AHC: Walter Mondale elected President in 1984.

DTanza

Banned
With a POD of August 1st 1980 have Walter Mondale be elected President of the United States in 1984. Platinum points if he's running against President Reagan.
 
With a POD of exactly August 1, 1980, here goes:
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August 1, 1980: While taking target practice, John Hinckley's Rohm RG-14 revolver jams. Hinckley then purchases and practices with a Glock 17 9mm semi-automatic pistol.

March 30, 1981: In a scheme to impress teen actress Jodie Foster, John Hinckley, Jr. assassinates President Ronald Reagan, who dies instantly. Vice-President George H.W. Bush becomes President. Hinckley would later be convicted of first-degree murder and given the death penalty.

April 11, 1981: Bush -- believing that he needs a "youthful, vibrant" Vice President from a midwestern state to secure his re-election in 1984 -- reportedly narrows down his short list to two "dark horse" candidates: first-term Indiana Senator Dan Quayle, and former Ohio Congressman Donald E. "Buz" Lukens.

April 20, 1981: The baby-faced Lukens, 50, is sworn in as Vice President.

May 1, 1981: President Bush replaces Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker with Dick Darman. With unemployment at 7.5% and inflation at 10%, Darman declares that his primary focus will be on deficit reduction.

October 7, 1982: Vice-President Lukens is forced to resign in disgrace after local D.C. police officers on an unrelated stakeout overhear Lukens arranging with a woman to have sex with her 13-year-old daughter.

November 12, 1982: Yuri Andropov elected General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

November 16, 1982: After massive Democratic gains in the House and Senate during the mid-term elections, Bush announces that he is appointing Secretary of State Elliot Abrams to succeed Lukens as Vice-President.

1983: Democrats in Congress block Bush's budget proposals, as Vice President Abrams heads to Capitol Hill to lobby for marginal tax rate cuts and a large cut to the capital gains tax. Meanwhile, Fed Chairman Darman keeps interest rates high. Unemployment soars to 11% and climbs, on average, by a tenth of a percent each month until the 1984 election.

February 2, 1984: Yuri Andropov dies. Seeking to take advantage of "instability" in the United States, the Politburo surprisingly elects former KGB Alexander Shelepin to replace Andropov. Shelepin's tenure as head of the Soviet Union would be marked by a crackdown on internal reforms and mounting tensions with the West.

April 20, 1984: In an interview with NBC's chief White House correspondent Chris Wallace, Vice President Abrams defends himself against charges that he mislead Congress during the protracted budget negotiations. "Lying to Congress is not a crime," argues Abrams. "Lying to Congress is established practice, dating back at least to President Polk during the Mexican-American war. Robert McNamara lied about the secret deal to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey after the Cuban Missile Crisis. LBJ lied about the Gulf of Tonkin. It's practically the administration's duty to lie to Congress!"

July 18, 1984: Walter Mondale selects Colorado Sen. Gary Hart as his Vice-Presidential running mate.

July 19, 1984‎: In accepting the Democratic nomination for President, Walter Mondale delivers a stirring speech about the need for the next administration to tell the truth to the American people. "Let's be honest," says Mondale. "Mr. Bush will raise taxes, and so will I. He won’t tell you. I just did.”‎ This speech is interpreted as a defense of telling hard truths in difficult times, rather than a promise to raise taxes.

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I think your platinum points will wind up going unclaimed, though.
 
An earlier Iran-Contra. Reagan's Alzheimer's is more obvious in the campaign due to this stress.

That wouldn't do it, Iran-Contra didn't get started until 1985 after Congress cut off funds for Nicaragua. You'd need the Boland Amendment to go into effect two years sooner at least.
 
You can just have them ransom hostages by selling weapons to Iran. The focus would be more on selling weapons to a terrorist nation and ransoming hostages
A writer in Newsweek during the 84 campaign wrote a piece describing how Mondale could win and he had a leaked memo from David Stockman that outlined the tax increase to be introduced the next year. I got say this TL is filling me with joyous nostalgia. Can someone please write a TL where I meet my wife in time to take her to the Live Aid concert.
 
The American people find out in 1982, that Reagan and Bush talked to the Iranans about keeping all hostages in Iran until after the swearing in of Regean (in 81) Even If Reagan survives the impeachment and treason trials, any Democrat including Mondale wins in a walk in 84.
 
My favorite POD and largely I think one of the most realistic, is just have the '82-'83 recession last a bit longer, or have the economic recover more "L-shaped rather than V-shaped. Perhaps you could have Carter appoint other than Volcker, who tightened interest rates to the fed Or have Congressional Democrats fight Reagan over his Tax plan more aggressively which causes the markets to tumble as a result of gridlocked government. But no, Ronnie was not invulnerable, and if you can keep his approval ratings in the toilet during most of 1984 as they were in '82 or '83, I think he would have found it really hard to be re-elected.
 
My favorite POD and largely I think one of the most realistic, is just have the '82-'83 recession last a bit longer, or have the economic recover more "L-shaped rather than V-shaped. Perhaps you could have Carter appoint other than Volcker, who tightened interest rates to the fed Or have Congressional Democrats fight Reagan over his Tax plan more aggressively which causes the markets to tumble as a result of gridlocked government. But no, Ronnie was not invulnerable, and if you can keep his approval ratings in the toilet during most of 1984 as they were in '82 or '83, I think he would have found it really hard to be re-elected.

But against Mondale? To me, that match-up seems like Bobby Kennedy trying to get reelected against Bob Dole, without the hostage crisis.
 
My favorite POD and largely I think one of the most realistic, is just have the '82-'83 recession last a bit longer, or have the economic recover more "L-shaped rather than V-shaped. Perhaps you could have Carter appoint other than Volcker, who tightened interest rates to the fed Or have Congressional Democrats fight Reagan over his Tax plan more aggressively which causes the markets to tumble as a result of gridlocked government. But no, Ronnie was not invulnerable, and if you can keep his approval ratings in the toilet during most of 1984 as they were in '82 or '83, I think he would have found it really hard to be re-elected.

Against a candidate as spectacularly bad as Mondale, I'm not sure that's enough. My guess is that you'd wind up with a 2004-like scenario, with Reagan narrowly re-elected. (That's why I had Bush fire Volcker, and appoint criminals and idiots to the levers of power.)

Watching Mondale's '84 acceptance speech for Dirty Laundry was really instructive: he honestly thought that the way to go after Reagan was to tap into supposed public sentiment that Reagan was untrustworthy and deceptive. (That's the genesis of the whole "He won't tell you; I just did" line that no one remembers.) I'm not sure one needs the benefit of hindsight to know that's a very weird line of attack against the affable Reagan. It also had the side-effect of leaving the Mondale campaign unprepared to capitalize on Reagan's first debate debacle.

Bottom line: Reagan is hypothetically beatable, but I don't think Mondale can do it.
 
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