Talk Elections

Who, in your view, is the biggest "Sacrificial Lamb" Presidential candidate?

Please vote and discuss.

Goldwater. if Jesus Christ himself had been the Republican nominee in 1964, it might have been a close race, but any other Republican was destined to lose to LBJ in a landslide.

Of the elections since the war, John Davis (1924) fits the bill rather nicely—from what I've read, hardly anyone though he could win and the nomination went his way only after the delegates failed to break the deadlock between the heavyweight contenders. Perhaps Winfield Scott (1852) or Rufus King (1816) ought to be considered as well.

Thank you.

Yes, I was in fact going to put James Cox 1920 and John W Davis 1924 on the list, and should have, but decided not to. 

Exactly. Goldwater was a trailblazer in terms of running a conservative campaign on the national level. It just happened to be one of the worst years to do so.

Hillary Clinton.

Dewey in '44.

I dont think you can call Goldwater or McGovern Sacrificial Lamb candidates because neither were really wanted by their party's establishment.

Yep, it doesn't really fit with the definition.

I would say Stevenson in 56, since he'd already been shellacked by Eisenhower in 52. The Dems were pretty much throwing in the towel by nominating him again. Mondale would be a good choice too.

I thought of Landon in 36 for a second but then remembered that people contemporaneously expected a close election and were stunned by the huge landslide. They didn't really have scientific polling back then.

Voted Goldwater, but now that I think about it, I'm kind of in agreement with Old School Republican in that:

So, Goldwater and McGovern aside, I'd probably go with Stevenson, with Mondale and Bob Dole in 1996 (I'm surprised Dole wasn't an option) tied for second.

Voted Stevenson in '56, since he's the only one who never truly had a chance or believed he had a chance. Federalist candidates in 1804, 1808, and 1816, and Democratic candidates in 1904, 1920, 1924, and 1928, also never had a chance.

This. I actually think Stevenson would have beaten anyone other than Eisenhower, it's a shame he never became president.

And Bob Dole was at the very least the biggest sacrificial lamb in my lifetime, I think the only other candidate who was a bigger sacrificial lamb than him in the last 40 years was Mondale. I really do think that had the GOP seriously thought they could win in 1996 they would never have made Dole their nominee.

Smith because America wasn't ready for a Catholic.

Horace Greeley's probably the canonical answer.

I don't think that's the main factor. For one, he didn't even want to run. Second, you DO know who he was running against, right?

Voted Alf Landon but I forgot about the fact that hindsight is 20/20...

Now I'd probably go with Stevenson '56

Then you should probably read some history. His Catholicism was a massive factor in why he lost in a landslide. Why did you think he only got 51% in Alabama?

if by sacrificial lamb you mean someone who ran against a popular president with whom he had no chance of beating, I'm going to go with Walter Mondale.

Also, why is Carter in 1980 included? He was a sitting President, and actually had a chance (a very, very slim one) at winning.

I don't think Greeley qualifies as a sacrificial lamb candidate.   The Democrats backed the Liberal Republicans because they thought they stood a chance to win with Democratic support whereas the Democrats on their own would not. 

Landon

Smith was a very enthusiastic campaigner on the trail. Even if he didn't have a chance, he was clearly of the Goldwater/McGovern sort, running to make a point. That he nearly flipped New York and flipped Massachusetts and Rhode Island permanently and performed the best in the Northeast since Wilson in 1912 should only exacerbate where things were going and what kind of point he was trying to make.


But Landon added nothing and was noted for being mostly absent.

Even Stevenson in 1956 put in more effort.

Alton B. Parker.

The sheer absurdity is unmatched, of nominating a judge who barely even wanted to run for the job and who’d hardly made a peep about national politics before he was nominated.

The even funnier part is that he probably could’ve done a decent job.

I read somewhere that Parker is the only MAJOR PARTY presidential nominee who hasn't had a biography written on him.

mondale since he had the worst results of them all.

Agreed lol

Mondale, America wasnt gonna vote Reagan out in Cold War era. Iran Contra came in 1986

What I meant is that the only reason the Dixiecrats let him get nominated was because they knew that Hoover was unbeatable.

Mondale said himself after the whole "My Opponents Youth and Inexperience" he knew he had no chance.

Poor guy is the only person to win a race in all 50 states (1984 and 2002 MN Senate election)

For Hoover 1932 and Carter 1980, I think "drank a poisoned chalice 4 years earlier" would be a better description than "sacrificial lamb". "Sacrificial lamb" means "if their party had a chance of winning the general, they wouldn't have been nominated."

Dole 1996 imo

Charles Pinckney and the fading Federalists feeble run against Jefferson's re-election. The 1804 election is such a snoozefest that it really is only remembered for being the backdrop for Burr shooting Hamilton. In fact the Federalists kind of defined useless opposition: without their big names they were laughably useless at presenting challenges: see also them shrugging their shoulders and selecting Rufus King against Monroe because literally nobody else would step up.

This.

Also...

I'd also argue that James Cox in 1920 and John W. Davis in 1924 were sacrificial lambs.

John Kerry was a "sacrificial lamb", the Dems wanted to win, but had Kerry been president, he would have done better on Katrina, but the Great Recession happened on "Dubya" watch.  Romney would have been elected president in 2008, had Kerry been president under the Great Recession.

But, Gephardt, not Edwards, with strong union support, would have clinched OH, and NM and IA for Kerry, Edwards was not a good Veep pick, but a stronger presidential candidate.