Scared
We finish ranking the elections. Don't be afraid.
Yesterday was Halloween, my least favorite holiday of the year. Lord knows I love candy, drinking beer, and getting dressed up as Ted Lasso last year was a good time.
But I will never get into the death and fear that dominate the season. Mostly, I dislike the disjointed Halloween themes where, on the one hand, you have skeletons climbing out of the ground, and it’s combined with a witch that looks like it's face-planted into your house.
Fear is the central theme in presidential campaigns. People running for office love to scare you. The media makes a lot of money from you being afraid.
Being scared is easy.
Being fearless is difficult.
There’s too much anxiety surrounding the 2024 election. I spelled out a Harris victory weeks ago, which should temper any fears. I don’t think the election will be close, but too many entities and people are vested in keeping you afraid and extending the Halloween season like it’s a Target store.
As we wrap up the 2024 edition of ranking stuff, we come down to two scary things in American history that resonate with me. I grew up learning as much as I could about the Civil War, and as I get older, I see the change taking place: the Confederacy is less and less accepted as something to be honored.
The global pandemic of 2020 left me unsure of what the future would hold. I wrote a lot on my Facebook page to process everything that was going on, and from there, Okay History was born.
I haven’t shut up since.
Without further delay, let’s look at some scary elections that turned out okay.
Let's dive in.
2: The Presidential Election of 2020
Election Date: November 3, 2020
The Candidates:
For some unexplained reason, the country elected Republican nominee Donald Trump president in 2016. Trump, who earned a master's degree in Lying and Hating from Trump University, had run for president in the Reform Party in 2000 and said, “It's very possible that I could be the first presidential candidate to run and make money on it.”
No kidding, brother.
He had no real opposition because the GOP is scared of him and his supporters, who come across as zombies, ready to eat the living who have souls.
The Democrats were reeling from Hilary Clinton's defeat and without a leader. In a demonstration of what was to come, they encouraged and included EVERYONE to run for the nomination. A record-setting Twenty-nine major candidates ran for this thing.
My preferred candidate was Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who ran on things that pissed off rich people, like ending lobbying. I used to run into her while walking on the National Mall, so I feel she and I are connected.
Warren would lose to a more progressive candidate, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who went further and said certain people, like billionaires, shouldn’t exist.
Ultimately, the Democrats returned to 1988 and 2008 candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden. The one thing I will say about the Democrats since 2008 is that I’m not a fan of how it appears party leaders are pressing the button down to get the results they want.
The nomination process is becoming more about who’s next in line or who needs to be in line rather than having an actual election.
And frankly, that scares me.
Major Issue of the Day:
I remember riding the train to work once and noticing many people wearing masks. It struck me as unusual, but then I saw the majority of them were of Asian descent, and I didn’t think any more of it.
Then, I started reading about a virus coming out of China, and it reminded me of the bird flu scares that occurred in the early 2000s, so I thought it wasn’t a big deal.
Finally, I had some weird situations as we approached the end of February and early March. I scheduled a doctor’s appointment, and they asked me if I had traveled to China recently. I said, "Of course not. That’s not a place people normally travel to."
Then, at work, we had a meeting and were told about the growing concern about people getting sick and that we needed to be prepared for being out of the office for a few days. That meeting took place on March 13, 2020.
I didn’t return to the office until September 2021.
It was a wild time that I hope we never experience again.
This is how stupid I can be. I thought the pandemic would be over before Memorial Day. I told people, “There’s no way they are going to cancel the summer.” What did I base that on? Absolutely nothing.
Much like these rankings!
The Winner:
Civility.
I think this was the central campaign point for Biden.
We spent four years of Trump lying his ass off. Remember when he told everyone he had the biggest inauguration crowd? That’s when I knew this was going to be a clown show. But with scary clowns.
I like Joe. I think he’s a good person. If you don’t think he is, you watch too much garbage from people who want you to hate him because Biden isn’t anywhere near being as scary as Trump.
The States in the Electoral College:
50. I don’t think anyone voted as hard against Trump than the residents of Washington, DC.
The Electoral College had 538 members, and the winner needed 270 votes.
