Democratic Nixon: A TL

The similarities between Richard Milhous Nixon and Albert Arnold Gore Junior are striking and surprising. Both were Vice-Presidents to a modestly popular president during relatively peaceful times in American history. Both ran for President and got nominated right after their superiors left office. Both lost their elections by a very close margin and among calls of voter fraud. Both even after losing remained very much in the public eye. But one thing did not fit the puzzle. Al Gore did not run for President in 2008 unlike Nixon. So what if he did? Thus it's the set up for:


A Democratic Nixon: A Timeline

From The Hard Years: A History of 2001-2020:

....It was a true tragedy when on October 22nd 2006 Robert Gates riding an automobile near College Station, Texas was killed when a SUV driven by a drunk driver crashed head-on into Gates' car. Gates was killed almost immediatly along with his wife.

US Senator John McCain in 2014 speculated in his personal journal that Robert Gates might have replaced Donald Rumsfeld as Secretery of Defense after the November mid-term elections. This remains an interesting possibiltiy to many, because it is strongly believed that with Gates as Defense Secretery the tragic end of the Iraq War might have been avoided.....

...By the middle of 2007 Iraq was a total disaster. Violence was rising sky-high and dozens were being killed every day. The Sunni and Shia violence was by then a full-scale civil war claiming tens of thousands of lives. It did not help that Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki was assassinated on June 14th 2007 when a squad of extremnist Shia militiamen struck his car with a RPG....

...Even worse for the Iraq War effort was when Senator Joseph Lieberman one of the few non-Republicans supporting the Iraq War announced that he supported a time-table plan for Iraq on August 3rd 2007....

....It was in the middle of this when Albert Arnold Gore Junior declared his candidacy for President of the United States on August 10th 2007....
 
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From The Hard Years: A History of 2001-2020:

....It was a true surprise when Gore pulled an upset victory in the Iowa Caucus. This was mainly credited to the fact that Gore built a grass-roots coalition in Iowa. Among the other Democratic candidates Barack Obama gained second place, while John Edwards and Hillary Clinton got third and fourth respectively...

....Gore continued his successes by winning the New Hampshire primary over favored candidate Hillary Clinton and won the Nevada caucus. Soon after the Nevada caucus Barack Obama decided to drop out mainly due to a lack of funds and endorsed Gore....

....Gore's greatest success was in the Super Tuesday primaries when Gore gained his greatest victories. Gore won the key state of California along with twelve other primaries. Despite this crushing victory Hillary Clinton would hold on until March 4th when losing both the Texas and Ohio primaries Clinton dropped out....
 
From The Hard Years:A History of 2001-2020:

.....Meanwhile in the Republican primaries Mitt Romney managed to eke out a close victory over his close rivals Rudy Giuliani and Mike Huckabee...John McCain meanwhile had dropped out after failing to win the New Hampshire primary which he had been counting on...Mitt Romney suffered greatly trying to balance his support of the base and winning over the moderates on the issue of the Iraq War...

....As an olive branch, Al Gore announced Hillary Clinton as the Vice Presidential candidate right before the Chicago Democratic Convention....Mitt Romney meanwhile was divided over choosing Mike Huckabee satisfying the base or John McCain who could attract moderates...In the end Romney almost forced by the RNC picked Huckabee

...The severe economic crisis in 2008 simply increased the support for Al Gore and so did Hurricane Ike which killed 300 people and was a terrible disaster...

...By this point Iraq's government was virtually nonexistent. It controlled only Baghdad and some of the surrounding areas. The Kurdish areas were by now independent in all but name and was fighting to America's chargin Turkey in border conflicts. The Shia areas meanwhile had come under the sway of Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and building friendly relations with Iran...

....Mitt Romney was perceived as a hypocrite when he was constantly probed on his changed positions on various issues...Mitt Romeny accurately summed up his situation on October 29th when he said right after a speech "There's no shit right for us."...
 
From The Hard Years: A History of 2001-2020

...The election results of the 2008 Presidential Elections were not at all surprising considering the unpopularity of the Republicans. Still the Democrats won in such states as Montana and Georgia. As the election results came out Mitt Romney is said to have remarked "We won Arizona? We were pretty lucky this year." .... President Gore in his acceptance speech vowed to ratify the Kyoto Protocal, end the Iraq War, and improve the economy. Of these three promises only one, ending the Iraq War, would come true in the coming four years but only at a great cost....

