What-If?: George Wallace Wins the Democratic Nomination, 1976?

...with no POD before 1976, so under "normal" circumstances (as in, no "Fear, Loathing, and Gumbo"-style scenarios).

So I was reading through primary results from the 1976 presidential election, and I noticed that the infamous Alabama Governor George Wallace actually did pretty well in the early contests. In the Massachusetts primary in particular, he came in third behind Scoop Jackson and Mo Udall, respectively, but it was a very thin margin between the top three placers.

Seeing as there was a lot of overlap between the kind of voters Jackson and Wallace were going for (apparently, Jackson chose to run on a strong "law-and-order" platform), what if Scoop makes some sort of huge gaffe in the days leading up to the primary. He loses some support to Wallace, allowing the latter to narrowly edge out Udall for first place. Wallace then uses that momentum to best Iowa caucus winner Jimmy Carter (the POD is after the caucus) in the states of Florida, North Carolina, and even possibly Illinois, which all held their contests within the first few weeks after Massachusetts.

After that, just how likely is it that Wallace wins the nomination? He was popular among many Southerners and blue collar workers, but will the Democratic leadership, fearful of nominating the arch-segregationist, coalesce behind an anti-Wallace candidate, and who would that be? Assuming he wins the nomination, who becomes his running mate?

How does he do in the general election? Specifically, how would he do against Ford, and how would he do against Reagan if he somehow won the GOP nomination? I'd imagine it's possible Republicans get a fairly large portion of the African-American vote. Would Wallace try to make amends to prevent that? And seeing the nature of the Democratic nominee, would left-wing third party candidates (particularly Eugene McCarthy) get a higher number of votes than usual?

Discuss.

(DISCLAIMER: I dislike George Wallace and would vote against him if given the opportunity. This is strictly a "what-if?" question.)

Any thoughts?

Here's my take:

Carter swept the South in '76, which is pretty much Wallace's base. Other than maybe Oklahoma (8 EV) -- which IOTL, Carter lost 50-48.75 (13,000 votes out of just over a million cast) -- it's hard to see any upside for Wallace.

Of course, Carter won (297-241 EV), so just duplicating his results gets you President Wallace. So the question is: is Wallace likely to lose enough other states to either Ford or Reagan to bring him under 270? To that end:

1. Reagan seems pretty obvious to me; he appeals to Wallace's core set of voters, but a) Reagan's better at it, and b) Reagan has a base of his own. So I think a Reagan-Wallace race winds up being a Reagan landslide.

2. Ford, on the other hand, isn't going to dislodge Wallace's Solid South, but it strikes me as pretty intuitively obvious that Wallace is going to underperform Carter in the northeast.

Carter won Ohio (25 EV) by 0.27% -- 11,000 votes out of 4 million. He won Wisconsin (11 EV) by 1.7%, and New York (41 EV) by 4.5%. I don't think there's much of an argument that Wallace is going to lose Wisconsin and New York. There are some on this board who have argued that Wallace has a natural strength with working whites in Ohio; I think that would be at least offset by Wallace underperforming in Cleveland and Cincinnati, so I think Ohio would be a net loss too.

So my view is that the best case scenario for Wallace/Ford '76 is that Wallace loses New York and Wisconsin (net -52), but wins Oklahoma (+8) and somehow maintains Ohio. That would put the race at Ford 285, Wallace 253.

I can also see Wallace having serious problems in socially liberal states that Carter won handily, such as Maryland (+6), Rhode Island (+11), Minnesota (+13) and Massachusetts (+16), which would make the map even worse.

Bottom line: I don't see any way to get Wallace to 270 EV in 1976 against either Ford or Reagan.

I iimagine that if wallace started pulling ahead, thered be an 'anybody but wallace' movement that guaranteed that one of the other guys got the nomination.

Wallace would be smashed in the Northeast and upper Midwest, branded a 'Dixiecrat' rather than a Democrat and the picture of him standing in the schoolhouse door would be rebranded on America's memory no matter how much he repudiates or denies or attempts penance.

If this happens, I strongly suspect blacks will run back en masse to the Republican Party.

So, everyone seems to think that the Republican, be it Ford, Reagan, or someone else entirely, would have one in a blow-out in this scenario?

MerryPrankster said:

If this happens, I strongly suspect blacks will run back en masse to the Republican Party.

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Does this butterfly all the dogwhistle crap the Republicans pulled out in the eighties around the drug war and welfare?

The only way this could happen is that he wasn't shot in 1972. He would have a large number of delegaates at the convention. It may keep Mc Govern out. Jackson could get the nomination. If Wallace is not on the ticket, he would still campaign for Jackson. Jackson would still lose, but not in a landslide, carrying several southern states. Watergate and Agnew still happen. When 1976 comes around, a partially reformed wallace would be a viable candidate.

vultan said:

So, everyone seems to think that the Republican, be it Ford, Reagan, or someone else entirely, would have one in a blow-out in this scenario?

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Assuming there's still Watergate, I think Wallace could make it close vs. Ford, but ultimately I can't see him winning in light of the map. Can you?

Could someone have run a third party attempt to deny Wallace many votes? Like Carter/Jackson heading his own campaign to discredit Wallace Democrats (Dixecrats).

There would almost certainly be a Democrat who would break ranks to run against Wallace as a third party option. In fact, that individual might come in second to the Republican in the popular vote. I'm just not sure who it would be. Maybe some convinced Teddy to launch an independent bid? If he can convince John Lindsay to get on the ticket with him (like convincing John Lindsay to do something that would get him attention would be difficult), it might be a pretty successful ticket. Successful enough to win? I don't know. Successful enough to deny Wallace the White House? Almost certainly.

