DBWI: Jimmy Carter survives assassination attempt

While on campaign stop in Nashville, Tennessee during the 1980 election, President Jimmy Carter was shot by the infamous John Warnock Hinckley, Jr. and Carter died soon after, with Walter Mondale replacing him as president and on the Democratic ticket in November, going on to lose in an almost fifty-state sweep, winning only Minnesota.

Modern historians and pollsters suggest had Carter recovered, he likely would've defeated Reagan, but conservatives claim Carter would've been defeated and any claims to the contrary are a whitewash.

(ooc: Try not to role-play too much here, guys, don't make me regret this one.

OTL basis - Carter was trailed by Hinckley for months before Reagan won and became his new target. Hinckley was arrested with a firearm in Nashville while doing so.)
 
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I'd say it was pretty unlikely that Reagan would wind up winning, to be honest, if you're going by his debate performance, which itself probably won't be butterflied by Carter's death. The man just came off as confused through the whole thing, have you seen some of the YouStream videos of it? Kind of embarassing for the last champion of Goldwaterite conservatism on the national scale to seem like a befuddled grandpa in front of millions.

As for what Carter's second term would look like, I'd reckon that it'd be closer to his first than to what Mondale's looked like. Not for nothing is Mondale referred to in leftist circles as "the least bad President", haha. We'd probably see more support for the Latin American dictatorships at the least, although not on a "arm the Contras" scale like Reagan or whoever that whackjob in '84 was (I always forget his name...).

(ooc: You always regret DBWIs. Always. ;))
 
OOC:I have a huge difficulty in thinking that someone like Mondale could beat Reagan in 1980...
 
OOC:I have a huge difficulty in thinking that someone like Mondale could beat Reagan in 1980...

OOC: The idea was that he won off the steam of Carter's assassination. Johnson wouldn't exactly be the most electable president if he hadn't run on Kennedy's assassination.

I'll remove the mention, I suppose.
 
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