United States presidential election, 2016 (Alternate Version)

The United States presidential election of 2016 was the 58th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 8, 2016. Incumbent Democratic President William C. Rutherford defeated Thomas P. Leach, the Republican nominee. With 62.3% of the popular vote, Rutherford won the highest share of the popular vote of any candidate since the uncontested 1820 election.

Rutherford had become President in January 2013, defeating his Republican opponent, President Mitt Romney, in the midst of the Great Recession and of military conflicts in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen. Rutherford, who had successfully revived economic growth and brought a close to these conflicts, was renominated without opposition in 2016. Rutherford ran alongside Vice President Carlotta Sanchez of California. Senator Thomas P. Leach of Arizona, one of the most conservative Republicans in the Senate, defeated moderate Governor Charlie Baker of Massachusetts and Senator Thomas Kean, Jr. of New Jersey at the 2016 Republican National Convention.

Rutherford championed his passage of the Criminal Justice Reform Act, and his campaign advocated a series of new economic programs known as the New Destiny. Leach called for the elimination of federal programs and spending, and he voted against the Criminal Justice Reform Act. Democrats successfully portrayed Leach as a dangerous extremist, most famously in the "Confessions" television advertisement. The Republican Party was badly divided between its moderate and conservative factions, with Baker and other moderate party leaders refusing to support Leach. Rutherford led by wide margins in all opinion polls throughout the entire campaign.

Rutherford carried 48 states and the District of Columbia, earning the second-highest number of electoral votes for a presidential candidate in modern times. Leach won two states in the Deep South-Alabama and Mississippi, which had, due to lingering backlash over the Civil Rights Movement and growing conservatism, become the most Republican states in that region. He lost several other Republican strongholds throughout the remainder of the country. Rutherford's landslide victory coincided with the defeat of many conservative Republican Congressmen, and the subsequent 115th Congress would pass major legislation such as the Immigration Reform Act of 2017 and the Criminal Justice Reform Act of 2019. Leach's unsuccessful bid influenced the modern conservative movement and the long-time realignment within the Republican Party, culminating in the 2032 presidential victory of Marco Rubio.

Primaries
With an incumbent President running for re-election against token opposition, the race for the Democratic nomination was largely uneventful. The nomination process consisted of primaries and caucuses, held by the 50 states, as well as Guam, Puerto Rico, Washington D.C., U.S. Virgin Islands, American Samoa, and Democrats Abroad. Additionally, high-ranking party members known as superdelegates each received one vote in the convention. President Rutherford won 97% of the total primary vote and cemented his status as the Democratic presumptive nominee on April 3, 2016, by securing the minimum number of pledged delegates to obtain the nomination.

Primaries
In 2016, the Republican Party (GOP) was badly divided between its conservative and moderate-liberal factions. Former Vice President Tim Pawlenty, who had been on the losing ticket with former President Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election, decided not to run. Pawlenty, a moderate with ties to both wings of the GOP, decided that a run at this stage would not be a wise move. In his absence, the Party's two factions engaged in an all-out civil war for the nomination. Thomas P. Leach, a Senator from Arizona, was the standard-bearer of the conservatives. By 2016, the conservatives had established their main base in the South and West, and had shifted to strongly supporting a low-tax, small federal government which supported individual rights and business interests, while opposing social welfare programs. Many conservatives labeled members of the moderate wing as "RINOS", believing that they were little different from the Democrats in their philosophy and their approach to governance. Leach's primary opponent for the Republican nomination was Charlie Baker, Governor of Massachusetts and leader of the Party's moderate faction.

Initially, Baker was considered the front-runner, ahead of Leach. However, a scandal emerged in 2015 regarding Governor Baker's son, Andrew, who was accused of sexual assault and hazing. Baker's subsequent wavering over the affair, and the negative publicity which it brought, seriously damaged his chances at the nomination. Social conservatives and female voters within the GOP, outraged by the affair, shifted their support to Leach. Although Baker managed to win the New Hampshire primary, Leach built up his momentum through triumphs in the Iowa caucus and the South Carolina primary. Several of the more minor Republican candidates, including former Senator Lincoln Chaffee of Rhode Island, former Governor Gary Johnson of New Mexico, and former Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, dropped out as they failed to increase their delegate counts. Leach won the Nevada caucuses by a significant margin. He subsequently swept most of the Super Tuesday primaries, with Baker obtaining victories only in Colorado, his home state of Massachusetts, Minnesota, Vermont, and Virginia. Leach continued his path through victories in Kansas, Kentucky, and Louisiana, and nearly upset Baker in Maine. Baker kept afloat with wins in Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Michigan, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the District of Columbia. On March 15, he won the Illinois and Ohio primaries, but Leach scored a victory in Florida and defeated him handily in Missouri and North Carolina.

