AHC- Change USA party primary, change president

The challenge is to change the result of the losing party's primary in a US presidential election, and have that party win. Both the primary change and general election must be relatively plausible. You cant stop third party runs like 1912, but in that case you could have Teddy win the primary. The unwritten rule against challenging incumbents may be plausibly broken. All elections from 1900 to 2012 are acceptable. 1964 may be a good place to start.
 
I'll bite -- I think one good option would be the Republican primaries in 1976. OTL Gerald Ford managed to make a close race out of what was supposed to be a Democratic year despite being a fairly week campaigner -- if Reagan had won, while he'd have the disadvantage of being more extreme than Ford, he might run a stronger campaign and cut into Carter's support base in the South.

1948 might also work, though I'm not sure who in particular would be a better candidate than Dewey (who looks fine "on paper"), unless Ike can be persuaded to run four years early.
 
1988: Super Tuesday works the way it was intended(maybe Jesse Jackson dies in a car crash, or Gore also appeals to Northerners better as well and does respectably in Iowa and New Hampshire)with Gore sweeping the Soith and then winning the nomination over Dukakis. Al Gore picks John Glenn as his running mate and runs on a 'New Democrat' platform, opposing gun control, vowing 'no new taxes' and supporting school prayer. Bush in turn attacks Gore as a 'lightweight' and benefits when Gore sighs in the debate and comes off as arrogant and obnoxious. By Election Day the polls are neck and neck. Gore beats Bush 50-48 but is only confirmed to be the winner after a divisive month-long recount in Ohio.
1992:H W Bush surprises them all by declining to run for a second term, as Dubya said in his book 41 that this was considered for a short time after Neil Bush's scandal. Dole easily wins the primary and picks Colin Powell as his running mate. Dole/Powell initially struggles amid the recession, but is able to win a comfortable victory after demolishing Democrat nominee Mario Cuomo as a 'bleeding-heart liberal who holds Middle America in contempt', to quote Dole's convention speech.
1996: In October 1995, after heightening media speculation, General Colin Powell announces he is running for President. Powell quickly upsets the front runner Dole, but before the Iowa caucuses comes under attack by Dole and Buchanan for being pro-choice. The Iowa caucuses narrowly go for Dole, but Powell wins a landslide in New Hampshire. Buchanan soon drops out and Powell then defeats Dole. Powell picks Dole as his running mate and wins a comfortable victory against Bill Clinton. Clinton, while popular, struggled against the successful combination of the universally-popular Powell, who got a quarter of the black vote based on himself being black, and the attack-dog Dole.
2000: Bill Bradley wins the New Hampshire primary and gains a burst of momentum against Al Gore. The media finally pays attention to the Democrat race, and Gore's campaign panics with high-profile resignations, while Gore performs poorly on the campaign trail. The result is that Gore, the inevitable candidate, doesn't even get the nomination of his party. They said Bradley's liberal platform would not find acceptance, but they didn't count on Donald Trump's surprisingly successful bid for Reform getting 6% of the vote, with 4.5% of those coming from Bush. Bradley won a narrow victory in Ohio and the election.
Or...
McCain gives a stirring speech two days before the South Carolina primary, lambasting Bush's 'gutter politics'. The result is an upset victory, where he wins Sc and then the nomination. From there his 4-point election is relatively easy. Campaign finance reform and true leadership comes to Washington, which proves useful when 9/11 hits. Hey, Bush did lose the popular vote and only won a shady recount!
2004:John Edwards wins the Iowa caucuses. Kerry wins in New Hampshire. On Super Tuesday, the Democrats declare that Iowa doesn't just pick corn and picks Edwards as their nominee. Edwards comes under attack by Bush as a lightweight, unable to handle the terrorist threat and an ambulance lawyer. Edwards fires back attacking Bush's record, promising new leadership. A compelling debate performance tips the balance in favour of Edwards, though not after another recount, this time in Ohio. That new leadership does not turn out well, to say the least.
 
1984: Gary Hart doesn't tell some stupid, corny joke about toxic waste in New Jersey and wins the primary. This prevents Mondale from winning a first ballot nomination. Which makes for some interesting horse trading and some type of brokered convention.

The challenge of course comes in November against Ronnie Reagan. After a double-dip recession in '80 and '82 (with the economy at -2.6 growth rate in the third quarter of '82), we were experienced economic growth in '83 and '84. That's tough to fight against, even with jobs lagging as they were.

In OTL, Mondale bravely and boldly said during his acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention: "Let's tell the truth. It must be done, it must be done. Mr. Reagan will raise taxes, and so will I. He won't tell you. I just did." A brave poker move and it threw the Republicans off balance for a little while. But then the Republican campaign largely took the tact, Reagan will raise taxes as a last resort, and Mondale as a first resort. And that was last.

Hart talked about the economy changing and the decline in manufacturing jobs, and people were listening. Maybe if he had advocated for an urban Marshall Plan combined with RR fumbling and making some mistakes?
 
