James M. Cox is elected president in 1920.

Status
Not open for further replies.
The obvious answer is that it's only possible if Hughes wins in 1916. But there is perhaps one way Cox can win in 1920 even if Wilson wins in 1916:

The POD is a healthier TR who is alive in 1920--and once again denied the GOP presidential nomination by the Old Guard. Angered, he once again runs a third-party campaign, allowing Cox to win with something like the 34.1 percent of the popular vote he got in OTL... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920_United_States_presidential_election

This is very unlikely, I know, but it's the only even-slightly-plausible way to get Wilson in 1916 and Cox in 1920 I can think of.
 
Granted that the Democrats' cause in 1920 was hopeless anyway, Cox was an astonishingly bad candidate. In his last campaign address he denounced African Americans and German Americans for supporting the GOP and announced that "Every traitor in America will vote tomorrow for Warren G. Harding." "People walked out of the hall." https://books.google.com/books?id=Uia4A04q8dMC&pg=PT378

(Cox was incidentally just about the worst candidate for getting any German-American votes. As governor of Ohio, he insisted that teaching in German be banned in private and parochial schools as well as public ones, over the opposition of the Catholic Church. Then he chose FDR was his running mate--and German American rightly or wrongly assumed that this Roosevelt shared the views of the other one toward Germany. Small wonder Cox got 16.17 percent of the vote in WI--not all that far ahead of Debs!--18.19 percent in ND (which Wilson had actually won in 1916) etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1920_United_States_presidential_election)
 
Top
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top