Hrm. It's possible that the disaster that was the Reagan/Rhodes presidencies seriously affected US demographics (e.g. flight of people from the South) just before the census, and changed the EV distribution significantly from IOTL?
Icarus Falls (An Alternate 1960s)
- Thread starter AnywhereButOTL
- Start date
Hrm. It's possible that the disaster that was the Reagan/Rhodes presidencies seriously affected US demographics (e.g. flight of people from the South) just before the census, and changed the EV distribution significantly from IOTL?
That's possible, though you'd have to seriously embugger population trends.
For the record, here is the incredibly rough electoral map I made to keep track while reading. Bush is in blue, Humphrey is in red(as God intended):
I have the same map, using Leip's Electoral Calculator, GWB 270 to HHH 268. Hell, I have five maps for 1972 from this TL from all the forecasts I made as the story changed. My RFK beats Rhodes is a particularly fun landslide.
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View attachment 228494
I have the same map, using Leip's Electoral Calculator, GWB 270 to HHH 268. Hell, I have five maps for 1972 from this TL from all the forecasts I made as the story changed. My RFK beats Rhodes is a particularly fun landslide.
Thank you. Dynamite cannot into math.
No comment on any potential tricks up sleeves.
The only thing that can break up The Beatles is Yoko Ono, and considering the sheer number of butterflies the have been ricocheting around the world I'm going to go ahead and say that John and Yoko never met.
Poor Johnson is basically reliving 1968, and it is pissing him off. He's going to be crusading for a Democratic recount/question the results of the election ceaselessly campaign until roughly the end of time.
"Grab your popcorn and let the soothing voice of Walter Cronkite guide you through the democratic process."
Isn't that half the reason we all come to After 1900 threads, the electoral-wonk game night rush? (For Cronkite of course you could substitute a Dimbleby -- father or son -- or Peter Mansbridge His Own Damn Self, depending which of the North Atlantic anglophonies you've tuned in.)
I wonder who amongst our current news anchors is going to be as revered as Cronkite and his colleagues.
That's a factor that I didn't consider. Electoral totals will probably start changing starting in the 1976 election, though how they will change I'm not entirely sure.
That's possible, though you'd have to seriously embugger population trends.
For the record, here is the incredibly rough electoral map I made to keep track while reading. Bush is in blue, Humphrey is in red(as God intended):
As God intended, heh. Poor Humphrey, he just can't become President, no matter how hard he tries. Him and Gerald Ford (who could have become President three goddamn times already if he wasn't so upstanding and morally oriented) are probably going to become great buddies once their political careers are over.
View attachment 228494
I have the same map, using Leip's Electoral Calculator, GWB 270 to HHH 268. Hell, I have five maps for 1972 from this TL from all the forecasts I made as the story changed. My RFK beats Rhodes is a particularly fun landslide.
You should post those, I want to see them.
Thank you. Dynamite cannot into math.
Don't worry, I cannot into polling, though my election coverage is decent.
Another update? You bet your buttons it is!
188.
“Lyndon, I’m not sure that calling for a recount is necessarily wise, Bush won the popular vote by almost a half million ballots, even if we do win this recount effort I’d still be heading into office crippled by the fact that I didn’t win a plurality of the vote.” On the other side of the room Johnson shook his head and stuck a finger at Humphrey.
“Goddamnit Hubert, no! We’ve worked much too hard to just let this election go to Bush, we are going to pull a victory out of this if it kills me.” Sitting on a nearby chair, looking decidedly nervous, Inouye cleared his throat.
“I…I'm going to have to agree with Lyndon here. New Mexico was very close, and if we win then the half million votes wont matter when we have almost complete control over both houses of congress. Hubert, this is the difference between national healthcare and Bush continuing to let the economy crash and put people out of work. We can fix the Middle East, work to bring democratic reforms to the Soviet Union and the Republic of China, win the war in Pakistan and stop the blight. Lyndon’s right...we can’t lose this.” With both men staring at him Humphrey nodded slowly and got up.
“Do it,” he said, “call for a recount.”
_______
“Goddamnit, they’re calling for a recount now? Sore losers...” Bush shrugged and ignored Rumfeld’s words, he was just trying to get the last of the adrenaline to leave his body. For a moment he had seen his presidency hang in the balance and he didn’t like that feeling, it made him feel helpless.
“We need to guarantee that you’ve won.” Bush glanced over, it was Kissinger, looking tense.
