I posted in 2012 the idea that Jackson would have picked Jimmy Carter as his running mate. Since that time, I have done reading and discovered that Jackson and Carter had a cooling of their relationship after the 1972 primaries.
https://www.weeklystandard.com/elliott-abrams/when-you-cant-stand-your-candidateThe Jackson biography (by Robert Kaufman) then recounts an interesting story:
Carter had expressed his loathing for McGovern in several conversations with Jackson. . . . What happened just after McGovern received the nomination irrevocably colored Jackson's view of Carter. . . . Carter called Jackson at 4 a.m. with this request: "Would Scoop be willing to approach McGovern to help get Carter selected as his vice president. . . . Scoop could not ever think of Carter again without a certain feeling of revulsion" [Jackson staffer and confidant Richard Perle said]. McGovern also found it off-putting that Carter solicited the vice presidential nomination so assiduously after saying such nasty things about him during the primary campaign.
Had Jackson won the 1976 Democratic Nomination, would Jackson have picked Carter? Probably not; there are other quotes I have read that describe the falling out Carter and Jackson had. Much would have depended on whether or how close Carter had come to the nomination in 1976, and whether or not Carter had succeeded in carrying the South versus George Wallace or not.
The issue with Jackson was that he had a solid Civil Rights record that was not appealing to many Southerners, but he had a hawkish record on Vietnam (though his record on many foreign policy issues was far more liberal than he gets credit for) and this displeased the progressively more dovish Democrats of 1976. Lloyd Bentsen may have been a natural pick for Jackson, but this may not have pleased the liberals. A better pick would have been Sen. Adlai Stevenson III from the critical (then) swing state of Illinois.
My map for such a race would be this:
Henry Jackson/Adlai Stevenson III (D) (51%)Gerald Ford/Robert Dole (R) (48%)In retrospect, this strategy SHOULD have been the one Democrats pursued. Democrats tried to win back the South; they should have realized in 1976 that it was gone, save for a one-trick pony like Carter, whose Southern luster wore off when he was seen as a National Democrat. THIS labor-friendly ticket would have won CA, NJ, CT, MO, and OH; critical swing states of the day that were heavily unionized. In addition, many voters in CA, NJ, and CT considered Carter the more socially conservative candidate and voted for Ford; those states would have been pickups for Jackson. Ditto IA, which was one of McGovern's better states that has a traditional anti-Southern tendency.
Now, for Jackson/Reagan in 1980:
Henry Jackson/Adlai Stevenson III (D) (50%)Ronald Reagan/George Bush (R) (49%)Henry Jackson would have governed in a way that would have precluded a primary challenge. He would have mollified the Congress, and he would have had the support of the entire Democratic membership of Congress.
I am not certain that Reagan would have been nominated against a Jackson. There are some advantages Reagan would not have enjoyed that he had enjoyed against Carter. Jackson would not have alienated as much of Congress as Carter did, nor would he have governed in such a manner as to promote a speech about "malaise". Jackson would NOT have carried CA in the general election, but Reagan would have had to work hard to win his home state.
Carter is an example of a guy who tries to govern as a true outsider. Clinton was not an outsider, nor was Bush 43. Jackson would have avoided those perils, and that would have been enough to win, even in difficult circumstances.
