WI Perot For President 2000

Just a recent idea I had.

So, WI Ross Perot won a bigger margin of the popular vote in 1992, and didn't run again in 1996. Bill Clinton's still elected president, and re-elected in 1996, and history is exactly the same. Then, in 2000, former Perot supporters draft Ross Perot into the race once again as an Independent, and now, the 2000 election is a three-way Bush vs. Gore vs. Perot campaign.

Is Perot elected president? Does Perot take votes away from Bush and give Al Gore the presidency? Or does George W. Bush somehow survive Perot's candidacy and win the presidency?

The only problem I see with this scenario so far is that Ross Perot was born in 1930, and would be seventy years old in 2000, seventy-four in 2004, and, if he is re-elected, seventy-eight in 2008.

Still - could it have happened? And what do you think would have happened?
 
no. Leaving aside Perot's age, which is going to be a major knock against him (perhaps even moreso since he is independent), he doesnt really have much hope in this race. The political environment is less conductive to a credible third-party candidate than it was eight years previously, and Perot himself is by now something of a political has-been.
 
Just a recent idea I had.

So, WI Ross Perot won a bigger margin of the popular vote in 1992,

You give Perot a larger margin of votes in 92, he's very likely going to win some electoral votes. That alone is going to cause some major butterflies, including legitimizing the Reform Party as a 3rd option. Clinton would still win of course.

You'd see a lot more Reform candidites running, and some even getting elected in local, statewide and national politics. Perot would pretty much have to run again in 96. If his cards are played right, he could very well out perform Dole, who wasn't exactly an exciting nominee to begin with.

By the time 2000 rolls around, you have enough Reform Party offices at the national level, that a successor to Perot would emerge, though that's a lot of butterflies unleashed.
 
Does the Reform Party even still exist?
It is currently divided in a polarizing rift between Buchanan hardline Conservatives, and a moderate faction led by some university professor or something. So add Civil war on top of being already a marginalized party by the millenia, and the Reform party has no shot. Perot abandoned it long ago, so it's not his puppy anymore.
 
Perot has a son in his 50s, Ross Jr, as well as four daughters. He's only been slightly involved in politics, as part of Romney's campaign in 08.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H._Ross_Perot,_Jr.

If the father was able to stop the split within the Reform Party and keep it together for Jr to run for pres, perhaps the original thread scenario is possible. Gore wins thanks to many conservatives voting for Ross Jr. Even if he gets half of what his father did in 96, Bush has little chance. And Ross Sr has long had one helluva grudge against the Bushes.
 
The electoral college system doesn't help at all. Perhaps if something like the Every Vote Counts Amendment was brought in earlier to get rid of that relic of the age when it wasn't practical to use the popular vote.
 
You forget that 2000 had a higher percentage of Americans voting third party than at most times before Perot. They had TWO well-known third party candidates in Buchanan and Nader. Bush and Gore turned a number of voters off. I'm not sure if Perot would have tilted the vote to Bush ro Gore...or even won, if he had eight years to build up a base.
Two other things to keep in mind. Perot had an animus against Gore and Bush. Gore had debated him over NAFTA on Larry King. Bush claimed credit for the educational changes in Texas that were for the most part due to Perot and the Select Committee on Public Education.
On the other hand, the Commission on Presidential Debates refused to include Perot in 1996, thereby reducing his potential audience and vote. They'd likely do the same in 2000.
 
how about Jesse "the body" Ventura in 2000? he started out as a RP guy and then went just straight independent after that. he was tossed on his ear in 2002 for Tim "I'm meatball and I can't be President" Pawlenty. so Imagine Jesse is a tad more successful and there is your successor?
 
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