2008: President Kerry vs. Mitt Romney

[Alben Barkley]

READ SCENARIO CAREFULLY AS THIS IS NOT A NORMAL ELECTION.

John Kerry narrowly wins Ohio and the presidency in 2004, despite narrowly losing the popular vote. This results in a swift bipartisan effort to replace the Electoral College with the National Popular Vote to decide the presidency. A Constitutional amendment is ratified and goes into effect in time for the 2008 election.

Kerry has scaled down the US presence in Iraq, an overall popular move, but the Great Recession is still creeping up on the nation. Moreover, John Edwards is hit by the scandal of an extramarital affair while his wife was dying of cancer. Kerry replaces him with Hillary Clinton on the ticket for his re-election campaign.

Republicans nominate Mitt Romney in 2008; he narrowly defeats John McCain, who led a more hawkish faction of the party but is unable to secure the nomination as the party overall is uneasy about making the election a referendum on war and foreign policy again, preferring to focus on economics and domestic policy with a more traditional conservative like Romney. Due to concerns about the women vote after the announcement of Hillary Clinton replacing Edwards, Romney is advised to choose the little-known Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, as his running mate.

Despite lukewarm approval ratings for the president, the Kerry/Clinton ticket leads most early polls. However, the gap narrows dramatically following the September crash. Kerry regains the lead following a devastating Vice Presidential debate in which Hillary Clinton is widely perceived to have trounced the inexperienced, gaffe-prone, and ill-prepared Sarah Palin. This bounce fades over time, however, and the polls are neck-and-neck in the final stretch of the campaign. Romney blames Kerry for the crash and claims his business skill is needed to fix the country; Kerry blames Bush and claims that someone with ties to big banks like Romney is the last thing the country needs.

Since popular vote is now all that matters, the candidates spend most of their time in large states like New York, California, Texas, Florida, etc. Both, however, seek to boost turnout of core voters in other areas of the country as well.

How does this go down?

[OSR stands with Israel]

Romney wins 52%-47%

[Chips]

If Kerry couldn't win the popular vote in 2004. He probably isn't winning it in 2008 especially after all of this has happened. It would've been a 3-4 ish point win for Romney in the popular vote.

If the Electoral College was still a thing:



Mitt Romney: 302 electoral votes
President Kerry: 236 electoral votes

IRL 2004, Just replace NM with PA.

[Agonized-Statism]

President John Kerry (D-MA) / Senator Barack Obama (D-IL)
Fmr. Governor Mitt Romney (R-MA) / Governor Tim Pawlenty (R-MN) ✓

[Del Tachi]

Romney wins the popular vote by about the same margin Obama did in OTL

Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin are such perplexing VP picks in this scenario.  Clinton has always had too much baggage to be a credible VP choice, and the only Republican who would ever consider choosing Palin is a mavericky, hot-headed McCain down in the polls.  The tickets are probably something more like Kerry/Bayh vs Romeny/Pawlenty 

*Also Rielle Hunter didn't meet Edwards until 2006, so in a world where Edwards is  VP this affair probably never happens.  He is a slime ball nonetheless.