AHC: Al Smith Elected in 1928

I guess if the stock market crash happens in 1925, it's possible.

The problem is that if the Great Depression has already started by 1928, the Democrats are very unlikely to nominate Smith. The main reason he was nominated so easily in OTL is that his opponents in the party thought that the Democrats were unlikely to win that year anyway, so why not make Smith take the blame...?
 
The problem is that if the Great Depression has already started by 1928, the Democrats are very unlikely to nominate Smith. The main reason he was nominated so easily in OTL is that his opponents in the party thought that the Democrats were unlikely to win that year anyway, so why not make Smith take the blame...?

Who would it be then? Another colorless compromise like in '24?
 
The problem is that if the Great Depression has already started by 1928, the Democrats are very unlikely to nominate Smith. The main reason he was nominated so easily in OTL is that his opponents in the party thought that the Democrats were unlikely to win that year anyway, so why not make Smith take the blame...?

Didn't he nearly get nominated in 1932 until Roosevelt came along?
 
Didn't he nearly get nominated in 1932 until Roosevelt came along?

He never got more than 201.75 votes at the convention. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1932_Democratic_National_Convention If FDR hadn't stopped him, someone else would have.

In fact, Smith's' remaining a candidate despite the odds against him may have been what saved FDR! As Douglas A. Craig has put it: "By not withdrawing, he [Smith] unwittingly helped Roosevelt maintain his strength between the vital third and fourth ballots. Had he withdrawn then, William Allen White wrote Ralph Hayes soon after the convention, FDR's support would have evaporated quickly: 'So long as Smith was in, Roosevelt was fairly safe. You cannot imagine the fear and dread of the South and West which even the possibility of Smith's nomination produced.'" *After Wilson: The Struggle for the Democratic Party 1920-1934*, pp. 245-6.
 
Or Garner with Governor Ritchie as a compromise veep, because Garner's main backer, Hearst, hated the more plausible one, Mayor Baker of Cincinnati.

Yes, I did get this off of Wikipedia.
 
Maybe if they discovered that Herbert Hoover bought German supplies for his company during WWI? Mightn't technically be treason, as he was in Britain, but would ruin his career.
Maybe Hoover annoys Coolidge one time too many and 'Silent Cal' speaks out publicly against his Commerce Secretary? I'm unfamiliar with the machinations of the Republican convention in 1927 so I don't know how effective such intervention would be, though Coolidge did scupper Dawes's chance for the vice-presidential slot. Thigh might be enough to have Lowden (was there really anyone else? selected as the Republican candidate.

If Hoover is selected then again perhaps comments by Coolidge damage his chances? Or Hoover is more associated with the anti-Catholic rhetoric and this backfires? Is there any other interesting dirt in Hoover's life to be unearthed?

Even so it'd take a huge swing, even 8% would barely manage it.
 
Not impossible, but very hard.

Smith's biggest issue with the electorate was his Catholicism. This coincided with (and partly fueled) the second wave of Klan activity in the 1920s, which was largely an anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic agenda (rather than anti-black).

When Smith appeared in the mid-west his campaign train was greeted with burning crosses at some stations and sidings.

Changing the American attitude to Catholicism in this period is tough, probably requiring a pre-1900 POD of decoupling Catholicism from its immigrant status.

You could, if you wanted, have Smith convert sometime in the 1910s or have a major and public fall-out with the Church/Pope that would prove his independence, but doing this sort of goes against the nature of Smith himself and would make it harder for him to get the Tammany Hall support that placed him on the Democratic front bench in 1928 in the first place.
 
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