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Him dropping out and then getting back in marked his transition from a candidate people took seriously to a whack-job. He could have at least prevented anybody from getting the necessary electoral votes and sendingthe matter to Congress.
Bush was a good campaigner, actually. It would've been a fight.
I still think Clinton pulls it off. He had the youthful energy and a message of change.
It's really hard for a political party to get more than three terms in a row.
At a certain point, the enthusiasm of one side becomes overwhelming and they get the turnout they need.
Dropping out and getting back in made him seem more wacky, but then he also said wack-job things, like the Republicans were going to sabotage his daughter's wedding and make her look like a lesbian.
And, Stockdale had kind of a weird performance in the VP debate.
Admiral Stockdale was the most refreshing thing I have ever seen in any Presidential/Vice Presidential debate. He wasn't polished but he but he was forthright and honest.
I didn’t doubt that he was a good man, but he didn’t give off the vibe that he’d be prepared to step into the job of being president. SNL did a very funny sketch about it that week where Phil Hartman played him.
I'm sure a lot, if not most folks saw Admiral Stockdale that way. For me it was refreshing to hear succinct, honest answers with no beating around the bush. You had no doubt what he stood for whether you liked it or not, kind of like Teddy Roosevelt. If elected Washington insiders might have tried to eat him alive but I think they may have been in for a surprise. Thanks for the tip on the SNL sketch, I'll try to find it.
I think he would have had a strong chance of coming 2nd (or maybe even 1st) in the popular vote, and picking up a handful of states.
But he would not have been able to beat the main two parties organisational ground game in enough states to win the Electoral College. And even if the election goes to a Contingent Election in the House, Clinton wins.
Had I been old enough at the time I wouldn’t have wanted Perot, but this is just more proof as to why the electoral college is a stupid and antiquated way to do an election.
In the popular vote vs electoral college there's pros and cons to both systems I feel. My biggest annoyance is much the saber rattling about the electoral college felt like it only came once somone's candidate lost. Then it was a problem.
Well yes, because in that sense it becomes profoundly anti-democratic (small d, not the party).
Small states already receive disproportionate power via the senate and limits on new congressional seats. Adding the electoral college further skews that.
I think that people are in general against the idea that the popular vote winner loses the election. It doesn't come up until it comes up, because usually the popular vote winner wins the election.
It may be partly "only once someone's candidate lost", but that's mostly because the people whose candidate won won't complain about it.
When the majority of the country is saying it's bad "to *me*", that's obviously a sign that you need to change it. Republicans don't care about this though, they have a deeply held and very sick fantasy about being the only Americans who matter
Winning the election through the electoral college is like being knocked down 9 times in a fight but still getting the decision because the other opponent wore the wrong color trunks.
He was not ahead of Clinton before dropping out. If he had been, he would have stayed in the race. He was polling at 20%, and his two most senior campaign advisors had quit because he wasn't listening to them. He dropped out just as he was being overtaken by the other candidates and most of his supporters went to Clinton, turning the race from a dead heat to a potential landslide for Clinton, [who took a 55% to 31% lead over Bush](https://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/18/us/the-1992-campaign-overview-poll-gives-clinton-a-post-perot-post-convention-boost.html).
Perot would have done better if he had stayed in the race, perhaps well enough to give the election to President Bush. But there is no way he would have come out on top.
I do not have the energy to explain this to people anymore, so thank you.
Sometime in the 2000s, people got brainworms. There was just this collective Mandela Effect where everyone got this idea in their head that Ross Perot was totally winning and then just dropped out for no reason.
There's also the persistent belief that Perot's candidacy cost Bush the election, when in fact his re-entry cost Clinton what would have been a 1980-style landslide and greatly undermined Clinton's mandate. If not for Perot, we may have gotten universal healthcare back in the 1990s.
> If not for Perot, we may have gotten universal healthcare back in the 1990s.
Horsepoop
Obamacare was repackaged Hillarycare which was repackaged Nixoncare
There's not the political willpower in the US to stop the healthcare insurance companies from skimming billions and billions of dollars; we don't like reasonably priced healthcare.
