Do you recall any outliers in your presidential voting history, including primaries?

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

I've voted for every Democratic nominee in the general election beginning with Walter Mondale in 1984, the year I turned 18. But the first vote I ever cast was in the 1984 Democratic primary. I didn't like Mondale and I thought Jesse Jackson was kind of cool at the time. I was just an 18 y/o white kid from the Bay Area that didn't know a thing about Jackson but didn't like Mondale. I cast my first ever vote for Jesse Jackson. Of course, I voted for Mondale in the general election.

It still makes me chuckle today.

[catbyte]

1. I voted for Jesse Jackson in the 1980 MI Dem Caucus but I don't find it funny

What's your point?

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

2. Don't get me wrong, I didn't think it funny at the time.

Today, it makes me chuckle.

Anyway (whistling), someone may have voted for Reagan, Perot, Anderson...hmm, I guess we won't hear from those who voted for Nader, they'll get burned at the stake at DU.

[catbyte]

3. Why? He was the only candidate who wasn't a corporatist & the US

really started to go to hell when Reagan was elected. We are now seeing the horrendous harvest of what was sown in the early 1980's. We fucked up. Jesse Jackson was the only candidate that made sense. Do you think you were wasting your vote? Hilariously naive? I guess I am not seeing the humor. All I can see is the tragedy, actually. Maybe I need some more sleep.

[regnaD kciN]

4. I don't get what you mean by "outliers" in this context...

Do you just mean "primary votes for candidates who turned out to not be the party's nominee?" Well, since almost my entire voting "career" has been in Washington state, whain,ere we have party caucuses instead of primaries, I can pretty much say "most of the time." In 1984, I initially voted for George McGovern; however, he withdrew from the race while we were still in the caucus, and I wound up switching to Gary Hart. (It was rather complicated -- actually, I would have supported Mondale, but there was some vote-trading during the session, and I agreed to go with Hart in exchange for having some platform proposals adopted and sent "up the chain" to the county caucus.) In 1988, I went with Dukakis. I didn't attend the caucus in 1992, and they didn't have one in 1996 because Clinton was running unopposed. Once again, I skipped the caucus in 2000, but went with another "outlier" in 2004 with Dean over Kerry, who had achieved prohibitive front-runner status by that time. No question about 2008 -- at the caucus, I was the precinct captain for Obama. Of course, at the time, I would have said that was an outlier, since Hillary Clinton was sure to get the nomination! Once again, no caucus this year, as the President was running unopposed.

But here's a true, non-primary outlier: although I've almost always voted a straight Democratic ticket (and often worked for Democratic candidates, even before reaching voting age), my first vote ever wasn't for a Democrat. Specifically, it was for Governor Francis Sargent of Massachusetts, that now-extinct political species, the liberal Republican, who I found preferable to challenger (and eventual winner) Michael Dukakis -- that's right, the same Dukakis I was to represent all the way to county caucus (and alternate to state convention) fourteen years later!

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

5. Yeah! That's pretty damn cool!

Now you got me thinking, I supported Edwards, and would have voted for him in the primary over Obama and Hillary had he made it to Illinois. "Outlier" is definitely subjective. Your post was a good read.


Back to my vote for Jackson...I admit, my criteria was minimal. I didn't like the old, establishment Mondale and thought Jackson was cool at the time. I don't find Jackson cool, today. As for Edwards...he pissed me off, not because of the scandal, but because he thought he could have gotten away with it before the election. We surely would have had President McCain had Edwards gotten the nomination only to see his scandal unravel before the election.

[yewberry]

6. Not really.

I marched for John Anderson for the 1980 election, but I was a kid at the time.

My first presidential vote was in '88. Straight ticket every year.

[HubertHeaver]

7. Shirley Chisholm

[graham4anything]

8. What is your point??? I PROUDLY voted for Jesse Jackson & loved the thought of Jerry Brown/Jackson

I also find Rev. Al Sharpton to be the ONE and ONLY person on tv now that I listen to 100% of the time, and Rev. Al never, ever lied to me like say trash like John and his wife Edwards did.

so what is your point here?

Why the negativity toward Rev. Jackson, one of the giants of the post-Dr. King years in the civil rights movement. Do you think his run, where if not the presidential candidate, he should have been the VP on Mondale's ticket or Dukakis' ticket something that was funny???

Without Rev. Jackson, Obama could not have had an easy chance in winning.

Rev. Jackson was in the long line of people who made even dreaming of a President Obama possible (and that includes Shirley Chisolm, and all the Civil Rights heroes of the past, and the legendary President Johnson(who I never forget to thank, because, well HE DID IT, he signed those acts making ALL people equal instead of the way Thomas Jefferson wrote it, however was a major hypocrite, being that Jefferson owned people, and abused them, especially the females.)

So again, what is your point here? Why the negativity against Rev. Jackson, who I voted for twice, and loved the thought of Jerry Brown/ Rev. Jackson as a ticket.

(and you are not professing love for Ralph Nader, are you???

This is the Democratic site, not some stupid third party site who caused Al Gore to lose in 2000 you know. YES HE DID. Without Nader, Gore would have won New Hampshire, and the election and Florida would not have mattered.

so again, what is your point here???

(and I thought by outlier you meant Truman defeated by Dewey, but from your own secondary responses, that was not the case.)

and to Rev. Jackson, my thoughts and prayers to you and your family in your families time of need. THEY have tried to bring you down for decades.
Stand tall, and we still have your back.

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

9. I didn't intend this to be the diabolical plot you're fishing for.

Post #4 was along the lines of what I was looking for. I thought that was obvious by the and my reply to that post.

[graham4anything]

11. well then, why not write it??? are we suppose to read your mind ..you putting down Rev.Jackson

Can't say there was ever any candidate who I voted for that I was ashamed of.
Though I knew many wouldn't win, but then I don't vote for republicantealibertarians

BTW-I originally supported in 1972 someone who got more votes in Minnesota primary but didn't stay in the race til
it made NY and McGovern was the nominee...that being Mayor John V. Lindsay of NYC, a real true populist.
Loved McGovern but knew he wouldn't win, it was a nice dream though, and he is a beautiful nice man.

People who voted for Nader got what they deserve- the W eight years.

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

13. I didn't expect anyone to read my mind...

...but that didn't stop anyone lol

And, FWIW, this is what negetivity/putting someone down looks like:
"Al never, ever lied to me like say trash like John and his wife Edwards did."

But all of this is beside the...oh, nevermind.


By the way, McGovern was before my time, but I'm learning a lot about him reading here these past few days.

[HopeHoops]

10. Back up an election - Anderson.

[LWolf]

12. What's an outlier?

It's highly unlikely that anyone I ever vote for in a primary will make it to the general election, unless the Democratic Party decides to shake off corporate/centrist/"new" dem overlords.

I spent most of my voting life as an independent; I registered with a political party for the first time in '01, to protest the selection. No one I voted for during those years would be an "outlier," would they? Plenty of the votes were for Democrats; others for 3rd party members and independents. Unless it was a sleeper in a non-partisan race, I've never, to my knowledge, voted for a Republican, and never will.

Since becoming a Democrat, I've lost a lot of respect for the party. I liked Democrats better from the outside. Or, I just happened to register at a turning point, and the party turned away from where I am.

I still vote the same: on record and issues. The candidate that earns my vote gets it.

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

14. Great post!

Thanks for your candor