiously to evade the laws designed to safeguard the public from monopolistic extortion.
. . . .
The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism.
. . .
They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution.

They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.

[KC21304]

31. You have made me review my vote.

I guess I didn't research it carefully. Maybe it would have been much better if Wallace were Vice President when FDR died. I have a lot of reading to do. Thanks.

[wuushew]

5. Slight error in poll

Al Gore was elected, he simply failed to become President due to well known and dark forces at play.

[saoirse]

6. RFK All The Way!!!

What a president he would have been!

[JI7]

7. ALL, but al gore WAS elected

i would vote for them all, but al gore was elected president. that's why the scalia bunch had to appoint the chimp.

[David Zephyr]

9. We Were Posting The Same Thing Simultaneously.

Get out your tin foil hat, J17! :hi:

[David Zephyr]

8. But Gore Was Elected.

DemocratSinceBirth, wouldn't you agree?

Add Huey P. Long to your list and I'd vote for him.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

12. I Agree

You like the Kingfish, eh

Every man a king.

[David Zephyr]

18. Love the Kingfish!

Have you seen Ken Burns' filmography on HPL? It's great and ends with Randy Newman's "Evangeline".

:hi:

[Raenelle]

16. That's why I voted for McGovern instead of Gore--Gore doesn't

belong in the category.

[David Zephyr]

22. McGovern!

A truly great American. :hi:

[Bombtrack]

17. That's pretty revealing

that you would prefur an athoritarian socialist to RFK or others

[David Zephyr]

19. Huey Wasn't A Socialist.

But in the history of the U.S., I'd have to say that he governed as close to one as I know of.

I don't know what was "pretty revealing". Everyone on the DU has known for years that I am a socialist.

[ElsewheresDaughter]

10. hey hey hey........Gore WAS elected!

[CMT]

11. I can't help but wonder what had Humphrey defeated Nixon

in the 1968 election.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

14. The Popular Vote Was Close

The Electoral College wasn't as close.

And the Wallace vote came out of Nixon's hide

Fast forward to 72. McGovern doesn't do much worse than Humphrey . He gets 38% to Humphrey's 42%.

Nixon gets all the Rep. vote and the Wallace vote of disaffected Dems and swing voters too.

[mndemocrat_29]

15. He would've been a great president

n/t

[Pocho]

13. ADLAI GOT MY FIRST IN 1952

Thanks for the chance to repeat.

[xequals]

20. RFK, no question about it he would've won

and history would've been very different... we'd have MUCH stronger party. The chaos of '68 and '72 did a lot to weaken the party.. had all sorts of destabilizing ripple effects. With a strong leader to rally around, someone loved across the political spectrum like RFK, one can only imagine how much stronger the Democratic Party would be today. Reagan and the conservative revolution (which continues to this day) would've never happened. IMO, more than anything, the conservative revolution was more of a judgement against the circus-like Democratic Party of the late '60s and '70s (and '80s to some extent).

ps. I didn't choose President Gore because, after all, he did win the election.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

21. And if RFK's ideas had been implemented in 1968

along with MLK's, we would have had a much more peaceful and egalitarian society today.

Watch the spring 1968 portion of Eyes on the Prize 2 to see what we lost that year.

[Shanty Oilish]

23. Al Smith

Grandpa bequeathed me an Al Smith button & I've been waiting for just the occasion to wear it...

[jfkennedy]

24. RFK ------Al Gore was elected president

I would of voted for RFK.

Al Gore was elected president. He was to liberal for the powers that be so they stole it from him.

[JasonBerry]

25. *** NO WAY on Bobby *** - any of the others MUCH better!

Bobby marketed himself well. However, read some books that aren't "Kennedy worship" (and even some of them discuss it), and you'll read of an angry, vindictive, corrupt man who would have abused the office maybe even as much as the man who won in 1968. Bobby's history:

1.) Dirty tricks in 1960 in West Virginia and Illinois - HE was the one who did the bargaining with the mob.

2.) Later repaid his mobster friends by going after another mob family. (Noble, but was HARDLY altruistic.)

3.) Was a staffer for Senator Joseph McCarthy and was always a leftist witch-hunter. Defended McCarthy on many occasions.

4.) Misused the Justice Department in petty political ways to "get even" with his enemies.

5.) Didn't have the guts to fire J. Edgar Hoover. Why??????? There were many reasons, but it came down to Bobby didn't have the GUTS. Because Hoover had the "goods" on the Kennedy corruption.

I am a proud leftist who cannot understand the support for the man. His death was tragic - no question. However, I still think he would have lost the nomination to Humphrey had he lived and a GOOD thing. RFK has been mythologized to an extreme - unlike anyone else. Yes, even more so than JFK.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

27. RFK Was No Cardboard Saint

It's interesting all those examples you cite are before the assasination of JFK which was a life altering event for him.

I'll take a shot at a one and leave the rest to my fellow DUers.


Recent archives have proven that RFK was a moderating influence on Joe McCarthy.

Maybe as a proud "leftist" you don't like RFK because he was never a "leftist" and never aspired to be one.

He was a traditional liberal in the tradition of FDR, Harry Truman, and JFK.

RFK like the traditional liberals who preceded him wanted to make the system better and more equitable. They didn't want to replace it.

[xequals]

28. I recently saw an old RFK interview

conducted by David Frost shortly before RFK's death where he seems to be apologetic about his earlier brash/prosecutorial persona. You're right, he seems to have undergone a change that was due not only to his brother's death, but from the overall turmoil of the '60s, the civil rights movement, MLK's death, the Vietnam War etc.

The main thing the far left still hates about the Kennedy brothers is their staunch opposition to communism.

IMO, they were courageous and heroic to fend off hard left and hard right attacks from WITHIN their own party. The Democratic party of 1960 was very different from what it is today. There were extreme forces on the left (Marxists and other Castro sympathizers) and right (segregationists and the old southern Democrats) ripping the party apart.

JFK and RFK were a tougher breed of liberal than FDR, so was Truman. Remember, FDR had the leeway to do basically do and say whatever he wanted because of the extreme situation -- the great depression, the war, etc. He faced little to no opposition. FDR is the father of the modern Democratic Party, a great liberal, but it's unrealistic for some to think that we will have a Dem President in the near future who is as far to the left on economic issues as FDR was. Also, FDR wasn't even that far to the left considering the situation -- his New Deal economics were designed to save capitalism, not replace it. And future Democrats like JFK, while more moderate on economic issues, were farther to the left on social issues like civil rights.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

29. I Agree 100%

RFK and JFK were sui generis....

If I tried I couldn't think of one contemporary Dem who is similar to JFK and especially RFK philosophically or tempermentally.


I think Bill Clinton had RFK's ability to empathize but that's about it.

[PopSixSquish]

30. Bobby Kennedy All The Way!!!

I've already had the privledge of voting for the honorable Mr. Gore.

[UTUSN]

33. DID Vote for:

HUMPHREY, McGOVERN, MONDALE, DUKAKIS, plus the ones who won (including GORE) and would have voted for any one nominated.