New Delhi: Donald Trump will be only the second person in history to be elected president of the United States after losing their first reelection bid, in what is increasingly looking like a stunning political comeback to win the 2024 presidential election.
The first was Democrat Grover Cleveland, whose second stint ended 127 years ago—he was the 22nd and 24th president from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897.
Trump is projected to win the battleground states of North Carolina, Georgia and Pennsylvania, which means he needs to win only three more electoral college votes to reclaim the White House.
Trump, who was in office as the 45th president from 2017 to 2021, lost his first reelection bid in 2020 to Joe Biden. If he wins, the former president will be the 45th and 47th president of the US, and the first Republican in history to achieve this feat.
Democratic candidate Kamala Harris had a shot at history too—she was running to be the first sitting vice president to claim the White House since George H.W. Bush.
Bush, the 41st president, was vice president for eight years between 1981 and 1989, before leading the nation from 1989 till 1993. He lost his bid for a second term when he was defeated by Democrat Bill Clinton in 1992.
Since 1933, only Bush has won the White House as a sitting vice president. Only four other former vice presidents since the 1940s have been elected to the White House: Harry Truman, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon and Joe Biden.
However, both Nixon and Biden entered the White House years after finishing their terms as vice president. Nixon was vice president between 1953 and 1961 and president from 1969 till he resigned in disgrace in 1974. Biden was vice president of the US from 2009 till 2017, and became president in 2021.
Both Truman and Johnson assumed the presidency after the death of then sitting presidents Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy respectively, before going on to win the next presidential election.
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Who was Grover Cleveland?
Cleveland, the only president (so far) in history to have won two non-consecutive terms, was the first Democratic president of the US after the American Civil War, which ended in 1865. Cleveland was one of only two Democrats to win the presidency between 1869 and 1933—a period that saw the Republicans dominate the White House. The other Democrat was Woodrow Wilson, who was president from 1913 to 1921.
Born in 1837 in New Jersey, Cleveland was raised in New York. He worked as a lawyer before becoming the mayor of Buffalo in 1881 and later the governor of New York in 1883. In 1884, he was nominated as the Democratic candidate for the presidency.
He defeated Republican opponent James G. Blaine from Maine, with support from reformers within the Republican party, also known as the “Mugwumps”, who viewed their candidate as ambitious and immoral.
In 1888, he lost his reelection bid to Benjamin Harrison despite winning the popular vote. In 1892, Cleveland was nominated as the Democratic nominee at the party convention in Chicago and he took on Harrison in a rematch for the 1888 presidential election.
Cleveland won the election and reclaimed the White House till 1897. He won the popular vote in all three of his presidential bids, despite losing the electoral college in 1888. However, in 1896, the Democratic Party nominated William Jennings Bryan over Cleveland.
(Edited by Tikli Basu)
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