FINALLY. Thank you, Rachel Maddow, for setting the record straight about Ross Perot in 1992.

[StevieM]

Rachel just did a great segment on this historical issue. She did a great job of dispelling they myth that Perot somehow cost Bush the election. He didn't. Not even close.

[virtualobserver]

1. Bill would have had 60% of the popular vote if Perot hadn't re-entered the race n/t

[StevieM]

2. He was up by 15 to 20 points when Perot re-entered the race with a month to go.

Now maybe those polls would have closed anyway, even without Perot in the race, and he still would have won by only 5 1/2 points. But it is insane to think that Bush would have pulled off a Harry Truman style historic comeback, given how unpopular he was at the time.

[virtualobserver]

3. I don't think they would have closed....Bush was very unpopular.

[StevieM]

12. I agree that Bush was never going to do well, let alone win. When I say the polls would have closed

what I mean is that the margin of victory might have narrowed from the landslide Clinton was headed towards. But I can't imagine they would have narrowed any more than the margin that Clinton ultimately won by on Election Day

But it is also possible that it would remained a Clinton landslide without a Perot re-entry. Bush was the one who insisted on Perot being in the debates. At that point they were desperate to do absolutely anything to shake up the race.

[ericson00]

13. "He'll be important if we accomplish our goal, which is to draw even with Clinton,"

said Fred Steeper, a poll taker for Mr. Bush."

GOD I love historical data and evidence instead of right-wing (and far-left) hatred and lies.

[ericson00]

4. Bush Sr. was as popular in 1992 as Jimmy Carter (!) was in 1980

and that shoulda been hammered home more, but that was great! I could see Republicans literally fuming had she said that. When a clip of it is available, it needs to go viral, because such gross rewriting of history is simply un-American. Its very Putinesque. Not to mention those states Clinton permanently took away from them, which add up to 156 electoral votes (NJ, CT, CA, MI, ME, VT, NH, PA, DE, MD, IL) that woulda elected all their losers since 1992.

[riderinthestorm]

19. Welcome to DU!

[ericson00]

5. definitely at least 55%+

judging from the graph, Kornacki also has tweeted this.

[merrily]

26. I think Perot may have gotten some votes from very conservative Democrats, but not centrist or

Last edited Fri Jul 24, 2015, 07:16 AM - Edit history (1)

leftist Democrats. Perot probably got a lot of votes from people who might not have gone to the polls at all otherwise. Other than that, I think his votes came from Indies and Republicans.

[StevieM]

29. That is not what the exit polls told us. And I did know of centrist Democrats who voted for Perot.

The media description of who his supporters were was never accurate.

Did you see Rachel's show last night? She did an outstanding job of addressing this matter.

[merrily]

30. No. I will watch the video at some point.

I've had difficulty watching her for about three years now.

[ProudToBeBlueInRhody]

6. Absolutely

I didn't see her story, but the people who voted for Perot HATED Bush and weren't going to vote for him, period. They were largely indifferent towards Clinton.

[Gidney N Cloyd]

7. USUALLY the history books were written by the winners. I guess that was pre-FAUX News.

[sub.theory]

8. Read My Lips

I was just a kid at the time, but wasn't Bush Sr. saying "Read my lips: no new taxes" and then raising taxes his doom? Between that and Reagan recession he lost the independents and moderates. At least that's how I understood it. It wasn't Perot. He had just painted himself in a corner he couldn't get out of.

[ericson00]

9. Media Matters needs to cover the Perot myth-NOW

Reagan wasn't always a god and another obvious reason to peddle the Perot myth is that in 1992, Reagan was a polarizing figure.

The Perot myth and the myth that Reagan never experienced popularity ebbs and flows REALLY needs to be covered by Media Matters. If you agree, please email them to get stories on it. I've tried to no avail, yet. Maybe the Maddow segment can give us some momentum.

[udbcrzy2]

10. I remember his charts and what he said about that giant sucking sound

Remember him talking about that giant sucking sound?

[ericson00]

11. clearly, seeing that NAFTA was gonna happen anyway

Bush or Clinton, at least Clinton got us a lot of electoral votes that used to be Republican and are now nearly permanently Democratic, 5 in 6 popular vote victories, a few good SCOTUS guys, and a reputation better than the party of being "soft on crime and welfare" which beat Dukakis, Mondale, and McGovern.

[freshwest]

17. Yes, I recorded those half hour television programs he had on. And thought abou it.

He was very big about what he called the revolving door of trade lobbyists.

Some even quit during the middle of negotiations and took their information to the other nation to give them advantage. Unions were getting beaten down since Reagan.

I kept the recordings for about 10 years and of course it was all a done deal by that time. Manufacturing went south of the border, but then China took their base from them. I watched over the years as everything was undone, even the tool and dies were auctioned off to China.


The business owners behaved exactly as he described there in the video and there was ripple effect downward and we developed what was called a permanent underclass.

Later I heard here of other things about Perot that I didn't like at all.

[ericson00]

14. While I know its probably not the most popular paper here,

if anyone has a Wall Street Journal account and can log in, articles like these are a big problem. Help defeating the myth there would be good. I don't have an account with them.

