Bryan was a good man who MIGHT have made a good President. Of course, he may have been the 1901 version of Jimmy Carter too, but I'd like to think otherwise.
Retrospective US Presidential Election: 1900
- Thread starter Nerdlinger
- Start date
Bumping yet again. C'mon, people, this is a fairly close election. Let's keep the discussion going so this doesn't constantly fall off the first page.
It wasn't his finest hour. I sometimes wonder if he'd have become a liberal icon had he died a year earlier. [1]
But isn't it all academic as far as 1900 is concerned? In those days education (bar a few special cases like West Point and Annapolis) was entirely a state matter, so what the POTUS thought about teaching evolution (had he ever even raised the question in public at that date?) would have been of little significance. Nor had he made a big issue of Prohibition as yet.
More positively he was on record as a strong supporter of women's suffrage, which he had advocated since the 1880s. I don't know if it would have come any earlier, but every little helps.
I'd vote for him.
[1] Alternatively, had he died in 1917 he would be remembered for his fight to keep America out of WW1. Not everyone would have agreed with him, but it would have been a far better note to go out on than Scopes.
Given that this is a retrospective exercise, I figure we can make our picks based on information about the candidates from after the election.
No problem there - so long as the info is relevant.
My point was that WJB's attitude to the teaching of evolution is a completely moot point - a 1900 POTUS had little or no power in that sphere.
As to Prohibition, he might conceivably be able to speed it up - as conceivably he might be able to speed up votes for women - but since both were eventually to pass anyway it doesn't really matter too much.
Maybe in a hundred years somone will be writing on this forum "Because what was socialism in 2000 is conventional wisdom now."
Anyway I picked the socialist too. Not because of the person himself (because I know very little about socialism in the USA) but because of my own preferences and all the others being out for the reasons VidaLaVida already outlined.
Thanks for the bump. It'd be neat if one of the first elections in this project resulted in an unexpected winner.
You don't know anything about Debs, do you? He was a member of the revolutionary wing of the party and a founding member of the Industrial Workers of the World, a union which proclaimed revolutionary intent in its charter and was the home of many of the founders of the American CP. The only reason Debs was the SP's consistent Presidential candidate was because he was the most influential and charismatic member of the party, the racist right-wing of the party would have kept him off the ballot if they could have afforded to.
Edit: This rant is also the reason I voted for him.
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You don't know anything about Debs, do you? He was a member of the revolutionary wing of the party and a founding member of the Industrial Workers of the World, a union which proclaimed revolutionary intent in its charter and was the home of many of the founders of the American CP. The only reason Debs was the SP's consistent Presidential candidate was because he was the most influential and charismatic member of the party, the racist right-wing of the party would have kept him off the ballot if they could have afforded to.
Edit: This rant is also the reason I voted for him.
To clarify, as I understand it, Debs was not in favor of violent revolution -- if he had been, I wouldn't have voted for him.
No Marxist, not even Lenin, said "Hey guys, let's kill our way to the top!" That's Narodnichestvo. Almost every serious Marxist understands that revolution will be a necessarily violent affair due to the fact that no matter the nature of the conquest of power by the working-class, the bourgeoisie will not allow it and will resist using all the power of the state at their disposal. Look at Allende in Chile. Any Marxist could have told you that something like the Pinochet coup was GOING to happen, and that was in response to a non-revolutionary like Allende. This does not mean that revolutionary socialists advocate violence by the working-class, but all serious revolutionaries recognize the need for workers' self-defense.
OK, so I'm not as well-versed in Marxism as most people are. Politics has never been my area of expertise.
Yeah, we're just going by the plurality winner in these elections. It's simpler that way.