Jimmy Carter Mania’s Brief Moment: The DNC Convention 1976

Originally released August 2020.  Jimmy Carter’s 1976 convention in New York handed him 30 percentage points in the polls.  No other party convention has ever done that for a candidate.  It turned an unknown upstart into the leader of a party.  And it is seen as one of the best   We look at what happened…

“Wrong Forever on the Throne!” – William Jennings Bryan and the Democratic Party in His Later Years

The Democratic Party had a problem in the nineteen teens and twenties. What to do with a candidate that could stir up crowds but not enough electoral votes? Though pleased to nominate him in 1896 and introduce a new kind of politics to their party, some Democrats grew tired of William Jennings Bryan especially in…

Speaker Election of 1855, 20th Amendment, and a Show Update

We talk a bit about Nathaniel Banks, the Speaker of The House of Representatives that (still) took the most ballots to be elected. Kevin McCarthy joins the ranks of Speakers that needed multiple ballots – we discuss the implications. A brief look at Frederick Gillett, the last Speaker to even need two ballots in 1923,…