81 Million Americans told Trump, “You’re Fired.” That was 16 million more than the people who didn’t want to hire him in the first place. 51% of the country went for Biden, which is scary because that means that almost half the country are lunatics.
Trump lost in 2020 by a wider margin than in 2016- almost seven million votes. Five states flipped blue. Trump, of course, didn’t think he lost because he makes money not just from running and then being president but also from losing the presidency.
He’s already begun telling us he’s not conceding again, and we should get used to another January 6. It was a day that got really scary, really quick.
The 2021 OKH Presidential Ranking:
Biden is unranked because he remains in office, but I can say I have been incredibly impressed with his presidency. I wasn’t a fan of his when he became the nominee, with Elizabeth Warren being my BFF, but if this guy were 71 instead of 81, he’d be smoking Trump right now.
Why Did I Rank it Here:
If you are around my age, just under 50, but you look much younger than that, I think you could easily look back and say this was the most intense and traumatic election of our lifetime.
The uncertainty of pretty much everything made it seem like we were heading into the twilight zone.
Thank God we won.
There’s a great argument that convicted felon and former President Donald Trump is the result of a path we have been traveling down for decades.
The most important election in our country’s history was a result of escalating tensions over the idea of slavery.
Thank God we won.
Let's dive in.
1: The Presidential Election of 1860
Election Date: November 6, 1860
The Candidates:
We just finished James Buchanan's presidency, which wasn’t good. The Republican Party was a new thing that ran its first candidate against Buchanan and had a good showing. Plus, an influx of members from the Whig Party would come on board.
However, like the Democratic Party nomination process of 2020, the presidential field was wide open.
Stephen Douglas, who sparred with Lincoln in those famous debates, secured the Democratic nomination. The only thing was, he didn’t back the party platform on slavery, so those guys went out and formed the Southern Democratic Party and nominated John C. Breckinridge from Kentucky.
Not all Southerners wanted to leave the Union, so they got together and nominated John Bell from Tennessee.
All three matched up against an unknown Congressman from Illinois named Abraham Lincoln, who was viewed as a moderate within the party. His running mate was a guy named Hannibal, who was Governor of Maine at the time.
Major Issue of the Day:
We couldn’t figure out how to end slavery.
The country became very sectional and divided in its thinking about the issue, especially regarding the expansion of the Western territories and the political power they would receive.
The Dred Scott decision in 1857 made things worse, and people living in Southern states were scared that the North would take away their freedom to oppress people, PLUS they were afraid of the enslaved people rising up violently against them.
White people are always afraid of something.
The Winner:
Divine Intervention.
That can be the only explanation.
The States in the Electoral College:
25.
The Electoral College had 303 members, and the winner needed 152 votes.
Lincoln won the White House by winning 39% of the vote, the lowest percentage ever, but won all of the northern states, which dominated the Electoral College and easily cleared the bar with 180.
Douglas came in second with 21% and over a million votes, but it only landed him one electoral vote. Just over 670,000 people voted for Breckenridge, but all of them were from future Confederate states. Bell racked up three states and came away with 39 electoral votes.
The 2021 OKH Presidential Ranking:
Lincoln is the best president in the OKH Presidential List. As I mentioned last week, it would be tough to knock him off, but if I can dig up some stuff that concerns me, all bets are off!
Why Did I Rank it Here:
There’s nothing scarier when you know violence is imminent, and you don’t know what will happen. There was a slow burn that eventually lit this house on fire.
There you have it! We ranked the presidential elections, and we did it right up against the next election.
How did we do? Did you learn anything? Did I get it all wrong? Thanks for reading!
I’ll be away this weekend on my annual spiritual retreat, so there will be no Maundy Monday Newsletter—and this time, I mean it! I’m spending time with God, which means no internet machine or outside world. They do have newspapers to read, which I find funny.
So I won’t see you until after the election.
I hope you take the time to vote. I hope you aren’t scared when you do it, when you watch the results, or when the whole thing is over.
We are strong people. We can be dumb sometimes, but we can figure everything out.
Everything will be okay.
Okay,
Chris
