WI: Eisenhower Does Not Run in 1952?

In 1952, the presidential election was the first of the eventual two battles between Republican nominee, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Democratic nominee, Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson, Eisenhower won both, but had to be coaxed into running in the first place in 1952; only doing so after prodding.

What if Eisenhower does not run, what happens? presuming Stevenson is still the Democratic nominee in this scenario at least.
 
If Eisenhower sticks to his "I don't plan on running" pledge Taft is nominated but Eisenhower scores a couple of embarrassing primary wins without even trying. Taft is probably forced to pick a more Dewey wing VP like, say...Harold Stassen (I know he's become a running gag in Shared Worlds, but he's legit at this time). If Truman looks over at the GOP, says "fuck it", and runs for another term I think he limps into another term in the White House. Otherwise, say with a Stevenson candidacy, Taft wins the election with much shorter coattails than Ike had. Taft dies on schedule, and Stassen guides us through the fifties with a much larger Democratic Congress. This has some consequences. Ernest McFarland almost certainly beats Barry Goldwater short-circuited that career and delaying Lyndon Johnson's grab for actual power, but perhaps (and I've only read the first 2/3rds of Caro's first book) moves him into a position where his own self doubt doesn't keep him from running in 1960. Stassen picks a running mate, Nixon's probably in trouble right about now, so I'd go with Christian Herter of Massachusetts; this ticket wins. I'd say the nation remains largely the same as OTL, though I can see Stassen/non-Eisenhower isn't as effective as Ike.
 
If Eisenhower sticks to his "I don't plan on running" pledge Taft is nominated but Eisenhower scores a couple of embarrassing primary wins without even trying. Taft is probably forced to pick a more Dewey wing VP like, say...Harold Stassen (I know he's become a running gag in Shared Worlds, but he's legit at this time). If Truman looks over at the GOP, says "fuck it", and runs for another term I think he limps into another term in the White House. Otherwise, say with a Stevenson candidacy, Taft wins the election with much shorter coattails than Ike had. Taft dies on schedule, and Stassen guides us through the fifties with a much larger Democratic Congress. This has some consequences. Ernest McFarland almost certainly beats Barry Goldwater short-circuited that career and delaying Lyndon Johnson's grab for actual power, but perhaps (and I've only read the first 2/3rds of Caro's first book) moves him into a position where his own self doubt doesn't keep him from running in 1960. Stassen picks a running mate, Nixon's probably in trouble right about now, so I'd go with Christian Herter of Massachusetts; this ticket wins. I'd say the nation remains largely the same as OTL, though I can see Stassen/non-Eisenhower isn't as effective as Ike.

I have a feeling that Stevenson would beat Taft honestly.
 
I think Taft would be able to beat Stevenson; the people were sick of Democrats by that point and he was a skilled campaigner.

If Eisenhower sticks to his "I don't plan on running" pledge Taft is nominated but Eisenhower scores a couple of embarrassing primary wins without even trying. Taft is probably forced to pick a more Dewey wing VP like, say...Harold Stassen (I know he's become a running gag in Shared Worlds, but he's legit at this time). If Truman looks over at the GOP, says "fuck it", and runs for another term I think he limps into another term in the White House. Otherwise, say with a Stevenson candidacy, Taft wins the election with much shorter coattails than Ike had. Taft dies on schedule, and Stassen guides us through the fifties with a much larger Democratic Congress. This has some consequences. Ernest McFarland almost certainly beats Barry Goldwater short-circuited that career and delaying Lyndon Johnson's grab for actual power, but perhaps (and I've only read the first 2/3rds of Caro's first book) moves him into a position where his own self doubt doesn't keep him from running in 1960. Stassen picks a running mate, Nixon's probably in trouble right about now, so I'd go with Christian Herter of Massachusetts; this ticket wins. I'd say the nation remains largely the same as OTL, though I can see Stassen/non-Eisenhower isn't as effective as Ike.
Truman's approval rating was in the twenties at this time, Taft would probably beat him soundly.
 
I think Taft would be able to beat Stevenson; the people were sick of Democrats by that point and he was a skilled campaigner.

Even with Taft being an open isolationist? I don't know if the American public could stomach that in the middle of the Cold War.
 
Taft would beat Stevenson. The voters were tired of the Democrats because they controlled the presidency fire 20 years.
 
I think Taft would be able to beat Stevenson; the people were sick of Democrats by that point and he was a skilled campaigner.

Truman's approval rating was in the twenties at this time, Taft would probably beat him soundly.

I think that if any Democrat can win that election it's Truman, if only through the momentum of incumbency. I think it would require a united Democratic Party for the party faithful to hold their nose and vote for him, but...in 99 out of 100 scenarios, yeah the Republicans are going to win this one whoever they put up. The only real difference will be the margin.

