Way back in 1996, I wrote the following:
Another question is whether Hughes could have been reelected in 1920.
Whether the U.S. joined the League or not, there was bound to be some
disillusionment with the war, a feeling that the peace treaty was too
unjust to vindicate our participation in the war. This feeling would
have run against Hughes as it did against Wilson, even if the details of
the peace treaty differed. Resentment against postwar inflation would
also have hurt Hughes as it did Wilson. So instead of a Republican
landslide in 1920, we might have had a Democratic landslide. In fact, a
legend might start that if only Wilson had been reelected we would have
stayed out of war, as we did from 1914 to 1916. "He kept us out of war"
would no longer be a mockery.
A possible result: James Cox becomes president of the United States and
Franklin D. Roosevelt vice-president. (This is assuming the Democrats
nominate the same ticket they did in OTL, which I consider at least
plausible.) Cox gets credit for the prosperity of the mid-twenties, and
is relected in 1924. In 1928, he hands over the nomination to FDR, who
is elected, but is in office for less than a year when the stock market
crashes and the Great Depression starts. The event becomes blamed
evermore in the public mind on the Democrats; the GOP wins the
presidency in 1932--maybe even with the noted progressive engineer and
humanitarian Herbert Hoover. (You can see the slogans: "He fed the
hungry in Belgium during the Great War. He can feed the hungry here at
home living in our miserable Rooseveltvilles.")
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