A new ugly streak in American politics

In the latest example of a new cruel streak in modern politics, several politicians are openly calling for blocking aid to California in the wake of the deadly wildfires. It’s wrong for several reasons.

First, Californians contributed to that aid and are among the biggest givers in Federal income taxes. Second, this is being suggested by politicians in states which pay on average far less of the share in income taxes. Third, those suggesting stopping or dangling aid will demand unconditional assistance when they need help, if history is any guide. Finally, it’s hard to find this to be any part of our American or Christian heritage.

According to Merideth Lee Hill of Politico, “[House Speaker] Johnson told reporters, 'we’ll see where it goes,' acknowledging that he, personally, supported putting 'conditions' on California wildfire aid. 'That’s my personal view,' he said.”

Another Congressman, this one from Ohio, said as much about California aid according to Amber Baker with WTRF: “If they want the money, then there should be consequences, requiring them to change their policies.” An Alabama politician concurred.

It reminded me of two years ago when a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, producing a terrible plume of dangerous smoke. Did Congress withhold aid until Ohio agreed to better regulate their trains for having more safety personnel aboard (instead of cutting them) or requiring better braking systems? Such policies should be implemented, but those poor residents should not have been held hostage to a political battle. In fact, the IRS made those relief checks non-taxable, even though the district voted over 70% for Trump in 2020. How you voted in the last election shouldn’t determine whether or not you get aid or not, right?

I checked the National Taxpayers Union Foundation analysis of who pays when it come to taxes. California pays the most in raw numbers, but the state ranks fifth in average Federal Income Tax paid per person. Ohio ranks 39th. Louisiana ranks 45th. Alabama is 46th on average.

According to SmartAsset.com, California ranks 41st for being dependent upon the Federal Government, one of the 10 states least dependent upon the U.S. Government. Louisiana is eighth for being the most dependent upon Federal Government aid. Alabama is the ninth most dependent state on government money.

Imagine if Californians withheld aid to Louisiana or Alabama after a Category 5 hurricane.

Now I’m sure the residents of these states are just as likely to donate to disaster relief causes. Their representatives could learn from their constituents.

Blocking aid to another state in need is a relatively new ugly streak in American politics. When Hurricane Sandy hit New Jersey, a number in Congress voted against aid, even though SmartAsset.com shows “For every $6.28 New Jersey forks over to the federal government, it receives $1 back.” Well, some of the same politicians who said nay to New Jersey shamelessly asked for aid just a few years later when tornados and hurricanes hit their states. New York and New Jersey politicians thankfully did not play the same “tit-for-tat” game with Texas for Hurricane Harvey.

An iconic American image involves people passing water buckets to help a neighbor in need of putting out a home fire. None are trying to slap “conditions” on the help or blocking firefighting help in exchange for some quid-pro-quo. That’s because it’s just not the American spirit. Once people are cared for, we can debate policy, without holding hostage that aid to those in need.

John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu. His “X” account is JohnTures2.

Kamala Harris channels Ronald Reagan in 'Morning in America' moment

At a rally in Savannah, Democratic Party nominee Kamala Harris’ speech resembled Reagan’s “Morning in America” but was delivered in the same setting for the iconic suspense novel Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil: A Savannah Story. To my surprise, the end result resembled a rock concert.

Years ago, during my first trip to Savannah, I listened to the audiobook of that bestselling Savannah story by John Berendt. The first thing that struck me was how insular the town was.

“For me, Savannah’s resistance to change was its saving grace. The city looked inward, sealed off from the noises and distractions of the world at large,” Berendt wrote. “It grew inward, too, and in such a way that its people flourished like hothouse plants tended by an indulgent gardener. The ordinary became extraordinary. Eccentrics thrived.”

In other words, Savannah doesn’t necessarily resemble a good place for a campaign event. Nor do they take well to outsiders, especially those telling locals what to do.

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"People come here from all over the country and fall in love with Savannah,” Berendt noted. “Then they move here and pretty soon they’re telling us how much more lively and prosperous Savannah could be if we only knew what we had and how to take advantage of it. I call these people ‘Gucci carpetbaggers.’”

I cringed at how locals might react to a California prosecutor coming into Savannah for these very reasons, especially at a rally for a brand new, almost out-of-place hockey arena for the “Savannah Ghost Pirates.” Wouldn’t Columbus or Augusta be more welcoming to the VP?

To my surprise, Kamala Harris was a hit. A local outstanding DJ got the crowd going with hits that spanned the decades. Cell phones became flashlights as they turned down the lights. Mayor Van Johnson prepared the crowd well, noting all the help that the Biden-Harris team had given to the city. Georgia Congresswoman Nikema Williams, who won the seat John Lewis represented for years, adroitly reminded the audience what was at stake.

It’s worth noting that in Reagan’s “Morning In America” campaign, the country faced persistently high unemployment in 1984, but the Republicans that year pointed to progress and noted “we can’t go back” to the last administration, something Team Harris-Walz effectively emphasized.

Would the city go for this new approach? “Savannah was invariably gracious to strangers, but it was immune to their charms,” Berendt wrote. “It wanted nothing so much as to be left alone.”

But in this case, the audience was charmed. Harris’ speech managed to thread the needle between being specifically preachy and vaguely flattering to the locals. Rather than promise a whole new “New Deal” she focused on some modest but meaningful policy ideas. These ranged from tax credits to new parents to tax breaks for building new homes. The targeted plans sounded affordable. It was the right call. After all, Berendt quipped, “If there’s a single trait common to all Savannahians, it’s their love of money and their unwillingness to spend it.”

Mingling with the crowd after a day spent in smaller towns or in the market might have also seemed quirky, but that’s how Savannah seems to like it.

Riding back with the locals and volunteers, the vibe was like leaving Woodstock. They couldn’t wait to canvass for the Harris-Walz Team, put up yard signs, and encourage their neighbors to vote. Gone was my prediction of merely some polite golf claps and shaking heads at a cookie-cutter campaign event, the way one attendee described being a Dukakis delegate at the convention in Atlanta in 1988. It resembled the enthusiasm Obama conjured up back in 2008 in a city that can often get blessedly unenthusiastic about anything new and exciting.

John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu. His “X” account is JohnTures2.

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Trump’s RFK Jr. endorsement actually helps Harris

Last week, after ex-Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced he was suspending his independent presidential campaign and endorsing Republican nominee Donald Trump, MAGA loyalists gleefully concluded they had all but won the 2024 election.

After all, most recent national polls indicated RFK Jr. commanded about 5 percent of the vote nationwide. Many Republicans quickly concluded that most of those voters would now swing toward Trump.

But they shouldn’t be so certain. This is shaping up to be a situation of subtraction by addition. RFK Jr. may be the millstone around Trump’s neck that the GOP nominee will likely regret.

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Harris will likely hold her own in polls after RFK Jr.'s endorsement of Trump.

Statistics, coupled with a dash of political logic, help explain why.

As the Associated Press reports: “Recent polls show that Republicans are more likely than Democrats to have a favorable opinion of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who suspended his presidential campaign on Friday and gave his support to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump. ... The developments left relatively narrow room for Kennedy’s presence — or departure — to make a difference in the election outcome. Recent polls don’t give a clear indication that Kennedy’s presence in the race had an outsized impact on support for either major-party candidate.”

Political analysis and data outlet 538, as reported by ABC News, offers evidence that RFK Jr.’s “campaign suspension/Trump endorsement” will benefit Democrats, not Republicans.

Republicans probably expected a “whale” of a swing in the polls in their direction after Kennedy opted for Trump. But on ABC News’ site, G. Elliot Morris and Mary Radcliffe report that 538’s national polling average doesn’t see much of a net gain. “Kennedy’s presence in the race is drawing slightly more away from Trump and increasing Harris’s margin by about 0.2 percentage points on average across the states.”

It gets worse for the Trump-Vance-Kennedy ticket.

