Ten years ago, on the first day of a hamburger chain's million dollar giveaway based on a famous real-estate board game, I got a game piece called "Boardwalk". Two days later, I got "Park Place" but I had lost the Boardwalk piece and never got the million dollars. Every year when they have the promotion again, I think "What if..." and I conclude that I was better off not winning.
This got me thinking of other "What ifs", whether sometimes it may have been better off not winning...
Tonight's question: What if NYC supported Ford in 1976 instead of Carter?
Carter won New York by 300,000 votes. 70% of the New York City area voted for him (don't forget the Post headline: "Ford to City: Drop Dead"). If Ford had done better, he could have won New York State and the Presidency.
Just for fun, let's play this out. Ford re-elected, Bob Dole is Vice President. With or without the Iranian hostage crisis, Dole would have been the presumptive Republican nominee in 1980. Could Reagan have beaten him in a primary? Could Dole have won the Presidency in 1980? If Dole wins the primary against Reagan, would that have ended Reagan's presidential hopes?
And with Ford/Dole in power, would the neocons have been able to take control of the Republican party? Without Reagan, would there have been a Bush?
I think that if Ford had won, the Reagan revolution would have never happened; the neocons never would have come to power and we would not be fearing a far right Supreme Court. From a Supreme Court perspective, might Democrats have been better off if Ford had won?
Of course, there are a million possible messes that we might have ended up falling into instead; the map of the world might have been totally different. Would the Iron curtain have fallen? Would Yugoslavia have imploded? Would we have had a nuclear war by now? Many possibilities to mull.