Could Dukakis have won?

[President Johnson]

Could Michael Dukakis have won somehow in 1988 against Poppy Bush? After the conventions, he led by 17 points in the polls and then lost by margin, that was never outperformed since then (53.4% of the vote and 426 electoral votes).

[Fuzzy Bear]

Possibly.  He would have needed to have done the following:

1.  He needed to have picked a Southern running mate from a state he was not sure to lose.  Sam Nunn of Georgia, Ernest Hollings of South Carolina, even Richard Shelby of Alabama would have been better picks than Bentsen (who, admittedly, would have defeated Bush head to head in Texas).

2.  He needed to have responded more quickly and affirmatively to attacks on "social issues" (Pledge of Allegiance, Willie Horton, etc.)  These attacks hurt him because he allowed them to linger out there.

3.  He needed to AGGRESSIVELY defend Massachusetts as a state.  "Liberal Massachusetts".  He should have, over and over, pointed out that Massachusetts was the birthplace of Liberty, of Paul Revere and the original Patriots.  He should have described himself as a Greek-American who was grafted into this Heritage when his parents emigrated from Greece to America. 

Dukakis did none of this.  He was unwilling to get in the dirt with Poppy Bush.  Trump has shown what happens when you are willing to get into the dirt with a Bushie.

[sg0508]

Waiting too long to respond to the GOP's relentless "Massachusetts Liberal" tag devastated him.  Willie Horton didn't help matters either.

The "soft on crime" label killed Dukakis in the white collar suburbs in PA, NJ, CT, CA, IL, MI, etc. Oh yes, those are states the Republicans haven't won since then.

Part of it was though, the Democrats still didn't have a cornerstone "home" in the 80s.  The power shift from the south to the midwest, northeast and west coast still hadn't materialized.  It started to, given some of the Dukakis wins that year, but he was not one to excite the party.

Being from the state of MA in generally, really didn't help.  Then lastly, he was fighting the "Reagan Revolution".  While Bush wanted the credit for winning the race, he knew not to distance himself from Reagan in the end.  The latter is the biggest mistake Al Gore made in 2000.  He distanced himself from a 23 million job creation, low inflation, economic boom of a record from '93 to '00 because the Lewinsky Scandal embarrassed him.....he paid for it dearly and so has America since then.

[Kingpoleon]

Sure. Besides his responses on the issues, he didn't try to unite his party. He picked Bentsen as his running-mate but didn't try to reach out to the New Democrats otherwise. He would have been far better off if he made a targeted effort to unite the party. If he managed to convince Jeane Kirkpatrick or Tim Wirth to join him on the ticket, he would have done better among Democratic Hawks.

I think that Wirth or a Southerner like Bob Martinez, alongside having surrogates and platform concessions to New Democrats and Blue Dogs, would have helped very much.

[Fuzzy Bear]

Sure. Besides his responses on the issues, he didn't try to unite his party. He picked Bentsen as his running-mate but didn't try to reach out to the New Democrats otherwise. He would have been far better off if he made a targeted effort to unite the party. If he managed to convince Jeane Kirkpatrick or Tim Wirth to join him on the ticket, he would have done better among Democratic Hawks.

I think that Wirth or a Southerner like Bob Martinez, alongside having surrogates and platform concessions to New Democrats and Blue Dogs, would have helped very much.

Bob Martinez was a Republican in 1988; he left the Democratic Party around 1983.

[Kingpoleon]

Ah ha. I was thinking of Bob Graham.

[IceSpear]

No, barring some extraordinary external event. He could've done better though, if his campaign wasn't abysmal.

[136or142]

No, barring some extraordinary external event. He could've done better though, if his campaign wasn't abysmal.

I think this is correct, the demographics and the national sentiment of '(emerging) peace and  prosperity' at the time were almost certainly too hard to overcome.

Coincidentally though I've been re-reading the Newsweek Special issue they wrote on the 1988 election.  I've just got to the part near the end where John Sasso is re-hired by the Dukakis campaign right after Labor Day.

Based on what I've read, Sasso's strategy based on the advice of a 27 page report from a consultant was to basically run the campaign as contrasting the present (emerging) peace and prosperity with worries about the future.

What I would have suggested, and this is easy to say in hindsight, would be to take from that strategy and contrast Bush's lack of vision ("the vision thing") with a campaign plan of acknowledging the present (emerging) peace and prosperity and asking the voters:  who has the better plan to address the economic threats facing the United States in the future?

