Illinois State University



Autumn MarkleyResearch for ISURough DraftDue: 3/24/2017Wallace and Trump ComparedIn my research I am attempting to make connections between President Donald J. Trump and George Wallace, the Independent candidate from the 1968 presidential race. My interest in these two political figures came from the way in which they decided to run their campaigns, and their successes and failures along the way. Neither of these men were seen as politically correct or mainstream nominees, yet they both managed to collect a strong enough group of supporters to do exceptionally well in the races. When Donald Trump decided to run for office the number of people who believed he would be successful was slim. There was still constant doubt even after he was chosen as the Republican Nominee at the RNC in 2016. This kind of doubt was also seen in George Wallace’s campaign. While Wallace was unsuccessful in being elected President he still made a breakthrough in the political world as a third party candidate. Throughout my research I hope to provide the differences in the way these two men ran their campaigns in order to explain why one was more successful than the other. In 1967 Wallace became the founder, organizer and director of the newly-formed American Independent Party. He was able to get enough support to be shown on the ballots in all fifty states, carrying five of those states in the general election. This was a victory in itself, the election of 1968 was the first time in American history where a third party won any overall state, and he was capable of winning five, along with forty-six electoral votes. Wallace also had 9.9 million popular votes, which is the highest popular vote of any third-party candidate in American history. Wallace and the Independent party became a major threat to the future of the two-party political system. While people understood that Wallace had no realistic chance of winning, it was noted that he could make it so that neither the Republican nor the Democratic nominee be able to take the majority of the 270 electoral votes in the presidential election. Wallace was running a campaign that he knew was not going to make him the president, but he continued to run because he believed that American needed to see passed the two party system. His vision was to give the American people a third choice in hopes that in future elections a third party candidate would be able to win the presidency. Trump also tended to be against the Two Party system throughout his campaign. Both Wallace and Trump claimed that the two party system was rigged while they were running their campaigns. Even though Trump decided to run as a Republican, he showed his lack of a strong party identity throughout his campaign. Many conservatives did not like that Donald Trump was the Republican nominee because he was not the typical conservative candidate, but this is also what made him stand out in the election. He was also more popular with younger voters who were still unsure of their party affiliation.Donald Trump, while he ran as a Republican, does not seem to share the views of many conservatives especially towards the beginning of his campaign. Trump used to define himself as a Democrat and backed many Democratic politicians prior to running as a Republican. Trump says that this is because he is “from an area that is mostly Democrat” but claims that over his years of being involved he has developed into a Republican. In an article from The Atlantic, Johnathan Rauch tore Donald Trump’s political party affiliation to pieces claiming that he has never been loyal to either party. He states, “According to registration records, since 1987 Donald Trump has been a Republican, then an independent, then a Democrat, then a Republican, then ‘I do not wish to enroll in a party,’ then a Republican; he has donated to both parties; he has shown loyalty to and affinity for neither.” This was unappealing to conservatives because they wanted a strong Republican nominee in the general election. However it did end up helping him gain support from millennials. For many people high school and college aged this was the first election that they could vote in. While many millennials would describe themselves as leaning democratic, over half of them refuse to pick either side and consider to identify as independents. This helped Donald Trump in the election because his lack of a strong party affiliation tended to make his campaign seem more independent which is why he was able to gain so much support from young voters. Another group that is strongly supported by millennials is a new movement called the “alt-right” full name being alternative right. More millennials that tend to lean more towards the conservative side consider themselves this because they do not fully support everything that traditional republican do.More recently people are claiming that Trump is a part of the “alt-right” or in some way correlated with this particular group. The “Alt-right” is defined as a “loose group of people with far-right ideologies who reject mainstream conservatism in the United States.” Many American’s have expressed their concerns over the “alt-right” over the past few months claiming that it is a “hate movement” and that the followers are “white supremacists”. Milo Yiannopoulos, the senior editor of Breitbart, has been accused of being the leader of this movement, however he has always claimed to have no part of it. Because of some of the controversial things that Milo says in his talks many people assume that he does support this movement, the same can be assumed with Donald Trump. While the alt-right did celebrate Donald Trump’s presidential win, he has not ever admitted to being a part of or made any correlation between himself and this particular group. However, Trump’s views were obviously more conservative than they were liberal which is why he ran as a Republican. Part of what won Trump the presidency was the fact that he appealed to many voters in different parties. In the 2016 presidential election there was a noticeable switch trend in many key counties that Obama won in 2008 and 2012. Donald Trump was an appealing candidate mostly to Republicans and