WI: President Harding lives to the election and scandals come out the wazoo

Heya folks, working on a potential timeline where this is the primary PoD, I've thought out some vague ideas for what might happen but I'm far from an expert.

In one fell swoop, the Teapot Scandal breaks out and Harding is tarnished by association and Harding's affair comes out, which swings it big time.

In a worst case scenario for President Harding, I have him hemorrhaging votes to both the Democrats and the Progressives compared to Coolidge IOTL. The resulting electoral map sees Davis perform quite well, taking 'back' the border states of Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland and Delaware in addition to Indiana; and squeak out narrow wins in Colorado, Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Oregon.

For La Follette, he takes Wisconsin as OTL, but racks up 82 votes by sweeping the upper Great Plains and California and Washington

However - the state that I'm mostly wondering about is could this flip New York Democratic.

OTL, Davis took just under 30% of the vote there, Coolidge won it with 55% and La Follette took about 15%. Assuming Harding loses a big chunk of support there, could we see a narrow Democratic victory by having 7%~ vote Davis and 15%~ vote La Follette? Resulting in (roughly)

Davis 37%
Harding 33%
La Follette 30%

and swinging the election from a deadlock to a Democratic victory?

Is that too much? A deadlock would probably see Harding take another term (right?), which I have a plan for if that does happen but I wanted some more opinions on what would happen before I dive too far down either path in my writing.
 
Until DNA testing came along, it wasn't possible to prove that Nan Britton's daughter was Harding's. As for Teapot Dome, I don't think it would have been fatal to Harding's chances unless it could be shown he was personally involved, which AFAIK has never been shown, though obviously his choice of Albert Fall as Secretary of the Interior would look unwise in retrospect. (Yet at the time Fall was appointed, nobody considered him corrupt, though some progressives did object to him as too friendly to corporate exploitation of public land.) The same is true of other scandals. As I wrote here a few years ago, "As for the other major scandal, the Veterans Bureau, Harding certainly can be criticized for allowing the head of the Bureau, Charles Forbes, to go on vacation to Europe, during which Harding accepted his resignation--yet as Ferrell points out "At that time, January, 1923, the president had no clear evidence against Forbes which would put him in jail." (Ferrell, p. 121) As for Daugherty's relations with American Metal, Daugherty was after all never convicted..." https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...o-lose-the-1924-election.319451/#post-9316175 As I note in that post, Robert Murray in The Harding Era thought that Harding would have been re-elected in 1924, and I am inclined to agree.
 
Until DNA testing came along, it wasn't possible to prove that Nan Britton's daughter was Harding's. As for Teapot Dome, I don't think it would have been fatal to Harding's chances unless it could be shown he was personally involved, which AFAIK has never been shown, though obviously his choice of Albert Fall as Secretary of the Interior would look unwise in retrospect. (Yet at the time Fall was appointed, nobody considered him corrupt, though some progressives did object to him as too friendly to corporate exploitation of public land.) The same is true of other scandals. As I wrote here a few years ago, "As for the other major scandal, the Veterans Bureau, Harding certainly can be criticized for allowing the head of the Bureau, Charles Forbes, to go on vacation to Europe, during which Harding accepted his resignation--yet as Ferrell points out "At that time, January, 1923, the president had no clear evidence against Forbes which would put him in jail." (Ferrell, p. 121) As for Daugherty's relations with American Metal, Daugherty was after all never convicted..." https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...o-lose-the-1924-election.319451/#post-9316175 As I note in that post, Robert Murray in The Harding Era thought that Harding would have been re-elected in 1924, and I am inclined to agree.

All valid points, thank you for responding with such depth :) as I said, I’m far from an expert on Warren Harding.

I do however recall there being some very... in depth... letters between himself and Nan Britton. I didn’t go into detail in my original post but how I envisaged it working out is Harding and Britton have a falling out of some kind and Harding ceases providing for his daughter’s welfare, as (I’m pretty sure) he did while he was alive. Britton then releases all of these letters and the flames are fanned by Democrats and the media. He could deny it, but a slip of the tongue to the wrong person and he can admit to it.

Hopefully that made sense; that combined with the loss of luster from the other scandals, which of course wouldn’t really involve him personally but it could be perceived as such, could tank his popularity in the months leading up to the election, unless I’m completely wrong haha.
 
The really embarrassing letters were the ones to Carrie Phillips, especially because of her pro-German views. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrie_Fulton_Phillips But there wasn't much chance they would come out as long as she was being paid...

You’re right, thank you, I obviously got my mistresses mixed up.

It could happen that she ceases being paid. The question of course, is how?

From what I gather, it was the Party, not Harding personally that was paying her off. Maybe someone in party leadership gets into a pissing match with Harding and the payments mysteriously cease being sent?

If this admittedly rather unlikely series of events occurs and it breaks out to the public sometime in say, October of 24, is it enough to shatter him?