/Edit
Of course, I tend to subscribe to Litchman's Keys to the White House theory of elections so that if Truman were the Democratic nominee, faced no major contest at the convention, no third party emerges, and Taft fails to be charismatic then the Democrats have just enough Keys to win the popular vote in 52. A bit of a longshot.
 
I think that if any Democrat can win that election it's Truman, if only through the momentum of incumbency. I think it would require a united Democratic Party for the party faithful to hold their nose and vote for him, but...in 99 out of 100 scenarios, yeah the Republicans are going to win this one whoever they put up. The only real difference will be the margin.

/Edit
Of course, I tend to subscribe to Litchman's Keys to the White House theory of elections so that if Truman were the Democratic nominee, faced no major contest at the convention, no third party emerges, and Taft fails to be charismatic then the Democrats have just enough Keys to win the popular vote in 52. A bit of a longshot.

The keys system has only four keys in Nixon's favor in 1960--yet not only did he come close to winning the popular vote in 1960 but there are good arguments that (completely disregarding allegations of fraud) he *did* win it, since what is usually counted as the JFK vote in Alabama was in fact a vote for a mixed slate of pro- and anti-JFK Democratic electors. (I know it has been argued that if not for religion JFK would have won more easily in 1960 but the very fact that you have to go to additional factors, not counted in the keys, shows a weakness in the system.)

Using the keys system mechanically in 1952 IMO is wrong because for example he treats foreign policy under Truman as a wash--success in Europe, failure in Asia. But to the voters any successes of containment in Europe were *far* outweighed by the endless war in Korea. And again it is against all common sense to say that incumbency is an advantage when the incumbent gets 22% job approval ratings...
 
The keys system has only four keys in Nixon's favor in 1960--yet not only did he come close to winning the popular vote in 1960 but there are good arguments that (completely disregarding allegations of fraud) he *did* win it, since what is usually counted as the JFK vote in Alabama was in fact a vote for a mixed slate of pro- and anti-JFK Democratic electors. (I know it has been argued that if not for religion JFK would have won more easily in 1960 but the very fact that you have to go to additional factors, not counted in the keys, shows a weakness in the system.)

Using the keys system mechanically in 1952 IMO is wrong because for example he treats foreign policy under Truman as a wash--success in Europe, failure in Asia. But to the voters any successes of containment in Europe were *far* outweighed by the endless war in Korea. And again it is against all common sense to say that incumbency is an advantage when the incumbent gets 22% job approval ratings...

Well, that's assuming that the only consequence of Truman running again is that Key flipping in that direction. What would actually happen is a floor fight that is perhaps worse than the one IOTL and if Truman manages to survive that, at least one faction of the party would splinter off as they did in 48. If I'm honest with the scenario, Truman running would probably result in no change in the scenario didn't end up worse. Not dissimilar to the 1920 election in Ruins of an American Party System. The book itself points out how certain keys have a ripple effect that lead to other keys being toppled as many President's deep in scandal, as Truman was due to Kefauver's investigations, take themselves out of contention and flip the incumbency Key. And that's not to discount the actual campaigning itself. Gerald Ford bottomed out at 29% in the summer of 1976 but brought the thing close by the end. A campaigning incumbent is different than one that's not. So...I don't know.

As for 1960, I would tend to argue that such a thing as what happened in Alabama is outside of the scope of the system and should be treated the same as certain states in 1868, 1872, and 1876 which is to discount Alabama altogether as being part of the overall popular vote. That may be a justification to fit the outcome, I admit.
 
...lGerald Ford bottomed out at 29% in the summer of 1976 but brought the thing close by the end. A campaigning incumbent is different than one that's not. So...I don't know.

As for 1960, I would tend to argue that such a thing as what happened in Alabama is outside of the scope of the system and should be treated the same as certain states in 1868, 1872, and 1876 which is to discount Alabama altogether as being part of the overall popular vote. That may be a justification to fit the outcome, I admit.

(1) Gerald Ford's job approval ratings were never under 37%, according to Gallup. (And that 37% was in January and March 1975, when the recession was hitting the country hard, when the Republicans had just done poorly in the 1974 elections, and when memories of the Nixon pardon were still fresh.) In 1976, Ford's job approval ratings were never under 45%--not even in June 1976, when he was trailing Carter badly. (The fact that Ford's job approval rating was actually a net positive in June--45-40--should have suggested that Carter's huge lead was unlikely to hold up.) http://www.gallup.com/poll/23995/gerald-ford-retrospective.aspx

(2) With regard to 1960, the real question is not whether Nixon or JFK won the popular vote, but whether a system that has four keys in Nixon's favor and nine against him has something wrong with it when the result was a virtual tie. I know that Lichtman is fond of saying that the system is a binary one, that it does not intend to predict the *margin* of a candidate's victory, but surely results like this suggest that even if the system has never actually been wrong, it *could* have gone wrong under other circumstances and might go wrong in the future. (Of course if Nixon had won a clear popular plurality in 1960, Lichtman, writing in the 1980's, would have devised a different key system!)

