DBWI: Dukakis Nominated in 1988

What if Michael Dukakis, then Governor of Massachusetts, was nominated by the Democrats for President in 1988? Would he have won?
 
No but I think it would of not been the total landslide loss which what happened when they nominated Gary Hart.
 
I had to look up Dukakis on Wikipedia and didn't get much, though he was indeed Governor of Massachusetts.

This is a really eccentric what-if. The runner up for the nomination that year was Jesse Jackson, but granted no one thinks Jackson could have actually gotten elected President. But there is a timeline somewhere on this site about Al Gore, who did win several primaries, getting the nomination and it could well have been Gore's year if the scandals around Hart came out earlier. Dick Gephardt, who at least won in Iowa and Missouri and stayed prominent in Democratic politics is a more plausible alternative.

I couldn't find much evidence that Dukakis even ran, but apparently he did, and was beaten in his own state's primary by George McGovern, of all people.

He seems to have been a fairly standard, mainstream Democrat, and arguably someone like that without Hart's personal conduct could well have won that year. But its much more interesting to speculate about Gore winning.
 
He would have probably destroyed Bush in a landslide.

Considering that Gary Hart had a sizable lead on the Vice President until his affairs came out, Dukakis, a successful, clean, and relatively charismatic Governor would have blown Bush out of the water.
 
He might have had some handicaps with the whole "New England ethnic liberal" thing, but on the other hand, he was probably pretty well-protected aginst some of the usual conservative barbs. On law-and-order, for example, crime had been declining in Massachusetts under his watch, so the GOP probably couldn't have made much hay out of that.
 
First off, how could Michael Dukakis got the Democratic nomination? How could a random governor without name recognition from New England even win the nomination in the first place?

Anyway, let's take a look at the electoral map in 1988:
genusmap.php

US Presidential election, 1988
George H. W. Bush / Dan Quayle (R) 49,335,871 (55.6%) 506 EV

Gary Hart / Tom Harkin (D) 35,471,593 (39.9%) 32 EV
Lenora Fulani / Joyce Dattner (NA) 2,139,752 (2.4%) 0 EV
Ron Paul / Andre V. Marrou (L) 1,574,385 (1.8%) 0 EV
Other candidates 271,039 (0.3%)

Bush carried the election handily in 1988, he was not unbeatable but Democrats had to nominate a strong candidate. On the plus side, while Bush won 506 electoral votes, he got just 55.6% of the popular vote. Altogether, Ron Paul and Lenora Fulani obtained 4.2% of the popular vote, in an election where the voter turnout was below 50%. You can argue that third-party tycoon Donald Trump won 14% of the popular vote in 1992 so 4.2% wasn't too much, but it was more or less a three-way race in 1992. Third party support at 4.2% has pretty much shown how voters were dissatisfied with both major party candidates.

Bush could easily have lost the election to a stronger candidate, but I guess Michael Dukakis or say Paul Tsongas would not have been the one. Don't overestimate Bush, yet don't underestimate Bush and more importantly, Lee Atwater. You need a stronger candidate say Dick Gephardt or Mario Cuomo, instead of some random New England governors without much name recognition, unless you could find a Southern Democrat that could carry the south (yet then Bush may win even more anywhere else).

Let's also take a look at the election results in 1992.

genusmap.php

US Presidential election, 1992
Mario Cuomo / Al Gore (D) 46,321,155 (45.6%) 359 EV

George H. W. Bush / Dan Quayle (R) 40,079,532 (39.5%) 179 EV
Donald J. Trump / Lowell P. Weicker Jr. (I) 14,374,929 (14.2%) 0 EV
Other candidates 701,972 (0.7%)

As we all know, Trump was running on a fiscal conservative yet protectionist platform with various social liberal views (such as a pro-choice platform). In the absence of Trump, polls at the time had consistently shown that Cuomo would only beat Bush by 2-3% in a 2-way race. Despite having broken the "no new taxes" pledge and a struggling economy, Cuomo was the only Democrat who could beat Bush and Trump. Cuomo was leading Bush by 7 points, at the same time when "black horse" Bill Clinton would have come third to Trump and Bush in a Gallup poll in early June 1992. In the same poll, Bush was leading Paul Tsongas by 10 points, Al Gore by 5 points, edging Dick Gephardt by around 3 points. Maybe Bush would still have lost in 1992 had the Democratic nominee not been Cuomo, but there weren't many Democratic candidates that could convince the voters either. The same rule applies to 1988.
 
In the absence of Trump, polls at the time had consistently shown that Cuomo would only beat Bush by 2-3% in a 2-way race.

Not really. The exit polls suggested a approximately equal split. The whole "Bush would win if it weren't for Trump" thing is little more than a conspiracy theory spread by the likes of Coulter and Limbaugh because they want to delegitimize the Cuomo realignment.

OOC: From OTL. I'm assuming the whole "Trump caused Cuomo" argument is as much of a myth as "Perot caused Clinton".
 
Not likely. Guy's a rube. You have to be to get Bill Weld to whip your successor in the People's Republic of Massachusetts. Didn't it take almost another 20 years for the state to elect a Democratic Governor after Dukakis?
 
Not likely. Guy's a rube. You have to be to get Bill Weld to whip your successor in the People's Republic of Massachusetts. Didn't it take almost another 20 years for the state to elect a Democratic Governor after Dukakis?

He was largely successful in 1988, what with the Massachusetts Miracle. It all came tumbling down due to his hatred of executions, of course (as before the Cuomo realignment it was unpopular to oppose them), but in 1988 he was widely considered a success.
 
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