McGovern Kennedy 72

All Things Considered did a long story on Thomas Eagelton. They said that McGovern hoped Ted Kennedy would be his running mate. w What i Ted said yes? I don't think he could have helped much. At best this ticket could have scored in the low forties in the popular vote and carried Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Minnesota,and South Dakota. Is anybody else mote optimistic?
 
Eagleton not having to resign helps Mcgovern slightly, I think. He'll probably lose to Nixon in a landslide, but it'll probably be a smaller one.

Getting Kennedy to agree to be his VP candidate will be tricky though, as in OTL Kennedy knew that Mcgovern was going to lose. Their's also Chappaquiddick to consider, which is at this point a fresh memory. Even EMK would probably admit that it was too soon after that for him to run for higher office. No doubt he'd hold more votes than Eagleton/Shriver though, as those who weren't going to vote for Ted as VP because of Chappaquiddick wouldn't vote for him anyway, regardless of Nixon and co dragging it up.
 
Not quite ASB...but Ted Kennedy had already turned down Vice-President Humphrey's offer 4 years earlier to be on the 1968 Democratic ticket. It was probably too soon after Chappaquiddick (3 years) . Plus, McGovern did not look like a winner against Nixon. As the heir to Camelot, it is difficult to see Ted playing second-fiddle anyway...
 
Depends when the PoD for this is.

1) If you have Eagleton get hit by a bus before he can slander McGovern anonymously to the newspapers, then there will be no "acid, amnesty and abortion" rumors, and it will be much easier for working-class Democratic voters to rally behind McGovern. (He favored amnesty, but the other two are twisting the truth - he was pro-life and believed in drug decriminalization, not legalization.) Then the party would be kept together and he'd actually have a very good chance of winning the Presidency with Ted Kennedy as his running mate.

2) If Kennedy agrees to serve as McGovern's running mate at the convention, he'd still have a shot: the polls for that hypothetical ticket against Nixon were relatively impressive, and an urban Catholic would help unite the party and dispel the image of McGovern as a candidate representing solely blacks and students. It would be an uphill battle, but it could result in victory - and even if it didn't, it wouldn't be a total landslide. If Kennedy accepts quickly, the convention could be wrapped up with little trouble, and then McGovern would be able to make a prime-time speech without being delayed until the middle of the night by pissed-off delegates nominating Chairman Mao and Abbie Hoffman.

3) If the PoD is that Kennedy agrees to replace Eagleton after he drops off the ticket, nothing will really be accomplished. The D's might win a few more percentage points and do better in the Northeast, but that's it.
 
It would have made fund raising a lot easier if EMK was the choice from the start. It would have helped a lot with Unions and working class people. Kennedy could have got George to talk about his military service and that would have helped with the blue collar. Plus EMK could have been a big time attack dog on Watergate. Many traditional democrats would have stayed aboard on this ticket. McGovern would have still lost but he would have had over 200 electoral votes. That makes it easier for him to run again in 76.
 
I'm with Paul here. Nixon would throw Chappaquiddick at them nonstop along with whatever CREEP can find on Kennedy's private life. IOTL he had PIs tailing Kennedy, expect that to ramp up considerably if somehow Kennedy agrees to be Veep. Which I highly doubt.
 
Nixon still wins big...

Before the mid-to-late 1990s, when the Republicans were still very competive at the presidential level in large electoral votes states like California, Illinois, Michigan, and Pennsylvania and in parts of the Northeast (New Jersey and 3-4 New England states), a Democratic ticket comprised of 2 northern liberals made very little sense.

Humphrey chose Senator Muskie of Maine as his running mate in 1968, in part because he knew that independent George Wallace would win several states in the deep South anyway. McGovern could justify the Senator Eagleton choice on the basis that Missouri was at least a border state and the somewhat conservative Eagleton could appeal to southerners and border staters. Without a southerner or border stater on the ticket, McGovern was essentially conceding the once solidly Democratic South to Nixon. Adding the South to the traditionally Republican western and midwestern base all but guarranteed a Nixon win in 1972.