I would have suggesting laying out Dukakis' plan to invest in national infrastructure projects, his plan to reduce the national deficit and his successful economic record as a governor and additional things like that in contrast to the un-serious nature of George H.W Bush's campaign: his campaigning in flag factories, his attempt to make the Pledge of Allegiance into a major campaign issue and his choice of Dan Quayle as his running mate, and I would have hinted that in not having or campaigning on a strategy to deal with emerging U.S economic threats, that H.W Bush was, in fact, the unpatriotic candidate.

In this way, I would have suggested running the campaign on the idea that if Dukakis was not the heir to Ronald Reagan, that he was the better heir to the legacy of Reagan's (perceived) economic success.

[Senator-elect Spark]

Probably, but not with those statements he made on gun control.

[Sumner 1868]

Possibly.  He would have needed to have done the following:

1.  He needed to have picked a Southern running mate from a state he was not sure to lose.  Sam Nunn of Georgia, Ernest Hollings of South Carolina, even Richard Shelby of Alabama would have been better picks than Bentsen (who, admittedly, would have defeated Bush head to head in Texas).

The problem is he needs a running-mate that's conservative but not too conservative. Hollings and Shelby aren't it. Nunn might be grudgingly accepted, but he would likely be viewed as more "presidential" than Dukakis, thus the same problem that he had with Bentsen. Dukakis at least picks up Georgia, however, as Nunn was way more popular with Georgians than Bentsen with Texans.

[136or142]

Possibly.  He would have needed to have done the following:

1.  He needed to have picked a Southern running mate from a state he was not sure to lose.  Sam Nunn of Georgia, Ernest Hollings of South Carolina, even Richard Shelby of Alabama would have been better picks than Bentsen (who, admittedly, would have defeated Bush head to head in Texas).

The problem is he needs a running-mate that's conservative but not too conservative. Hollings and Shelby aren't it. Nunn might be grudgingly accepted, but he would likely be viewed as more "presidential" than Dukakis, thus the same problem that he had with Bentsen. Dukakis at least picks up Georgia, however, as Nunn was way more popular with Georgians than Bentsen with Texans.

Lloyd Bentsen ended the election campaign as the only one of the four with a higher net approval rating than he had going in.  I don't know what you are referring to.  Lloyd Bentsen basically ended the campaign as, to use a term I don't really like, a 'rock star.'

I also don't think Dukakis had any problem with Bentsen outshining him in personal terms or in terms of how it effected the outcome of the election.  After Bentsen's debate with Quayle and the "you're no Jack Kennedy" moment, the Dukakis campaign started running commercials on the Dukakis/Bentsen campaign and some staffers joked that Michael Dukakis' name was now 'Dukakis Bentsen'.

I can't imagine any potential Dukakis voter not voting for him because, of the four, Lloyd Bentsen was the preferred choice for President for most Americans, but I am aware that, according to exit polls, having Dan Quayle as his running mate cost George H W Bush about 2% of the vote.

I don't understand where this concern over having a Vice Presidential pick outshine the Presidential nominee comes from, to me it shows that the Presidential nominee is comfortable (for whatever that's worth) and, more importantly, shows that they may have sound judgement.

This was the first Presidential election that I followed closely and I remember that I predicted the two candidate result with no decimals dead on: 54-46% (This was before the internet, so the average person may have heard about the third party candidates like Ron Paul once or twice during the campaign and it was pretty much good like finding the actual raw number final results, rather than just being given the result as '54-46%'

I remember that my Electoral College prediction was 412-126 whereas the actual final result was 426-112 (426-111 with one college vote cast for Bentsen.) Obviously I'm able to remember that because I flipped the final two digits.  I can't remember which state or states I predicted for Bush that Dukakis ended up winning, but I'm pretty sure I predicted Maryland and Illinois for Dukakis that he ended up losing.

As I previously wrote, Dukakis did poorly in Illinois because his field organization in that state was a shambles (that was actually reported in the Canadian magazine MacLeans' and not in Newsweek) and he lost in Maryland due to their being a referendum on whether Saturday Night Specials (guns) should remain legal.  The referendum (or initiative) to ban them passed, but Dukakis still lost the state.

I also remember that right after the second debate that I predicted that had the election been held at that time that George H W Bush would have won all 50 states.

[Bojack Horseman]

I remember seeing an interview with Mike Dukakis from a few years ago where he talked about the Lee Atwater tricks used against him. He still had a flyer they mailed around the state of Illinois hitting him on crime that said something to the effect of, "Every murder, rapist, child molester, and thug in Illinois is voting for Mike Dukakis. Are you?"

[Podgy the Bear]

I don't think that he would have won--though he would have made the election much more competitive if he had run a better campaign.  After shutting himself down after the Democratic convention in July for about a month, he had a dismal September and first part of October 1988.

