Adlai Stevenson Day 2025 is on Wednesday, February 5, 2025: How did Adlai Stevenson win Missouri in 1956?

Wednesday, February 5, 2025 is Adlai Stevenson Day 2025. Adlai Stevenson II - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Adlai Stevenson II

Actually, Stevenson won 6 states' electorial votes. 7 if you count Alabama who gave 10 of its 11 to Stevenson. As for Missouri. Stevenson won the popular vote by only .22% which was 3,984 votes out of more than 1.8 million cast in Missouri. Most of that margin was provided by the City of St. Louis.

Seniors: What did Americans think of Adlai Stevenson back in the 1950s and 1960s?

I'm afraid I'm giving away my age, but I actually remember Adlai Stevenson, sort of. My mom took me with her to vote. She took me in the voting booth and showed me how it was done, by pulling levers for this guy for mayor, this guy for city council, and Adlai Stevenson for president. Mom said she and Dad usually voted Democratic, but they were independents, 'voting for the man not the party'. She said Eisenhower was also a very good man, very decent and honest, and he would make a good president too. I was like 5 years old.

Eisenhower was so popular after WWII that both parties wanted him to run on their ticket. He picked the Republicans, but then there was a serious scandal about his running mate, a young congressman named Richard Nixon. And at the Republican convention, Eisenhower said (later) that he nearly walked out when he heard the chairman of the Republican Party call his opponent, Stevenson, a 'communist sympathizer'.

The Republicans bashed Stevenson as an 'intellectual'. Even in those days they were trying to 'smear' Democratic candidates as somehow too intelligent, therefore not to be trusted. They've done that with nearly every Democratic candidate since!

Who is a modern day Piggy? (Lord of the Flies)?

Adlai Stevenson was--in the 1950's. An intellectual who lost to a good person but not as good as he was.

Brooksley Born is a woman who saw the crisis in derivatives, warned Congress, but no one paid her any attention. She was an intellectual talking to yahoos. She was ignored--later vindicated.