WI: Kerry Wins EC, Loses Popular Vote

ZMF

ZMF

Whenever I see a timeline where someone loses the popular vote, it always seems to be a Republican (someone tell me of any TLs where a Dem does it, I haven't seen one yet), but Kerry could have easily done it in 2004. He lost the popular vote by 3% and ended up with an electoral result of 251 (252 if you count the rogue elector for "John Ewards" for President and John Edwards for Vice President).

However, he only lost the state of Ohio by 120,000 votes. Let's say that something butterflies the victory of Ohio to Kerry, pushing him over the limit in the electoral college but does not get him enough to win the popular vote. How would this affect Kerry's term? What happens to the Electoral College now that two elections in a row have not reflected the popular vote? Who wins in 2008? Kerry, McCain, a Clevelanding Bush, or someone else?
 

Marthabutt

Probably both parties want some type of reform for the Electoral College now. Bush probably won't come back though.

If Kerry does well enough,he may get re-elected although I think there's a decent chance he'd lose re-election. I don't think McCain would be the one to beat him though,maybe George Allen avoids his gaffe? Or either Huckabee or Romney manage better campaigns?
 
ZMF

ZMF

Malkenny said:
Probably both parties want some type of reform for the Electoral College now. Bush probably won't come back though.

If Kerry does well enough,he may get re-elected although I think there's a decent chance he'd lose re-election. I don't think McCain would be the one to beat him though,maybe George Allen avoids his gaffe? Or either Huckabee or Romney manage better campaigns?
Click to expand...
Really, I'm not sure if he could get reelected, with the housing crisis and all, which I believe would still be in motion. However, this would have a big affect on the bailouts. Would Kerry still institute Too Big To Fail?

George Allen seems like an interesting person to beat him with. Who'd he choose as a VP? Romney, to balance the votes? A conservative, like Huckabee? Hell, even Lieberman could be a possibility. Maybe he'd choose some maverick to win on a "Change" promise.
 

Emperor Julian

Maybe with his brother being better regarded (leaving office with high approvals, winning the popular vote) Jeb Bush would run for President in 2008.
 
ZMF

ZMF

Emperor Julian said:
Maybe with his brother being better regarded (leaving office with high approvals, winning the popular vote) Jeb Bush would run for President in 2008.
Click to expand...
If Jeb decided to run, he'd have one major hurdle: his charisma. He's shown that he isn't the most charismatic, and when you're running for President, debates, speeches, and remarks matter. Really, a victory for him would be based on his brother's popularity, not his, and establishment supports, and those can only last so long. Perhaps he could win, but it certainly wouldn't be a landslide.
 

High Plains Drifter

Malkenny said:
If Kerry does well enough,he may get re-elected although I think there's a decent chance he'd lose re-election.
Click to expand...
99% likelihood the 2008 Crash still happens. The underlying systemic issues to it from a political perspective were as much based on Democratic party policies as Republican (Lookup Brooksley Born, chairperson CFTC under Clinton, on wiki for an example). No President is going to survive that to get re-elected.
 

dw93

Republicans are even more bitter than they were after 2008 and 2012 and even more bitter than they Democrats were after 2000 and 2016, as Bush was still very popular with Conservatives and Republicans in 2004, so with the GOP in control of congress, Kerry gets very little if anything done. I can see Katrina being handled better and so will Iraq and Afghanistan, but with little else going for him and a financial crisis in 2008, Kerry loses to McCain, Romney, a gaffeless George Allen, or if Dubya is still popular within the GOP, Jeb! Whichever one of them wins probably worsens the economy and loses in 2012. Dubya is remembered as an average President instead of one of the worst.
 

David T

ZachMettenbergerFan said:
Whenever I see a timeline where someone loses the popular vote, it always seems to be a Republican (someone tell me of any TLs where a Dem does it, I haven't seen one yet), but Kerry could have easily done it in 2004.
Click to expand...

Well, the possibility of Kerry winning in the Electoral College for Ohio-specific reasons has been noted here several times, e.g., https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...a-have-electoral-reform.378610/#post-11841858 but in addition in 2012 if Obama did 2.0 percent worse and Romney 2.0 percent better in every state, Romney would narrowly win the popular vote, but Obama--despite losing FL, OH and even VA--would still win with 272 electoral votes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2012
 

FlyingSquirrel

Kerry would definitely have a very difficult time in office if he was elected under those circumstances - the GOP Congress would probably be bent on obstructing him and most of his domestic agenda would be DOA unless he plays hardball and starts vetoing appropriations bills.