In that ABC News article, 538 explores RFK Jr. supporters’ second-choice preferences. A video on that site indicates that Harris gets 32 percent of the RFK Jr. supporters, while only 18 percent favor Trump. Another 34 percent go with “someone else,” while 14 percent claim they won’t vote for a presidential candidate in the 2024 election.

The Pew Research Center numbers back that up: “Far more of those who changed their preference decided to support Harris (39 percent) than Trump (20 percent),” Pew reports.

Republican glee — or gloom?

Let’s pause a moment to remember that, not long ago this year, Trump skewered RFK Jr. on his Truth Social site.

“RFK Jr. is a Democrat ‘Plant,’ a ‘Radical Left Liberal,’ Trump said in a three-part post on his Truth Social website,” USA Today reported earlier in the campaign.

In April, on his X account, Kennedy replied to Trump.

“When frightened men take to social media they risk descending into vitriol, which makes them sound unhinged. President Trump’s rant against me is a barely coherent barrage of wild and inaccurate claims.”

Later in that post, RFK Jr. added “President Trump betrayed the hopes of his most sincere followers.”

GOP pollster Frank Luntz seemed happy for the first time since President Joe Biden dropped out and Harris surged against Trump. In an interview with NewsNation, Luntz said “It’s probably worth about 1 percent for Trump and that 1 percent could be everything if it’s in the swing states. In the end, the reason why Kennedy was drawing 10, 12, even as high as 14 percent is because he was taking votes away from Joe Biden.”

Luntz’s supposition was not backed by the evidence. As USA Today reported in April: “Recent polls by Marist College and NBC News show Biden benefitting against Trump when other candidates are included on the ballot, including Kennedy and third-party aspirants Cornel West and Jill Stein.” Surveys showed RFK Jr. leeching support from Trump, not Democrats.

In another article by The Hill, former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy crowed: “If you’re a Democrat, the Kennedy family is the closest there is to political royalty in that party. And it makes you wonder, would John F. Kennedy be a Democrat today because of his positions were much different than the Democrat Party is today.”

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McCarthy, fresh from his unsuccessful attempt to oust Rep. Matt Gaetz in Florida’s GOP primary, must have been too busy to hear that several members of the Kennedy family blasted RFK Jr.’s endorsement of Trump, as noted by MSNBC.

RFK Jr.’s rambling Arizona speech showed himself to be further away from John F. Kennedy, his uncle, and Robert F. Kennedy, his father, than ever.

John F. Kennedy, for one, stood up to the Russians, wasn’t a vaccine skeptic, pushed harder for civil rights than Confederate monuments, and would never transition from Democrat to independent to Republican backer in the span of 10 months and surrender his dignity to a candidate who winks at authoritarianism.

As Biden stepped aside and Vice President Kamala Harris stepped up to win the Democratic nomination, RFK Jr.’s remaining support for his flagging presidential campaign suffered even more defections. His poll numbers — at about 15 percent on July 11 — plummeted over the next month, with many of his former supporters trending toward Harris.

What about Bob?

As reported in a story by The Hill: “Republican strategist Scott Jennings advised former President Trump to be careful now that he has seemingly joined forces with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., arguing the independent presidential candidate is ‘kind of a looney tune.’

CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer asked Jennings Friday if Kennedy’s endorsement could “end up backfiring” on the former president, considering the environmental lawyer’s controversial views on vaccines and embrace of some conspiracy theories.

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In the article on Yahoo about the GOP expert, Jennings said: “There could be some cost on the other side of the algebra. I mean, I’m old enough to remember when RFK was a liberal, you know, conspiracy theorist. Now he’s more of a conservative conspiracy theorist, but the through line is, he’s a conspiracy theorist, and a lot of people think he’s kind of a looney tune.’”

RFK Jr. may try to worm his way back into the election as a kingmaker, but it’s unlikely that most voters can bear it.

Advantage: Harris.

John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu. His “X” account is JohnTures2.

Why Kamala Harris may get a big convention polling ‘bounce’

Back in 1988, Gallup polling had Democrat Michael Dukakis up by 17 points over Republican George H. W. Bush in July of that year.

Bush went on to trounce Dukakis, who in the race’s final days was running such a listless and futile campaign that Saturday Night Live served up one of its all-time brutal presidential candidate skits the weekend before Election Day. The Dukakis experience helped fuel the myth of the post-political party convention poll bounce as being overinflated and irrelevant.

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What can we learn from this in 2024? Are national convention poll bounces ever anything more than temporary? Does it matter whether you have your convention first or second? Do Democrats get bigger bounces? And does having the bigger convention bounce benefit the candidate at the ballot box?

To answer these questions, analyzing the past helps inform our present.

Gallup-ing away with the election

For years, Americans looked to the Gallup polling firm for their “horse race” public opinion polls to determine which candidate was leading at a given point in time.

The American Presidency Project at the University of California at Santa Barbara has collected those numbers for 1964-2000 from Gallup Polling, as provided by Gerhard Peters. My analysis found that the average poll bounce for any presidential candidate, regardless of party, was 5.73 percentage points after their convention.

My calculations show that Democrats fared better with these post-nomination speech surveys, averaging a 6.18 percentage point bounce, as opposed to the Republicans who still find a mean jump of 5.27 percentage points after their conventions.

Recent cases show softer bounces.

More recent national convention surveys, aggregated by FiveThirtyEight, come from multiple polling firms. They run their comparison from the Monday when the convention begins to the Thursday after the convention ends. And they find that bounces just aren’t as big now — and probably weren’t so big back then.

My analysis of FiveThirtyEight’s data shows that during national conventions from 1968 to 1992, the average poll bounce was only about 2.71 percentage points. From 1996 to 2020, that bounce shrunk to a mere 1.64 percentage points. The average overall bounce was only 2.18 percentage points.

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In digging through FiveThirtyEight’s numbers, I found that the Republican Party enjoyed a slightly bigger bounce — 2.36 percentage points to only a two-point gain for Democrats, on average. This is in large part caused by disastrous Democratic Party conventions in 1968, 1972 and 1984, where the candidates the Democrats nominated would get wiped out in the general election.

My research of FiveThirtyEight’s polling collecting reveals that it’s slightly better to conduct a national convention second, as the conventions staged later get a 2.36 percentage point bounce, on average, as opposed to the party that has its convention first, which can only expect a two-point shot in the arm.

Getting the bigger bounce matters at the ballot box

While Gallup had Dukakis up 17 points on Bush overall in July 1988, the Massachusetts governor only got a seven point bounce from the convention, meaning he was already ahead of Bush before the convention in Atlanta began.

Republican ads and a disastrous second debate erased that Democratic advantage, showing that you still need more than a good convention to win.

In 2008, Obama didn’t get much of a bounce from Denver, because the U.S. senator from Illinois already had a big lead over his rival before arriving at Invesco Field to accept his party’s nomination. But that same year, McCain was trailing badly. He experienced a bigger jump because he selected Sarah Palin. That boost lasted at least until a disastrous Palin television interview several weeks before the election.

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External forces can certainly have an effect on national political convention poll bounces.

An extreme example is the biggest post-convention jump of modern presidential history, when Democrats Bill Clinton and Al Gore surged in 1992. (Both the Gallup and FiveThirtyEight datasets confirm this.)

This occurred because independent presidential candidate H. Ross Perot temporarily suspended his campaign after the Democratic National Convention, which further amplified Clinton’s already sizeble convention boost.

Most think the 1992 Republican National Convention in Houston was a disaster, but President George H.W. Bush actually had the second highest jump — tied with Carter in 1976 — because he used the convention to help bring some disaffected conservatives back in the fold. But it didn’t help Bush win reelection, of course, as he couldn’t fully kick his image as a mushy moderate who struggled to hold firm on conservative principles.

Post-convention bounces clearly matter in one way: who gets a bigger jump in the polls after their convention ends is more likely to win on Election Day.