“And how would we do that?” He asked, Rumsfeld, having taken interest in the conversation, walked over.
“With an election this close there is a possibility that the recount could uncover mistakes and then award Humphrey with victory.” That made Bush frown, not just the thought of a Democratic victory, but also the implications of what Rumsfeld was protractedly suggesting.
“Is Ed anywhere nearby?” He asked, Rumsfeld shook his head, it was nearly three in the morning and Brooke had gone to bed already, exhausted by the stress that the election had incurred.
“Good, if we’re going to do this then I don’t want him involved. Now tell me, what do you suggest?”
_______
“This recount can’t begin until tomorrow morning, so just as long as you don’t concede until then we can figure out what’s going on in New Mexico.” Hanging up the phone an election official in Albuquerque sighed and looked at the reams of voting results sitting before him. He would have to call in his staff and have them count it all over again, by hand, just to make sure that nothing had been missed.
“Washington,” he sighed, “you do not pay me enough.”
_______
“Some unexpected news coming out of Washington, where Senator Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic nominee for President, has just called for a recount of the voting results in New Mexico. The Bush administration has announced that it will not contest the recount, where more than three hundred thousand votes will be counted over the next forty eight hours.” Shutting off the television Kennedy sat back and glanced over at Springer.
“This is terrible...” he sighed, “how many more wars do you think Bush is gonna start?” Springer shrugged, he looked tired and demoralized.
“He might bomb Uyghurstan, and if the Libyans don’t stop buzzing our carrier then he might bomb them too.”
“We are going to Mars though...I guess that’s the only good thing he’s done.” Springer put a hand over his eyes and cocked his head towards the window, where the sunrise was brightening, the two men had stayed up all night, exchanging pessimistic small talk over what four more years of Bush would look like.
“Maybe he’ll bomb Mars.” That made Kennedy chuckle.
“I think he’s going to stick Gerald Ford in his cabinet somewhere, Ashbrook too.” Springer nodded.
“Ashbrook? Christ...that guy’s social views are stuck in the paleolithic era. We may not ever see equal rights for women.” That made Kennedy feel depressed again.
“I’d vote for Ford,” he said, “he’s a decent guy. I wish he’d run instead of Bush, he actually wants to get rid of the EPAB instead of expanding it. Hell, the only difference between Bush and Reagan is that Bush has a few more IQ points.” Springer didn’t respond to that and Kennedy saw that he’d fallen asleep. Getting up he drew the shades to darken the room and left quietly. He needed to go talk to Ted, to see where this whole recount business was going.
_______
Even as the New Mexico recount began, leaving the outcome of the 1972 Presidential election as uncertain as ever, the House and Senate elections for the year were already over, resulting in the Republican party winning four seats in the House and the balance of power in the Senate remaining exactly the same, a rare bit of stability amongst the political chaos that had enveloped Washington in recent years. These changes, along with the survival of the Freedom Party, resulted in the 93rd Congress of the United States looking like this:
House of Representatives: 238 Democrats, 161 Republicans, 36 Freedom
Senate: 59 Democrats, 35 Republicans, 6 Freedom
In Texas a certain libertarian physician was narrowly reelected, taking advantage of a district split between a Democratic and Freedom Party challenger. Gerald Ford won handily in his own district as well and though the only new faces in the Republican party were moderates from New Hampshire and Maine, it was better than nothing.
In Washington Bush began to slowly assemble his new cabinet, giving potential nominees calls, all the while keeping a careful eye on the New Mexico recount, which was proceeding smoothly, just as Kissinger had promised.
_______
Somewhere on the backroads near Albuquerque a man was watching a collection of papers burn, the flames reflecting off of his glasses. The flames were small and whenever they began to flag he fed them from the little sheafs he had in a crate next to him. He had been ordered to burn his assigned materials slowly and not generate a large amount of smoke, thus no gasoline had been used either, just a good old fashioned zippo and a bunch of newspaper. He was burning the papers in a metal trash bin and as he watched the air shimmer above the edge of the can he balled up more papers and dropped bundles in, sparks dancing above the desert, almost matching the vibrant sunrise beginning to appear behind him.
