The election of 1904 was a dismal one for the Democrats, but there were a few rays of light. The most surprising perhaps was in Minnesota, where--even as TR was overwhelming Alton B. Parker in the state by 73.98-18.4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election_in_Minnesota,_1904 --the Democratic candidate for governor, John A. Johnson https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Albert_Johnson defeated the Republican candidate Robert Campbell Dunn by 48.71%-46.13%. https://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=63139 Part of the explanation is that Dunn was a rather roughhewn politician, controversial among his fellow Republicans. But as Johnson's biographer points out:
"The Democratic victory, however, cannot be explained simply in terms of Robert Dunn's unpopularity. Johnson's political experience was recognized by the Democrats, and his legislative record proved him to be an honest and conscientious legislator with a strong spirit of independence. His lack of experience as an administrator was the only criticism made of him, and many people were willing to take a chance on that. He proved to be an amazingly fine campaigner, who showed himself familiar with state problems and who urged progressive but not radical legislation. There is little doubt that his personality won him votes, and the story of his life had a dramatic appeal which was emphasized when the Republicans tried to twist the facts in an effort to defeat him.
"Certainly Johnson's Swedish extraction helped him to win, for the Svenska Amerikanska Posten, the Minnesota Stats Tidning and the Svenska Folkets Tidning, all Swedish newspapers. supported him. Still, the Minnesota Stats Tidning declared Johnson did not win because the Swedes of Minnesota voted for him but because he deserved to win, and the paper had printed a letter written by a friend of Johnson's urging people to vote for him but reminding the readers that a Swede never votes for a candidate because he is Swedish but because he is capable and a man of character..." Winifred G. Helms, John A. Johnson, The People's Governor: A Political Biography (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1949), pp. 144-5
Johnson proved to be a popular governor: the reforms he recommended were popular (stricter railroad rate regulation, an end to the system of free passes for state officials, revision of the insurance code, etc.) and the Minnesota Republican legislature had no problem adopting many of them. Indeed, when Johnson came up for re-election in 1906, the Republicans' only real arguments aganst him were that it was the legislature, not Johnson, which was responsible for the progress Minnesota had made in the past two years, and that the re-electon of Johnson would strengthen the Democratic patronage machine. These arguments were not enough to convince Minnesota voters: Johnson was re-elected with 60.93 percent to 34.78 percent for the Republican Albert Cole. https://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=63154
Democratic governors of northern states were rare during the Theodore Roosevelt administration (it was only in 1908 with the election of Thomas Marshall in Indiana and Judson Harmon in Ohio that the Democrats started to achieve breakthroughs). So it is not surprising that Democrats who disliked the prospect of another William Jennings Bryan candidacy began to look to the re-elected Governor Johnson as a presidential candidate for 1908. This was especially true after Johnson's tactful handling of a miners' strike on the Mesabi Range. Although the miners lost, they appreciated that "Governor John A. Johnson stayed impartial and did not use the state militia to suppress the strike." http://www.mnopedia.org/event/mesabi-iron-range-strike-1907 One of the first anti-Bryanites to recommend Johnson was the influential Henry Watterson of the Louisville Courier-Journal. Watterson conceded that Bryan could have the nominaton if he wanted it, but thought that the Commoner would be no more successful in the general election than he had been in 1896 or 1900, and urged him not to run. Now that Roosevelt was retiring, the Democrats, Watterson thought, had an excellent chance of winning in 1908--if they only nominated someone like Johnson. Watterson's support gained some notice in Minnesota, but most observers there thought Johnson would have a chance only if Bryan supported him.
Another booster of Johnson was Joseph Pulitzer. At the beginning of 1908, Pultizer's New York World published a series of editorials called "Sixteen to One" on sixteen alternatives to Bryan. (Pulitzer had reluctantly backed Bryan in 1900 because of the anti-imperialism issue, but thought he would be a weak candidate in 1908. To those who said Bryan's time had finally come, the World challenged them to name one state that Bryan would carry in 1908 that he had lost in 1896.) Of course the title was also a mocking reference to Bryan's past advocacy of free silver. Anyway, the articles inadvertently showed why Bryan was such a heavy favorite: most of the alternatives the World listed were too old, too obscure, too southern, or too conservative--or else were Bryanites unlikely to challenge their leader. (Incidentally, one of the alternatives, suggested to Pulitzer by George Harvey, was Princeton University President Woodrow Wilson...) However, Pulitzer also included Johnson, who seemed to have real possibilities.