The problems were predicated on the fact that the Democrats had no real base at the time (whereas the South and West were locks for the Republicans).  He was struggling to find electoral votes anywhere.  Dukakis did come back in the latter part of October and into November (the election was held on November 8th)--and the results are the formation of the Democratic advantage of today.  

[136or142]

I don't think that he would have won--though he would have made the election much more competitive if he had run a better campaign.  After shutting himself down after the Democratic convention in July for about a month, he had a dismal September and first part of October 1988.

The problems were predicated on the fact that the Democrats had no real base at the time (whereas the South and West were locks for the Republicans).  He was struggling to find electoral votes anywhere.  Dukakis did come back in the latter part of October and into November (the election was held on November 8th)--and the results are the formation of the Democratic advantage of today.  

Not having the awful and not very intelligent Susan Eistrich run his campaign until Sasso's return (and even then, everybody had to play nice to her) would have helped as well.  

Dukakis was also hurt by his being a 'boy scout.'  Sasso resigned from the campaign because he leaked the video showing Joe Biden was stealing quotes from then U.K Labour Party Leader Neil Kinnock and attributing them to himself.  

I can understand that there was unhappiness with the campaign and with Democrats in general that Sasso was initially willing to let the Gephardt campaign take 'the blame' for leaking the video, but I don't understand what the problem was in the first place.

Sasso said that 'he realized he had done something unethical' the moment he leaked the video to the media.  I have no idea what is unethical about that.  Biden was doing something unethical and dishonest and he got caught on it, why would anybody consider it wrong to make that public?

I also disagree with the idea that Dukakis 'came back in late October and into November.'  He got a 'dead cat bounce' after the second debate wherein the first polls after that debate showed him now trailing by 17% (the exact 55-38% mirror image of his lead after the Democratic convention) to losing the election by the roughly 8% that he trailed Bush for most of the election.

I also largely disagree with the idea that the Dukakis campaign helped lead to the formation of the Democratic advantage today.  He did win a couple states that had previously favored moderate Republican like Washington and Oregon, but all of his other wins were traditional Democratic states: Hawaii, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Rhode Island, West Virginia and Wisconsin.  The one exception to that was Iowa which voted heavily for Dukakis because family farmers had been left out of the economic boom (Dukakis also only lost South Dakota 53-47%.)

Dukakis did somewhat better with Latinos than Democrats had previously done, but the rest of his voter base were the traditional Democratic constituencies of blacks, blue collar workers and unionized public sector employees.  I'd say it was Bill Clinton who started the Democrats winning the then emerging 'knowledge class' workers much more as well as many more of the managerial and professional types.

[sg0508]

Possibly.  He would have needed to have done the following:

1.  He needed to have picked a Southern running mate from a state he was not sure to lose.  Sam Nunn of Georgia, Ernest Hollings of South Carolina, even Richard Shelby of Alabama would have been better picks than Bentsen (who, admittedly, would have defeated Bush head to head in Texas).

The problem is he needs a running-mate that's conservative but not too conservative. Hollings and Shelby aren't it. Nunn might be grudgingly accepted, but he would likely be viewed as more "presidential" than Dukakis, thus the same problem that he had with Bentsen. Dukakis at least picks up Georgia, however, as Nunn was way more popular with Georgians than Bentsen with Texans.

Lloyd Bentsen ended the election campaign as the only one of the four with a higher net approval rating than he had going in.  I don't know what you are referring to.  Lloyd Bentsen basically ended the campaign as, to use a term I don't really like, a 'rock star.'

I also don't think Dukakis had any problem with Bentsen outshining him in personal terms or in terms of how it effected the outcome of the election.  After Bentsen's debate with Quayle and the "you're no Jack Kennedy" moment, the Dukakis campaign started running commercials on the Dukakis/Bentsen campaign and some staffers joked that Michael Dukakis' name was now 'Dukakis Bentsen'.

I can't imagine any potential Dukakis voter not voting for him because, of the four, Lloyd Bentsen was the preferred choice for President for most Americans, but I am aware that, according to exit polls, having Dan Quayle as his running mate cost George H W Bush about 2% of the vote.

I don't understand where this concern over having a Vice Presidential pick outshine the Presidential nominee comes from, to me it shows that the Presidential nominee is comfortable (for whatever that's worth) and, more importantly, shows that they may have sound judgement.

