Woodrow Wilson has his stoke years earlier during the campaign.and its too big and public to cover uo
The only way for this to happen is progressives and liberals from both parties coalesce under a ticket consisting of TR and a Democratic VP. Roosevelt's plan was to ride the support of Progressive Republicans and liberal Democrats back to the White House. According to Edmund Morris, there was actually a lot of support for this in the lead up to 1912 and may very well have happened had the Democrats put up any candidate besides Wilson. (While he did worse in the popular vote than Bryan in 1908, Wilson's crucial support from reformers and establishment figures terrified of TR allowed him to maintain a united Democratic party behind him and gain cross over support from Republican businessmen. Morris' contention is that a weaker candidate like Clark who Bryanites hated would not have been able to do this. I'm not so sure if he's right (emphasis added for a reason) but go and read his excellent "Colonel Roosevelt" if you want to know more of what I'm talking about).
Did Bryanites particularly hate Clark? I always understood that he was a Bryanite until WJB picked a quarrel with him at the Convention.
Bryan's excuse for this was that the Tammany delegation from NY had switched their votes to Clark, which somehow made it "impossible" for Bryan to vote for him, though Bryan himself had been supported by Tammany in previous elections.
I can only assume that Bryan was hoping to produce a deadlocked Convention which might then turn to him. But would his nitpicking objection about Tammany mean anything to the people who habitually voted for Bryan? After all, Clark had creamed Wilson by almost three to one in a state as Progressive as California, which doesn't suggest that liberal Dems had any problem with him.
Taft pisses off America as much as he did Roosevelt, the GOP decides to sit this one out and focus on Congress, Roosevelt capitalizes.
Despite popular belief, after three presidential runs Bryan absolutely did not want to be nominated in 1912.
In any event, whatever Bryan's intentions, a Wilson-Clark deadlock might start off a Bryan stampede which might force the Commoner to accept the nomination whether he wanted it or not unless he was willing to throw the party into chaos. Of course it was in part precisely the dread of such a stampede that led party bosses like Roger Sullivan of Illinois and Tom Taggart of Indiana to switch to Wilson.
I do think that Bryan genuinely did not want to run and his reasons for opposing Clark were based in principle and not in selfishness.
This is probably true (though his brother Charles did at least want him to consider runing again). But still, it's hard to blame Bryan's critics for being suspicious when, as David Sarasohn has noted (The Party of Reform: Democrats in the Progressive Era, p. 132). Bryan's disclaimers of interest in the nomination seemed carefully stated and "did not quite close the door." E.g., "I cannot conceive any condition that could arise which would make me a candidate this year." https://books.google.com/books?id=ljIPAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA65 Not quite Shermanesque--and in any event however sincere these statements were, they were made before the GOP split virtually assured that whoever the Democrats nominated would be elected. Colonel House predicted on June 7 that "he [Bryan] will not want the nomination unless two Republican tickets are in the field." https://quod.lib.umich.edu/g/genpub/ACL9380.0001.001?rgn=main;view=fulltext Was it so unreasonable to think that once that condition was met, the Commoner might change his mind?
It is in any event interesting that the resolution proposing that the party declare itself opposed to "J. Pierpont Morgan, Thomas F. Ryan, August Belmont, or any other member of the privilege-hunting and favor-seeking class" and demanding the exclusion of any delegates obligated to them was the idea of Bryan's brother, who favored a fourth campaign. William Allen White wrote in his Autobiography that "I often met Bryan and his brother, Charley, and we reporters all knew that someone, maybe it was brother Charley — it might have been Bryan — was promoting a rather futile cabal to nominate Bryan again.." https://www.google.com/search?biw=1877&bih=675&tbm=bks&ei=ts5jW56wI4ncjwSp7afwCQ&q=william+allen+white+autobiography++"we+reporters+all+knew"&oq=william+allen+white+autobiography++"we+reporters+all+knew"&gs_l=psy-ab.3...17096.17879.0.18289.3.3.0.0.0.0.148.407.0j3.3.0....0...1c.1.64.psy-ab..0.0.0....0.M0MR83QUtXk
In any event, whatever Bryan's intentions, a Wilson-Clark deadlock might start off a Bryan stampede which might force the Commoner to accept the nomination whether he wanted it or not unless he was willing to throw the party into chaos. Of course it was in part precisely the dread of such a stampede that led party bosses like Roger Sullivan of Illinois and Tom Taggart of Indiana to switch to Wilson.