1912 WJB wins Democratic nomination

I feel like a Democrat definately has an advantage in the fall.

If he were to win, who would his cabinet be? How would he handle the great war?

And would he have been able to do something about the gold standard?
 
Just have him not run in 1908. Three losses was too much for the party. And even after that he was the reason Wilson won the nomination and, ultimately, the presidency.

I think his cabinet would be a compromise of standpatter Democratic leaders as well as populist leaders. But no one to the level of Samuel Grompers.


America would not go to war. Bryan was unequivocally opposed to America's entry to the war (he resigned in 1915 from the office of Secretary of State in protest to the growing consideration of American entry into the war).

Even by 1900 he focused less on the gold standard than in 1896 and it was not a main part of his 1908 platform. He would focus on prohibition, women's suffrage and labor laws instead. He would go down in history as a Pacifist Progressive president, a good reflection in comparison with the more militant in foreign policy but also enthusiastically progressive President Theodore Roosevelt.
 
I feel like a Democrat definately has an advantage in the fall.

If he were to win, who would his cabinet be? How would he handle the great war?

And would he have been able to do something about the gold standard?

(1) It's unlikely he will be nominated (and he was probably sincere when he said he didn't want the nomination, though his brother Charles seems to have wanted him to try for it) but with a sufficiently prolonged Clark-Wilson deadlock, I don't think you can rule it out.

(2) He would keep the US out of the War--period. Even if it meant acquiescing in German unlimited submarine warfare.

(3) By 1908, he had (finally!) given up on free silver.

(4) The six-year single-term amendment would pass--Bryan favored it and got it inserted into the Democratic platform, Wilson opposed it and killed it through his letter to A. Mitchell Palmer. Indeed, as The Nation remarked, "From the first he [Wilson] treated the one-term plank as a bit of Bryanesque buncombe." https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...o-reelection-presidency.448505/#post-17372149
 
Would WJB work to make the US the neutral arbiter of peace in Europe?

How would the US react to the Russian civil war?
 
Maybe Bryan doesn't run in 1900, 1904, or 1908. As a result, people welcome him back in 1912 like they welcomed Nixon back in 1968, and Bryan defeats the divided GOP like Nixon defeated the divided Democrats.
 
Maybe Bryan doesn't run in 1900, 1904, or 1908. As a result, people welcome him back in 1912 like they welcomed Nixon back in 1968, and Bryan defeats the divided GOP like Nixon defeated the divided Democrats.

Honestly just don't run in 1908 (Bryan didn't run in 1904) and your good (especially if the candidate is more conservative, but most likely a moderate for Conservative Parker got absolutely destroyed in 1904).
 
Honestly just don't run in 1908 (Bryan didn't run in 1904) and your good (especially if the candidate is more conservative, but most likely a moderate for Conservative Parker got absolutely destroyed in 1904).
True, but I'm curious as to why he ran in 1900 considering that the same opponent had defeated him in the last election.
 
He saw the rise of trusts, and the Spanish American war as two imps from hell. He wanted to encourage the Dominican Republic as a african American homeland.
 

SsgtC

Banned
Politically a nobody but not in terms of academic achievement (President of Princeton). But I know what you mean.
Yeah, sorry. I should have clarified that. He wasn't even the frontrunner for his Party's nomination in 1912. Champ Clark was. It wasn't until WJB played kingmaker and threw his support behind Wilson that he won.
 
Wilson was a nobody in 1908. Hell, he was barely anybody in 1912. He didn't enter politics until 1910 when he ran for Governor of New Jersey.

Wilson was not a nobody in 1908, though he had not held electoral office. He had received lots of publicity as president of Princeton (not the sort of post a Democrat usually held) especially for the Quadrangle Plan which was portrayed as a "democratic" assault on the "aristocratic," "snobbish" eating clubs. Conservative businessmen like George Harvey, the very wealthy owner of the *North American Review* and *Harper's Weekly* boosted him, and (at Harvey's suggestion) Joseph Pulitzer included him on his *New York World* list of sixteen Democrats who would be preferable to Bryan (the list was called "sixteen to one" in a dig at Bryan's past advocacy of free silver). As I noted at https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...nate-wilson-in-1908-and-bryan-in-1912.299615/ "The combination of political conservative and educational reformer, Harvey thought, would be attractive to the public."

As I also note in that post,


***


with respect to Wilson not holding any public office, one has to remember that not very many Democrats outside the South *did* hold major public offices at that time. As a Southerner who lived in New Jersey, Harvey argued, Wilson had a chance of carrying New Jersey and New York, states that he thought essential to a Democratic victory. (Had not Bryan proven the futility of looking for a southern-western alliance instead? Ironically, Wilson himself was to vindicate a modified "Bryanite" strategy in 1916 as Truman was to do in 1948--in both elections, the Democrats, with support from western farmers and with enough backing from trade unionists to win one or two key midwestern states Bryan had lost, prevailed despite losing New York and New Jersey. But Harvey was, psychologically, still living in the world of Samuel Tilden and Grover Cleveland--the only two Democrats to win the popular vote between 1856 and 1912--who relied on a South-Northeast alliance.)

There was of course one thing wrong with this reasoning. The Democrats were not in the least in the mood to nominate a conservative in 1908. They had tried that with Parker in 1904 and had been defeated even worse than when they had twice nominated Bryan.

So what is necessary to give Wilson any real prospect of winning the nomination in 1908? IMO it is this: instead of nominating Parker, the Democrats have to try "radicalism" yet a third time in 1904 (presumably this time with Hearst instead of Bryan) and go down to crushing defeat. Instead of blaming it on Hearst's dubious moral reputation or on TR's personal popularity or on the prosperity the country was enjoying, they will conclude that radicalism is the source of all the party's ills, and that only with a conservative do they have any chance in 1908...

Anyway, I think we can fairly assume that Wilson will lose to Taft in 1908--Taft being the choice of the popular TR, and the nation enjoying peace and prosperity. Moreover, the Democrats will be badly divided; Taft might not be particularly attracitve to progressive Democrats, but some might stay home, Hearst might try a third party candidacy, and even if he doesn't, Debs is available as a protest vote for the most radical Democrats.

So what happens in 1912? I think this is Bryan's best chance to win not only the nomination but the presidency (assuming that we still get the Taft-TR split). He can point out that after all in 1896 and 1900 he did better than either of his successor candidates (Hearst and Wilson) and that the Wilson campaign in particular showed the folly of the Democrats trying to attract conservatives.
 
Wilson in 1908 makes no sense, but Champ Clark in 1908 works.

Wilson in 1908 is very unlikely because after the Parker experience of 1904, the Democrats were in no mood to nominate a conservative, which Wilson was at the time. But as I noted at https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...nate-wilson-in-1908-and-bryan-in-1912.299615/ things might be different if the Democrats had nominated another "radical" like Hearst in 1904--they might then be in the mood to try a conservative in 1908. And certainly Wilson was better known nationally by 1908 than Alton B. Parker was before 1904...
 
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