DBWI: Save the Democrats

OTL, the decline of the Democrats probably came with the 1968 election.

The Romney-Reagan ticket dominated so effectively in the election following Goldwater's coming third in the electoral vote to the Barnett-Wallace ticket (Goldwater only winning Arizona, Idaho, and Nebraska). It was a real political shock when the Democrats came third electorally in 1968.

It certainly didn't help that along with being the new home for disaffected Dixiecrats, the AIP's 1968 candidate actually had a *stronger* AFL-CIO rating than the Democratic nominee. The AIP's coopting of white labor voters and southerners from the Democrats while the GOP at the same time was bringing black and racially-liberal voters back into the fold ultimately reduced the Democrats to a regional party against two national behemoths.

Just look at the 1968 election totals:
George Romney - Ronald Reagan: 398 (47.4%)
George Wallace - Happy Chandler: 86 (22.5%)
Hubert Humphrey - Henry Jackson: 54 (29.7%)

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How could the Democrats be saved as one of the top two parties in the United States?
 
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Once mid-sized developing economies like Peru, Nigeria, Kenya, began competing with the U.S. on manufacturing in the late ‘50s, it was just going to be a much lower trajectory for the U.S. middle class. And voters felt it.

It was kind of a miracle Johnson-Humphrey won in ‘64, given the public anger and how much Democrats were blamed.

Potential POD: Have Eisenhower run as a Republican? ? I know that’s jarring. Please think about it.
 
If the GOP nominate Dewey not Taft in 1948, he would probably beat the unpopular Truman and would be succeeded by either another Liberal Republican like Harold St assent or a Republican who can appeal to both Conservatives and Liberals like Richard Nixon, if you butterfly his car crash.
 
Like you said; the lose of the Midwestern "Hard Hat" vote to really hit the Democrats hard in a key electoral vote stronghold. The sense of betrayal felt by the unions and low-level white collar workers who joined the party under FDR, who depicted the Dems as selling basic pocketbook issues such as affordable housing and educational expansion largely on racial grounds in their attempt to assist minority groups without trying to enforce the "poison pill" of actual Civil Rights legislation on a national level, still runs deep in a lot of rural communities up North. They forgot about the forgotten man again... to say nothing of the fact that no actual legislation protecting blacks from state persecution down South and the resulting "Black Flight" to the industrial heartland not only flared up racial tensions, but lead to, in combination with the targeted Federal assistance/preference, the reduction in poverty and growth in the educated middle class among African Americans that lead to the less socially-minded losing their loyalty on social issues and drift towards the more economically-focused Republicans.

To avoid this, maybe you can get Johnson's Civil Rights Act not get declawed by the Supreme Court. That would allow the Dems to keep their economic policies more balanced and based on income rather than identity, while creating a uniformity of treatment under the law between the regions of the country that would limit black migration into the more prosperous and industrial North so as not to be seen as "stealing" the jobs, educational positions, business opportunities, ect. of the local lower class (who never saw the oppression as their fault) while leading to the hollowing out of the infant industry and old agricultural backbone of the South due to the flight of cheap labor.
 
Like you said; the lose of the Midwestern "Hard Hat" vote to really hit the Democrats hard in a key electoral vote stronghold. The sense of betrayal felt by the unions and low-level white collar workers who joined the party under FDR, who depicted the Dems as selling basic pocketbook issues such as affordable housing and educational expansion largely on racial grounds in their attempt to assist minority groups without trying to enforce the "poison pill" of actual Civil Rights legislation on a national level, still runs deep in a lot of rural communities up North. They forgot about the forgotten man again... to say nothing of the fact that no actual legislation protecting blacks from state persecution down South and the resulting "Black Flight" to the industrial heartland not only flared up racial tensions, but lead to, in combination with the targeted Federal assistance/preference, the reduction in poverty and growth in the educated middle class among African Americans that lead to the less socially-minded losing their loyalty on social issues and drift towards the more economically-focused Republicans.

To avoid this, maybe you can get Johnson's Civil Rights Act not get declawed by the Supreme Court. That would allow the Dems to keep their economic policies more balanced and based on income rather than identity, while creating a uniformity of treatment under the law between the regions of the country that would limit black migration into the more prosperous and industrial North so as not to be seen as "stealing" the jobs, educational positions, business opportunities, ect. of the local lower class (who never saw the oppression as their fault) while leading to the hollowing out of the infant industry and old agricultural backbone of the South due to the flight of cheap labor.

I would say that the Black vote returning to the GOP was due to more than just being disaffected by lack of Democratic interest/effort. Jackson in 1968 outright opposed things like busing and was very hawkish on Vietnam - both of which drove black voters towards the very racially liberal and anti-war George Romney. Reagan meanwhile doubled down on focusing on black voters when he picked Ed Brooke as his running mate in 1976. The same reasons a lot of black voters returned to the GOP was why a lot of white Social Liberals drifted over as well.

Meanwhile the alliance of "Hard Hat" voters and white southerners continues to be the backbone of the AIP today. The issue with the New Deal Democrats was that their coalition was so broad that it was impossible to maintain. The Democrats unfortunately opted to try to hold on to their whole coalition and fell apart because of it.
 
Hubert Humphrey - Henry Jackson: 54 (29.7%)
We should point out that the Democrats came in second in 1968 by percentage of popular vote. One function (sawdust?) of the electoral college is to magnify a victory and really make it look like a landslide, especially on maps.

I have an idea. What if a much bigger component of the old cold war took place along military lines including propping up dictatorships favorable to us? Yes, it would likely come back and bite us in the ass. Yes, it's short-sighted policy.

But people sometimes do short-sighted things.

That's my main argument for this possibility. And if things like this did happen, it would slow down catch-up industrialization in the third world. And it might spread over decades the erosion of U.S. manufacturing jobs. There would be swinging back and forth between Democrats and Republicans. The Democrats as the dominant party would not be blamed so heavily and fall so hard, so quickly.
 
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