This was the first Presidential election that I followed closely and I remember that I predicted the two candidate result with no decimals dead on: 54-46% (This was before the internet, so the average person may have heard about the third party candidates like Ron Paul once or twice during the campaign and it was pretty much good like finding the actual raw number final results, rather than just being given the result as '54-46%'

I remember that my Electoral College prediction was 412-126 whereas the actual final result was 426-112 (426-111 with one college vote cast for Bentsen.) Obviously I'm able to remember that because I flipped the final two digits.  I can't remember which state or states I predicted for Bush that Dukakis ended up winning, but I'm pretty sure I predicted Maryland and Illinois for Dukakis that he ended up losing.

As I previously wrote, Dukakis did poorly in Illinois because his field organization in that state was a shambles (that was actually reported in the Canadian magazine MacLeans' and not in Newsweek) and he lost in Maryland due to their being a referendum on whether Saturday Night Specials (guns) should remain legal.  The referendum (or initiative) to ban them passed, but Dukakis still lost the state.

I also remember that right after the second debate that I predicted that had the election been held at that time that George H W Bush would have won all 50 states.

Dukakis' strong close with the late deciders probably got him Washington state, maybe WI, and solidified NY. 

If you remember that night though, ABC blew a call...they called MD for Dukakis and CBS blew a call with them calling IL for Dukakis.  Only NBC was perfect on their calls that night. When Brokaw and Co. signed off, they had two states still outstanding (IL and WA). 

The two states that Dukakis had no business losing but did, simply because of Willie Horton were MD and PA.

[136or142]

If you remember that night though, ABC blew a call...they called MD for Dukakis and CBS blew a call with them calling IL for Dukakis.  Only NBC was perfect on their calls that night. When Brokaw and Co. signed off, they had two states still outstanding (IL and WA).  

The two states that Dukakis had no business losing but did, simply because of Willie Horton were MD and PA.

1.I had just turned 18 on the day of the election and I still lived with my parents and, for some reason my older brother was also with us.  I remember they wanted to watch something and I wanted to see the election returns that they didn't care about at all (we're Canadian and everybody knew George H.W Bush was going to win)  but we compromised a little and we watched a few minutes of a election day episode of the Gary Shandling Show (Mainly for the opening theme song).  In hindsight, I'm sure the show wasn't live, but they said that Dukakis had won Connecticut, which was one of the 18 states that Dukakis was counting on to win the election, and Gary Shandling said something like "I guess Dukakis won the election after all!"  And, me not realizing the whole show was a joke, thought to myself or said out loud "There are still a bunch of other states he needs to win first."

Gary Shandling was a Dukakis supporter.  I remember his most famous joke at the time was after Bush said something like "I hear the voices of the desperate people in my head"  and Shandling replied:  "people who hear voices like that are usually treated by a psychiatrist and not elected President."

2.I don't think we disagree on the undecideds breaking for Dukakis.  I don't have any exit poll evidence to back this up, but given what I wrote previously that Dukakis on a line of best fit trailed Bush in the election after the Republican Convention by about 8% throughout the campaign, but trailed by 17% in one poll after the second debate, my guess is that most of the 'undecided' were Dukakis supporters who shifted to 'undecided' after the second debate and drifted back to supporting him before election day.  I can't say they would all have done this anyway irrespective of how Dukakis campaigned at the end, but I'd guess that most would have done so.

[136or142]

I don't think that he would have won--though he would have made the election much more competitive if he had run a better campaign.  After shutting himself down after the Democratic convention in July for about a month, he had a dismal September and first part of October 1988.

The problems were predicated on the fact that the Democrats had no real base at the time (whereas the South and West were locks for the Republicans).  He was struggling to find electoral votes anywhere.  Dukakis did come back in the latter part of October and into November (the election was held on November 8th)--and the results are the formation of the Democratic advantage of today.  

I should add to what I wrote previously, while Dukakis did win just the ten states (and D.C) he lost another six states worth 120 electoral votes by 6% or less, and most of them by 4% or less.

In addition to the previously mentioned Illinois, Maryland and South Dakota, he also lost, I think (doing this from memory as a test to check later on Dave Leip's election results site), California, Vermont and probably Pennsylvania by 6% or less.

Checked it: Dukakis lost about 10 states by 6% or less, he lost 6 states worth 120 electoral votes by 4% or less (California, Illinois, Maryland, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Vermont.)

So, with a better campaign, say one headed up by John Sasso and not by Susan Eistrich, he probably would have won around 232 electoral votes.

However, while I've previously written that I believe Dukakis did better with Latino voters than other recent Democratic Presidential candidates around that time had done, in terms of the rest of the modern Democratic coalition, the mainly suburban professional, managerial and 'knowledge' workers (outside of the traditional south) Dukakis did not do well with these voters (many of whom were referred to as Yuppies - Young Urban Professionals) as he lost badly in the largely suburban and now heavily Democratic states of New Jersey and Delaware.

