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Yesterday afternoon, it occurred to me that if Clinton won, it would be 12 years in a row of a Democrat being president. How would that feel to the losers, the non-Democrats? It would make them more discontent, more angry. Maybe it is a necessary thing that each of the 2 major parties wins every few elections, to give each side a feeling of "having their turn". The longer a stretch goes on of not "having your turn", the worse and worse the other side seems, and the better you imagine things might be with your side being in charge.
It occurred to me that if elections really were rigged, if the same people are behind both parties, pulling strings and faking election results, it would make sense for them to switch between parties every few elections. To keep people placated, to make people feel like the results are real. It would make sense for the results to always be near 50/50, so that people wouldn't find it too unbelievable whenever the balance tips the other way.
I got to wondering what's the longest stretch of time that one party has won the presidential elections. I remembered Wikipedia having a page listing all the U.S. presidents along with their party affiliation. Google search results, however, failed me yesterday. It kept showing only other results like "popular presidents" and "best presidents", and stuff related to the current election.
I edited my search phrase from "list of presidents" to "list of u.s. presidents" to "list of all u.s. presidents", with no luck. (Although today, those all work fine, and the desired page is the first hit.) I kept adding onto my search phrase, up through this one, which still didn't work:
list of all u.s. presidents ever from george washington damn google you are not working today no i don't want the popular ones or the best ones I want a list of all of them for fucks sake how hard can that be
I finally found the page by searching directly on Wikipedia: List of Presidents of the United States
Other than the 12 years of Reagan/Reagan/Bush, the longest recent stretch of a single party president was from 1932 to 1952, FDR and Truman, Democrats.
It occurred to me that if elections really were rigged, if the same people are behind both parties, pulling strings and faking election results, it would make sense for them to switch between parties every few elections. To keep people placated, to make people feel like the results are real. It would make sense for the results to always be near 50/50, so that people wouldn't find it too unbelievable whenever the balance tips the other way.
I got to wondering what's the longest stretch of time that one party has won the presidential elections. I remembered Wikipedia having a page listing all the U.S. presidents along with their party affiliation. Google search results, however, failed me yesterday. It kept showing only other results like "popular presidents" and "best presidents", and stuff related to the current election.
I edited my search phrase from "list of presidents" to "list of u.s. presidents" to "list of all u.s. presidents", with no luck. (Although today, those all work fine, and the desired page is the first hit.) I kept adding onto my search phrase, up through this one, which still didn't work:
list of all u.s. presidents ever from george washington damn google you are not working today no i don't want the popular ones or the best ones I want a list of all of them for fucks sake how hard can that be
I finally found the page by searching directly on Wikipedia: List of Presidents of the United States
Other than the 12 years of Reagan/Reagan/Bush, the longest recent stretch of a single party president was from 1932 to 1952, FDR and Truman, Democrats.