The 1884 presidential contest between James G. Blaine (the Republican nominee) and Grover Cleveland (the Democratic nominee) came down to the wire. The polls (such as they were then) placed Blaine slightly ahead, and most observers expected that Blaine would defeat Cleveland and become the president in 1885.
Then, 140 years ago yesterday, six days before Election Day, a delegation of local clergymen met with Senator Blaine at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. The chairman, the Reverend Samuel D. Burchard, included these three sentences in his welcome remarks:
"We have a higher expectation, which is that you will be the President of the United States, and that you will do honor to our name, to the United States and to the high office you will occupy. We are Republicans and don't propose to leave our party and identify ourselves with the party whose antecedents have been Rum, Romanism and Rebellion. We are loyal to our flag, we are loyal to you."
"Rum" meant alcohol, on which attitudes crossed party lines. "Rebellion" meant the late Civil War, when Republicans stood for the union and Democrats for secession and slavery. "Romanism," however, meant the Roman Catholic church, which the Protestant ministers opposed on theological grounds and Blaine opposed on political grounds. (In 1875 Blaine had proposed a constitutional amendment to prohibit all government aid to religious institutions, which for him meant mainly Catholic schools.)
Blaine heard Dr. Burchard call the Democratic Party the party of "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion," and did not dissent. The national Democratic campaign committee and some of the state Democratic committees printed signs with Dr. Burchard's remarks to swing Catholic votes from the Republican candidate to the Democratic candidate. "Here's what Blaine thinks of you," the signs implied, "so vote for his opponent."
I should add that in 1884 Catholicism was New York City's largest religious denomination.
Cleveland defeated Blaine by 23,000 votes nationwide and by a scant 1,149 votes in New York State. He received 219 electoral votes to Blaine's 182. If 575 New Yorkers had voted for Blaine instead of for Cleveland, Blaine would have won the state and its 36 electoral votes, and would have defeated Cleveland in the Electoral College, 218 to 183.
On October 27, 2024 at a rally for republican candidate Donald Trump, almost exactly 140 years to the day after Dr. Burchard torpedoed the Blaine campaign, a speaker named Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico "a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean," Several of his other attempts at humor were based on racist or religious tropes. Mr. Trump heard Mr. Hinchcliffe's remarks and said nothing about them in his own speech shortly afterward.
Tony Hinchcliffe has given Donald Trump a modern "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion" moment. Residents of Puerto Rico are citizens of the United States, but they don't vote in the general presidential election . . . until they move to one of the states, where as citizens they are immediately eligible to register to vote. Over 200,000 Puerto Ricans moved to the United States after President Trump and FEMA botched the response to Hurricane Maria in 2017, including a large contingent to Pennsylvania, one of the swing states in 2024. It would be a delicious irony if President Trump's mishandling of Hurricane Maria has combined with his modern-day Burchard moment to switch just enough Puerto Rican voters in Pennsylvania to give the state, and likely the national election, to Kamala Harris.
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