The burning would take a while but it was almost pleasant, the crackling of burning paper peaceful and almost harmonic. Sitting back, the man looked up at the sky and saw that it was just about light enough to read. Digging out his book he opened it up, balling up more paper against his thigh and continuing to feed the flames in the trash barrel. Once he was done burning the papers then he would fill the barrel with water to cool the ashes, don gloves and roll it into the hole that he had dug earlier. In this part of New Mexico it wasn’t uncommon for weeks to pass between visitors and he was confident that nobody would ever find the barrel, not even if they knew that it existed and had even a remote idea of where to look.
Flipping to the last page where he had been the man squinted and then closed his book again, it was still just a little too dim to comfortably read. Tossing another large ball of paper onto the blaze he looked into the barrel, shielding his face from the heat with his book, and saw a few sparks bounce off of the spine. As the sunset continued to grow brighter Gordon Liddy watched the ballots burn.
188.
“Lyndon, I’m not sure that calling for a recount is necessarily wise, Bush won the popular vote by almost a half million ballots, even if we do win this recount effort I’d still be heading into office crippled by the fact that I didn’t win a plurality of the vote.” On the other side of the room Johnson shook his head and stuck a finger at Humphrey.
“Goddamnit Hubert, no! We’ve worked much too hard to just let this election go to Bush, we are going to pull a victory out of this if it kills me.” Sitting on a nearby chair, looking decidedly nervous, Inouye cleared his throat.
“I…I'm going to have to agree with Lyndon here. New Mexico was very close, and if we win then the half million votes wont matter when we have almost complete control over both houses of congress. Hubert, this is the difference between national healthcare and Bush continuing to let the economy crash and put people out of work. We can fix the Middle East, work to bring democratic reforms to the Soviet Union and the Republic of China, win the war in Pakistan and stop the blight. Lyndon’s right...we can’t lose this.” With both men staring at him Humphrey nodded slowly and got up.
“Do it,” he said, “call for a recount.”
_______
“Goddamnit, they’re calling for a recount now? Sore losers...” Bush shrugged and ignored Rumfeld’s words, he was just trying to get the last of the adrenaline to leave his body. For a moment he had seen his presidency hang in the balance and he didn’t like that feeling, it made him feel helpless.
“We need to guarantee that you’ve won.” Bush glanced over, it was Kissinger, looking tense.
“And how would we do that?” He asked, Rumsfeld, having taken interest in the conversation, walked over.
“With an election this close there is a possibility that the recount could uncover mistakes and then award Humphrey with victory.” That made Bush frown, not just the thought of a Democratic victory, but also the implications of what Rumsfeld was protractedly suggesting.
“Is Ed anywhere nearby?” He asked, Rumsfeld shook his head, it was nearly three in the morning and Brooke had gone to bed already, exhausted by the stress that the election had incurred.
“Good, if we’re going to do this then I don’t want him involved. Now tell me, what do you suggest?”
_______
“This recount can’t begin until tomorrow morning, so just as long as you don’t concede until then we can figure out what’s going on in New Mexico.” Hanging up the phone an election official in Albuquerque sighed and looked at the reams of voting results sitting before him. He would have to call in his staff and have them count it all over again, by hand, just to make sure that nothing had been missed.
“Washington,” he sighed, “you do not pay me enough.”
_______
“Some unexpected news coming out of Washington, where Senator Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic nominee for President, has just called for a recount of the voting results in New Mexico. The Bush administration has announced that it will not contest the recount, where more than three hundred thousand votes will be counted over the next forty eight hours.” Shutting off the television Kennedy sat back and glanced over at Springer.
“This is terrible...” he sighed, “how many more wars do you think Bush is gonna start?” Springer shrugged, he looked tired and demoralized.
“He might bomb Uyghurstan, and if the Libyans don’t stop buzzing our carrier then he might bomb them too.”
“We are going to Mars though...I guess that’s the only good thing he’s done.” Springer put a hand over his eyes and cocked his head towards the window, where the sunrise was brightening, the two men had stayed up all night, exchanging pessimistic small talk over what four more years of Bush would look like.
“Maybe he’ll bomb Mars.” That made Kennedy chuckle.
“I think he’s going to stick Gerald Ford in his cabinet somewhere, Ashbrook too.” Springer nodded.
“Ashbrook? Christ...that guy’s social views are stuck in the paleolithic era. We may not ever see equal rights for women.” That made Kennedy feel depressed again.
