Impact of a narrow Gore victory

samcster94

Banned
What if Gore wins in 2000, but it is a narrow one(like he wins NH by 50 votes during a second recount)??? I was just wondering how this would impact his Presidency, which likely would be one term.
 
The narrow margin wouldn't matter, especially since he still had a majority of the popular vote. Why likely one term, unless he really messed up 9/11 (if it happened). He would not have gone into Iraq, the issue that made the 2004 election closer.
 
I think he is referencing Gore would be running for 16 consecutive years of uninterrupted political power which hadn't happened since FDR - Truman. Knowing how much the public hated political dynasties and how little he could get done with Republicans controlling Congress, the odds of him being a one term is significantly high.
 

samcster94

Banned
I think he is referencing Gore would be running for 16 consecutive years of uninterrupted political power which hadn't happened since FDR - Truman. Knowing how much the public hated political dynasties and how little he could get done with Republicans controlling Congress, the odds of him being a one term is significantly high.
OTL Bush Sr is a good example.
 
OTL Bush Sr is a good example.

In fact I think Gore would almost be the Democratic version of HW Bush: pretty successful in domestic and foreign affairs, but bad with PR. Gore would preside over a recession and this would provide powerful ammo to the GOP in 2004. I don't think GWB would make a comeback, so McCain would be the nominee after Giuliani (if 9/11 still happens) crashes and burns in the primaries. But that said, McCain would be in power during Katrina the Great Recession so he wouldn't be re-elected either. But instead of losing to Obama, he'd lose to HRC since there's no Iraq War to drag her down.

43. Al Gore (2001-2005), D-TN
44. John McCain (2005-2009), R-AZ
45. Hillary Rodham Clintoln (2009-2013), D-NY

Obama just barely overcame Romney, who was actually predicted by Gallup to win by 1% the day of the election, so I don't think Clinton would be re-elected given that by her own admission she isn't as good as a politician.

46. Mitt Romney (2013-2017), R-MA
47. Barack Obama (Since 2017), D-IL

Romney would more likely than not be a one term President, given that middle class anger will be just as strong if not stronger with a wealthy, conservative businessman in charge. Not to mention that he'd fail to repeal Obamacare and attack Syria - angering conservatives and making him look generally incompetent.
 
In fact I think Gore would almost be the Democratic version of HW Bush: pretty successful in domestic and foreign affairs, but bad with PR. Gore would preside over a recession and this would provide powerful ammo to the GOP in 2004. I don't think GWB would make a comeback, so McCain would be the nominee after Giuliani (if 9/11 still happens) crashes and burns in the primaries. But that said, McCain would be in power during Katrina the Great Recession so he wouldn't be re-elected either. But instead of losing to Obama, he'd lose to HRC since there's no Iraq War to drag her down.

43. Al Gore (2001-2005), D-TN
44. John McCain (2005-2009), R-AZ
45. Hillary Rodham Clintoln (2009-2013), D-NY

Obama just barely overcame Romney, who was actually predicted by Gallup to win by 1% the day of the election, so I don't think Clinton would be re-elected given that by her own admission she isn't as good as a politician.

46. Mitt Romney (2013-2017), R-MA
47. Barack Obama (Since 2017), D-IL

Romney would more likely than not be a one term President, given that middle class anger will be just as strong if not stronger with a wealthy, conservative businessman in charge. Not to mention that he'd fail to repeal Obamacare and attack Syria - angering conservatives and making him look generally incompetent.
I don't think that HRC is going to run in 2008 in this TL. Basically, the 2008 recession only became evident around December 2007--at which point it might be too late for HRC to start a campaign. Before December 2007, McCain would have probably looked unbeatable.
 
What if Gore wins in 2000, but it is a narrow one(like he wins NH by 50 votes during a second recount)??? I was just wondering how this would impact his Presidency, which likely would be one term.
That depends. Does he win fairly by 50 votes or through more questionable means (for instance, by halting a recount or by throwing out some absentee ballots)?
 
I don't think that HRC is going to run in 2008 in this TL. Basically, the 2008 recession only became evident around December 2007--at which point it might be too late for HRC to start a campaign. Before December 2007, McCain would have probably looked unbeatable.

Given how powerful Clinton was in the Democratic Party before 2016, she could jump in at that point and still win. Otherwise, it would be pretty ironic if Obama still wins anyway in this TL.
 
