WI McGovern was the Democratic nominee in 1984?

I know this isn’t very likely, and I hope this is not a completely implausible scenario, but I believe he did finish third in Iowa, so if he could energize the liberal base and stand out some more he might have had a shot at being a factor in the primary. My question is, if George McGovern had succeeded at becoming the nominee of the Democrats in 1984 for the second time, would history have changed in any significant fashion? He’d have lost in a landslide of course, but would he have done any better then Mondale did in OTL? Would his nomination and subsequent lost have caused the Democratic party to undergo any sort of transformation? Would there be any difference in the 1988 Democratic primary’s? I imagine had McGovern’s picked a “good” running mate this person could be a significant contender in 1988, but they face the risk of there role on a McGovern ticket hurting them more then it helps them.


Any thoughts on what things would change in this scenario, if anything?
 
Setting aside the chances of McGovern winning the Democratic Presidential nomination after 1972 are basically zero….

Maybe the DLC pressure is higher.

Mondale was an old-line Humphrey style liberal (of which many were still around) while McGovern was firmly of the utter failure New Left faction.

I could see the DLC making more of an impact in both 1988 and 1992, consequence being the Democratic Party looks like Republican-lite earlier than 1994 and Clinton's triangulation strategy.

I don't know how that would work for them (badly, I suspect), but McGovern II would probably compel them rightwards.
 
McGovern was firmly of the utter failure New Left faction.

That's how he came to be perceived (here's a link to an article by paleo-conservative thinker Bill Kauffman, that suggests perceptions aren't always reality in regards to the character of Senator McGovern), while in many ways, he was really an agrarian populist with many views that would today be associated more with the far right than any sort of left. For example, he was not an appeaser, so much as he was an isolationist (and an open admirer of Charles Lindbergh and his America First Committee).
 
You have to love that OTL had a politician called McGovern, of all things, and yet nobody ever thought of nominating him.
 
He will lose, Much worse than in 1972. McGovern is too unpopular to the moderate Americans.

I doubt he would have done much worse than Mondale (the 41% of the electorate that voted for Mondale would have probably voted for just about any Democratic nominee; they were the diehards in a Republican landslide), although just worse enough that Reagan would have managed a 50-state sweep, with an Electoral College count of 535-3. Mondale barely carried his home state of Minnesota, which to this day hasn't voted Republican since (you guessed it) 1972. Mondale pretty much got the same people McGovern got 12 years earlier, only they were a slightly larger portion of the population by that time.

While I know this isn't the conventional view, in my estimation, the country has been moving leftward since 1960 (in the partisan sense of being more friendly to Democrats, not necessarily in absolute, ideological terms), a fact which was occassionally obscured by shorter term trends (most notably, Reagan's intense personal popularity during the 1980s, and Clinton's disastrous first two years in office handing the GOP control of both Houses of Congress in '94). The fact that even a Michael Dukakis, who lost 40 states, was still able to capture Oregon (which hadn't voted Democrat since 1964, Washington state (which hadn't voted Democrat since 1968), and came very close in states like Missouri and, of all places, Montana, is indicative of the early fruition of a long-term shift away from Republicans, and towards the Democrats, that would only accelerate after the end of the Cold War. What I suspect will be Obama's minor landslide victory later this year will be the ultimate fruition of that shift (quite possibly fortelling a long-term trend in the other direction, although that may not begin until the 2020s or whatnot).

Anyway, not trying to take this thread off-topic with a lot of partisan chitchat, but sometimes its difficult to discuss alternative history without going into the past and near-future. And anyway, my political views are obscure enough that I can assure one and all that I have said nothing intended to advance them in this post.
 
You have to love that OTL had a politician called McGovern, of all things, and yet nobody ever thought of nominating him.

Oh they nominated him in '72 - but the verdict of the electorate was 'No way in hell are we going to let you McGovern the country.' ;)
 
How about McGovern - Hart ?

He was McGovern's 1972 campaign manager, and ran in 1984 as well as (disastrously) in 1988

If he sits on the ticket with McGovern in 84, then he would be front runner in 88 and might manage not to blow his campaign up in his face (having more experience)


Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
How about McGovern - Hart ?

He was McGovern's 1972 campaign manager, and ran in 1984 as well as (disastrously) in 1988

If he sits on the ticket with McGovern in 84, then he would be front runner in 88 and might manage not to blow his campaign up in his face (having more experience)


Best Regards
Grey Wolf

Democrats do not (in general) re-nominate losers, Bryan and Stevenson being exceptions that demonstrate some kind of deep love Democrats have for amazing, doomed orators. McGovern was not an amazing orator.

Hart also was the candidate who was running as the reform candidate for the Democrats in '84. Mondale and his guys rather viscously put down his candidacy.

'84 was a pre-ordained disaster anyway though, so why bother?
 
'84 was a pre-ordained disaster anyway though, so why bother?

Pretty much the only quasi-plausible reason I can come up with for nominating McGovern: he'd take the fall when nobody else would be willing to step up and provide opposition. I have to agree with the assessment that the overall result would remain the same; only the margin would change: if anything, he'd underperform Mondale in OTL. Somehow, I can't see him carrying Democrat bastions like Hawaii, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts: the assessment of a 50 state Reagan sweep, yielding only DC to the Democrats, would be on target.

In the AH vein, assuming that TR won in 1912 as the Republican candidate, I could see the Democrats turning reluctantly to Bryan in 1916 for a fourth time: nobody else would be willing to run against an enormously popular TR (and Wilson's stubbornness/ego would preclude a rematch at that point). In that event, Bryan would carry pretty much the first five or six states that joined the Confederacy, and probably little if anything else. I doubt he'd even get Texas.
 
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