AHC: Have Roosevelt and the Progressives win the 1912 Election

Bomster

Banned
I know that it would be difficult, maybe even a little ASB, for Roosevelt to win in 1912 under the Progressive Party, but using all of your historical resources and all the butterflies you can make Roosevelt and the Progressives win the 1912 presidential election.
 
Last-minute discovery of letters where Wilson tells Mrs. Peck how great she is in bed? (Probably not enough, at least in mostly-pre-woman-suffrage days.)
 
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).
 
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.
 
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.

Despite popular belief, after three presidential runs Bryan absolutely did not want to be nominated in 1912. He famously quipped to a supporter that he wouldn't run in 1912 just so he could, "dig the Republican Party out of a whole." Bryan was neutral througout the entire contest up until the latter part of the Democratic Convention. (He actually attended both the GOP and Den conventions, the first in disguise as a journalist and the second as an elder statesman of his party). Once Clark gained the endorsement of Wall Street and Tammany Hall and it looked like this would nominate him, Bryan suddenly grew outraged and immediately threw his support to Wilson in a last ditch attempt to stop Clark before he got the 2/3 vote needed. (Clark already had a majority, before FDR a Democrat needed a supermajority).

Without the 2/3 rule, Clark would have been nominated but I can imagine that Bryan and his ilk would not have been happy about that. As for his change if heart (in that he could stomach Tammany before but not in 1912), like Roosevelt and much of the country I imagine that Bryan was wrapped up in the reformist zeal of the time and he probably grew more progressive as time went on. (Again, Roosevelt was on the same trajectory but in a different party; Wilson had only just recently converted to progressivism after a lifetime as a Bourbon). 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.
 
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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.

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.
 
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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.

Indeed. Had I been a Clark man at that Convention I would probably have been spitting rivets about Bryan's intervention and utterly determined not to let him benefit from it. Forced to choose, I might well prefer to lose to Wilson rather than to the b*****d who had sabotaged my candidate.
 
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.


Even if this were so, would his followers have shared it?

For all the sound and fury of 1912, it is my impression that ordinary voters never got all that excited about it. After all, turnout was only 58.8%, well down from the 65.4 of 1908. Indeed, if we count only the votes for major candidates, and treat Socialist and other minor party votes as the abstentions which, effectively, they were, then not only was the percentage turnout down, but the absolute number as well. In 1908, Taft and Bryan had a combined vote of 14,085,770, but in 1912 the combined Wilson/Taft/TR vote was only 13,897,482 - a drop of 188,288.

Even this understates the case, as the 1912 total included almost 69,000 votes from the new states of NM and AZ, plus an enormous jump of over 335,000 in CA and WA, presumably due to their adoption of women's suffrage. W/o those changes, the shortfall would be more like half a million.

Some of this, no doubt, can be attributed to voter suppression in the South, but nowhere near all. Unless I have miscounted badly, the major party vote in the Old Confederacy was indeed down, but only by about 58,000. Indeed in four Southern states - AL, FL, GA and LA - the major party vote was higher than in 1908.

Elsewhere, the major party vote exceeded 1908 in only twelve states - CA, DE, ID, MA, ME, MI, MT, OR, RI, VT, WA, WY. Of the 46 states which voted in 1908, in no less than thirty, north and south alike, the major party vote was well down from four years earlier. All in all, the average Joe seems to have heard all the 1912 razzmatazz with a yawn. In such circs, is he likely to get very excited over Clark receiving some convention votes from a Tammany delegation?
 
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.

More evidence from Sarasohn that Bryan may (at least after the GOP split made it obvious any Democratic nominee would win) have been more interested in getting nominated than he let on:

"[After Clark started to fade at the convention] the most likely alternative to [Wilson] was Bryan. Although he was voting for Wilson, Bryan had never endorsed him; in fact, he made it clear that he would oppose Wilson if New York were to support him. Since New York's delegation numbered almost a tenth of the convention, Bryan was demanding that a candidate win nearly three-quarters of the remaining votes. The St. Louis Republic reflected a widely held belief when it headlined, "Nebraskan's Stand Indicates Deadlock Cannot Be Broken." Bryan fueled reports of his own ambitions by refusing, despite demands from both the Wilson and Clark camps, to say that he did not want the nomination himself.

"Wilson's forces viewed the Commoner with growing apprehension. "He was reported to have said things having an ominous meaning, that indicated he was planning his own nomination," remembered Robert Woolley, a Wilson press aide. After several days of voting, Bryan suggested five new candidates who the convention should consider. "All these men have high character and fine ability, but not one of them had the remotest chance of nomination," wrote one observer; perhaps Bryan was thinking of some other undeclared candidate. After the forty-second ballot, when the Wilsonians had begun to smell victory, Bryan infuriated them by suggesting that the convention take a month off and return after talking to the people. According to James Kerney, a close advisor of Wilson, Bryan told an emissary of Roger Sullivan "that if the convention should regard his nomination as needful, the regular party leaders would find him easier to deal with than Wilson."

"Bryan's hopes collapsed on the forty-sixth ballot, when the Underwood delegates, following Roger Sullivan's example, went to Wilson and nominated him. "Beyond rising [Bryan] did not participate in the concluding Wilson demonstration," reported the St. Louis Republic. "His face seemed to have frozen and apparently he had aged ten years. ... Many who studied his expression in the closing minutes believe they saw there the emotions of hope lost and a lifetime ambition again defeated."" The Party of Reform, pp. 141-2.

FWIW, the judgment of veteran political reporter Arthur Wallace Dunn in From Harrison to Harding was that Underwood "was no more of a possibility in that convention than were Harmon, Marshall, Foss, Baldwin and others. Only Champ Clark, Woodrow Wilson, or William J. Bryan had a chance to be named." http://books.google.com/books?id=BeFBAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA192 (OTOH, Dunn also says that Underwood, though he had no chance of the nomination himself, could have assured either Wilson or Clark--even after Bryan's attack on the latter--of the nomination. One thing I am pretty sure of is that Underwood would not favor Bryan, who had repeatedly attacked him as a "reactionary.")
 
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