6 Questions: Is the 2016 presidential race the nastiest in U.S. history?

October 12, 2016 10:44 pm

By: John DeLuca

jdeluca@abc6.com

The presidential election of 2016 between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, show 2 candidates with negative poll numbers around 60 percent.

The insults, the bitterness, it’s something citizens of the United States have never seen before. Or have they?

According to a Brown University Professor I spoke with, it’s not even close. You have to go back to the year 1800 for it.

In this latest edition of 6 Questions, I chat with Professor Jim Morone about why a Trump win would be unprecedented.

In 1800, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who was president at the time, had a nasty campaign.

How nasty? Here’s what the Adams supporters were writing in newspapers about Jefferson:

"They said he was a mean spirited, low lived son of a half breed squaw sired by a Virginia mulato father."

"They said about John Adams …that he was a hideous hermaphrodite who had neither the force nor firmness of a man…nor the gentleness of a woman. So they’re calling the guy sexless and in 1800…those are really fighting words."

Professor Morone says the two most disliked presidential candidates would be from the 1884 race between New York governor Grover Cleveland and Maine Senator James Blaine.

Letters made public showed Blaine sold his influence in congress, and Cleveland had fathered an illegitimate child.

Both were wildly unpopular, but Cleveland ended up with the win.

One thing we’ve never seen in the history of U.S. politics?

"No president in history has ever been elected without any government service at all…in the military or in the public eye…almost all of them had been elected to something. So if Donald trump wins…it’ll be unprecedented," said Professor Jim Morone.

Recent missteps by Trump have had his poll numbers dropping in swing states, although according to Professor Morone polling in 2016 is really a challenge.

"Someone picks up the phone you say I am from Gallup, Taubman or any of your polling organizations…less than 1 percent will go all the way through the poll," said Professor Morone.

"How much can we trust what we’re seeing, who’s winning, who’s losing?” I asked Professor Morone. He replied saying: “on any one poll…be very, very skeptical."

I asked: "where do independents go? Professor Morone replied: “that’s the huge question…I think we break them up…non-college educated white men going Trump…independent college educated big time Clinton. College educated women..that’s where Trump I think really lost ground."

I asked Professor Morone what advice he would give to each candidate. For Donald Trump he said he should watch Ronald Reagan debating Jimmy Carter in 1980. Every time Carter would attack him, he’d smile and say “there you go again,” and just play it off.

For Hillary Clinton he said “show some personality…show the American people who you are as a person.”

He also predicted: “if Hillary Clinton wins by 10 points or more…the democrats will take the senate and the house. If she wins by 5 or 6…the democrats will take the senate. If she wins by 2 or less republicans will hold the senate.”