Kamala Harris fans pay close attention.

I found in Gallup’s polls that the candidate with the bigger bounce in public opinion won 63.6 percent of the time in November — taking seven of 11 elections, not counting one election where the two candidates had exactly the same post-convention poll bounce. For the FiveThirtyEight data, the candidate having the bigger post-convention bounce won seven elections, compared to four losses and three ties in post-convention bounces.

That means there’s additional pressure for Harris and running mate Tim Walz to have a successful convention, and not just rely on what’s been a very good start to their unexpected campaign, as Kyle Kondik with the Center For Politics and Sabato’s Crystal Ball, agrees.

And that’s why it’s also vexing to MAGA that Trump’s convention last month in Milwaukee ended with Trump delivering a rambling speech and selecting a running mate in J.D. Vance who many Republicans consider underwhelming.

Harris now has the convention stage. If she uses it well, history indicates it will bode well for her on November 5.

John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu. His “X” account is JohnTures2.

Does hosting your political convention in Chicago equal victory? History has an answer

As Democrats converge on Chicago in what appears to be an organized show of unity at their 2024 convention, it’s a far cry from what transpired 100 years ago in New York City.

There and then, the Democratic party fielded 16 presidential candidates and conducted 103 ballots votes for a nominee. Battles raged over whether the party should insert a platform plank condemning the KKK. A delegate allegedly quipped, “We’re either going to have to pick a candidate tonight or a cheaper hotel.”

The New Republic reported that the event that occurred just before the Democratic National Convention that year in Madison Square Garden was the Barnum and Bailey Circus. Attendees of the 1924 Democratic National Convention probably couldn’t tell the difference between their event and the ones with clowns and dancing bears.

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Even in our age of sanitized, made-for-TV national political conventions, where organizers do their best to promote unity and quell dissent, there’s always the possibility of flashpoints — internal or external — when thousands of delegates descend upon a city.

Countering Democrats’ exercise in comity this year is like to be a series of pro-Palestinian protests. Here, on the weekend before the convention begins, there’s no predicting whether these protests will be peaceful — or less than peaceful. Visions of Chicago in 1968, where anti-war protesters battled Chicago police in the streets, loom large.

But Chicago is no political convention rookie. In fact, Chicago has hosted 25 national political conventions over our nation’s history — 15 more than the next closest city, Baltimore.

In 14 of these 25 cases, Chicago’s winner has gone on to win the presidency — a 56 percent success rate.

On balance, Chicago has been kind to both parties. The GOP has hosted 14 national conventions in Chicago (with their presidential nominee winning eight) while Democrats opted to hold their party convention in Chicago 11 times (winning six).

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The second most popular site for a national political convention is Baltimore.

But all but one (1912) took place in the 1800s, when Baltimore was one of the largest cities in America. In 1831, the first political party convention occurred. It was in Baltimore, put on by the Anti-Masonic League, and nominated William Wirt. Whigs and Democrats soon followed suit later that year and in 1832. In 1860, when the Democratic Party fractured in Charleston, S.C., Northern Democrats fled to Baltimore to nominate Sen. Stephen Douglas.

Philadelphia is the site of the third most political conventions in American history — nine. A little more than half of these conventions led to success in November.

Surprisingly, New York City has only hosted six, with three producing a win. Holding fifth place for convention sites is St. Louis, with five (only two nominees at those events won). San Francisco has held four conventions, with a party winning only one of those. Kansas City has only led to victory as a national convention site in one of three elections.

Six cities have hosted at least one convention and never yielded a winner Atlanta, Boston, Charleston, Houston, Minneapolis/St. Paul and Tampa.

Houston, which has lost twice before, is slated to host the GOP convention in 2028.

The smallest city to host a convention, by population rank at the time of the census, is Atlantic City, N.J. (1964), followed by Tampa (2012), Minneapolis/St. Paul (2008), Cleveland (2016) and Miami Beach (1968, and 1972 twice).

Atlantic City (1964), Dallas (1984), Detroit (1980), and New Orleans (1988) have won their solo shot at a convention.

So has Milwaukee in 2020 for the Democrats, although that largely virtual convention was decidedly unconventional given the COVID-19 pandemic. We’ll see what happens for the Republicans in 2024, as Milwaukee hosted their national convention last month.

Miami Beach, Cleveland, and Cincinnati have also fared well, with each being a successful site in two of three elections. Denver and Los Angeles have each won half of their convention host years.

Bottom line for bigger cities as convention sites?

During the last 12 elections, the convention that’s been conducted in the bigger city has won eight of them. Overall, in a head-to-head comparison, the bigger convention city has nominated an eventual presidential winner 21 times, while the smaller city has prevailed 15 times. (In six cases, both parties held their convention in the same city in the same year.)

This history bodes well for the Democrats, whose 2024 convention city (Chicago) is larger than the 2024 Republican host city (Milwaukee).

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For the record, the largest cities never to host a convention are Phoenix, followed by San Antonio, Texas; San Jose, Calif.; Jacksonville, Fla.; Indianapolis; Austin, Texas; Columbus, Ohio; Ft. Worth, Texas; El Paso, Texas; Memphis, Tenn.; and Seattle. (Jacksonville did play an odd and ill-fated role during the 2020 election, however.)

Numerous factors go into the success — or lack thereof — of a presidential candidate. But if they want a historical tailwind at their backs, Democrats and Republicans both may want to consider city size when making their choice for their convention site for 2028.

Given the track record for the larger city, perhaps Los Angeles, New York City or yet another return to Chicago might be the better option in four years, although that probably doesn’t mean a cheaper hotel room.

John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu. His “X” account is JohnTures2.

Yes: VP pick Tim Walz matters for winning the election. History shows it.

Growing up in Texas, we were treated to stories of colorful political characters. Few could top John Nance “Cactus Jack” Garner, who once pronounced that the vice-president position “is not worth a bucket of warm spit.” (Some say Garner said worse.)

That seems to be the opinion of more than a few pundits and political scientists. National Public Radio, The Economist and Politico have all run articles asserting how little impact a vice presidential pick makes on the ultimate outcome of a presidential election.

I take a different approach, comparing vice presidential picks’ performance in their states to how the party did in that state four years earlier.

Vice presidential picks: a recent history

To test their hypothesis, I analyzed how a party’s presidential ticket performed in the vice president nominees’ state in a given election year. Then I compared it to how the party’s ticket did in that state four years earlier.

It turns out that more often than not, a vice presidential candidate running as vice president for the first time helps you perform better in his or her state than four years earlier when that VP candidate wasn’t on the ticket.

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For example, did Mike Pence help Donald Trump’s performance in Indiana during 2016 compared to how Republicans did in 2012? This case matters, given that Democrats won Indiana in 2008.

By the same token, did Democrats do better in Virginia with Sen. Tim Kaine as Hillary Clinton’s running mate in 2016 than Democrats did in the same state during 2012?

In these most recent 17 cases, where the vice presidential nominee isn’t already a vice president running for reelection — such as Joe Biden in 2012 — the vice presidential candidate boosted the party ticket 10 times in his or her home state. On seven occasions, the VP candidate did not do as well for his or her party as the party did four years ago in the state.

There were three cases where the vice presidential candidate boost or drag on the ticket was less than a percentage point. Taking those three out means that on nine occasions, the vice presidential candidate improved the ticket in his or her state. In five cases, the VP candidate did not help the ticket in the state he or she is from.

The average boost a vice presidential candidate gets a ticket in his or her own state is 4.4 percentage points, when considering all 17 cases.

That difference definitely matters in 2024.

As recently as last month, some polls put Trump ahead of Biden in Minnesota, which Biden had won by about 7 percentage points in 2020.

With Biden off the ticket, the advantage has swung back toward Democrats, but Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s addition to the ticket Tuesday will all but ensure that Minnesota — a must-win for Kamala Harris’ presidential chances — stays blue.

