Ulysses S. Grant Quotes
I voted for [James] Buchanan because I didn't know him and voted against [John C.] Fremont because I did know him.
Ulysses S. Grant, 1822-1885, 18th President of the United States (Republican, OH), Quoted in The St Louis Republican, August 24, 1885
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
This is not just a theoretical possibility. It has occurred several times. The latest was on the 1990 election where Gore got half a million more votes than George W. Bush, but Bush became President.
In 2012, the Republican party had shifted to the right and was split between two factions. None of the 4 leading candidates had the support of a majority of the activist Republicans who vote in Primary elections. The then started to vie with each other for the most conservative elements of the party and did so by attacking the other candidates, making moral pronouncements and attacking President Obama. None of them offered any positive programs or solutions to the problems they claimed existed, and the attacks on the others were always that they were “really not conservative” and “could not get elected.” The result was that all the candidates negatives rose.
Harriman was the senior Democratic leader of the era. Every aspiring Democratic politician would make it his business to get to meet Harriman and try and get his endorsement. However, Carter was not a typical politician and when he decided to run for the Presidency, he had not even met many of the leading Democratic Party leaders. Harriman, a man of the old school, could not believe that anyone in the party who he did not know could possibly have the connections and the sophistication to win the presidency. However, Watergate had seared the American political soul and voters were not looking for a veteran, sophisticated politician. Nixon had been that.
At that time, the right wing of the Republican party was so anti-Federal Government, that they would de facto veto any Washington Politician who tried to get the Presidential nomination.
Donald Trump had won the presdiency by winning a majority of the votes of the Electoral College. However his opponent Hillary Clinton garnered about 2 million more votes. Several other presidents have won with a minority vote. These occurances did not affect the Presidents' legitimacy as the Electoral College was specified in the Constitution, However, it did undercut the concept that the President had a mandate. Other presidents just carried on and either earded the respect of the majoprity of AMericans or did not over time. Howevewr, Trump, who was so sensitive and fragile about his image, kept responding to comedians like Bee by claiming that the only reason he lost the poular vote was voter fraud by illegal immigrants. However he never offered any evidence of such and there were no convictions for same or even arrests and trials.
Ulysses S. Grant was an American military leader who served as the 18th president of the United States from 1869 to 1877. As president, Grant was an effective civil rights executive who created the Justice Department and worked with the Radical Republicans during Reconstruction to protect African Americans. As Commanding General, he led the Union Army to victory in the American Civil War in 1865 and thereafter briefly served as Secretary of War.