David Sarasohn (The Party of Reform: Democrats in the Progressive Era, pp. 39-40) sums up Johnson's attractions to anti-Bryan Democrats--and the one problem that the Johnsonians had: Johnson's reluctance to run.
"Combining a competent progerssive administration with a strong appeal to his fellow Scandinavians, Johnson won an overwhelming reelection in 1906 and became narionally known in his second term when he peacefully settled a miners' strike on the Mesabi Range, after refusing to send troops. Johnson could boast the solid reform record essential for any Democratic aspirant.
"To the anti-Bryanites, Johnson seemed the answer to a prayer. The son of immigrants, he had left school at thirteen to help support his family. As the editor of a Democratic newspaper, he had supported Bryan twice, thus fulfilling the Commoner's first requirement for a Democrat—but he had done it unenthusiastically, thus meeting the anti-Bryanites' preference. In a front-page statement in the World, he named the traditional Democratic issue of the tariff as the key to the campaign. Called by one magazine "the best-loved public man in the great Northwest," he might bring the Democrats the electoral votes of that section, the prosperous Upper Mississippi Valley that Bryan had never been able to carry. Further, the World predicted hopefully that Johnson's immigrant background and "sane" Democracy would be worth 100,000 votes in New York and New Jersey.
"The Johnsonians had newspapers, some interested Democratic leaders, and a reasonable case. They lacked only a candidate. When Johnson had made no move by January 1908, Henry Watterson, an early booster, announced, "it is too late. The time has gone by, the psychological moment has passed." As late as the end of February, he held back, unsure of even his own Minnesota delegation. "Poor John A. Johnson," a Pulitzer agent wrote his employer in disgust, "is almost daily thrusting away the Presidency." He was also thrusting away the torrent of abuse that would engulf any Democrat foolhardy enough to oppose the party's idol. Upon learning of Johnson's ambitions, Bryan was reported to have shaken his head and murmured, "Poor John, poor John." The Commoner limited itself to remarking, "Now it must be evident that the Bryan opposition cannot rally very enthusiastically around a man who refuses that honor." But other Bryanites, as soon as Johnson talk began, drew a line from the reform governor to James J. Hill, the nominally Democratic railroad boss of the Northwest, based largely on their mutual residence in Minneapolis. The Public announced that Johnson was "generally believed to be a political protege" of Hill. "One thing is certain," Senator Newlands noted; "no man can be nominated who is not progressive.""
Yet it is hardly fair to say that Johnson in 1908 was not progressive; he "favored such measures as the inititiative and referendum, direct election of senators, a graduated income tax, an inheritance tax, and woman suffrage." (Helmes, p. 246) The attempt to link Johnson with Hill was based on the fact that one of Johnson's advisors was Richard T. O'Connor, Democratic boss of St. Paul, who was believed to be tied up with Hill. But Johnson had oppposed the merger which created Northern Securities Company (of which Hill was president) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Securities_Company and nobody who knew Johnson thought that O'Connor or anyone else could get him to do anything he didn't want to. But this was just a sample of the abuse Johnnson was sure to get if he opposed Bryan. Given the mounting odds in favor of Bryan, was it worth it? As Sarasohn notes (p. 41) "throughout February and March, while Johnson hesitated and the World fulminated, state after state instructed its delegates for Bryan. Democratic bosses Roger Sullivan of Chicago and Tom Taggart of Indiana, who had far more to lose than Joseph Pulitzer did, now came to terms with Bryan. Had they not done so, Bryan might easily have captured their delegations out from under them. He conceded nothing for their support and even exacted Sullivan's retirement from the National Committee."
And inexplicably John A. Johnson chose this time to announce his willingness to accept the nomination for the presidency! In a March 27 letter to Swan J. Turnblad, the editor of the Svenska Amerikanska Posten, Johnson wrote:
".. I do not believe that any American citizen should be an active, open candidate for the nomination for the presidency. Any American would appreciate the high honor which could come to him in being sekected as standard bearer of his party. While I recognize that the press has had much to say of me in connection with this high office, I have hitherto avoided any public or private expression regarding my position. Matters have progressed so far, however, that it seems to me that I could at least say, in answer to your interrogation, that if the Democratic party of the nation believed me to be more available than any other man, and felt that by my nomination I could contribute any service to the party and to the nation, I should be happy to be the recipient of the honor. . . .
