WI: Roosevelt 1912

Although I'm not convinced Roosevelt could have won, I expect he could have done better if the Democrats hadn't taken the full advantage of the progressive/conservative schism.

I wanted to explore different electoral college scenario based on the assumption that Clark is nominated instead of Wilson and suffers from opposition of Bryans' liberal wing.



#1: Low Scenario


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This map has Democrats suffering at both Roosevelt and Taft hands. Wherever the victory margin is less than 10 points, the state goes to the best opponent. Two exceptions are here Vermont and Massachussets.
In Vermont, Taft margin is barely 2 points over Roosevelt; keeping in mind that this TL WI is to explore alternatives with better results for Roosevelt, I cast Vermont for Progressives. Taft however gets New Hampshire.
In Massachussets, the margin separating Roosevelt and Taft is thin enough (2.81) so that I could have Roosevelt overtaking both Taft and Clark.
In this #1 scenario, the election still goes to Clark.



#2 : Middle Scenario


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In this map, we have states with victory margins less than 15 points going to best opponent. The result is the election going to the House.



#3: Upper Scenario

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That's the scenario where Roosevelt wins an electoral majority.
I had Colorado (15.71 margin) going to Progressives and New York (16.71 points margin) going to Roosevelt instead of Taft.


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I used wikipedia numbers and 270towin historical interactive maps, but I was unable to get different shades of color to evidence wide and thin margins.
 
The notion that Clark was a conservative and would not get the votes of Bryan Democrats is IMO a myth. As I wrote at https://groups.google.com/d/msg/soc.history.what-if/nzrnpcNL7Hc/BK_LYUO7zQIJ

***

Even today Clark is sometimes referred to as a "conservative" Democrat--which
shows how well Bryan's dubious attempt to portray him as such in 1912
succeeded. I'll quote an old post of mine;

"Hard to see why Clark should be considered a 'conservative'--he actually had
a progressive record in Congress when Wilson was still a Cleveland Democrat.
Furthermore, he had the support of Samuel Gompers of the AFL. Bryan's
attempt in 1912 to portray Clark as conservative because of the latter's
support (allegedly as part of a deal with Tammany Hall) of Alton Parker as
temporary chairman of the Democratic convention is unconvincing. The
temporary chairmanship hardly meant control of the convention; its function
consisted primarily of making the keynote speech and handing the gavel over
to the permanent chairman. Bryan had been offered the temporary chairmanship
himself and declined it. And as Gompers pointed out, Parker had actively
supported Bryan in 1908. (The same point was made by Governor Thomas
Marshall of Indiana in a response to a Bryan telegram urging all progressives
to oppose Parker: 'Parker came to Indiana in 1908 to advocate your election
and mine. I do not see how his election as temporary chairman will result in
a reactionary convention.')

"One need not be a cynic to suggest that Bryan's real motive in portraying
Clark as a conservative was to stop a front-runner and thereby increase the
chances that he himself would win the Democratic nomination--and for once in
a year the Democrats could win!--despite his disavowals of interest. Bryan's
argument that anyone with Tammany backing could not be a real progressive is
a bit hard to accept when you recall that he himself avidly courted Tammany
in 1908."

I might have added the famous incident in 1900 when Bryan, making a campaign
speech in New York City, "impulsively held his hand over [Tammany boss
Richard] Croker's head and intoned, 'Great is Tammany and Croker is its
prophet.'" http://books.google.com/books?id=W1A6VZs1nNMC&pg=PA172

***

If Bryan's efforts to stop Clark had failed I have no doubt that Bryan and most of his followers would vote for him in the general election. After all, Bryan endorsed Parker in 1904 and Davis in 1924 (admittedly in the latter case his brother was on the ticket...). And as I noted, Clark's voting record in Congress would be quite satisfactory to progressive Democrats (not to mention that he would be running on a progressive platform).

IMO there is only one way TR could win in 1912--and that is to win the Republican nomination. This isn't likely (unless Taft gives way voluntarily) but is the only real chance.
 
And why does Clark lose California?

OTL, Wilson lost it by just 174 votes of some 600,000 cast. But Clark had won the Democratic Primary by a margin of almost three to one, so he clearly had more appeal than Wilson to CA Democrats, and is likely to pull out the few extra that he needs to carry the state.

It is conceivable that he'd be slightly weaker in the Northeast, where Wilson's "respectable" Ivy League image might go down better than Clark's folksiness, but at most only one or two New England states are likely to switch columns. Ditto, FTM, if Bryan had somehow got the nomination.
 

cpip

Gone Fishin'
I just thought of Clark, but it could be anyone else with less appeal, too much southerner ...:confused:

In that case, you might look to Oscar Underwood, as a dark horse after a deadlocked convention. That definitely would get to the latter results.
 