I know that it has been argued that in 1960 JFK's Catholicism made the race much closer than it would otherwise have been. But even if this is true (as it may well be, though of course to some extent religion helped as well as hurt JFK, though it probably hurt him more than it helped) it means that we sometimes have to take account of factors not found in the keys.

(3) But, you might say, even if anyone can after the fact devise a system to explain all previous elections, Lichtman's system has worked for all the elections *after* he promulgated the system. True enough, but note Jonathan Bernstein's observations:

".... What he has is a combination of things that are generally causes (such as the economy) of incumbent party success, things that are effects of incumbent party success (such as the incumbent winning renomination uncontested and third party challenges), and things that are arbitrary and dubious (such as whether the candidates have "charisma").

"It's not surprising that you can "predict" the winner with that batch of stuff. After all, while Lichtman's system has worked since he debuted it for the 1984 cycle, a much simpler system that predicts the incumbent party wins barring an election-year recession also successfully calls the winners from 1984 through 2008, at least if you count 2000 for Gore (as Lichtman does). That doesn't make Lichtman wrong as much as it just means his system isn't telling us much that we don't already know otherwise." http://plainblogaboutpolitics.blogspot.com/2011/08/not-buying-keys.html

(In 1952 to be sure there was no recession, but there was a seemingly endless war...)

(4) A lot of Lichtman's keys are *correlated* with electoral success rather than necessarily a *cause* of it. Take incumbency. Undoubtedly, a party is more likely to win a presidential election when its candidate is an incumbent. But this does not necessarily indicate that incumbency is an advantage. Rather, maybe it is simply a matter that *usually* the fact that an incumbent is running for re-election means that he has only been in office for four years, and absent a war or recession voters are willing to give him a second chance. By 1952, however, Truman had been in office for more than seven years, and the Democratic Party for twenty, and time-for-a-change sentiment was mounting. This would have hurt *any* Demcorat, but there is certainly no reason to think it would have hurt Truman *less* than Stevenson--even if Truman had won the nomination with little opposition (which is altogether possible--after all, Hoover had little Republican opposition for renomination in 1932, largely because the Republicans realized they were doomed by his record no matter who they nominated).

(5) In addition, in 1992 Lichtman and his co-author actually disagreed whether the keys pointed to a Clinton or a Bush victory! One reason: "In 1992, Lichtman called the "recession" key, Key 5, as lost for Bush even though subsequent analysis indicated the recession had ended in the summer. "The perception was there during the campaign, and that's what counts," Lichtman says." http://www.lionhrtpub.com/orms/orms-2-04/frwhitehouse.html But if we are going to go on "perceptions" then part of the attraction of the model--that it lets us get past polls to more "objective" indicators--is lost.

In short, while Lichtman's system does point to some factors related to success in presidential elections, I wouldn't take it too religiously. If the system would point to a Truman victory over Taft in 1952, I would say that the system would be wrong.
 
How about Senator Knowland getting the Republican nomination? I think he was acceptable to pro- and anti-Taft Republicans and could be a compromise candidate. Reputed to be a bit of a dim bulb, though, and that might hold him back.
 
Of course, I tend to subscribe to Litchman's Keys to the White House theory of elections so that if Truman were the Democratic nominee, faced no major contest at the convention, no third party emerges, and Taft fails to be charismatic then the Democrats have just enough Keys to win the popular vote in 52. A bit of a longshot.
Truman was already facing a primary challenge before he dropped out in 1952 and before Eisenhower had entered the race, so the POD of Eisenhower just choosing not to run won't work.

For a third term of Truman, I think you need the Korean war ended by the end of 1951. That will give Truman a boost going into the primaries and might convince Eisenhower that it's unnecessary to run.
 
(1) Gerald Ford's job approval ratings were never under 37%, according to Gallup. (And that 37% was in January and March 1975, when the recession was hitting the country hard, when the Republicans had just done poorly in the 1974 elections, and when memories of the Nixon pardon were still fresh.) In 1976, Ford's job approval ratings were never under 45%--not even in June 1976, when he was trailing Carter badly. (The fact that Ford's job approval rating was actually a net positive in June--45-40--should have suggested that Carter's huge lead was unlikely to hold up.) http://www.gallup.com/poll/23995/gerald-ford-retrospective.aspx

(2) With regard to 1960, the real question is not whether Nixon or JFK won the popular vote, but whether a system that has four keys in Nixon's favor and nine against him has something wrong with it when the result was a virtual tie. I know that Lichtman is fond of saying that the system is a binary one, that it does not intend to predict the *margin* of a candidate's victory, but surely results like this suggest that even if the system has never actually been wrong, it *could* have gone wrong under other circumstances and might go wrong in the future. (Of course if Nixon had won a clear popular plurality in 1960, Lichtman, writing in the 1980's, would have devised a different key system!)