“I’d vote for Ford,” he said, “he’s a decent guy. I wish he’d run instead of Bush, he actually wants to get rid of the EPAB instead of expanding it. Hell, the only difference between Bush and Reagan is that Bush has a few more IQ points.” Springer didn’t respond to that and Kennedy saw that he’d fallen asleep. Getting up he drew the shades to darken the room and left quietly. He needed to go talk to Ted, to see where this whole recount business was going.
_______
Even as the New Mexico recount began, leaving the outcome of the 1972 Presidential election as uncertain as ever, the House and Senate elections for the year were already over, resulting in the Republican party winning four seats in the House and the balance of power in the Senate remaining exactly the same, a rare bit of stability amongst the political chaos that had enveloped Washington in recent years. These changes, along with the survival of the Freedom Party, resulted in the 93rd Congress of the United States looking like this:
House of Representatives: 238 Democrats, 161 Republicans, 36 Freedom
Senate: 59 Democrats, 35 Republicans, 6 Freedom
In Texas a certain libertarian physician was narrowly reelected, taking advantage of a district split between a Democratic and Freedom Party challenger. Gerald Ford won handily in his own district as well and though the only new faces in the Republican party were moderates from New Hampshire and Maine, it was better than nothing.
In Washington Bush began to slowly assemble his new cabinet, giving potential nominees calls, all the while keeping a careful eye on the New Mexico recount, which was proceeding smoothly, just as Kissinger had promised.
_______
Somewhere on the backroads near Albuquerque a man was watching a collection of papers burn, the flames reflecting off of his glasses. The flames were small and whenever they began to flag he fed them from the little sheafs he had in a crate next to him. He had been ordered to burn his assigned materials slowly and not generate a large amount of smoke, thus no gasoline had been used either, just a good old fashioned zippo and a bunch of newspaper. He was burning the papers in a metal trash bin and as he watched the air shimmer above the edge of the can he balled up more papers and dropped bundles in, sparks dancing above the desert, almost matching the vibrant sunrise beginning to appear behind him.
The burning would take a while but it was almost pleasant, the crackling of burning paper peaceful and almost harmonic. Sitting back, the man looked up at the sky and saw that it was just about light enough to read. Digging out his book he opened it up, balling up more paper against his thigh and continuing to feed the flames in the trash barrel. Once he was done burning the papers then he would fill the barrel with water to cool the ashes, don gloves and roll it into the hole that he had dug earlier. In this part of New Mexico it wasn’t uncommon for weeks to pass between visitors and he was confident that nobody would ever find the barrel, not even if they knew that it existed and had even a remote idea of where to look.
Flipping to the last page where he had been the man squinted and then closed his book again, it was still just a little too dim to comfortably read. Tossing another large ball of paper onto the blaze he looked into the barrel, shielding his face from the heat with his book, and saw a few sparks bounce off of the spine. As the sunset continued to grow brighter Gordon Liddy watched the ballots burn.
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(said by Inouye before he goes on to explain why a recount is a good idea.) Is that a typo?
How close exactly were the votes in New Mexico, by the way? Recounts generally don't swing that many votes - say, maybe 0.05% at most.
Somehow I think that this is going to end up very messy. Especially if Mr. Liddy ends up caught again.
Please Don't let Humphrey win this way. He had good ideas in OTL in 1968, but winning this way would associate him along the lines of Bush 43 in OTL, and don't let NASA's Mars mission be cancelled if Humphrey wins. Like Bush 43 in OTL, that is the good thing George HW did in TTL - he did not cancel the Mars Mission. Along with that, he continued the hype from the space race (approving Solar based energy).
Any respect that I had for Bush has been burnt to a crisp like those ballots even if he is a big proponent of the space program.
To AnywhereButOTL:
Also, are you a fan of Breaking Bad?
To AnywhereButOTL:
Also, are you a fan of Breaking Bad?
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Damn, this hit too close to home, with the recent election in Turkey and all the shenaningans that followed it.
Hot damn!
Wow, the Bushes sure know how to run an election in any TL, don't they?
Great updates!
Prediction: Liddy is caught, and it's discovered that Bush would've won the recount anyway, even with the burned ballots.
Prediction: Liddy is caught, and it's discovered that Bush would've won the recount anyway, even with the burned ballots.
That is indeed a typo, thank you for catching that, it has been fixed.
Bush won New Mexico by less than 2,000 votes, which in a state where 350,000 votes were counted, is less than 0.4% of the total vote, so the recount could have some effect, even if it was mostly the result of Johnson refusing to admit that the Republicans won the election.