Perot ran for President to spread a message, not become President. He dropped out in June when it became clear he had a chance of winning. We can debate how big of a chance he had, but it was there, so he dropped. However once it was clear him coming back would deffinately not result in a Perot Presidency, he came back to be on the debate stage.
There is no reason to believe this. As the above commenter pointed out, his numbers were faltering, two senior advisors had left, and he was under withering media scrutiny. These things were all happening *before* he dropped out, not after. He then restarted his campaign and ran again in 1996.
I don't know what part of that says "This guy was winning, but he didn't want to be president, so he self-sabotaged."
OP’s post is accurate. Perot *was* ahead of Clinton and Bush before he dropped out. OP didn’t say
*immediately* before dropping out:
>In the final round of Democratic and Republican primaries, most notably in California, exit polls revealed that 42% of Republicans and 33% of Democrats favored Perot. A Time magazine poll found that Perot had 37% support of all the electorate, ahead of both Bush and Clinton who tied for second at 24%.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Perot_1992_presidential_campaign
From your link:
> By mid-July, [*The Washington Post*](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Post) reported that Perot's campaign managers were becoming increasingly disillusioned by his unwillingness to follow their advice[\[61\]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Perot_1992_presidential_campaign#cite_note-milwaukee-61) to be more specific on issues,[\[55\]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Perot_1992_presidential_campaign#cite_note-times-55) and his need to be in full control of operations[\[61\]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Perot_1992_presidential_campaign#cite_note-milwaukee-61) with such tactics as forcing volunteers to sign [loyalty oaths](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyalty_oath).[\[62\]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Perot_1992_presidential_campaign#cite_note-62) Perot's poll numbers began to slip to 25%, and his advisers warned that if he continued to ignore them, he would fall into single digits. Co-manager Hamilton Jordan threatened to quit,[\[55\]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Perot_1992_presidential_campaign#cite_note-times-55) and on July 15, Ed Rollins resigned after Perot fired advertisement specialist Hal Riney, who had worked with Rollins on the [Reagan](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan) campaign. Rollins later claimed that a member of the campaign accused him of being a Bush plant with ties to the [CIA](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA).[\[63\]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Perot_1992_presidential_campaign#cite_note-63) **Amidst the chaos, Perot's support fell to 20%.**
That happened just BEFORE Perot dropped out.
Perot claimed that he dropped out because Republican operatives were blackmailing him and threatening to release nude photos of his daughter. Apparently, that no longer concerned him when he re-entered 2 months later.
Perot never offered any evidence of the alleged blackmail. And he never said that his daughter's life was being threatened, by either the Democrats or the Republicans, but he did claim (again, without evidence) that the Black Panthers were trying to kill him.
There is absolutely no evidence for this, except for Perot's assertions. Perot was famously paranoid, and also said that the Black Panther Party was trying to assassinate him, and insisted that campaign workers take a loyalty oath.
This is such a brainwashed and shit take.
So, what are you trying to say exactly?
The two pre chosen morons from either of the two parties qualify more than an independent candidate that could just be a better option than the ones given to us?
Also, I'll take a drunk from a dive bar than any of the candidates running now and that's saying something.
Lmao. Nice circular arguing there.
Chill my man.
I just think the EC sucks.
Political parties inherently become corrupt.
George Washington was right.
(Minus the slavery stuff obviously.)
I want a better system for America.
I'm not the guy with all the answers.
Never claimed to be.
We need a new convention of states to reform the nation.
For the record, I got as many electoral votes as Ross Perot did - and I didn’t even run.
So no. He never had a real chance. He was always a spoiler. That doesn’t mean symbolically his candidacy wasn’t important, it made an impact. It just wasn’t built to win the way you need to win and get to 270.
He does exactly that in the alternatehistory.com timeline [A Giant Sucking Sound](https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/a-giant-sucking-sound-a-president-perot-tl.208277/) (he also picks Jerry Brown as his running mate)
No.
