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WI: Bob Dole wins in 1996?

I feel like these kinds of what-ifs and scenario are usually baseless- if the Democratic Party loses to Bob Dole, a respectable moderate within the Republican Party, the lesson learned* probably won't be that Clinton should have gone further left. The lessons drawn would probably have been about Clinton's character and the image of his Administration because after all- he won in '92 and was, if anything, part of a larger trend starting with New Democrats in the 80s.

*I also think the idea that parties learn lessons and adjust in a clear stimulus/response way is clearly wrong. All the evidence was that voters thought Hillary was too far left in 2016 and they personally disliked her, the solution in 2020 was to nominate someone with a further left platform, less of a perception of being left who was more personally likeable. Where's the lesson?
 
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What lessons (if any) are drawn from a defeat are contingent on how the defeat happens.

If Clinton somehow lost in '96 because of whatever Clinton scandal(s) you want to pick, then we can be pretty doubtful that would end moderation in the Democratic Party. The observation would just be that Clinton had been ineffective in office, hadn't recovered from the disaster of the first two years, and had way too much personal baggage.
 
JesterBL said:
I feel like these kinds of what-ifs and scenario are usually baseless- if the Democratic Party loses to Bob Dole, a respectable moderate within the Republican Party, the lesson learned* probably won't be that Clinton should have gone further left. The lessons drawn would probably have been about Clinton's character and the image of his Administration because after all- he won in '92 and was, if anything, part of a larger trend starting with New Democrats in the 80s.

*I also think the idea that parties learn lessons and adjust in a clear stimulus/response way is clearly wrong. All the evidence was that voters thought Hillary was too far left in 2016 and they personally disliked her, the solution in 2020 was to nominate someone with a further left platform, less of a perception of being left who was more personally likeable. Where's the lesson?
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Bob Dole was not a moderate, not even in the increasingly right-wing Republican Party of the 90s. He was to the right of Bush in 1988.

I do agree with the rest of what you said though.
 
Catalunya said:
Bob Dole was not a moderate, not even in the increasingly right-wing Republican Party of the 90s. He was to the right of Bush in 1988.

I do agree with the rest of what you said though.
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I disagree. Bob Dole as a candidate in 1996 positioned himself as a moderate, open to compromise, and his acceptance speech even included digs at more conservative Republicans. Contemporaries commented that his chief problem in the primaries was that he wasn't conservative enough and that was the only serious opposition he faced. And, referring to the conceit of the OP- the lesson the Republican Party took from 1996- don't nominate a moderate.

1988 Bob Dole- not a moderate. 1996 Bob Dole- yeah, probably best described as a moderate.
 
JesterBL said:
I disagree. Bob Dole as a candidate in 1996 positioned himself as a moderate, open to compromise, and his acceptance speech even included digs at more conservative Republicans. Contemporaries commented that his chief problem in the primaries was that he wasn't conservative enough and that was the only serious opposition he faced. And, referring to the conceit of the OP- the lesson the Republican Party took from 1996- don't nominate a moderate.

1988 Bob Dole- not a moderate. 1996 Bob Dole- yeah, probably best described as a moderate.
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The problem was that he wasn’t able to portray himself as a moderate to the average voter. Dole was seen as old school and out of touch, and trying to run to the centre when your opponent was already doing that (and much better as well), was a horrible campaign tactic. A President Dole would only be slightly less conservative than Bush 43, and that’s more down to the people they associate themselves with, rather than his attempts at moderatism.
 
If Bob Dole is President, a big difference might be the delay of "Presidential Administration" (to quote Elena Kagan). The modern trend of increased Presidential direct oversight over the Administrative State started with Carter (who created OIRA, but that was the tail end of his administration) and Reagan (who started doing unified administrative schemes to deregulate unilaterally), but the practice of digging up decades-old statutes, identifying vague language, and doing end-runs around Congress to assert new regulatory authority over big chunks of the economy or other areas (like health policy, such as when Dubya cried to nix Oregon's right to die laws) kicked off under Clinton and especially after Clinton became Director of the Domestic Policy Council in 1997 in Bubba's second term. It's probably somewhat inevitable that that will pop up, but it will be delayed in its emergence.


Sandra Day O'Connor probably retires sooner. By 1996 she was eligible for her pension and she wanted to spend her golden years with her husband.

Bob Dole probably pays closer attention to Foreign Policy than Bill Clinton did. Bubba cared more about domestic policy.

