Part 5 of this series¹ mentioned some events of President Wilson's first term. This Part 6 covers some highlights of the Presidential campaign and election of 1916.

First, I merely note that, in January, 1916, Pancho Villa executed sixteen U.S. citizens in Mexico (does it matter that they were citizens, rather than U.S. residents?); and, on March 9, 1916, Pancho Villa and several hundred of his men attacked Columbus, New Mexico (which had become a U.S. state in January, 1912), killing seventeen Americans (similar question) and burning the center of town.² (Today, both those events would be called terrorist attacks, not "raids," as I've always seen and heard Villa's activities characterized.) Villa was retaliating because of Wilson's role in Mexican affairs, which was part of a deal related to World War I.³ After Columbus, Wilson ordered Villa brought to justice, dead or alive. However, General Pershing and up to 10,000 men failed to apprehend Villa. (You can't make up this stuff.) I need to learn more before I say more. So, without further ado (or segue), I'm on to the Presidential election of 1916.

Although Wilson's 1915 SOTU and ramping up of military recruitment certainly seemed to contemplate entry of the U.S. into World War I, in 1916, Wilson had the gall to run ran for re-election on the slogan "He kept us out of war," also more euphemistically and jingoistically known as "America First." He also ran, however, on being prepared for war. America was definitely not prepared for war when Wilson took office, or in 1915. For other elements of his re-election campaign, Wilson "borrowed" liberally (so to speak) from Theodore Roosevelt, one of the more liberal candidates to run against Wilson in 1912.⁴

As the Party platform was drafted, Senator Owen of Oklahoma urged Wilson to take ideas from the Progressive Party platform of 1912 "as a means of attaching to our party progressive Republicans who are in sympathy with us in so large a degree." At Wilson's request, Owen highlighted federal legislation to promote workers' health and safety, prohibit child labour (sic), provide unemployment compensation and establish minimum wages and maximum hours. Wilson, in turn, included in his draft platform a plank that called for all work performed by and for the federal government to provide a minimum wage, an eight-hour day and six-day work week, health and safety measures, the prohibition of child labour(sic), and (his own additions) safeguards for female workers and a retirement program."

Ironically and sadly, not many decades before 1916, socialists and anarchists who fought for the eight-hour work day and other workplace safety measures were killed and/or imprisoned and, at the very least, seen as a grave danger to America.⁵ (Some of them may well have been dangerous, but not because they advocated safer working conditions.) I note as well from the above, that Democrat Wilson's addition as to women in the workplace was more oriented toward "the little woman" than toward the suffragette.

Senator Owens was either fluent in PoliticianSpeak and/or deep into PoliticianDelusion, or both: It was not so much that progressive Republicans were in sympathy with Democrats as it was that Democrats, tired of not being elected President much since 1860, had been begun trying to copy progressive Republicans, much as Owens had recommended to Wilson.

No Democrat challenged Wilson, but the 1916 Republican Presidential primary field was about the same size as the large Republic primary field of 2016. Included among the hopefuls were iconic names: former President Theodore Roosevelt (who withdrew during the Republican National Convention), T. Coleman du Pont, Henry Ford, John Wanamaker and then Senator Warren G. Harding. The nominee, however, was Charles Evans Hughes, then Supreme Court Associate Justice and former Governor of New York, later also Secretary of State and SCOTUS Chief Justice. (Now, that's a resume--and he owed none of it to his spouse. On the other hand, Hank's his uncle!⁶) Although Hughes has been described variously as conservative, moderate, progressive, and liberal, Theodore Roosevelt proclaimed that the only only difference between Hughes and Wilson was a shave. This is understandable, given that Wilson and Hughes both ran on Roosevelt's ideas.

In all, Wilson faced four opponents and something of a shadow candidate: Hughes; Allan L. Benson, nominee of the Socialist Party (initial frontrunner, Eugene V. Debs, having pulled out to run for Congress from Indiana); Reimer, again the nominee of the Socialist Labor Party; and Frank Hanly, Prohibition Party nominee. As for the shadow candidate: The Progressive Party had again nominated Teddy Roosevelt, who declined the nomination, instead endorsing Hughes, whereupon the Progressive Party simultaneously imploded and Humpty Dumpty-ed. The Progressive Party's Vice Presidential nominee, businessman John L. Parker, however, endorsed Wilson while running. With "No Candidate" literally heading its ticket, and the Party gone, the Progressive Party still received .18% of the popular vote. In comparison, in 2012 (before benefiting from Sanders voters), Jill Stein, who was actually running, and as the standard bearer of an extant Party, received .36% of the vote.⁷

Although Wilson was running on Roosevelt's platform and Roosevelt was not his opponent, Wilson attacked Roosevelt throughout the campaign. (Politicians! Amirite?) When asked why he did not attack Hughes directly, Wilson replied, "Never murder a man who is committing suicide." An interesting (to me) sidelight of this election is Wilson's plan to ensure continuity in the Oval Office:

In view of the current international turmoil, Wilson thought that if he lost the election it would be better for his opponent to begin his administration straight away, instead of waiting through the lame duck period, which at that time had a duration of almost four months. President Wilson and his aides formed a plan to exploit the rule of succession so that Hughes could take over the Presidency as soon as the result of the election was clear. The plan was that Wilson would appoint Hughes to the post of Secretary of State. Wilson and Vice President Marshall would then resign, and as the Secretary of State was at that time designated next in line of succession, Hughes would become President immediately.