Trust me, the Mars mission will launch, the real danger lies in what happens to it once it slips the bonds of Earth's gravity.
Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Breaking Bad is pretty damn awesome, it's the first show that I actually binge-watched (watched the last two seasons in three days, did not do good things to my sleep schedule).
Election fraud is a horrible crime, I wish that it never happened but unfortunately we cannot be so lucky.
Hot damn!
Wow, the Bushes sure know how to run an election in any TL, don't they?
They do, even if it was just Bush making sure that he had absolutely no chance of losing.
Thank you. As for the prediction, my lips are sealed.
188.
“We can now confirm that twenty six hours after Senator Humphrey’s request for a recount in New Mexico that the state has once again been called for President Bush by a margin of sixteen hundred votes.” The news reverberated around the country and though Johnson begged for him to continue contesting the results of the election Humphrey conceded on the afternoon of November 8th, ending the 1972 Presidential election and guaranteeing Bush a full term.
_______
Statistics for the 1972 Presidential Election
President George H.W. Bush - 270 EV 35,981,555 PV
Senator Hubert H. Humphrey - 268 EV 35,502,017 PV
_______
“That fucker had to have cheated, there’s no way that the Republicans won after Reagan and goddamned Rhodes. No way at all...” Johnson, in the days after the end of the election, had become a man possessed, pressing his contacts amongst the election officials he knew, searching for discrepancies in voting records in Ohio and New Mexico, and poring through every record that was available to him, looking for evidence of voting fraud and missing ballots, anything that would prove his hunch that the election was false.
“Lyndon...we lost, all we can do now is prepare for the midterms and make sure that we win in ’76.” Inouye had traveled back to Hawaii to resume his senatorial duties but Humphrey had stuck around, worried by Johnson’s intensifying spiral into obsession.
“You’re too indecisive Hubert,” Johnson growled, dropping a file into his wastebasket and beginning to search through another. He was looking through the results from some of the more liberal leaning counties in New Mexico, so far nothing out of the ordinary had surfaced but it had to be there, he knew that much. “You need to stand up to that goddamn Reagan wannabe in the White House and be brave enough to tell him that you know exactly what he did to carry New Mexico.” Humphrey sighed and sat down beside Johnson.
“I’ve conceded Lyndon,” he said gently, “the election is over. I need you not to do anything rash or else you might make the party look bad...we’re in a bad enough spot already.” Johnson didn’t respond immediately, instead he dialed a number.
“Hubert,” he said finally, “nothing you say will stop me from doing this. Now get out of here, I’ll tell you when I find something.” Humphrey left the room, gently closing the door behind him. Johnson was furious, Inouye seemed desperate to forget the election and get back to work and the party as a whole was shellshocked and unsure about the future. Somehow the Republicans had won another election, and nothing seemed certain anymore.
_______
History books would later note that the first presidential action taken after the conclusion of the election was the firing of an orbitally guided projectile into the northern mountains of Iran, devastating a jihadist training camp and collapsing an offensive that was planned to attack Tehran. Iranian Army troops would secure the wreckage hours later but by then the survivors had cleared any surviving equipment from the rubble and had disappeared into the mountains, where many of their bases had been moved following the start of the American orbital support campaign in the country.
Unable to make any large scale moves without attracting the terrible attention of combined American and Iranian airpower, the jihadists in Iran soon adopted tactics similar to the ones being seen in Pakistan, bombings, ambushes and other small scale actions that they hoped would pile up to bleed the Shah’s regime dry.
The rest of the Middle East, and indeed by extension the Muslim world, wasn’t much more peaceful. Syria quickly became a nation divided as Turkish forces finished their intervention and Israeli forces withdrew to a more defensible occupation zone stretching between As Suwayda and the irradiated ruins of Damascus. Southern Lebanon was also quickly invaded, though the purpose was more to form a sort of demilitarized zone than occupy any territory.
The Jordanian occupation was also plagued with violence as the western portion of the country was bombed relentlessly and hundreds of thousands of refugees fled into Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Iraq, though its citizens called for war with Israel, instead found itself battling Kurdish rebels in the northern mountains, using whatever means necessary to drive the Kurds and their sympathizers back. Elsewhere violence was erupting as well, as Kurdish rebels clashed with Turkish military units in Syria and rioted in southern Turkey itself. The Iranian portion of the Kurdish uprising had proceeded smoothly and the Iranian Army, already spread thin in its fight against jihadist forces, had made the hard choice to abandon the Kurdish controlled portions of the nation, though they vowed to retake them once the rest of the country was stabilized.