In three cases (1976 Democrats, 1980 Republicans and 1992 Democrats), a vice presidential candidate helped flip a state. In 2016, Kaine boosted the Democrats in his swing state of Virginia in a tight election — Clinton won Virginia, even if she lost the election.

One should also consider the cases where a presidential candidate would have done much better, possibly winning the overall election, with a better vice presidential selection.

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Imagine President Gerald Ford keeping Vice President Nelson Rockefeller — and winning New York in 1976. It could have meant the difference in Ford defeating Democrat Jimmy Carter and winning his own four-year term after assuming the presidency from disgraced Richard Nixon. Instead, Carter narrowly won New York — and the election.

It’s also hard to imagine Democrat Al Gore losing Florida with the highly popular Sunshine State politician Bob Graham — a senator and governor — in 2000. Instead, he picked Connecticut's Joe Lieberman.

Republicans would have almost certainly fared a bit better against Democrat Barack Obama with a ticket of John McCain and Tom Ridge of Pennsylvania in 2008, instead of McCain and then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) might have helped Mitt Romney in 2012, at least in Ohio.

Still need convincing?

Many others in the media and academia have challenged the idea that vice presidential picks matter.

The Economist takes issue with the notion that vice presidential nominee Lyndon B. Johnson delivered the 1960 election to John F. Kennedy, who edged out Nixon in one of the nation’s closest elections in history.

And they might be right, given that the only states that voted for Democrat Adlai Stevenson II in 1952 and 1956 were from the South. Yet Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Republican, did win Johnson’s home state of Texas in both elections, and Kennedy captured Texas in 1960.

In a recent interview with A Martínez from National Public Radio, professor Kyle Kopko at Elizabethtown College takes issue with the idea that a VP candidate can deliver an election:

MARTÍNEZ: All right. So if the Harris campaign is thinking about picking a VP candidate to help them carry one of November's swing states, what is your message to them? Kyle, let's start with you there.

KOPKO: Well, first of all, it's probably not going to happen. Whenever we estimate a number of statistical models dating back decades, it's pretty rare that we find a vice presidential candidate that can deliver a battleground state. And even if they could, then it really has to be the decisive state in the Electoral College really to make a difference. So you can think about this as lightning needing to strike ever just right for it to count in the presidential election.

In a Politico article two elections ago, Kopko and Christopher Devine go into more detail about their model.

They look at state-level election returns from 1884-2012. They also delve in public opinion polls from 1952-2008 to see how much a vice-presidential candidate means for their home state.

Here are their findings: “While presidential candidates typically enjoy a home-state advantage (approximately 3 points to 7 points), vice presidential candidates generally do not. In each of the three analyses described above, a presidential ticket performs no better in the vice-presidential candidate’s home state than we would expect otherwise. Statistically speaking, the effect is zero.”

It's not that Kopko and Devine are wrong, but they are looking at eras with many blowout elections.

Think of Republican victories from 1896-1908 (William McKinley, Teddy Roosevelt), 1920-1928 (Warren G. Harding, Calvin Coolidge), and 1952-1956 (Eisenhower), or Democratic dominance from 1932-1944 (Franklin D. Roosevelt).

It wouldn’t have mattered if you put Superman on the ticket for the losing side, even with the X-ray vision.

But in more recent years, with 24-hour media and social media coverage, we learn a lot more about Palin, Pence, Kamala Harris and Joe Biden than America ever heard about Thomas Marshall, Thomas Hendricks, Levi P. Morton or Allen G. Thurman in those days.

Legacy of Charles not-quite-in-charge

But in more recent years, from 1976-2020, one could say that it’s a whole new ballgame for vice presidential picks.

And the selections of J. D. Vance of Ohio and Walz of Minnesota are likely to have a much bigger impact than Charles Fairbanks, Charles G. Dawes, Charles Curtis, Charles W. Bryan and Charles L. McNary (all vice presidential picks between 1904-1940) ever did.

John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu. His “X” account is JohnTures2.

Kamala Harris was not ‘the most liberal senator’ — take conservatives' word for it

Every four years, it seems Republicans claim that the Democratic Party presidential or vice presidential nominee is “the most liberal senator” (just as they did for Barack Obama).

This year is no different. Many conservatives, including Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have argued that Kamala Harris was the nation’s most liberal senator during her four years (2017 to 2021) representing California.

“Kamala Harris is a dangerous liberal. She makes Joe Biden look competent and moderate by contrast,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) recently declared.

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“Kamala Harris will appoint hundreds of extreme far left judges to forcibly impose crazy San Francisco liberal values on Americans nationwide,” Donald Trump himself told a crowd of supporters last month.

To test this argument, I analyzed the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC)’s congressional ratings database, which in part uses American Conservative Union (ACU) system of ideological voting rates in Congress. (And yes, this is the same CPAC that conducts the annual convention near Washington, D.C., so beloved by Donald Trump’s MAGA acolytes.)

This is a database that I have used in my political science classes, as well as in academic publications that evaluate congressional voting records.

This research focuses on Sen. Kamala Harris’ last year in office: 2020. This gives her most recent voting score and her lifetime voting score, based on how she voted on a variety of bills before the Senate.

In 2020, Harris’ CPAC score was 9 out of 100, with 100 being the most conservative one could be and zero being as utterly lefty liberal as possible.

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CPAC ranks almost all Democrats as more liberal than their Republican counterparts — no surprise there.

But: Harris getting a score of nine tied her with Democrats such as Sen. Jon Tester of Montana — hardly a far-left icon — and then-Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii. Gabbard, who left the Democratic Party shortly after her failed run for president in 2020, is now a favorite among some conservatives.

I also tested Harris’ score against all of her fellow Democrats to see if, indeed, she is “the most liberal” during her final year as a senator.

Of all the House of Representatives members and U.S. senators who were Democrats in 2020, Harris fell on the more conservative end of the spectrum — relatively speaking.

CPAC data reveal that the average score for Democrats in the Senate during 2020 was 7 out of 100. For the House, the average was 4 of 100.

This means that Harris’ voting habits were more in line with the most conservative Democrats than, say, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) or Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA).

When I analyzed Harris’ overall voting record from 2017 to 2020, she finished with a four percent conservative score, according to CPAC.

Even by that measure, Harris is far from the most liberal member of the Senate, or Congress as a whole, during that period.

I found at least 26 members of the House and Senate with a voting record below 4 of 100, and 19 members of Congress with voting scores also with at least a 4 of 100. There may be more — full disclosure: this is a lot of data to wade through — and it doesn’t cover anyone who left office between 2017 and 2019.

So no, Kamala Harris was not the most liberal senator during her time in the Senate, according to one of the most conservative, Trump-loving organizations among conservative, Trump-loving organizations.

Let’s look at one vote Harris took on one of her final days in the Senate before becoming vice president.

The vote — taken on January 1, 2021 — was for the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021. It reads: “To authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2021 for military activities of the Department of Defense, for military construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for other purposes.”

Harris voted for it.

Does that make Harris a conservative for being pro-military, or an anti-conservative for voting for a lot of fiscal spending? Regardless of CPAC scores, if Harris had voted against it, would she be praised for fiscal restraint? Or would she be criticized for being anti-military? You be the judge.

John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Ga. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu. His “X” account is JohnTures2.

What history says about V.P. picks: senator, governor or wild card?

We know this much: Vice President Kamala Harris will pick her running mate before accepting her party’s presidential nomination in August at the Democratic National Convention.

Harris also has a short list of about a dozen potential candidates she’s vetting, according to CBS News.

So should she choose a U.S. senator, governor, U.S. House representative — or someone else?

Let’s examine the historical record to see which type of vice presidential candidates have helped — or hurt — a presidential ticket.

Since 1945, presidential candidates have made 31 vice presidential picks — not counting vice presidential renominations.

