WI Chappaquiddick never happened and Ted Kennedy ran in '72?
- Thread starter rick007
- Start date
I don't think Kennedy would run in 1972. He would remain a viable candidate for quite some time. He would wait until a Republican president had an unfavorable administration and then run. A run in 1972 would have the risk of a loss if Nixon had the image of an acceptable incumbent. And that loss would hurt his future.
I don’t think he’d run but if he wins the primary Kennedy loses to Nixon but does better than McGovern. Come 1976 EMK himself might run again on the basis of being cheated in ‘72 / noble loss kinda thing—plus he’s still the best known figure in the entire Party.
To be honest name recognition is at least half the work and Kennedy has that in spades.
To be honest name recognition is at least half the work and Kennedy has that in spades.
Last edited:
Ted Kennedy in '76 as a one-term failure would mean somewhat better democrats than OTL. Why? Well the party would be less "communitarian" in some ways on things like social policy/proposing national service with the Kennedy name being tarnished. "Kennedy" would be associated with Carter-tier failure instead of "Camelot". Also less room for candidates playing up the combo of vaguely communitarian/kennedy type hipness so nobody outside of Arkansas knows Bill Clinton's name or lllinois and Obama.
Who knows, maybe this means we get Cuomo or someone else halfway decent in '92 and a better healthcare system, maybe even national healthcare.
Who knows, maybe this means we get Cuomo or someone else halfway decent in '92 and a better healthcare system, maybe even national healthcare.
Kennedy without Chappaquidick and elected in ‘76 could quite possibly not be a single term President. He’d have excellent relations with the Democratic Congress and have multiple successes under his belt, not have a primary contest, and perhaps not be defined by an alt-Operation Eagle Claw.
Anybody elected in 1976 is a single or last term president for the party. Oil and inflation are foreign-influenced and real estate is driven by population patterns that do not depend on general American politics.
If there were no Chappaquiddick and EMK were to be nominated in 1972, he would do much better than McGovern but still almost certainly lose. The economy seemed to be in good shape, "Vietnamization" had largely defused the war issue, and even if less vulnerable than in OTL to personal attacks, EMK would still be vulnerable to political attacks for being "too liberal." (One should also remember that there was at least one part of the country where the Kennedy name was not magic--the South.)
Why? This is really dismissing how poorly Carter bungled his first two years in office. Kennedy wouldn’t have made the mistakes Carter did with his earmark reform fiasco or failure to have a functioning executive with a Chief of Staff.
Inflation was tied to domestic politics as well as the Volker reforms were part of the cause. A more traditional liberal President who didn’t abide by Carter’s fiscal conservatism could have been more lenient with action to counteract the recession results of the reform. This was an explicit part of Kennedy’s 80 campaign.
‘76 being a poisoned chalice that doomed anyone who was in office is a myth that needs to die.
Edit: I’m not just saying this as a liberal argument. Carter didn’t have a Chief of Staff for 2.5 years! Then he picked Hamilton Jordan! Any other fiscally conservative Democrat most certainly wouldn’t have done that.
Last edited:
Two factors could have helped Ted Kennedy get a second term in 1980. The first is a successful Operation Eagle Claw. The second would have been pressure on the British Government to seek a political rather than military solution to the Troubles in Northern Ireland. This would have been well-received by Irish-American voters.
Having a southerner as Vice-President would have also helped.
Having a southerner as Vice-President would have also helped.
BigBlueBox
Banned
And how would it be received by WASP voters? Or for that matter, anybody concerned by a US President intervening in the internal affairs of one of America's closest allies on behalf of his ethnic kinsmen? Note that Ted Kennedy would be practically guaranteed the Irish vote anyways, in no small part due to his last name.
Ted Kennedy losing in '72 and knocking McGovern forward into '76 as the heartland, Western-y, common man Democrat who can win in a divided field because he isn't burdened by NE/liberal state/Catholic Democratic political baggage, and is willing to organise the anti-Carter primary vote, let that scramble your preconceptions, After1900.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
I’ll go with teaching high trajectory.
