AH Challenge: Gore-McCain: Gore wins

V-J

V-J

Although polls early in presidential election years are by their nature not hugely reliable indicators of how people will vote months away in November, in February 2000 polls generally showed John McCain beating Al Gore by double-figure numbers - sometimes by as much as 20 points; a sizeable figure by anyone's estimate.

But of course that kind of lead can be beaten down - Dukakis was at one point in double figures against George Bush senior.

So your challenge, should you chose to accept it, is to do just that. Have McCain both win the Republican nomination, and then lose to Gore in the general election, preferably relatively unambiguously. Your POD can be any time from the 1996 Presidential election onwards. And No ASBs!
 
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ColeMercury

Gore runs a better campaign? Maybe he plays up the Keating Five scandal, the shit way McCain treated his first wife, and McCain's snappish & impulsive temperament.
 

Draco

Have McCain win in South Carolina after which the nomination fight becomes increasingly bitter eventually he does wins the nomination but the fight takes its toll on his public image. Combine this with Jerry Falwell and his ilk taking the attitude if not our man then not yours either. So come November McCain numbers are lukewarm at best due to a tarnished image and outright hostility from a large part of his own party which gives the perception that he’d lack the support necessary to govern effectively which seals Gore’s victory.
 
Old Crank 67

Old Crank 67

Gore could have run a better campaign IMO ... running more on peace and prosperity instead of his awkward populism, and contrasting the Democrats' good stewardship of the nation's prospects to the potentially wild ride McCain might offer.
 

Orville_third

Banned
Well, in a thread I did a few weeks ago, I started a TL of sorts where McCain did defeat Bush in SC, and said defeat effectively put the kibosh on Bush. In my TL (though I hadn't gotten to that yet), much of the Religious Right would abandon the Republicans (though in my TL, McCain would win). Perhaps if you add Bob Smith or Alan Keyes in as the US Taxpayers Party candidate, and stronger paleoconservative support for Pat Buchanan, that would be a major key to a McCain loss.
Ironically, one of the best potential attack ads for McCain from a Democrat came from a Republican. (Stewart Stevens's "The Big Enchilada" has the text for such an ad, dreamed up by Bush staffers in the early days of the campaign.)
 
V-J

V-J

Good ideas so far. But would McCain have simply let the rift with the religious right fester? Could he have not gone some way to healing that with his VP choice?
 

Orville_third

Banned
Perhaps. However, if McCain is sufficiently upset by the Religious Right's actions (or vice versa) he may not pick a running mate from them (or vice versa).
 
V-J

V-J

Or he does try to heal the splits and breed enthusiasm for his candidacy, and in so doing picks a spectacularly bad VP nominee...

Anyone who McCain could have realistically chosen who would have been a liability? A few skeletons in their closets which would could come out during the campaign would be good too.
 

Orville_third

Banned
Well, with Jay Leno's quote, "Former Governor of a southern state, involved in shady financial dealings with his wife- I'm telling you, this guy is starting to look more and more like presidential material", Lamar Alexander comes to mind.

There's also Alan Keyes. He has only one big skeleton in his closet- paying himself from campaign funds. McCain would be likely to choose him because A. He's Black. B. He's Religious Right- big time. C. He was/may have been the only candidate left fighting George W. Bush during/after South Carolina (Perhaps the poll closings, negative campaigning and reckless driving* by Bush and his allies helped him to lose SC (or lose the eventual nomination)), and McCain chose him as VP to prevent a drag-out battle. But, Keyes's firebrand style may help turn off most voters, and I'm sure he'll try and push McCain farther to the right. (IMHO, Obama should thank Keyes for helping him have such a huge margin of victory in 2004...)

* See my thread on a McCain defeat of Bush in SC for more on this...
 
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