1968-2020: How I wish they went

[dw93]

For my list, I'm using declared candidates that were either nominated or had a realistic shot at being the nominee. Bolded candidate is the candidate that I would want to win in said match up and I have maps as I don't have the time. Will provide further elaboration for some elections:

1968: George Romney vs. Hubert Humphrey
1972: Richard Nixon vs. Edmund Muskie
1976: Ronald Reagan vs. Scoop Jackson
1980: George HW Bush vs. Jimmy Carter
1984: Ronald Reagan vs. Gary Hart
1988: George HW. Bush vs. Dick Gephardt
1992: George HW. Bush vs. Tom Harkin
1996: Pat Buchanan vs. Bill Clinton
2000: George W. Bush vs. Al Gore
2004: George W. Bush vs. John Kerry
2008: Mitt Romney vs. Hillary Clinton
2012: Rick Santorum vs. Barack Obama
2016: Ted Cruz vs. Hillary Clinton
2020: Donald Trump vs. Joe Biden (though by a much larger margin that in Real life)

Elaborations:

1968: Romney winning means the more moderate, Rockefeller wing lives on longer and does so without Rockefeller's personal baggage.  Any righward realignment that comes is less likely to be social/cultural without Nixon's southern strategy.

1984: While I'd personally vote Hart in this matchup, Reagan had no primary challenge of significance and no Democrat was winning the general election with things as they were, so if a Democrat has to go down to decisive defeat, I'd rather it be "Atari" Democrat Gary Hart as that would likely discredit the DLC, "third way" types that emerged after a Mondale loss.

1996: While I personally prefer Dole to Buchanan, Buchanan would lose in a legit landslide and said landslide loss would smother modern Paleoconservatism in its crib.

2008: 08 was too soon for Obama and if there's one candidate Hillary Clinton could beat in a (abet in a modern sense) landslide, it's vulture captialist Mitt Romney in the midst of the worst financial crash since 1929. Romeny going down in a landslide may even push the GOP in a more moderate direction economically too.

2012: A reactionary theocrat neocon like Santorum would go down worse than Romney did against Obama and would likely moderate the GOP socially.

2016: Cruz had many of Trump's negatives without any of the showmanship and working class appeal. Cruz losing would put the notion that Republicans have that they "only win with a True Conservative" to rest.