WI: Dukakis didn't run in 1988

Is it true that the Dukakis campaign was responsible for alerting the media about Biden forgetting to source one of his speeches? Because if so obviously that doesn't happen here and butterflies really start flapping with another viable candidate.

Otherwise it's between Gore and Gephardt. Jackson isn't getting it in 88. Ironically Dukakis would be a solid VP choice for both Gore and Gephardt in this scenario being a Northerner.

As to who wins the general it's pretty close, but voter fatigue favors the dems. Dukakis only did so poorly due to poor campaigning, so it's there race to lose.
 
Without Dukakis it is incredibly likely that nominee will end up being Gephardt. Gore basically has very little chance of winning the nomination in 1988, considering the campaign he was running at that point.

Biden's 'liberal' usage of Kinnocks' speech will probably still come out as it did IOTL. But the scandal may end up being less damaging without Sasso being able to spin it so badly against Biden, and it may be possible that Biden will be able to keep running for a little while longer.

Of course Biden is going to end up dropping out at some point anyway, with his health problems that he had at that point.

As for how well Gephardt would do in the general? Better than Dukakis, sure. However he is certainly by no means the favourite and I would probably rate it as a tossup in the end.
 
If the POD is around Dukakis deciding not to run then I guess Cuomo probably doesn't change his mind. (He'd be a frontrunner if he did, though.)

Clinton decided very abruptly not to run AFTER Dukakis was already in. Since we're past the POD, his decision could change.
 
If the POD is around Dukakis deciding not to run then I guess Cuomo probably doesn't change his mind. (He'd be a frontrunner if he did, though.)

Clinton decided very abruptly not to run AFTER Dukakis was already in. Since we're past the POD, his decision could change.

Clinton doesn't have any chance as long as Gore is in the race.
 
. . Paul Simon. .
Here’s a Feb. 1987 interview with him.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?94722-1/lets-put-america-back-work

He wrote a book entitled Let’s Put America Back To Work. He’s saying, look, we’re not going to let people starve. It makes a heck of a lot more sense to pay them to do something rather than to pay them to do nothing. Like the New Deal WPA, turn the liability of unemployment into a national asset.

Yes, Illinois Senate Paul Simon of the bow tie !
 
My thoughts:

Dukakis ran possibly one of if not the worst campaign in the history of presidential elections. If Dukakis doesn’t run, the candidates chances of win go up greatly.

Gore was running a southern strategy of sorts and probably wouldn’t have expanded his horizons enough to win.

Jackson really isn’t a viable candidate under any context.

Biden just may not win. Maybe VP 20 years early.

Babbitt well... (laughs)

I think it’s between Simon and Gephardt. Simon probably could win. He has a history of being tough on crime having been responsible for a mob bust in Chicago in the ‘50s so he has that going for him. He had also been a one term senator with representative experience so he had not too much baggage. Gephardt I honestly don’t know as much about but I feel since he was a 6 term representative, he’ll have some baggage. If anything, it’s to a lesser scale than Dukakis. But both men aren’t particularly charismatic so that may be a damper.

Overall, Simon probably would have won a decent victory. Gephardt maybe.
 
Clinton doesn't have any chance as long as Gore is in the race.

This is too simplistic, but I take your point that three southern Dems- you've forgotten Jackson here- are going to make a southern strategy difficult. Of course that's assuming Clinton relies on a southern strategy, which is not likely if he is the chosen candidate of the DLC. So really I guess I don't take your point?

I'm not sure how many second-choice votes are set to move between Clinton and Gore, as Gore ran a much more conservative campaign in '88 than Clinton did in '92. So I'm not sure how much Gore's presence affects Clinton on the ideological front.
 
This is too simplistic, but I take your point that three southern Dems- you've forgotten Jackson here- are going to make a southern strategy difficult. Of course that's assuming Clinton relies on a southern strategy, which is not likely if he is the chosen candidate of the DLC. So really I guess I don't take your point?

I'm not sure how many second-choice votes are set to move between Clinton and Gore, as Gore ran a much more conservative campaign in '88 than Clinton did in '92. So I'm not sure how much Gore's presence affects Clinton on the ideological front.

I haven't forgotten Jackson. The only thing candidacies by both Clinton and Gore would do would be to make sure that Jackson does even better in the South than in OTL (for example, he will carry North Carolina, which he very narrowly lost to Gore in OTL). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries,_1988

As for Gore in 1988 being much more conservative than Clinton n 1992, please remember Sister Souljah and Clinton's making a point of returning to Arkansas to oversee Ricky Ray Rector's execution... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricky_Ray_Rector

Yes, there were differences between Clinton and Gore, but fundamentally both of them ran as southern "New Democrats." Of course neither could win with the South alone, but in both cases the South was their initial base. Gore never got the breakthrough in the North that he wanted in 1988. But neither would Clinton have in 1988 especially with Gore as competition. It took Dukakis' loss to convince many northern Democrats that only a southern New Democrat was electable (which ironically was probably not true in 1992!).
 
I haven't forgotten Jackson. The only thing candidacies by both Clinton and Gore would do would be to make sure that Jackson does even better in the South than in OTL (for example, he will carry North Carolina, which he very narrowly lost to Gore in OTL). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries,_1988

As for Gore in 1988 being much more conservative than Clinton n 1992, please remember Sister Souljah and Clinton's making a point of returning to Arkansas to oversee Ricky Ray Rector's execution... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ricky_Ray_Rector

Yes, there were differences between Clinton and Gore, but fundamentally both of them ran as southern "New Democrats." Of course neither could win with the South alone, but in both cases the South was their initial base. Gore never got the breakthrough in the North that he wanted in 1988. But neither would Clinton have in 1988 especially with Gore as competition. It took Dukakis' loss to convince many northern Democrats that only a southern New Democrat was electable (which ironically was probably not true in 1992!).

I think you may be underestimating the degree to which Gore was running to the right in '88. Clinton fired occasionally to the right, true, but only to triangulate himself as a centrist against his occasional jukes to the left. Gore was trying to keep a generation of conservative white Democrats in the south from leaving the party, which they subsequently did. He embraced the right in '88.
 
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