{"id":4535,"date":"2016-11-18T09:49:16","date_gmt":"2016-11-18T14:49:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/?p=4535"},"modified":"2025-08-13T19:35:48","modified_gmt":"2025-08-13T23:35:48","slug":"after-the-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/2016\/11\/18\/after-the-election\/","title":{"rendered":"After The Election"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ray\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The successful candidate of this past presidential election was bound to be a \u201cfirst\u201d in one form or another:\u00a0 one would be the first woman ever to hold the office; the other without holding a previous political office or having served in the military.\u00a0 One thing that was not going to be a first, of course, was that pollsters might get things wrong\u2014just ask Thomas Dewey, a \u201cprogressive Republican\u201d and governor of New York who lost not one but two historic races: in 1944 against Franklin Delano Roosevelt (who was reelected into the first and only presidential fourth term as a result) and in 1948 against Harry S. Truman in what was arguably the greatest popular vote and electoral college upset in the modern era.\u00a0 Dewey was an \u201cinsider\u201d in both elections, having worked up the ranks as a Wall Street lawyer, federal prosecutor, a special prosecutor against the infamous \u201cTammany Hall\u201d political machine of New York City and the gangsters with whom they were in cahoots, then Manhattan District Attorney (think \u201cLaw and Order\u201d), governor of New York, and, finally, presidential candidate (thrice).\u00a0 Through it all, Dewey was known best by a single adjective\u2014honesty<\/em>\u2014he was literally like one of those guys in the film \u201cThe Untouchables.\u201d\u00a0 But he was also known to be vague in his political speeches, given to broad and unsupportable promises, as well as appearing stiff and unapproachable in person.\u00a0 As one reporter put it, Dewey was \u201cas cold as a February iceberg.\u201d\u00a0 And he, of course, wasn\u2019t the first presidential candidate to lose despite running on promises to clean up Washington.<\/p>\n

Historians and political analysts alike will undoubtedly spend years drawing parallels\u2014and distinctions\u2014between this election\u2019s results and those of 1948.\u00a0 And pollsters will, again, work to develop more reliable practices and methodologies.\u00a0 But let me offer a couple more interesting parallels up front.\u00a0 Like President-elect Trump, Truman won the electoral college (Dewey received 189 to Truman\u2019s 303).\u00a0 Truman won, also like Trump, following division within his own party.\u00a0 The two third parties involved in the race didn\u2019t break against the winner like many pundits thought.\u00a0 Truman, like Trump, campaigned in an aggressive populist style; in retrospect, Dewey failed to respond effectively to such a campaign.\u00a0 The United States was clearly divided between those who desired change and those who looked for continuity with the party holding office.\u00a0 And the victorious party not only won the presidency but both houses of Congress.<\/p>\n

Of course, there were also considerable differences.\u00a0 Dewey lost the popular vote, whereas Clinton (it appears) has won it.\u00a0 The Democrats won a fifth straight presidential election; again, unprecedented in modern politics.\u00a0 And the Republicans lost, rather than won, the rural\u2014and \u201cRust Belt\u201d\u2014vote and, thus, lost the election.<\/p>\n

So, again, this was an election of \u201cfirsts\u201d but not one without parallels and precedents to previous ones.\u00a0 And as we all celebrate or mourn the results, it is vital to keep in mind the truth that more and more \u201cfirsts\u201d will follow.<\/p>\n

Consider, for instance, that my 6-year-old daughter only knows a world in which an African American has held the highest elected political office in this nation\u2014and been elected and re-elected with strong majorities.\u00a0 Or that a woman has (likely) won the popular vote of the presidency.\u00a0 Even back in 1984, which isn\u2019t exactly the distant past, as my high school peers and I debated the candidacies of Reagan and Mondale, we could only envision a world in which white men<\/em>, and heteronormative ones at that, could ever hope<\/em> to be president.\u00a0 (This is not to slight Geraldine Ferraro, Mondale\u2019s running mate, and the first woman to ever appear on a dominant party ticket, but she maintained far less political capital and influence than Secretary Clinton.)\u00a0 My daughter lives in a world in which that paradigm no longer holds complete sway.\u00a0 In fact, she cannot imagine a world in which the color of one\u2019s skin or one\u2019s gender disqualifies an individual for the presidency.\u00a0 Put another way, she takes for granted the world that an institution like the University of Maine at Presque Isle and its collective community of scholars, staff and students takes as its mission: that the transformative power of education will create a more just and humane world.<\/p>\n

Some other firsts:\u00a0 U. S. Grant was the first to host Native American and African American leaders in the White House; Andrew Johnson was the first not to receive a formal education\u2014and also the first to be impeached; Theodore Roosevelt was the first to receive a Nobel Prize; Franklin Delano Roosevelt appointed the first woman to his cabinet; Lyndon B. Johnson the first to appoint an African American to the Supreme Court, Reagan the first to appoint a woman, and Obama the first to appoint someone of Hispanic heritage.\u00a0 Increasingly, our presidents have responded to a nation that has consistently, although sometimes far too slowly, recognized the need to support and represent all of its citizens\u2014not just those who represented the gender, race and wealth of those who first established this nation.<\/p>\n

Much more important, here are some other firsts I hope that my daughter will soon see:\u00a0 the first openly LGBTQ president; the first Jewish president; the first Muslim president; the first Native American president; and, indeed, the first woman president.\u00a0 What\u2019s truly remarkable about this nation is that my daughter just assumes<\/em> that those things will happen\u2014because she assumes<\/em> that this is, indeed, a progressively more just and humane world.\u00a0 It\u2019s the essential job of the rest of us, of all of those of voting age\u2014of faculty, staff, students, and all Americans, whether we live in cosmopolitan or rural areas, on the Coasts or in the Rust Belt\u2014to ensure that her assumption and expectation is a reality.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The successful candidate of this past presidential election was bound to be a \u201cfirst\u201d in one form or another:\u00a0 one would be the first woman ever to hold the office; the other without holding a previous political office or having served in the military.\u00a0 One thing that was not going to be a first, of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":218,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7381],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4535","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archives","et-doesnt-have-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4535","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/218"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4535"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4535\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8926,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4535\/revisions\/8926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4535"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4535"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wp.umpi.edu\/utimes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4535"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}