In terms of the major controversies of Bush's RL second term and whether they'd still happen:
  • Katrina - Probably not as bad. I suspect Kerry would have done more to make sure the emergency response agencies were ready and pushed for a more aggressive rebuilding effort.
  • Harriet Miers - Not really. He'd have some tough SCOTUS fights, but probably more to the tune of a GOP Senate just not wanting to confirm a left-leaning judge as opposed to questions about whether the person is qualified.
  • Economic crises of 2007-08 - Probably still happen. The sort of policies needed to prevent that probably still didn't have enough "currency" at the time.
  • Iraq - This is a tough one, because Kerry's main stated differences with Bush during the '04 campaign were that he should have gathered more international support and that he mishandled Iraq. Later he came around to the notion that the war was a fundamental mistake, that he shouldn't have voted to authorize it, and that they needed to set deadlines to draw down the U.S. presence, but that was as a Senator. My *guess* is that he would not have done the surge and would have started a withdrawal at some point during his term, albeit probably a relatively slow one. I'm not sure what he could have done to change the internal situation in Iraq, since a lot of the dominoes that eventually fell were already in place before he would have taken office.
 

CaliGuy

Banned
FlyingSquirrel said:
Kerry would definitely have a very difficult time in office if he was elected under those circumstances - the GOP Congress would probably be bent on obstructing him and most of his domestic agenda would be DOA unless he plays hardball and starts vetoing appropriations bills.

In terms of the major controversies of Bush's RL second term and whether they'd still happen:
  • Katrina - Probably not as bad. I suspect Kerry would have done more to make sure the emergency response agencies were ready and pushed for a more aggressive rebuilding effort.
  • Harriet Miers - Not really. He'd have some tough SCOTUS fights, but probably more to the tune of a GOP Senate just not wanting to confirm a left-leaning judge as opposed to questions about whether the person is qualified.
  • Economic crises of 2007-08 - Probably still happen. The sort of policies needed to prevent that probably still didn't have enough "currency" at the time.
  • Iraq - This is a tough one, because Kerry's main stated differences with Bush during the '04 campaign were that he should have gathered more international support and that he mishandled Iraq. Later he came around to the notion that the war was a fundamental mistake, that he shouldn't have voted to authorize it, and that they needed to set deadlines to draw down the U.S. presence, but that was as a Senator. My *guess* is that he would not have done the surge and would have started a withdrawal at some point during his term, albeit probably a relatively slow one. I'm not sure what he could have done to change the internal situation in Iraq, since a lot of the dominoes that eventually fell were already in place before he would have taken office.
Click to expand...
In regards to Iraq, couldn't Kerry encourage the Iraqi government to be more conciliatory to Iraqi Sunni Arabs?
 

David T

ZachMettenbergerFan said:
Whenever I see a timeline where someone loses the popular vote, it always seems to be a Republican (someone tell me of any TLs where a Dem does it, I haven't seen one yet), but Kerry could have easily done it in 2004. He lost the popular vote by 3% and ended up with an electoral result of 251 (252 if you count the rogue elector for "John Ewards" for President and John Edwards for Vice President).

However, he only lost the state of Ohio by 120,000 votes. Let's say that something butterflies the victory of Ohio to Kerry, pushing him over the limit in the electoral college but does not get him enough to win the popular vote. How would this affect Kerry's term? What happens to the Electoral College now that two elections in a row have not reflected the popular vote? Who wins in 2008? Kerry, McCain, a Clevelanding Bush, or someone else?
Click to expand...
David T said:
Well, the possibility of Kerry winning in the Electoral College for Ohio-specific reasons has been noted here several times, e.g., https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...a-have-electoral-reform.378610/#post-11841858 but in addition in 2012 if Obama did 2.0 percent worse and Romney 2.0 percent better in every state, Romney would narrowly win the popular vote, but Obama--despite losing FL, OH and even VA--would still win with 272 electoral votes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2012
Click to expand...

Also, it is arguable that JFK lost the popular vote in 1960. I don't refer to allegations of fraud, but to the fact that the usual figure of an approximately 113,000 popular plurality for JFK runs into the problem that the Alabama slate of Democratic electors included both pro-JFK and unpledged anti-JFK electors (the latter voted for Harry Byrd for president). Most Alabama Democrats just voted for the entire slate of Democratic electors, making no distinction between pro- and anti-JFK ones. (The top unpledged elector got about 324,000 votes, the top JFK one about 318,000, while Nixon got about 238,00 votes in the state.) Arguably, one should prorate the Alabama Democratic vote between JFK and Byrd, in which case Nixon wn the popular vote. See Gordon Tullock's comments at http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1988/11/10/did-nixon-beat-kennedy/ and Sean Trende's at http://dyn.realclearpolitics.com/pr...id_jfk_lose_the_popular_vote_115833-full.html
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top
Top