WI: Jerry Brown wins 1992 Democratic nomination, endorsed by Perot

[Snowstalker]

Along with Massachusetts senator Paul Tsongas, Jerry Brown was the runner-up to Bill Clinton in the 1992 Democratic primaries, and combined an opposition to NAFTA with surprisingly conservative positions on taxation. Let's say his surge takes place before New Hampshire rather than after it, placing him in a better position for the later primaries, and he beats Clinton in the Western and Northern states to take the nomination. When Ross Perot exits the race in June 1992 as IOTL, he endorses Brown due to his NAFTA opposition and "mavericky" positions on other issues, leading to a two-race between Brown and President Bush. Questions here:

1. Jerry Brown would probably be favored due to the recession and Bush's faltering approval ratings, but what would the electoral map look like? Would Brown do significantly worse than Clinton in the South (and to mitigate this would he pick a Southerner as his running mate)?
2. How different would a Brown administration be from a Clinton administration?

 

[Grimbald]

Personally I think Jerry is toast. Clinton needed the south to win this and without it Bush wins though not by his 1988 margins.

 

[Snowstalker]

Personally I think Jerry is toast. Clinton needed the south to win this and without it Bush wins though not by his 1988 margins.

Brown still wins 323 electoral votes even if you flip every ex-Confederate state that Clinton won (AR, LA, TN, GA) plus Kentucky.

 

[sciscisciortino]

Bush was unpopular at the time and the GOP's 1980s planks had faltered under recession and the collapse of the USSR. Brown's ideological pivoting and substantial breaking from the Democratic old guard helps but I think a significant issue may be his "flake" factor -- making unforced errors like floating Jesse Jackson as VP or crackpot stuff like "Buddhist economics" from his 1980 run cropping up.

 

[Snowstalker]

Bush was unpopular at the time and the GOP's 1980s planks had faltered under recession and the collapse of the USSR. Brown's ideological pivoting and substantial breaking from the Democratic old guard helps but I think a significant issue may be his "flake" factor -- making unforced errors like floating Jesse Jackson as VP or crackpot stuff like "Buddhist economics" from his 1980 run cropping up.

I think to win the nomination he would have to combine his outsider image (which both he and Clinton had in different ways) with trying to beat Clinton in the union vote (which was a lot more relevant in 1992 than it is today) over the issue of NAFTA.

 

[History Learner]

Personally I think Jerry is toast. Clinton needed the south to win this and without it Bush wins though not by his 1988 margins.

Exactly this, in my opinion.

 

[President Benedict Arnold]

Brown's biggest weaknesses are his left-wing hippie-ish image and his foot-in-mouth syndrome. If he could overcome those to become the Democratic Nominee, there is no reason to assuming he couldn't overcome them to become President.

I think Ross Perot's impact depends on when he supports Brown. Assuming there is a butterfly net around Perot's campaign and the whole election proceeds as it did IOTL, just with Brown winning instead of Clinton: the best moment for Ross Perot to drop out and endorse Jerry Brown would be in the lead up to the Democratic National Convention, with Perot speaking at the Convention. This was just weeks before Perot quit IOTL and was when Perot was peaking in the polls. The bump this would give Brown would be tremendous and he would easily defeat Bush in November.

In a close three way race, when candidate jumps behind another, that doesn't mean 2/3 of people are now going to back that one person. They had a multitude of reasons to only like their candidate and to specifically dislike that one, but IOTL, Bush consistently polled between 30-40%, rarely breaking 40%. After Perot dropped out, Clinton polled over 50% until Perot rejoined. If Perot clearly and fully backed Jerry Brown's candidacy, he'd have gotten plenty of Perot voters and would have easily defeated Bush. He was an extremely weak incumbent and, as others have said above, the public liked an outsider. Brown, Clinton, and Perot were all extremely strong candidates and any one of them could have ended up defeating Bush. Under the right circumstances, HW could pull off a win, but without any crisis or powerful demonstration of why we like President Bush, he's toast.

 

[darklordoftech]

If Brown wins, he ends negotiations for NAFTA and vetoes the bill to implement it. If the GOP still gains control of Congress in 1994, Brown signs bills from them to cut taxes and to abolish the Department of Education.