As I wrote previously, it was Bill Clinton who really began the process of turning these voters into Democrats.

As one example of the incompetence of the campaign as reported in the Newsweek election issue, the campaign did not prepare any major reports or briefing notes for the first debate, none that Dukakis saw anyway, except for a technical report on the layout of the debate hall and the procedures of the debate.

Dukakis himself didn't seem to care as he had been through a number of one-on-one general election debates in Massachusetts and thought he could handle himself without much preparation especially as he thought very lowly of George H W Bush.

It wasn't until Sasso returned not long before the first debate that debate preparation was started in earnest and Dukakis wasn't put through a mock debate until four days before the actual debate.  According to the article, Dukakis was extremely flustered in the mock debate by the person playing Bush who kept accusing Dukakis of 'being a liberal' that after this debate was over Dukakis said "We have a lot of work to do."

In the end, the article reported that Dukakis actually did reasonably well in the first debate, but treated it too much like a college debate with a point scoring system that he failed to sustain any gain in the polls.

It was the second debate where Dukakis had a pretty severe fever and was given too much contradictory advise ('be nice and smile,'  'fight back and show Bush how outraged you are with his campaign tactics')  where he performed very poorly, especially as he was thrown for a loop by the first (tasteless) question of whether he would still oppose the death penalty if his wife was raped and murdered.

This wasn't in the article, but I've also read that the Bush campaign considered that to be such a softball question for Dukakis that they were initially angered by it as they heard it being asked and figured out what the question was going to be and were genuinely stunned by Dukakis' unemotional answer.

All that written:  I'm not sure that it was such a bad thing that a person who was ultimately responsible for probably the most incompetent campaign in modern history didn't become President.

[Sir Mohamed]

I just remember his gaffe at one debate when he was asked about capital punishment and whether he would still oppose it if his wife were raped and murdered. And laughable photo with the tank. Maybe a southern running mate like Lawton Chiles may have helped, though Bentsen was a good candidate (especially at the moment when he destroyed Quayle during the VP debate with JFK). But due to Reagan’s continued popularity, it was difficult to win that one.

[Landslide Lyndon]

Strong economy+popular incumbent make a Dukakis win extremely unlikely.
His own lack of charisma and hapless campaign only made matters worse.

[sg0508]

A lot of people forget that Bush didn't pull away in the last month.  Many thought he was actually blowing it.  Until late October, most news pundits predicted a near '84 repeat in the electoral college, which Dukakis avoided largely due to his winning many of the undecided voters in the end from his Populist rhetoric.

Until the last week or two, the only few states save for Dukakis were RI, MN, IA and HI.  Even his own state was still considered to be losable.

[Nym90]

A stronger Democratic candidate could have won, but not Dukakis.

[Lincoln Republican]

No.

Dukakis was one of the absolute worst candidates for a major party for President in U.S. history.

He was cold, passionless, and robotic.

And don't forget his ride in the tank.

[Weiner/Holder]

Not a thing he could've done to get elected.  He would've screwed up if he stuffed the ballot boxes.

[Nym90]

A better campaign could have made it closer. He wasn't all that far from getting over 200 electoral votes and making the race competitive.

Bush's percentage of the vote was about in line with Reagan's approval rating, which helps disprove the notion that Dukakis was a horrible candidate (unless you believe Bush was, as well, and the two canceled each other out). Dukakis consolidated the anti-Reagan vote, but he was unable to convince the country that the Reagan administration had been a failure and that a change was needed.

I agree that he ran a bad campaign, but there is a difference between that and being a bad candidate.

[136or142]

A lot of people forget that Bush didn't pull away in the last month.  Many thought he was actually blowing it.  Until late October, most news pundits predicted a near '84 repeat in the electoral college, which Dukakis avoided largely due to his winning many of the undecided voters in the end from his Populist rhetoric.

Until the last week or two, the only few states save for Dukakis were RI, MN, IA and HI.  Even his own state was still considered to be losable.

I don't remember news pundits predicting that, and the Newsweek special edition on the election makes no mention of that.  As I wrote previously, Bush received a large bump in the polls after Dukakis' disastrous second debate performance, but Bush had led Dukakis by an average of around 8% following the Republican Convention and the election result was just a reversion to this mean, which should pretty much have been expected.

His ending the campaign with populist rhetoric and his stating "Yes, I am a liberal" went over very well at his very well attended rallies (rallies late in the campaign are always well attended) and I wrote above that I'm sure those things got him back the votes of those who had supported him prior to the second debate, but went to the undecided column after that, but i don't think the late campaign rhetoric made much difference to the overall share of the vote.