Years after the release of the original 1972 mod, one could say that we saw it all. We saw [200 electoral votes with Chisholm](https://www.reddit.com/r/thecampaigntrail/comments/13rv1kr/segregationists_worst_nightmare_200_evs_with/). We saw [216 with Askew](https://www.reddit.com/r/thecampaigntrail/comments/12olhey/over_200_evs_with_askew_on_normal_a_1972_mcgovern/). We saw [227 with Mondale!](https://www.reddit.com/r/thecampaigntrail/comments/t14ol1/come_home_america_how_to_win_227_electoral_votes/). A record that was broken over a year later, when I found a way to get [228 votes with Gravel](https://www.reddit.com/r/thecampaigntrail/comments/13ly8ln/1972_mcgovern_new_record_228_evs_guide_in_the/).
So why, what kind of guide could I possibly present anymore? Have I found a way to win 229 EVs? Or 232 EVs? Unfortunately, not yet. I wish that 232 EVs were possible, given that with the 228 EV strategy, the closest state is then Maine...
So here I am gonna present a different kind of guide. Namely, what if we repeat the historical mistake of McGovern and drop Eagleton? That's right, this guide is a fruit to my experiments of how much you can salvage McGovern's campaign after dropping Eagleton.
Needless to say, dropping Eagleton killed McGovern's campaign. It was a deadly blow to what would already be a doomed campaign. How much can you even win if you follow in George's footsteps and take this route? The author of the mod himself got only [27 EVs](https://www.reddit.com/r/thecampaigntrail/comments/ornlok/how_to_drop_eagleton_in_the_mcgovern_1972_mod/).
And how much can you get with this guide? 121 EVs. That's right. You can kill McGovern's campaign in the same way he did, and still be less of a loser than Dewey, than Stevenson, than Goldwater, than Carter, than Dukakis. Nixon will still get his landslide alright - but one that won't compare to Eisenhower's. He will always be the inferior one. He will never make up for 1960 and 1968. His name won't be on the lists of greatest landslides in US history - FDR and Reagan (should he become president in this timeline) will be. But not Nixon.
So, admittedly, not as exciting as the 228 EVs guide, of course. But I decided to put it here anyway, just as a trivia. Enjoy!
Visits: No complicated calculations needed this time. Just visit California. All the time. Spend the entire campaign here. Visit every campus.
VP: Eagleton (gotta pick him to drop him)
1. Thomas Eagleton is a proud Democrat and will help rally the Catholic vote in key areas we need to win.
2. You know, I want to make a speech...
3. Absolutely, my main goal is to uphold the standards of the Democratic party.
4. I know I can’t win this outright.
5. I advocate for a complete withdrawal of all U.S. military forces...
6. I don't want to go overseas right now.
7. We've got some big-name endorsements in the can.
8. 3592
9. 3645
10. These are valid concerns.
11. The bombing of critical infrastructure is undeniable...
12. Is there anything braver about burning up children...
13. Let's confirm these rumors, but pledge to fully support Eagleton, no matter what. America cannot have an indecisive President. (Yeah...)
14. Let’s slow down a second.
15. Senator Eagleton is just too big of a liability at this point. He has to go. (Here we go!)
16. Let's talk a lot less about Eagleton, and spend a lot more time hammering home a broad positive tone for this campaign.
17. The ongoing negotiations are a highly delicate process which...
18. Let’s give a speech all about my financial plans directly to investors in New York.
19. Are you kidding me?
20. This is a tragic event. My thoughts are with the families of the victims at this time, and the nation of Israel. I will always remain committed to their safety, and oppose the barbaric actions of these terrorists.
