1988 Biden v Bush



The 1988 United States presidential election was the 51st quadrennial presidential election held on Tuesday, November 8, 1988. The Democratic nominee, Senator Joe Biden of Delaware defeated the Republican nominee, incumbent Vice President George Bush in a landslide.

President Ronald Reagan was ineligible to seek a third term. Instead, Bush entered the Republican primaries as the front-runner, defeating U.S. Senator Bob Dole and televangelist Pat Robertson. He selected U.S. Senator Dan Quayle of Indiana as his running mate. Biden went into the Democratic primaries as the front-runner after Gary Hart was forced to withdraw and Ted Kennedy declared himself not to be a candidate. Biden won the nomination against Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusettes, Senator Al Gore of Tennessee, and civil rights leader Jesse Jackson of South Carolina. He chose Senator Tim Wirth of Colorado as his running mate. This was the first election since 1968 to include no incumbent president on the ballot.

Bush ran an aggressive campaign that concentrated mainly on a strong economy, reduction of crime, and continuance with Reagan's policies. He and campaign manager Lee Atwater attempted to label Biden as a flip-flopper and a liberal through fiery attack ads. Atwater's ads heavily focused on the plagarism scandal that had plagued Biden since the Democratic Primaries. Biden would fight against the attack ads, most famously in the "Kinnock Speech" in which Biden gave a calm televised speech from Delaware that put the scandal to rest. Biden's poll numbers jumped up following the speech after having dipped following the Atwater attack ad campaign. Biden won a decisive victory over Bush, winning the Electoral College and the popular vote with comfortable margins.

This election marked the first time an incumbent senator was elected president since John F. Kennedy in 1960. This was also the first time a Democrat won the presidency without Texas. This election was the first time since a Democrat won the states of California, Oregon, Montana, South Dakota, Colorado, New Mexico, Iowa, and Vermont since 1964.

Democratic Party nomination
In the 1984 presidential election the Democrats had nominated Walter Mondale, a traditional New Deal-type liberal, who advocated for those constituencies that Franklin Roosevelt forged into a majority coalition, as their candidate. When Mondale was defeated in a landslide, party leaders became eager to find a new approach to get away from the 1980 and 1984 debacles. After Bush's image was affected by his involvement on the Iran-Contra scandal much more than Reagan's, and after the Democrats won back control of the U.S. Senate in the 1986 congressional elections following an economic downturn, the party's leaders felt optimistic about having a closer race with the GOP in 1988, although probabilities of winning the presidency were still marginal given the climate of prosperity.

One goal of the party was to find a new, fresh candidate who could move beyond the traditional New Deal-Great Society ideas of the past and offer a new image of the Democrats to the public. To this end party leaders tried to recruit New York Governor Mario Cuomo to be a candidate. Cuomo had impressed many Democrats with his keynote speech at the 1984 Democratic Convention, and they believed he would be a strong candidate. After Cuomo chose not to run, the Democratic frontrunner for most of 1987 was former Colorado Senator Gary Hart. He had made a strong showing in the 1984 presidential primaries and, after Mondale's defeat, had positioned himself as the moderate centrist many Democrats felt their party would need to win.

But questions and rumors about extramarital affairs and past debts dogged Hart's campaign. Hart had told New York Times reporters who questioned him about these rumors that, if they followed him around, they would "be bored". In a separate investigation, the Miami Herald had received an anonymous tip from a friend of Donna Rice that Rice was involved with Hart. After his affair emerged, the Herald reporters found Hart's quote in a pre-print of The New York Times magazine. After the Herald's findings were publicized, many other media outlets picked up the story and Hart's ratings in the polls plummeted. On May 8, 1987, a week after the Rice story broke, Hart dropped out of the race. His campaign chair, Representative Patricia Schroeder, tested the waters for about four months after Hart's withdrawal, but decided in September 1987 that she would not run. In December 1987, Hart surprised many pundits by resuming his campaign, but the allegations of adultery had delivered a fatal blow to his candidacy, and he did poorly in the primaries before dropping out again.

Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachusetts had been considered a potential candidate, but he ruled himself out of the race in the fall of 1985. Two other politicians mentioned as possible candidates, both from Arkansas, did not join the race: Senator Dale Bumpers and Governor and Governor Bill Clinton.

Al Gore, a senator from Tennessee, also chose to run for the nomination. Turning 40 in 1988, he would have been the youngest man to contest the presidency on a major party ticket since William Jennings Bryan in 1896, and the youngest president ever if elected, younger than John F. Kennedy at election age and Theodore Roosevelt at age of assumption of office.