Election Results of the 2008 Elections

Presidential Election:

Candidates Electoral Votes Popular Vote
Al Gore/Hillary Clinton (D) 393 74,554,633

Mitt Romney/Mike Huckabee (R) 145 54,835,636

Congressional Elections:

Senate:

Democrats: 61 (incl. 2 Independents) +10

Republicans: 39 -10

House:

Democrats: 264 +28

Republicans: 175 -28

Election Map:

Map Thirty.png
 
The title is seriously confusing (because it implies a Democratic Nixon, after all) but I'm interested.


No way would Gore pick Clinton for a VP. They didn't like each other, and she brings nothing to the table when there are plenty of more reasonable picks. Olive branch nothing.

Romney would probably do better than you portray because he can use the financial crisis to stick his flip-flop on social issues onto the backburner.

Gore wouldn't win Georgia. He lost his home state in 2000 and the only reason Obama came close in 2008 is because of black turn-out. The white southern voter is Republican, these days. Same with North Carolina. Maybe Virginia. I'm also unsure if he'd win all three of Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

Soon after the Nevada caucus Barack Obama decided to drop out mainly due to a lack of funds and endorsed Gore....

Drop out, maybe, but probably not due to lack of funds. The problem that comes is that Obama and Clinton had the donor base of different parts of the Democratic Party. I think Gore would have to enter a couple months earlier to cut off Obama and burn into Clinton's donors.
 
So far, so good, if a tad confusing, like Electric Monk pointed out.

I would bet on Gore probably not being able to carry Georgia. As EM pointed out, the only reason Obama really came close to carrying the state was because of the African American turnout in the state. I can see North Carolina and Virginia, though, if only because of their shifting demographic population and their recent Democratic trends. I also don't really see Gore taking Indiana. Tennessee may be a bit closer than OTL, but it won't go blue, either. I would almost switch Arizona into the Democratic column. If Clinton is the Vice Presidential nominee, then Gore will pick up Arkansas, too.

As for the Senate, I'm assuming the Democrats will still pick up Alaska (Mark Begich), Colorado (Mark Udall), Minnesota (Al Franken), New Hampshire (Jeanne Shaheen), New Mexico (Tom Udall), North Carolina (Kay Hagan), Oregon (Jeff Merkley), Virginia (Mark Warner). This begs the question of the last two seats...I would suggest having the Democrats win the Senate races in Kentucky (Bruce Lunsford toppling Mitch McConnell), and in Mississippi (Ronnie Musgrove defeating Roger Wicker) or Texas (Rick Noriega beating Jon Cornyn). Probably the former.

Just an idea...if you want to make this more like Nixon's comeback for Gore, you could have something where the RNC is deadlocked and ends up choosing Vice President Cheney in a chaotic floor vote, with a quixotic third party bid from, say, Ron Paul.
 
Revised Election Map

From The Hard Years: A History of 2001-2020

...The election results of the 2008 Presidential Elections were not at all surprising considering the unpopularity of the Republicans. Still the Democrats won in such states as Montana and Georgia. As the election results came out Mitt Romney is said to have remarked "We won Arizona? We were pretty lucky this year." .... President Gore in his acceptance speech vowed to ratify the Kyoto Protocal, end the Iraq War, and improve the economy. Of these three promises only one, ending the Iraq War, would come true in the coming four years but only at a great cost....

Election Results of the 2008 Elections

Presidential Election:

Candidates Electoral Votes Popular Vote
Al Gore/Hillary Clinton (D) 381 74,554,633

Mitt Romney/Mike Huckabee (R) 157 54,835,636

Congressional Elections:

Senate:

Democrats: 61 (incl. 2 Independents) +10

Republicans: 39 -10

House:

Democrats: 264 +28

Republicans: 175 -28

Election Map:

Map Thirty Seven.png
 
From The Hard Years: A History of 2001-2020

....President-Elect Al Gore began naming his Cabinet. Among the most notable choices was Wesley Clark for Secretary of Defense and Joseph Biden as Secretary of State. With the preeminence of economic issues Gore selected Tim Geitner as Secretary of the Treasury. Gore also decided to select some of his primary rivals for Cabinet positions-John Edwards was named Attorney General and Barack Obama was named Secretary of Housing and Urban Development....

