I haven't done an 'alt US elections' TL in a hot minute, and I felt like doing one based on an obvious scenario I don't think I've done before.
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It goes without saying that 1968 was one of the most tumultuous presidential races in American history. With Richard Nixon running a 'Law and Order'-based Republican campaign and George Wallace leading a third party ticket based around his segregationist views, the Democrats were on the back foot, and before he had even won the nomination, Robert F. Kennedy had had an attempt on his life thwarted.
Despite picking President Johnson's ideological ally Senator Ralph Yarborough of Texas as his running mate, calling for a bombing halt in Vietnam and condemning racism after the murder of Martin Luther King, RFK spent much of the campaign trailing Nixon- but then in the lead-up to the election the Paris negotiations appeared to make a 'Halloween Peace' in Vietnam possible. Nixon had his campaign aide H. R. Haldeman sabotage this, and the Kennedy campaign had this leaked.
Despite Kennedy, Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen viewing Nixon's actions as treasonous, they held their tongues in public and allowed the news cycle to lambast him. It paid off handsomely, and not only did Nixon lose to a second Kennedy, but his career in politics was destroyed.
Kennedy/Yarborough (Democratic): 345 EVs, 45.6%
Nixon/Agnew (Republican): 136 EVs, 40.2%
Wallace/LeMay (American Independent): 57 EVs, 13.7%
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1972
Kennedy's first term would prove eventful, as he took America off the Gold Standard, ended the draft, introduced OSHA and defended the Philadelphia Plan to help support the hiring of African-Americans, implemented busing for American schoolchildren of colour, negotiated towards peace in Vietnam with a settlement being reached in 1971, pushed for détente with the USSR and and passed the 26th Amendment to lower the voting age from 21 to 18. The economy had also remained solid despite the 'Kennedy shock'- if anything, most consumers were happy with Kennedy's decision to implement price controls.
However, his leadership had proved quite divisive, particularly being despised by conservatives, and California Governor Ronald Reagan seized on this. He ran a hardline campaign which condemned the 'hippie in the White House', claiming Kennedy was not leading a strong enough fight against Communism and pledging he would create 'a truly great society' by rolling back the welfare reforms of the preceding three Democratic administrations. His running mate, Governor Jim Rhodes of Ohio, shared his views.
Despite his opponent's aggressive campaign, Kennedy's response was strikingly cordial. When the two men debated, Reagan hammered him on his policies, and Kennedy calmly defended himself, as well as pointing out controversies from Reagan and Rhode's governorships like the Bloody Thursday crisis and the Kent State Massacre. Further hurting Reagan was the third-party campaign of Congressman Pete McCloskey, to whom the Republican campaign bled votes.
Kennedy/Yarborough (Democratic): 302 EVs, 50.8%
Reagan/Rhodes (Republican): 235 EVs, 46.3%
Hospers/Nathan (Libertarian): 1 EV, 0%
In his autobiography, Reagan reflected on the 1972 election as 'one from which I learned many lessons about political campaigns'. Despite this, it did little to temper his ideological convictions, as his following presidential run would show.
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1976
Kennedy's second term would be just as eventful as his first, but far less cordial. The Yom Kippur War and oil crisis that followed seriously hampered the economy, and despite his efforts to broker a peace in the Middle East, Kennedy was seen as incompetent for allowing it to happen. His government was also seen as complicit in the 1973 Chilean coup d'etat, which outraged leftists, and his continued efforts towards détente and peace became more frustrating to Americans as Vietnam fell to Communist control and hostility grew towards the Eastern bloc.
While Reagan was determined to run again, his 1972 defeat haunted him and other Republicans, and he made sure to make his speeches more conciliatory and pragmatic, focusing on slogans over shocking ideological statements. While he made it clear he would support paring back the welfare provisions of the Great Society, he also pledged he would not endanger the finances of impoverished Americans. His pick of running mate also emphasised his new image- Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee. Baker, the first Republican elected to the South since Reconstruction, was a moderate conservative who had respect from politicians on both sides of the aisle.
On the Democratic side, things were significantly more heated. It was rumoured that the President's brother, Senator Ted Kennedy, would be a candidate, but he refused to run. In his place came several prominent Democrats, including Washington Senator Henry M. 'Scoop' Jackson, Arizona Congressman Mo Udall, and most controversially, former Alabama Governor George Wallace. Wallace performed shockingly strongly, vocally renouncing his segregationist views at the beginning of his candidacy, but came second to Reagan's successor as Governor of California, Jerry Brown.
