Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.—Gustav Mahler

Wednesday, November 18, 2020

How did the Parties do in Relation to State Legislative Seats?

 E-mail from National Conference of State Legislatures to Seth Barrett Tillman:


That number is always the last to pin down [and not yet final] and the one with the most ‘noise.’ Our current estimate is that Republicans netted at least 160 seats in the [2020] election. It is rare, but far from unprecedented, for the party winning the White House to lose seats in states. This is the 6th time that it has happened since 1960, and the most losses by the winning president’s party since then. In 1960, Democrats lost around 300 legislative seats even though John Kennedy won the White House. 


The reader can reflect on that comparison—to the election of 1960.


Seth

Seth Barrett Tillman, How did the Parties do in Relation to State Legislative Seats?, New Reform Club (Nov. 18, 2020, 9:34 PM), <https://reformclub.blogspot.com/2020/11/how-did-parties-do-in-relation-to-state.html>;

7 comments:

Isabella Lucas said...
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Nathan Redshield said...
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Professor Mojo said...

Do I detect a hidden reference to the Chicago Mob and Landslide Lyndon?

William said...

When I was a youth, 1960 was the very definition of a stolen election. 2020 puts it to shame.

Erik said...

Evidence of Fraud in 2020 Election?
A Surprising Number of Parallels
with JFK's 1960 Campaign
https://no-pasaran.blogspot.com/2020/11/evidence-of-fraud-in-2020-election.html

"In some ways the most dangerous kind of politician is a man who is good at PR and nothing else"

writes Paul Johnson in his monumental History of the American People.

No, he was not talking about Barack Obama (his book was written in 1999, after all — before Obama had even published his (first) autobiography), but about John F Kennedy

"Yet, from start to finish, the media, especially the 'quality' press, distrusted [Nixon], consistently denigrated him, and sought to destroy him, indeed in a sense did destroy him. At every crisis in his career — except the last — he had to appeal above the heads of the media to the great mass of the ordinary American people, the 'silent majority' as he called them."

When I first read Paul Johnson's book, incidentally, I remember thinking, But of course! What has always been described as an unsavory character trait in Richard Mulhouse Nixon — his alleged paranoia — turns out perhaps not to have been so paranoid at all and to have been provoked by those who claimed to be innocent bystanders, if not the actual entirely-innocent victims of "Tricky Dick"… (If only for Paul Johnson's description of Watergate — which he likens, persuasively, to a witch hunt — you must read A History of the American People.)

[2020 update: and cannot similar lines be written about Donald Trump?]

…/… "By contrast, the media did everything in its power to build up and sustain the beatific myth of John F. Kennedy, throughout his life and long after his death, until it finally collapsed in ruins under the weight of incontrovertible evidence. The media protected him, suppressed what it knew to be the truth about him, and if necessary lied about him, on a scale which it had never done even for Franklin Roosevelt."

…/… "This was a crooked election, especially in Texas and Illinois, two states notorious for fraud, and both of which Kennedy won. In Texas, which gave its twenty-four college votes to Kennedy, by a margin of 46,000 votes (out of 2.3 million), one expert made the calculation that

'a minimum of 100,000 votes for the Kennedy-Johnson ticket simply were non-existent.'

… (in one polling station, where only 4,895 voters were registered, 6,138 votes were counted as cast)"

…/…

Your Correspondent said...

I can recall my late ex-father-in-law, then a Chicago policeman and precinct worker, telling how on election night in 1960, he was helping haul Republican ballots to the dumpster at the polling place he was working.
Today's vote fraudsters evidently have far more efficient means of destroying the integrity of an election.

JAL said...

I saw elsewhere that this election is the first since 1960 (!) where the winner of Florida was not the next president.

Same thought experiment here: what was different about the 1960 election?

Cook County. Even then, (I was in school) my father told us the election had been stolen in Cook County. Nixon did not contest it, though I have always (since 1960) heard that he could have, should have, but stood back for the good of the country.
That did not end well for JFK.

So should DJT "stand back" and concede? NO WAY. He must pursue this to the end -- for the good of the country.