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Why don't losing presidential candidates run again?
I'm talking when someone is a party's nominee and loses to the other top candidate, they seem to disappear. Is it because their name is now poisoned in everybody's mind? Damaged goods? I mean, it's like that even in a close election. Al Gore had a lot of support after his tenure as VP, and we all know how either Bush or Gore could have won in 2000. There actually was some talk in 2004, but he declined, and now he's just known as the environmentalist who lost. With McCain's age, and all the criticism toward Romney, it makes sense that neither will ever run again. But even when it is plausible, it never happens. Nixon coming back and winning the presidency is unthinkable today, and Cleveland really did the impossible. Can you imagine a one-term president bouncing back like that? When was the last time a candidate was the runner up and ran again? Seymour lost to Grant multiple times, but today the idea of a "loser" coming back seems ridiculous - image is stained for good.
Keith, I mean someone losing on election day, not failing to get the party's nomination. Lots of candidates have lost in the primaries and come back.
8 Answers
- ex arcamLv 68 years agoFavorite Answer
It used to be that a candidate's first need was support of party leaders in the various states. Now, the first need is money. A big donor, or the head of a superpac, looks upon a candidate and says: "Last time I gave you $nnn, and what did I get for it?"
I think Bush was vulnerable to Gore in 2004, and if Gore had run, would have beaten Bush. But he would have had to make the election a referendum on Bush's conduct of the 'war on terror', especially the Bush administration's mismanagement of the Iraq occupation, and I think Gore was unwilling to do that. He was concerned with different issues.
The presidents who won coming back from a loss were Jefferson, Jackson, W. H. Harrison, Cleveland and Nixon. Nixon is the only one with another president's term intervening between the loss and comeback. I think the last runner-up to win a second nomination, apart from Nixon, was Thomas Dewey, unless you want to count H. Ross Perot, who tried again after a very strong 3rd-place, but didn't do as well the second time. Before Dewey, it would have been William J. Bryan, who was nominated three times.
I'm afraid you're mistaken about Seymour. He tried against Grant once. Grant's second opponent was Horace Greeley. Grant tried for a third term in 1880 but lost the nomination to Garfield.
- Ralph BLv 78 years ago
Adlai Stevenson tried it twice and lost twice.
George W. Bush lost the popular vote but came back to win a second term. The country was rewarded with a deep recession.
- ?Lv 45 years ago
Obama won't lose and whether he did, definite he can run for president returned. yet, i can not think of mummy McCain and poopoo Palin in workplace. If McCain grew to become into at my domicile, i does not enable him to apply the distant. the only element Palin is physically powerful for is changing McCain's diapers.
- Anonymous8 years ago
Embarrassed
- darrin bLv 78 years ago
It's too costly.
It's too taxing.
It's too emotional.
But not all of them don't run. This was Mitt's second run. And Nixon ran again too.