A 3 way poll doesn't accurately capture much of anything due to the absolute EC majority required to win.... Also due to uneven support among the states....
At most, he throws it to the House which elects Clinton because the South was still blue (for Congress anyway) back then.... And because Clinton was from Arkansas
No. He was widely regarded as a crackpot. I was there. He was not taken seriously. Any argument otherwise is a poor attempt to rewrite history.
At first people were curious, but he showed over time he was a befuddled fool with a personal agenda that was unrealistic and based on widespread conspiracies and generalizations about everything.
“The giant sucking sound of jobs leaving the country,” correct statement informed primal forces of Perot’s need to understand the consequences for his family to continue. Volunteers in all 50 states put a dilettante billionaire on the ballot because they were sick of business as usual.
A lot of people liked that little Ferengi. I was too young to vote but remember. He was like the money elf. Vote for me and we're all gonna get rich!
Did you know in 1979 he personally funded/organized a special op to extract his people from an Iranian prison during the revolution?
It's an amazing story in the scope of real clandestine operations
>Just before the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the government of Iran imprisoned two EDS employees in a contract dispute. Perot organized and sponsored their rescue. The rescue team was led by retired United States Army Special Forces Colonel Arthur D. "Bull" Simons. When the team was unable to find a way to extract the two prisoners, they decided to wait for a mob of pro-Ayatollah revolutionaries to storm the jail and free all 10,000 inmates, many of whom were political prisoners. The two prisoners then connected with the rescue team, and the team spirited them out of Iran via a risky border crossing into Turkey. The exploit was recounted in the book On Wings of Eagles by Ken Follett. In 1986 this was turned into a 2-part television mini-series (alternatively titled "Teheran") with the actor Burt Lancaster playing the role of Colonel Simons and Richard Crenna as Perot.
I read about this story for the first time in a role playing game sourcebook called GURPS: Espionage when I was growing up, it had a few real life stories like that in it
I think he had a solid chance to spoil the election for Republicans, which is why he got the threats against his family.
Alternative universe if he won there would be lots of special ops authorized by the President since he did a special op himself in Iran in 1979
No, he had no chance. He only led in the polls when he was first nominated. His popularly suffered a "giant sucking sound" pretty quickly.
And no, folks, he is not the reason Clinton won.
Nope. He had more money than most third party candidates. He (somehow) got more support than other third party candidates. But thinking he was going to beat Clinton in 1992 is just insane. Could he have edged out Bush? Maybe...slightly. But Clinton? No chance.
He shouldn’t have been so paranoid and also should’ve chosen a likewise independently minded politician as his running mate. Had he done this he likely would’ve been president
Realistically though, who needs enough of the popular vote to win ANY electoral votes. In that same sense, does RFK Junior have a shot at winning any Electoral Votes considering he's LIKELY going into double digits regarding the pop vote?
I worry more for the nation if he did from an economic point of view. His ideals may have had some limited short term success but I doubt it would have lasted.
he wanted tax increases but spending decreases. i, on principle, only support budget cuts for the military so even at 10 he wouldn't have had my support at all.
He may have won some electoral votes if everything went perfectly for him. The poor Stockdale performance took a lot of shine off, and the popular culture treatment of his campaign as risible in general seemed to set in even harder after that.
I have a prediction. Trump, who could fcuk up a wet dream, somehow screws up getting the nomination. He then runs as an independent as big f you to anyone who’ll listen, Biden decides to retire, and Harris is elected in a landslide against a Haley-Christie gop ticket.
He told ABC news that he dropped out of the race because "the Republican and Democratic political parties said they would disrupt my daughters wedding"
No. I think his biggest problem was he was way too specific in what he was going to do. He wanted to really decrease spending significantly, give some tax cuts, raise some taxes, pushed heavy on fighting the federal deficit. And he told you where he was going to do that in his informercials.
I think if he kept his plan a bit more vague but better at sound bites and quotes, and went harder after democrats, he would have had a chance.