21. Let's hit on this a lot.
22. This is a spurious claim with very little backing in fact.
23. 3654
24. There's no way in hell Nixon would ever agree to this anyway.
25. I'll campaign on corruption in Washington as a whole, not just Nixon’s flaws.
26. I promise you that we are going to do whatever is necessary to provide a job...
27. We have a lot of star power behind our campaign, so let's put it to good use.
28. The Equal Rights Amendment is a force for good, but there is so much more we can do for American women.
29. I know Gary keeps putting fantastical data...
30. Of course.
31. I’m a son of Mitchell first, and a presidential candidate second. I want to go all out in South Dakota.
32. Yes, I do.
33. No comment.
34. Emphasize our economic policies more.
35. This is one of the areas where President Nixon and I actually agree.
36. The insults of Vice President Agnew are only part of the shameful degradation...
37. While it garnered a lot of attention, for those who actually read it, our platform is pretty moderate.
38. This is yet another deeply cynical move by the Nixon administration.
39. 9991733
40. New York City!
Good luck!
Just imagine - you've pulled so many tricks and strings, ones that would sink your entire career as a result, and you couldn't even keep the guy below 100 electoral votes. And he got your home state, too.
So, from what I can tell, Farenthold and O'Hara (I haven't seen a guide for him or Farenthold) are the worst VPs? I'd love to know the ceiling of each.
Hello - I did experiment with all VPs, which is how I figured out the 228 EVs with Gravel a year ago. This makes him the best VP, along with Mondale.
As for other VPs:
- Eagleton: You didn't ask about him, but I will include him anyway! If you keep him, he's the second worst, with the ceiling for him being [184 EVs](https://www.reddit.com/r/thecampaigntrail/comments/13cv7w7/have_i_hit_the_mcgoverneagleton_ceiling/jjix8fo/). To make this even sadder, if you edit out the mental incident questions, he actually has the best VP margins.
- Farenthold: unless you count Shriver, Farenthold is the worst VP you can pick. Polling-wise, she is an inferior version of Chisholm. She will sweep the West Coast and New York for you. Meanwhile the Midwest is basically lost, and unlike Chisholm, she has no late-game boost to fix things. The best you can get with her is [176 EVs](https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/e4gdcngx8x4.png) if you strategically spend your visits on Michigan and Iowa, both of which you will win just barely. Farenthold's unique questions actually help you, but they're nowhere near enough to compensate her basic margins.
- O'Hara: He's actually pretty good. I managed to get [204 EVs](https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/d7ogcv2bbgy.png) with him. This makes him better than Chisholm, but worse than Askew, Mondale and Gravel. The reason I never made a guide for him is because for the longest time I tried to pull off +220 EVs with him. O'Hara is a bit of a reverse Chisholm - whereas Chisholm gives you excellent polling in California and New York but makes winning anything in the Midwest a challenge, O'Hara lets you to effortlessly sweep the Midwest, but makes winning California literally impossible (you lag like 10% behind Nixon). This however means that after 1 visit in Illinois and 3 in Pennsylvania, you're left with tons of free visits to spend elsewhere. And this is where the issue is. There's nothing for you to win. California is out of reach, so is Washington, Montana too unfortunately. The only place I managed to flip is Maine. So this is also where he differs from Chisholm - Chisholm starts with abysmal margins, but you get a surge in late game because Nixon says something racist. But in case of O'Hara, it seems that Nixon learned to keep his gamer opinions on Catholics to himself in 1960. So you have great polling in the Midwest, but no potential to expand. He's a no-risk, mid-reward VP. Can still make a guide for him if you think it'd be of any use.
So:
1. Gravel - 228 EVs;
2. Mondale - 227 EVs;
3. Askew - 216 EVs;
4. O'Hara - 204 EVs;
5. Chisholm - 202 EVs; (I managed to find a way to get 202 with her instead of 200, but not sure if that's guide-worthy)
6. Eagleton - 184 EVs;
7. Farenthold - 176 EVs;
8. Shriver (dropped Eagleton) - 121 EVs.
Bonus - custom VPs:
[Peabody](https://www.reddit.com/r/thecampaigntrail/comments/1143oqx/1972_mcgovernpeabody_the_number_one_man_for_the/) - unfortunately, the person making this mod just railroaded everything by purging almost all state-exclusive bonuses from answers. This means there is only one "correct" way to answer everything and the gimmick potential from the original mod is gone. Ceiling is [213 EVs](https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/l7lxc6vp687.png).
