WI the Liberal Republicans make a better showing in the 1872 elections?

The 1872 election was an odd one, because there was no presidential candidate from the Democratic Party. Instead, the main opposition to Ulysses Grant was Horace Greeley, who ran with the offshoot Liberal Republican Party. At the time, the Democrats' presence in Congress was being further and further reduced, and they knew they had no one who could win the presidency so they just went "fuck it" and endorsed Greeley, even though Greeley very publicly hated the Democrats and would criticise them all the time back when he was a newspaper editor.

Of course, it turned out that Greeley was a shitty campaigner and his running mate was a laughable drunkard, so he did incredibly poorly and basically sent the Liberal Republicans into their death spiral. And then everything went to shit in Grant's second term and the Democrats made a huge comeback in the 1874 midterms and then won the popular vote in the 1876 presidential election (even though they lost the electoral vote). But it seems to me that 1872 is a possible window for a major political realignment, with the Democratic Party going the way of the Federalists (or at least being reduced to a regional party unseen outside the South) and a new two-party system forming of Radicals vs Liberals.

Maybe if the Liberal Republicans ran a better presidential candidate in 1872, like Charles Francis Adams Sr (son of John Quincy Adams). He doesn't even have to win -- all he has to do is make a good showing of it, and establish the Liberals as a viable alternative for people (particularly in the North) who don't like Grant's administration's corruption and protectionism but would prefer to vote for a political party which doesn't have the Democrats' history of slavery and secession.

Maybe this sets up a three-way 1876 election, or perhaps eventually a formal merger between the Liberals and the Democrats. Or maybe the Liberals come and go like the Know-Nothings did. Anyway, it could be interesting.
 
Interesting it would be indeed. Greeley's main problem (aside from dying) was that he was too Radical for his time. The guy even made vegitarianism a campaign platform.
 
Can we confidently assert that the Democrat's didn't support Greeley precisely because they knew his campaign and party would self destruct?
(i.e. they would not back someone like Adams who might have been more successful)
 
The problem is that Ulysses S. Grant was really popular in his own time. He was a proto-TR in that he had some of the less pleasant sides of the Victorian era coupled with some extremely progressive and far-sighted ideas that tend to be overlooked. To defeat Grant in any election you need someone more popular than he is and that did not exactly happen in either case.
 
The problem is that Ulysses S. Grant was really popular in his own time. He was a proto-TR in that he had some of the less pleasant sides of the Victorian era coupled with some extremely progressive and far-sighted ideas that tend to be overlooked. To defeat Grant in any election you need someone more popular than he is and that did not exactly happen in either case.

Alien Space Bats resurrects the corpse of Abraham Lincoln, who appalled by the corruption of the Grant Administration decides to run on the Democratic Platform...?
 
Can we confidently assert that the Democrat's didn't support Greeley precisely because they knew his campaign and party would self destruct?
(i.e. they would not back someone like Adams who might have been more successful)
Doesn't seem right to me -- surely the Democrats would be more willing to run their own candidate against a weak one from the Liberal Republicans, as if to say "What, you think these clowns could be the next major party? We're the only real alternative to Grant and the Radical Republicans." It's more likely they just didn't have the strength at the time.

Snake Featherston said:
The problem is that Ulysses S. Grant was really popular in his own time. He was a proto-TR in that he had some of the less pleasant sides of the Victorian era coupled with some extremely progressive and far-sighted ideas that tend to be overlooked. To defeat Grant in any election you need someone more popular than he is and that did not exactly happen in either case.
Well, like I said, they don't really need to defeat Grant in 1872 to make the Liberals into a major party -- they just need to do well enough to be taken seriously. Charles Francis Adams could be like their John C Fremont.
 
Awesome idea! I have to wonder, how the Gold/Silver-Gold currency standard debate will go with a three-party system (assuming the Democrats become only a southern regional party for the rest of the 19th century while the Liberals and Radicals compete with each other in the north and west).

Also, how would the Republican Party split? Would Rutherford B. Hayes be a Radical or a Liberal? Would Samuel Tilden (an Indiana native) stay with the Democratic Party or switch to the Liberals?
 
There were too many irregularities much violence from the Klan to know who won the popular vote in 1876, and the compromise was pure power politics on either side. Since then, die-hard segregationists have shaped the perceptions of reconstruction, the idea that the Grant administration was more corrupt than other administrations, and so on.
 
If Tilden did switch parties to the Liberals, that raises the question of who the Democrats might run in the 1876 election -- if anyone. After all, Tilden's campaign platform was basically "Hey, I'm barely a Democrat, so it's safe to vote for me."
 
Doesn't seem right to me -- surely the Democrats would be more willing to run their own candidate against a weak one from the Liberal Republicans, as if to say "What, you think these clowns could be the next major party? We're the only real alternative to Grant and the Radical Republicans." It's more likely they just didn't have the strength at the time.
It all depends on if you value sending a message more then pragmatism. You either say "What, you think these clowns could be the next major party?" by sending a message and running, thus spliting the vote and ensuring Grant wins, or take the pragmatic vote and backing a LibRep a poor chance of winning, politics to radical to catch on, and knocking on death's door. Either they LibReps win and kick replace grant with an adminstration who needs the support of your party, or they loose spectacularly and are eliminated as competion. Win-Win for the democrats in the long run.
Well, like I said, they don't really need to defeat Grant in 1872 to make the Liberals into a major party -- they just need to do well enough to be taken seriously. Charles Francis Adams could be like their John C Fremont.
That is true, but what's more difficult is determining just how well is "well enough". A better way to look at this is how well they do in congress. Say they loose the presidency, but get a democrat backed minority in congress, using tit-for-tat politics, they could become major power brokers, and would be in better possition come '74 and '76. Of course in this sceanario they remain the de-facto "third party" for quite some time, and if and when they get the presidency it'll either be through a popular superstar darkhorse candidate, or through lucky "vote splitting".
 
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wormyguy

Banned
Presidential campaigns in this era consisted of doing nothing but speeches and interviews, no actual campaigning, so the winner was whoever was best at media manipulation and/or vote fraud. (Actually, much like it is nowadays, but without the campaigning).
 
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