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Of these 31 picks, 19 most recently served in elected office as U.S. senators, four were governors and seven had prior electoral experience only from the House of Representatives, such as Dick Cheney and George H. W. Bush. One did not have experience in any of those offices.

Of their 18 vice presidential selections, Democrats have chosen a U.S. senator in 16 cases since 1945. The Republicans are a little more diverse in their selections, with four U.S. Senate picks — including Donald Trump’s selection of J. D. Vance — four gubernatorial picks and six selections from the House of Representatives.

There’s the adage that a vice president can only hurt you, and he or she can’t help you. Gov. Nelson Rockefeller, who Gerald Ford selected when he replaced President Richard Nixon as president, was not renominated by Ford when he unsuccessfully ran for his own term in 1976 — not that it mattered much in the end.

Historical evidence indicates that the prior job of the running mate makes little difference in victory or defeat — if he or she is a senator or governor. U.S. senators nominated for vice president have won nine times and lost eight times. Governors as vice presidential nominees are split, winning twice and losing twice.

But those without gubernatorial or senatorial experience fare poorly. Picking a candidate from the House of Representatives has only been successful two times in seven tries.

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The one candidate without experience as a governor, senator or representative, Sargent Shriver, lost in 1972 as Democrat George McGovern’s ticket partner.

Republicans picked Vance, and their record with U.S. Senate vice presidential nominees is pretty good: two wins (Richard Nixon and Dan Quayle) and one loss (Bob Dole).

Democrats, however, have seven wins with U.S. senators (Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Al Gore, Walter Mondale, Hubert Humphrey, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Alben Barkley) against seven losses (Tim Kaine, John Edwards, Joe Lieberman, Lloyd Bentsen, Edwin Muskie, Estes Kefauver and John Sparkman).

Republicans are the only ones since World War II who have picked a governor as a running mate. Two (Mike Pence, Spiro Agnew) won, while two (Sarah Palin and Earl Warren) lost.

U.S. House representatives have largely failed for both parties, with the GOP picking two winners (George H. W. Bush and Dick Cheney) and four losers (Paul Ryan, Jack Kemp, Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., and Bill Miller). Democrats picked one (Geraldine Ferraro) and she lost.

It should also be noted that Bush — UN ambassador, CIA director — and Cheney — secretary of defense, CEO of Halliburton — both had extensive experience in other realms between their stints as House members and selections as vice presidential candidates.

Trump has already made his pick. What should Harris do?

It’s a flip of a coin based on the historical record, so long as she doesn’t pick a U.S. House member.

At present, senators and governors top her shortlist, including Harris can choose North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Illinois Gov. J. B. Pritzker, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, California Gov. Gavin Newsom or even Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz. Some new names include Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, as CBS reports.

Given that the record shows all things are equal in vice presidential picks, it is probably best to select a running mate from a state that will help you. That would put those candidates from swing states, such as Kelly (Arizona), Shapiro (Pennsylvania), Whitmer (Michigan) and even perhaps Cooper (North Carolina), at the top of the list.

Had Gore picked popular Florida U.S. senator and former Gov. Bob Graham for his VP, he would have very likely won the 2000 election, given Florida’s overriding significance in that race. Taking a running mate from Connecticut in 2000 — Joe Lieberman — made little difference.

Ford might have done better in 1976 with a Texan such as George H. W. Bush instead of a Kansan in Dole, given that Ford lost the Lone Star State to Democrat Jimmy Carter.

For John McCain in 2008, Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge would have been a far better choice than Palin, of then-deep red Alaska. McCain lost the Keystone State (and some Obama-backing moderates).

In a close presidential race, particularly now, vice presidential candidates from swing states may matter more, regardless of prior office experience.

John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu. His “X” account is JohnTures2.

Trump vs. Harris will seem compressed. But it’s the norm elsewhere.

As news broke that President Joe Biden would exit the 2024 presidential election, Republicans cried foul.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) criticized Biden’s decision to step down, claiming the Democrats might “run into legal impediments” if Biden isn’t at the top of the ticket. On ABC, he said: “It would be wrong, and I think unlawful, in accordance to some of these states’ rules, for a handful of people to go in a back room and switch it out because they don’t like the candidate any longer. That’s not how this is supposed to work.”

HuffPost pointed out that Johnson failed to cite a legal doctrine to back this up.

And so far, there’s not much of a legal case to be made by Republicans, as Biden had not been officially selected as the Democratic Party’s 2024 presidential nominee.

There doesn’t seem to be anything in the U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 1, concerning presidential elections, that is violated by Biden stepping aside. There’s nothing in the 12th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would make this illegal, either.

States have also not printed their ballots on which presidential candidates’ names will appear. Antonio Fins with the Palm Beach Post, as posted on Yahoo, noted that Florida has its primary for non-presidential races on Aug. 20. Several other states similarly conduct their non-presidential primaries in August or September, according to the Federal Election Commission.

This means that general election ballots simply cannot be printed for many more weeks, as those states don’t yet know who will have qualified for their general elections.

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This unexpectedly shorter presidential election season — at least between the two new opponents in Donald Trump and Kamala Harris — may seem strange, even unmooring to many Americans, particularly for anyone who’s of a Generation X, millennial or Generation Z vintage.

But, in fact, the 2024 U.S. presidential election appears destined to in part resemble American presidential elections before the 1970s, when national nominating conventions were more than made-for-television formalities, where a party’s “presumptive” nominee had — for better or for worse — not been determined weeks or months earlier.

Before the modern nomination process began in 1972, when statewide electoral contests began to eclipse state conventions as the “primary” means of selecting delegates, candidates were selected at national party conventions.

Starting in 1856, the first year there was both a Republican and a Democratic Party in the same election cycle, there have been 86 national party conventions held or about to be held.

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Over the years, only three of these party conventions took place in May. Thirty have been conducted in June, 29 in July, 21 in August and three in September.

For conventions in August and September, late in the game, Republicans outnumber Democrats for holding these August and September meetings, 13-11. This year’s Democratic Party convention in Chicago, scheduled to begin Aug. 19, would be within these normal time limits.

With the Trump vs. Harris matchup beginning just 106 days removed from Election Day on Nov. 5, the United States will also walk a small step closer to other advanced democracies, which tend to have shorter election seasons.

I analyzed the most recent presidential and parliamentary elections of 20 different advanced democracies from Europe, North America, Asia, Oceania and the Middle East. These countries include France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, Greece, Belgium, Ireland, Denmark, Portugal, Canada, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Israel, Poland, the Czech Republic, Australia and Austria.

The average number of days for an election is 75.8 days.

If Biden’s replacement is formally chosen on Aug. 22, 2024, the final day of the Democratic National Convention, it will be 75 days until the election.

When Speaker Johnson claims, “That’s not how this is supposed to work,” what is happening in 2024 is a different process than the endless election cycles that have recently dominated the American process that often exhaust the average American voter.

That does not make it illegal.

HuffPost reports that the Heritage Foundation, behind Project 2025, which Donald Trump both has never heard of and also manages to strongly disagree with, will likely be filing lawsuits in several states over the change in candidates.

Sadly, filing endless litigation over elections does seem to be a more disturbing trend in modern presidential elections in America.

But from a constitutional standpoint, as well as an historical one, little seems to stand in the way of a Trump-Harris presidential race — quick as it may be by modern political standards.

John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Ga. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu. His “X” account is JohnTures2.

Do presidents’ popularity increase after assassination attempts? History has an answer.

In the 2010 movie “Machete,” Sen. John McLaughlin of Texas (played by Robert De Niro) stages an assassination attempt to frame the title character. A newscaster in the film reports that a poll, taken within minutes of the fake shooting, shows McLaughlin at record-high approval ratings.

It’s part of a popular belief that when high-profile political figures survive assassination attempts, their approval ratings skyrocket.

So will Donald Trump — having survived an assassination attempt Saturday when a gunman wounded his ear — suddenly run away with the 2024 presidential election as some fretting Democrats and exuberant Republicans now believe?

