1992 Election (The Hearse at Monticello)

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Perhaps the greatest surprise of the primary cycle was the nomination of Patrick J. Buchanan, who upset early front-runner and elder statesman Richard Lugar of Indiana to win the American Party primary by the narrowest of margins. A strident social conservative who served in the Administration of Phillip Crane, Buchanan rallied Christian fundamentalists and fiscal hawks to his banner with cries of vengeance against the Washington machine and political cronies everywhere. If elected, Buchanan has promised to vastly diminish the size of government, repeal the Abortion Legalization Act, and cut welfare spending in half.

Enormously popular with religious conservatives, Buchanan has struggled to win over moderates and business conservatives within the American Party, who contend that the Virginian activist is not only inexperienced, but a bigot and an extremist. These individuals, supported by much of the party establishment, have formed the center-right National Liberty Party, which has chosen Senator Lugar as its candidate for president. A coalition of self-described "fiscal and social moderates", the party has drawn comparisons to George Romney's 1968n Independent campaign, a correlation Lugar and his supporters have embraced.

The People's Party, meanwhile, is similarly divided. The coalition of rural populists and New England liberals that elected Mario Cuomo four years ago is under duress: while Cuomo remains popular with the party at-large, a small but growing faction within the party is increasingly distrustful of the president and his policies. Much of the tension is regional rather than political: an east-coast social liberal, Cuomo is a poor fit for rural, socially conservative Populists in the South, and his failure to roundly condemn free trade agreements¹ has left some labor advocates unsettled. These voters supported Arkansas Governor William M. Clinton in the primaries, giving him roughly 26% of the vote, and have since formed the rival Reform Party to challenge Cuomo, with Vice President Ross Perot as their presidential nominee.

Despite his divided party, President Cuomo has entered the fall campaign swinging, highlighting his success in balancing the budget, strengthening the welfare state, and reversing a decade of economic malaise and charging that his opponents, particularly Perot and Buchanan, are "candidates of the last generation" who will take the country backward, not forward. To replace Perot, Cuomo has selected Californian Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi as his running mate, who if elected would become the first female vice president since Margaret Chase Smith.

Who will emerge victorious from this momentous contest? The choice is yours.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

I don't see what's so "interesting" about conservative nutjobs winning. We've had plenty of those in past elections.

Exactly. Every president in the last 40 years has been either a strident progressive (Kefauver, McGovern, Church) or a strident conservative (Bricker, Goldwater, Kemp, Crane). Buchanan would be a return to the status quo.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

1992 Presidential Election

Mr. Patrick Buchanan (American-Virginia)/ Congressman Bob Dornan (American-California): 277 Electoral Votes; 43.2% popular votes
President Mario Cuomo (People's-New York)/ Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi (People's-California): 246 Electoral Votes; 32.4% popular votes
Senator Richard Lugar (National Liberty-Indiana)/ Senator Arlen Specter (National Liberty-Pennsylvania): 15 Electoral Votes; 13.5% popular votes
Vice President Ross Perot (Reform-Texas)/ Governor William M. Clinton (Reform-Arkansas): 0 Electoral Votes; 10.8% popular votes

After his upset victory in the American Party primaries over establishment candidate Richard Lugar, Patrick J. Buchanan would go on to defeat incumbent President Mario Cuomo and two other candidates in the general election, becoming the first U.S. President to have never before held elective office. Buchanan's victory was made possible by a divided opposition: while 57% of Americans voted for a candidate other than Buchanan, these voters were split between three candidates, while Buchanan received the unanimous support of evangelicals and Goldwater conservatives. Thus, the People's Party was ousted from power just four years after reclaiming the White House, and the moderate wing of the American Party was sidelined forever.

An examination of the breakdown of the popular vote would demonstrate just how dependent Buchanan had been on the division of his opponents. In all but a few states, his margin of victory was under 50%, and in the key battleground of Texas he won by only a few thousand votes. Had Cuomo been his only opponent, he might have lost handily; but the candidacies of Ross Perot, who appealed to union members and Southerners who had traditionally been Populists, and Richard Lugar, who won votes from moderates who might otherwise have supported the president, allowed him to win states like Texas and Pennsylvania that had supported the Populists in 1988. Only in the West, where neither Lugar nor Perot have strong appeal, did Cuomo manage to win a decisive victory, and it was to these Western states that Buchanan's opponents would turn as his administration unfolded.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

I have a hard time seeing 40% of Vermonters voting for Buchanan.

Good point - on second thought, Lugar is probably the best fit for Vermont of the four candidates, considering trends ITTL. The map has been changed accordingly.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

..
while Buchanan received the unanimous support of evangelicals and Goldwater conservatives.
...

No he didn't.

Fine, near unanimous.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Pretty sure Perot won Arkansas

He came close, but ultimately fell short due to a) a significant swath of the electorate reflexively voting straight Populist; and b) swing voters going heavily for Buchanan, who was able to cast himself as the "change" candidate in a way that the incumbent VP was not.

Given Cuomo'a geographical base, I honestly see Buchanan picking up pluralities in northern plains stares and even Minnesota. Cuomo's a city boy, and the House vote against NAFTA was strongly centered in MT, the Dakotas, Canadian-bordering rust belt areas, and Northern New England.

NAFTA doesn't exist ITTL. Cuomo's stance on free trade is similar to Obama's real life position on the Keystone pipeline: he hasn't openly disavowed it, but has hesitated enough to give activists a start. This, and his urban background, led him to win the Plains states by a much slimmer margin than Populist candidates before him, but the region's longstanding preference for Populist candidates has led to an unusually weak American Party structure in that part of the country, whereas the Populists have such a strong turnout machine that even a comparatively weak candidate starts out with a large advantage.

That said, if the Populists continue to nominate urban, socially liberal candidates like Cuomo who are less inclined to double down on farm subsidies, there could very well be a large shift in the future.