people who identified themselves with the alt-right, but he was also able to pull support from part of the Democratic Party who was still hoping for the change that Obama promised. President Trump knew during his campaign that his elaborate and what seemed to be outlandish plans would get him more support, and much like Wallace he used it to his advantage. Even though neither candidate had a strong party affiliation they made names for themselves by staying away from moderation in their policies. Both men were seen as strong candidates once they were in the general election which made them less likely to moderate their positions because it would hurt their reputations as strong and daring leaders. In my opinion Trump tends to be more of an Independent rather than fitting in a specific party, which I believe assisted his campaign and made his win possible. Trump’s views do not seem to match up with either major party, and he was known for targeting both Republican and Democratic politicians throughout his campaign. Unlike George Wallace, Trump wanted to run in a major party regardless of his beliefs because he knew it was the only way he would be able to win, and we all know Trump hates to lose. John Hill emphasized in one of his articles that Wallace was a Democrat who decided to run as an independent, mainly because he knew he would not win the Democratic Nomination. Trump took the opposite approach by joining one of the two parties even though he may not have completely fit into it. Because of party polarization it is hard for a third party candidate to have a chance in major elections because people tend to choose one of the two major parties at a relatively young age and back them regardless of who the candidate is. This is why it made more sense for Donald Trump to run as a Republican rather than creating or running in a Third Party like Wallace did. There are several reasons that will cause third party candidates to be unable to win the United States Presidential election anytime soon. First of all over the years there have only been two parties capable of building up sufficient funds to fight a national campaign at the level required for success. The Republican and Democratic parties have been the main two since 1857, giving both parties plenty of time to fully establish themselves. Because of this history both Parties’ campaigns are well funded and gain a lot of support. They are the only two parties that have managed to create links to big business to acquire funding and support. The idea that these are the only parties that a majority of the country feel can win any major election leaves the other third parties without much support unless it is coming from people who pay close attention to politics. The third party candidates are not well covered by the media because they are not typically allowed in the debates, George Wallace was an exception to this because he was high enough in the polls to qualify. In the 2016 election neither Jill Stein nor Gary Johnson were able to get the 15% in national polls needed to be allowed to debate. It is hard for them to get enough support without the sufficient funds to run and without having a certain percentile of the vote they are not allowed to partake in debates with the Republican and Democratic nominees. While it is not impossible for a third party candidate to get that percentage it is very difficult to accomplish. Wallace had a lot of support from the southern states which is how he was able to make it to 15% in 1968. George Wallace won five states running against Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey. All of the states that he won were in the Deep South because of his position on segregation. It is impressive that he was able to do this, but he still did not stand a chance in the overall election because he was not running as one of the popular two party candidates. The second reason that we cannot seem to escape the Two Party System is because of the winner takes all system. Presidential elections are state-by-state races, thanks to the Electoral College, in which every state except Maine and Nebraska awards all of its electoral votes to whichever candidate wins a number of the state’s votes. For example, California is a Blue State, always won by the Democratic Candidate who then gains 55 electoral votes for winning this state. So even though Wallace won five states he only gained 46 electoral votes from all five combined, while Nixon would have gained 55 from California alone. This makes a lot of Americans feel like if they vote for a third party candidate than they are “wasting a vote” so even when they do support someone other than the two main party candidates they will not vote for that person in fear that their vote won’t matter.The main reason that Trump was able to win the presidency while Wallace could not is the fact that Trump was able to brand himself as a Republican early on in the election. Wallace ran his campaign with the idea that the two major parties were bad, he stated "There's not really ten cents worth of difference in the two national parties" in a speech announcing the new Independent Party on August 3rd 1968. Wallace could not fit in either party and in result created his own Independent Party which has not been successful in winning a presidential election. Trump, while he may not have fit the exact picture for a typical Republican candidate or endorse the current political party structure, ran in a party to ensure that he would be on the final ticket for the general election knowing that third party candidates typically do not stand a chance in elections.Aside from the party structure we also see a change in campaign strategies between the election of 1968 and 2016 which helped Trump become a more successful candidate. Prior to this election we did not see a lot of social media impact on candidate popularity, but it’s clear that it did play a large role in the 2016 election between Trump and Clinton. Social media has changed how politicians’ campaign and sites such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and many others helped elect Donald Trump which were not available during Wallace’s campaign. Social media is increasingly