Ted Kennedy as the 1972 Veep candidate from the get-go obviously generates some excitment and avoids the damage of the whole Eagleton debacle. However, even if Ted Kennedy added 5% of the popular vote to the Democratic ticket in all 49 states that McGovern lost in OTL (all at Nixon's expense for a total swing of 10% in every state), the McGovern-Kennedy ticket still only wins 4 more states--Rhode Island, Minnesota, Wisconsin and McGovern's own South Dakota than in OTL. The McGovern-Kennedy ticket also comes very close to winning Oregon's 6 EVs. That adds only 29-to-35 EVs to McGovern's pathetic 17 EVs (from Massachusetts and the District of Columbia) in OTL. So, Nixon still wins big by carrying 44-45 states with 480+ EVs.
 
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McGovern could justify the Senator Eagleton choice on the basis that Missouri was at least a border state and the somewhat conservative Eagleton could appeal to southerners and border staters. Without a southerner or border stater on the ticket, McGovern was essentially conceding the once solidly Democratic South to Nixon. Adding the South to the traditionally Republican western and midwestern base all but guarranteed a Nixon win in 1972.

Ted Kennedy as the 1972 Veep candidate from the get-go obviously generates some excitment and avoids the damage of the whole Eagleton debacle. However, even if Ted Kennedy added 5% of the popular vote to the Democratic ticket in all 49 states that McGovern lost in OTL (all at Nixon's expense for a total swing of 10% in every state), the McGovern-Kennedy ticket still only wins 4 more states--Rhode Island, Minnesota, Wisconsin and McGovern's own South Dakota than in OTL. The McGovern-Kennedy tciket also comes very close to winning Oregon's 6 EVs. That adds only 29-to-35 EVs to McGovern's pathetic 17 EVs (from Massachusetts and the District of Columbia) in OTL. So, Nixon still wins big by carrying 44-45 states with 480+ EVs.

McGovern's left-wing and anti-racist credentials already made him unlikely to take the South, which had been trending Republican ever since Barry Goldwater. Eagleton was a last-minute pick and was chosen not for his border-state status but because he was one of the only people in the party willing to serve as VP.

In any scenario where Ted Kennedy was willing to put his name on the ballot, the PoD would have to be that the urban Catholic core of the Northern Democrats was solidly behind McGovern rather than alienated as in OTL (believing he was a surefire loser, and an usurper who represented lefty special interests rather than their political base). Perhaps this could be because of some vulnerability that made beating Nixon more of a priority (and a possibility) that year - a bad recession, or an early revelation of corruption and dirty tricks.

If this was the case, and McGovern had broad-based support within the party, Kennedy's boost wouldn't be the only thing helping out his campaign - he could win endorsements from organized labor and get DNC help to fix his atrocious campaign commercials. It would be a much more evenly matched contest, although Nixon would probably still be able to pull a few dirty tricks and win in the end.
 
It would have been a futile effort. A big Nixon win either way, as I agree with what has been said about northeastern liberals on a ticket. Understand that Chappaquiddick hurt Teddy K in the eyes of everyone. The staunch hawkish Irish Catholics of the North would not vote for McGovern, and the Italian Catholics loved Nixon (Rodino said it himself). Still a losing cause.
 
1972 (like 1964 and 1984) is one of those landslide election years where the Veep selection of the loser would not have made any significant difference.
 
1972 (like 1964 and 1984) is one of those landslide election years where the Veep selection of the loser would not have made any significant difference.

What? Mondale could have won the election if he didnt go for the Hail Mary with Ferraro and focused on the issues, not the deficit.
 
Reagan had the luxury of running against a lackluster Democrat who wasted his time attacking Reagan on deficits and pulling the Democratic Party rightward on economics while ignoring the Soviet threat. That, plus the ultimate hail mary of all time, Geraldine Ferraro, didn't exactly add anything to the ticket. Mondale would have done better had he actually campaigned on the fact that there was still ~7% unemployment in 1984, and that Reagan had pushed the United States into the deepest recession since the Great Depression with his supply side policies before ultimately ditching them for Keynesian growth strategies.

TNF in another thread. Mondale was a good man, but he believed Inthe myth of Reagan. His picking Ferraro was more the quarterback throwing the hail Mary when he's only down three and needs to get into good kicking position.
 
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