WI: Al Smith won in 1928

In this scenario, the Democrats become the pro-business, conservative, free trade party with a base in the South. They never grow to dominate the black vote and they attract laissez-faire people like Barry Goldwater. The Republican nominee would pursue an agenda similar to the New Deal, with less ties to unions and more emphasis on racial and gender equality given the lack of Southern Democrats to appease. The laissez-faire, classical economic consensus of the past was destroyed in the Depression, replaced by the Keynesian one. The progressive Republicans will dominate in 1932 and steer the party in a more interventionist direction.

I’m not sure I agree. Its one possibility, but I don’t think its the most likely. First, the Republicans had just governed with two very laissez-faire administrations through the 20s and had done very well. In my scenario, the common wisdom will be that Hoover only lost due to a cultural scandal, rather than any repudiation of the GOP’s pro-business background.

Further, the Dems are still the more pro-union party in this scenario, as they have been for some time - unless you suggest them supporting some anti-union policies in the face of the Depression, which I find unlikely. I could see them accepting that in exchange for some other concession, perhaps.

Ultimately, I think this scenario results in both parties “owning” the Depression, since the Democrats have the White House when Wall Street crashes, but the GOP has Congress and had the White House for the previous 8 years. I think, because of this, the parties might converge a bit on economic matters; see how both parties supported Free Trade after WW2, historically. I think the GOP might be a tad more Keynesian than they historically were, and the Dems quite a bit less Keynesian than they historically were.
 
Alright, I'd like to propose a scenario in which Smith wins. Lets pull up a list of the states Hoover won, per wikipedia:
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If we restrict ourself only to those states that did worse than Hoover's national average, we can deny Hoover an electoral college victory

That's true in a lot of landslide victories. For example, if George McGovern had only carried all the states where he got over his national total of 37.52 percent, he would have won with 273 electoral votes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_United_States_presidential_election But of course that doesn't tell us how you get McGovern to carry states like Ohio which he lost by more than 20 points.

The same with 1928: If Hoover had only lost every state where he won by 14.65 points or less, Smith would have won. But I don't see any plausible scenario in which Smith carries Illinois, which would be the "tipping point" state in this scenario. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1928_United_States_presidential_election We're talking after all about a state which not only went for Hoover by 14.65 points in OTL, but where Coolidge got 58.84 percent of the vote in 1924 (Davis and La Follette combined couldn't get 42 percent) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1924_United_States_presidential_election and had easily gone for Hughes in 1916. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1916_United_States_presidential_election Smith couldn't even quite carry Cook County (though he did narrowly carry the city of Chicago) and heavily Protestant Downstate was hopeless (yes, there was some dissatisfaction among farmers but they were not convinced that a Catholic from the sidewalks of New York held the answer).
 
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Part of why the Solid South was so solid was that the South believed in free trade and the GOP was the party of tariffs. Maybe Smith could do better if he could convince the not-deep South that Hoover will enact tariffs?
 
Part of why the Solid South was so solid was that the South believed in free trade and the GOP was the party of tariffs. Maybe Smith could do better if he could convince the not-deep South that Hoover will enact tariffs?

By 1928 the Democrats were convinced that their traditional free-trade stance was a loser--hence their 1928 platform which for the first time endorsed the principle of protection: "Actual difference between the cost of production at home and abroad, with adequate safeguard for the wage of the American laborer must be the extreme measure of every tariff rate." https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/1928-democratic-party-platform (Even in the South support for free trade was not unanimous--Florida and Louisiana wanted protection for sugar and citrus. And some other southerners who supported free trade in general still wanted protection for their local products. "In the course of the struggle the traditional Southern low-tariff line wavered on several fronts and in the end 25 percent of the Southern Representatives voted for the Smoot-Hawley Tariff; only 15 percent had supported the Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922." https://books.google.com/books?id=V3rv2XMG6lQC&pg=PA35)
 
By 1928 the Democrats were convinced that their traditional free-trade stance was a loser--hence their 1928 platform which for the first time endorsed the principle of protection: "Actual difference between the cost of production at home and abroad, with adequate safeguard for the wage of the American laborer must be the extreme measure of every tariff rate." https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/1928-democratic-party-platform (Even in the South support for free trade was not unanimous--Florida and Louisiana wanted protection for sugar and citrus. And some other southerners who supported free trade in general still wanted protection for their local products. "In the course of the struggle the traditional Southern low-tariff line wavered on several fronts and in the end 25 percent of the Southern Representatives voted for the Smoot-Hawley Tariff; only 15 percent had supported the Fordney-McCumber Tariff of 1922." https://books.google.com/books?id=V3rv2XMG6lQC&pg=PA35)

BTW, if the Democrats had come out for free trade, they would probably have lost the two northern states they carried in OTL--MA and RI, both of which were very interested in protecting the textile and shoe industries.
 