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To test this argument, I analyzed Gallup approval rating data involving modern-era presidents who survived assassination attempts.

Here are the results:

Since John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, there have been at least six high-profile attempts upon the lives of presidents, with three against Republicans (Gerald Ford twice and Ronald Reagan once) and three against Democrats (Bill Clinton twice and Joe Biden once).

Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme tried to assassinate Ford on September 5, 1975, in Sacramento.

Gallup Polling from August 15-18, 1975, showed Ford with 46 percent support. That support declined to 45 percent by September 9-12, 1975.

Then, on Sept. 22, 1975, Sara Jane Moore tried to kill Ford in San Francisco. Ford’s approval rating from Sept. 12-15, 1975, was 45 percent, which went up to only 47 percent on Oct. 3-6, 1975 — a two-percentage-point gain.

President Ronald Reagan was shot by John Hinckley Jr. on March 30, 1981. From March 13-16, 1981, before the shooting, the president’s support was at 60 percent. It increased to 67 percent on April 3-6, 1981, a seven-percentage-point gain in Gallup polls.

On Sept. 12, 1994, Frank Eugene Corder hijacked a small plane and attempted to crash it into the White House where Clinton, the then-president, resided. The plane instead landed on the South Lawn. Before then, Clinton had an approval rating of 39 percent. It increased in the next Gallup Polling average to 42 percent during Sept. 16-18, 1994.

Francisco Martin Duran, another would-be assassin who targeted Clinton on Oct. 29, 1994, shooting with an assault rifle at the White House while the president was inside. Before then, Clinton’s approval rating, according to Gallup, was 48 percent (Oct. 22-25, 1994) and it fell to 46 percent afterward (Nov. 2-6, 1994).

On May 23, 2023, a neo-Nazi tried to kill President Joe Biden by crashing through a barrier a block from the White House. The May 1-24, 2023, Gallup polling average for Biden was 39 percent. For the following month, it was 43 percent (June 1-23, 2023), according to Gallup polling.

Bottom line?

If you add the Gallup poll improvements and poll declining cases and divide the sum by the number of cases, you get an average increase of 2.17 percentage points — barely a statistical blip by presidential approval rating standards.

Movies aside, myths about assassination attempts boosting presidential poll numbers typically come from tales about Reagan.

Peter Sheridan in the United Kingdom’s The Express argues “President Reagan’s popularity soared by 22 per cent [sic] when he was shot by a would-be assassin 43 years ago, and political and financial experts expect Trump to savour a similar boost.”

But as the Gallup evidence showed, it was only a seven-percentage-point jump, and the percent boost is still not near 22 percent (only a little above 10 percent).

Moreover, Del Quentin Wilber, writing for the Associated Press, claims in a book of his book that the assassination attempt “changed the trajectory of his presidency” for the positive. He also cites David Broder, who claims that Reagan’s survival of the assassination attempt and his folksy humor, made him a “mythical figure.”

It is worth noting that by the start of the summer, Reagan was back down to 59 percent. By November, he was at 49 percent. By the end of 1982 and early 1983, his approval rating was 39 percent. All of these are verified by Gallup polling.

Reagan’s political fortunes would soon turn around — but not because of an assassination attempt. Instead, a strong economy, competent re-election campaign and middling Democratic opposition in Walter Mondale conspired to propel Reagan to a landslide victory in 1984.

Assassination attempts typically only make very small boosts in approval ratings.

Speakers at the Republican National Convention this week in Milwaukee can’t stop talking about how strong and brave Trump is — the former president appeared at Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum on Monday night — for bouncing back so quickly.

But if Trump becomes president of the United States again, and defeats Biden, it’ll likely be caused by any of several factors unrelated to the assassination attempt.

And an initial poll from Morning Consult supports that notion: Trump did not receive a nationwide popularity boost following the assassination attempt, according to the survey.

John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu. His “X” account is JohnTures2.

History shows presidential debate victors often win the battle but lose the war

Donald Trump has to feel pretty good, as he bested — some might say obliterated — a stammering, low-energy President Joe Biden in their first debate of 2024. A CNN poll declared Trump the hands-down winner, 67 percent to 33 percent.

But are those who win that first debate more likely to take the election?

In short: no.

During the television era, history indicates that the winners of first general election presidential debates went on to win the election only five out of 13 times.

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So at a moment when some Democrats are questioning Biden’s fitness for the presidency, and wondering aloud whether Biden should exit the race altogether, this is a bit of bad news for Trump.

Let’s run the numbers:

In 2020, Biden won 60 percent to 28 percent for Trump in the first debate, according to CNN’s poll. Then Biden went on to win the election in November 2020.

In 2016, Hillary Clinton was judged to have won the first debate, according to CNN’s poll that had her winning 62 percent to 27 percent for Trump. But she lost the 2016 election.

In 2012, Mitt Romney won the first debate easily. According to Gallup, the Republican and former Massachusetts governor prevailed 72 percent to 20 percent for President Barack Obama. But it was Obama, the Democrat, who easily won reelection in 2012.

In 2008, Obama took the first debate from Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, 51 percent to 38 percent in the first debate according to CNN. This served as a good launching point for Obama’s victory in the election later that year.

In 2004, Democratic Sen. John Kerry won the first debate against George W. Bush. Newsweek’s poll revealed that Kerry won 61 percent to 19 percent for Bush. But it was Bush who narrowly won the election.

In 2000, Gallup polling had Vice President Al Gore winning the first debate (48 percent to 41 percent), which may surprise people, as the media criticized Gore’s audible sighs. But Bush won the 2000 election.

In 1996, Democrat Bill Clinton outperformed Republican Sen. Bob Dole, in the first debate (51 percent to 31 percent) according to Gallup polling. And Clinton was reelected in 1996.

In 1992, Reform Party nominee Ross Perot won the first debate 47 percent to 30 percent for then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton and 16 percent for President George H. W. Bush, according to Gallup. But Perot finished third in the election, behind Clinton and Bush, and didn’t earn a single electoral vote despite winning about 19 percent of the popular vote.

In 1988, Democrat and Massachusetts Gov. Michael Dukakis was judged the winner of the first debate in two polls, but lost the election, by a wide margin, to Bush.

In 1984, Democrat Walter Mondale handily defeated Republican President Ronald Reagan 54 percent to 36 percent in their first debate. Yet Reagan won 49 of 50 states during the general election — one of the most notable landslide victories in U.S. History.

In 1980, Reagan also won the only debate against Democratic President Jimmy Carter and independent John Anderson, according to surveys from Gallup. Reagan also won the election.

Data from Gallup surveys showed that President Gerald Ford drastically reduced Carter’s big lead in 1976 but lost the election, while John F. Kennedy overtook Richard Nixon in the polls after their first debate in 1960 and ultimately won the ultra-close contest, according to Gallup.

That means that in 13 elections, the first debate winners have won five of these contests (1960, 1980, 1996, 2008, 2020). In the other eight cases, the first debate winners went on to lose at the ballot box (1976, 1984, 1988, 1992, 2000, 2004, 2012, 2016). That’s a 38 percent success rate for winners of the first debate.

No televised debates were conducted in 1964, 1968 or 1972.

Why do winners of the first presidential debate often come up short in the election?

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It could be because the first debate serves as a wake-up call for the first debate loser, as it did for Reagan in 1984, and Obama in 2012; each had to answer questions about their poor debate performance.

It could be that taking the first debate puts pressure on the winner to make a repeat performance.

Or, perhaps, the first debate winner could become overconfident in his or her chances of winning the election.

Whatever the case may be, Trump may find that history is not on his side just because he dominated Biden in the first debate.

A second debate between Trump and Biden is scheduled for Sept. 10.

John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu. His “X” account is JohnTures2.