I know that it has been argued that in 1960 JFK's Catholicism made the race much closer than it would otherwise have been. But even if this is true (as it may well be, though of course to some extent religion helped as well as hurt JFK, though it probably hurt him more than it helped) it means that we sometimes have to take account of factors not found in the keys.

(3) But, you might say, even if anyone can after the fact devise a system to explain all previous elections, Lichtman's system has worked for all the elections *after* he promulgated the system. True enough, but note Jonathan Bernstein's observations:

".... What he has is a combination of things that are generally causes (such as the economy) of incumbent party success, things that are effects of incumbent party success (such as the incumbent winning renomination uncontested and third party challenges), and things that are arbitrary and dubious (such as whether the candidates have "charisma").

"It's not surprising that you can "predict" the winner with that batch of stuff. After all, while Lichtman's system has worked since he debuted it for the 1984 cycle, a much simpler system that predicts the incumbent party wins barring an election-year recession also successfully calls the winners from 1984 through 2008, at least if you count 2000 for Gore (as Lichtman does). That doesn't make Lichtman wrong as much as it just means his system isn't telling us much that we don't already know otherwise." http://plainblogaboutpolitics.blogspot.com/2011/08/not-buying-keys.html

(In 1952 to be sure there was no recession, but there was a seemingly endless war...)

(4) A lot of Lichtman's keys are *correlated* with electoral success rather than necessarily a *cause* of it. Take incumbency. Undoubtedly, a party is more likely to win a presidential election when its candidate is an incumbent. But this does not necessarily indicate that incumbency is an advantage. Rather, maybe it is simply a matter that *usually* the fact that an incumbent is running for re-election means that he has only been in office for four years, and absent a war or recession voters are willing to give him a second chance. By 1952, however, Truman had been in office for more than seven years, and the Democratic Party for twenty, and time-for-a-change sentiment was mounting. This would have hurt *any* Demcorat, but there is certainly no reason to think it would have hurt Truman *less* than Stevenson--even if Truman had won the nomination with little opposition (which is altogether possible--after all, Hoover had little Republican opposition for renomination in 1932, largely because the Republicans realized they were doomed by his record no matter who they nominated).

(5) In addition, in 1992 Lichtman and his co-author actually disagreed whether the keys pointed to a Clinton or a Bush victory! One reason: "In 1992, Lichtman called the "recession" key, Key 5, as lost for Bush even though subsequent analysis indicated the recession had ended in the summer. "The perception was there during the campaign, and that's what counts," Lichtman says." http://www.lionhrtpub.com/orms/orms-2-04/frwhitehouse.html But if we are going to go on "perceptions" then part of the attraction of the model--that it lets us get past polls to more "objective" indicators--is lost.

In short, while Lichtman's system does point to some factors related to success in presidential elections, I wouldn't take it too religiously. If the system would point to a Truman victory over Taft in 1952, I would say that the system would be wrong.

1) My apologies, I was looking at the head to head Carter vs Ford on Gallup (http://www.gallup.com/poll/23995/gerald-ford-retrospective.aspx) where Ford had 29% to Carter's 62% at some point.

2-5) I suppose I came off as more defensive than I really feel about it, as I tend to take Litchman as the rule of thumb for elections rather than necessarily an actual truth...regardless of what my Election Game has to say on the matter. It does stand to reason that any predictive model would have some failure point, especially when applied in retrospect, so 1960 could be the race that proves the rule as it were. I mostly tend to think of it as a system that is good for determining the logistics on the ground when thinking about election results. The Keys tell me that Truman was the only Democrat that could have won that election, but it required absolutely everything going right for the Democrats in 1952, which is improbable. I tend to believe that to be true. Barring, I don't know, Eisenhower becoming a Democrat, but that wasn't the question here.

/Edit

Truman was already facing a primary challenge before he dropped out in 1952 and before Eisenhower had entered the race, so the POD of Eisenhower just choosing not to run won't work.

For a third term of Truman, I think you need the Korean war ended by the end of 1951. That will give Truman a boost going into the primaries and might convince Eisenhower that it's unnecessary to run.
Oh, I agree. As I was saying in response to David T, I just happen to think that Truman was the only Democrat that could have pulled off a miracle win, but that would require the stars to line up exactly right. Very, very unlikely, but possible. The most likely result in this scenario is that the moderate Republicans try to get the primary delegates Ike wins despite not running to back someone like....Earl Warren to stop Taft, but failing. Then Taft wins and dies.
 
Top