and this is the best argument for the Dukakis campaign not seeking recounts in those other states that probably would have gone Democrat in 1988: after all, such recounts cost money, and the Democrats were hard-pressed in that first election year of the Big Money years that we've been seeing ever since.
The Democrats felt they'd "got a clue" in running Clinton with more conservative and pro-corporate positions in order to receive some of that big campaign money themselves.
But what I've tried to point out, in my own research, is that the 1988 campaign had, within it, something else: that "undercurrent" of the Bush family style, little...call them semi- or even actual irregularities: in Maryland, the NSA had been found, in 1989, to have wiretapped the Maryknoll nuns who had opposed their operations in Nicaragua--operations that were investigated as part of the Iran/Contra scandal.
Ed Rollins's comments on "walking around money" in New Jersey were, admittedly, in the aftermath of Christy Todd Whitman's GOP campaign there. But he accompanied it with the statement: "that's quite common," and the context was that he was talking to local and regional activists.
The great "flu out" of 1988, mentioned at times in mass media coverage on election night, was also a big factor in Dukakis's anemic showing on the east coast, and in Illinois, Pennsylvania and Michigan. As noted earlier, much of the real dynamic of this "flu out" was something the media finally caught--thanks in part to reporting on the internet--in 2004 in Ohio: the lock up of voting booths, often in Democrat-oriented precincts.
Another undercurrent was when Bentsen was handed a note saying Dukakis had determined he'd lost, earlier on election night. While such states and areas as western Michigan, western Texas, New Mexico and California were still very much voting, and while voter groups were in process of requesting extension of poll closing times due to lengthy lines at the polls in Memphis, St. Louis, and in several locations in Ohio, Bentsen went live on TV and conceded.
Only later, did he learn this note was NOT from Dukakis, at all. The subsequent history of the investigation of this mysterious note issue, is murky to non-existent.
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