WI: Mo Udall won the '76 Democratic Primaries?

Who would his running mate be?
What would the platform be?
Would he win in '80?
How would the world change?
 
Well to begin with Mo Udall vs. Gerald Ford, I believe Udall has a distinct advantage over Ford, much more than Carter.

Carter was a gaffe machine. He has legendarily bad gaffes from the ‘76 campaign trail that shock me! Udall would at his worst wouldn’t discuss his own lust. It’s my honest opinion that Mo Udall would have filled the void if Carter didn’t run.

Udall, being a left-leaning Rep. from Arizona, would probably seek out a moderate Southernern or Northeasterner for the nomination. Senator Lloyd Bentsen from Texas would be a decent choice, probably the best pick put of those who ran for Pres in ‘76.

Udall/Bentsen would be a pretty strong ticket against, Ford/Dole. Udall’s got a ton of personality and Bentsen doesn’t really look boring facing against Dole that year.

Udall would campaign and govern as a different sort of liberal and probably pull that off better than Carter. Despite the folksy air around Udall, he was a Congressman and would know where to begin with working alongside Congressmen (he did write a book on how to be one!) and there’s no chance in hell that he’d forgo a Chief of Staff.

Overall, I think Udall’s term would be similar to Carter (who ran as a conservative and governed as a liberal in a lot of ways), but he’d just be better prepared for the task of it. Plus, butterflies could happen make Iran and any hostage crisis stemming from it a non-issue, which would give Udall an easy re-election run against Reagan (or whoever but it’d probably be Reagan), assuming he remained heathy enough for the office at least until ‘80.

As far as after Udall, if his health is a big enough issue we could see him resigning over it at some point in his second term. VP Lloyd Bentsen in 1984 would be a fine if dull candidate (assuming a good economy and relative peace and stability), but Sitting President Lloyd Bentsen would be a LOT stronger and would probably easily sweep the election.

He also was good enough to be Dukakis’s VP pick in ‘88 in OTL, so if Udall were to resign in his final year we could get a 9 year long Bentsen Administration (assuming that his Presidency is marked by general social and economic stability).

It’d be interesting to see how the Republicans in ‘92 would recon with the fact that their last elected President was 20 years ago and cheated to win (even if he would’ve probably won anyway). I could see the Conservative Movement in the GOP going in and out of fashion by then (‘84 and ‘88 probably having pretty hardcore conservatives, but ‘92 having a moderate as the cons all fail).
 
I don't quite understand why some people assume that Udall would be a much stronger candidate than Carter. Carter won ten of the eleven ex-Confederate states as well as Kentucky. In presidential elections from 1968 through 2004, not one of these states voted Democratic unless a southerner headed the ticket--with the sole exception of Texas in 1968, where LBJ's influence produced a narrow Humphrey victory. Udall did quite poorly in the primaries in these states when he entered them at all https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries,_1976 and I think he would have trouble in them in November.

Now it is of course perfectly possible that Udall will make up for this by carrying enough western and northern states that Carter lost. Possible, but by no means certain. Take Illinois. Sure, Udall will do better than Carter did on Lake Shore Drive and in the North Shore suburbs of Chicago. But Carter, though narrowly losing the state, won a lot of southern Illinois counties, which, though ancestrally Democratic, had soured on the national Democratic Party in recent years, rejecting the Catholic JFK in 1960 and the liberal (certainly by southern Illinois standards!) Hubert Humphrey in 1968. I just don't think Mo Udall's wit would be much appreciated in southern Illinois (away from Carbondale). Udall is more likely than Carter to carry California, and that is important, but I am not sure that and Oregon and a couple of other states Carter lost would be enough to offset the South. I doubt that Udall would even carry Arizona--after all, he had never won statewide office there, and in 1978 he even had some trouble in his own congressional district: https://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=30930

I understand why so many people here like Udall, but if the more witty, erudite candidate always won, Stevenson would have won in a landslide in both 1952 and 1956.
 
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