becoming more prominent in campaigns. Candidate popularity comes from several different character traits, but one of the most important according to Martin Wattenberg is a candidate’s ability to relate to the public. The use of social media from candidates helps them relate to the majority of the country, especially to young adults. Trump and Wallace were both paranoid of media involvement in their campaigns, but with social media Trump was able to get passed the media where Wallace was not. When the media made claims against Trump that he found were false, he would tweet and post about his frustration with the establishment and claim that the media was against him and for Hillary. August 14 2016 Donald Trump went on a Twitter rant about the corrupt media, he tweeted the following;“I am not only fighting Crooked Hillary, I am fighting the dishonest and corrupt media and her government protection process. People get it!” “I have always been the same person-remain true to self. The media wants me to change but it would be very dishonest to supporters to do so!”“It is not ‘freedom of the press’ when newspapers and others are allowed to say and write whatever they want even if it is completely false!”“Crooked Hillary Clinton is being protected by the media. She is not a talented person or politician. The dishonest media refuses to expose!”“If the disgusting and corrupt media covered me honestly and didn't put false meaning into the words I say, I would be beating Hillary by 20%”These were only about half of the tweets that Donald Trump made about the media on this day. While many people from the opposing side found Trump’s constant tweeting and Facebook posting as a turn off, his supporters encouraged it. Making use of these social media accounts helped him reach out to his voters and explain his side of things rather than allowing the media to be the only way to get news. It was also helpful in reaching out to millennials because these social media sites are used constantly by this generation. It was easier for Trump to get his opinions heard by the people than it was for Wallace because in order to hear what Wallace had to say you would have to go to a rally or a debate. Everything else was covered by the media who Wallace did not trust. George Wallace is highly known for making crude comments that offended a lot of citizens, much like Trump. Even Wallace’s running mate LeMay said some questionable things during the campaign. In John Paul Hill’s article he discussed reasons for why people felt Wallace and LeMay were simply too hot headed to run a clean and confident campaign. He used a speech from LeMay from when he was announcing his candidacy where he was talking about why we should use more nuclear weapons while making fun of our country for having a “phobia” of them. Through media involvement and ads run by the opposing party LeMay was soon turned into a political danger and people started to see the Wallace campaign in an even worse light than they already had. Hill also describes through his writing that the Wallace campaign trail was a rough road and it made many voters feel like Wallace wasn’t a stable candidate to vote for. This was also seen early on in Trump’s campaign. When he first announced he was running many people did not take him seriously, but throughout the race he was able to prove those people wrong by easily relating to the people through social media. Another shot that the media took at Wallace was the fact that LeMay was actually his second running mate. Chandler was his first but he ended up dropping out of the race. Once he dropped out he began to bash Wallace on the news, reducing his chances of running a successful campaign even further. When stories like these came out about the already disliked candidate Wallace, there was not much he could do other than express his displeasure with the media at rallies, while Trump would have just went on a twitter rampage and got thousands of people on his side within minutes. Wallace on the other hand had to say things in his speeches to get attention from supporters. One of Wallace’s more famous quotes is, “The doves in this country and some of the media are the cause of fifty-some-odd-thousand Americans being killed and all that money being spent, and all that inflation” where he is obviously talking about the media and how it is bad for government and the people. Many things that these two candidates did during their campaigns caused negative reactions from voters which is why the media picked at their campaigns so frequently. Regardless of these men believe that the media was being unfair in what they were reporting, it is important to look at why reporters said what they did.Looking back the media did seem to target both of these men, but these candidates also gave them reason to do so. Their strong views on controversial issues such as immigration and segregation made them easy targets. However, Trump was able to get away with his immigration policy ideas because they were not considered as racist as Wallace’s anti segregation campaign. In a famous speech Wallace states, “Segregation Now, Segregation Forever, and Segregation always”. This is what his entire campaign was based upon which made it evident that he was a racist and his supports were racist. Immigration played a big role in President Trump’s campaign, seen especially through his statements about building a wall on the Mexican border. But it wasn’t the only thing that he ran his campaign on. Fighting for other issues like fixing the economy allowed Trump to gain more support from conservatives who did not feel comfortable with his seemingly racist ideas about building the wall. Wallace and Trump both made many mistakes in their campaigns by running with racist platforms. Donald Trump attracted a lot of hate from people for his idea to build a wall on the Mexican border and to instate a Muslim ban once he became president. Trump was also guilty of making controversial comments about women which turned many people away from supporting his campaign. All of these things made people who did not agree with his ideals fear the fact that he was potentially going to be voted into office which made the opposing