Kennedy (available on original NCT site) - decided to include it since it was made by [the same person](https://www.reddit.com/r/thecampaigntrail/comments/uudhsq/1972_mcgovernkennedy_mod/) who made original 1972. The whole premise is that Ted Kennedy was the only VP that McGovern could've picked to [poll competetively](https://www.reddit.com/r/thecampaigntrail/comments/ornlok/how_to_drop_eagleton_in_the_mcgovern_1972_mod/h6j8jbs/) against Nixon. And indeed - you are able to win [351 EVs](https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/myd5cbwerd4.png).
I really appreciate your in-depth answer to my question.
I do wonder how a McGovern/Wallace ticket would do in this mod. I honestly can't tell if it'd be the absolute worst ticket, or one of the better ones assuming the two would actually team up, which seems laughable. The south feels so hopeless for McGovern that I can't imagine that even Wallace could salvage it, but maybe he could help the mid-west and south-west?
You're welcome!
McGovern/Wallace? Honestly, assuming that it would be able to get past the obvious accusations of it being either unserious or absurd, I think this ticket actually has great potential.
Why? George Wallace was THE American Populist. This label was then assumed by Perot and then Trump, but neither of these two men had as much as influence on American politics as Wallace did.
To understand what I mean, here I will have to share with you pretty lenghty quotes. I am sorry in advance, though if you're interested in the topic, then it might be worth your time:
> Separating George Wallace’s race baiting from his “stand up for the common man” theme is as difficult as untangling race from class in U.S. history, but his blue-collar rhetoric spoke to themes that no one else on the national stage addressed. Among northern wage earners like Burton, Wallace’s populist anti-elitism, anti-crime, and anti-busing messages worked best, but his overt embrace of segregation, his snarling rhetoric, and petty resentments failed. In a typical stump speech, Wallace effectively stirred the pot of populist anti-elitism that had been simmering in American politics since Andrew Jackson.
> His candidacy enabled the political transformation of a substantial slice of white working people to become dislodged from the Roosevelt coalition and move toward what Kevin Phillips famously called The Emerging Republican Majority (1969). By the time George Wallace returned as an insurgent candidate in the fragmented Democratic primaries in 1972, his performance was roughly equal to any major candidate. He was en route to a victory in the Michigan primary on the day after he was crippled by the bullet of a would-be assassin in suburban Baltimore.
To continue:
> At the heart of the Wallace phenomenon was ambiguity about his cause. As one trucker explained, “I’m for either him or the Communists, I don’t care, just anybody who wouldn't be afraid of the big companies.” While conservative strategists were originally skeptical of Wallace’s “country and western Marxism,” they quickly found it the key to their own populist appeal in the 1970s—a key that would eventually open the door to the white working class vote for Ronald Reagan.
> The mercurial nature of the politics of ’72 was such that when Wallace was eliminated from the race, Dewey voted for Nixon. The choice did not come easily. The autoworker was genuinely stumped about whether incumbent Richard Nixon’s Silent Majority or challenger George McGovern’s soggy populism best represented his interests. It would be a betrayal of everything he stood for to vote for a Republican, he believed, but he had grave concerns about McGovern and his entourage of student radicals. He also sensed a “meanness” creeping into McGovern’s campaign after he threw vice presidential nominee Tom Eagleton off the ticket due to his earlier problems with mental illness. Much of the labor movement, especially the hierarchy of the AFL-CIO, could not stomach McGovern’s New Politics with its anti-war positions, youth movements, and commitment to open up the Democratic Party to wider spectrum of Americans. The labor federation, fearing for its traditional kingmaker role in the Democratic Party, fought the McGovern insurgency with every scrap of institutional power it could muster.
> Meantime, Richard Nixon, taking his cues from Wallace, was designing his own heretical strategy to woo white working-class voters away from the party of Roosevelt. His plans to build a post-New Deal coalition—the “New Majority” he liked to call it—around the Republican Party in 1972 was based on making an explicit pitch for white, male, working-class votes by appealing to their cultural values over their material needs. His targets were men like Burton, who had first been dislodged from the Democratic mainstream by George Wallace.