Let’s say Mary Jo Kopechne uses her organizational skills to set up a program in which children help to tutor math to children two to four years younger than themselves. And let’s say she starts and leads a similar program so that kids with Down Syndrome, for example, aren’t warehoused but instead get extra help which really benefits them.
She’s also involved in the early days of understanding dyslexia, say in the mid- and late-‘70s. In this case, the kids don’t necessarily learn slower, just differently.
And then politically . . . she testifies before a Congressional committee in the 1980s that kids in predominantly minority communities don’t receive the same per capita investment as kids in middle-class and upper middle-class communities. Merely one of a number of people who talk about this. And once it passes a threshold of media attention . . . an “obvious” issue and one the conservative Reagan administration has to answer for.
With Sam Donaldson asking, “Mr. President, how can we say we have equality of opportunity when a child in Houston Independent School District only receives ______ investment per year, whereas a child in ________________ ? And that’s not even the worse example.”
Reagan might reply that it’s a state-level issue.
But the issue has legs and makes a good foil for the conservative administration. Reagan was both a decent man on the here-and-now (not on some foreign policy issues) and at times also a stubborn man.
“Mr. President, why have we not been able to achieve the promise of largely equal schools?”
Several ways this might play out.
=====================
Born on July 26, 1940, Mary Jo Kopechne retires from active leadership of her educational organization the summer of 2000 at age 60.
And devotes herself to writing and travel, and a next chapter of . . .
Last edited:
I want to come here and agree with @Whanztastic. The 1980 election was as much about the perception of the two men as it was about the state of the country. The "malaise" of the 1970s narrative stuck to Carter so well because it fit perceptions of him as an ineffectual president who couldn't work with Congress. The Iranian hostage crisis fed into the narrative that Carter was weak. The failure of Operation Eagle Claw was, of course, worse for Carter than a successful operation would have been, but his numbers actually went up in the immediate aftermath of the incident because Americans felt he was finally doing something. (I think I would attribute this to Jimmy Carter: In Search of the Great White House, but I'm not totally sure of what my source is for this - I remember reading it when researching the operation). A successful Eagle Claw would have dramatically changed how the American people perceived Carter. Instead, it ultimately reaffirmed the perception that he was incompetent and when put against cowboy hat-wearing Reagan, who had as much charisma as a ... well, a Kennedy, there was no hope for Carter.
That said, if you have a president who brings in a number of legislative accomplishments in his first two years in office, successfully brings hostages home (I would emphasize Kennedy needs to be able to do this rather than simply avoiding the situation from happening in the first place), and potentially have Kennedy against a weaker candidate than Reagan (not inconceivable that the 1980 nominee could have been Dole or Bush), then I would actually place my bets on Kennedy. Presidents have been reelected in weak economies before - when the American people continue to trust them to be the one to fix the crisis. Carter did not have elicit that trust from the American people. Kennedy may have been able to.
That said, if you have a president who brings in a number of legislative accomplishments in his first two years in office, successfully brings hostages home (I would emphasize Kennedy needs to be able to do this rather than simply avoiding the situation from happening in the first place), and potentially have Kennedy against a weaker candidate than Reagan (not inconceivable that the 1980 nominee could have been Dole or Bush), then I would actually place my bets on Kennedy. Presidents have been reelected in weak economies before - when the American people continue to trust them to be the one to fix the crisis. Carter did not have elicit that trust from the American people. Kennedy may have been able to.
Well, he would stand a better chance against Nixon than McGovern did, that's for sure.
I think Electric Monk and David Tenner allude to better points as to why the vox populi probably don't have a reason to punish non-killer Ted in '72 as badly as they punished OTL's nominee.
Thoughts on McGovern's chances to be first time nominee in '76?