John Danforth as Ford's running mate in '76

[mullauna]

Say that John Danforth defeats Stuart Symington in the 1970 race. Might Ford in 1976 select Danforth--who is
from an important and closely contested border state--as his running mate? Danforth would have the advantage of combining youth with experience,
since he would only be forty years old in 1976, yet would have been in the Senate for six years. He would presumably help Ford carry Missouri, which Carter narrowly carried in OTL.


psephos.adam-carr.net/us/pres/1976.txt

And Danforth might help Ford in other closely contested states as well, because for example he would be unlikely to make Dole's mistake of characterizing America's wars of the twentieth century as "Democrat wars." (That kind of talk played well among Republicans but didn't help attract the nominal Democrats that the GOP needed to have on its side in 1976.) And of course when you're running in a nation that is recovering from Watergate and the Nixon resignation and attracted to the Christian moralism of a Jimmy Carter, having an Episcopalian priest on your ticket might not be a bad idea...

[mcnutt]

Carter's close margin in Ohio, Wisconsin and Mississippi could have been reversed by removing Dole's Democratic wars. So there is no President Carter.  In 1980, Reagan has to run as the candidate of the President's party in bad economic times. Because he is not running against an unpopular incumbent President, he has to defend his unpopular views like his opposition to Medicare. So there is no President Reagan.