WI: Reagan vs Humphrey 1968

Humphrey wins after he promises not to exploit for partisan gain his opponent's flagrant inexperience.
 
Plus, I don't think Reagan would have been distanced enough from his "A Time for Choosing" speech in favor of Goldwater '64, nor distanced enough from Goldwater's anti-social security views.

240px--A_Time_for_Choosing_by_Ronald_Reagan.ogv.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Time_for_Choosing

I mean, Shit. He just looks like an angry, pissed off type.
This is exactly why I think Reagan in 1968, if he lost would be seen as a Goldwater-type failure. That said, if he won due to different timing making the Movement Conservatives 1) lack a champion in 1980 2) be seen as tried but failing would lead to a weaker conservative movement 3) get nowhere near as much accomplished.
 
"Shouldn't someone tag Mr. Kennedy's "bold new imaginative" program with its proper age? Under the tousled boyish haircut it is still old Karl Marx — first launched a century ago. There is nothing new in the idea of a government being Big Brother to us all. Hitler called his "State Socialism" and way before him it was "benevolent monarchy." -- Ronald Reagan
 
. . . 2) be seen as tried but failing would lead to a weaker conservative movement . . .
As a liberal, my personal wish list might include:

1) someone more seasoned than Carter de-regulates communications, trucking, airlines,

2) but not banking!

3) healthcare viewed as infrastructure,

4) regulation with thresholds, so that small business has less than OTL, but large business more,

5) free, brave, open, and honest discussion that we are losing good-paying manufacturing jobs and that not enough other sources of good-paying jobs seem to be taking its place,

6) free, brave, open, and honest discussion of what might be better alternatives to a UBI, and

7) policy and implementation that is 45% pro-union and 55% pro-company much like OTL 1950s and ‘60s. No, it’s still not pro-union, for that might really be wild morning dream!
 
The biggest obstacle to a UBI or even just giving the united states first world-style labor protections/universal healthcare is what I like to call "white male syndrome": the essentially forced meme of making people identify with their jobs as being the norm instead of something that's a rare symptom of workaholism.
 
As a liberal, my personal wish list might include:

1) someone more seasoned than Carter de-regulates communications, trucking, airlines,

Congress deregulated those and did the work on it. Kennedy was furious about the outcome of airline deregulation, as its effects were nothing like what Congress had been told. Indeed Stephen Breyer comes out of the whole thing looking real bad in my opinion.
 
The only way deregulation was going to produce anything but a disaster would have been if they'd removed shareholder influence/input from companies.
 
This is exactly why I think Reagan in 1968, if he lost would be seen as a Goldwater-type failure. That said, if he won due to different timing making the Movement Conservatives 1) lack a champion in 1980 2) be seen as tried but failing would lead to a weaker conservative movement 3) get nowhere near as much accomplished.

Yeah, it's hard not to see the failures of the movement creating a narrative. Here's the popular narrative of the trajectory of American conservatism in the 20th century for both TTL and OTL:
- Doing fine through the 1920s.
- Oops! Depression! Conservatives get all the blame.
- When in the political wilderness, they tried to keep us out of the war.
- Their standard bearers in the 1950s were boogie men. Taft was so bad Ike agreed to run. McCarthy is...not their best look.
- Oh wait! Here comes Goldwat-oh nm.

Then things diverge. IOTL:
- Let's let the pressure build for another 15 years, then try again.
- Yay! We did it!

ITTL:
- Let's try again IMMEDIATELY!
- Wow, we still suck and can't be trusted to run national campaigns and also haven't been in power since we derailed the entire nation in 1929.

While facetious, this is the back-of-the-cereal-box interpretation most Americans will have of the conservative movement. Do they just go away? That seems unlikely. Do they lose the support of the partisan heart of the GOP, who really don't care what the policy directives are as long as they win? (Not to single out Republicans, I think at heart this is the nature of American partisan politics.)

It has to have some effect on the movement. The American conservative monolith is not a law of nature, it cannot inevitably sustain itself through defeat after defeat.
 
Yeah, it's hard not to see the failures of the movement creating a narrative. Here's the popular narrative of the trajectory of American conservatism in the 20th century for both TTL and OTL:
- Doing fine through the 1920s.
- Oops! Depression! Conservatives get all the blame.
- When in the political wilderness, they tried to keep us out of the war.
- Their standard bearers in the 1950s were boogie men. Taft was so bad Ike agreed to run. McCarthy is...not their best look.
- Oh wait! Here comes Goldwat-oh nm.

Then things diverge. IOTL:
- Let's let the pressure build for another 15 years, then try again.
- Yay! We did it!

ITTL:
- Let's try again IMMEDIATELY!
- Wow, we still suck and can't be trusted to run national campaigns and also haven't been in power since we derailed the entire nation in 1929.

While facetious, this is the back-of-the-cereal-box interpretation most Americans will have of the conservative movement. Do they just go away? That seems unlikely. Do they lose the support of the partisan heart of the GOP, who really don't care what the policy directives are as long as they win? (Not to single out Republicans, I think at heart this is the nature of American partisan politics.)

