Would a Democrat in his 1st term have the pull to get renominated in 1896?

[DTF955Baseballfan]

A number of threads have discussed how unpopular Cleveland was in 1896, and how any gold Democrat would have had problems. This made me curious.

Sure, Carter was challenged heavily by Ted Kennedy in 1980 before winning, but the economy wasn't in the tatters it was in back in 1896. So, perhaps that is more telling than 1932, where Hoover ran almost unopposed, with a handful of delegates voting for others. (Including a few for former President Coolidge.) Perhaps the GOP's Progressive wing was just so weak they couldn't mount a challenge, whereas there were some pretty powerful opposing wings in the Democrats of 1896 or 1980 (I mean, "He's a Kennedy and Carter isn't" might have been enough for some. )

Still, if Cleveland wins 2 terms and then David Hill, let's say, wins in 1892, or Cleveland just retires after 1888 or just chooses not to run in 1892 (maybe his cancer advances a bit faster), and David Hill or someone wins in 1892, would they have had enough pull to get the 2/3 of votes required? Or, would it have depended on the candidagtes? (I can see a scenario where Cleveland retires, Hill runs and wins in 1892, and then the Democrats, fed up with HIll, go from bimetalism back to gold in 1896, feeling that the influx of other metals was the problems. Or was bimetalism too similar to the gold standard?)

Or did Cleveland having won 2 terms not really matter?

I guess the 2/3 rule might come into play here, too.With enough anger against the incumbance, enought delegates could have blocked him that it didn't matter.

Found where to put threadmarks at the start, I'm going to see if I did this right and also put a poll up for practice.

 

[TheRockofChickamauga]

I doubt Hill could secure his renomination given the circumstances. Political nominations at that time were rough and tumble and party loyalty to established nominees was very fluid, as can be seen by the fact that no vice-presidential candidate was renominated for the office between 1828 and 1912, and that only three men from that period (Andrew Jackson, Ulysses S. Grant, and Grover Cleveland) would serve two full terms. And the odds would certainly be stacked against Hill at the convention. It should be noted that of the five leading candidates on the first ballot of the 1896 Democration National Convention, only one was in favor the gold standard (Robert E. Pattison) while the other four (Richard P. Bland, William J. Bryan, Joseph C.S. Blackburn, and Horace Boies) favored some form of bimetallism. Hill would probably be able to do better than Pattison with the incumbency advantage, but that also might be negated by his reputation for corruption. I would be willing to bet that a bimetallism man would be the 1896 Democratic nominee. It probably wouldn't matter whether Hill, or Bryan, or Bland, or someone else ended up being the Democratic nominee, as they were all but assured defeat at the ballot box come election time assuming the Republicans commit no major (and I mean major) gaffes.