At this point, the U.S. had not even entered World War II. Wilson's concern for the fate of the nation stands in sharp contrast to Franklin D. Roosevelt's icing out Truman during World War II, even though FDR was so very ill and weak when he last ran that he could barely deliver an inaugural address. That was inexcusable--one of several inexcusable acts or omissions of FDR, who was nonetheless a genius, IMO. Wilson, of course, never needed to implement his transition plan.

With 266 electoral votes then needed to win, Wilson took thirty states for two hundred seventy-seven electoral votes, to Hughes's eighteen states and two hundred fifty-four electoral votes. This made Wilson the first Democratic President to win a second consecutive term since Andrew Jackson in 1832⁸ and Vice-President Thomas R. Marshall the first Vice-President elected to a second term since John C. Calhoun in 1828.

Wilson had won many more electoral votes in 1912, making Wilson one of four Presidents to win re-election with a lower percentage of the electoral vote, following James Madison in 1812. Wilson was also the first of only three presidents to receive fewer total electoral votes upon re-election, the others being Franklin D. Roosevelt in both 1940 and 1944 and Barack Obama.

Total popular votes cast in the 1916 election exceed those cast in 1912 by 3,500,000, in great part because women had won suffrage in some states. Wilson received a total popular vote of 9,126,868, an increase of nearly 3,000,000, a gain in every section and in every state; and Hughes received almost 1,000,000 more votes than had ever been cast for a Republican Presidential nominee (bearing in mind that Republicans had won most Presidential elections since 1860). An incumbent President running essentially on the liberal platform of former Republican President Teddy Roosevelt, Wilson carried 200 counties that had never voted Democratic in a two-party contest prior to that time. This caused some to believe, incorrectly, as it turned out, that the Democratic Party might win the election of 1920.

Wilson's popular vote margin of 3.1% was the smallest attained by any victorious incumbent President until Bush the Lesser's re-election in 2004 (50.73% to Kerry's 48.27, or 2.46%). Still, it was a marked improvement over Wilson's plurality of 41.8% in the unique election of 1912. In swing states, Wilson won the popular vote by very narrow margins In fact, in New Hampshire, his margin was the smallest ever recorded in a U.S. presidential election: 56 votes. The nation waited days for results from California, which proved to be the decisive state, going for Wilson by only 3,800 votes out of almost a million: Had Hughes won California's (then) thirteen electoral votes, he would have won the election.

More factoids: Wilson did not win the state of his residence, New Jersey, but did win his state of birth, Virginia, much like Nixon (New York and California, respectively). The two other Presidents who failed to carry their state of residence were also born in that state: Trump (New York) and Polk (North Carolina). Wilson was the last Democrat to be elected without ever carrying Minnesota and the last Democrat to win an election without Massachusetts and Rhode Island (although he had previously won both states in 1912--being, in 1912, the first Democrat ever to win the Northeast). Wilson was also the last Democrat elected to two terms without carrying Michigan and Pennsylvania either time. (Although other Democrats since have won elections without one or both states, they either only served one term or they carried them both in another Presidential election.) To date, the election of 1912 was the last election in which North Dakota and South Dakota did not vote for the same Presidential candidate.

Next: Some events of Wilson's second term, including America's first de facto first woman President.

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¹ Links to Parts 1-5 of this series: http://caucus99percent.com/content/presidential-elections-and-liberals-l... http://caucus99percent.com/content/presidential-elections-and-liberals-l... http://caucus99percent.com/content/presidential-elections-and-liberals-l... http://caucus99percent.com/content/presidential-elections-and-liberals-l... http://caucus99percent.com/content/presidential-elections-and-liberals-l...

² http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/pancho-villa-raids-u-s

³ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson.

To minimize footnotes, I will not again footnote information from one or more of the following: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodrow_Wilson; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Woodrow_Wilson; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Evans_Hughes;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1916; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1916_Republican_National_Convention
Also, some of the statements in the blog entry are either my opinion or assumed by me to be general knowledge. Anyone wanting my source for a specific statement, please post or pm (after trying a quick google, please).

⁴ President Obama compared himself to Theodore Roosevelt on more than one occasion; e.g., https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/12/06/remarks-president... That a Democratic President whose 2012 campaign slogan was to be "Forward," would pride himself on espousing a platform that was over a century old is stunning, IMO, although not necessarily surprising. Although Roosevelt's domestic policies were liberal for his day (apart from his reputed racism), a liberal position of a century ago is hardly anything for a Democratic President to have preened about in 2011! Moreover, Obama certainly did not revive Roosevelt's opposition to big business and monopolies, which would have been "Forward," in 2011. Then again, Obama has compared himself, either expressly or implicitly, to other Republican Presidents who were (or became) popular, like Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt and Reagan. Comparing himself to Democratic Presidents like Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson --in other words, "liberal" or "populist" Democrats--has not seemed to be his preference, nor that of any New Democrats. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1_gR278FCg (Hillary nonplussed upon being referred to as "liberal," even during the 2016 Democratic primary)

⁵ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_socialist_movement_in_the_U...

⁶ Hughes' maternal uncle was Henry C. Connelly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_C._Connelly. See also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob's_your_uncle

⁷ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2012

⁸ Of course, Democrat Grover Cleveland, who probably should be nicknamed "the footnote President," served two non-consecutive terms. Whether he was ever re-elected, as opposed to simply being elected twice for the first time, is a conundrum I leave to you, dear reader, along with the dilemma of how his two elections should have affected the numbering of our Presidents.
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