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Re: Hope?

Posted by John Dobson on Oct 09, 2016; 4:11am
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Hope-tp7587915p7587931.html

Nick,

You inquired about the relative populations of states in 1824.  Actually, Ohio's population was larger than any New England State including Massachusetts.  Collectively, New England's six states controlled 51 electoral votes or 19 percent of the national total of 261.  Adams only had to round up those six and seven more loyal to Clay including Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri and Louisiana to defeat Jackson when the House voted.  

The other monkey wrench in the proceedings was the candidacy of William Crawford of Georgia.  Even though he suffered a paralytic stroke in 1823, he racked up more popular votes than Clay and retained the support of four state delegations when the vote went to the House in early 1825.  Thus Crawford's support basically kept his electoral and state votes off the table for either Jackson or Adams.  

Four popular candidates, each representing a different region of the country made for a very contentious ending to the "Era of Good Feelings" during which there was almost no opposition to electing and re-electing James Monroe as the Democratic-Republican heir to the Jefferson-Madison dynasty.    

Jackson and his remarkably able campaign chairman, Martin Van Buren, organized the first truly national party, held the first national party convention in 1828, and ensured that this sort of foolishness would not recur.

Fun, fun, fun!





On Fri, Oct 7, 2016 at 7:37 PM, Nick Thompson <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi,

 

I am just catching up with this debate, so forgive me if I am annoyingly irrelevant. 

 

I confess I am not much of a fan for privatizing Social Security and medicate, which I understand Johnson to be.  I am not a libertarian, but more a communitarian, which is why the charter school issue is such tough one for me.  One the one hand, I believe that intentional education by any neighborhood is probably better than education that as seen as inflicted the families of the neighborhood, if only because of the placebo effect.  On the other hand, all the effort by parents of one school to serve the kids in their school, makes the schools uneven in just the way that we cannot tolerate, and is destructive of the higher order community.  Does that make me a hierarchical communitarian.  Geez.   Some of the best outcomes are produced when the entire meta-community pulls together, but unfortunately that seems to require a war.  Anyway, you Johnson fans can take comfort in the fact that Professor Dave will box my ears soundly when I turn up at Friam in a week. 

 

On a historical matter, I was confused by:

 

So, anyway, it was up to the House to select the winner, each state delegation casting one vote.  Adams benefitted because the underpopulated New England States all went to him

 

I would have thought that in 1824, the population of new England states was high compared to much larger states such as Ohio, Kentucky, etc.  So, I would have thought that they would be UNDER-represented in a state by state poll of the House delegations.  John can box my ears on that one. 

 

Looking forward to meeting with the Mother Church next Friday at St. Johns.

 

NIck

 

 

Nicholas S. Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Biology

Clark University

http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of ?glen?
Sent: Friday, October 07, 2016 12:04 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Hope?

 

Thanks for the story!  I was aware, but only barely, in the context free way that's so common these days.

 

On 10/05/2016 04:18 PM, John Dobson wrote:

> I assume you guys all know about the only time the election has been thrown into the House.  It was 1824 when there were four candidates who won electoral votes, although Andrew Jackson had a pretty large plurality of the popular vote.  John Quincy Adams bitterly hated Jackson and assumed (Clinton/Bush dynasty-like) that he should be the president because his dad had done such a dynamite job as Washington's successor in 1797.

>

> So, anyway, it was up to the House to select the winner, each state delegation casting one vote.  Adams benefitted because the underpopulated New England States all went to him and he made what Jacksonians claimed was a "corrupt bargain" with Henry Clay of Kentucky to basically drop out of the race and swing his delegation to Adams.  It worked.  Adams won by a single vote.  Then he named Clay his secretary of state, the very job he was relinquishing and the cabinet office that was most likely to insure that its incumbent would have the inside track for the succeeding presidential election.

>

> Of course, Jackson came back strong in 1828 winning the first of two terms outright.  Henry Clay continued to run for President as a Whig into the 1840s but never managed to cash in the corrupt bargain for the top spot.  Given this year's candidates, I think any one of the three---Adams, Jackson, or Clay---would be preferable. 

>

> Even if Gary Johnson managed to "win" New Mexico, it's not clear what the result in the House would be if each state's delegation had a single vote.  I suppose the Republicans; gerrymandering would work in their favor though as there are more "red" states than blue at this point.

>

> Having a Ph.D. in American history doesn't help me much in doping out current affairs.

 

 

--

␦glen?

 

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Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College
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