No Democratic President has been followed by an elected Democratic President since almost before t…
No Democratic President has been followed by an elected Democratic President since almost before there was a Republican Party, when Franklin Pierce handed off the reins to James Buchanan in 1857. The only other Democrats to follow Democrats since then (Truman and Johnson) did so as Vice President when the President (Roosevelt and Kennedy) died in office.
I see much of what President Obama is doing, such as pretend that he is trying to institute a tax on big financial institutions, which he knows will never pass, as trying to be the first modern Democratic President to help hold the office for his party. He is going to continue to demonize the GOP in preparation for the 2016 elections. It'll be ugly, unfortunately.
(For reference, before Pierce, it happened once, from Jackson to Van Buren. For Republicans, it's been Grant to Hayes, Hayes to Garfield, Roosevelt to Taft, Coolidge to Hoover, and Reagan to Bush. There was also a string of three Democratic-Republican handoffs: Jefferson to Madison to Monroe to Adams.)
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