How The Onion’s founding editor finds humor in the dismal age of Trump

Sometimes this election seems a lot more dangerous and existential than just a scary Joe Biden-Donald Trump debate, as parodied by The Onion.

As the presidential rematch bounces between an edgy legal thriller and a Stephen King horror story, a good laugh is perhaps the best medicine.

That’s what Scott Dikkers, the founding editor of humor publication The Onion, told me during an interview at the monthly meeting of the Atlanta Writers Club.

“Humor can’t exist in a state of fear, so we need it,” Dikkers told me. “If you’re too scared, you can’t do humor, so we need it. When people say ‘too soon,’ comedians say ‘It’s never too soon.’”

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The long-serving editor of The Onion added: “Humor is a coping mechanism, an underrated method for dealing with life’s tragedies. All who do comedy professionally know this, which is why they do it.”

He agreed with me when I related stories of being in Russia during its painful transition from Soviet communism to something resembling capitalism. I heard a lot of Russian jokes about the economy. For example, “What did Russians use for light before they had candles? Answer: Electricity!”

Now with Vladimir Putin in charge, jokes, and even laughter in Russia, may be illegal, as Russians are increasingly finding out.

“How do you create a balance with joking about Democrats and Republicans?” I asked.

Scott DikkersThe Onion founding editor Scott Dikkers. (Courtesy)

“We don’t think of the divide as between Democrats and Republicans,” Dikkers replied. “We see the divide as between the haves and have-nots. It used to be [that] both parties would appeal to a different 50 percent. Now it’s one percent versus 99 percent as both parties appeal to the elites. And comedians want to appeal to the 99 percent. One party used to appeal to the 99 percent, but now it’s all muddied. Democrats used to appeal to labor, and the Republicans used to appeal to the rich establishment, but nobody seems to represent the have-nots anymore. So we can poke fun at both parties.”

For many Americans, nothing seems funny about the present moment. It’s a sobering summer. Civic tension is palpable. Laughter is scarce.

“How do you find humor in unfunny subjects?” I just had to know.

Dikkers answered my question with a question.

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“I mean, how do you make fun of nuclear weapons, the arms race, the Cold War?” he began while harkening back to one of The Onion’s historical publications, which poked fun at famous news events of yore.

He explained how The Onion got an idea from an old Bob Hope joke about the nuclear weapons test at Bikini Atoll: “Army finds the one place in the world untouched by war and blows it up.”

As “Uncle Ben” keeps reminding us in countless Spiderman movie remakes: “With great power comes great responsibility.”

With that in mind, the humor newspaper has had its share of newsmaking outside of its own humor headlines, such as it sale by G/O Media to something called “Global Tetrahedron” (which really sounds like a spoof from The Onion). Global Tetrahedron is actually a Chicago-based group of self-described digital media fans of The Onion who named their real company after a fake one created by the humor paper.

The Onion has also had to weather criticism from some purists that argue the newspaper’s humor just isn’t the same as before (like duh!).

Meanwhile, the humor newspaper waded into a Supreme Court debate over free speech rights.

After satirist Anthony Novak was arrested and charged with designing a fake website for the City of Parma, Ohio, police department, Novak sued Parma following his acquittal in court. The Onion wrote what has to be the funniest “friend of the court brief” (amicus curae for non-Latin dorks) on behalf of Novak v. The City of Parma (2022) to challenge the 6th Circut’s Court of Appeals move to dismiss the lawsuit.

The 23-page “brief “is replete with such gems as “Rising from its humble beginnings as a print newspaper in 1756, The Onion now enjoys a daily readership of 4.3 trillion and has grown into the single most powerful and influential organization in human history” to “The Onion regularly pokes its finger in the eyes of repressive and authoritarian regimes, such as the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea, and domestic presidential administrations. So The Onion’s professional parodists were less than enthralled to be confronted with a legal ruling that fails to hold government actors accountable for jailing and prosecuting a would-be humorist simply for making fun of them.”

Despite being the best brief in American legal jurisprudence (or at least the favorite one in my students’ law classes), the Supreme Court refused to grant Novak’s case a writ of certiorari in 2023, upholding the lawsuit’s dismissal, which was a chilling outcome for free speech in the United States.

Additionally, Dikkers noted several times in his talk about The Onion’s history where the publication faced lawsuits and “cease and desist orders,” showing that not all public officials can take a joke.

Thankfully, the comedic writing of The Onion team may be just enough to help us through the 2024 election — a battle to see whether our democracy will be sponsored by Facebook or Tesla.

John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu. His “X” account is JohnTures2.

Rep. Byron Donalds, his gigantic Jim Crow myth and a forgotten fact about Black voters

As we celebrated Juneteenth last week, a political argument is brewing about the legacy of the Jim Crow era.

It’s important, generally, to provide greater scrutiny of that era, lest we repeat, or even in some cases maintain, the legacy of that time frame in America.

But Rep. Byron Donalds (R-FL) ignited an acute firestorm of opposition and support at a June political event.

NBC reported that Donalds, a Trump campaign surrogate and potential vice presidential short-lister, “suggested that by embracing Democrats, circumstances have worsened for Black people. He pointed to programs enacted by President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s that included expanding federal food stamps, housing, welfare and Medicaid for low-income Americans.

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“‘You see, during Jim Crow, the Black family was together. During Jim Crow, more Black people were not just conservative — Black people have always been conservative-minded — but more Black people voted conservatively,’ Donalds told the audience Tuesday.”

Critics listed a myriad of horrors from the Jim Crow era, from KKK violence to curtailed voting rights to unconstitutional discrimination. Donalds defended himself, saying his remarks were only limited to Black families.

I researched whether Black people really “voted conservatively” during the Jim Crow era.

Bottom line: Donalds’ assertion is not supported by the evidence.

As Daphney Douglas at Salve Regina University discovered in her thesis, African Americans overwhelmingly voted for Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1936, well before the 1960s. Proquest found that 71 percent of African Americans voted Democratic in that election, according to news reports.

Douglas lists the actions that Republican Herbert Hoover engaged in that drove African Americans from the Republican Party, such as the Supreme Court nomination of John Parker.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs the Social Security Act . (FDR Library Digital Collection.)

African Americans tended to vote for Republicans before Hoover on the basis of civil rights issues typically against the conservative Democrats who pushed for segregation.

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But for Northern liberal Democrats, African American voters clearly felt differently.

Donalds is also mistaken about the source of African American poverty. Research by scholars at the Griswold Center for Economic Policy Studies in 2022 found that “although Black wealth growth outpaced that of white Americans’ between 1870 and 1930, the rate of convergence in these years lags far behind what would be expected had the two groups enjoyed equal conditions for wealth accumulation. Indeed, the historical record is rife with instances of expropriation of Black wealth, exclusion of Black Americans from the political process, and legally sanctioned segregation and discrimination in land, labor, and capital markets. All of these factors likely contributed to sluggish convergence over this period.”

Moreover, the programs Donalds blames for African American poverty aren’t responsible for that.

The Griswold Center scholars found: “During the 1960s through the 1980s, convergence regains speed, exceeding what would be predicted by our equal-conditions benchmark. The dismantling of Jim Crow through Black activism and civil rights legislation, expansions of the social safety net, and improved labor standards during this period may have boosted wealth-accumulating conditions for Black Americans.

Although the wealth gap remained sizable in these decades, it remained on track to converge. From today’s vantage point, however, these gains were short-lived. Starting in the 1980s, we document a widening of the racial gap in capital gains as well as a complete stalling of income convergence. These forces have caused the wealth gap to leave the convergence path altogether and to start increasing again.”

The economic numbers show that problems emerged when the beneficial policies of the 1960s were rolled back in the 1980s.

I agree with Donalds in his criticism of Florida education standards, which insist that there were “benefits” of slavery.

But he and I disagree about the legacy of Jim Crow. Black families were not better off economically during that dark time. The policies of the 1960s closed the racial gap in earnings but were rolled back in the 1980s. And African American support of Democrats began decades earlier than Donalds claims.

