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ELECTION 2024 - History has not been kind to sitting vice-presidents seeking to assume the reigns of presidential power.
For Vice-President Kamala Harris found that out painfully so as she was defeated in all seven swing states Tuesday night and became the first Democratic presidential nominee to lose the popular vote since John Kerry in 2004 to George W. Bush.
Before Vice-President George HW Bush inherited the top spot as the GOP nominee and defeated Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis in 1988, one has to go back to the year 1836 when Democrat Martin Van Buren, the VP under Andrew Jackson defeated William Henry Harrison, the Whig nominee.
In 1840 Harrison would defeat Van Buren in a rematch and die suddenly weeks after his inauguration. John Tyler of Tennessee would assume the presidency.
In 1952 when President Harry S. Truman did not seek reelection, his Vice-President Alben Barkley of Kentucky could not secure the nomination as Adlai Stevenson (his distant cousin), would be the sacrificial lamb to Allied Supreme Commander, General Dwight Eisenhower, and once again in 1956.
For Harris, like Richard Nixon before her ran into some awkward moments with her presidential mentor.
In the case of Nixon, he was held in low esteem with Eisenhower who was not fond of the man from Whittier, who had to fight to stay on the ticket with IKE with his famous Checkers speech to ward off accusations of corruption.
When Nixon became the 1960 nominee, he took up the commitment of visiting all 50 states as a campaign pledge instead of spending his time in Illinois where he lost to Senator John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts and ultimately cost him the election. Nixon would lose his 1962 race to Pat Brown for California governor and skip the 1964 presidential contest only to secure the nomination again in 1968 and defeat sitting Vice-President Hubert Humphrey in a three-way contest with Alabama Governor George Wallace who ran under the American Independent banner.
Nixon would edge out Humphrey by a mere .7% of the popular vote, but received 301 electoral college votes. Wallace, who received 13.5% of the popular vote was the last third-party candidate to receive electoral college votes (46).
Nixon would appear on the GOP national ticket three times for the presidency (1960, 68 & 72), and twice for VP (1952 & 56).
Only Franklin Delano Roosevelt would appear on a party’s national ticket five times as well, four times for president (1932,36,40 & 44), and once for VP (1920).
Former Vice-President Al Gore (1993-2001) also tried to assume the presidency in 2000, only to lose the Electoral College to George W. Bush, but win the popular vote. An election ultimately decided in a 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court.
Five times in American presidential history a candidate who has won the popular vote, but lost the Electoral College were ironically all Democrats (Jackson, Tilden, Cleveland, Gore & Clinton).
And while Harris leaves the national stage after her 107-day campaign for president, her options for other offices seem slim.
With US Representative Adam Schiff just easily elected to the US Senate, the prospects of Harris returning to that body are futile. Unlike Humphrey, he returned to the US Senate in 1970 after his time as vice-president (1965-1969) until his death in 1978.
It will be interesting to see what path Harris takes in her post vice-presidency, as she could opt to run for governor with incumbent Gavin Newsom term-limited, and currently a weak field of declared hopefuls.
For President-elect Donald Trump, he becomes the first candidate since FDR to appear as a party’s nominee three consecutive cycles (2016, 20 & 24). He would lose the popular vote in 2016 but win the Electoral College, lose both the popular vote and EC for reelection, and win the popular vote and EC becoming the second president in history elected to non-consecutive terms of office.
(Nick Antonicello is a thirty-one year resident of Venice and covers city, county, state and federal politics. Have a take or a tip? Contact him via e-mail at [email protected])
