The POD is John McCain wins the 2000 South Carolina Republican Primary, and from there goes on to clinch the Republican nomination for President. In the general election, he faces Vice-President Al Gore. Who wins?
 

bguy

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The POD is John McCain wins the 2000 South Carolina Republican Primary, and from there goes on to clinch the Republican nomination for President. In the general election, he faces Vice-President Al Gore. Who wins?

Most likely Gore. With the exception of campaign finance reform (an issue that the voters really didn't care much about), McCain never seemed that interested in domestic policy issues, and 2000 was very much a domestic policy election. Also, based on his 2008 campaign McCain just seems to be a bad presidential candidate. His 2008 campaign was horribly organized (witness their failure to do any significant vetting of Sarah Palin), and McCain showed pretty poor political instincts throughout the campaign as demonstrated by such actions as his trying to select Lieberman as his veep (which likely would have triggered a full scale revolt at the Republican convention) and his trying to cancel one of the debates to deal with the economic crisis (an action which far from making McCain seem statesman like just made him look panicky and thus destroyed the experience advantage argument he had previously had over Obama.) He's also unpopular with the right wing of the party and will have a hard time motivating them to show up on election day. And while McCain does have a heroic military record, being a military hero didn't help Bush in '92 or Dole in '96 (and wouldn't IOTL help Kerry in '04 or McCain himself in '08), so there's little reason to think it will be of much help to McCain in a 2000 election either.
 
John McCain winning the South Carolina Primary is very hard, because George W. Bush is more of a Southerner than him. Perhaps McCain could win Nevada, and coupled with an ATL release of Bush's drunk driving arrest from the 1970s, this gives him the momentum he needs to defeat Bush?

Anyway, most users on this board agree that John McCain would defeat Al Gore by a larger margin. They explain this by noting that McCain would run as an independent maverick against the political establishment. However, I believe that this could go the other way as well. I personally think Gore would defeat McCain, because not only would conservatives not be satisfied with him as their nominee, he has less charisma than Bush, and is weak on foreign policy issues. McCain would stress foreign policy issues and his long record of service, but could not attack Gore on the good economy.

Come the 2002 midterms, George W. Bush doesn't run for re-election as Governor of Texas to step aside for Rick Perry. Bush most likely runs for President again in 2004.
 
John McCain winning the South Carolina Primary is very hard, because George W. Bush is more of a Southerner than him. Perhaps McCain could win Nevada, and coupled with an ATL release of Bush's drunk driving arrest from the 1970s, this gives him the momentum he needs to defeat Bush?

Anyway, most users on this board agree that John McCain would defeat Al Gore by a larger margin. They explain this by noting that McCain would run as an independent maverick against the political establishment. However, I believe that this could go the other way as well. I personally think Gore would defeat McCain, because not only would conservatives not be satisfied with him as their nominee, he has less charisma than Bush, and is weak on foreign policy issues. McCain would stress foreign policy issues and his long record of service, but could not attack Gore on the good economy.

Come the 2002 midterms, George W. Bush doesn't run for re-election as Governor of Texas to step aside for Rick Perry. Bush most likely runs for President again in 2004.

I think by 2008 McCain had a weakness on domestic issues. But in 2000 he had serious cross party appeal based off his support for campaign finance reform. He also had substantial support from independents. The economy was good overall in 2000, but it was already showing signs of weakening with the dot com crash earlier in the year. Gore himself blamed his defeat on this fact. If Bush could barely defeat Gore, I think McCain has a strong chance of narrowly winning both the electoral vote and the popular vote. Bush was actually a weak general election candidate: during the debates he forgot Social Security was a federal program and a DUI scandal broke in the weeks before the election.
 
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