Small mistakes that could change an election

>>> presidential elections are high stakes affairs where the smallest miss take can prove coastly. losing candidates play monday-morning quarterback wishing they had done something different. rachel is the managing editor of politogeek.com and use the author of the book "the political bible." we've been excited to talk to you, rich.

>> absolutely. thank you.

>> absolutely. based on your information about a few oops moments that turned into something bigger. we're going to start in 1884 . let's go way back to --

>> before my time.

>> maybe a year before me. nemps, it eventually won grover cleveland the there. what happened?

>> this was between republican james d. blaine and democratic glover cleveland. new york was a critical battleground state , the showdown state in the election. about a week prior to the election, james t. blaine appeared at a republican rally and a pastor said the republican party was the party of rum, romance and rebellion. this galvanized the democratic party to come out against james t. blaine because blaine did not disassociate himself from those remarks. of course, they associated it with alcoholism. blaine lost that election and lost that state by 1,047 votes.

>> gosh.

>> had he decided to disassociate himself from those remarks history may have been a lot different.

>> that's incredible. you think about it now when presidential candidates drink with people in bars so they can prove they're the every man. all do beer and a shot from time to time.

>> even hillary clinton enjoys shots.

>> there's nothing wrong with that. 1968 richard nixon facing hugh hubert humphrey . mitt romney didn't want to appear on "snl." he was worried about it not seeming presidential. let's show nixon 's moment.

>> sock it to me?

>> we know happened as a result.

>> that was five seconds that could have changed the course of history. richard nixon had a similar to be what mitt romney has as being seen as plastic and not much of a personality. nixon said sock it to me in that voice, and it made him seen human. hubert humphrey , listen to his handlers, and they said not to appear on the program. he later says he believes he could have won that election had he appeared on the show. by the way, for your information, on the show who wants to be a millionaire, the first question was which presidential candidate appeared on "laugh in" and it was nixon .

>> howard dean , who could forget 2004 . it would make a lovely ring tone right now to have him say that famous yeah, but at the time not so good. let's play it.

>> we're going to california and texas and new york and we're going to south dakota and oregon and washington and michigan. and then we're going to washington, d.c. to take back the white house . yeah!

>> as i mentioned today a fungy ring tone , but not so great of a moment for howard dean at the time.

>> there's some history there. this was the iowa caucus , and what happened was there was almost a culture war in the democratic party . dick gephardt and howard dean were really going after each other. it was destruction. what happens is a lot of iowa voters in a very polite state became disenfranchised and john kerry and john edwards rose to the top. kerry won iowa followed by edwards and dean and gephardt. dean dropped out of the race after that. howard dean was no longer the front-runner, and he made that gaffe, shall we say.

>> if only they hadn't done it. thank you. pretty cool. we have to have you back on. thank you.