Good morning,
Today’s post-election forecast calls for a partly sunny day, with a high temperature of fifty-eight degrees.
There’s much to consider about America’s, Wisconsin’s, and Whitewater’s elections. I’ll write about them over the next two days or so. As a third-party voter, who splits a ticket every which way most elections, some of my preferred candidates won, but others lost. The happiness at seeing a preferred candidate win is often tempered by seeing one’s other preferences defeated.
The Wisconsin Historical Society recalls that on this November 3rd in 1936 (that year a Tuesday):
1936 – Roosevelt Wins in Rock County
On this date Rock County voted Democratic in a presidential election for the first time in 74 years. The county’s 17,987 votes for FDR eclipsed 14,689 for Republican Alf Landon. Janesville and Beloit both voted for Roosevelt, who won in the largest national election landslide in history. [Source: Janesville Gazette]
Although I’m convinced that Roosevelt’s New Deal failed to achieve the economic improvement often falsely credited to it, how can one not admire Roosevelt’s zeal and commitment, love of America, and his concern for ordinary people? He was not merely tenacious, but often caustic and acerbic toward his political opponents, and that rhetoric was much to his (and his party’s) advantage.
He was, so to speak, a man willing to break an egg to make an omelet.