side become very violent at rallies and discussions lead be specific speakers like Milo who supported Trump. George Wallace also said things during his campaign that were seen poorly by the opposing side. His racist comments and pro segregation platform made many people strongly dislike him as a candidate. His rallies also attracted violent protesters and negative coverage.The media and opposing parties were able to use the things that these men said against them in their campaigns. A big part of what makes political candidates look bad are the advertisements that are used during campaigns. There are many scholarly articles outlining this point. Political advertisements are used in order to create and alter the emotions of voters. This was seen in the 2016 campaign quite a bit, but this has been a tactic that has been used for years in order to get voters to choose who they want to support. Daniel Stevens discusses how fear and sorrow can be manipulated to sway the bipartisan votes. Campaign ads typically try to target specific groups of people that the candidate is trying to get a point across to in order to gain votes or take votes away from their opposition. Stevens not only believed that negative advertising was a good way to change votes, but he also talked about repetition and how it is a good way to ensure that the voters do not forget the way they felt during the advertisements when they enter the polls on voting day. In the 2016 election Hilary Clinton had a very emotional ad against Donald Trump. In this video it showed young girls and the different races of children that he had said negative things about. It had various video clips from his rallies and speeches and showed the children watching the television with tears in their eyes. This emotional video was likely to change many voters’ opinions about Donald Trump. Hearing all of the things that Trump had said about women and minority groups in this ad was difficult for many people because our president is supposed to be someone that children look up to not someone that frightens them.There was also a video that came out towards the end of the election of Donald Trump talking poorly about women which many people found distasteful. After this video came out there were many women who were supporting Trump that then changed to Hillary or decided not to vote altogether. Even though this particular video was taking over ten years ago and he was unaware that he was being filmed, the things that he said were scary to many women and it made him look like he was not fit to be the president, but that he was just a reality television star that can do and say whatever he wants without consequence. There were many things similar to this that Trump said and did throughout his campaign that turned many people away from supporting him, and the media made sure to cover his mistakes and continuously had him in the spotlight through the election.The ways in which the media and the opposing candidate advertise is the only part of the election that many people pay attention to. People are more likely to dislike a specific candidate if they are seen in a bad light in interviews, debates, or rallies. George Wallace for example, is known for making crude comments that offended a lot of citizens. Wallace was a Democrat who is now decided to run as an independent, mainly because he knew he would not win the Democratic Nomination, and that LeMay was actually Wallace’s second running mate. Chandler was his first but he ended up dropping out of the race. Once he dropped out he began to bash Wallace on the news, reducing his chances of running a successful campaign even further. However, Wallace as a third party candidate did not do as poorly as Independents typically do, he was actually quite popular.When it comes to third party candidates they have an obvious disadvantage. Howard J. Gold goes into detail when explaining third party experiences in elections. He was trying to figure out why certain third party candidates do well in the elections while others do not. Since 1912 only three men have been able to get over 5% of the popular vote, Wallace being one of them. His conclusion was that the third parties do better when there is a lack in partisanship. Wallace ran his campaign based on the idea that neither candidate shared the ideas of the voters trying to get their support for him. The other reason she gave was that Wallace, much like Trump, ran at a time of great dissatisfaction in the country. This helped both of these candidates in getting support regardless of the harsh things they said during the campaigns. Both of these men ran saying that the government and the people in Washington cannot be trusted. By Wallace and Trump constantly expressing to their supporters how terrible Washington D.C. and the two party system are they were able to get a lot of people’s attention especially in the white working class which was targeted in both of these elections. Wallace tended to target both Republicans and Democrats while Trump blamed the political establishment and the incumbent administration. In the quote below it is shown how Wallace directly points blame to the two parties. “The working man cannot walk to work in safety, nor his wife ride the transit system nor go to the supermarket. Nor can you walk in the neighborhood because these anarchists they kowtow to--both national parties, the members of both national parties--and the National Democrats and the National Republicans have their sails up to encourage the movement that dominates in our cities and makes it unsafe to walk on our streets…” –George WallaceDonald Trump tends to preach change for Washington, implying that it is not getting the job done as is and it needs help. He also picked on the incumbent party quite a bit throughout his campaign and even before he decided to run. This attracted more supporters who were not happy with the way Barack Obama and the Democrats had been handling the country’s issues."Our great African-American President hasn't exactly had a positive impact on the thugs who are so happily and openly destroying Baltimore." – Donald Trump“I’ve been playing this game for a long time, folks, from the other side. I changed