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1940: No WWII. Dewey wins the GOP nomination, he was the frontrunner until the fall of France. The Democrats nominate Paul V McNutt, and the election proves close. Dewey promises to improve the New Deal while McNutt runs a lackluster campaign, so Dewey gets a narrow victory despite his inexperience.
1944: MacArthur makes a Shermanesque statement vowing not to run in 1944, so he does not sweep the Wisconsin primary. Instead, Wendell Willkie gets 28% of the vote and then wins primaries in Maryland, New Jersey and Oregon. Willkie becomes the Republican nominee and runs on a platform of 'winning the peace', challenging FDR's ability to move America beyond the war. FDR still seems to be the likely winner, until he bungles two speeches, including the infamous Fala speech, a rambling speech where FDR says he is offended by attacks on his dog. Willkie pulls out a narrow victory.
1948: Harold Stassen runs a better campaign, besting Dewey in Oregon because Dewey does not use the line "you can't shoot an idea with a gun." Stassen is the Republican nominee, and after a good campaign scores a surprisinbgly narrow victory over President Truman. Most observers belive fears of communism gave Stassen the victory, especially after he portrayed Truman as "Stalin's choice for President," who "bends the knee to the Reds."
 
These are interesting scenarios, but I should point out that the party that won OTL has the same nominee. And the other party wins. I did not consider 3rd parties preforming stronger than normal, which is a good idea. Great scenarios, even the ones that didn't follow the initial guidelines.
 
more on 1984: On June 5, the Democrats held primaries in California, New Jersey, and three smaller states. Hart won California. Mondale won New Jersey, and had previously said he would have a delegate majority by noon the next day. Fritz Mondale and his staff worked the phones calling superdelegates asking for firm commitments. And sure enough, by noon he stated he had won the nomination, including stating these are hard numbers. Some of that was wishful thinking, but it was felt it would be even worse not to come through by noon.

Please understand, June 6, 1984, was the 40th anniversary of D-Day. And so while Mondale was making this statement which was kind of true about politics, Reagan was touring the beaches of Normandy with veterans of an Army Rangers unit. And who seemed much more the statesman? It was President Ronald Reagan.

https://books.google.com/books?id=g...AH#v=onepage&q=Hart Jersey June toxic&f=false

And I'd personally add, maybe Mondale tried too hard, and Reagan didn't.
 
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Is there any reason that 1964 has not been suggested? LBJ was unpopular, and it took Barry Goldwater to hand him the presidency, because most of the country thought he was insane, due in part to him saying that he would start a nuclear war.
 
It being the biggest popular vote landslide in American history?
Heard that it was Barry Goldwater throwing it of, and that a more moderate republican could have win because a lot of people didn't like LBJ. Were other factors also responsible fort LBJ winning besides dislike of Barry Goldwater?
 
LBJ had approval ratings in the 70s as of November 1964 - which makes it a little doubtful that he was widely disliked outside of the Deep South. If a liberal Republican like Rockefeller or Lodge is nominated - they are just going to do worse in the south and with the base (Rockefeller was booed at the convention for a reason) - while at best picking up a handful of states in the north. (So yes, Goldwater was a bad candidate, but the Republicans didn't have any other great options and LBJ almost certainly would have won anyway.)
 
Heard that it was Barry Goldwater throwing it of, and that a more moderate republican could have win because a lot of people didn't like LBJ. Were other factors also responsible fort LBJ winning besides dislike of Barry Goldwater?

LBJ was absolutely beloved because his civil rights pushes proved to be supremely popular and because of goodwill after the Kennedy assassination. This would only evaporate in 1966 after the Vietnam War.
 
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LBJ was absolutely beloved because his civil rights pushes proved to be supremely popular and because of goodwill after the Kennedy assassination. This would only evaporate in 1966 after the Vietnam War.
I see. I guess I mixed up my elections. been quite a while since I read about the LBJ era. So Barry Goldwater wasn't responsible for LBJ's second term?
 
I see. I guess I mixed up my elections. been quite a while since I read about the LBJ era. So Barry Goldwater wasn't responsible for LBJ's second term?

He wasn't responsible at all. Johnson would have dispatched anyone he faced with ease. What Goldwater did do is give Johnson an uber-landslide in both chambers of Congress, and in that way may have helped Johnson to pass the Voting Rights Act.
 
He wasn't responsible at all. Johnson would have dispatched anyone he faced with ease. What Goldwater did do is give Johnson an uber-landslide in both chambers of Congress, and in that way may have helped Johnson to pass the Voting Rights Act.
Good to know, thanks for the clear up.
 
1988: No Joe Biden plagiarism scandal. Dukakis really tanked that election for the Democrats, but any reasonably talented campaigner could have pulled it off, I think. And people really underestimate Diamond Joe's charisma.
 
2008: Bill Richardson wins the Democratic nomination somehow. You'd need to make both Obama and Clinton sit out of the race. Richardson's scandals come out, and it's just enough to give McCain an exceptionally narrow victory.
 
Wasn't 1788 and 1792 bigger?
I don't know that an election where 6/13 states actually bothered to use the popular vote(with a limited franchise at that) is really a good place to designate a popular vote landslide (and we would have to add 1804,1808,1816 and 1820 to that list then). That said, yes, I suspect Washington was also a pretty likely winner ;).
 
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