Presidential Picks

When I put my ballot in the mail for the 2020 election, it was the 16^th time I voted in a U.S. Presidential election. A table of that voting history is at the bottom of this page. It shows that the candidates I voted for won eight times and lost seven times.

I'm not proud of all my past votes, particularly those that reflected my having been brought up in a staunchly Republican family. It took me a long time to start thinking for myself. What finally triggered my switch in voting was the 1992 election. I had voted for George H. W. Bush in 1988. However, it was clear by 1992 that the religious right was taking over the Republican Party, and their agenda was contrary to what I believed as well as to what the Republican Party had been.

From my standpoint, I didn't leave the Republican Party, the Party left me. My political awareness began when Harry Truman was elected President in 1948. I was nine years old, and I remember my family being dismayed that Thomas Dewey, Truman's Republican opponent wasn't elected. Four years later in 1952 the Republican nomination was a contest between Dwight Eisenhower, the candidate of the liberal wing of the Republican Party, and Robert Taft, the conservative candidate. Much to my family's delight, Eisenhower won the primary and then the general election. When I moved to Oregon in 1962, Democrat JFK was in the White House, and I did a lot of voter registration work for the Republican Party. Back then Republicans believed the important thing was to get as many people as possible to the polls. That was our goal. The strength of a democracy is in the participation of the citizenry. Certainly we hoped that those we registered would vote Republican, but the more important thing was that they vote. Country was more important than party. I still believe that.

When Republicans went into a voter suppression mode, they were losing me, and when they went the anti-abortion route they really lost me. I registered as an Independent for a few years, but in Oregon if you were an Independent you didn't get to vote for partisan candidates in the primaries. I finally registered as a Democrat, and I am still registered as such today, believing that it is the lesser of evils.

In the list below, don't take the fact that I voted for a candidate to mean that I liked them. I believe that you should always vote, and that you should vote for that candidate that you will believe will be best for the country given the choices available. In some elections that might mean that you're voting for someone you don't like because you believe that candidate will do the least harm. I cannot agree with those who, because they don't like either candidate, don't vote. Surely there is always at least some difference in how you view candidates. If you vote for neither, you are acquiescing to the fact that your lack of voting is liable to result in the election of the candidate you thought might be worse than the other. I think there was a lot of that in the 2016 election.

Bill Clinton was the first Democratic candidate for President that I voted for. When he ran for re-election in 1996, it was clear he would win, so I allowed myself the luxury of a protest vote. At the time I was heavily involved in advocating drug policy reform. Harry Browne, the Libertarian candidate, was the only one advocating a sensible drug policy. When Clinton was elected in 1992, I along with many others in the drug policy reform movement had looked to him for intelligent drug policy reform, but he failed miserably in that regard. George W. Bush didn't do any better. Barack Obama did better, but I wish he had done a lot more. Unfortunately, with the Trump administration, it appears we might well be going backward insofar as drug policy reform is concerned, though at least some states have enacted less puntive laws with respect to cannabis.

The outcome of the 2016 election was the greatest disappointment I ever experienced insofar as Presidential elections go. I believed that Donald Trump was unqualified to be President on a number of levels. His performance has confirmed that in my opinion.

Voting is a basic requirement of citizenship. I always vote.

Number	Year	Candidate	Party	Win/Lose
1	1960	Richard Nixon	Republican	loss #1
2	1964	Barry Goldwater	Republican	loss #2
3	1968	Richard Nixon	Republican	win #1
4	1972	Richard Nixon	Republican	win #2
5	1976	Gerald Ford	Republican	loss #3
6	1980	Ronald Reagan	Republican	win #3
7	1984	Ronald Reagan	Republican	win #4
8	1988	George H. W. Bush	Republican	win #5
9	1992	Bill Clinton	Democratic	win #6
10	1996	Harry Browne	Libertarian	loss #4
11	2000	Al Gore	Democratic	loss #5
12	2004	John Kerry	Democratic	loss #6
13	2008	Barack Obama	Democratic	win #7
14	2012	Barack Obama	Democratic	win #8
15	2016	Hillary Clinton	Democratic	loss #7
16	2020	Joe Biden	Democratic	win #9