Given how powerful Clinton was in the Democratic Party before 2016, she could jump in at that point and still win. Otherwise, it would be pretty ironic if Obama still wins anyway in this TL.
Yes, it's very possible, but she's going to have to very quickly organize a campaign.

As for Obama, it's not guaranteed that he runs in 2008 in this TL. After all, like Hillary, he might only see the 2008 recession coming once it is already too late for him to jump into the race. Plus, he'd have much less name recognition than Hillary in this TL.
 
Yes, it's very possible, but she's going to have to very quickly organize a campaign.

As for Obama, it's not guaranteed that he runs in 2008 in this TL. After all, like Hillary, he might only see the 2008 recession coming once it is already too late for him to jump into the race. Plus, he'd have much less name recognition than Hillary in this TL.

So like in 1992, we could have a scenario where the leading Democrats sit out the race only for a dark horse to come out on top. For all we know it could've been John Edwards (who obviously wouldn't have run for VP in 2004), and given his disastrous personal life I'm not sure he would even be able to survive one term...whether he resigns over the affair or alleged campaign finance violations.
 
So like in 1992, we could have a scenario where the leading Democrats sit out the race only for a dark horse to come out on top. For all we know it could've been John Edwards (who obviously wouldn't have run for VP in 2004), and given his disastrous personal life I'm not sure he would even be able to survive one term...whether he resigns over the affair or alleged campaign finance violations.
Yeah, a Dem dark horse in 2008 in this TL is certainly very possible. I don't know if it would be John Edwards, though. After all, why would he run if he doesn't think that he can win?

As for resigning, Bill Clinton didn't resign over his affair and thus I doubt that John Edwards would resign either.
 
As for resigning, Bill Clinton didn't resign over his affair and thus I doubt that John Edwards would resign either.

But Edwards and Clinton are very different. Edwards not only had an affair but his wife was dying of cancer at the time and the affair produced a child out of wedlock. Clinton on the other hand never went that far and proved an unusually adaptable and resilient politician who was able to survive a midterm blowout and an impeachment. Edwards, not so much. And remember that Edwards was charged of violating campaign finance laws, an actual crime unlike adultery. An Edwards Presidency would be a perfect storm of sex scandal and political corruption, resulting in a resignation sometime in 2010. Even if he isn't necessarily guilty of a crime, the Democrats would certainly turn on him ahead of the midterms and force him out as the GOP did with Nixon.
 
But Edwards and Clinton are very different. Edwards not only had an affair but his wife was dying of cancer at the time and the affair produced a child out of wedlock. Clinton on the other hand never went that far and proved an unusually adaptable and resilient politician who was able to survive a midterm blowout and an impeachment. Edwards, not so much. And remember that Edwards was charged of violating campaign finance laws, an actual crime unlike adultery. An Edwards Presidency would be a perfect storm of sex scandal and political corruption, resulting in a resignation sometime in 2010. Even if he isn't necessarily guilty of a crime, the Democrats would certainly turn on him ahead of the midterms and force him out as the GOP did with Nixon.
Was Edwards actually convicted of violating campaign finance laws, though?

As for the child out of wedlock, did he pay child support for this child? If so, there shouldn't be much of a problem.

The part about cheating on a wife with cancer is distasteful, but I'm unsure that this in itself would be enough to trigger impeachment proceedings against Edwards. After all, there is a difference between politicians' private and public lives.
 
No. But truth isn't exactly the name of the game in politics.

If Donald Trump can thrive in a post-truth world, so can John Edwards.

Not to voters. Edwards was crushed in OTL because of the affair, after starting out as one of the three leading candidates.

Actually, I vividly remember that campaign and Edwards dropped out several months before his scandal became known. That scandal certainly wasn't what did him in; rather, it was the fact that he was a White guy in a field where many voters were looking for more excitement.
 
Obama just barely overcame Romney, who was actually predicted by Gallup to win by 1% the day of the election, so I don't think Clinton would be re-elected given that by her own admission she isn't as good as a politician.

46. Mitt Romney (2013-2017), R-MA
47. Barack Obama (Since 2017), D-IL

A very odd claim, then an odder one, in reverse order.