At any rate, I think it's pretty clear that Wallace, even the reformed Wallace of the later years, would get whupped by Ford or Reagan in a nationwide contest even if there was no third party challenge. Likely in part because who is going to agree to run with him? I mean you'll be hard pressed to find any aspiring Democrat who would want to run with Mr. Segregation Today, Tomorrow, and Forever in 1976, especially one of the stripe he would need to appeal to the party's base. He might be able to convince the nearly-octogenarian Happy Chandler to run with him eight years after he was snubbed, but I can't honestly for the life of me think of another individual who would do it willingly unless there was some promise of a big payoff in the future with some other position in the party. And at that point you have a Democratic veep nominee who isn't actually invested in the ticket winning.

Either way, Wallace goes down in flames and Republicans spend the next two decades waving the bloody shirt of segregation in Democrats' faces while minorities are further disenfranchised.

edvardas said:

The only way this could happen is that he wasn't shot in 1972. He would have a large number of delegaates at the convention. It may keep Mc Govern out. Jackson could get the nomination. If Wallace is not on the ticket, he would still campaign for Jackson. Jackson would still lose, but not in a landslide, carrying several southern states. Watergate and Agnew still happen. When 1976 comes around, a partially reformed wallace would be a viable candidate.

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But wasn't Wallace getting shot what prompted his reformation?

I remember him saying something to the effect that his being treated by black nurses was his come to Jesus moment.

MerryPrankster said:

But wasn't Wallace getting shot what prompted his reformation?

I remember him saying something to the effect that his being treated by black nurses was his come to Jesus moment.

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That may be true. I don't hold Wallace in a particularly high regard for a lot of reasons. One is that he was the kind of guy who would say only what was politically expedient at the time he was talking. That's why he went from moderate LBJ style southern-democrat in his first race for governor to what he became in the 1960's.

It's possible that Wallace changed his politics after being treated by black nurses. I think it's entirely more likely that his "come to Jesus moment" was the instant he realized he'd never be able to win another election with race-baiting.

My point is that he would have changed his politics whether or not he was shot, in my opinion.

If this happens a big name liberal will run against him. You've just created a multiparty America.

Zacoftheaxes said:

If this happens a big name liberal will run against him. You've just created a multiparty America.

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For one election, certainly. Unless that independent wins, though, I'd imagine things revert to the status quo ante of pre-1976.

This is, I think, the "best case scenario" for the independent Democrat. When it becomes apparent that Wallace is going to win the Democratic nomination, Ted Kennedy leads a walk out and announces that he will run for president as an independent. A few days later he names John Lindsay as his running mate. The remnants of the Democratic National Convention are pandemonium. On the final day of the convention, Congressman Larry McDonald makes a speech before the convention to rapturous applause and is nominated as a Vice-Presidential candidate.

The Republican convention, however, is also chaotic. After much maneuvering, Governor Reagan manages to win the nomination and selects, and surprisingly receives, Bill Brock as his running mate to counter Wallace's appeal in the south.

The race is close until the end, and Kennedy wins by the smallest of margins in the popular vote. Any single fraction of a percent difference could have tipped the scales sending the vote to the House of Representatives.

The final result:
Kennedy/Lindsay - 273
Reagan/Brock - 183
Wallace/McDonald - 82

I just had another thought on this subject. Sometimes from our vantage point it's easy to forget that Wallace was really only "conservative" in his support for segregation. Otherwise, he was a fairly liberal New Deal/Great Society type of Democrat who might have been to the right of Kennedy but wasn't about to upset the status quo. If he's able to position himself in the race that way, he might be able to run up the middle against the liberal Kennedy and the arch-Conservative Reagan (or even Ford). The result isn't going to be a win, but he'll almost certainly be able to win enough Electoral Votes to put the election in the House of Representatives. The House, being dominated my Democrats, is going to find itself in a very volatile situation in choosing between Ted and Wallace. Ultimately a deal will be made and Ted will probably win, although he'll be pretty unpopular from the outset of his presidency.

Getting back to the beginning of the thread; the reason Wallace did fairly well in the Mass primary was for one reason only : forced busing. In 1974, the Boston school system was ordered to desegregate. And things got real ugly, especially in South Boston. Those folks seriously did not want any of their kids to be bused into Roxbury. [Not that I blame them] There was civil unrest. In March of '76, this was fresh on everyone's mind, and Wallace took advantage of it. He won Boston. Udall took the more liberal suburbs, but Jackson, the preferred canddate of big labour, was victorious in working class cities such as Springfield, Worcester and Malden. Carter, who had won both Iowa and New Hampshire, came fourth. If I'm not mistaken, Florida was the next contest. And there, Carter stopped Wallace dead in his tracks. Wallace won Fl. in 1972. And that was basically the end of his run.

Well, if we're talking the viability of Wallace winning the nomination then that changes the whole discussion. There's just no way he can do it. Even with Carter out of the picture, the party would coalesce behind Udall and, unless Wallace's people can seize control of the convention apparatus and prevent it, he will be the nominee. The thing is, once Wallace starts winning primaries the party is going to panic for fear of losing an easily winnable election and will force other candidates from the race to pave the way for an electable candidate.

But if through some wild one-in-a-million type of shenanigans Wallace DOES take the nomination, there's no way he's going to be able to make peace with the left wing of the party no matter how hard he tries. One of Wallace's greatest regrets was that he could never rehabilitate his image after 1968. Part of the reason for that is that the establishment wouldn't forgive him enough to let him try. Thus, I believe that you'd have a third party run from the left or the Democrats deciding to just cut their losses and double down on growing their numbers in congress while waiting for 1980.

Bottom line: he's poison and he couldn't win unless he was somehow running against a Nixon/Herbert Hoover ticket, and even then it would be close.