If it’s ridiculouslt unlikely that it would occur I’ll just go down the other route of having him in charge another four years, that’s not the most important part of what I have planned anyways luckily. Still early stages so it won’t ruin my writing.
 
If it’s ridiculouslt unlikely that it would occur I’ll just go down the other route of having him in charge another four years

Of course that's not guaranteed either. He might just die in 1925 instead of 1923. Istr he was considering Charles G Dawes as replacement VP.
 
Until DNA testing came along, it wasn't possible to prove that Nan Britton's daughter was Harding's

Maybe Harding writes a letter to someone he knows he can trust, and admits that he has an illegitimate daughter? Wouldn't prove that it is Nan Britton specifically, but would still damage him thoroughly.
 
Maybe Harding writes a letter to someone he knows he can trust, and admits that he has an illegitimate daughter? Wouldn't prove that it is Nan Britton specifically, but would still damage him thoroughly.

Iirc, Grover Cleveland made just such an admission and still got in.
 
You are looking at an "AHC Republicans lose the 1924 US presidential election" when OTL the election was either first or second (I forget which, I think second) in national popular vote percentage margin for the winning Republican candidate. Its that hard to do with a POD after 1920. Its hard to grasp a hundred years later how dead in the water electorally the Democrats were in the 1920s. And if the Democrats themselves had thought they had a chance, they never would have nominated a non-entity like Davis anyway.

The Republicans have to do more than nominate a non-entity with a mistress and some crooked friends to screw this up. Really you need to have the Great Depression happen eight years early. Or the Republicans go to against their campaign platform, join the League of Nations, and get the United States involved in another war, say in the Middle East, and even they they would probably get through at least 1924 OK.
 
The best chance for the Democrats in 1924 would be a McAdoo who had not made the mistake of working for the oil companies and thus making himself, rather than the Republicans, the chief political victim of Teapot Dome. (It might also have helped if he had at least been mildly critical of the Klan: pro-Klan delegates would still prefer him to the "wet" Underwood, let alone to Smith.) McAdoo was supported by the railway brotherhoods, which remembered his pro-labor record running the railroads during the War and in OTL were among the leading supporters of La Follette after Davis was nominated. Without the support of the railway brotherhoods and labor in general, it is conceivable that La Follette would withdraw (in OTL his candidacy seems to have hurt Davis more than Coolidge). In a two way race between this alt-McAdoo and Coolidge--or even a Harding who lived and was somewhat, though not too badly tarnished with scandals--the Republicans would still be the favorites, but it would be much closer than in OTL. (The chief handicap of the Democrats, apart from their own divisions, was the return of prosperity after the depression of the early 1920's. In particular, "After three very bad years, farm prices in August 1924 hit their highest peak in forty-seven months..." Paolo Coletta, William Jennings Bryan: Political Puritan 1915-1925, p. 194. This of course also hurt La Follette.)
 
You’re right, thank you, I obviously got my mistresses mixed up.

It could happen that she ceases being paid. The question of course, is how?

From what I gather, it was the Party, not Harding personally that was paying her off. Maybe someone in party leadership gets into a pissing match with Harding and the payments mysteriously cease being sent?

If this admittedly rather unlikely series of events occurs and it breaks out to the public sometime in say, October of 24, is it enough to shatter him?

If it’s ridiculouslt unlikely that it would occur I’ll just go down the other route of having him in charge another four years, that’s not the most important part of what I have planned anyways luckily. Still early stages so it won’t ruin my writing.
If the Party was paying her off, and Harding was aware of it, then he was also part of covering it up. (How eerily familiar.). Depending on how much he was aware of many of the alleged scandals, and how much he may have been part of any cover ups, I can see a House impeachment, Senate trial, and removal from office.
 
After reading this feedback I think I’ve got a decent idea of how it could plausibly turn out: Harding gets a second term it’s just not quite the smashing victory of OTL Coolidge. He’s still able to take it fairly handily because yeah, with a little research it’s clear that that Davis fellow doesn’t really have much of a chance of a victory, at least in 24. and I’ve pretty much scrapped my original scenario with NY et al

What happens after the election though... we’ll have to see about that
 
After reading this feedback I think I’ve got a decent idea of how it could plausibly turn out: Harding gets a second term it’s just not quite the smashing victory of OTL Coolidge. He’s still able to take it fairly handily because yeah, with a little research it’s clear that that Davis fellow doesn’t really have much of a chance of a victory, at least in 24. and I’ve pretty much scrapped my original scenario with NY et al

What happens after the election though... we’ll have to see about that
Like in more modern times, Richard Nixon won a landslide re-election in 1972, and it all came crashing down by 1974. And many of the cover ups were due to scandalous activities that occurred before or during that re-election campaign. Might not the same happen to Harding? After-all many of the scandalous activities were occurring in what would be "first term."
 
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