"I have done nothing and will do nothing in the way of organization to bring about this end [Sarasohn remarks that this was all too accurate--DT] and shall not be a candidate in a sense of seeking the nomination. . . . I desire it to be understood that in no sense am I to be a candidate for the purpose of defeating Mr. Bryan or any other man. . . . In order that there be no doubt I would say . . . that if a nomination came to me, I certainly should not refuse it." (Helmes, John A. Johnson, The People's Governor, p. 255)
By this time Johnson clearly had no chance of winning the presidential nomination. Wattterson, disappointed by Johnson's dilatoriness, had already gone over to the Bryan camp. (He did suggest to Bryan that he should choose Johnson as his running mate, but Bryan rejected this, saying he could never choose a running mate who "is suspected of intimate connections with the Wall Street crowd." https://books.google.com/books?id=R6lI5ueaRgoC&pg=PA261 In any event, Johnson made clear that he would not consider the nomination for the vice-presidency.) Pulitzer also made peace with Bryan, and on the eve of the convention Tammany boss Charles Murphy rejected a desperate attempt by anti-Bryanites to try to get the anti-Bryan vote above the one-third level necessary to deny the Commoner a victory; Murphy said that Bryan's nomination was inevitable. In the end, Johnson only got 46 votes at the convention--22 from MN, 5 from CT, 3 from PA, 3 from RI, 9 from MD, 1 from NH, 2 from GA, 1 from ME. "Begun too late and badly managed, the campaign for Johnson had stirred up a great deal of publicity for him, which even reached overseas to the land of his parents' birth. But the campaign had also produced ill-feeling among the Bryan men, a thing which could have been avoided. Johnson himself had tried to keep his followers from antaqgonizing Bryan. Agan and again he announced that he was not a candidate to 'beat Bryan'; nevertheless the Johnson movement attracted the anti-Bryan Democrats, and the Johnson organizers did not repudiate them." https://books.google.com/books?id=R6lI5ueaRgoC&pg=PA264&lpg=PA264 Johnson did loyally camapign for Bryan after the latter's nomination, though.
The defeat of Bryan was thought by many to give Johnson an opportunity to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 1912. Johnson (who had been re-elected to a third term as governor in 1908) while ruling out seeking another gubernatorial term in 1910 or election to the Senate at any time, pointedly did not rule out a 1912 presidential camapign, simply commenting that it was too early to say. But in 1909 he died:
"The Mayo brothers' surgical outcomes were usually excellent, but this was not always the case. A well-known Minnesotan had four operations in Rochester over a dozen-year period. John Johnson was a newspaper editor and aspiring politician when Will removed his appendix in 1897. Two subsequent surgeries went well. Johnson was in his third term as governor (and a potential ,esidential candidate) when he had a fourth operation in September 1909, following months of episodic abdominal pain. Visiting doctors watched Will and Charlie struggle to get their patient through a long and complex operation for intestinal obstruction caused by adhesions. The governor's death six days after surgery sent a shock through the state and the nation. He was among the 1.7 percent of patients who died after undergoing abdominal surgery at St. Mary's Hospital in 1909, when 3,746 operations of that type were performed there..." W. Bruce Frye, Caring for the Heart: Mayo Clinic and the Rise of Specialization, p. 33. https://books.google.com/books?id=cKGeBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA33
So, could Johnson have won the Democratic presidential nomination in either 1908 or (if he lived) 1912?
(1) For 1908, I would say, No, not as long as Bryan was running. Johnson could have made it more of a contest if he had started earlier, but by 1908 Democrats would see any anti-Bryan campaign as conservative--and indeed Johnson would have no choice but to rely on conservative Democrats to have any chance for the nomination. After the 1904 Parker debacle, Democrats were in no mood to nominate anyone even associated with conservatism. To be sure, some Democrats thought Bryan had gone too far in advocating government ownership of the railroads, but Bryan himself backtracked on that issue sufficiently to satisfy most of the party. If Bryan were to decide not to run (unlikely) or were to die (a bit more plausbile) Johnson might have a chance for the nomination. If nominated, Johnson might have made a better showing against Taft than Bryan did, but I doubt that he could actually win.
