Hobbes Forever: The Timeline

[George W. Hobbes]

Okay, I decided to do a TrueDem styled ATL, but I'll be altering the candidates and such as a result of how each election goes out.

I decided to start in 1964, because frankly, I wanted to see if the AI could give Goldwater a win.

1964


The 1964 election was a turning point for the Republican Party, Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater firmly entrenched the GOP into a conservative message which would set their goals for years to come.

Thanks to support from partisans like Ronald Reagan, Goldwater actually made California competitive for a time, and seemed to catch the incumbent LBJ off guard.  GOP hopes for an upset were dashed, however, when it was revealed that Goldwater had conducted some shady deals in the U.S. Senate to benefit his political career.  (Power 6 integrity scandal).

The victorious President Johnson vowed to continue the War on Poverty and usher in a Great Society, while preserving America as a bastion for peace.

[George W. Hobbes]

1968



Bobby Kennedy/Ed Muskie (D) 43% 248
Richard Nixon/Spiro Agnew (R) 42% 249
George Wallace/Curtis LeMay (I) 14% 41

Barry Goldwater would never know it, but his victory in Idaho in 1964 saved the life of Bobby Kennedy.  Disgruntled Idaho Democrat Morris Mallory decided to move to California, an LBJ state, in hopes of finding a more liberal environment.  On June 3, 1968, Mr. Mallory was involved in a traffic accident, killing Arab nationalist Sirhan Sirhan, who had been plotting to murder Senator Robert F. Kennedy.

Kennedy went on to win the Democratic nomination at a peaceful convention in Chicago, and named Maine Senator Edmund Muskie as his running mate.  At the Republican gathering in Miami Beach, former Vice-President Richard Nixon was selected and he named Maryland Governor Spiro Agnew as his Veep.

The campaign, which begin as a discussion of the ongoing culture wars, quickly degenerated into scandal, as three seperate moderate scandals hit Nixon throughout the election cycle, and Senator Kennedy's integrity came under question concerning his work for former Senator Joe McCarthy early in his political career.

Third-party insurgent George Wallace campaigned on a segregationist platform and found a surprising well-spring of support in the Deep South, carrying all of the original Confederacy except for Georgia and Florida.  Wallace's campaigned deadlocked the election, but in the House, Republicans sick of Nixon's political baggage and looking at polls that clearly shows most Americans wanted Kennedy, the winner of the popular vote, as President; voted generally across party lines, and RFK was elected President.

[George W. Hobbes]

1972


Governor Ronald Reagan/Rep. Phil Crane (R) 51%  337
President Robert F. Kennedy/VP Ed Muskie (D) 46% 201

President Kennedy's Vietnam War withdrawal early in 1969 posed significant problems for his administration.  The inability of the South Vietnamese to defend themselves, coupled with the President's veto of a bill to provide any sort of fiscal aid to the South Vietnamese, clearly gave RFK dovish credentials that the Republicans had an easy time sneering at.

However, Kennedy's anti-crime legislation managed to keep enough conservatives in his flock down South to make the 1972 election against California Governor Ronald Reagan interesting.  In the end, however, the Kennedy charm and the war on crime weren't enough...America wanted a leader who would "keep the forces of freedom strong."

[Ben Meyers]

Interesting

[George W. Hobbes]

1976

President Ronald Reagan/VP Phil Crane (R) 51%  319
Senator Henry Jackson/Senator Birch Bayh (D) 47% 219

The 1976 election was filled with surprises, as moderately popular tax-cutting and budget busting President Reagan squared off against conservative Democrat Scoop Jackson.

Jackson, who won the nomination off a call for Democrats to "return to the party's grassroots" and the conventional wisdom that President Kennedy's liberalism, particularly on Vietnam, had lost him the 1972 election.  The ticket of Jackson and Indiana Senator Birch Bayh was positioned in the center of American politics, and had a chance of upsetting the favored Reagan.

However, the dynamic Reagan/Crane ticket delivered the Midwest, half of New England, and the Rocky Mountain West on election day, although both candidates bizarrely lost their home states. 

[George W. Hobbes]

1980



Vice-President Phil Crane/Sen. George H.W. Bush (R) 48% 277

Sen. Fritz Hollings/Sen. Walter Mondale (D) 49% 261

The year 1980 saw one of the closest elections in American history as South Carolina Democrat Fritz Hollings squared off against Vice-President Phil Crane. 

Although Reagan remained personally popular, Crane's 1980 campaign was hampered by the continual problems of Islamist insurgence against the U.S. supported shah in Iran, an energy crisis, and rumors of malfeasance in the administration.  Hollings-Mondale, a ticket of a moderate Southerner paired with a liberal Northerner, seemed poised to defeat Crane.

However, Crane held on to a victory in electoral votes, but managed to lose the popular vote tally, causing his Presidency to be considered illicit by most Democrats, who happened to control Congress.  Now, the question was whether or not President Crane, a rock-ribbed conservative, could manage to successfully reach across party lines.