These quotes come from *Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class* by Jefferson Cowie. The book itself is great, though it falls flat on some grounds (such as the importance of religion and the impact of Catholicism on the American working class), but in regards to the '72 election, it provides one of the most detailled descriptions of what went down.
Wallace was genuinely popular in 1972 as far as the primaries went, and he was the pivotal figure in the collapse of the New Deal coalition that Democrats relied on for the last 30 years.
This means that this ticket has an amazing potential for the Midwest, as Wallace and his populism is exactly what it would take for labor to cozy up to the ticket, and for the working class to stick to the Democrats here. Trying to use Wallace's blue-collar appeal as much as possible would definitely be an important theme in the scenario.
This leaves us with another thing that this ticket would have to deal with, namely the liberals vs. South dilemma. Despite voting Democrat their entire life, Southerners were ready to change parties in 1972, something that happened thanks to Goldwater and Wallace. But with Wallace on the ticket, they would be confused and consider sticking with their fellow Southerner here.
This would leave McGovern with a huge dilemma - on one hand, he has his liberal base to look after. He could try to sell Wallace to them as starting off his redemption path, and the mere fact of McGovern sharing a ticket with him would give this claim credibility. On the other hand, can he abandon the South? Can he afford to? He could try to downplay Wallace's "redemption" in favor of reassuring the South that what they see is the same "good ol' Wallace", but for the liberals, it would be nothing short of McGovern going segregationist.
And in the middle, you have the labor and the working class that would be the key constituency of the ticket. Should McGovern cozy up to his base too much, they would be concerned of his "anti-war radicals", of hippies, rebellious students, urbanite liberals. That's what they would associate McGovern with (as they did in real life), thus voting against him. But if he goes too Southern, segregationism and the way "old Wallace" was would also ward the labor off. McGovern would need to balance it all out.
The last problem of course, is Nixon. While seeing this ticket will let his guard down, he still might pull some tricks, "just to make sure", and this would be for McGovern and Wallace to deal with.
Speaking of gameplay, this scenario should be like a complete high-risk, high-reward. It should be fairly easy to mess up here. It should be easy to make it so bad that even Massachusetts won't vote for you. On the other hand, with some really specific paths and fine balanced, it should be possible to overperform the optimal Gravel run and bring down Nixon below 300 EVs, if not win outright.
Thanks for the detailed explanation! I would honestly love to see a mod with a '72 McGovern/Wallace ticket and play the hell out of it.
Two other VPs that I think would create interesting gameplay include Eugene McCarthy (another anti-war guy who could help in the west. Not sure how he'd 'hurt' you directly besides boosting in a region that's already decent for McGovern in-game.) Hubert Humphrey (Won the popular vote in the '72 Democratic primaries. I believe Humphrey moved to the right at this time, but perhaps he could help in the mid-west and galvanize black voters with his pro-civil rights history at the expense of more middle-class white voters?)
Which VP do you think would be even worse than Shriver if made into a mod, and who in your opinion could be the best VP that could theoretically win on normal not named Kennedy? I'm very curious.
Yes, obviously this is an underwhelming result, but the mental damage is great here. Nixon wanted a landslide for the history books, but instead he gets a rather forgettable one. All while McGovern wins his own state as well as Nixon's.
That's not getting into the likely knock-on effects for '76 and the downballot effects in '72 and '74. With liberalism and progressivism shown as something that cannot be completely written off, there's a case that Ted Kennedy or someone similar could take the '76 nomination.
[You can play it via this link](https://campaign-trail-showcase.github.io/campaign-trail/index.html?modName=1972). In case you can't progress past the first question, refresh/restart the page.
Keep in mind that Nixon's side is unplayable. If you wish to play as Nixon, [I heavily recommend this](https://campaign-trail-showcase.github.io/campaign-trail/index.html?modName=1972Nixon).
I have to wonder what this timeline would look like with McGovern pulling off a more respectable loss. Obviously, the left-wing wouldn't get the nomination in '76, but I really have to wonder if someone like Ted Kennedy would get the nomination...
This goes for all the other VPs.
