The Beauty of Election: Anyone Can Win
My first vote for president was for John Kennedy in the Nebraska primary of 1960.
He was the only Democrat officially on the ballot, having locked-up support of the party largely due to the dogged determination of his right-hand man, Ted Sorenson, a Nebraska native.
Senator Kennedy had campaigned for Frank Morrison, who had run for the Senate against Roman Hruska in 1958 and had spoken before mesmerized audiences in Lincoln and Omaha.
JFK won the ’60 primary with 88.7% of the vote. It was not surprising considering the others (including Hubert Humphrey and Adlai Stevenson) were write-ins.
Nay-sayers declared after the nomination that Kennedy could not possibly win; he was a Catholic!
Indeed, the only Catholic candidate in a presidential race before 1960 was New York Governor Al Smith, in 1928, running with a virtually unknown senator from Arkansas. A famous writer of the day, Frederick W. Wile, announced that Smith had been beaten by “Three Ps” —Prohibition, Prejudice and Prosperity.
And beaten he was, losing to Herbert Hoover 444 electoral votes to 87. Smith only got a little over 40% of the vote.
But Kennedy beat Richard Nixon in 1960, proving that a Catholic could win. More importantly, you shouldn’t pay attention to those who say, “So-and-so can’t possibly win!”
After all, the biggest surprise of the 21st century so far has been the 2016 election of Donald J. Trump!
This year, there are those proclaiming, “Joe can’t win. He’s too washed up.” Or, “Bernie’s not only old, but a Socialist and he’s not even a Democrat.”
Millions of ordinary people came out to vote in 2018 for candidates who had been proclaimed “inexperienced” or even “doomed,” but a swarm of Democratic neophytes did win and captured the House of Representatives.
It was kind of like when that young African American Senator from Illinois electrified the world when, in the 2008 election, he showed everybody that the impossible is possible in American politics.
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