Brown sought to undermine Reagan's strategy by picking popular Southern Governor Dale Bumpers of Arkansas as his running mate, but his campaign ran into a similar problem to Reagan's but in reverse- he was perceived as being too liberal, and Reagan argued that he would expand on existing measures of the Kennedy administration. Kennedy and Brown tried to turn this association into a benefit to Brown, particularly with his support for and involvement with the United States Centenary celebrations, but Reagan was able to frame himself even more effectively as a political outsider due to this.
Reagan/Baker (Republican): 434 EVs, 56.3%
Brown/Bumpers (Democratic): 104 EVs, 43.0%
Just nine states out of 50 voted for 4 more years of Democratic control of the White House, and the Republicans also managed to regain control of the Senate for the first time in 22 years. Despitehis ticket's resounding defeat, Brown would return to Sacramento and serve out another term and a half where he continued to implement his agenda in the Golden State, while Reagan would struggle to implement his on the national stage.
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1980
Now that he had finally secured control of the White House, Reagan announced at his first State of the Union Address that he would 'revitalise' the economy by significantly cutting back the Great Society and its 'excesses'. These cuts almost immediately deepened unemployment and failed to curb inflation. He also ended up deepening his unpopularity by unashamedly backing authoritarian regimes in South America, and ended détente, calling the Soviet Union an 'evil empire'.
To make matters worse, Reagn's attempt to broker positive relations with the People's Republic of China to capitalise on its frosty relationship with the USSR collapsed humiliatingly. The invitation of Deng Xiaoping to the US was announced in late 1978 and took place in January 1979, then the month afterwards China invaded Vietnam. Reagan had been convinced to meet with Deng to build up to recognising it as the legitimate Chinese government by Henry Kissinger, continuing to serve as Secretary of State having been assigned to that position by Kennedy in 1973, but the Sino-Vietnamese War stifled this. While this was more damaging in the long run to China, contributing to a difficult 1980s where its attempts to economically and politically liberalise were frequently hamstrung until the Tienanmen Square Revolution in 1989, in the short term it hampered Reagan considerably.
This would not be the foreign policy crisis in the forefront of most Americans' minds by the time of the 1980 election, though- that would be the one taking place in Iran. The 1979 Iranian Revolution had seen the hardline Islamist Ayatollah Khomenei take control of the country and hostages from the American Embassy were taken. Despite negotiation attempts and Operation Eagle Claw being conducted to try to retrieve the hostages, all American attempts to recapture them failed prior to Election Day.
Seeing Reagan's vulnerability, the Democratic primary was hotly contested, with Ted Kennedy standing this time and initially appearing the frontrunner. However, his momentum would be dampened by the arrival of a dark horse- Senator Gary Hart of Colorado. Hart had won the Senate race in his home state despite the 1974 midterms seeing national losses for the Democrats, and positioned himself as a 'New Democrat' who would delicately handle the nation's finances. With this strategy, he established an even stronger lead over Reagan than Ted Kennedy- and slowly but surely usurped his strong standing in the primaries.
Having served as Brown's campaign director in 1976 and had a prominent role in the Senate investigations into the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster, Hart had slowly begun to build a name for himself nationally, and with a strong grassroots campaign he gradually came from behind to beat Kennedy to the nomination. The two retained a respectful relationship, with Kennedy speaking favourably of Hart at the convention, in noted contrast to liberal Republicans like Charles Mathias and John Anderson breaking off from Reagan's ticket.
To compensate for any attacks on his lack of experience, Hart nominated House Majority Leader Jim Wright, who had represented Texas in the House for 25 years and been senior in the House for the last 3. Supporters unofficially used a slogan that was a play on two slogans from the 1964 election, which had been a Democratic landslide- 'In your Hart, you know we're Wright, and in your guts, you know he's nuts' (the 'he' of course being Reagan).
Hart/Wright (Democratic): 509 EVs, 58.8%
Reagan/Baker (Republican): 29 EVs, 39.6%
Hart defeated Reagan by an even bigger landslide than Reagan had beaten Brown by. Only seven states voted to give him a second term, all of which but New Hampshire were in the West and which together made up only 29 electoral votes. By taking over 500 EVs, and recapturing the Senate while he was at it, Hart interpreted his election as a massive mandate for the 'New Democrats'.
However, other Democrats would interpret it quite differently, and this would complicate things once he entered office...