(2) For 1912 (assuming that his health, precarious since his youth, held out): here a big problem is that he had done so much to alienate Bryan in 1908--and as Champ Clark learned, it is hard to get the votes of two-thirds of the delegates if Bryan portrays you as a tool of Wall Street. Another problem is that after 1908 and 1910, northern Democratic governors were no longer so rare, and--just looking at governors--Johnson would have competitionn from Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey, Judson Harmon of Ohio, Thomas Marshall of Indiana, etc.
"The Democratic victory, however, cannot be explained simply in terms of Robert Dunn's unpopularity. Johnson's political experience was recognized by the Democrats, and his legislative record proved him to be an honest and conscientious legislator with a strong spirit of independence. His lack of experience as an administrator was the only criticism made of him, and many people were willing to take a chance on that. He proved to be an amazingly fine campaigner, who showed himself familiar with state problems and who urged progressive but not radical legislation. There is little doubt that his personality won him votes, and the story of his life had a dramatic appeal which was emphasized when the Republicans tried to twist the facts in an effort to defeat him.
"Certainly Johnson's Swedish extraction helped him to win, for the Svenska Amerikanska Posten, the Minnesota Stats Tidning and the Svenska Folkets Tidning, all Swedish newspapers. supported him. Still, the Minnesota Stats Tidning declared Johnson did not win because the Swedes of Minnesota voted for him but because he deserved to win, and the paper had printed a letter written by a friend of Johnson's urging people to vote for him but reminding the readers that a Swede never votes for a candidate because he is Swedish but because he is capable and a man of character..." Winifred G. Helms, John A. Johnson, The People's Governor: A Political Biography (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1949), pp. 144-5
Johnson proved to be a popular governor: the reforms he recommended were popular (stricter railroad rate regulation, an end to the system of free passes for state officials, revision of the insurance code, etc.) and the Minnesota Republican legislature had no problem adopting many of them. Indeed, when Johnson came up for re-election in 1906, the Republicans' only real arguments aganst him were that it was the legislature, not Johnson, which was responsible for the progress Minnesota had made in the past two years, and that the re-electon of Johnson would strengthen the Democratic patronage machine. These arguments were not enough to convince Minnesota voters: Johnson was re-elected with 60.93 percent to 34.78 percent for the Republican Albert Cole. https://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=63154
Democratic governors of northern states were rare during the Theodore Roosevelt administration (it was only in 1908 with the election of Thomas Marshall in Indiana and Judson Harmon in Ohio that the Democrats started to achieve breakthroughs). So it is not surprising that Democrats who disliked the prospect of another William Jennings Bryan candidacy began to look to the re-elected Governor Johnson as a presidential candidate for 1908. This was especially true after Johnson's tactful handling of a miners' strike on the Mesabi Range. Although the miners lost, they appreciated that "Governor John A. Johnson stayed impartial and did not use the state militia to suppress the strike." http://www.mnopedia.org/event/mesabi-iron-range-strike-1907 One of the first anti-Bryanites to recommend Johnson was the influential Henry Watterson of the Louisville Courier-Journal. Watterson conceded that Bryan could have the nominaton if he wanted it, but thought that the Commoner would be no more successful in the general election than he had been in 1896 or 1900, and urged him not to run. Now that Roosevelt was retiring, the Democrats, Watterson thought, had an excellent chance of winning in 1908--if they only nominated someone like Johnson. Watterson's support gained some notice in Minnesota, but most observers there thought Johnson would have a chance only if Bryan supported him.
Another booster of Johnson was Joseph Pulitzer. At the beginning of 1908, Pultizer's New York World published a series of editorials called "Sixteen to One" on sixteen alternatives to Bryan. (Pulitzer had reluctantly backed Bryan in 1900 because of the anti-imperialism issue, but thought he would be a weak candidate in 1908. To those who said Bryan's time had finally come, the World challenged them to name one state that Bryan would carry in 1908 that he had lost in 1896.) Of course the title was also a mocking reference to Bryan's past advocacy of free silver. Anyway, the articles inadvertently showed why Bryan was such a heavy favorite: most of the alternatives the World listed were too old, too obscure, too southern, or too conservative--or else were Bryanites unlikely to challenge their leader. (Incidentally, one of the alternatives, suggested to Pulitzer by George Harvey, was Princeton University President Woodrow Wilson...) However, Pulitzer also included Johnson, who seemed to have real possibilities.
David Sarasohn (The Party of Reform: Democrats in the Progressive Era, pp. 39-40) sums up Johnson's attractions to anti-Bryan Democrats--and the one problem that the Johnsonians had: Johnson's reluctance to run.