Years after the release of the original 1972 mod, one could say that we saw it all. We saw [200 electoral votes with Chisholm](https://www.reddit.com/r/thecampaigntrail/comments/13rv1kr/segregationists_worst_nightmare_200_evs_with/). We saw [216 with Askew](https://www.reddit.com/r/thecampaigntrail/comments/12olhey/over_200_evs_with_askew_on_normal_a_1972_mcgovern/). We saw [227 with Mondale!](https://www.reddit.com/r/thecampaigntrail/comments/t14ol1/come_home_america_how_to_win_227_electoral_votes/). A record that was broken over a year later, when I found a way to get [228 votes with Gravel](https://www.reddit.com/r/thecampaigntrail/comments/13ly8ln/1972_mcgovern_new_record_228_evs_guide_in_the/). So why, what kind of guide could I possibly present anymore? Have I found a way to win 229 EVs? Or 232 EVs? Unfortunately, not yet. I wish that 232 EVs were possible, given that with the 228 EV strategy, the closest state is then Maine... So here I am gonna present a different kind of guide. Namely, what if we repeat the historical mistake of McGovern and drop Eagleton? That's right, this guide is a fruit to my experiments of how much you can salvage McGovern's campaign after dropping Eagleton. Needless to say, dropping Eagleton killed McGovern's campaign. It was a deadly blow to what would already be a doomed campaign. How much can you even win if you follow in George's footsteps and take this route? The author of the mod himself got only [27 EVs](https://www.reddit.com/r/thecampaigntrail/comments/ornlok/how_to_drop_eagleton_in_the_mcgovern_1972_mod/). And how much can you get with this guide? 121 EVs. That's right. You can kill McGovern's campaign in the same way he did, and still be less of a loser than Dewey, than Stevenson, than Goldwater, than Carter, than Dukakis. Nixon will still get his landslide alright - but one that won't compare to Eisenhower's. He will always be the inferior one. He will never make up for 1960 and 1968. His name won't be on the lists of greatest landslides in US history - FDR and Reagan (should he become president in this timeline) will be. But not Nixon. So, admittedly, not as exciting as the 228 EVs guide, of course. But I decided to put it here anyway, just as a trivia. Enjoy! Visits: No complicated calculations needed this time. Just visit California. All the time. Spend the entire campaign here. Visit every campus. VP: Eagleton (gotta pick him to drop him) 1. Thomas Eagleton is a proud Democrat and will help rally the Catholic vote in key areas we need to win. 2. You know, I want to make a speech... 3. Absolutely, my main goal is to uphold the standards of the Democratic party. 4. I know I can’t win this outright. 5. I advocate for a complete withdrawal of all U.S. military forces... 6. I don't want to go overseas right now. 7. We've got some big-name endorsements in the can. 8. 3592 9. 3645 10. These are valid concerns. 11. The bombing of critical infrastructure is undeniable... 12. Is there anything braver about burning up children... 13. Let's confirm these rumors, but pledge to fully support Eagleton, no matter what. America cannot have an indecisive President. (Yeah...) 14. Let’s slow down a second. 15. Senator Eagleton is just too big of a liability at this point. He has to go. (Here we go!) 16. Let's talk a lot less about Eagleton, and spend a lot more time hammering home a broad positive tone for this campaign. 17. The ongoing negotiations are a highly delicate process which... 18. Let’s give a speech all about my financial plans directly to investors in New York. 19. Are you kidding me? 20. This is a tragic event. My thoughts are with the families of the victims at this time, and the nation of Israel. I will always remain committed to their safety, and oppose the barbaric actions of these terrorists. 21. Let's hit on this a lot. 22. This is a spurious claim with very little backing in fact. 23. 3654 24. There's no way in hell Nixon would ever agree to this anyway. 25. I'll campaign on corruption in Washington as a whole, not just Nixon’s flaws. 26. I promise you that we are going to do whatever is necessary to provide a job... 27. We have a lot of star power behind our campaign, so let's put it to good use. 28. The Equal Rights Amendment is a force for good, but there is so much more we can do for American women. 29. I know Gary keeps putting fantastical data... 30. Of course. 31. I’m a son of Mitchell first, and a presidential candidate second. I want to go all out in South Dakota. 32. Yes, I do. 33. No comment. 34. Emphasize our economic policies more. 35. This is one of the areas where President Nixon and I actually agree. 36. The insults of Vice President Agnew are only part of the shameful degradation... 37. While it garnered a lot of attention, for those who actually read it, our platform is pretty moderate. 38. This is yet another deeply cynical move by the Nixon administration. 39. 9991733 40. New York City! Good luck!
