WI: Former NC Gov Terry Sanford Accepts Humphrey’s Offer to be his VP?

As the tin says, what if former North Carolina Governor Terry Sanford had accepted Humphrey’s offer to be his VP?
 
Would a Southern Democrat running mate help Humphrey win?

Probably no, not Sanford anyway. North Carolina was not really close (Nixon 39.54, Wallace 31.26, Humphrey 29.34) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1968 There is serious disagreement on whether a running mate really helps a presidential candidate in the running mate's home state (Edwards certainly doesn't seem to have helped Kerry much in NC in 2004) but he certainly doesn't help enough to close a ten-point gap. The only really close southern state was Texas--and Humphrey won it. The major states which Humphrey narrowly lost were MO, NJ, OH, IL and CA--and I don't see how Sanford helps him in any of them.
 
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. . . There is serious disagreement on whether a running mate really helps a presidential candidate in the running mate's home state . . .
I might take it further and say there’s some studies which show a V.P. doesn’t add any positives hardly at all. That the whole point in winning elections is to pick a V.P. with the fewest negatives.

Yet this is counter-intuitive (doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s wrong!) because it sure looks like Hubert picking Terry would signal that he wants to be president of the whole country. So, let’s say there’s a tension between what some political science studies show and what might be a quick, casual, but also experienced look. For example, an inspired choice for V.P. does seem to add to post-Convention bump.

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As far as what’s good for the country and what’s going to help your fellow citizens, I’d say it’s almost obvious that you want to pick someone you already know, someone you can work with, and someone whom you respect.
 
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I might take it further and say there’s some studies which show a V.P. doesn’t add any positives hardly at all. That the whole point in winning elections is to pick a V.P. with the fewest negatives.

Yet this is counter-intuitive (doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s wrong!) because it sure looks like Hubert picking Terry would signal that he wants to be president of the whole country. So, let’s say there’s a tension between what some political science studies show and what might be a quick, casual, but also experienced look. For example, an inspired choice for V.P. does seem to add to post-Convention bump.

——————-

As far as what’s good for the country and what’s going to help your fellow citizens, I’d say it’s almost obvious that you want to pick someone you already know, someone you can work with, and someone whom you respect.

FWIW, Sanford's showing as a presidential candidate in 1972 does not inspire any great confidence that he would help much in the South, or even particularly in NC: " Even in the North Carolina primary, however, Wallace beat Sanford by 100,000 votes, and Sanford managed only a fifth-place finish at the 1972 Democratic National Convention with 77.5 votes, behind George McGovern (1,864.95), Henry M. Jackson (525), Wallace (381.7), and Shirley Chisholm (151.95)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_Sanford

Remember, incidentally, that Sanford had not won an election in NC since 1960 and would not again until 1986. 1968 was just a bad time for liberals in the South, including southern ones. Look at Leroy Collins' loss in FL, for example. The "law and order" issue and the white backlash were perhaps at their peak.
 
If anything, I think the case could be made that a Democratic ticket without Muskie may well lose Maine.

Also, Muskie was a bit more dovish than Humphrey on Vietnam https://books.google.com/books?id=mj70AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA149 and after Chicago Humphrey needed to conciliate antiwar Democrats. There was also the argument that he could help the Democrats with the Polish-American vote--though whether this actually happened is unclear. (Humphrey did win the Polish-American vote--not by the margins that Truman had in 1948 or JFK in 1960, but it was unrealistic to think that those margins could be duplicated in 1968. In 1948, the Depression and the New Deal were still vivid memories, and in 1960 there was JFK's Catholicism. And by 1968 the "law and order" issue was hurting the Democrats with Polish-American voters, and it can be argued that it would have hurt them even more without Muskie.)
 
. . . 1968 was just a bad time for liberals in the South, including southern ones. Look at Leroy Collins' loss in FL, for example. The "law and order" issue and the white backlash were perhaps at their peak.
Seems like there would be some way to sell "New South" of economic growth to the voters?

maybe with the specific of education promoted? I can see this being effective politically, even though I'm not that much of a sincere believer myself. For example, I don't think STEM is the savior of the human race because it mainly just means that we compete more intently for what remains a relatively small number of jobs.

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I think demographics explain 80% or more of crime. That the baby boom generation reached its peak around 1953 or '54 and that young men commit age 16 to 25 commit far more than their share of violent street crime.

It gets tricky because, yes, this sure looks like a gender difference. And we do want to be hesitant before saying that gender differences in other human fields are what we should most talk about. And even in crime, I think there are plenty of female criminals who have committed interesting, colorful crimes for the history books, but also ones which have caused real human harm
 
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