Could Gerald Ford have likely beaten Carter?

From what I remember of either Kennedy or Mondale in those days, neither would be a shoo-in for the presidency. Ted Kennedy wasn't much more than a distant echo of either of his brothers, plus he had the massive baggage of Chappaquiddick. Mondale tended to be rather strident at times, and while he wasn't as far to the left as McGovern, he was far enough to give swing voters pause. Have the GOP nominate a moderate (paging Arlen Specter or Howard Baker...) and 1980 would be fascinating--and could even have a GOP president taking office in 1981.
 
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a100476butzresign

And on Oct. 4, 1976, it came out that Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz had told an R-rated joke derogatory of African-Americans

. . . and Ford delayed asking for his resignation.

Oh, God. I remember that and the "joke", which was really awful. It cost Ford. In an election that close, everything mattered. But the Eastern Europe remark probably cost him the election. Had Ford's term gone anything like Carter's, that gaffe probably gave us Reagan as I'm not sure any Republican, even Reagan, could have won in 1980 after a bad Ford term.

Here's the "joke". Caution: very offensive, strong language.

“I’ll tell you what coloreds want. It’s three things: first, a tight pussy; second, loose shoes; and third, a warm place to shit. That's all!”
 
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a100476butzresign

And on Oct. 4, 1976, it came out that Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz had told an R-rated joke derogatory of African-Americans

. . . and Ford delayed asking for his resignation.
yeah, if ford fires him early and doesn't make the eastern euorpe gaffe, i see him taking mississippi, hawaii, and ohio compared to otl
that gives him a 277-261 ev count, but he still loses the popular vote, albeit narrowly
 
Kennedy would not have even won the primaries

Yep. And everyone with a pulse in the Democratic party would have run in 1980, too. Mondale probably would have been the front-runner, but there would be plenty of room for a dark horse insurgent to make a deep run and perhaps win the nomination. If US-Soviet tensions had ratcheted up along OTL lines, this might be a good year for John Glenn, who could almost certainly get the Ohio legislature to pass a law allowing him to run for both the Senate and Presidency in 1980.
 

RousseauX

Donor
Yep. And everyone with a pulse in the Democratic party would have run in 1980, too. Mondale probably would have been the front-runner, but there would be plenty of room for a dark horse insurgent to make a deep run and perhaps win the nomination. If US-Soviet tensions had ratcheted up along OTL lines, this might be a good year for John Glenn, who could almost certainly get the Ohio legislature to pass a law allowing him to run for both the Senate and Presidency in 1980.
Kennedy wouldn't have won because of that time he killed a girl

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chappaquiddick_incident
 
No, constitution only says you can be elected twice, so you can techniquely serve 3 terms if you get elected vp and your president dies on day 1 or something

No:

Section 1. No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once. But this article shall not apply to any person holding the office of President when this article was proposed by the Congress, and shall not prevent any person who may be holding the office of President, or acting as President, during the term within which this article becomes operative from holding the office of President or acting as President during the remainder of such term

Harry Truman would be the exception here, not Ford.

(There is also the unanswered question about whether a two-term President can be VP. They're not ineligible to be President, under the 12th Amendment - they're just ineligible to be elected President).
 
Ted Kennedy's presidential ambitions was dead in the water (lol) after Chappaquiddick

I honestly think that, more than Chappaquiddick, the biggest barrier to Ted becoming the President was the fact that deep down, he himself didn't want it. He only ever ran in 1980 as a protest against Carter's taking the Democrats on a neoliberal/proto-DLC turn, and he only started campaigning strongly once it became clear he couldn't win. Just watch his infamous Roger Mudd interview- that is not a man who really wants to be President.

If he ran at the right time and actually wanted it, Chappaquiddick could have been overcome.
 
Kennedy wouldn't have won because of that time he killed a girl

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chappaquiddick_incident

Yes, I am aware of that. In fact, I was a very young kid, but I was on Martha's Vineyard when that happened. I still remember that black Olds 88 sitting in the lot at the Texaco in Edgartown, where ghoulish souvenir hunters picked out pieces of the shattered windshield. They did a similar thing over at the bridge, chiseling out wood splinters from it. Sick stuff that made quite an impression on me.

But Chappaquiddick isn't why he would have lost. He would have lost because his 1980 campaign was a train wreck and there would have been little appetite in 1980 -- even an alternate 1980 -- for his old-fashioned liberalism, which was stale and doctrinaire. And as noted above by Don Draper, I don't think he really had the fire in the belly for it. Chappaquiddick is way down the list of reasons he would have lost.
 
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