Primaries
After Hart withdrew from the race, no clear frontrunner emerged before the primaries and caucuses began. The Iowa caucus was won by Dick Gephardt, who had been sagging heavily in the polls until, three weeks before the vote, he began campaigning as a populist and his numbers surged. Joe Biden finished a close second, and Massachusettes Governor Michael Dukakis finished third. In the New Hampshire primary, Dukakis came in first, Gephardt fell to second, and Biden narrowly came in third. In an effort to weaken Gephardt's candidacy, Biden, Dukakis, and Gore ran negative television ads against Gephardt. The ads convinced the United Auto Workers, which had endorsed Gephardt, to withdraw their endorsement; this crippled Gephardt, as he relied heavily on the support of labor unions.

In the Super Tuesday races, Biden won six primaries to Gore's five, Jesse Jackson's four, Dukakis's one, and Gephardt's one, with Gore and Jackson splitting the Southern states. The next week, Simon won Illinois with Jackson finishing second. 1988 remains the race with the most candidates winning primaries since the McGovern reforms of 1971. Jackson captured 4.2 million votes and won 8 contests: seven primaries (Alabama, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Puerto Rico and Virginia) and one caucus (South Carolina).

Jackson's campaign suffered a significant setback less than two weeks later when he was defeated in the Wisconsin primary by Biden. Biden's win in Pennsylvania effectively ended Jackson's hopes for the nomination.

Democratic convention
The Democratic Party Convention was held in Atlanta, Georgia from July 18–21. Senate Majority Leader Robert Byrd placed Biden's name in nomination and delivered his speech, in which he gave a stirring and rousing statement of optimism, saying “tonight we start our campaign for the common man”, a comment which was covered heavily in the press afterwards.

Texas State Treasurer Ann Richards, who was elected the state governor two years later, gave a speech attacking George Bush, including the line "Poor George, he can't help it, he was born with a silver foot in his mouth."

With only Jackson and Dukakis remaining as an active candidate to oppose Biden, the tally for president was:

Both Dukakis and Jackson supporters declared that their respective candidate's showing made them deserving of the vice presidential nomination. Biden, despite such calls, would go on to choose Colorado Senator Tim Wirth as his running mate, Wirth would be nominated by a voice vote, which would become the tradition in the later Democratic National Conventions.

Republican candidates

 * George Bush, Vice President
 * Bob Dole, U.S. senator from Kansas
 * Pat Robertson, televangelist from Virginia
 * Jack Kemp, U.S. representative from New York
 * Pete du Pont, former governor of Delaware
 * Alexander Haig, former secretary of state, from Pennsylvania
 * Ben Fernandez, former Special Ambassador to Paraguay, from California
 * Paul Laxalt, former United States Senator from Nevada
 * Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of Defense from Illinois
 * Harold E. Stassen, former Governor of Minnesota

Bush unexpectedly came in third in the Iowa caucus, which he had won in 1980, behind Dole and Robertson. Dole was also leading in the polls of the New Hampshire primary, and the Bush camp responded by running television commercials portraying Dole as a tax raiser, while Governor John H. Sununu campaigned for Bush. Dole did nothing to counter these ads and Bush won, thereby gaining crucial momentum, which he called "Big Mo". Once the multiple-state primaries such as Super Tuesday began, Bush's organizational strength and fundraising lead were impossible for the other candidates to match, and the nomination was his.

The Republican Party convention was held in New Orleans, Louisiana. Bush was nominated unanimously and selected U.S. Senator Dan Quayle of Indiana as his running mate. In his acceptance speech, Bush made the pledge "Read my lips: No new taxes,".

Libertarian Party
Ron Paul and Andre Marrou formed the ticket for the Libertarian Party. Their campaign called for the adoption of a global policy on military nonintervention, advocated an end to the federal government's involvement with education, and criticized Reagan's "bailout" of the Soviet Union. Paul was a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives, first elected as a Republican from Texas in an April 1976 special election. He protested the War on Drugs in a letter to Drug Czar William Bennett.

New Alliance Party
Lenora Fulani ran for the New Alliance Party, and focused on issues concerning unemployment, healthcare, and homelessness. The party had full ballot access, meaning Fulani and her running mate, Joyce Dattner, were the first pair of women to receive ballot access in all 50 states. Fulani was the first African American to do so.

Socialist Party
Willa Kenoyer and Ron Ehrenreich ran for the Socialist Party, advocating a decentralist government approach with policies determined by the needs of the workers.

Populist Party
David E. Duke stood for the Populist Party. A former leader of the Louisiana Ku Klux Klan, he advocated a mixture of White nationalist and separatist policies with more traditionally conservative positions, such as opposition to most immigration from Latin America and to affirmative action.

Campaign
During the election, Biden put a heavy emphasis on Democratic unity, appearing with major Democrats all throughout the campaign. While Biden characterized Bush an out-of-touch politician, Bush portrayed Biden as a rampant liar and untrustworthy. Biden, throughout the campaign, would respond to the attacks and be forced to defend his record.