That's true in a lot of landslide victories. For example, if George McGocern had only carried all the states where he got over his national total of 37.52 percent, he would have won with 273 electoral votes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_United_States_presidential_election But of course that doesn't tell us how you get McGovern to carry states like Ohio which he lost by more than 20 points.

The same with 1928: If Hoover had only lost every state where he won by 14.65 points or less, Smith would have won. But I don't see any plausible scenario in which Smith carries Illinois, which would be the "tipping point" state in this scenario. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1928_United_States_presidential_election We're talking after all about a state which not only went for Hoover by 14.65 points in OTL, but where Coolidge got 58.84 percent of the vote in 1924 (Davis and La Follette combined couldn't get 42 percent) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1924_United_States_presidential_election and had easily gone for Hughes in 1916. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1916_United_States_presidential_election Smith couldn't even quite carry Cook County (though he did narrowly carry the city of Chicago) and heavily Protestant Downstate was hopeless (yes, there was some dissatisfaction among farmers but they were not convinced that a Catholic from the sidewalks of New York held the answer).

I agreed about your general premise. But I figure something like the dancing scandal could be problematic enough to tilt things - nearly everyone who had problems with Smith’s religion would have even more problems with Hoover dancing with a black woman.
 
I agreed about your general premise. But I figure something like the dancing scandal could be problematic enough to tilt things - nearly everyone who had problems with Smith’s religion would have even more problems with Hoover dancing with a black woman.

I doubt very much that Hoover would flout southern racial etiquette that way (the incident allegedly took place when he was on an inspection tour of Mississippi for flood relief in 1927). But suppose he did and even suppose it was photographed. Maybe that costs him a few southern states, but he can easily win without them. How is it going to cost him states like WI which he won by 9.24 points, or IL which he won by 14.65? Smith's vote in WI had nothing to do with race; it was very strongly correlated with religion. https://books.google.com/books?id=k3xjQ-eSCdUC&pg=PA137
 
I'm a practising Catholic. I'm also moronic.

What would have happened?

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(...and two other things.)
 
Maybe the backlash against the famously wet President Smith insures that Prohibition actually lasts a bit longer than in OTL? ("Smith puts booze ahead of bread!")

(I can actually see at least one distinguished economist--Irving Fisher--arguing that Smith's failure to enforce Prohibition made the Depression significantly worse... https://books.google.com/books?id=JXa9MgztR2AC&pg=PA15)
 
One of the big handicaps the Democrats faced in the 1920's was that they were thought of as the party which brought bad times and the Republicans as the party of prosperity. The panic of 1893 and the ensuing depression happened under Cleveland. There had been a recession in 1913-14 which the Republicans blamed on the Underwood Tariff. The depression of the early 1920's started under Wilson. There was no corresponding disaster associated with Republicans (the downturn following the Panic of 1907 was over well before Election Day 1908). This was a major theme of the Republican in 1928:--a typical GOP campaign card said "HARD TIMES always come when Democrats try to run the nation--ASK DAD-HE KNOWS!" https://books.google.com/books?id=iQ5cBAAAQBAJ&pg=PT215

A Smith administration in 1929-33 would only reinforce the public association of Democrats with hard times, and make it difficult for the Democrats to win the White House for another generation--just as in OTL the memory of Herbert Hoover's administration hurt the Republicans as late as 1948.
 
There probably isn't a very good chance of Smith winning. It seems the odds are just too great.
 
There probably isn't a very good chance of Smith winning. It seems the odds are just too great.

I agree--and that's a lucky thing for the Democrats.

In fact, one reason Smith got nominated so easily (compared to the bitter struggle of 1924) was that Democrats figured that Hoover was probably going to win anyway, so they might as well take a risk. Indeed, some 1924 McAdoo supporters thought that Smith should be nominated in 1928 precisely because they were sure he would lose--and thus discredit the northeastern "wet" wing of the party. "George Fort Milton described this sentiment to McAdoo in August 1927 as a desire to rid the party of the eastern 'menace' by 'nominating Smith and letting him have the terrific trouncing he is doomed to get.'" Douglas B. Craig, After Wilson: The Struggle for the Democratic Party, p. 108. (This was pretty much the same line of thought which led Bryan to mute his criticisms of Alton B. Parker in 1904: https://books.google.com/books?id=53zojBsecxcC&pg=PA157) This line of thinking was not without its risks, however; after all, Smith chose John Raskob to head the Democratic National Committee, and Raskob and his associates made a serious attempt to cement Northeastern, conservative control of the party from 1928 to 1932.
 
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