To take your second suggestion, that HRC somehow manages to win the 2008 nomination (I can agree her being suckered into supporting the Iraq invasion might be critical) but then gets primaried out by Obama is quite bizarre. Offhand I can't think of a sitting President in their first term ever being primaried out at all and I certainly see no reason for Obama to be favored for doing it--more likely Obama is Clinton's VP, which among other things ought to be handy assassination insurance! I think it is far more likely Clinton loses to McCain in the general election, due to the insanity of the right wing animus against her, than Obama and still less any other Democrat even attempting to primary her in 2012 if she did win. If she loses in 2008 it is a different story of course and that, given your presumptions, seems far the most likely.

Which sets us up for the even weirder looking claim, which you voice first: in what sense do you parse Obama's OTL performance against Romney as "narrow?" First look at the Electoral Vote; he got 332 to Romney's 206. That is not a landslide, but it is quite a comfortable victory margin. Way better than GW Bush in 2004 for instance, who did not do as well in EV as Donald Trump did in 2016. Second, it is of course legally irrelevant but morally important--not only did he win a plurality versus Romney, unlike many Presidents regarded as comfortably more popular (such as say W in 2004), he won a solid majority, 51.1% to Romney's 47.2% of popular vote, the balance going to third parties, mainly Gary Johnson for the Libertarians. (Bill) Clinton never got a majority; neither Bush nor Gore in 2000 got one; if Gore resembles Poppy Bush in career, it seems likely some strong third party candidate a la Perot will deny a majority to either frontrunner in 2004 either, though the Electoral votes may mask it. Compared to that sort of competition Obama won quite handily in 2012. I can find only one sense in which he could be said to have done poorly, and that is that his PV percent and EV count were both down from 2008. But note that this second and less overwhelming swing and hit got Obama a bigger popular vote than Reagan's majority in 1980, though far fewer EV. Which says more about the flaws of the EV system than Obama's success--put it this way, would you characterize Reagan in 1980 as easy to beat?

Another possible sense in which an election can be narrow is if a critical number of states won by Obama OTL hung narrowly in the balance and they could easily shift to whomever is running against him, in your supposition Romney. Well gosh, look at Florida and Ohio! In percentage terms, Obama's margin of victory in Florida was a real squeaker at 0.88 percent, which was in that large state 74,309 votes. Next up on the list of Obama wins by narrow margins in percent terms is Ohio, which went for him by a margin of 2.98 percent which is 166,272 votes. Eeek!

But note this--despite the fact these battleground states are infamous heavyweights in the EV system, Obama could lose both of them and his EV would drop to 285--which is still a straight win for him. A narrow win, but quite decisive. Next state up the list is Virginia with 13 EV, and nearly a 4 percent margin--Obama is battered but still standing tall at 272 EV. He must lose all four of his most percent-marginal states, losing Colorado as well which went for him by 5.37 percent, for Romney to win. A shift of national popular vote that big would be just shy of 7 million voters who voted for Obama OTL voting for Romney instead, which would give Romney a very decisive popular vote margin, a bigger absolute majority than Obama got OTL, and yet leave him with quite a weak showing for a victor with such PV under his belt in the EV system. Perhaps now we get talk of abolishing the damned EV system already, now that it is a Republican ox gored by it for the first time? But no, it is an EV squeaker but still a win for Romney so he surely would not rock the boat.

I am pretty much at a loss for why you have an impression Romney came close to winning OTL. It has been said, and I believe it, that had all 50 states adopted the Congressional district system of choosing electors used by Maine and Nebraska Romney would win, but that just points to a combination of gerrymandered districts and the structural tendency of Democrats to win big in fewer (largely urban) districts while Republicans win by thinner margins in more numerous districts. Had this been the manner of Romney's victory I am sure the cry would be to go back to winner take all state block EV votes, for he could win it by trailing Obama in a wide margin of PV in which Obama, unlike HRC in 2016 or Gore in 2000, would win a solid majority of all PV.