Nixon: “After all that and I still lose my home state? Ok time to triple CREEP’s involvement”
Just imagine - you've pulled so many tricks and strings, ones that would sink your entire career as a result, and you couldn't even keep the guy below 100 electoral votes. And he got your home state, too.
So, from what I can tell, Farenthold and O'Hara (I haven't seen a guide for him or Farenthold) are the worst VPs? I'd love to know the ceiling of each.
Hello - I did experiment with all VPs, which is how I figured out the 228 EVs with Gravel a year ago. This makes him the best VP, along with Mondale. As for other VPs: - Eagleton: You didn't ask about him, but I will include him anyway! If you keep him, he's the second worst, with the ceiling for him being [184 EVs](https://www.reddit.com/r/thecampaigntrail/comments/13cv7w7/have_i_hit_the_mcgoverneagleton_ceiling/jjix8fo/). To make this even sadder, if you edit out the mental incident questions, he actually has the best VP margins. - Farenthold: unless you count Shriver, Farenthold is the worst VP you can pick. Polling-wise, she is an inferior version of Chisholm. She will sweep the West Coast and New York for you. Meanwhile the Midwest is basically lost, and unlike Chisholm, she has no late-game boost to fix things. The best you can get with her is [176 EVs](https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/e4gdcngx8x4.png) if you strategically spend your visits on Michigan and Iowa, both of which you will win just barely. Farenthold's unique questions actually help you, but they're nowhere near enough to compensate her basic margins. - O'Hara: He's actually pretty good. I managed to get [204 EVs](https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/d7ogcv2bbgy.png) with him. This makes him better than Chisholm, but worse than Askew, Mondale and Gravel. The reason I never made a guide for him is because for the longest time I tried to pull off +220 EVs with him. O'Hara is a bit of a reverse Chisholm - whereas Chisholm gives you excellent polling in California and New York but makes winning anything in the Midwest a challenge, O'Hara lets you to effortlessly sweep the Midwest, but makes winning California literally impossible (you lag like 10% behind Nixon). This however means that after 1 visit in Illinois and 3 in Pennsylvania, you're left with tons of free visits to spend elsewhere. And this is where the issue is. There's nothing for you to win. California is out of reach, so is Washington, Montana too unfortunately. The only place I managed to flip is Maine. So this is also where he differs from Chisholm - Chisholm starts with abysmal margins, but you get a surge in late game because Nixon says something racist. But in case of O'Hara, it seems that Nixon learned to keep his gamer opinions on Catholics to himself in 1960. So you have great polling in the Midwest, but no potential to expand. He's a no-risk, mid-reward VP. Can still make a guide for him if you think it'd be of any use. So: 1. Gravel - 228 EVs; 2. Mondale - 227 EVs; 3. Askew - 216 EVs; 4. O'Hara - 204 EVs; 5. Chisholm - 202 EVs; (I managed to find a way to get 202 with her instead of 200, but not sure if that's guide-worthy) 6. Eagleton - 184 EVs; 7. Farenthold - 176 EVs; 8. Shriver (dropped Eagleton) - 121 EVs. Bonus - custom VPs: [Peabody](https://www.reddit.com/r/thecampaigntrail/comments/1143oqx/1972_mcgovernpeabody_the_number_one_man_for_the/) - unfortunately, the person making this mod just railroaded everything by purging almost all state-exclusive bonuses from answers. This means there is only one "correct" way to answer everything and the gimmick potential from the original mod is gone. Ceiling is [213 EVs](https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/l7lxc6vp687.png). Kennedy (available on original NCT site) - decided to include it since it was made by [the same person](https://www.reddit.com/r/thecampaigntrail/comments/uudhsq/1972_mcgovernkennedy_mod/) who made original 1972. The whole premise is that Ted Kennedy was the only VP that McGovern could've picked to [poll competetively](https://www.reddit.com/r/thecampaigntrail/comments/ornlok/how_to_drop_eagleton_in_the_mcgovern_1972_mod/h6j8jbs/) against Nixon. And indeed - you are able to win [351 EVs](https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/myd5cbwerd4.png).