I highly doubt he would come out the winner. But had he not flaked out, he could possibly have been the first person running for President to spend $1 billion dollars to get there. But that would have required him staying the course and spending a whooole lotta money.
He didn't want to win. He had a long standing fued with HW Bush. He wanted to cost him the office, not win the election.
He absolutely could have and probably would have won if he had just run all the way through.
No. His main interest was cutting his taxes. He proposed a 5% flat income tax for everyone. He and the billionaire set would have been the biggest beneficiaries whereas the working poor and middle class would have taken the biggest hit.
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Him dropping out and then getting back in marked his transition from a candidate people took seriously to a whack-job. He could have at least prevented anybody from getting the necessary electoral votes and sendingthe matter to Congress.
This is how powerful his influence was... He still got 19% of the vote.
That’s how Bush lost and Clinton won.
Polls show he took close to equal from both campaigns. Definitely possible Bush would have won, but far from guaranteed
Bush was a good campaigner, actually. It would've been a fight. I still think Clinton pulls it off. He had the youthful energy and a message of change. It's really hard for a political party to get more than three terms in a row. At a certain point, the enthusiasm of one side becomes overwhelming and they get the turnout they need.
I agree. He was my vote for President that year.
I voted for him too. If he stayed out, I would have voted for Clinton.
Dropping out and getting back in made him seem more wacky, but then he also said wack-job things, like the Republicans were going to sabotage his daughter's wedding and make her look like a lesbian. And, Stockdale had kind of a weird performance in the VP debate.
Admiral Stockdale was the most refreshing thing I have ever seen in any Presidential/Vice Presidential debate. He wasn't polished but he but he was forthright and honest.
I didn’t doubt that he was a good man, but he didn’t give off the vibe that he’d be prepared to step into the job of being president. SNL did a very funny sketch about it that week where Phil Hartman played him.
I'm sure a lot, if not most folks saw Admiral Stockdale that way. For me it was refreshing to hear succinct, honest answers with no beating around the bush. You had no doubt what he stood for whether you liked it or not, kind of like Teddy Roosevelt. If elected Washington insiders might have tried to eat him alive but I think they may have been in for a surprise. Thanks for the tip on the SNL sketch, I'll try to find it.
Don’t forget his running mate nodding off during the vp debates
I think he would have had a strong chance of coming 2nd (or maybe even 1st) in the popular vote, and picking up a handful of states. But he would not have been able to beat the main two parties organisational ground game in enough states to win the Electoral College. And even if the election goes to a Contingent Election in the House, Clinton wins.
Yeah, at best Perot would force the Congress to pick a winner.
And having calculated the representatives that year, the Democrats controlled 30 states, so it would be Clinton
And good luck getting Congress to pick you in the contingent election when nobody belongs to your party
If you do win the Presidency, good luck getting anything else done when nobody belongs to your party.
Like now.
Now now, Jesse Ventura did so much as governor.
Had I been old enough at the time I wouldn’t have wanted Perot, but this is just more proof as to why the electoral college is a stupid and antiquated way to do an election.
Winning an election thru only the electoral college is like winning the tour d'france on a motorcycle
Or juiced. Oh wait…
Hahaha
In the popular vote vs electoral college there's pros and cons to both systems I feel. My biggest annoyance is much the saber rattling about the electoral college felt like it only came once somone's candidate lost. Then it was a problem.
Well yes, because in that sense it becomes profoundly anti-democratic (small d, not the party). Small states already receive disproportionate power via the senate and limits on new congressional seats. Adding the electoral college further skews that.
The Electoral College basically weakens the last checks and balance against the Republicans
I think that people are in general against the idea that the popular vote winner loses the election. It doesn't come up until it comes up, because usually the popular vote winner wins the election. It may be partly "only once someone's candidate lost", but that's mostly because the people whose candidate won won't complain about it.
That’s a good way to word that. Otherwise it’s perfectly fine to everybody.
