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This came up today when I was musing about a potential survival of the Progressive Party. IOTL, the Progressive Party approached T.R. about running again in 1916, but he turned the offer down in order to stop a potential split in the Republican vote against Woodrow Wilson. Of course, the Progressives after this relented and supported T.R. by not running a candidate.

What if they didn't? Let's say that the anti-war Progressives (the majority faction of the party, despite it's support for the imperialist-y T.R. in 1912) approach Bob LaFollette about a run in 1916, and Fighting Bob agrees to run against both Hughes and Wilson on a more feverently anti-war platform. Wilson won in 1916 largely because he "kept us out of war", but of course, we all know where that ended up taking us two years later...:rolleyes:

I imagine that LaFollette would do worse than T.R. did in 1912 (because with Wilson also running an anti-war platform there wouldn't be *that* much distinction between the two, if only that LaFollette was more to the left than Wilson), but would still probably do well enough to carry his home state of Wisconsin, plus or minus a few other states that could (a) send the election to the House or (b) give Wilson a more comfortable cushion of votes than IOTL's 1916.

Thoughts?
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