John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu. His “X” account is JohnTures2.

Paper caper: Red state voting ballots aren’t what Republicans expected

Listening to former President Donald Trump on the campaign trail, you’d think there were hardly any paper ballots used in American elections.

“We’ll straighten out our elections, too, so that we’re going to paper ballots,” Trump said at a December campaign rally at the University of New Hampshire, according to WMUR-TV 7.

ABC reported that Trump doubled down on that comment this year in appearance with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), demanding paper ballots — even though it’s up to every state and local jurisdiction to determine what voting system to use.

Neither the president nor Congress has the power to dictate how a particular American county or state chooses to vote. The Federal Election Commission and federal Election Assistance Commission are equally powerless.

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But the facts show that in 2020, most Americans voted in jurisdictions that indeed use paper ballots in one form or fashion.

In fact, all but one state that doesn’t use paper ballots or generates a reviewable paper trail voted for Trump in 2020. Many of these red states and locales, at the behest of Trump and other election deniers, are now struggling to switch to paper ballots. As they do, they’re finding that it’s not so easy, or cheap, to appease never-satisfied Republicans who seem to find a new voting conspiracy around every corner.

Fact checkers at ABC News and WMUR-TV noted that the majority of Americans overall cast votes on paper ballots. My own fact-checking, using data compiled by Verified Voting and posted on Governing.com, shows that in 2020, and again during 2022, almost 70 percent of Americans lived in states and voting jurisdictions with hand marked paper ballots.

This is almost the exact percentage as in the 2012 election, when Trump was still hosting his NBC reality television show, “The Apprentice.”

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Back in 2012, almost 25 percent of Americans lived under systems that had direct recording equipment without a “voter-verified paper audit trail” printers. As Ballotpedia notes, you’d have touchscreens, dials or some kind of mechanical buttons. Voter choices would be theoretically stored by the computer on a cartridge or hard drive. But you wouldn’t have any sort of separate paper record preserved for the purposes of an audit or hand recount.

According to Ballotpedia, direct recording equipment without a voter-verified paper audit trail cannot “produce paper records that can be preserved to be tabulated in case of an audit or recount.”

By 2022, these systems appeared in less than 10 percent of voting jurisdictions by 2022. And according to the Brennan Center for Justice, hardly any states will have such systems by the 2024 election, which makes Trump’s point relatively moot.

Most of the remaining states use ballot-marking devices, which “allows for the electronic presentation of a ballot, electronic selection of valid contest options, and the production of a human-readable paper ballot, but does not make any other lasting record of the voter’s selections,” according to Ballotpedia.

States or local voting jurisdictions with ballot-marking devices alone make up about 20 percent of voting jurisdictions.

Listening to Trump’s allies, you’d also think Dominion Voting Systems ran the 2020 election. But even with recent increases in usage, the company’s machines, the subject of many conspiracy theories, served barely a quarter of the voters.

So which states had jurisdictions without some kind of paper trail in 2020 — the direct recording equipment without voter-verified paper audit trail — that anger some Republicans?

According to Ballotpedia, those states with at least some voting jurisdiction with anti-paper voting machines in 2020 were Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, New Jersey, Oklahoma (only in some accessibility cases), Tennessee and Texas.

And Johnson’s home state of Louisiana was the only state in 2020 with direct recording equipment without voter-verified paper audit trail for all jurisdictions.

You read that correctly: One of the nation’s reddest states uses the least amount of paper ballots.

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None of these states were swing states in the last election. And all but one of these states without a voting machine paper trail voted for Trump in 2020.

After the 2020 election, when GOP outrage over the election results was at its zenith, Republicans in Louisiana passed a bill designed to overhaul the state’s current voting machines, now more than 30 years old, so outdated with some parts that aren’t even being manufactured any more.

But the bill was so cumbersome that the Louisiana legislature is trying to repeal portions of it, according to Wesley Muller of The Louisiana Illuminator, as recently reported by Raw Story.

Those red states with paperless systems in some jurisdictions are going to be stuck with quite a bill if they want to make Trump happy, should he get his wish in winning another term and “imposing” some sort of law on all voter jurisdictions.

When Georgia was deciding on paying for hand-marked paper ballot systems or “touchscreen-marked paper ballots,” the version with paper ballots was estimated to be $224 million — almost $75 million more than electronic system with paper verification, which had “superior security, accessibility and transparency” claimed then-Deputy Secretary of State Jordan Fuchs, according to Georgia’s Secretary of State office.

Instead of listening to election deniers complain about paper ballots, it seems that modernizing election systems might be a better choice for states heading into future elections.

John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu. His “X” account is JohnTures2.

Why an independent judiciary is essential to America’s survival

“All the rights secured to the citizens under the Constitution are worth nothing, and a mere bubble, except guaranteed to them by an independent and virtuous Judiciary.”

So said President Andrew Jackson, according to reports from the time. Of course, Jackson also reportedly said after another Supreme Court ruling from the 1830s: “[Chief Justice] John Marshall has made his decision. Let him try and enforce it!”

Both quotes illustrate America’s complicated relationship with its independent judiciary.

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We all value a court free from political influence.

Until we lose.

A jury has found Donald Trump guilty in his case involving allegations of paying off a porn star with so-called “hush” money in an effort to keep a sexual affair secret before the 2016 election, and our attitudes on the court are likely to be dictated by the verdict, rather than abstract legal principles.

Having an independent judiciary — that is, one largely free from the meddling of legislators and government executives — is a big deal. Bigger than most Americans appreciate.

As my students and I studied last fall, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been trying to take away rights associated with his country’s independent judiciary, which polarized the population on whether it had the power to hold the prime minister accountable for alleged corruption. The Muslim Brotherhood lost power when it went after Egypt’s relatively independent judiciary.

In class, my students and I studied the difference between common law countries like the United States and code law countries found in Europe.

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In America, there’s a greater emphasis on precedent (or setting new ones) and creativity in interpreting and enforcing the law. We also have judicial review, where courts can overturn a national or state law, something rarely found in Code Law countries, which act as more like a government appendage and often issue very brief rulings, simply restating what the government’s law is, and are less likely to actually challenge it.

My LaGrange College undergraduates and I gathered data on which countries had common law systems, and which ones had code law systems. We also entered data on a country’s level of freedom (from Freedom House) and corruption (from Transparency International) in an in-class experiment.

Our findings showed that countries with a common law system were far more likely to be free (2.7692) than code law countries (2.1923). Countries scoring a "3" are fully free, and countries with a "1" are considered not free.

When it came to Transparency International’s “Corruption Perception Index” — higher scores mean less perception of corruption — we found that common law countries were significantly less likely to be corrupt (61.8462) than code law countries (44.8205). But mixed common law systems (39.879) and mixed code law systems (33.1579) performed far worse in our studies.

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When student Makayla Page and I presented our findings at the Georgia Political Science Association at St. Simons Island in Georgia, we got some feedback about other measures of an independent judiciary, so my law students and I will look at those this fall.

But as our preliminary results show, having a court that is capable of taking on laws passed by Congress, an executive order, a state law, or even a time-held judicial precedent is pretty good for a country’s freedom while lowering a country’s level of corruption.

John A. Tures is a professor of political science at LaGrange College in LaGrange, Georgia. His views are his own. He can be reached at jtures@lagrange.edu. His “X” account is JohnTures2.

LaGrange College students Makayla Page, Ben Schmisseur, Hayleigh Sebaugh, Jenna Pittman, Parker Floyd, Zyhia Johnson, Gabriel Cofield, Daniel Cody, Amanda McLendon, Cooper Dolhancyk, Jakai Reed, Joe Thomas, Makenzi Maltezo, Landon Erwin, Camron Long, Zion Turner, Ema Turner, William Pearce, Samuel Whitt and David Fugate contributed to this column.

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