Would RONALD REAGAN Have Won in '72? [View All]

[liberalpragmatist]

If Hubert Humphrey had won the 1968 race, would Ronald Reagan probably have been the '72 nominee? My guess is he would have been, and with the conservative tide of the country - white-collar Dems fleeing to the Repubs and Southern Dixiecrats abandoning the party via George Wallace, my guess is Reagan would have been elected in '72 - maybe not a landslide, but a win nevertheless.

The irony here is, I think the country would be in a more liberal place today had Humphrey won in '68 and Reagan won in '72 and served, say, 8 years. The general impulse is to rotate party control after 8 or 12 year periods, so the Democrats would probably have governed through most of the 1980s - perhaps someone like Fmr. Sen. Lawton Chiles of Florida. Clinton may well still have emerged, perhaps in '96 or so, but of course, with a shift in the political terrain, who knows what figures might have emerged?