Here's a wild card: 1976.
Ford wins and all the woes of the late 1970's get pinned on the GOP. Watergate, vietnam, "malaise," Iranian hostage crisis, all perceived as a 12-year Republican orgy of incompetence and corruption. There is never a Reagan Revolution (with all that entails) in this timeline! Ted Kennedy (or someone very much like him) wins a landslide in 1980, opening the door for a second Great Society with Democratic super-majorities in Congress.
Makes me sick to read. Not just because that’s the seemingly 9th different scenario that could’ve easily saw the Kennedy’s back in the White House
(which I would love although not nearly as much as if it had been a second JFK term, RFK of JFK Jr) - but because the electoral map would be a lot more favorable to Democrats and so many policies which have made our economy imbalanced & unfair - would not have been enacted - we would be far better off today
Oh what could have been
