June 1992

PoD: In June 1992, Bill Clinton, his family, and several of his staff are killed in a plane crash outside Little Rock Arkansas.

Thoughts on the 1992 election and who the Democratic candidate will be, anyone?
 
Why kill him? He could just do worse in the primaries because of stronger infidelity claims.

Jerry Brown, Bob Kerrey, but also Paul Tsongas are the three strongest contenders.

If you really want to go with that late of a POD, Cuomo may hop in as a party unifier.
 
Most likely Jerry Brown I mean being a governeor of California would give Brown a chance I think.

No way in hell. The convention delegates were already selected and they were Clinton delegates and not particular fans of Brown. Moroever, you can't kill the whole Clinton staff and those who remained working on the campaign would have exerted maximum effort to see that Brown (who was despised within the Clinton camp) would not be the nominee.

Nor would it have been any of the other defeated candidates, none of whom particularly distinguished themselves as strong candidates.

You would likely wind up with someone who had run before and been vetted by the press -- no Eagleton-like mess could be tolerated. There were a few staffers who had ties to Dick Gephardt, who meets the criteria above (though tainted a bit by the then-recent House bank scandal, IIRC), so that's a possibility. There's also the potential for a complete free for all on the convention floor and I'd expect some sort of draft Cuomo movement to arise from certain quarters. More likely than not, you'd have an actual honest to God brokered convention.

In all honesty, though, I don't know how it would have turned out. And I spent June of 1992 working in New York for Clinton on setting up the convention...
 
I think it means a wide open convention. All bets are off. The candidates will be wooing the Clinton delegates like crazy. The guys who had been running will jump back in. Gore and Cumo might jump in. More likely Gore. Cuomo never did leave his comfort zone. I agree Jerry Brown would be the least likely to get involved. Ted Kennedy had a great deal of say so and it would be interesting to see who he backed. There would be some who would be trying to get Ross Perot to come over to the democrats side. He was popular at that point in the campaign. I see a Gore-Kerrey ticket coming out of the New York Convention. At least 3 ballots.
 
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