1936 Election without Roosevelt

Let's assume, for whatever reason, Franklin Roosevelt is dead before the 1936 election. Either he is assassinated or suffers a bad stroke in 1935 and Garner takes office. This leaves the Democratic Party without any strong front runners and a man in office who opposes most of the New Deal.

Who does the Democratic Party nominate? Do the Republicans stick with Landon? What are the likely results?
 
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But would Garner accept that? He doesn't seem like the sort of individual who would voluntarily step down after becoming President and if he does run, it would split the Democratic base.


I may be misremembering, but doesn't Long also have some enemies in the leadership of the Democratic Party?
 
But would Garner accept that? He doesn't seem like the sort of individual who would voluntarily step down after becoming President and if he does run, it would split the Democratic base.


I may be misremembering, but doesn't Long also have some enemies in the leadership of the Democratic Party?

He might lose the Democratic ticket, but I wouldn't write off his chances of a successful third party run considering the blandness of Garner and Landon.
 
He might lose the Democratic ticket, but I wouldn't write off his chances of a successful third party run considering the blandness of Garner and Landon.

I wouldn't either, but he has a lot going against him.

If Long does not get the Democratic nomination though, who will?
 
I really don't see how Garner could lose the nomination. He'll have the South behind him, which is well over a third of the delegates in the 1930s. No way the New Dealers and the machine bosses can agree on anyone strong enough to overtake him.

If LaGuardia could be persuaded to officially cross the aisle, he may be able to unite the anti-Garner votes. But even then, he'd provoke a protest by Democratic loyalists.
 
On second thought, maybe the New Dealers' best strategy is to find an acceptable Southerner -probably Robinson, Hull, or Barkley. (Black is probably too anti-Catholic for the bosses to put him at the top of the ticket).

I keep coming back to LaGuardia and Wagner as the perfect FDR heirs, but one is a Republican and the other's foreign-born.
 
Garner and some Northern or Midwestern governor. Maybe Lehman to retain the FDR connection. Garner wins easily both because the GOP is still discredited and far too weak, plus Long is probably one of, if not the most electorally overrated interwar US politician.
 
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