Different Nominees in Locked Elections

Well initially because LBJ was the incumbent running for re-election, so a different nominee is moot; that said, was there a serious possibility of him choosing someone other than Humphrey to be his running mate?
I was thinking more of a different Texan being Kennedy's running mate, like Ralph Yarborough or John Connally, and then winning in 1964.
 
Given the economic situation, I’d argue that 1992 was maybe a lock election.

Reading “The Red and the Blue” has reminded me of how gross “Slick Willie” really was. If any of the other candidates who sat it out, from Bumpers to Cuomo, ran instead, Bush was a really weak re-election candidate.
 
Given the economic situation, I’d argue that 1992 was maybe a lock election.

Reading “The Red and the Blue” has reminded me of how gross “Slick Willie” really was. If any of the other candidates who sat it out, from Bumpers to Cuomo, ran instead, Bush was a really weak re-election candidate.

Had Brown been nominated and had he picked Jesse Jackson as his running mate, as he promised to do, then Bush would probably have won. But Tsongas, Harkin, or any halfway decent Democrat would have won in 1992. In fact someone without Clinton's personal baggage might have done better in the popular vote.
 
A thought about the 1952 GOP convention: from what I've been given to understand, Taft's pancreatic cancer was silent at that point IOTL (it was only discovered in April 1953). If there had been some hint / suspicion that his health wasn't the best (IOTL, he went from diagnosis to terminal in approximately four months), would the convention have become essentially a moot point, with would-be Taft supporters reluctant to support a candidate who might well die after a (very?) short time in office? Might his supporters have insisted on a Taft-like running mate, such that Richard Nixon remains a senator?
 
Given the economic situation, I’d argue that 1992 was maybe a lock election.

Reading “The Red and the Blue” has reminded me of how gross “Slick Willie” really was. If any of the other candidates who sat it out, from Bumpers to Cuomo, ran instead, Bush was a really weak re-election candidate.

Let's just say that as late as February 1992 despite poor ratings for Bush on the economy, the polls did not indicate a sure thing for the Democrats in November. "...Mr. Bush lost a trial heat against an unnamed and possibly idealized Democratic nominee, 40 percent to 45 percent, but he won theoretical races among registered voters: against Mr. Clinton by 51 to 40, against Mr. Tsongas by 47 to 40 and against Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri, often mentioned as a possible late starter in the race, by 52 to 33." https://www.nytimes.com/1992/02/22/...bstantially-pulling-near-clinton-in-poll.html

And before concluding that Clinton was a weak candidate, remember that he won four ex-Confederate states (Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, and Tennessee) as well as the border states of Kentucky and Missouri. No non-southern Democratic candidate for the presidency has done that well in the South since JFK in 1960, and I doubt if, say, Cuomo could in 1992. Even in the North, it is not clear to me that Cuomo would have done better than Clinton; Clinton carried a fair number of counties in southern Ohio that in other elections have not been terribly friendly to national Democrats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_...e:Ohio_Presidential_Election_Results_1992.svg
 
That does make you wonder who the GOP would pick if they should make more of a play for the upper south... So really, that would just leave Governor William O'Connell Bradley, Senator Jeter Connolly Pritchard, and... Rep Brownlow.
@David T So I was just looking up Governor Bradley again, and on review he actually looks like he had a(n at least somewhat) successful, fairly progressive, and pretty cool term of office; and unlike Evans (FWICT), he wasn't feuding with fellow powerful state Republicans like Brownlow. I realize he was far from a large player in the party at a national level (like Root, Long, or Allison), but if Evans could be seriously considered in 1896, was there any possibility of him being tapped in 1900?
 
I don't think 1992 was a Democratic lock, but all the fundamentals were working against Bush. I think it's the Democratic nominee's to lose. The most likely nominee beyond Clinton is Tsongas, and if you absent both of them, it's probably someone like Kerrey - and I think all of those would have won. It's true that Clinton broke the electoral college wide open, but you can write off every single southern state he won and Ohio and another mid-sized Clinton state, and the Democratic nominee still wins more comfortably in the electoral college than a lot of elections since. Different nominees might also have brought different regional strengths - I can see Tsongas winning New Hampshire, which was in a very bad way economically, more comfortably, for instance.
 
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