 | abichara (60)
11/14/2004 | John Davis's claim to fame in Presidential history is the fact that it took 135 ballots in the Democratic National Convention just to nominate him in 1924. At the time the Democrats were heavily divided between its rural wing and its urban wing, which was dominated by machine politics. This division was racial, ethnic and social. Davis, a former diplomat in the Wilson administration was seen as a consensus candidate, but not much else. Davis was an intelligent man, an accomplished lawyer and diplomat, but he had no experience in elective politics. He wasn't really well known, so he didn't have any base to fall back on. Davis was taking on a very popular Coolidge administration in a time of economic prosperity. Any Democrat would have had a tough go of it at the end of the day; Davis was simply a sacrificial lamb.
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 | EschewObfuscation (61)
09/16/2004 | irish, I thought I'd round it off at an even 20 items (my Dad wasn't even born yet!) but this election was held at a cataclysmal time in the US. There is one major reason to include this election on this list, though, and it has to do with timing: the 19th Amendment, ratified on 8/26/1920. Women had earned the right to vote in the 1920 election but few voted. In the 1924 election women turned out in larger numbers to vote for the first time and male candidates have been trying to figure out how to win their vote, without much consistent success, ever since. Also, the voter turnout of 49% of eligible voters was the lowest turnout in 100 years, oddly. UPDATE: The turnout number is most likey low due to the addition of all eligible female voters (those of voting age) to the denominator. Prior to this election, voter turnout was in the high 50's and low 60's consistently, males only.
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 | irishgit (138)
09/06/2004 | Jeez Eschew, I admire your notion of recent. Not a great surprise. The country was in the midst of an economic surge and almost nobody realized that they were dancing on the edge of a precipice.
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