In that case, you might look to Oscar Underwood, as a dark horse after a deadlocked convention. That definitely would get to the latter results.

Though Wilson's Southern origins didn't seriously hurt him, and Underwood was born in Kentucky, so in his origins (though not his later career) was less "Southern" than Wilson.

Nonetheless, Underwood could indeed do worse than Wilson - but probably not enough worse. Remember that in 1904, with about the most uninspiring candidate they had ever fielded, and in a straight fight with TR, the Democrats still got nearly 38% of the popular vote - only four percentage points less than Wilson would get in 1912. Even if Underwood loses that same amount, and all of it switches to TR (rather than to ex-Democrat Debs or simply to abstention [1]) that still leaves TR seven percent behind, even assuming that the Taft vote is unchanged - which it almost certainly won't be. In real life, if TR looks even remotely like winning, quite a few Taft supporters will be likely to vote Democratic in order to keep him out. They are much more bitter against him than against the opposition.


[1] If wiki can be believe (always a necessary caveat) about 19.5 million votes were cast for the House of Representatives, as against barely 15 million in the Presidential race. IOW, almost one voter in four chose to ignore all the Presidential contenders and vote only for Congress and lesser offices. This suggests that those who were unimpressed with their party's nominee were as likely to abstain as to vote en masse for an opponent. They could perfectly well defect without needing to defect to anyone.
 
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FWIW, the judgment of veteran political reporter Arthur Wallace Dunn in *From Harrison to Harding* was that Underwood "was no more of a possibility in that convention than were Harmon, Marshall, Foss, Baldwin and others. Only Champ Clark, Woodrow Wilson, or William J. Bryan had a chance to be named." http://books.google.com/books?id=BeFBAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA192 And I personally doubt that Bryan had much of a chance, either. The reason such bosses as Tom Taggart of Indiana and Roger Sullivan of Illinois threw their support to Wilson was to avoid any chance that a prolonged deadlock would lead to a Bryan nomination.
 
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FWIW, the judgment of veteran political reporter Arthur Wallace Dunn in *From Harrison to Harding* was that Underwood "was no more of a possibility in that convention than were Harmon, Marshall, Foss, Baldwin and others. Only Champ Clark, Woodrow Wilson, or William J. Bryan had a chance to be named." http://books.google.com/books?id=BeFBAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA192 And I personally doubt that Bryan had much of a chance, either. Such bosses as Tom Taggart of Indiana and Roger Sullivan of Illinois threw their support to Wilson was to avoid any chance that a prolonged deadlock would lead to a Bryan nomination.



FWIW, I rather get the feeling that Bryan had acquired a "sense of entitlement" where the Democratic nomination was concerned - and that this was his undoing.

Imho he wanted it, but he didn't want to have to fight for it. He wanted it to be conferred by acclamation. As the party's "Grand Old Man" he had started to think of it as his by right, and found the idea of contesting the primaries like a common or garden contender as somehow beneath his dignity. Hence his messing around at the Convention, which sabotaged Clark but from which Bryan could not benefit.

Served him right, I suppose, but it was a sad way for a remarkable career to end.
 

cpip

Gone Fishin'
Mikestone8 said:
Though Wilson's Southern origins didn't seriously hurt him, and Underwood was born in Kentucky, so in his origins (though not his later career) was less "Southern" than Wilson.

Underwood's campaign, however, was very strongly sectional; he barely ran outside of the South, and his campaign ran strongly on the subject of "a Southerner in the White House". Wilson was portrayed just as much as an effete Northeastern professor as a southerner, depending on who was trying to condemn him.

Imho he wanted it, but he didn't want to have to fight for it. He wanted it to be conferred by acclamation. As the party's "Grand Old Man" he had started to think of it as his by right, and found the idea of contesting the primaries like a common or garden contender as somehow beneath his dignity. Hence his messing around at the Convention, which sabotaged Clark but from which Bryan could not benefit.

I've heard that argument made before, and generally it's one I've found convincing; literally about thirty minutes ago, however, I was reading America's Bank by Roger Lowenstein, the story of the passage of the Federal Reserve act in 1913, and he puts forth an alternate theory that I think is equally worthwhile. In Lowenstein's argument, it wasn't that Bryan wanted the nomination, but he wanted to be seen as the party's kingmaker, the man who had the power to confer or withhold the nomination as he saw fit.
 
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