sides. I was total establishment. Now I’m like the worst thing that ever happened to the establishment. Because I understand the game!” - Donald TrumpAlong with the trying to make the establishment and the political system look bad, they also both used the idea that America should be better than it is. At this point in time nearly every American knows Donald Trump’s campaign slogan “Make America Great Again”. Looking back at George Wallace’s campaign his slogan was very similar, “Stand Up For America”. Their goal in these slogans was to target a specific group of American’s and convincing them that their version of America is under threat. While these slogans are simple patriotic and innocent statements many American’s connect them to hate and violence because of how they have been used by their supporters. Donald Trump mentioned in a press conference after the Chicago rally got shut down due to the protesters that his supporters are not violent people, rather they are just angry and scared at the way the country is being run. This was another thing that the Wallace and Trump campaign had in common, both were running during a time of major racial conflicts. At times where the country seems to be in a downfall a voter typically are looking for a change which both Wallace and Trump were offering. During the election year of 1868 when Wallace was running there were several events that took place that affected the voters decisions. There was a lot of racial unrest and violence occurring that helped him to get the support he needed from the white working class to win the five states that he did. Zubeida Mustafa considered Wallace to be a “racist and extremist” and explains how he was still able to do so well in the election.Again I noticed a comparison with Trump, Wallace was pro segregation which caused people to hate and protest his rallies. This was the same problem we saw with Trump, his anti-immigration made a lot of people angry and they became violent. During this election year Martin Luther King and Senator Robert Kennedy were assassinated. In this article he said these actions along with the DNC protest that caused conflicts between students and police officers helped Wallace gain support. While Mustafa saw Wallace as an extremist his supporters did not see him this way. They saw a country being destroyed by anarchy and many of them felt that it was because of race. Wallace and Trump share an attitude that catches voters and pulls them in. Patrick Pierce wrote an article about how candidate’s personal characteristics change the outcome of the election. He was explaining that Candidates stances on issues do not matter, but that instead their successes or failures are based on their personalities. In the case of both the 2016 and 1968 elections this concept makes plenty of sense. These two elections show that people were attracted to the fact that the men were not politically correct. Voters liked that these men got angry and spoke their mind and I do believe that is a huge reason that they were able to grow support like they did. However it was not only the way they presented themselves, they also had views that correlated well with the voters at these times. The way that Wallace and Trump presented their ideas did make a difference in their fast grown popularity, but their ideas were still the key part of their success. Both Trump and Wallace made claims and suggestions when running for president that scared minority groups. While this was a rather large turn off for many voters, it was also the reason that they had more support from the white working class voters than other candidates. One major problem with their campaign strategies was the fact that they made minority groups and in Trump’s case women very angry which in return caused their campaigns to become violent. Violence can be defined in many different ways, however here it will be explained as violence by others causing a physical injury. Marvin E. Wolfgang wrote an article that discussed the way that people fear violence. When people are afraid of violence they are more willing to break their own personal beliefs. The use of violence in social relationships has been a trend for people who are trying to change the views of others to fit their own. Wolfgang blamed violence on the lower class, he said that the middle class felt that violence was morally wrong and they did not to partake in it. The main concept he was trying to get through in his article was that violence is used to establish political power. Racism has been a huge problem in the U.S for a long time now which is one of the main reasons I have found for election violence. Michael Wallace went into great detail in his article about why people riot and how the violence can get out of control when more than one group is struggling to gain power. Looking at the violent trends throughout American history Wallace placed the blame on that fact that minorities feel oppressed while majorities get territorial and strive to keep their power. His article was based around not only racial violence but economic violence as well. The concept of citizen’s economic wellbeing was discussed in an article by Andrew Healy. This article set out to explain why people tend to respond more to the economy during election years. Healy was trying to make the readers understand why the election-year economy influences the election so considerably. By the end of his article he came to several conclusions for why this is. The most reasonable explanation that he found was that the incumbent performance was poor and the voters who were hurt financially by that are more likely to get out and vote for someone who offers different ideas or solutions to the problems. I found this article to be important because it showed how important the economy is for the voters who have been struggling. People are more likely to become passionate about an election if they feel that they have been ignored or hurt by the current administration this is why poorer cities are more likely to riot because they have less to lose. Wallace stated that much of the racial unrest is caused by “dominant groups defending their position of privilege”. After looking at the