Governor's plan for presidential run affects Florida

Significance DeSantis is widely seen as a leading contender for the 2024 Republican nomination. This position reflects the fact that, while closely divided in general elections, Florida’s demographics provide an opportunity for different Republican factions to compete. Impacts The position of DeSantis on mask and vaccination requirements will bring him into greater conflict with the Biden administration. Turnout for midterm elections in 2018 was 63%, sharply up on 51% in 2014, and should remain high in 2022. Florida is likely to see a major political fight over re-drawing the boundaries of its congressional districts for 2022.

Hope and change: choosing a president

This chapter reflects on the challenge of choosing a president, drawing on conversations with white working-class communities about their lived economic and social experiences, as well as their lived values. It emphasizes how the rise of Donald Trump, from an outside candidate for the Republican nomination to being elected president in 2016, created a backdrop for the book. His was the “hope and change” candidacy and he clearly “weaponized” the discussion on white working-class communities by portraying himself as the victim of political elites who had no interest in the lives of ordinary people. This was in contrast to Trump's defeated opponent Hillary Clinton, who could not move from being seen as an establishment candidate who was out of touch with white working-class values, which were so important in defining who belonged to this group. The chapter then takes a critical view of the white working class being positioned as enthusiastic cheerleaders for Trump.

New York Sybarite Conquers the South

Donald Trump, the thrice married and publicly philandering Manhattan resident who had recently been pro-choice and pro-gun control, won the Republican nomination and the presidency in 2016 in part through his very strong showing among Southern white voters. How he managed to do that is the story of this chapter. Trump appealed to Southern white racial resentment, as well as to the anti-immigration fervor particularly evident in the low growth “stagnant” Southern states such as Alabama and Mississippi. But what was really remarkable is how he won the GOP nomination by doing well in all regions. The Republican Party has become unified around a largely Southern conception of conservatism: deeply religious, pro-military, and less concerned with free trade. In the general election, by contrast, regional polarization intensified in 2016. In both elections, Trump’s path to victory required him to do well among Southern whites, which he ably did.

“Annals of Europe and America” and Brown’s Contribution to Early American Periodicals

Charles Brockden Brown, who edited three periodicals between 1799 and 1809, used his experience as a novelist to engage readers on important cultural issues. His periodicals became increasingly political. Brown’s “Annals of Europe and America” document historical events, his capacity as a novelist to write “history,” and his status as an ironic historian. In assessing Napoleonic rule and British expansion, he develops a self-conscious method that also informs his inquiry into American events. He sympathetically renders oppressed others in India, comments ironically on motives for exploiting the American west, and interrogates political intrigue in the 1808 Republican nomination process. With developing awareness of the constructed, contingent nature of history, Brown came to understand political self-interest, power and imperialism, and American exceptionalism relative to that of Europe. As in his novels, he imaginatively and provocatively employed genre conventions of the day to represent the past and critically reflect on the present.

The Trump Draw: Voter Personality and Support for Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican Nomination Campaign

This study explores how variation in voters’ personality traits, as represented by the Big Five framework, corresponded with variation in judgments regarding the leading presidential candidates during the 2016 nomination campaign. We argue that the context of a crowded field and an atypical candidate in the Republican nomination campaign activated personalistic criteria for candidate evaluation—voters’ own personality traits plausibly gave direction to their candidate assessments, and personality was a useful basis on which to differentiate between eventual winner Donald Trump and the other leading Republican competitors early in the primary process. Analyses make use of data from a large national survey fielded at the time of the Iowa caucuses. Results show that voters with a particular constellation of personality traits—high conscientiousness and extraversion, and low openness, agreeableness, and neuroticism—favored Donald Trump as compared with Ted Cruz, John Kasich, Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, and the remainder of the Republican field.

The Eisenhower Solution, 1948–1952

Stassen’s failure to win the Republican nomination for president in June 1948 did not quench his thirst for high office. Robert T. McCracken, chairman of the University of Pennsylvania’s Board of Trustees, offered Stassen the university presidency in July, and the board elected him on September 17, 1948. The enthusiasm he aroused among college students as a Republican candidate convinced him that higher education had always been in the forefront of his ambitions. Stassen saw himself in the same light as Eisenhower, who had accepted the presidency of Columbia University. As the president of a prestigious Ivy League university, he could ensure his prominence in national affairs. For four years, Stassen walked a delicate line between his university obligations and his political ambitions. Inevitably, he had to confront criticism over his extracurricular activities. However, the possibility of a cabinet appointment in a Dewey administration became irrelevant when President Truman won the election in November.