Mountaineer posted:

e: Gotta say, I don't care for Levi Morton though. I guess around now is when the Republicans are shifting from progressive stances to FYGM capitalism?

Platystemon posted:

McKinley took a bullet six months into his term.

What would you rather have, 3.5 years of Greatest of All Time TR, or 4 years of perennial loser EVD?

Platystemon posted:

McKinley took a bullet six months into his term.

What would you rather have, 3.5 years of Greatest of All Time TR, or 4 years of perennial loser EVD?

Platystemon posted:

perennial loser

Alikchi posted:

I'm guessing Debs wouldn't be down with being called "His Imperial Majesty, Lord-President of these United States and Protector of their Liberties". Gonna have to come up with a new title!

quote:

...
Dr. Harry J. Haiselden, chief surgeon at the German-American Hospital in Chicago, was faced with a tough dilemma. A woman named Anna Bollinger had just given birth to a child, John, who suffered from severe birth defects. John had no neck or right ear and suffered from a serious skin ailment, all judged to be the result of syphilis likely passed on by his father. Dr. Haiselden knew that he could save the child’s life through a surgical procedure. But since he was familiar with the conditions into which Illinois’ “feeble-minded” were thrown after birth, he convinced the child’s parents to let John die at the hospital. When the news came out that the doctor wasn’t going to perform the necessary surgery, an unknown person tried to kidnap the child and take it to another hospital. The kidnapping attempt failed and John Bollinger died.

While the Catholic Church, one of the few vocal critics of eugenics, was the only major group to initially protest the surgeon’s decision, Haiselden was soon called before a medical ethics board in Chicago. He nearly lost his medical license, but managed to hang onto it. Public opinion was sharply divided. Chicago social worker and suffragette Jane Addams came out against Haiselden. Short of the death penalty for murder, Addams said, no doctor had the right to be an unwilling person’s executioner. “It is not for me to decide whether a child should be put to death. If it is a defective, it should be treated as such, and be taught all it can learn,” she added.

Many of Haiselden’s critics, such as Addams, pointed out that if eugenicists had had their way, they would have killed some of the great “defectives” in history, like Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoyevksy, French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte, children’s writer Edward Lear, and even the eugenicist Harry Laughlin himself — all of them epileptics. (Biologist Laughlin, Superintendent of the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor and one of the science’s greatest advocates, had suffered from epilepsy since childhood.)

Support for Dr. Haiselden, however, came from many famous social activists. Among them was Helen Keller — advocate for the disabled, a Socialist, and a eugenics supporter (at least in 1915.) Keller, who was blind and deaf since the age of one but thrived against all odds, published her views on the Haiselden case in The New Republic. She thought that children proven to be “idiots” by a “jury of expert physicians” could and perhaps should be put to death. (Keller was an amazing woman, but it’s hard not to view her trust in the opinions of “unprejudiced” medical “experts” as naive.) Chicago lawyer and civil liberties crusader Clarence Darrow — who famously went up against eugenics critic William Jennings Bryan at the 1925 Scopes Monkey Trial — made no bones about his support for the surgeon: “Chloroform unfit children,” Darrow said. “Show them the same mercy that is shown beasts that are no longer fit to live.” Indiana Socialist Eugene V. Debs also supported Haiselden’s decision...

QuoProQuid posted:

I like how the Democrats have been reduced to a minor party whose last stay in national office was in 1833 under John Quincy Adams. Somehow, the Republicans and the Prohibitionists seem like the only parties able to consistently get votes. Meanwhile, there's a revolving door of third parties that can't last more than two election cycles.

karmicknight posted:

It's the taint of Jefferson. Even doubling down on the North can't save the Party That Shot Hamilton (pbuh), Shot Fort Sumter, and let Andrew loving Jackson live.

MMM Whatchya Say posted:

IDK, for all the extremist tickets we voted for on the basis of their anti racism, I think I can give this one to Streeter for the women's rights stance alone. We should throw them a bone for once imo

Mountaineer posted:

As a long-time Greenback voter I'm worried by the Republicans' stance on the gold standard, but I'm leaning towards Harrison anyway.

e: Gotta say, I don't care for Levi Morton though. I guess around now is when the Republicans are shifting from progressive stances to FYGM capitalism?

Corek posted:

Nebakenezzer posted:

Serious reply: people confuse Harrison with his grandfather.

Nebakenezzer posted:

Serious reply: people confuse Harrison with his grandfather.

WrightOfWay posted:

I honestly forgot that Benjamin Harrison was ever president.

QuoProQuid posted:

Benjamin Harrison never won the popular vote. His attempts at reform were constantly stymied. He had no discernible personality. And he presided over no great crises or historical events.

Benjamin is not remembered as a bad president. He's barely remembered at all, which is why he usually ranks in the lower-middle of the list with all the other Gilded Age presidents. He might have had great ambitions but he barely got the opportunity to address them.

axeil posted:

Harrison sounds really good. I vote for him. Please someone explain how he is secretly terrible.

edit: also I am voting for whoever is the most popular other than Debs because commies suck.

WrightOfWay posted:

Generally the only one term presidents that scholars who rank presidents like are JFK and Polk.

I think there's a decent chance that Debs will lose an election or two since he's up against some other thread favorites like Teddy Roosevelt and William Jennings Bryan.

Alfred P. Pseudonym posted:

Did Debs ever run in the same election as Fightin Bob LaFollette?

NumberLast posted:

I wish Huey Long could end up in an election. I'd be interested to see how he did, all things considered.

Lord of Pie posted:

He'd send in federal troops to burn Shreveport to the ground which would make him a top 5 president probably