AHC: President Dick Lamm

Your challenge is to have the moderate Democratic Governor of Colorado, Richard 'Dick' Lamm get elected President as a Democrat. Added points if you can have him beat an incumbent President.
 
Your challenge is to have the moderate Democratic Governor of Colorado, Richard 'Dick' Lamm get elected President as a Democrat. Added points if you can have him beat an incumbent President.

I'm not sure I'd describe him as a moderate. Just because someone's views don't fit neatly into traditional liberal-vs.-conservative labels does not make him a "moderate"--on the contrary, some such views can be pretty extreme.

"In 1984, his outspoken statements in support of physician-assisted suicide generated controversy, specifically over his use of the phrase "we have a duty to die." Lamm later explained that he "was essentially raising a general statement about the human condition, not beating up on the elderly," and that the exact phrasing in the speech was "We've got a duty to die and get out of the way with all of our machines and artificial hearts and everything else like that and let the other society, our kids, build a reasonable life." [11] His dire predictions for the future of social security and health care ("duty to die") earned him the nickname "Governor Gloom"." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lamm

No major national party is likely to nominate a presidential candidate who talks that way. Besides, in 1984 and 1988, Gary Hart pretty much made it impossible for any other Coloradan to seriously seek the presidential nomination, and in 1992 Lamm couldn't even get the Democratic nomination for the US Senate.
 
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Too unorthodox. Would turn off conservatives by being too environmentalist and liberals by being too anti-immigration.
 
Maybe get him elected under the Reform ticket first (Lamm/Perot), against extremist nominees for R and D.

While he somehow becomes a popular President, it is difficult for him to operate given no Reform Party presence in Congress and the Reform party being a disaster so he decides to switch his registration for his reelection campaign. Democrats, anxious for a victory, allow it.
 
earned him the nickname "Governor Gloom"
I remember he thought, because of decline of middle-class jobs, there would be growing animosity between black and white citizens. The first part happened, but not the second. And/or the problems facing the African-American community were mass incarceration from a misdirected war on drugs, and what's happening now where municipalities use a bunch of ticky-tacky tickets and court fees as a revenue-generating mechanism.

And with middle-class jobs, I think it shows what a slow-motion decline it was, and how wide open for a politician to address it in constructive fashion, perhaps as long as he or she used Reagan-esque optimism (although Reagan himself didn't exactly help the cause of middle-class jobs!)
 
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