Whatever else, Democrats not having to defend Bill Clinton's personal shortcomings for four years probably (and Republicans getting angrier and angrier over Clinton's sleazy aspects) means the tone of American Domestic politics is less angry and vitriolic.

The Clinton Administration, seeking to promote racial equity in home ownership, encouraged banks to give out more loans to minority applicants (and threatened investigation or enforcement actions if an insufficient number were given out). Often this meant having to reduce credit qualifications (subprime mortages). This was one (among several) factors that led to the financial crisis. The Bush Administration kept these policies in place.


Democrats would be in some disarray if Clinton loses. Bill was beloved OTL because Republicans had held the White House for 20 of 24 years when he showed up and won landslide victories (and even the one Dem win in 1976 was a squeaker). There would be squabbles over why Bill lost. Was it personal/scandal issues? Was it because he governed to the left of what he ran as? Was it because he lost old school social conservative economically left catholic labor voters? Dems would be arguing with each other over these questions, and the GOP meanwhile would be riding the late 90s economy into the 2000 election...
 
Bob Dole was about as moderate as you could get in both 1988 and 1996 and still be a fully plausible shot at the national nomination. The right of the party always distrusted him (rightly) as someone who was willing to put up taxes, see a role for government, had very much not been shy in saying that Iran-Contra needed to be investigated, and as someone who was very much not part of the New Right.

He pandered to the right in both 1988 and 1996 of course, but that's precisely because he knew it was a weak spot for him. It also certainly wasn't any more extensive a pandering than that of George Bush, who actively went out of his way to make himself a full-blown proxy of Reagan.

In so far as the 1988 primaries should be given a single political reading, they're best seen as a referendum on Reagan. Which is why Dole triumped in a farm crisis state but struggled everywhere else.
 
TheKennedyMachine said:
Saw this tweet and got inspired to ponder the question of what exactly a Dole victory in ‘96 would lead to.

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I am a tad miffed about this. If Clinton losing in 1996 would have been proof that triangulation doesn’t work, is Clinton winning in 1996 proof that triangulation does work?

I mean, I think this guy is betting way too much on the outcome of a single election as a guide to the future. It’s like if Tom Dewey would have won in 1948. No doubt there’d be someone arguing that if Dewey would have lost, the Republicans would have figured, ”Well, in 1936 we nominated a bona fide progressive Republican who accepted huge chunks of the New Deal, and that didn’t work, in 1940 we nominated a former Democrat and a former Roosevelt delegate to the DNC who still accepted most of the New Dwal, and in 1944 and 1948, we nominated Tom Dewey, the most East Coast progressive of East Coast progressive Republicans, and he kept losing! Clearly, going for a friendly moderate doesn’t work, we need a proper reactionary demagogue!” and so, with moderate political strategy being exposed as a failure, they would have gone for Bob Taft in 1952, and the conservative ascendancy would have abolished Social Security and the income tax by 1976.

Only, of course, that obviously didn’t happen.
 
Makemakean said:
I am a tad miffed about this. If Clinton losing in 1996 would have been proof that triangulation doesn’t work, is Clinton winning in 1996 proof that triangulation does work?

I mean, I think this guy is betting way too much on the outcome of a single election as a guide to the future. It’s like if Tom Dewey would have won in 1948. No doubt there’d be someone arguing that if Dewey would have lost, the Republicans would have figured, ”Well, in 1936 we nominated a bona fide progressive Republican who accepted huge chunks of the New Deal, and that didn’t work, in 1940 we nominated a former Democrat and a former Roosevelt delegate to the DNC who still accepted most of the New Dwal, and in 1944 and 1948, we nominated Tom Dewey, the most East Coast progressive of East Coast progressive Republicans, and he kept losing! Clearly, going for a friendly moderate doesn’t work, we need a proper reactionary demagogue!” and so, with moderate political strategy being exposed as a failure, they would have gone for Bob Taft in 1952, and the conservative ascendancy would have abolished Social Security and the income tax by 1976.

Only, of course, that obviously didn’t happen.
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People always make dumb posts on twitter for the fun of it. Nobody actually believes that Dole 1996 is the precise thing needed for socialism in America.
 
Catalunya said:
People always make dumb posts on twitter for the fun of it. Nobody actually believes that Dole 1996 is the precise thing needed for socialism in America.
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Then what's the point of this thread, if assessing the thesis posited in the OP is to be discouraged?
 