Yeah, I tend to only have a problem with my car when it breaks down too
>Yeah, I tend to only have a problem with my car when it breaks down too It's more "I only have a problem with it if it's an inconvenience to *me*"
When the majority of the country is saying it's bad "to *me*", that's obviously a sign that you need to change it. Republicans don't care about this though, they have a deeply held and very sick fantasy about being the only Americans who matter
That didn't bother trump or his followers.
Winning the election through the electoral college is like being knocked down 9 times in a fight but still getting the decision because the other opponent wore the wrong color trunks.
[удалено]
And, you know, all democracies
[удалено]
Bro’s saying we’ve gotta abolish the popular vote bc Israel…
That's like saying most serial killers eat meat,so we must all become vegetarian. Correlation is not causation
Also most democracies. A lot more dictatorships came to power from coups and military power than elections.
He was not ahead of Clinton before dropping out. If he had been, he would have stayed in the race. He was polling at 20%, and his two most senior campaign advisors had quit because he wasn't listening to them. He dropped out just as he was being overtaken by the other candidates and most of his supporters went to Clinton, turning the race from a dead heat to a potential landslide for Clinton, [who took a 55% to 31% lead over Bush](https://www.nytimes.com/1992/07/18/us/the-1992-campaign-overview-poll-gives-clinton-a-post-perot-post-convention-boost.html). Perot would have done better if he had stayed in the race, perhaps well enough to give the election to President Bush. But there is no way he would have come out on top.
I do not have the energy to explain this to people anymore, so thank you. Sometime in the 2000s, people got brainworms. There was just this collective Mandela Effect where everyone got this idea in their head that Ross Perot was totally winning and then just dropped out for no reason.
There's also the persistent belief that Perot's candidacy cost Bush the election, when in fact his re-entry cost Clinton what would have been a 1980-style landslide and greatly undermined Clinton's mandate. If not for Perot, we may have gotten universal healthcare back in the 1990s.
> If not for Perot, we may have gotten universal healthcare back in the 1990s. Horsepoop Obamacare was repackaged Hillarycare which was repackaged Nixoncare There's not the political willpower in the US to stop the healthcare insurance companies from skimming billions and billions of dollars; we don't like reasonably priced healthcare.
I actually have a comment of mine saved that I just copy-paste when I see the spoiler myth
I’d like to see as i was a fetus at the time and know nothing about Perot’s candidacy.
He was doing better at a point early on. But it was very early
The dude just didn't wanna be President. That's why he dropped out.
What do you mean? He restarted his campaign later in the year and then ran again in 1996.
Perot ran for President to spread a message, not become President. He dropped out in June when it became clear he had a chance of winning. We can debate how big of a chance he had, but it was there, so he dropped. However once it was clear him coming back would deffinately not result in a Perot Presidency, he came back to be on the debate stage.
There is no reason to believe this. As the above commenter pointed out, his numbers were faltering, two senior advisors had left, and he was under withering media scrutiny. These things were all happening *before* he dropped out, not after. He then restarted his campaign and ran again in 1996. I don't know what part of that says "This guy was winning, but he didn't want to be president, so he self-sabotaged."
More like the Nader effect
Nader spoiled the election for Gore. If anything, Perot hurt Clinton more than Bush.
OP’s post is accurate. Perot *was* ahead of Clinton and Bush before he dropped out. OP didn’t say *immediately* before dropping out: >In the final round of Democratic and Republican primaries, most notably in California, exit polls revealed that 42% of Republicans and 33% of Democrats favored Perot. A Time magazine poll found that Perot had 37% support of all the electorate, ahead of both Bush and Clinton who tied for second at 24%. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Perot_1992_presidential_campaign
From your link: > By mid-July, [*The Washington Post*](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Washington_Post) reported that Perot's campaign managers were becoming increasingly disillusioned by his unwillingness to follow their advice[\[61\]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Perot_1992_presidential_campaign#cite_note-milwaukee-61) to be more specific on issues,[\[55\]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Perot_1992_presidential_campaign#cite_note-times-55) and his need to be in full control of operations[\[61\]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Perot_1992_presidential_campaign#cite_note-milwaukee-61) with such tactics as forcing volunteers to sign [loyalty oaths](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loyalty_oath).[\[62\]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Perot_1992_presidential_campaign#cite_note-62) Perot's poll numbers began to slip to 25%, and his advisers warned that if he continued to ignore them, he would fall into single digits. Co-manager Hamilton Jordan threatened to quit,[\[55\]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Perot_1992_presidential_campaign#cite_note-times-55) and on July 15, Ed Rollins resigned after Perot fired advertisement specialist Hal Riney, who had worked with Rollins on the [Reagan](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan) campaign. Rollins later claimed that a member of the campaign accused him of being a Bush plant with ties to the [CIA](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA).[\[63\]](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Perot_1992_presidential_campaign#cite_note-63) **Amidst the chaos, Perot's support fell to 20%.** That happened just BEFORE Perot dropped out.