"Combining a competent progerssive administration with a strong appeal to his fellow Scandinavians, Johnson won an overwhelming reelection in 1906 and became narionally known in his second term when he peacefully settled a miners' strike on the Mesabi Range, after refusing to send troops. Johnson could boast the solid reform record essential for any Democratic aspirant.
"To the anti-Bryanites, Johnson seemed the answer to a prayer. The son of immigrants, he had left school at thirteen to help support his family. As the editor of a Democratic newspaper, he had supported Bryan twice, thus fulfilling the Commoner's first requirement for a Democrat—but he had done it unenthusiastically, thus meeting the anti-Bryanites' preference. In a front-page statement in the World, he named the traditional Democratic issue of the tariff as the key to the campaign. Called by one magazine "the best-loved public man in the great Northwest," he might bring the Democrats the electoral votes of that section, the prosperous Upper Mississippi Valley that Bryan had never been able to carry. Further, the World predicted hopefully that Johnson's immigrant background and "sane" Democracy would be worth 100,000 votes in New York and New Jersey.
"The Johnsonians had newspapers, some interested Democratic leaders, and a reasonable case. They lacked only a candidate. When Johnson had made no move by January 1908, Henry Watterson, an early booster, announced, "it is too late. The time has gone by, the psychological moment has passed." As late as the end of February, he held back, unsure of even his own Minnesota delegation. "Poor John A. Johnson," a Pulitzer agent wrote his employer in disgust, "is almost daily thrusting away the Presidency." He was also thrusting away the torrent of abuse that would engulf any Democrat foolhardy enough to oppose the party's idol. Upon learning of Johnson's ambitions, Bryan was reported to have shaken his head and murmured, "Poor John, poor John." The Commoner limited itself to remarking, "Now it must be evident that the Bryan opposition cannot rally very enthusiastically around a man who refuses that honor." But other Bryanites, as soon as Johnson talk began, drew a line from the reform governor to James J. Hill, the nominally Democratic railroad boss of the Northwest, based largely on their mutual residence in Minneapolis. The Public announced that Johnson was "generally believed to be a political protege" of Hill. "One thing is certain," Senator Newlands noted; "no man can be nominated who is not progressive.""
Yet it is hardly fair to say that Johnson in 1908 was not progressive; he "favored such measures as the inititiative and referendum, direct election of senators, a graduated income tax, an inheritance tax, and woman suffrage." (Helmes, p. 246) The attempt to link Johnson with Hill was based on the fact that one of Johnson's advisors was Richard T. O'Connor, Democratic boss of St. Paul, who was believed to be tied up with Hill. But Johnson had oppposed the merger which created Northern Securities Company (of which Hill was president) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Securities_Company and nobody who knew Johnson thought that O'Connor or anyone else could get him to do anything he didn't want to. But this was just a sample of the abuse Johnnson was sure to get if he opposed Bryan. Given the mounting odds in favor of Bryan, was it worth it? As Sarasohn notes (p. 41) "throughout February and March, while Johnson hesitated and the World fulminated, state after state instructed its delegates for Bryan. Democratic bosses Roger Sullivan of Chicago and Tom Taggart of Indiana, who had far more to lose than Joseph Pulitzer did, now came to terms with Bryan. Had they not done so, Bryan might easily have captured their delegations out from under them. He conceded nothing for their support and even exacted Sullivan's retirement from the National Committee."
And inexplicably John A. Johnson chose this time to announce his willingness to accept the nomination for the presidency! In a March 27 letter to Swan J. Turnblad, the editor of the Svenska Amerikanska Posten, Johnson wrote:
".. I do not believe that any American citizen should be an active, open candidate for the nomination for the presidency. Any American would appreciate the high honor which could come to him in being sekected as standard bearer of his party. While I recognize that the press has had much to say of me in connection with this high office, I have hitherto avoided any public or private expression regarding my position. Matters have progressed so far, however, that it seems to me that I could at least say, in answer to your interrogation, that if the Democratic party of the nation believed me to be more available than any other man, and felt that by my nomination I could contribute any service to the party and to the nation, I should be happy to be the recipient of the honor. . . .