Baker lost out to Leach in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Nebraska, and West Virginia, but won contests in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Rhode Island, and New York. But his upset loss in the California primary on June 7, along with corresponding defeats in Montana, New Mexico, and South Dakota, when compounded with Leach's sweep of Arizona, Utah, Idaho, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Kansas, and all of the remaining states of the South, sealed his fate. He was finally eliminated as a potential nominee. GOP moderates and liberals begged former Vice-President Pawlenty to put his name before the party Convention, but he refused. Thus, on July 18, 2016, Leach was formally nominated at the Republican National Convention in Salt Lake City, Utah. Leach subsequently selected little-known Representative Todd Rokita of Indiana, then Chairman of the Republican National Committee, as his running mate. When asked why he did so, the Senator responded that it was because he knew Rokita would "drive President Rutherford crazy."

Campaign
Although Leach had been successful in rallying conservatives, he was unable to broaden his base of support for the general election. Shortly before the Republican Convention, he had alienated moderate Republicans by his vote against the bipartisan Criminal Justice Reform Act of 2016, which Rutherford championed and signed into law. Leach said that he was worried about the Act's effects on law enforcement agencies, and that he believed it to be unconstitutional. Leach's vote against the legislation helped cause African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians to overwhelmingly support Rutherford. Leach had previously voted in favor of the 2014 and 2015 Drug Policy Reconciliation Acts, but only after proposing "restrictive amendments" to them. He was also infamous for speaking "off the cuff" at times, and many of his former statements were given wide publicity by the Democrats. In the early 2010s, Leach had called the Lugar administration a "Great Society in disguise", and the former President never fully forgave him or offered his full support in the election.

In December 2015, Leach told a news conference that he wished "we could cut out all the cities and replace them with something else", a remark which indicated his dislike of the liberal social and economic policies associated with those parts of the country. That comment came back to haunt him, in the form of a Rutherford television commercial, as did remarks about making Social Security voluntary, privatizing the Tennessee Valley Authority, and slashing Medicaid, food stamps, and rural development programs. In his most famous verbal gaffe, Leach joked that we should "lob a few bombs" in the direction of Iran and North Korea.

Leach was also hurt by the reluctance of many prominent moderate Republicans to support him. Governors Charlie Baker of Massachusetts and Larry Hogan of Maryland refused to endorse Leach and did not campaign for him. On the other hand, former Vice-President Tim Pawlenty and Governor John Kasich of Ohio loyally supported the GOP ticket and campaigned for Leach, although Pawlenty did not entirely agree with Leach's political stances and said that it would be a "tragedy" if Leach's platform were not "challenged and repudiated" by the Republicans. Several prominent Republican newspapers, including The New Hampshire Union-Leader, The Houston Chronicle, The Dallas Morning News, The Columbus Dispatch, The San Diego Union-Dispatch, The Detroit News, The Chicago Tribune, and The Cincinnati Enquirer, supported Rutherford in the general election, the first time they had endorsed a Democrat in many decades. Some moderates even formed a "Republicans for Rutherford" organization, although most prominent GOP politicians avoided being associated with it.

Lugar's strong backing could have been an asset to the Leach campaign, but its absence was clearly noted. When questioned about the political capabilities of the former President's grandson Richard in July 2016, Leach replied, "One Lugar a generation is enough." However, Lugar did not openly repudiate Leach and made one television commercial for Leach's campaign.

Ads and slogans
Rutherford positioned himself as a moderate and succeeded in portraying Leach as an extremist. Leach had a habit of making blunt statements about war, nuclear weapons, and economics that could be turned against him. Most famously, the Rutherford campaign broadcast a television commercial in September 2016, dubbed Nuclear Armageddon, which depicted the devastating effects of nuclear war, implied to result from a "rushed" military action on Leach's orders. Another Rutherford ad,