Who runs in 2012 is John McCain is President

[Samof94]

Who runs for the Democratic nomination in 2012?

[Agonized-Statism]

Pretty easy. It would be #herturn and Sanders might run too.

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

A lot depends on who it is in 2008 that lost to him.

[Vosem]

Yeah, how did McCain win 2008 in this scenario? By modern standards the election was not close at all (in fact Obama won the decisive state by 9 points; measured this way it was the most decisive election after 1984), so the world where he wins feels like a very different world.

(The easiest way to make this happen would probably be a world where you shift some of the timing of the 2004 campaign, have Kerry win, and then have the financial crisis and Middle Eastern insurgencies happen on his watch. McCain if anything has an easier path to the nomination in this world -- the Republican turn against interventionism would've taken longer if the Middle Eastern failures were perceived to be Democratic ones, and even IRL the 2008 primaries were fought mostly on foreign policy, not yet the economy -- and my guess is that he would annihilate Kerry. Then you push off the Hillary vs. Obama primary to 2012.)