To the east the Afghan government called for calm and mobilized the army and police forces, ready to declare martial law if jihadist movements cropped up from the growing unrest in the countryside. Central Asia combusted even further as more chemical and biological weapons were used, Uyghurstan fortified its borders from potential invasion from every direction, the ROC massacred jihadist and communist prisoners in a policy of no mercy towards traitors, and Pakistan continued to bleed. As the autumn ended the bloodshed stretched on and on, with no end in sight.
_______
In the month that he had spent in Hamid’s home McCain had become quite proficient at communicating through gestures and a mangled mixture of expressions and the Farsi that Hamid had been teaching him. His pilot beacon had run out of batteries after two weeks and while Hamid had evidently been unsurprised by the reluctance of American forces to rescue one of their own, he had made it clear that if McCain wanted to leave Pakistan alive then he would need to travel north, to the Tibetan border.
Upon asking how far it was Hamid had been unsure, somewhere between a week and ten days, an amount of time that made McCain feel ill to think about. His leg had healed nicely and aside from a little knob of bone that had formed over the site of the break he could walk normally. Hamid had set aside some food and supplies for his journey and McCain had, at his request, put a worn Koran in with his belongings. The jihadists would be less likely to kill him outright if they found a Koran with him, even if he was obviously an American.
“You will go tomorrow. At dawn.” McCain nodded and looked down at the meal that Hamid had prepared, a hearty goat curry so filled with spice that it made his eyes water. They ate slowly and Hamid explained the route to him slowly as the meal proceeded. He had provided McCain with a map and outlined the route, describing landmarks and villages where he could stop without fear of ambush. The villages, McCain noticed, were few and far between, and so Hamid had given him enough food for two weeks, explaining that he could use the gold in his survival pack to buy more supplies if he needed to.
McCain had attempted to give Hamid the gold several times during his stay but each time Hamid had politely declined and pointed at McCain instead, the meaning of the gesture easy to understand, he would need it more than Hamid ever would.
“I want to thank you for all of this,” McCain said slowly, stumbling over the still unfamiliar words, “I would be dead without you.” Hamid didn’t respond for a long time.
“Any good man would have done what I did.” The rest of the meal passed in silence and McCain, though he had expected to have trouble sleeping in light of the momentous trek he was expected to begin in only a few hours, fell deeply asleep almost immediately.
He awoke shortly before dawn, to see Hamid carefully wrapping something up in a bundle of cloth. Getting up he saw that it was a clay vessel, sealed with wax. Seeing him up Hamid handed him the pot.
“Open once you get to Tibet.” He explained and McCain nodded, placing the pot at the bottom of his pack, wondering what it contained as he did so. His pack, when loaded with all of the supplies that he would take, was breathtakingly heavy but he didn’t complain, even as a little throb of dull pain ran down his ill used leg.
“Thank you.” He said, Hamid smiled and handed him the Soviet pistol.
“Good luck.” He said, and together they walked up the path, back towards the mountain where McCain had first landed. As Hamid’s hut faded into the distance behind them McCain wondered how far Hamid would accompany him, it was comforting to have the man with him.
His query was answered a moment later as they crested the top of a hill and looked out across the landscape before them, the path that McCain would follow stretching into a pass a few miles ahead.
“Camp at the pass tonight, and then follow the map path.” Hamid said, patted McCain on the shoulder and hugged him. “Be safe John.” McCain smiled, trying to conceal how nervous he was.
“I’ll come back one day,” he said, “and properly thank you.” The two men parted ways and McCain watched as Hamid turned and began the walk back to his home, then he turned and looked at the distant pass. He would make it there today, and once he arrived and camped then he would be past the point of no return, deeply in jihadist country, with Tibet as one of only two outcomes, death being the other.
“We can now confirm that twenty six hours after Senator Humphrey’s request for a recount in New Mexico that the state has once again been called for President Bush by a margin of sixteen hundred votes.” The news reverberated around the country and though Johnson begged for him to continue contesting the results of the election Humphrey conceded on the afternoon of November 8th, ending the 1972 Presidential election and guaranteeing Bush a full term.