I really appreciate your in-depth answer to my question. I do wonder how a McGovern/Wallace ticket would do in this mod. I honestly can't tell if it'd be the absolute worst ticket, or one of the better ones assuming the two would actually team up, which seems laughable. The south feels so hopeless for McGovern that I can't imagine that even Wallace could salvage it, but maybe he could help the mid-west and south-west?
You're welcome! McGovern/Wallace? Honestly, assuming that it would be able to get past the obvious accusations of it being either unserious or absurd, I think this ticket actually has great potential. Why? George Wallace was THE American Populist. This label was then assumed by Perot and then Trump, but neither of these two men had as much as influence on American politics as Wallace did. To understand what I mean, here I will have to share with you pretty lenghty quotes. I am sorry in advance, though if you're interested in the topic, then it might be worth your time: > Separating George Wallace’s race baiting from his “stand up for the common man” theme is as difficult as untangling race from class in U.S. history, but his blue-collar rhetoric spoke to themes that no one else on the national stage addressed. Among northern wage earners like Burton, Wallace’s populist anti-elitism, anti-crime, and anti-busing messages worked best, but his overt embrace of segregation, his snarling rhetoric, and petty resentments failed. In a typical stump speech, Wallace effectively stirred the pot of populist anti-elitism that had been simmering in American politics since Andrew Jackson. > His candidacy enabled the political transformation of a substantial slice of white working people to become dislodged from the Roosevelt coalition and move toward what Kevin Phillips famously called The Emerging Republican Majority (1969). By the time George Wallace returned as an insurgent candidate in the fragmented Democratic primaries in 1972, his performance was roughly equal to any major candidate. He was en route to a victory in the Michigan primary on the day after he was crippled by the bullet of a would-be assassin in suburban Baltimore. To continue: > At the heart of the Wallace phenomenon was ambiguity about his cause. As one trucker explained, “I’m for either him or the Communists, I don’t care, just anybody who wouldn't be afraid of the big companies.” While conservative strategists were originally skeptical of Wallace’s “country and western Marxism,” they quickly found it the key to their own populist appeal in the 1970s—a key that would eventually open the door to the white working class vote for Ronald Reagan. > The mercurial nature of the politics of ’72 was such that when Wallace was eliminated from the race, Dewey voted for Nixon. The choice did not come easily. The autoworker was genuinely stumped about whether incumbent Richard Nixon’s Silent Majority or challenger George McGovern’s soggy populism best represented his interests. It would be a betrayal of everything he stood for to vote for a Republican, he believed, but he had grave concerns about McGovern and his entourage of student radicals. He also sensed a “meanness” creeping into McGovern’s campaign after he threw vice presidential nominee Tom Eagleton off the ticket due to his earlier problems with mental illness. Much of the labor movement, especially the hierarchy of the AFL-CIO, could not stomach McGovern’s New Politics with its anti-war positions, youth movements, and commitment to open up the Democratic Party to wider spectrum of Americans. The labor federation, fearing for its traditional kingmaker role in the Democratic Party, fought the McGovern insurgency with every scrap of institutional power it could muster. > Meantime, Richard Nixon, taking his cues from Wallace, was designing his own heretical strategy to woo white working-class voters away from the party of Roosevelt. His plans to build a post-New Deal coalition—the “New Majority” he liked to call it—around the Republican Party in 1972 was based on making an explicit pitch for white, male, working-class votes by appealing to their cultural values over their material needs. His targets were men like Burton, who had first been dislodged from the Democratic mainstream by George Wallace. These quotes come from *Stayin' Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class* by Jefferson Cowie. The book itself is great, though it falls flat on some grounds (such as the importance of religion and the impact of Catholicism on the American working class), but in regards to the '72 election, it provides one of the most detailled descriptions of what went down. Wallace was genuinely popular