Do you remember the story of politician Harold Stassen?
In 1948, Stassen could have been elected president of the United States if he had won the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. “Stassen Defeats Truman” could have been an accurate headline unlike the infamous but wrong Chicago Daily Tribune headline “Dewey Defeats Truman” that President Harry Truman held up the day after he was re-elected.
Earlier that year, Stassen got almost twice as many votes as Thomas Dewey, the New York governor and the GOP’s 1944 presidential nominee, in the presidential primaries, finishing second to California governor and future Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren.
Stassen’s 1948 president campaign was his second. In 1948, he was the thrice-elected governor of Minnesota, the keynote speaker at the 1940 convention, a World War II hero and Navy commander, and the president of the University of Pennsylvania. Only 41, he was very highly regarded and viewed as a possible future president.
If you ask historians or political experts about Stassen, though, they might not mention any of the above information when summarizing his legacy. Stassen, you see, became addicted to politics. He ran a credible campaign in 1952, finishing fourth in the GOP presidential sweepstakes behind future president Dwight Eisenhower, Ohio Senator Robert Taft, and Warren. Then, he began running for one office after another in Minnesota and Pennsylvania. He kept losing.
By the time he ran for president in 1964, he was largely forgotten and received about one-eighth of the votes he got in 1952 although there were far more primaries. Then, he ran again. And again. And again. He ran for president a total of TWELVE times — in 1944, 1948, 1952, 1964, 1968, 1976, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, and 2000, when he was 93 years old. He also ran for various offices in Minnesota in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s. He died in 2001.
Stassen became a joke at some point in his life, a target of comedians every four years. He transformed his legacy from a wunderkind in politics, government, and academics to an old man people laughed at. Wikipedia says “his persistent attempts were increasingly met with derision and then amusement as the decades progressed.”
When other people run for office repeatedly despite repeated failures, they are often called “The Harold Stassen of (the state or locale they’re from).”
Is Hillary Power-Mad?
The Hillary Clinton of 2018 probably has a worse reputation and a less promising future than the Harold Stassen of 1948.
Clinton, though, does not — as of today — have the total joke reputation that Stassen had by the 1970s. It’s true that she’s despised and disrespected by tens of millions of Americans, but tens of millions of other Americans respect her service as First Lady, U.S. Senator, and Secretary of State.
Could Clinton become the next Harold Stassen by running for president again and again? At 71, she probably couldn’t run 12 times. She’d be 109 if she continued to run every four years. She could, though, embellish her image as a power-hungry and ruthless politician and hurt her image among many of her fans if she ran in 2020.
“I’d like to be president,” she said at an event in October. “The work would be work that I feel very well-prepared for having been in the Senate for eight years, having been a diplomat in the State Department.”
At the same event, Clinton said “no” when asked if she wants to run again, but did she really run in 2008 and 2016? SHE believed the process was more of a coronation than a campaign. That wasn’t the case in 2000, 2004, and 2012. What if she believed that she would win easily in 2020, a possibility considering how wrong she was in 2008 and 2016? Lack of confidence isn’t in her DNA.
Clinton could also make Hillary 3.0 a different candidate as she’s done before in transitioning back and forth between progressive and moderate and between dove and hawk as circumstances and polls changed. One believer in this theory is Mark Penn, who was the chief strategist and pollster of her 2008 campaign.
In a column in The Wall Street Journal, Penn wrote that Clinton might be planning a 2020 campaign. He predicted she will “come out swinging” as the progressive firebrand she was in the early 1990s. “Mrs. Clinton will take down rising Democratic stars like bowling pins,” he wrote. “Mike Bloomberg will support her rather than run, and Joe Biden will never be able to take her on.”
Penn dismissed Clinton’s statements about not running again. “Mrs. Clinton knows both Mr. Clinton and Mr. Obama declared they weren’t running, until they ran,” he wrote.
She’s VERY Unpopular
Is Penn correct that Clinton could win the Democratic Party nomination? Right now, the “science” says “no.” The numbers say:
* Clinton was tied for third with Oprah Winfrey at 13 percent in a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll (conducted by Penn) behind Joe Biden at 27 percent and Bernie Sanders at 16 percent. Thirteen percent is extraordinarily bad for someone with her name recognition.
* She is extraordinarily unpopular. She was the least popular Democratic Party nominee in polling history in 2016, and her popularity since then has gone DOWN. Her favorability rating of 36 percent in a September Gallup poll was her lowest ever. In the poll, her favorability rating among Democrats had declined 10 percent since 2016. Her popularity rating among the crucial independent voters is a “pitiful 30 percent,” reports this Washington Examiner article.
* Presidential candidates who lose general elections rarely win the next time as Dewey (1944, 1948), Adlai Stevenson (1952, 1956), Hubert Humphrey (1968, 1972), and George McGovern (1972, 1984) found out while others like Al Gore, John Kerry, and Mitt Romney considered running again but didn’t. Richard Nixon was the exception.
The non-science aspects of politics also say no. For starters, Democrats are yearning for young leadership. They’re also yearning for diversity, California Senator Kamala Harris and New Jersey Senator Cory Booker fit both criteria and appear to be aggressively running. In addition, Democrats HATE Trump and are VERY angry that, from their perspective, Clinton blew an easy win in 2016.