....At his inauguration speech Gore once again repeated his campaing promises of protecting the environment, improving the economy, and ending the Iraq War. All three positions were popular to most Americans and Republican opposition was seen as increasingly bitter and fanatical. For instance on January 21st talk show host Rush Limbaugh was heard calling Gore "a son of a bitch" which to liberals seemed to prove the ranting idiocy of talk show hosts. But as ironies turned out the talk show hosts turned out be right on one issue...

...The steady withdrawl from Iraq began almost immediatly after Gore took office as President. Gore had promised to withdraw all US combat troops in a year, which was kept. However not surprisingly Iraq began falling into chaos. Already on the brink of collapse, the Iraqi government disintegrated and lost all power in Kurdish and Shia areas. Baghdad itself became a hell-city as the Shias and Sunnis began a long series of massacres, assassinations, and retributions. On March 3rd 2009 317 Sunnis were killed in a series of riots and street fighting by Shia militiamen. As this violence continued many Iraqis began directly appealing to the US government to keep the troops in Iraq but now with both the US government and 74% of Americans against it, it was little more then a bitter plea...
 
2009: A Year in Review

With the economic crisis looming, President Al Gore proposed a stimulus plan especially concerning a "Green New Deal". Gore's plan of a "Green New Deal" was a New Deal style program devoted to building and producing things that would be environmentally sound. Thus among Gore's first projects to go forward was building hundreds of solar power panels throughout the United States. The stimulus bills were quickly passed in Congress due to the Democratic majority without much compromise in spending with the Republicans. Despite the best efforts of the US government however AIC went bankrupt in May and Chrysler did so in October. At the end of the year the unemployment rate was 9.7% and the recession was still going badly with only little improvement.

One of the more controversial actions of President Gore was signing the so-called cap and trade bill on June 5th. This outraged the Republicans and many Democrats saying it would hurt the economy already in a recession. However Gore simply ignored the argument and even unsuccessfully tried to have the Kyoto Protocal ratified. This failed however in Congress and was the new President's first major defeat.

In foreign policy President Gore was considered by most to be unsuccessful. Iraq continued it's long and bloody collapse throughout 2009. On October 16th Shia militamen took over Baghdad from the central government and put to death over the following week some 6,000 Sunnis in one of the bloodiest massacres of all time. This would slowly evolve into a genocide in southern Iraq and by the end of 2009 almost 90,000 Sunnis had been killed. Also during this time Turkey invaded the Kurdish areas of Iraq and bitter conflict resulted in thousands dead. Despite a surge in Afghanistan however violence continued to rise and the elections there had to be canceled. In Somalia, over the year seven American hostages were killed by Somali pirates and Gore only allowed a small naval presence there. Indeed Gore was called by some to be a neo-isolationist especially when Gore said "We should concern ourselves with improving America not the world." in his inauguration speech....

Comments please
 
This is actually a rather interesting scenario I recalled while in the President Cliche thread, and I actually didn't know it was Mung who did it.

Someone should actually pick this up.
 
No way would Gore pick Clinton for a VP. They didn't like each other, and she brings nothing to the table when there are plenty of more reasonable picks. Olive branch nothing.

I agree, and (although I am not familiar with the whole range of possible candiates) would rather suggest Obama as VP. The primiaries should have shown the political potential of the guy.He would still be the first black VP-candidate and he is young enough to accept the role of a traditional two-term-successor when it comes to 2016.
 
What are you thinking having Gore carry Indiana. He would get slaughtered by Romney. Remember Obama only won 7 counties and even some Dems here think Gore's "green" ideas are batcrazy. Also Indiana is one of the most conservative states in the US.
 
He's long since banned, so your message is for naught my friend.

My reason for bumping this was that I recalled that it was done, and think someone should take it over since it's a good idea, and we have two years since 2008 under our belts now.
 
He wanted me to continue this TL- for some reason Mung Beans seemed to be on good terms with me. Not a chance in hell I will.
 
I'm not saying this iteration should continue, but I do think the idea is solid for a TL should someone wanna start a new one.

I might pick it up although I've always wanted to do a Gore wins in 2000 scenario, but maybe I'll do this one after I finish For Whom The Bell Tolls when I start working on it again.
 
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