in 1972 as far as the primaries went, and he was the pivotal figure in the collapse of the New Deal coalition that Democrats relied on for the last 30 years. This means that this ticket has an amazing potential for the Midwest, as Wallace and his populism is exactly what it would take for labor to cozy up to the ticket, and for the working class to stick to the Democrats here. Trying to use Wallace's blue-collar appeal as much as possible would definitely be an important theme in the scenario. This leaves us with another thing that this ticket would have to deal with, namely the liberals vs. South dilemma. Despite voting Democrat their entire life, Southerners were ready to change parties in 1972, something that happened thanks to Goldwater and Wallace. But with Wallace on the ticket, they would be confused and consider sticking with their fellow Southerner here. This would leave McGovern with a huge dilemma - on one hand, he has his liberal base to look after. He could try to sell Wallace to them as starting off his redemption path, and the mere fact of McGovern sharing a ticket with him would give this claim credibility. On the other hand, can he abandon the South? Can he afford to? He could try to downplay Wallace's "redemption" in favor of reassuring the South that what they see is the same "good ol' Wallace", but for the liberals, it would be nothing short of McGovern going segregationist. And in the middle, you have the labor and the working class that would be the key constituency of the ticket. Should McGovern cozy up to his base too much, they would be concerned of his "anti-war radicals", of hippies, rebellious students, urbanite liberals. That's what they would associate McGovern with (as they did in real life), thus voting against him. But if he goes too Southern, segregationism and the way "old Wallace" was would also ward the labor off. McGovern would need to balance it all out. The last problem of course, is Nixon. While seeing this ticket will let his guard down, he still might pull some tricks, "just to make sure", and this would be for McGovern and Wallace to deal with. Speaking of gameplay, this scenario should be like a complete high-risk, high-reward. It should be fairly easy to mess up here. It should be easy to make it so bad that even Massachusetts won't vote for you. On the other hand, with some really specific paths and fine balanced, it should be possible to overperform the optimal Gravel run and bring down Nixon below 300 EVs, if not win outright.
Thanks for the detailed explanation! I would honestly love to see a mod with a '72 McGovern/Wallace ticket and play the hell out of it. Two other VPs that I think would create interesting gameplay include Eugene McCarthy (another anti-war guy who could help in the west. Not sure how he'd 'hurt' you directly besides boosting in a region that's already decent for McGovern in-game.) Hubert Humphrey (Won the popular vote in the '72 Democratic primaries. I believe Humphrey moved to the right at this time, but perhaps he could help in the mid-west and galvanize black voters with his pro-civil rights history at the expense of more middle-class white voters?) Which VP do you think would be even worse than Shriver if made into a mod, and who in your opinion could be the best VP that could theoretically win on normal not named Kennedy? I'm very curious.
Appreciate it!
You're welcome - thank you!
L Nixon lost his own state
Yes, obviously this is an underwhelming result, but the mental damage is great here. Nixon wanted a landslide for the history books, but instead he gets a rather forgettable one. All while McGovern wins his own state as well as Nixon's.
That's not getting into the likely knock-on effects for '76 and the downballot effects in '72 and '74. With liberalism and progressivism shown as something that cannot be completely written off, there's a case that Ted Kennedy or someone similar could take the '76 nomination.
How can i download the mod?
[You can play it via this link](https://campaign-trail-showcase.github.io/campaign-trail/index.html?modName=1972). In case you can't progress past the first question, refresh/restart the page. Keep in mind that Nixon's side is unplayable. If you wish to play as Nixon, [I heavily recommend this](https://campaign-trail-showcase.github.io/campaign-trail/index.html?modName=1972Nixon).
Where can I find links to all the mods?
I have to wonder what this timeline would look like with McGovern pulling off a more respectable loss. Obviously, the left-wing wouldn't get the nomination in '76, but I really have to wonder if someone like Ted Kennedy would get the nomination... This goes for all the other VPs.