Here’s a good name. Frank Church. He should have a lot of the antiestablishment/rural appeal of Carter while being a more compelling candidate for labor and the New Left. His selection would push the defense hawks into Reagan’s hands but that’s probably going to happen with any non-Scoop candidate anyway.
If Ford wins in 1976, who's the Democratic Nominee in 1980?
- Thread starter TheKennedyMachine.
- Start date
Unless he's caught with the proverbial dead girl or live boy how does Carter get "absolutely destroyed" by Ford in 1976 in the first place?
What if he completely botched the playboy interview even worse than OTL and even more directly called LBJ a lying SOB or something
By attacking Johnson he might shore up support on his left TBH.
Not saying Carter can't lose. Just saying it is tough for him to plausibly get destroyed.
Sure, in terms of the popular vote he might not lose very much, but it could have outsized influence in the relatively close Southern states, particularly if paired with, say, an even weirder version of “adultery in my heart” and a refusal to apologize for it
Mostly because he was the Democratic equivalent of Marco Rubio, incredibly strong on paper but an utter flop nationally, his 1976 DNC remarks landed with a thud, and he didn't make much of an impression on the debate stage
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So then why did Bob Dole and John Edwards fail when they ran 4 years after running for VP? Like them, Mondale would be lost in a sea of more colorful candidates and he'd likely fail to win the nomination.
I still think he had a shot, like, what if his 1976 DNC Keynote was recieved better? Would that help at all?
Vidal
Donor
Again. No one is saying he can't win. Just that he's not the most plausible nominee. It really depends on the field.
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Oop. Sorry, misinterperted there. I wonder who he would pick as VP if he ever managed to snag the nomination.
Because neither ran a good enough campaign? Now an actual VP (instead of candidate) of a despised ex-president is going to have an uphill climb, see Walter Mondale.
The GOP and by extension conservatism would get full credit for the late 70s failures. Reagan would probably break more than 100 electoral votes but definitely lose.
The post-election tantrum given his being an actor would be something. I imagine the soviets would get tons of mileage out of tanks having to be brought to DC since we'd be seeing an american version of Russia's black october/the october 93 constitutional crisis.
I mean there's a lot of divergence you could effect even within Carter's (or an alternate Dem president's) presidency from a 1976 start POD, so yeah it's really lazy that people on here continually assume Ford's presidency would go exactly the same way as Carter's.
The GOP also had a huge structural advantage in the electoral college in this era. Until the nineties there are practically no reliably Democratic states. If a Dem nominee can't break open the south in particular then yeah any race is certainly winnable for the GOP.
The GOP also had a huge structural advantage in the electoral college in this era. Until the nineties there are practically no reliably Democratic states. If a Dem nominee can't break open the south in particular then yeah any race is certainly winnable for the GOP.
We don't know if the late '70s failures happen or not under a Ford Admiration. Maybe they go better, maybe they are even worse. We have no idea of knowing. "The failures of the late 1970's is not Jimmy Carter's fault" sounds more like political bias than anything else. I have a feeling most of the posters who say he had nothing to do with it would be blaming him if he were a Republican. In that case you would have Republicans saying it wasn't his fault.
I tend towards "more likely than not to happen" given all the stuff that was baked in. Iran was probably going to blow up to name one. Nevermind party fatigue/ford being of Nixon's part, etc.
Neither of them were top tier candidates. George Bush and Al Gore were the last two VP candidates with real stature. They had both run real campaigns for President and actually added to the ticket.
Leaving aside Carter's foreign policy bungling, many of the factors that resulted in those failures were actually outside of policymakers' control, especially domestic/economic ones. So, he might have done better than Carter, but he would have lost if his performance is not good enough to overcome the tough situation, or is perceived to be not good enough by the electorate.
It's like a guy who scores 40/100 is better than a guy who scores 20/100 but still fails because he does not meet the 50 requirement to pass as the exam is too hard.
In addition, party fatigue is a thing. If Ford won, by 1980, the Republicans would have already been in power for 12 years. Party fatigue could result in a defeat in a fair weather scenario, let alone the late-1970s.
And if he does even worse than Carter, well, that would be a no-brainer scenario. Well, Democratic massive victory, although not at Reagan's scale due to GOP advantage in the South/Southwest.
A lot depends on Iran and whether the OTL oil shock from the revolution still happens, and you've got years of butterflies on that if we're talking a 1976 POD. SlideAway has previously pointed out that Carter's policy of championing human rights abroad lead to the Shah allowing the protest movement in Iran to build and the release of opposition figures.
I've never really understood what people on here mean by 'party fatigue'. Parties lose elections for concrete reasons, not because the electoral gods decree the other party has to have a turn. The Republicans won five presidential elections between 1968 and 1988 to one very narrow loss, and two of those wins were landslides.
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As V-J notes there’s a lot of space to work with given the timing.
Iran could have become a proper democracy if one-two key extremists happened to die. Or with Ford in office the Shah cracks down hard and survives.
Saudi Arabia could have lost control of OPEC earlier, sparking deregulated American oil in say ‘78 instead of ‘81 and preventing much of the 1980-85 oil price rises—with consequences in oil producing American states (booming less) and the rest (booming more, with cheaper oil). Combined with no Wall St panic as Iran turns out fine, there’s no gas lines in ‘79 and things are looking up.
By 1980 President Ford could have inflation under control with a growing economy, Iran remaining as an ally, and with OPEC broken and oil deregulated even the lower oil prices vs OTL are still making a lot of GOP business folk extra rich. Given that the POD doesn’t specify perhaps Ford picks his other top VP choice of Dan Evans—one of the best Governors in the nation—as his running mate and he’s the successor. Ford and Evans catch the right timings for a seemingly doomed government to rebound and 1980 sees a fourth Dem loss in a row as weak candidate Hugh Carey is defeated.
I don’t think I’ve seen a Ford success timeline actually.
Iran could have become a proper democracy if one-two key extremists happened to die. Or with Ford in office the Shah cracks down hard and survives.
Saudi Arabia could have lost control of OPEC earlier, sparking deregulated American oil in say ‘78 instead of ‘81 and preventing much of the 1980-85 oil price rises—with consequences in oil producing American states (booming less) and the rest (booming more, with cheaper oil). Combined with no Wall St panic as Iran turns out fine, there’s no gas lines in ‘79 and things are looking up.
By 1980 President Ford could have inflation under control with a growing economy, Iran remaining as an ally, and with OPEC broken and oil deregulated even the lower oil prices vs OTL are still making a lot of GOP business folk extra rich. Given that the POD doesn’t specify perhaps Ford picks his other top VP choice of Dan Evans—one of the best Governors in the nation—as his running mate and he’s the successor. Ford and Evans catch the right timings for a seemingly doomed government to rebound and 1980 sees a fourth Dem loss in a row as weak candidate Hugh Carey is defeated.
I don’t think I’ve seen a Ford success timeline actually.
We don't know that, I have a sneaky suspicion that you and others who are arguing that would be arguing that it was under the policymakers control if it were a Republican who was president and vice/versa.