William Jennings Bryan, 1908
If you're sick of seeing Bryan's name, think how the voters must've felt. The Republican slogan was "Vote for Taft now, you can vote for Bryan anytime." Bryan, older now, and not such a pretty boy, but every bit as much a crankcase, lost bigger than ever, but then in William Howard Taft, he faced much bigger opposition.
1 It seemed even Bryan was capable of learning a lesson because he never ran again, but he remained a force in the Democratic party espousing the causes of enfranchisement, economic justice, and (yawn) bimetallism, a voice until the day he died for the common man.
2 He was instrumental in getting Woodrow Wilson elected, and indirectly, therefore, bringing us Prohibition.
3 Bryan had one last hoorah in '25 at the famous Scopes "Monkey" Trial in Tennessee where he won a sterling victory against the causes of science and truth. His opponent and former friend, Clarence Darrow, defended John Scopes for teaching evolution to high school students on the irrelevant basis that evolution is a
fact. Bryan argued from the unimpeachable position that evolution was against the law. (Why can't these dang secular humanists understand this?) Among other moral objections to Darwin's so-called "theory" was that it taught we weren't even descended from good American monkeys but from old-world monkeys.
Result
William Howard Taft: 321
William Jennings Bryan: 162
1. Ah-ha-ha-ha.
2. The commoner, the better, as far as Bryan was concerned.
3, Thanks, Bryan!