_______
Statistics for the 1972 Presidential Election
President George H.W. Bush - 270 EV 35,981,555 PV
Senator Hubert H. Humphrey - 268 EV 35,502,017 PV
_______
“That fucker had to have cheated, there’s no way that the Republicans won after Reagan and goddamned Rhodes. No way at all...” Johnson, in the days after the end of the election, had become a man possessed, pressing his contacts amongst the election officials he knew, searching for discrepancies in voting records in Ohio and New Mexico, and poring through every record that was available to him, looking for evidence of voting fraud and missing ballots, anything that would prove his hunch that the election was false.
“Lyndon...we lost, all we can do now is prepare for the midterms and make sure that we win in ’76.” Inouye had traveled back to Hawaii to resume his senatorial duties but Humphrey had stuck around, worried by Johnson’s intensifying spiral into obsession.
“You’re too indecisive Hubert,” Johnson growled, dropping a file into his wastebasket and beginning to search through another. He was looking through the results from some of the more liberal leaning counties in New Mexico, so far nothing out of the ordinary had surfaced but it had to be there, he knew that much. “You need to stand up to that goddamn Reagan wannabe in the White House and be brave enough to tell him that you know exactly what he did to carry New Mexico.” Humphrey sighed and sat down beside Johnson.
“I’ve conceded Lyndon,” he said gently, “the election is over. I need you not to do anything rash or else you might make the party look bad...we’re in a bad enough spot already.” Johnson didn’t respond immediately, instead he dialed a number.
“Hubert,” he said finally, “nothing you say will stop me from doing this. Now get out of here, I’ll tell you when I find something.” Humphrey left the room, gently closing the door behind him. Johnson was furious, Inouye seemed desperate to forget the election and get back to work and the party as a whole was shellshocked and unsure about the future. Somehow the Republicans had won another election, and nothing seemed certain anymore.
_______
History books would later note that the first presidential action taken after the conclusion of the election was the firing of an orbitally guided projectile into the northern mountains of Iran, devastating a jihadist training camp and collapsing an offensive that was planned to attack Tehran. Iranian Army troops would secure the wreckage hours later but by then the survivors had cleared any surviving equipment from the rubble and had disappeared into the mountains, where many of their bases had been moved following the start of the American orbital support campaign in the country.
Unable to make any large scale moves without attracting the terrible attention of combined American and Iranian airpower, the jihadists in Iran soon adopted tactics similar to the ones being seen in Pakistan, bombings, ambushes and other small scale actions that they hoped would pile up to bleed the Shah’s regime dry.
The rest of the Middle East, and indeed by extension the Muslim world, wasn’t much more peaceful. Syria quickly became a nation divided as Turkish forces finished their intervention and Israeli forces withdrew to a more defensible occupation zone stretching between As Suwayda and the irradiated ruins of Damascus. Southern Lebanon was also quickly invaded, though the purpose was more to form a sort of demilitarized zone than occupy any territory.
The Jordanian occupation was also plagued with violence as the western portion of the country was bombed relentlessly and hundreds of thousands of refugees fled into Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Iraq, though its citizens called for war with Israel, instead found itself battling Kurdish rebels in the northern mountains, using whatever means necessary to drive the Kurds and their sympathizers back. Elsewhere violence was erupting as well, as Kurdish rebels clashed with Turkish military units in Syria and rioted in southern Turkey itself. The Iranian portion of the Kurdish uprising had proceeded smoothly and the Iranian Army, already spread thin in its fight against jihadist forces, had made the hard choice to abandon the Kurdish controlled portions of the nation, though they vowed to retake them once the rest of the country was stabilized.
To the east the Afghan government called for calm and mobilized the army and police forces, ready to declare martial law if jihadist movements cropped up from the growing unrest in the countryside. Central Asia combusted even further as more chemical and biological weapons were used, Uyghurstan fortified its borders from potential invasion from every direction, the ROC massacred jihadist and communist prisoners in a policy of no mercy towards traitors, and Pakistan continued to bleed. As the autumn ended the bloodshed stretched on and on, with no end in sight.
_______
In the month that he had spent in Hamid’s home McCain had become quite proficient at communicating through gestures and a mangled mixture of expressions and the Farsi that Hamid had been teaching him. His pilot beacon had run out of batteries after two weeks and while Hamid had evidently been unsurprised by the reluctance of American forces to rescue one of their own, he had made it clear that if McCain wanted to leave Pakistan alive then he would need to travel north, to the Tibetan border.