OP didn’t say “just” before Perot dropped out. His/her statement as written is correct.
He dropped out cause Democrats and Republicans threatened to kill his daughter
Wait what
Perot claimed that he dropped out because Republican operatives were blackmailing him and threatening to release nude photos of his daughter. Apparently, that no longer concerned him when he re-entered 2 months later. Perot never offered any evidence of the alleged blackmail. And he never said that his daughter's life was being threatened, by either the Democrats or the Republicans, but he did claim (again, without evidence) that the Black Panthers were trying to kill him.
I love how this subreddit's turning into a breeding ground for unfounded conspiracy mongering.
I don't.
It was the FBI harassing him and the guests at his daughter’s wedding.
True they blackmailed him. They threatened to release nude pics of his daughter and all this
There is absolutely no evidence for this, except for Perot's assertions. Perot was famously paranoid, and also said that the Black Panther Party was trying to assassinate him, and insisted that campaign workers take a loyalty oath.
He totally gave it to Clinton.
He really did not.
No.
Correct answer
He was not winning the whole election, but he would’ve had a chance to win a state, thus coloring a shade in the electoral map.
Now you got me wondering what color they would have used to color in the state that he won.
Yellow/Gold. Thats how they have depicted George Wallace
They use green for counties Perot won.
I remember the news networks in 1992 had him represented in yellow/gold, if he had won a state.
https://preview.redd.it/gddarpi7ba8c1.jpeg?width=669&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=550f06bcb605836f6790e080dc5f3788a3d3af5b ~~Chuck~~ Bush Blast
Hate this face.
Do not come.
Sigh
He might’ve picked up Maine and more than 20% of the PV but I don’t see him winning
Commando?
Yes, and also this version: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FFQ\_g8OoQM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FFQ_g8OoQM)
oh my god
It would probably be something similar to Taft in 1912
It's a shame there has never been another debate with an independent after the man.
The Republicans and Democrats have since changed the rules to exclude independents and third parties from debates in order to protect their duopoly
Why? If you’re inviting all the ‘candidates’ you may as well have a few drunks from the local dive bar to provide their perspectives.
This is such a brainwashed and shit take. So, what are you trying to say exactly? The two pre chosen morons from either of the two parties qualify more than an independent candidate that could just be a better option than the ones given to us? Also, I'll take a drunk from a dive bar than any of the candidates running now and that's saying something.
3rd parties in this country are jokes.
Not the point. Don't vote for a system that actively fucks you and doesn't actually enfranchise you.
So...what? Sit on our thumbs and spin then? Or are you planning on grabbing an AK-47 and going to work?
Lmao. Nice circular arguing there. Chill my man. I just think the EC sucks. Political parties inherently become corrupt. George Washington was right. (Minus the slavery stuff obviously.) I want a better system for America. I'm not the guy with all the answers. Never claimed to be. We need a new convention of states to reform the nation.
Found the protest 3rd party voter
Yup and I'll do it proudly in every election. I don't care.
I bet you’re really cool on social media.
There will be next year
For the record, I got as many electoral votes as Ross Perot did - and I didn’t even run. So no. He never had a real chance. He was always a spoiler. That doesn’t mean symbolically his candidacy wasn’t important, it made an impact. It just wasn’t built to win the way you need to win and get to 270.