Elektronaut said:
Bob Dole was about as moderate as you could get in both 1988 and 1996 and still be a fully plausible shot at the national nomination. The right of the party always distrusted him (rightly) as someone who was willing to put up taxes, see a role for government, had very much not been shy in saying that Iran-Contra needed to be investigated, and as someone who was very much not part of the New Right.

He pandered to the right in both 1988 and 1996 of course, but that's precisely because he knew it was a weak spot for him. It also certainly wasn't any more extensive a pandering than that of George Bush, who actively went out of his way to make himself a full-blown proxy of Reagan.

In so far as the 1988 primaries should be given a single political reading, they're best seen as a referendum on Reagan. Which is why Dole triumped in a farm crisis state but struggled everywhere else.
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Yeah wasn’t Dole also pro-choice but then became aggressively pro-life because he got primaried for the Senate in Kansas? I can’t remember the year but it was covered in Cramer’s classic on the 1988 election ‘What it Takes’.

As much as I disagree with Dole’s politics, his life story was inspiring. My favourite Dole moment was when Malcolm Rifkind as British Foreign Secretary told a delegation of Senators that America didn’t know the consequences of war…a delegation including an enraged Dole and McCain.
 
Catalunya said:
He just posted a tweet he probably found in that Oppo list, and asked a pretty conventional question about what a Dole presidency would look like. Not whether the tweet is correct or not.
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Okay, well, kind of feel then that it was a tad misleading, but let's not get bogged down on that.

If we all agree on that the tweet at the beginning of the post is stupid, and that it would be waste of time even addressing it at all, then let's do so.

Could I just then pray ask the OP to add a quick edit to the original post saying that, you know, you don't actually want to have a discussion about the tweet you linked to in your one sentence-opening post?
 
JesterBL said:
I disagree. Bob Dole as a candidate in 1996 positioned himself as a moderate, open to compromise, and his acceptance speech even included digs at more conservative Republicans. Contemporaries commented that his chief problem in the primaries was that he wasn't conservative enough and that was the only serious opposition he faced. And, referring to the conceit of the OP- the lesson the Republican Party took from 1996- don't nominate a moderate.

1988 Bob Dole- not a moderate. 1996 Bob Dole- yeah, probably best described as a moderate.
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Bob Dole wasn't a moderate substantively (meaning his positions) but by 1996 he was a moderate in terms of temperament and disposition. The 1996 platform was plenty Conservative, but if Dole follows through on how he campaigned he'd be willing to settle for compromises in areas where necessary and possible.

I'd expect something at least as reformist as the Clinton-Gingrich Social Security reform that failed to pass.

Sandra Day O'Connor probably retires sooner (I mentioned this above). By 1996 she was eligible for her pension and she wanted to spend her golden years with her husband. Who might replace her? Lawrence Silberman (probably too old), Samuel Alito, Edith Jones, Edith Brown Clement, or Emilio Garza.

There aren't many 5-4 cases between 1997 and 2005 this changes.
  • Stenberg v. Carhart (2000) comes out differently, but the case was narrowed significantly in 2008's Gonzales v. Carhart (2008) OTL.
  • Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) ends affirmative action, although there might be a carveout for the military academies.
  • Federal Election Commission v. Colorado Republican Federal Campaign Committee (2001) means parties can coordinate their expenditures with the candidate more easily
  • McConnell v. FEC (2003) means much of McCain-Feingold gets struck down (assuming it happens at all).
  • McCreary County v. ACLU (2005) comes out more in favor of public displays of religion by governments.
 
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JesterBL said:
*I also think the idea that parties learn lessons and adjust in a clear stimulus/response way is clearly wrong. All the evidence was that voters thought Hillary was too far left in 2016 and they personally disliked her, the solution in 2020 was to nominate someone with a further left platform, less of a perception of being left who was more personally likeable. Where's the lesson?
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I mean I think the lesson is "Whig measures by tory men" is an extremely good political tactic (and one that the right/hard right understands better, just from the uh opposite end of the spectrum), with a side of people not wanting to draw too many lessons from Clinton because of how much the election was just her personal baggage. Also unfortunately I think that America just isn't going to elect a woman for president anytime soon mainly because of the way presidential campaiging and sexism as it exists in the US intersect, but that may be a discussion for another thread.
 
Anyhow, I think the preconditions for a more explicitly left-wing dem party are honestly just the Cold War not being in recentish memory/having a generation or two of politically engaged people who couldn't remember the Cold War, but I do think maybe third way politics is slowed a bit as a project by an electoral defeat, maybe Paul Wellstone gets a presidential run in since it's fairly certain his death is butterflied by this.
 
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