Results from my game
Ford - 503 EVS
Carter - 35 EVS
Pop (Ford) - 44,559,814
Pop (Carter) - 35,175,714
WI: Ford picks Reagan as VP, can he win?
- Thread starter Hulkster'01
- Start date
Results from my game
Ford - 503 EVS
Carter - 35 EVS
Pop (Ford) - 44,559,814
Pop (Carter) - 35,175,714
I don’t think to that extreme but Ford would do a fair bit better here, especially against Carter... only to pretty sink himself, Reagan and the GOP in the long run as they will be unable to handle the crapshow of the 1979 Oil Panic and likely mishandle Panama to where the canal gets damaged and thus send the trading network into chaos.
An old post of mine:
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"Ford gestured toward making Reagan his running mate. Reagan responded diffidently, or perhaps coyly. James Baker, who later worked closely with Reagan when he was president, thought a Ford-Reagan ticket would have been appealing to voters and could have happened had either side been a bit more forthcoming. 'You know, Mr. President,' he told Reagan, 'if President Ford had asked you to run with him, he would have won.' Baker added, thinking of what happened in the next four years, 'And you might never have been president.'
"''You’re right,' Reagan responded. 'If he had asked, I’d have felt duty-bound to run.'
"Baker continued: 'President Ford didn’t ask you because we received word from your campaign that you would join him for a unity meeting only on condition that he wouldn’t offer you the vice presidency. And besides that, you very publicly shut down the movement by your supporters in Kansas City to draft you for the vice presidential nomination.'
"'Look, I really did not want to be vice president, and I said so at the time,' Reagan responded. 'But I don’t have any recollection of telling anyone to pass a message to President Ford not to offer me the spot. If he had asked, I would have felt duty-bound to say yes.'
"Baker could hardly believe what he was hearing. “I was shocked,” he recalled. “How different history might have been. Given the intensity of their primary battle, Ford really didn’t want Reagan as his running mate, but the president might have asked if he had thought Reagan would accept. And with a Ford-Reagan ticket in 1976, I think two portraits might be missing from the White House walls today—those of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.'"
http://www.historynet.com/ronald-reagan-gop-nomination.htm
I am not so sure that a Ford-Reagan ticket would have won. It would have strengthened the ticket in the West and South, but Ford-Dole swept the West anyway (except Hawaii, where I doubt Reagan would have helped) and in the South, Carter's appeal to regional pride was strong enough that the only state Carter carried really narrowly (he lost Virginia) was Mississippi. Still, it is just possible that Reagan would have energized enough conservatives to enable the ticket to carry Ohio as well as Mississippi (though note that Reagan barely defeated Carter in Mississippi even in 1980!). And there is more than a slight possibility that the Ford administration would be so unpopular by 1980 and the GOP brand so tarnished after twelve years in office that no Republican including Reagan could win that year...
(Also, just because Reagan said years later that he would have felt duty-bound to accept does not *necessarily* mean he would have done so in 1976 IMO.)
***
"Ford gestured toward making Reagan his running mate. Reagan responded diffidently, or perhaps coyly. James Baker, who later worked closely with Reagan when he was president, thought a Ford-Reagan ticket would have been appealing to voters and could have happened had either side been a bit more forthcoming. 'You know, Mr. President,' he told Reagan, 'if President Ford had asked you to run with him, he would have won.' Baker added, thinking of what happened in the next four years, 'And you might never have been president.'
"''You’re right,' Reagan responded. 'If he had asked, I’d have felt duty-bound to run.'
"Baker continued: 'President Ford didn’t ask you because we received word from your campaign that you would join him for a unity meeting only on condition that he wouldn’t offer you the vice presidency. And besides that, you very publicly shut down the movement by your supporters in Kansas City to draft you for the vice presidential nomination.'
"'Look, I really did not want to be vice president, and I said so at the time,' Reagan responded. 'But I don’t have any recollection of telling anyone to pass a message to President Ford not to offer me the spot. If he had asked, I would have felt duty-bound to say yes.'
"Baker could hardly believe what he was hearing. “I was shocked,” he recalled. “How different history might have been. Given the intensity of their primary battle, Ford really didn’t want Reagan as his running mate, but the president might have asked if he had thought Reagan would accept. And with a Ford-Reagan ticket in 1976, I think two portraits might be missing from the White House walls today—those of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.'"
http://www.historynet.com/ronald-reagan-gop-nomination.htm
I am not so sure that a Ford-Reagan ticket would have won. It would have strengthened the ticket in the West and South, but Ford-Dole swept the West anyway (except Hawaii, where I doubt Reagan would have helped) and in the South, Carter's appeal to regional pride was strong enough that the only state Carter carried really narrowly (he lost Virginia) was Mississippi. Still, it is just possible that Reagan would have energized enough conservatives to enable the ticket to carry Ohio as well as Mississippi (though note that Reagan barely defeated Carter in Mississippi even in 1980!). And there is more than a slight possibility that the Ford administration would be so unpopular by 1980 and the GOP brand so tarnished after twelve years in office that no Republican including Reagan could win that year...
(Also, just because Reagan said years later that he would have felt duty-bound to accept does not *necessarily* mean he would have done so in 1976 IMO.)
This map is absoluutely bizarre. Usually running mates have a very limited effect on the electorate, and I' not even sure that Reagan's would be a net positive. But even if it would be, it's just weird to say that Ford would carry WV (which Carter won by 16.14 points in OTL just because Reagan is his running mate. Even in 1980, Reagan lost WV to Carter by 4.5 points! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_United_States_presidential_election_in_West_Virginia Or that MN which Carter won in 1976 by 12.87 points would go for Ford-Reagan. Carter defeated Reagan there by almost four points even in the very Republican year of 1980! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_United_States_presidential_election_in_Minnesota And then you have Ford carrying RI, which in OTL Carter carried *by double digits* in both 1976 and 1980...
But there's no point in going over the implausibilities of this map state by state. If you think that by having Reeagan as his running mate, Ford would win by over nine million votes an elecrion he lost in OTL by almost two milion, you just do not get that (1) Reagan was not all that popular *in 1976*--he badly lost the GOP primaries in many states you have him enabling Ford to win https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1976_Republican_Party_presidential_primaries and (2) "nobody votes for the veep." https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2000/06/nobody-votes-for-the-veep.html That last may be a slight oversimplification but only a slight one.
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