Official 1988 Election Thread

I can understand the need to put a mid-westerner on the ticket, but I think they could have chosen a better individual. I find it sad that every four years you hear about Quayle forming an exploratory committee to see if people want him to run and then the next day he announces he will not run.


2004 mark my words, it will happen again!

 

Quayle will always want to be president and he will always fail....at least I hope so .

Both nominees were so lackluster that year. Frankly I think that Bob Dole would have had great success in 88 if he could have won the nomination, and not just because he would be riding Reagan's coattails like Shrubbery 1 did.

 

Who remembers"Governar if Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered would you support the Death Penalty for her killer"(Not exact quote)

 

I vaguely remember hearing about that, but I don't know if that kind of comment would fly today.

 

Yea he said after he'd still not favor the Death Penalty and I think that turned alot of people off to him.

 

and he gained greater respect from me for that, but that's for another thread

 

I'm sorry but seeing Dukakis as president is down right frightening and to think people supported that guy is beyond me.

I still remember what doomed Dukakis ultimately and it wasn't all just his politics but the "Tank Commercial" Anyone remember this terrible commercial of Dukakis driving a tank with the helmet and the stupid look on his face??? That sealed the deal.

 

Was'ent he sorta Anti-Military?

 

Yes he was and one big reason why I wouldn't vote for him. The commercial was showing this point or something if I can remember. The commercial came from the Bush Campaign I think it was showing that Dukakis says he anti-military and if he is then what is he doing in a tank.

 

How many states did he win?

 

And that tank commercial was put on the air by the Bush people. Actually it was the furlough program which was mentioned in the same commercial.

 

As you can see here:

Dukakis won 11 states and received nearly 42 million votes. This gave him 111 electoral votes, those of Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisnosin, West Virginia, New York, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Washington D.C.

Bush the Elder got nearly 49 million votes and 426 electoral votes.

 

It also didn't help that he went to give a speech at a factory promoting native business when the factory owners happened to live overseas...

 

Thats not going to win you it.

 

Blunders like that make me laugh. Kinda like the guy that tried to car-jack a mini-van full of martial arts students. Now that's comedy. Truth is stranger than fiction.

 

All in all, I think it was a very boring election which brought us into the new age of bad and worse candidate choices. It seems to me that this past election was the epitomy of where that 1988 election has taken us. With the increasing apathy and feeling that there is no meaningful difference between the candidates from the two parties, you end up with an election where it is a photo finish and the popular vote doesn't necessarily elect the president.

I'm not tryin to start a debate on whether Gee Dubya is a good pres or not, I'm not saying that Gore would have been some great savior, on the contrary I think the evolution of elections to the point where neither candidate is particularly desired by their respective constituence hit a peak with the 2000 election (at least I hope that's the case).

 

I agree. A candidate can be assured of the fringe voters in their party's spectrum. The Democrats are going to get the lefties and the Republicans the righties. The battleground is the middle with the swing voters. The parties are too similar today and as a result you see the advent of third parties designed to steal voter support away from the big 2 (Reform & Green).

 

So is the answer to have 3 or 4 parties instead of two? Won't the majority, which is necessarily in the middle of the bell curve, still have the power to manipulate the fringes?

 

As long as the Electoral College exists in its present state, we will be stuck with only two parties. If, as I have argued before in the Electoral College thread, adopted the proportional division of a state's electoral vote to resemble that of the popular vote, we might see third parties have a better chance.

 

So is the answer to have 3 or 4 parties instead of two?

I brought up that very same idea in this thread. It seems that way to me. The old left vs. right fight is to me a relic of the first half of the 20th century, and now people seem to vote for candidates in tradition.

 

There is no way that a 3rd party would ever win an election in this country while we have the electoral college. So until we get rid of that then people like me who can't stand the radical left and right from both democrats and republicans will be left with nothing. That is why I was dying for McCain to leave the Republican party and run independent. He would have taken a lot of votes from both parties and it would have been close.

 

I do not think that the electoral college in entirely to blame for the 2 party system. I believe the winner-take-all system is much worse. It is nonsensical to me for a president be elected with almost no members of the same party in the legislature.
If we adapted the legislature to allow for some kind of proportional representation, people would actually vote for third parties without feeling like they just threw their vote away.

 

He would have taken a lot of votes from both parties and it would have been close.

He wouldn't have taken enough votes to compete with the big 2. Anyway, this on the 1988 thread, so let us try to keep it there.

 

Yeah, I agree about keeping this on topic. The reality is that there couldn't have been a successful third party candidate in 88 anyway.

How about this...what have been the ramifications of that election in the world today?

 

Did'ent Dukakis run againest Gore and Gephardt in the primary?