How could Al smith win the 1928 Election

The crash happens sooner? I don't know; given that he was a Catholic in the golden age of the KKKand that the GOP had what appeared to be a booming economy in their pocket, Smith's only hope is to have the economy sour in 1928.
 
In 1916, Woodrow Wilson won the election as "the man who kept us out of war", under a promise to, well, keep tine US out of war. He gets 49.2% of the popular vote, winning by a 3.1% margin. He then asks for a declaration of war against Germany within weeks of taking office.

The 1896 to 1932 period was a pretty Republican era generally, more so than the 1932 to 1968 era was Democratic.

The anti-war Socialists make big gains in municipal elections in 1917, but the federal government stops that by jailing their leaders and seizing their funds. The Republicans make big gains in the 1918 elections and don't look back.

In 1920, the Democratic presidential candidate, Cox, gets 34.2% (!) of the popular vote and loses by a 26.1% margin. This is still a record for a nationwide presidential popular vote percentage margin.

In 1924, the Democratic presidential candidate, Davis, gets 28.8% of the popular vote and loses by a 25.2% margin.

In 1928, Smith gets 40.8% of the nationwide popular vote and loses by a 17.4% margin. As you can see, Smith in fact does significantly better than the previous two Democratic presidential candidates. He also does about as well as Mondale vs Reagan (40.6%/ 18.2%) and Stevenson vs. Eisenhower in the second match (42.2%/ 15.4%).

The Democrats were also getting creamed in federal and state down balllot races at a rate not seen again until this decade. Really, the Great Depression saved that party.

The obvious thing to do is to move the start of the Great Depression up,but since the Republicans were still holding their own in 1932, it took a few years past the Crash for the bottom to fall out, you probably have to move the Great Depression up to 1925. And that produces butterflies.

The other problem is that Smith is exactly the sort of candidate you nominate to make some of your core supporters happy, in an election you know you are going to lose anyway. The Democrats thought they had to throw the Irish and big cities a bone, and 1928 was the time to do it precisely because defeat was guaranteed no matter what they did. It follows that if they actually had a chance to win, Smith would not have been the nominee.
 
Might be possible-by way of a very big stretch-to have Hoover commit some sort of gaffe during the campaign that would alienate sizable blocks of what were otherwise GOP voters. I'm having trouble figuring what that might be, though, given that by 1928 the KKK was on the decline. Perhaps if he went out of his way to praise prohibition he might have pushed more moderate GOP voters into the Smith column? But whether that would be enough to do it is unlikely. Apart from, say, the panic of 1923 degenerating into something worse and longer lasting (Coolidge would have been elected anyhow in 1924 out of inertia), I'm not sure what if anything could do it.
 
The problem is this: Probably the only way Smith could get elected is if the Great Depression starts earlier. But in that case the Democrats would be unlikely to nominate Smith. They knew in OTL that 1928 was going to be a long-shot year for them anyway, with prosperity (even granted that not everyone was sharing in it), Hoover's strong reputation, and the fact that the GOP was the majority party. So they figured they might as well take a chance on Smith. They would probably be looking for a less controversial candidate in a year victory seemed within their grasp.
 
So, based on what's being said on the thread, something major would have to happen between the Democratic Convention (so that they would still choose Smith as a throwaway candidate) and general election to ruin the Republicans' chances.

It wouldn't be enough on its own, but is there a possible alternative Republican candidate that would be conservative and unpopular enough to prompt the revival of the Progressive Party?
 
So, based on what's being said on the thread, something major would have to happen between the Democratic Convention (so that they would still choose Smith as a throwaway candidate) and general election to ruin the Republicans' chances.

It wouldn't be enough on its own, but is there a possible alternative Republican candidate that would be conservative and unpopular enough to prompt the revival of the Progressive Party?
Progressives had already been revived by Robert M Latolette in 1924, the party would die out in 1932 into a state party.
 
"So, based on what's being said on the thread, something major would have to happen between the Democratic Convention (so that they would still choose Smith as a throwaway candidate) and general election to ruin the Republicans' chances."

Hoover's VP was the Senate majority leader and a perfectly suitable replacement candidate, so Hoover doing something like starting to campaign naked doesn't work either.

By the way, the runner-up for the Democratic nomination was a strong dry with ties to the KKK so those ideas floated above don't work either.
 
"So, based on what's being said on the thread, something major would have to happen between the Democratic Convention (so that they would still choose Smith as a throwaway candidate) and general election to ruin the Republicans' chances."

Hoover's VP was the Senate majority leader and a perfectly suitable replacement candidate, so Hoover doing something like starting to campaign naked doesn't work either.

By the way, the runner-up for the Democratic nomination was a strong dry with ties to the KKK so those ideas floated above don't work either.

As a wise man said 64 years later: "It's the economy, stupid." If the crash ends up being in early fall of 1928 and people are suddenly ruined and disillusioned with the GOP then Smith has a shot. Other than that, he was cannon fodder.
 
In 1928, Hoover was super popular and known after his brilliant work in helping people after the 1927 Mississippi River flood. Maybe Hoover isn't appointed to help so it's just a big disaster in general. Hoover is not the nominee. Instead, it's someone less inspiring and more conservative like Curtis or Watson. Perhaps under these circumstances, Smith would have potentially won. He certainly would have done much much better.
 
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