[Gothmog]

15. Rachel did a good job on this story

[ericson00]

16. now all that needs to happen

is that other anchors out there, Chris Matthews included, one of the lie's foremost peddlers, do the same. Extend it to other networks too. Guess it sucks for Clinton haters having so much data out there to show the truth.

[Snobblevitch]

18. What is still somewhat amazing is that

G.H.W. Bush's popularity rankings were so high in 1991 that more popular Democrats than Clinton chose not to enter the presidential race.

[ericson00]

20. Or how Bush let it slide so badly

Look at the slope of his approval ratings. Which shows he was a rather inept politician lucky to have Reagan at his side and Dukakis on the other side in 1988, as well as a friendlier media than Clinton had. If Bush had kept Desert Storm going, maybe he'd he'd have won. W indeed learned from it.

Clinton foreseeing it was by far his biggest skill.

[Snobblevitch]

24. I don't think Clinton was able to predict the downslide of

Bush's popularity rankings. He wanted to be president. He would still have entered the race no matter what.

[ericson00]

25. there was the early 90's recession

so I think what Clinton was able to do was notice how Bush Sr.'s approvals slumped badly through 1990 and that Desert Storm shortly after was just pure Wag-The-Dog that wouldn't last. He wasn't afraid of the media, who missed Bush Sr.'s terrible politicking skills, which is another reason I think they don't like him. I mean how often does a politician do something as short-sighted as "read my lips?"

Clinton was not the guy to run if he thought he was gonna lose, hence why he didn't run in 1988, even tho he toyed with the idea.

[Drunken Irishman]

21. True...it was a push most likely.

But some are wrong that Clinton would've won by a bigger margin. Exit polls from 1992 showed that Ross Perot drew equally from potential Clinton/Bush voters - and one exit poll, in Ohio, indicated Bush would've won that state had it not been for Perot. Ultimately, the race doesn't change too much - Clinton still wins, though with a majority instead of a plurality.

Where Perot helped was early in the race when he went after Bush exclusively while Clinton was still fighting back primary challenges.

[ericson00]

23. I've seen the tidbit

Last edited Fri Jul 24, 2015, 12:38 AM - Edit history (1)

what you're citing:

"Ross Perot’s presence on the 1992 presidential ballot did not change the outcome of the election, according to an analysis of the second choices of Perot supporters.

The analysis, based on exit polls conducted by Voter Research & Surveys (VRS) for the major news organizations, indicated that in Perot’s absence, only Ohio would have have shifted from the Clinton column to the Bush column. This would still have left Clinton with a healthy 349-to-189 majority in the electoral college.

And even in Ohio, the hypothetical Bush “margin” without Perot in the race was so small that given the normal margin of error in polls, the state still might have stuck with Clinton absent the Texas billionaire."

A race in the margin of error is as statistically good as an exact tie.

The idea that Clinton woulda won by a larger margin is from the fact that the portion of the race Perot was gone for saw Clinton hold 10-12 point leads on Bush Sr. while he Bush still polled at 37-39% of the vote in a 2-way contest.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

22. I knew several Democrats who voted for Perot over Clinton

Bill Clinton was seen by many as a Republican-Light "third way" Democrat. In his campaign appearances in conservative Orange County, California he was drawing big crowds of fiscal conservatives who dug his message of bringing spending down and balancing the budget.. Besides, several of these Dems told me they were fed up with Washington politics and just voted Perot to shake things up and hope that the success of a third party candidate might help end the stranglehold on American elections by two parties. I really do believe that Perot got a lot of Democratic votes.

[Tom Rinaldo]

27. By the ten minute mark she was driving me crazy however

I think my clock said 9:19 when she finally covered something other than Perot election history. I happen to love Rachel by the way, I rarely miss her show. And yes she did a real service correcting revisionist history regarding Perot. But she could have done that in three minutes if she just laid out the facts, and I would have been fine with her taking another 5 minutes so that she could have some fun doing it with flair. The first 8 minutes of her show spent on reviewing history with a current events connection? OK. Literally a third of her show? That felt excessive to me and I came very close to turning her off because I started feeling frustrated by all of the repetition.

[StevieM]

28. I understand your sentiments, but for me it was fabulous. I have waited years to hear someone

finally address the matter as completely as she did.

[Tom Rinaldo]

35. That she did, and there's much to be said in favor of that n/t

[Paladin]

31. Anybody else remember your liberal friends being enthusiastic about Perot?

Me, either. Nice try, Rachel, but I'm just not buying it.

[ericson00]

32. don't like data? Just like "I'm not a scientist"

not everything that you can't see fails to exist.

[StevieM]

34. Actually, I do remember some liberals voting for Perot.

I remember his voters were coming from everywhere.

[Horse with no Name]

33. I used to work with Carolyn Perot's husband

He is a truly wonderful man.

I always thought this was a Rovian attack on them.

That being said. It was a great expose on the (*) that the conservatives try to place on the Clinton victory.

[JonLP24]

37. On edit -- never mind got the names mixed up.

Last edited Sun Jul 26, 2015, 01:00 AM - Edit history (1)

[JonLP24]

36. I haven't seen it

but I do know Ross Perot received 18% of the poll, 35% according to exit polls said they would have voted for Ross Perot if they didn't feel it was a "wasted vote" so if the "wasted voters" voted for him anyway that would give him 53% of the vote. I don't know that translates over to the electoral college though.