Talk Elections

Truman wins, in my opinion.

Discuss with maps.

Taft wins.

Taft would do a good deal worse:
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Why? If Truman could beat Dewey (who was much more moderate on economic and foreign policy), then why would Taft beat Truman when Truman could have a much easier time tying him to Hoover's failed economic policy (which caused the Great Depression) and to the failed policy of isolationism? To me, it seems that this factor would make Truamn's victory even larger than it was in RL.

I agree with Ben's map. Taft would get humiliated much worse than Dewey.

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Senator Robert A. Taft of Ohio/ General Douglas MacArthur of Arkansas 360 electoral votes
President Harry S. Truman of Missouri/ Senator Alben Barkley of Kentucky 133 electoral votes
Governor J. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina/ Governor Fielding Wright of Mississippi 38 electoral votes

Sorry, but I'm not going to answer questions rooted in false pretenses.

Yeah, no way.  Not only was Taft very charismatically challenged, but Truman did spend three months running against him IRL in 1948, and he won.  Taft actually being the nominee would just make things much worse.

Yeah, way. Truman was cruising for a bruising if Dewey weren't a suckass candidate. Your map is hackish nonsense.

Dewey stood back and took Truman's sh**t, and barely lost to him. Taft was not a pushover. Taft would have given all of Truman's crap and more, and probably win. Libertas's map might be too generous to Taft, but I agree Taft would have won.

Yep, there's no way Taft does worse than Dewey.

ew macarthur? :(

Well I went with a semi-realistic running mate choice...

Taft likly would have won because much like Truman he was not afraid to get down and dirty.  Dewey had simply hoped to coast to the presidency which obviously failed.  Sadly for the country, Taft was a much better campaigner.

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Solid Taft victory.

Wow, someone who actually thinks that war criminal Truman made a better president than Robert A. Taft would? :o

I think Virginia, Tennessee, and possibly Florida would have flipped before Oklahoma.

Thats me, actually I think the majority of people would.

I guess we could have gathered that from your user name...

Taft would win easily.  He was a great campaigner, passionate in his convictions and had a lot of popularity in the midwest and certain regions of the south.  He could have chosen either a moderate, east coast Republican to balance his ticket, or a westerner to lock Truman out of the west.  Either way, the country was looking for change 3 years after WWII and Taft's "America first" message would have won the hearts of many people in the key states.


Robert Taft 339
Harry Truman 154
Strom Thurmond 38


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Seeing as Taft was a labor hating, isolationist bastard, yes, Truman made a better President than Taft ever would have.

Ben, how do you think taft would have handled the USSR? Would he have just ignored the Soviets and allow them to take over Western Europe? Or would he eventually come to his senses and follow an internationalist foreign policy? By the way, how was Truman strongly pro-labor? He didn't get Taft-Hartley repealed when he won in 1948 and when the Democrats recaptured both houses of Congress, even though he promised to.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_S._Truman#cite_ref-Truman_strike_speech_72-0