Does it help if we shift from percentage shifts to absolute number shifts? Well, first of all I suggest it is quite illegitimate to add up the margins of the states needed to flip the election and declare "that many people decided the outcome" unless one is talking about someone able to commit fraud and get away with it, in which case it is the fraudsters who decide by stealing outright, not the made-up voter numbers. If you are going to get say 10,000 voters in say Delaware to flip by legitimate means (bearing in mind how very sleazy some common political stratagems are, but considered either completely legal or anyway not worth trying to prosecute against after the fact) you have to assume the same tactic is applied to all states, and that it is the percentage of people necessary to flip rather than absolute numbers that is the relevant one. So you might argue that with some judicious targeting my 7 million to flip above is really only perhaps 3 or even two million, in carefully chosen battleground states--but the more targeted the contest is on a particular handful of identified borderline states, the more the tactics of most dubious legitimacy must be employed and such dirty tricks might backfire. One way or other, I think there is a reason that except in 2016, one case in living memory where I think it is clear illegitimate forms of voter suppression carried the day (not to mention other state-fostered manipulations) and two 19th century cases everyone agrees involved outright fraud, the EV system does wind up on the whole favoring whoever has the plurality of popular votes. Don't let people do outright criminal things (or things that ought to be criminal, such as purging people from voter roles without positive and incontrovertible evidence they don't meet state standards for voting) and I think 2016 would be the first time we'd ever see a flip between PV plurality and EV vote.

So just to note it, if we rank Obama's state margins by absolute size, not four but six states, one of them Florida, would have to be flipped, and in Delaware his margin was actually far higher than 10,000 and really was nearly 19 percent. It was pretty solid in New Mexico at over 10 percent, nor would Nevada's near 7 percent margin be at all easy to flip either. Therefore operatives seeking to turn marginal states to Romney would need to go wider afield to get the 62 shifted EV they need, and again many millions of votes would have to change.

There is just no path to victory for Romney to be divined in OTL 2012 data without making massive shifts of some kind. Obama won reelection with solid margins, and again I have to wonder who put this bug in your ear whispering there was any thinness to it. Compare to GW's "impressive mandate" of 2004 for instance; why would W's reelection not have been still easier to reverse?
 
To take your second suggestion, that HRC somehow manages to win the 2008 nomination (I can agree her being suckered into supporting the Iraq invasion might be critical) but then gets primaried out by Obama is quite bizarre.

Oh it is indeed bizarre, and it's also something that I never said.

Obama won reelection with solid margins, and again I have to wonder who put this bug in your ear whispering there was any thinness to it.

Obama won Florida by less than 1%, and if you switch only 2% nationally then Romney would've won the popular vote.

why would W's reelection not have been still easier to reverse?

It would have been just as easy to reverse actually. Had either Kerry or Romney not made critical gaffes and generally had been better at articulating their message to average voters then they probably would've won.
 
I am pretty much at a loss for why you have an impression Romney came close to winning OTL.

I remember just how competitive that election was, and how polling after the first debate showed Romney either tied with or leading Obama. Even Gallup on the day of the election showed Romney leading by 1%. (This is something I already pointed out, and now I have to do it again).
 
I remember just how competitive that election was, and how polling after the first debate showed Romney either tied with or leading Obama. Even Gallup on the day of the election showed Romney leading by 1%. (This is something I already pointed out, and now I have to do it again).

Because that was just a bunch of pundits and talking heads, I don't think after the fact you should allow rhetoric to overpower the facts once they are in.

And I don't know which of them you wanted to win yourself, but that might be a factor too. Heck, I was working hard to support Obama myself and I had a glum sense of defeatism from time to time. Again though, when we look back on hard evidence and compare how 2012 racks up versus other elections in our lifetime, it is far far away from marginal by objective standards; how you and I felt at the time is something else, having perhaps to do with engagement in it.

But again and again, reading mainstream sources I have found myself being hypnotized into suspecting and fearing that various things--the abolition of progressive income tax, for instance, or of Social Security, or its partial privatization--are inevitable, done deals, the opposition to these radical reforms being dead in the water, the American common people just lining up to take the deal their smarter betters tell them is good for them. Don't they always?

Well, in electoral politics, sometimes they surprise you.

You complain I ignore your pollsters, but they were wrong, why pay attention to them now? They were spectacularly wrong about Trump, there my hero the American voter really screwed me, but the point is, these expert geniuses can't really predict the future. We are talking in this thread about what we think would have happened, and for that we are allowed to use hindsight based on what did happen OTL. The polls you paid attention to were wrong. Perhaps they were blindsided after diligently trying to do their best, or perhaps they had a dog in the race as it were, in terms of interests of their employers, and an interest in selling a certain narrative. For whatever reason they blew it, on the matter of who would be President and how anyway.

