What if John McCain switched parties in 2001?

After the 2000 election, the Senate was left split 50-50. Democrats sought a Republican who could switch to their party, and eventually found one, with Jim Jeffords switching to being an independent, caucusing with the Democrats. However, they also tried to get Lincoln Chafee or John McCain to switch, both unsuccessful. According to a Politico article, John McCain almost did the same thing. What would have been the result of this happening?

Here is the article in question: https://www.politico.com/magazine/s...nce-almost-left-the-gop-what-about-now-215437
 
McCain gets voted out in the next election, even a recall before that

Possible to go from 'Maverick' to 'Turncoat'

Arizona was far more Red than Blue, unlike Vermont
 
McCain did seriously consider switching - but not to the Democrats. He thought of becoming an independent, but ultimately choose to remain a Republican. The fact is McCain was always a conservative through and through, while being unorthodox in his support for campaign finance reform and opposition to the Bush tax cuts.
 
The democrats got a lot more benefit of having McCain inside the republican tent. He voted on the democrat line sufficient times.
 
It's tough, right? As we saw, the man was...ugh it's early in the morning, what's the positive way the press has been spinning "desperate to stay in power until death took him?" Something like..."committed public servant...something something..."

Anyway, he wanted to forever be in office. I think he'd have to be convinced that his days in the senate were numbered. You could really up the antipathy in the 2000 campaign; it was already torturously mean to McCain, but I think that the Rove well of dickery never runs dry, so maybe he digs deep and goes full scorched earth on McCain, souring the party entire on the man, vowing a primary challenger for him and all sorts of devilry. I mean the nation's not primed in 2000 for Trumpism, but perhaps if it were, he would've jumped then.

So if all bridges are burned in the GOP during the 2000 campaign, he might leave. 2004 is a tough reelection year for him, but if he moderated to the left (the way he hardened to the right IOTL 2008) he's probably got the VP slot. Kerry/McCain is a compelling kind of narrative for your Prime Time Soap Opera demographic, and represents Democrats trying a very similar strategy that they tried in 2000. Nothing easier than not changing.

While Bush is still a tough boss to beat in 2004, John Kyl's a bit more vulnerable in 2006 (assuming McCain distinguished himself on the campaign trail). Do we think McCain can manage to do five points better than John Pederson, for whom wikipedia hasn't even bothered to dig up a picture? It isn't impossible. He can't rest on his laurels in 2012, but if the crazies are coming out of the rocks as per OTL and one of them wins the GOP nomination (much more likely with him out of the way) he coasts to victory again.

Under this scenario, assuming other events go nominally according to OTL, we'd have 60 Dems in the senate in 2008. And he and Lieberman would basically run the damn government, is my prediction, dictating terms for cloture. I can even imagine a scenario where the two of them and maybe their two esteemed Republican colleagues from Maine are pretending the entirety of the government swings around their orbit (this would be because McCain likes a show of bipartisanship, not any inherent power of the moderate Republicans or need to compromise).

Obama and Pelosi are probably content to let it happen, with Reed requiring some sort of show that he's the one that's REALLY forcing moderate Republican sensibilities on the party, NOT McCain!

Might be we leave healtchare alone in this situation, or pass something much less significant a la Rahm Emmanuel's suggestions. Cap and trade is on the menu. Campaign finance reform, of course.

But yeah, the tough thing is that initial part, getting him to feel like there isn't a home for him in the GOP anymore.
 

samcster94

Banned
McCain did seriously consider switching - but not to the Democrats. He thought of becoming an independent, but ultimately choose to remain a Republican. The fact is McCain was always a conservative through and through, while being unorthodox in his support for campaign finance reform and opposition to the Bush tax cuts.
Would Reform have fit him had they survived??
 
Would Reform have fit him had they survived??

The problem is that Reform was too disorganized to work without Perot as a unifying figure, and on the whole neither Republicans nor Democrats were upset enough with their established parties to join a new one. They never even elected a single federal representative or Senator. McCain could have jumped into the 2000 Race as a Reform candidate and gotten around 20% of the vote, but after that his political career would be over.
 
So I wrote about this two years ago. I argued that in the context of the times, McCain could well have been the Democratic presidential nominee in 2004 (regardless of whether he formally declared himself a Democrat or continued to be an independent, a la Bernie Sanders).

I got a lot of understandable pushback on that, but I continue to think it was plausible. In the early 2000s, there was a broad centrist political consensus over domestic policy (with Republicans of course more enthusiastic about tax cuts and Democrats pushing for more incremental increases in the social spending and non-financial regulation). And there was a broad spirit of pragmatism within the party and even on the left, which felt fairly marginal. McCain's voting record actually swung considerably to the left in the first Bush term, with McCain co-sponsoring virtually all major Democratic bills, including things like cap-and-trade proposals, drug re-importation, and background checks on guns. Notably, his top political aides at the time, Marshall Whitmann and John Weaver, both (for a time) switched party registration.

Moreover, the Democratic Party mood throughout the 2000's was so anti-Bush they were willing to welcome virtually any former Republican who would criticize Bush. Jim Webb was considered a star when he first won in 2006, especially in the left "blogosphere" and a lot of people pushed for him to be the 2008 vice presidential nominee. Especially given that McCain had already moved left in 2001, I suspect his past transgressions would be largely overlooked. Not true in today's climate, mind you, but in the mid 2000s that wasn't as clear.

One major objection that gets cited is Democrats' opposition to the Iraq War. McCain was an avid supporter of the intervention, and many asked why his imagined 2004 campaign wouldn't suffer the same fate as the OTL Joe Lieberman campaign. The difference here is that Lieberman didn't just back the war - he outright pushed back on virtually any criticism of the Bush Administration over it, downplayed revelations of torture, and spent his campaign largely attacking the Democratic left. McCain was OTL actually far more critical of the war's conduct than Lieberman. And OTL Democrats did nominate John Kerry, who also refused to repudiate his vote until quite late in that campaign (September 2004).

Now, to be clear, I don't predict at all smooth sailing. A lot of McCain's fawning press coverage would dissipate once he was just a Democrat, not a renegade Republican. And though I think he well could have been the party establishment's choice for the 2004 nomination, he would have gotten pushback from some of the base. I imagine he'd have a more drawn out primary win than Kerry did, for example. And I imagine the relationship between John McCain and the Democratic Party would sour quite quickly post-2004 win or lose.

If he wins, McCain would likely appoint Clintonites to a lot of staff and cabinet roles, but his inner circle would be dominated by his personal loyalists. Like him, mostly former Republicans. He'd be considered a traitor from the Republican Congress and would get zero congressional support for anything. Meanwhile, his own executive actions would likely fall short of what even the center-left Democratic policy establishment wanted. He'd quarrel with labor, most Democratic interest groups, and his own aggressive tack abroad would alienate him from a lot of Democratic rank-and-file even before the financial crisis hits.

So I imagine an unhappy term, with him quarreling with both parties, and I could see him leaving the party post-presidency. If, for example, a 2009-2013 Romney term is followed by an Obama presidency, easy to imagine McCain emerging as an Obama critic and declaring himself an independent again.
 

samcster94

Banned
The problem is that Reform was too disorganized to work without Perot as a unifying figure, and on the whole neither Republicans nor Democrats were upset enough with their established parties to join a new one. They never even elected a single federal representative or Senator. McCain could have jumped into the 2000 Race as a Reform candidate and gotten around 20% of the vote, but after that his political career would be over.
Minnesota's Governor race was a weird anomaly.
 
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