DBWI: Ford defeated in 1976? (TAKE2)

genusmap.php

Gerald Ford / Bob Dole (R) 49.1%, 284EV
Jimmy Carter / Walter Mondale (D) 49%, 254EV

As we all know, Gerald Ford was reelected President by a very slim popular vote margin. He would take the blame for the recession, as well as the communist takeover of Iran.

genusmap.php


Henry M. Jackson / Reubin Askew (D) 53.2%, 340 EV

Ronald W. Reagan / Howard Baker (R) 45.5%, 198 EV
While Reagan was an outsider, did well in debates, and got a strong rebound afterwards, he was ultimately defeated by Henry M. Jackson, despite winning a few Southern states that Carter won in 1976, while Jackson carried some other Southern states by a popular vote margin of less than 2%.

What if Carter won the election instead? How would he have handled things? How would he try to save the Iranian regime, and fix the economy? Would Carter get re-elected in 1980, or he would be outsed by Reagan in TTL? Would moderate Republicans try to challenge the frontrunner status of Reagan in 1980 after he almost defeated Ford in 1976? Would we see moderate Republicans including Anderson and Weicker crossing the floor to endorse the Democratic nominee like in OTL?

OOC: No change before 1975 allowed, don't give me nonsense like Ford was elected on his own right in 1972.
 
I thought you were going to go for the obvious 'what-if'; that is, what if President Jackson hadn't dropped dead of a heart attack in early 1983?

First, I think it's pretty obvious he would have won re-election. I tend to think the economy would have recovered no matter who was President (within reason, of course), but obviously IOTL President Askew's Economic Recovery Act was credited as turning the economy around by 1984, leading to his 45-state landslide. His coattails swept in a wave of loyalists and really led to his total dominance of Democratic politics.

Now, I wasn't quite old enough to vote in '88, but -- and isn't this strange? -- I can actually remember being excited when Askew won re-election. I grew up at a time when the Democrats were the party of social liberalism (if you can imagine that!), and back then it was the Republicans who did all the pandering to the fundamentalists. I think a lot of us just assumed that the Democrats would always be the socially progressive party, and that what President Agnew was doing was just "cutting deals" to advance our agenda in the long term. And really, who pays attention to Supreme Court nominees when you're 15?

In retrospect, that all seems pretty naive, I know. But I don't think I was the only one who was blindsided when the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in 1989. And then all of a sudden it was the Republicans who were putting forth pro-choice initiatives in state after state, and the Democrats were holding those rallies, like the one in Colorado Springs where Vice-President Breaux hugged that guy from "Focus on the Family." After that, well, it just seemed natural to vote for Weicker in '92 and then Weld in '96.

So yeah, I always wondered what if President Jackson had lived. Would we have two socially liberal parties now, instead of just one?
 
I thought you were going to go for the obvious 'what-if'; that is, what if President Jackson hadn't dropped dead of a heart attack in early 1983?

First, I think it's pretty obvious he would have won re-election. I tend to think the economy would have recovered no matter who was President (within reason, of course), but obviously IOTL President Askew's Economic Recovery Act was credited as turning the economy around by 1984, leading to his 45-state landslide. His coattails swept in a wave of loyalists and really led to his total dominance of Democratic politics.

Now, I wasn't quite old enough to vote in '88, but -- and isn't this strange? -- I can actually remember being excited when Askew won re-election. I grew up at a time when the Democrats were the party of social liberalism (if you can imagine that!), and back then it was the Republicans who did all the pandering to the fundamentalists. I think a lot of us just assumed that the Democrats would always be the socially progressive party, and that what President Agnew was doing was just "cutting deals" to advance our agenda in the long term. And really, who pays attention to Supreme Court nominees when you're 15?

In retrospect, that all seems pretty naive, I know. But I don't think I was the only one who was blindsided when the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade in 1989. And then all of a sudden it was the Republicans who were putting forth pro-choice initiatives in state after state, and the Democrats were holding those rallies, like the one in Colorado Springs where Vice-President Breaux hugged that guy from "Focus on the Family." After that, well, it just seemed natural to vote for Weicker in '92 and then Weld in '96.

So yeah, I always wondered what if President Jackson had lived. Would we have two socially liberal parties now, instead of just one?

OOC: Sorry, but the Democrats going totally conservative and the Republicans going totally liberal is pretty ASBish by the '80s. Will have to completely ignore this.

IC: You must've been reading too much of Jerry82's "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas", in which Harold Stassen wins the election in '60 and gets assassinated in 1966 during his second term.

And, btw, Roe vs. Wade was never overturned, either. You're thinking of Richards vs. Wilson in '91, the 1977 air traffic control case. Must've been partying too hard last night. ;)

Anyway, Reubin Askew's term in office wasn't too bad; he did get us involved in that disaster in Iraq between 1989-91, though. Howard Baker's run(this came after Carter, btw!), 1984-88, though, was a disaster; towards the end, apart from the financial & political scandals, the Crash of '88 threw us into the worst recession since the Great Depression, and the Tea Party Republicans seizing the House in that year didn't help much. It was only thanks to the Democrats fighting back in both subsequent years that we got anything done, and if it hadn't been for Joe Biden's two terms in office, who knows how much worse things could have gotten?
 
OOC: Sorry, but the Democrats going totally conservative and the Republicans going totally liberal is pretty ASBish by the '80s. Will have to completely ignore this.

OOC 1: Feel free. I was just struck by three facts posited by the initial poster: (1) that it's probably the most conservative plausible Democratic ticket in the modern era; (2) that Scoop Jackson was in pretty poor health by 1980 (he died of an aneurysm in 1983 IOTL); and (3) that Reubin Askew was a genuine social conservative by the standards of the 90s and beyond. Add to that the fact that the religious right was not seriously organized as a political arm of the Republican Party until Reagan (who's never President ITTL), and I thought it'd be fun to have a dispirited GOP turn to the Rockefeller Republicans instead of the far right in a search for votes after being on the wrong side of the '84 landslide.

OOC 2: Also, there was a reason I name-dropped both Lowell Weicker (who, IOTL ran to the Democrat Joe Lieberman's left in his Senate race in '88), and Bill Weld (who did the same thing, running to Democrat John Silber's left in the Massachusetts gubernatorial race in 1990).
 
Top