It has to have some effect on the movement. The American conservative monolith is not a law of nature, it cannot inevitably sustain itself through defeat after defeat.
Agree 100%. This sort of thing is why I didn't buy the assumption that there'd be a *Reaganite era, whether delayed 12/16/20 years in the "democratic revolution in 1980s", doubly so here since TTL wouldn't have had OTL's watergate-era discrediting of liberal/moderate reps. Sure, it wouldn't be "all liberal all the time", and there'd be an eventual GOP era in the 80s democratic revolution TL it's just we'd be talking a center-right GOP with movement conservatives as a wing and not the party core/leadership.

Reagan losing to HHH in 1968 means we'd see a GOP that's a center-right party and not a right party. Reagan winning in 1968 would imo have the same effect just by the fact that 1) the cons don't get what they want in early 70s america 2) no watergate.
 
The biggest obstacle to a UBI or even just giving the united states first world-style labor protections/universal healthcare is what I like to call "white male syndrome": the essentially forced meme of making people identify with their jobs as being the norm instead of something that's a rare symptom of workaholism.
I tend to view this as more of a human trait.

I'll tell you what I would like. First off, what we almost got in Dec. 2016 that if a person makes less than $47,000 for the year, they get time-and-a-half for overtime regardless of whether they're classified as hourly or salaried. What happened is that a federal court ruled that the U.S. Dept. of Labor had exceeded its authority even though it had had a lengthy comment figure and was updating a long-dormant figure of around $23,000.

Yes, this will help to spread out available jobs.

And more than merely a change in law, I'd like to see a social norm more fully evolve that if you're working too much more than 40 hours on any kind of regular basis it's either a sign that you're in a little bit over your head (loss of status) or you're trying to be a big shot (loss of status a different way). But in either case, a social reason among friends and colleagues to avoid this. Basically, we'd have a social norm of, not hogging work.
 
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I don't see Reagan losing in 1968. While he would be considered a bit of a reactionary, his natural charisma would likely make up for it, and he could very easily point out the large failures of the Democratic administration. Reagan's position isn't anywhere near as dire as that of Goldwater. Furthermore, Wallace likely wouldn't run and most of his support would go to Reagan, thus making up for the loss of liberal Republican voters.
 
Congress deregulated those and did the work on it. Kennedy was furious about the outcome of airline deregulation, as its effects were nothing like what Congress had been told. Indeed Stephen Breyer comes out of the whole thing looking real bad in my opinion.


From this 1995 book which I really enjoyed, I gathered that airline deregulation was good for customers, but bad for employees of airlines.

And when Reagan fired the air traffic controllers in 1981 (yes, due to an illegal strike), that didn't exactly help matters.

I do remember the part where Ted Kennedy angrily told someone that he had misled him.
 
. . . it wouldn't be "all liberal all the time", and there'd be an eventual GOP era in the 80s democratic revolution TL it's just we'd be talking a center-right GOP with movement conservatives as a wing and not the party core/leadership. . .
A question I have, why was there an upsurge of right-wing anger starting around 1989 and 1990 when Bush, Sr., was president?
 
A question I have, why was there an upsurge of right-wing anger starting around 1989 and 1990 when Bush, Sr., was president?
Effects of reaganism taking hold on the economy, combined with Bush I's rhetoric/policy not being reaganite enough for them. Make Kemp or some other conservative instead of a moderate like Bush SR. and imo we would have seen reaganism at least partially burn out, with the positive side effect of getting Cuomo or someone else who at least isn't Bill "I'll actually do what Reagan talked about but get called a leftwinger" Clinton.
 
Definitely part of it, but I think there was a lot more

If we are discussing this timeline, it was largely due to former Preisdent H.W. Bush's lackluster commitment to conservatism, for while his success in the Persian Gulf War buoyed him in the polls, failure to back low taxes, Second Amendment rights, and celebration over the collapse of the Soviet Union contributed to his defeat at the hands of Slick Willy in '92. But that is all current politics, so I digress.

To make up, I will comment that the Eighties was the decade made for the Reagan Revolution and its message of small government, low taxes, and individual freedom.
 
https://books.google.com/books?id=0...ded, and the right wing is the worst"&f=false

"We’re getting pounded, and the right wing is the worse, much more so than the left wing, it seems to me.”
This is something Pres. Bush, Sr., wrote in his diary. Some of the fallout from a Sunday evening, May 6, 1990, meeting with a bipartisan Congressional leaders, and following statements and news stories.

This does seem early to be even talking about making concessions, to what a goodly number of your fellow citizens view as a major pledge.

I do not wish to discount the importance of “Read my lips: No new taxes.” But I do think there were other sources of conservative anger.
 
I think John Tower is a possible 1968 Reagan running mate, especially if the idea is to keep Wallace out of the race.
 
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