But meanwhile my post was pointing out that these margins that seem so thin to you are quite thick and comfortable compared to plenty of others that have generally not been characterized as "thin." Not when it is the other party benefiting anyway. You may recall 2004 as well. Did you feel W was heading to crash and burn then? Well, his margin was thinner than Obama's in every way. I specifically discussed the size of shift in vote it would take to reduce Obama's margin below 270 EV, over 5 percent. Such a shift would indeed take Obama well below his actual majority of OTL, but he'd still have a bigger plurality than Bill Clinton did in 1992--though now it would be against a large majority Romney would have. Indeed Obama could win EV and lose the PV. (And on what grounds would the Republicans object to that? Maybe this is what it would take to sink the damned EV vote system, perhaps?)

Regardless of how we perceive the philosophy of history, whether one thinks events generally happen for deep seated reasons and its course is hard to change, or on the contrary that events are deeply chaotic, turn on a dime, and just about any possibility is as likely as any other, you did not say something along the lines of "Obama could easily have lost the election." You said instead
Obama just barely overcame Romney
See the difference there? You said it did happen that way. But no consistent definition of a thin margin can bracket Obama there. Unless of course instead of talking about what did happen, it is all about your subjective private mental process.

It is implicit that unless you are saying consistently that all US Presidential races are tossups, there is a scale of nearness and closeness in these elections, and that Obama, you believe--not believed on the night of the election nearly six years ago now but believe to this moment based on what has happened since--"barely won." Not that some alternate universe in which he barely won was as likely as ours, along with another one where he barely lost by the same (ATL, since you seem to have been under the impression he won OTL by 5 EV or something like that, when in truth his margin was double that Trump currently enjoys) small margins, and then another where Romney really cleans his clock.

Subscribing to an Alternate History site implies we both entertain the idea that such worlds are imaginable, and we might quarrel about how probable, but they are Out There in some sense.

Fine, but your language has you talking about this world, and when the President is reelected with a 62 EV margin and has double the fraction over 50 percent that the US mainstream pundits celebrated as some kind of crushing mandate when a Bush happened to win it (though his daddy had done far far better in 1988) it is just plain false to call that "barely won."

By that standard most American Presidents "barely win" and Obama in 2012 stacks up pretty well in my scan going back to 1948. He did better in 2012 than Truman, Kennedy, Carter, Gore, or either Clinton ever did, and 2012 was only his personal second best. By the standards you imply, in the plain sense of your phrase clearly meaning one needs even bigger margins to win "comfortably," only Republicans, and Lyndon Johnson in 1964, have been legitimate majority winners since Franklin Roosevelt died.

so I don't think Clinton would be re-elected given that by her own admission she isn't as good as a politician.

Now here, instead of a world where as you say here
It would have been just as easy to reverse actually. Had either Kerry or Romney not made critical gaffes and generally had been better at articulating their message to average voters then they probably would've won.
everything turns on a dime, victory and defeat are as smoke in the wind based on purely chaotic happenstances, in your original post you are in the business of hard inference. HRC<BO in political skill, therefore since Obama was (in your subjective impression, carried over into your false belief about his precarious position in a reality you imagine) on the think edge of failure AND Hillary is not as slick a politician, therefore =>Romney wins QED.

I point out one of your premises in this syllogism is out of line with measurable reality, namely that a one percent margin is pretty massive by the standards of US two party Presidential elections (and the margin between Obama and Romney was a lot bigger than one or two percent by the way, it is 1.1 plus the difference between 47.2 and 50, or 3.9 altogether, double what you have been trying to frame as wispy and weak) and you say "well to heck with logic, politics turns on whims and little gasps here and there." But then you really can't say anything about probabilities at all, can you?

Are we reality based then, or are we playing Calvinball? Sorry to ignore your pollsters, I did my best to forget their foolish twaddle once the election was done. And know that in terms of many other offices than the President, the ones they were not talking about, they had the last laugh.

But meanwhile Obama came out of that election with the most solid mandate for his own office of any Democrat elected since I was born, bettered only by his first election which was even more solid. Obama in fact is by far the most clearly election-winning of every Democratic candidate there has ever been since 1964, and that one election alone stands better than his two of all Democrats since Franklin Roosevelt died.
 
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