Trump and Wallace campaigns I feel that this could not be truer.The truth of the matter is that the winner of the Precedency is highly dependent on the incumbent administration’s performance over their president’s four year term in the White House. Lichtman developed an equation-like method using thirteen “keys” that get a candidate elected into office. The first key is based on whether or not the incumbent party has lost or gained seats in the House of Representatives in the last two midterm elections. The author called this key the Incumbent Party Mandate. This key in particular shows an 86% win rate which is quite impressive, making the first key a strong base for Lichtman’s equation. During Obama’s administration the Republicans took over the majority in the House which gave Trump the upper hand in this year’s election. In the 2014 Midterm Election the Democratic Party lost at least nine seats in the House along with many others that year. This was Obama’s “lame-duck” midterm because he was prohibited constitutionally to seek reelection in the next presidential race because he was in his second term already. Democratic control of the Senate was lost in this Midterm Election as well. Having only two years left in office the Democrats did not have a lot of opportunity to regain the credibility and voter momentum needed for Democratic success in the current election, which plays a large role in predicting who will win the 2016 race. Lichtman’s other keys all had to do with economic standing, military successes or failures, and the personalities of the incumbent and the candidates running for president. Lichtman, a college professor, has predicted thirty years of presidential elections correctly using these “keys to the White House”. The nation’s standing during election years has a major impact on the voter outcome. After the Obama administration many American’s were not happy with how the country was doing, this showed in the election because the incumbent party did not win. This was similar during the presidential race of 1968. Even though Wallace did not win, neither did the incumbent party. This was because the country was not in a good place after the Johnson administration.Lyndon B. Johnson had a rough term in office because of the Vietnam War. While three presidents prior to Johnson also wanted to stop the spread of communism, LBJ took it to the next level. The number of American soldiers in Vietnam rose from 16,000 to 500,000 throughout his presidency. At a time when so many American citizens were opposing the war these numbers had a great effect on the presidential election of 1968. In the 2016 election the rise of Isis played a role in the voting as well. While the Obama Administration did not have any major military failures, they also did not accomplish as much as people would have liked which helped Donald Trump get elected president. Especially because many of the problems that the United States has faced since Obama because president were due to immigration failures and terror attacks. Donald Trump was elected on the promise for change in the White House. His platform on immigration while many people viewed it as racist, ended up getting him a lot of support due to the condition of the country. Similar to Wallace and his pro-immigration platform, in both instances the white working class voters feared the loss of power if they did not elect someone who would protect their jobs from immigrants, and in Wallace’s case African American’s. Looking back to the election of 1968, there were a lot of racial inequalities still. It is easy for people to view Wallace as a racist, but at the time that he was running for president many people still believed that segregation was a good thing, just like a majority of Trump supporters believe that we need tougher immigration laws. It all comes down to what our country is used to and how people fear the loss of power.Civil rights movements, while most had no intention to take away power from the white population, had a way of intimidating the majority of the United States according to Rory McVeigh. In McVeigh’s article he discussed the way that social movements tended to provoke hate crimes because the fear of losing power to the minorities was too much for some people to handle. Especially seen in the white working class when families feared losing their jobs to African Americans and immigrants. He talked about white supremacist organizations and how their money allowed them to attack movements in a way that would keep them from being punished. This wasn’t uncommon, however it did get a lot of people talking and reporting on the stories which in return actually helped the civil rights movement rather than hurting it. McVey’s article did a nice job of outlining the importance of social movements and why the civil rights movement ended up resulting in hate crimes. After reading about the civil rights movements and the way that many people had responded to them it is no wonder why the African American population feels that they have been oppressed over the years. Susan Olzak wrote an article on economic competition and how it has caused violence against blacks throughout history. Her argument was that economic problems along with the rise in immigration resulted in racial violence because of job competition. Her article is based on America in 1882-1914 which means that white working class jobs were vulnerable because immigrants and African Americans could do the jobs as well even without having an education. People were worried that their jobs would be taken so they partook in lynching along with several other forms of hate crimes. She gave a good outlook on the way that people thought about minorities. This relates back to Wallace and Trump’s campaign strategies because they took this type of fear that the white working class has and used it to get votes. They both ran fear based campaigns, and blamed the media for any problems they came across along the way. Neither candidate was going up against a strong incumbent party, but their own political parties were the deciding factor in whether or not they were successful. ................
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