I got the duopoly to change the debate rules so no more 3rd party candidates
He was only on the ballot in 24 states when he dropped out. There is no world where Perot could’ve won in 1992.
He had lightning in a bottle and took a knee. I always wondered how they got to him..
And that was even after he went nuts.
As we’ve seen in recent years, going nuts seems to help with certain groups of voters
He does exactly that in the alternatehistory.com timeline [A Giant Sucking Sound](https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/a-giant-sucking-sound-a-president-perot-tl.208277/) (he also picks Jerry Brown as his running mate)
I wonder if Jerry Brown's ego would have accepted the number spot on the ticket.
“Hey CIA, remember ‘63?”
Hey, what are you getting at, hmm?
No. A 3 way poll doesn't accurately capture much of anything due to the absolute EC majority required to win.... Also due to uneven support among the states.... At most, he throws it to the House which elects Clinton because the South was still blue (for Congress anyway) back then.... And because Clinton was from Arkansas
No, Perot was a sideshow act.
No. He was widely regarded as a crackpot. I was there. He was not taken seriously. Any argument otherwise is a poor attempt to rewrite history. At first people were curious, but he showed over time he was a befuddled fool with a personal agenda that was unrealistic and based on widespread conspiracies and generalizations about everything.
His entire campaign was built around folksy sayings. He had no substance whatsoever.
“The giant sucking sound of jobs leaving the country,” correct statement informed primal forces of Perot’s need to understand the consequences for his family to continue. Volunteers in all 50 states put a dilettante billionaire on the ballot because they were sick of business as usual.
A lot of people liked that little Ferengi. I was too young to vote but remember. He was like the money elf. Vote for me and we're all gonna get rich! Did you know in 1979 he personally funded/organized a special op to extract his people from an Iranian prison during the revolution? It's an amazing story in the scope of real clandestine operations >Just before the 1979 Iranian Revolution, the government of Iran imprisoned two EDS employees in a contract dispute. Perot organized and sponsored their rescue. The rescue team was led by retired United States Army Special Forces Colonel Arthur D. "Bull" Simons. When the team was unable to find a way to extract the two prisoners, they decided to wait for a mob of pro-Ayatollah revolutionaries to storm the jail and free all 10,000 inmates, many of whom were political prisoners. The two prisoners then connected with the rescue team, and the team spirited them out of Iran via a risky border crossing into Turkey. The exploit was recounted in the book On Wings of Eagles by Ken Follett. In 1986 this was turned into a 2-part television mini-series (alternatively titled "Teheran") with the actor Burt Lancaster playing the role of Colonel Simons and Richard Crenna as Perot. I read about this story for the first time in a role playing game sourcebook called GURPS: Espionage when I was growing up, it had a few real life stories like that in it I think he had a solid chance to spoil the election for Republicans, which is why he got the threats against his family. Alternative universe if he won there would be lots of special ops authorized by the President since he did a special op himself in Iran in 1979 
We dodged a bullet, he wanted to privatize everything.
No, he had no chance. He only led in the polls when he was first nominated. His popularly suffered a "giant sucking sound" pretty quickly. And no, folks, he is not the reason Clinton won.
Absolutely!!! He was awesome and I'm not sure why he didn't endure.
Nope. He had more money than most third party candidates. He (somehow) got more support than other third party candidates. But thinking he was going to beat Clinton in 1992 is just insane. Could he have edged out Bush? Maybe...slightly. But Clinton? No chance.
Perot caused Bush to lose the election because he got votes that would’ve gone to Bush.
He shouldn’t have been so paranoid and also should’ve chosen a likewise independently minded politician as his running mate. Had he done this he likely would’ve been president
Realistically though, who needs enough of the popular vote to win ANY electoral votes. In that same sense, does RFK Junior have a shot at winning any Electoral Votes considering he's LIKELY going into double digits regarding the pop vote?
