It is said that history is taught in school so the mistakes made in the past are not repeated in the future. While this is a great way to think, it definitely cannot be applied to modern society, specifically politics.
Multiple times throughout history, political parties have been at fault for their own loss in presidential elections. As the 2020 presidential election creeps up, political parties need to learn from the mistakes of the past if they want to see a win.
In the election of 1860, Abraham Lincoln, the Republican candidate, was running against the two Democratic candidates, John C. Breckinridge (southern) and Stephen Douglas (northern), who opposed each other on the issue of slavery. The Democratic vote was split between the two candidates, resulting in Lincoln winning the election without a single electoral vote from the south. While this scenario is very unlikely to happen today, there is a valuable lesson to learn from it.
By having strong candidates from the same party run against each other, political parties are hindering their ability to win the election.
As of March 7, there are 14 Democrats who have announced a 2020 presidential campaign. If the party wants any shot at winning the election, they need to make it apparent who the front-runner is before the primary election.
A more likely scenario is found in the election of 1912, where Theodore Roosevelt decided he wanted to run against the incumbent president, William Howard Taft. When Taft received the Republican nomination instead of him, Roosevelt created the Progressive Party and ran as an independent. Because of this, he stole the votes from Taft and the Democratic nominee, Woodrow Wilson, won the election instead.
Upon examining these historical elections, it is apparent that having two candidates that are from the same political party will attract a substantial amount of voters for each candidate, which will, in turn, split the said party’s votes and hand over the win to their opposer.
Unfortunately, if the Democratic party loses the upcoming election, a candidate as widely respected as Lincoln will not become president like in the election of 1860. Instead, it will likely be President Trump, as he seems to be the favorite pick for the Republican nominee. So, if the Democratic party wants a presidential win against Trump, they need to narrow down their options soon so their vote is not split later.
As of March 7, there are 14 Democrats who have announced a 2020 presidential campaign. If the party wants any shot at winning the election, they need to make it apparent who the front-runner is before the primary election.
Many of his supporters were “Bernie or Bust,” meaning that if they couldn’t have Bernie they would either not vote or vote for Trump.
During the last presidential election, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton were the two strongest candidates from the Democratic party. However, Clinton won the primary election and received the nomination from the party. Even though Sanders is technically a Democratic Socialist, he pulled out of the race and did not continue to run under his independent party, realizing that if he did this he would take votes away from Clinton. While it was smart, and the right thing to do, it still did not result in a win for the Democratic Party.
The reason for this, and it may be surprising, is that many of Sanders’ supporters voted for Trump instead of Clinton or didn’t vote at all. According to NPR, one in 10 of Sanders’ supporters voted for the current president in the election. Many of his supporters were “Bernie or Bust,” meaning that if they couldn’t have Bernie they would either not vote or vote for Trump.
This cannot happen again.
If Democrats want to win against the current president, or whichever Republican candidate they may be up against in the 2020 election, they need to make it clear who the front-runner is before the primary elections so there isn’t a repeat of last year’s series of unfortunate events. If this is not done, there will be a repeat in history, showing the party has not yet learned from its mistakes.
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