It's actually the same number of states on the border, just in a different configuration. Montana is smaller, but there's only one Dakota.
Until Liberty Enlightens The World: An Alternate America and an Alternate Cold War
- Thread starter Jamee999
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Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. is an American politician who is the senior United States Senator from
Biden was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and was raised there and in Delaware. After studying at the University of Delaware, and Syracuse University's law school, Biden worked as a lawyer, before being elected as the Republican Mayor of Wilmington in 1976. He was an extremely popular mayor, and served for twelve years, often running without opposition in elections. In 1985, frustrated at the rightward direction of the national Republican Party during the Roberts administration, he switched to be an independent, and then after winning re-election in 1986, switched to the Progressive Party. He was elected to the U.S. Senate as a Progressive in 1988, and quickly emerged as an important figure in the party's moderate faction.
Biden has served three non-consecutive stints as Chair of the Senate Transportation Committee, and is currently its Chair once again. He has been a passionate advocate for expanding and improving the nation's public transportation infrastructure, notably commuting from Wilmington to the Capitol by train every day. He is known to have been offered the role of Secretary of Transportation three times, but rejected each time in order to remain in the Senate. Biden has also served as the Progressive ranking member in the Foreign Relations and Judiciary committees, and was notable as a Progressive supporter of intervention in Haiti and sub-Saharan Africa. His role as a founding member of the Cross-Party Foreign Policy Caucus led to criticism from many on the left of the party.
After a brief, unsuccessful, campaign for the presidency in 1992, he ran a much more serious and successful one in 2000, rallying the center of the Progressive Party, and attracting some moderates from other parties to cross over and vote for him in the primaries. However, he was narrowly defeated by Mario Cuomo, and is widely understood to have turned down an offer from Cuomo to be his Vice Presidential running mate. Following the 2004 elections, when the Progressives held the White House and a plurality in both houses of Congress, Biden became a leading figure in the Senate, and worked prominently with the administration to help shepherd legislation through Congress.
However, following the election of Mitch Daniels in 2008, Biden became increasingly frustrated with the leftward movement of the Progressive Party, and, following Daniels' landslide victory in 2012, along with Biden's fifth election to the Senate, he officially switched parties in October 2013, re-joining the Republican Party which he had left nearly thirty years previously, and regaining the Chair of the Transportation Committee in the process. He won a sixth term in 2018, his first Senate election as a Republican, and has indicated that he will likely retire from the Senate in 2024, although he has not yet made an official announcement to that effect.
Woah, Democrat Mitch McConnell? How did that happen? I’m assuming that the Democrats are far more rightward than they are IOTL, and the Republicans are more moderate ITTL?
The tl;dr is basically that the Democrats are still the party of the South (mainly the white south) - both on the right and the (center-)left. It's a somewhat unwieldy big-tent party. McConnell is the Senate leader more because of seniority and influence and his ability to maneuver, rather than because he's really representative of the party as a whole, and there are definitely Senators who would like to replace him with someone more moderate.
There are 54 states. The "extra ones" are Baja California, Newfoundland, Puerto Rico (including the USVI), and Sequoyah. Plus, as discussed, some of the western states that were admitted after the POD are in a different configuration (OTL, the Dakotas were admitted as two states because it was supposed to give an advantage to the Republicans. TTL, a Democrat is President at that time, so there's only one Dakota)
Ah i see well that leave guam,northern mariana island and america samoa as the territories i wonder does the us keep okinawa? Are there other us territory ittl?
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Fueled by economic turbulence in Argentina, South Africa, and the Antipodes, there was a run on gold in the US treasury in early 1893, and that led to a run on many banks in the summer, causing a credit crunch that sent waves throughout American life. Tens of thousands of businesses went broke, stock prices crashed, railroads failed, and unemployment was higher than one-in-three in many states. The Treasury's gold reserves ran perilously low, and the federal government was forced to borrow tens of millions of dollars worth of gold from private suppliers.
Congress and the McKinley administration had raised tariffs almost immediately upon taking office, and, after a ham-fisted federal intervention during a railroad strike, McKinley's popularity plummeted, as many Americans blamed the severity of the crisis on his policies. The Populist movement, which had first emerged in the late 1880s, as a backlash against banks, big business, and east coast elites, exploded in popularity during the economic downturn, and dozens of House seats turned from the Republicans to the Populists in the 1894 midterm election, as did several gubernatorial elections. Meanwhile, the Democrats were able to find success on the east coast by campaigning for lower tariffs and sound money, two policies that had been staples of the Bourbon Democratic faction led by former President Grover Cleveland, and that Democrats felt had been forsaken by McKinley, leading to economic ruin.
Author's Note: Much of the economics of the TTL Panic of 1893 is as OTL. However, because TTL McKinley is the President, rather than Cleveland, he is left "holding the ball" when the recession hits, and McKinley and the Republicans are blamed for much of the economic damage that was blamed on Cleveland OTL.
