Historically speaking

On November 8, 56 years ago, John F Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon taking the White House in one of the closest elections in American history.

53 years ago Friday, the 22nd, John Kennedy was murdered on the streets of Dallas Texas. Interesting that five decades removed from those two significant events questions remain relative to both. The 1960 presidential race was settled quickly when Richard Nixon conceded, ignoring the urging of several supporters to contest the results. Kennedy won the popular vote by just under 112, 000 votes out of 68 million cast, a margin of 0.2%. But his victory coincided with rampant rumours that the political machine of Mayor Richard Daly stuffed Chicago’s ballot boxes to seal Illinois for Kennedy. Down in Texas a story of skulduggery engineered by JFK’s running mate Lyndon B. Johnson was credited with sealing the Lone Star state for the Democrats. Over the objections of many Republicans Nixon conceded on the afternoon of November 9th telling close friends, “our country cannot afford the agony of a constitutional crisis in the middle a Cold war.” But despite Nixon’s decision not to ask for a recount, the Republican party pursued recounts and investigations in 11 states. In fact Earl Mazo, a Washington reporter for the New York Herald Tribune was positive the Democrats had committed Grand Theft. He kept telling anyone who would listen, “there’s no question in my mind the election was stolen…..stolen in Chicago and Texas.” Tipped off by reporters in Chicago, Mazo went to the Windy City, obtained lists of voters in precincts that seemed suspicious and started checking addresses. He recalled, “there was a cemetery where names on the tombstones were registered and voted. I remember a house. It was completely gutted. Nobody there. But there were 56 votes for Kennedy in that house.” At the urging of Democrats. Mazo went to Republican areas downstate and looked for fraud there. He found it but on a smaller scale than in Chicago. Then Mazo hit Texas where he documented similar Democratic electoral shenanigans. Armed with a couple briefcases detailing voting irregularities, his editors suggested a 12 part series on election fraud. By Mid-December 1960 he had published four of the 12, which were carried by papers across the States, including the Washington Post.

Then Nixon called and asked Mazo to stop writing his series on election fraud and dead voters because the United States could not afford a constitutional crisis given the heat of the Cold War. Mazo couldn’t believe his ears. “I thought he was kidding, but he was serious.” Failing to convince the intrepid reporter, Nixon called his editors at the Tribune and implored them to stop the series. Long story short, the Editors pulled him off the Series! Chagrined wouldn’t come close to describing his reaction. “I was terribly disappointed. I envisioned the Pulitzer Prize for crissakes.”

Election irregularities in the United States are an endemic nuisance. Americans call it garden variety fraud but it’s more than that. The fact is no one knows whether the Republic has in times past been the victim of a felonious cabal that used the ballot box to subvert the will of the people. Everything about the 2020 vote is not known but opinions are rampant. A Vegas oddsmaker says, “the fix was in. Trump was robbed. This election was stolen.” Financial broadsheet Lear Capital has important questions about what happened: “from statistical impossibilities, to coincidences that defy the odds, to 100+% voter ‘turnout’, there are anomalies that need explaining. They must be cleaned up before the next election or our beloved republic is in danger.”

The real tragedy of the election of 2020 is that 12 billion dollars was spent on a process that seriously diminished the Democratic process. America is the poorer for the outcome because it failed to blunt the destructive forces that attended the assassination of the Chief Executive Officer more than 5 decades ago.

Next, the decade Americans gave away their birthright.