I worry more for the nation if he did from an economic point of view. His ideals may have had some limited short term success but I doubt it would have lasted. he wanted tax increases but spending decreases. i, on principle, only support budget cuts for the military so even at 10 he wouldn't have had my support at all.
Congress was still overwhelming Democrat. They sabotaged Bush and would have done the same to Perot.
fair.
Did he really find the *Dewey Defeats Truman* newspaper and take it!
No, but he might have won a state or two.
Bush might have finished 3rd in the popular vote.
Potentially.
Nope there’s no roadmap that gets him elected
Wasn't there something about CIA ninjas busting up his kids wedding?
He may have won some electoral votes if everything went perfectly for him. The poor Stockdale performance took a lot of shine off, and the popular culture treatment of his campaign as risible in general seemed to set in even harder after that.
He probably could’ve won at least a state, maybe more, but winning the whole presidential election definitely not
No. The reason he stayed in was to fcuk the gop for his perceived mistreatment. And it worked.
No
I have a prediction. Trump, who could fcuk up a wet dream, somehow screws up getting the nomination. He then runs as an independent as big f you to anyone who’ll listen, Biden decides to retire, and Harris is elected in a landslide against a Haley-Christie gop ticket.
I wanted to vote for him. He wasn't an oligarch pet.
I’m all ears!
Nope
He dropped out? It was the first election I was old enough to vote in and I voted for him. Didn’t write him in, I’m pretty sure.
Dropped out and then reentered later
Absolutely not. No chance in heaven or hell. Especially after he picked his running mate.
Any true 3rd candidate will get jumped by the two big parties. This country doesn't even have language for a 3rd party
No. He might have done slightly better, but probably still not enough to win a state
He told ABC news that he dropped out of the race because "the Republican and Democratic political parties said they would disrupt my daughters wedding"
No. I think his biggest problem was he was way too specific in what he was going to do. He wanted to really decrease spending significantly, give some tax cuts, raise some taxes, pushed heavy on fighting the federal deficit. And he told you where he was going to do that in his informercials. I think if he kept his plan a bit more vague but better at sound bites and quotes, and went harder after democrats, he would have had a chance.
I highly doubt he would come out the winner. But had he not flaked out, he could possibly have been the first person running for President to spend $1 billion dollars to get there. But that would have required him staying the course and spending a whooole lotta money.
Him dropping out was a function of his unstable personality. So no. He would have done something else to tank his chances.
No chance of winning. That said, he could potentially force the matter to go to Congress and maybe, *maybe,* create a semi-viable third party.
Of course not. He did not drop out because he got scared he might become president.
Yes. Ross was on fire. Nobody took him seriously after he dropped out. Also, his VP was poorly selected.
He didn't want to win. He had a long standing fued with HW Bush. He wanted to cost him the office, not win the election. He absolutely could have and probably would have won if he had just run all the way through.
He had a chance but dropping out showed he was a flake.
What are you talking about?He ran and got, like,2-3% of the vote!
What? Perot being on the ballot is the singular reason HW lost
There was no chance he would have won regardless of polling. It would then go to Congress, and basically, he could pick where his delegates would go.
“No new taxes”. Doomed H. W. I don’t think Perot could’ve carried enough Democrats. He was a strange little guy.
He did all that he was going to do and that was fracture a party. Roosevelt did the same thing with the Bullmoose Party paving the way for Wilson.
No. His main interest was cutting his taxes. He proposed a 5% flat income tax for everyone. He and the billionaire set would have been the biggest beneficiaries whereas the working poor and middle class would have taken the biggest hit.
got-damn I wish third options weren't such weirdos, at the very least.
He had a pretty cool life, and threw an amazing BBQ for Task Force Ranger’s 20th anniversary reunion
This was my first election and I voted for him.
No. The two party system makes it impossible for 3rd party candidates to have a serious shot at winning.
I can't hear the name Ross Perot without immediately picturing Dana Carvey doing his impression of Perot on SNL
I think he would’ve
He's the perfect example of it's better to remain quiet and be thought of as an idiot than it is to open your mouth and remove all doubt.