Upon asking how far it was Hamid had been unsure, somewhere between a week and ten days, an amount of time that made McCain feel ill to think about. His leg had healed nicely and aside from a little knob of bone that had formed over the site of the break he could walk normally. Hamid had set aside some food and supplies for his journey and McCain had, at his request, put a worn Koran in with his belongings. The jihadists would be less likely to kill him outright if they found a Koran with him, even if he was obviously an American.
“You will go tomorrow. At dawn.” McCain nodded and looked down at the meal that Hamid had prepared, a hearty goat curry so filled with spice that it made his eyes water. They ate slowly and Hamid explained the route to him slowly as the meal proceeded. He had provided McCain with a map and outlined the route, describing landmarks and villages where he could stop without fear of ambush. The villages, McCain noticed, were few and far between, and so Hamid had given him enough food for two weeks, explaining that he could use the gold in his survival pack to buy more supplies if he needed to.
McCain had attempted to give Hamid the gold several times during his stay but each time Hamid had politely declined and pointed at McCain instead, the meaning of the gesture easy to understand, he would need it more than Hamid ever would.
“I want to thank you for all of this,” McCain said slowly, stumbling over the still unfamiliar words, “I would be dead without you.” Hamid didn’t respond for a long time.
“Any good man would have done what I did.” The rest of the meal passed in silence and McCain, though he had expected to have trouble sleeping in light of the momentous trek he was expected to begin in only a few hours, fell deeply asleep almost immediately.
He awoke shortly before dawn, to see Hamid carefully wrapping something up in a bundle of cloth. Getting up he saw that it was a clay vessel, sealed with wax. Seeing him up Hamid handed him the pot.
“Open once you get to Tibet.” He explained and McCain nodded, placing the pot at the bottom of his pack, wondering what it contained as he did so. His pack, when loaded with all of the supplies that he would take, was breathtakingly heavy but he didn’t complain, even as a little throb of dull pain ran down his ill used leg.
“Thank you.” He said, Hamid smiled and handed him the Soviet pistol.
“Good luck.” He said, and together they walked up the path, back towards the mountain where McCain had first landed. As Hamid’s hut faded into the distance behind them McCain wondered how far Hamid would accompany him, it was comforting to have the man with him.
His query was answered a moment later as they crested the top of a hill and looked out across the landscape before them, the path that McCain would follow stretching into a pass a few miles ahead.
“Camp at the pass tonight, and then follow the map path.” Hamid said, patted McCain on the shoulder and hugged him. “Be safe John.” McCain smiled, trying to conceal how nervous he was.
“I’ll come back one day,” he said, “and properly thank you.” The two men parted ways and McCain watched as Hamid turned and began the walk back to his home, then he turned and looked at the distant pass. He would make it there today, and once he arrived and camped then he would be past the point of no return, deeply in jihadist country, with Tibet as one of only two outcomes, death being the other.
Don't start conspiracy theories before the man dies.
Sometime a heart attack is just a heart attack. But, given the behavior of TTL's GHW Bush, we'll never know for sure.That's a very good point.
I'm sure you'll understand why I chuckled about the barrels then (especially because it was also in New Mexico).
I love the more or less gradual corruption of George Bush here... I realized that he started pretty much appalled at the abuses of power Reagan and Rhodes had gone to get things done.... and was dedicated to at least attempting to set things right..
and yet latest development is that the man just ordered ballots to be burned to help ensure he won an election.
the corruption from power was very gradual and you kinda missed it if you weren't paying attention. I thought that was masterfully done Anywhere.
and yet latest development is that the man just ordered ballots to be burned to help ensure he won an election.
the corruption from power was very gradual and you kinda missed it if you weren't paying attention. I thought that was masterfully done Anywhere.
Anywhere,
I am now caught up. A right proper dystopia you've created, little SNAFUs piled on top of one another.
Well done so far.
A minor point of contention: NASCAR was a regional niche sport at this time IOTL. The economy ITTL may have killed it.
The real question is what happens to baseball, the national pastime.
I am now caught up. A right proper dystopia you've created, little SNAFUs piled on top of one another.
Well done so far.
A minor point of contention: NASCAR was a regional niche sport at this time IOTL. The economy ITTL may have killed it.
The real question is what happens to baseball, the national pastime.