YMMV / State of the Union

• Aluminum Christmas Trees: A latter-day viewer may wonder why Conover is so monomaniacal about gaining the support of party power-brokers and is contemptuous of Grant's support with voters. The answer is that in those days, as had been the case throughout history and would still be true for a couple more decades, the party nominating process was controlled by power brokers. Party primaries did exist but in real life they were mostly beauty contests, and candidates were nominated by people controlling blocks of delegates at conventions, as suggested in this movie.

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