Explanation: After his second term, American President Teddy Roosevelt declared no intention to run in 1908, allowing Taft to become president on the Republican ticket, and openly considering Taft as a ‘worthy’ successor.
Four years later, the ever-restless TR decided Taft had not been progressive enough, and made a major third party run in 1912 when he failed to clinch the Republican nomination (primaries at that time being run by a narrow group of party insiders without any obligation to outside voices like ‘the public’). This was one of the most successful failures in US electoral history - he gained more votes than Taft. Unfortunately, he lost out to the Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson.
Wilson talked a moderate progressive game, and followed a moderate progressive line… except on race, where he talked a nice moderate game on the campaign trail, and immediately reversed to a hard reactionary racist position once in office, re segregating the Federal government and driving race relations in the US to their lowest point in decades, with echoing effects, likewise, for decades.
Ah. Damn our history.
(primaries at that time being run by a narrow group of party insiders without any obligation to outside voices like ‘the public’)
The way this is worded seems very odd to me — is it really different today?
Yeah. Both the Republican and Democrat parties nowadays run ‘primaries’ wherein the great mass of party voters from each state have an election, and the results of that chooses the candidate who will run for each office, including the presidential candidate.
There are still unobligated electors in this system - “Superdelegates” - but they’re a small minority and can only really make a difference if the primary election itself is very close.
As it worked back then (and up until the 1960s), effectively, there were only superdelegates who could pick whomever they damn well pleased for the party ticket.
Was the prior lowest point Andrew Johnson’s ‘contributions’ to Reconstruction?
Yeah. The 1890s were rough too, but the 1910s and 20s managed to dip below that.
The Southern Good Ole Boys heard about the Great War and thought to themselves “The only great war is the Race War!”