"I have done nothing and will do nothing in the way of organization to bring about this end [Sarasohn remarks that this was all too accurate--DT] and shall not be a candidate in a sense of seeking the nomination. . . . I desire it to be understood that in no sense am I to be a candidate for the purpose of defeating Mr. Bryan or any other man. . . . In order that there be no doubt I would say . . . that if a nomination came to me, I certainly should not refuse it." (Helmes, John A. Johnson, The People's Governor, p. 255)
By this time Johnson clearly had no chance of winning the presidential nomination. Wattterson, disappointed by Johnson's dilatoriness, had already gone over to the Bryan camp. (He did suggest to Bryan that he should choose Johnson as his running mate, but Bryan rejected this, saying he could never choose a running mate who "is suspected of intimate connections with the Wall Street crowd." https://books.google.com/books?id=R6lI5ueaRgoC&pg=PA261 In any event, Johnson made clear that he would not consider the nomination for the vice-presidency.) Pulitzer also made peace with Bryan, and on the eve of the convention Tammany boss Charles Murphy rejected a desperate attempt by anti-Bryanites to try to get the anti-Bryan vote above the one-third level necessary to deny the Commoner a victory; Murphy said that Bryan's nomination was inevitable. In the end, Johnson only got 46 votes at the convention--22 from MN, 5 from CT, 3 from PA, 3 from RI, 9 from MD, 1 from NH, 2 from GA, 1 from ME. "Begun too late and badly managed, the campaign for Johnson had stirred up a great deal of publicity for him, which even reached overseas to the land of his parents' birth. But the campaign had also produced ill-feeling among the Bryan men, a thing which could have been avoided. Johnson himself had tried to keep his followers from antaqgonizing Bryan. Agan and again he announced that he was not a candidate to 'beat Bryan'; nevertheless the Johnson movement attracted the anti-Bryan Democrats, and the Johnson organizers did not repudiate them." https://books.google.com/books?id=R6lI5ueaRgoC&pg=PA264&lpg=PA264 Johnson did loyally camapign for Bryan after the latter's nomination, though.
The defeat of Bryan was thought by many to give Johnson an opportunity to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 1912. Johnson (who had been re-elected to a third term as governor in 1908) while ruling out seeking another gubernatorial term in 1910 or election to the Senate at any time, pointedly did not rule out a 1912 presidential camapign, simply commenting that it was too early to say. But in 1909 he died:
"The Mayo brothers' surgical outcomes were usually excellent, but this was not always the case. A well-known Minnesotan had four operations in Rochester over a dozen-year period. John Johnson was a newspaper editor and aspiring politician when Will removed his appendix in 1897. Two subsequent surgeries went well. Johnson was in his third term as governor (and a potential ,esidential candidate) when he had a fourth operation in September 1909, following months of episodic abdominal pain. Visiting doctors watched Will and Charlie struggle to get their patient through a long and complex operation for intestinal obstruction caused by adhesions. The governor's death six days after surgery sent a shock through the state and the nation. He was among the 1.7 percent of patients who died after undergoing abdominal surgery at St. Mary's Hospital in 1909, when 3,746 operations of that type were performed there..." W. Bruce Frye, Caring for the Heart: Mayo Clinic and the Rise of Specialization, p. 33. https://books.google.com/books?id=cKGeBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA33
So, could Johnson have won the Democratic presidential nomination in either 1908 or (if he lived) 1912?
(1) For 1908, I would say, No, not as long as Bryan was running. Johnson could have made it more of a contest if he had started earlier, but by 1908 Democrats would see any anti-Bryan campaign as conservative--and indeed Johnson would have no choice but to rely on conservative Democrats to have any chance for the nomination. After the 1904 Parker debacle, Democrats were in no mood to nominate anyone even associated with conservatism. To be sure, some Democrats thought Bryan had gone too far in advocating government ownership of the railroads, but Bryan himself backtracked on that issue sufficiently to satisfy most of the party. If Bryan were to decide not to run (unlikely) or were to die (a bit more plausbile) Johnson might have a chance for the nomination. If nominated, Johnson might have made a better showing against Taft than Bryan did, but I doubt that he could actually win.
(2) For 1912 (assuming that his health, precarious since his youth, held out): here a big problem is that he had done so much to alienate Bryan in 1908--and as Champ Clark learned, it is hard to get the votes of two-thirds of the delegates if Bryan portrays you as a tool of Wall Street. Another problem is that after 1908 and 1910, northern Democratic governors were no longer so rare, and--just looking at governors--Johnson would have competitionn from Woodrow Wilson of New Jersey, Judson Harmon of Ohio, Thomas Marshall of Indiana, etc.
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