I wonder if the South Africa will turns towards the Soviet Union for support now. That’s one of the things I keep seeing in why we had to support them and their apartheid system.
Bicentennial Man: Ford '76 and Beyond
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That would never happen. The South African government was fiercely anti-communist and the Soviet Union would never side with a regime that practiced open racial discrimination.
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How is Rhodesia faring under the Bishop and Nkomo? I wonder how Nkomo would handle affairs verses Mugabe.
There’s basically no way to get a Democratic President (at least one who wants to get re-elected) to be willing to give Pretoria a pass by the early 80s considering how much South Africa was despised by the global community. Even Reagan had to couch his opposition to sanctions behind very carefully-worded reasoning and that wound up blowing up in race anyways. The pressure campaign would start much earlier.
@Arthur Marston has it right. The only reason SA got a pass to begin with was they were seen as the most reliable opponent of communism in Africa, particularly with all the Soviet-backed civil wars in the 1970s (plus the ANC was for a long time explicitly and enthusiastically Marxist). Those haven’t gone away TTL sans Rhodesia (if anything, the collapse of Ethiopia into civil war has made it worse), but the West isn’t really willing to kneecap their credibility all over Africa anymore just to indulge the Afrikaner chauvinists
Mugabe’s still out there so the Bush War hasn’t totally ended, but I’d say Rhodesia is somewhere a notch above Tanzania/Kenya and maybe a few notches below Mandela-era South Africa. So better off than Mugabe’s kleptocratic regime, that’s for sure. Nkomo was always the more practical of the two
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I have a question: who’s in charge of Cleveland at this point? Since TTL has the mafia plot to kill Dennis Kucinich succeeding before the recall began, will it be George Voinovich or someone else? And on a related note, does that mean Muny Light is still publicly owned?
I was wondering the same thing? It could be Voinovich. But I could easily see Anthony Celebreezze Jr. or his brother Gary Kucinich. I like the idea of Congresswomen Mary Rose Oakar becoming mayor.
That’s a great question! I never really thought out Kucinich getting literally whacked by the mob Beyond “holy shit this almost happened?!”
My best guess is Voinovich as the fresh reformist outsider thought somebody like Oakar would be an interesting choice. I can’t say I know enough about Cleveland politics to really comment
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Voinovich winning in 1979 is a bit harder to pull off with a unpopular GOP incumbent President, especially if Kucinich is killed by the mob. I could see Oaker running and winning in 1979 in these circumstances.
Absolutely, which is why gun to head Id probably go with Oakar and then maybe Voinovich has a good enough performance that he sets himself up for another go in 1983. Municipal elections are so much their own beast of course that Id but V winning in 1979 anyways, though the sympathy factor for a whacked mayor would probably be high
No Voinovich in 79 actually has pretty big butterflies both for the urban reform style of mayoralty as well as for the Ohio GOP considering how much he did to build it up in the 1980s
He also lost the 1978 Ohio gubernatorial election as the GOP’s Lieutenant Governor nominee. So right now he’s just a lowly county executive. I imagine it’ll either be Gary Kucinich or Mary Rose. But the possibilities are just about endless. I’m loving the idea of Mario Cuomo in NYC. Instantly iconic, I can see him making it into the mid 1990’s before leaving office. He would make a great mayor. I’m viewing Mary Rose as a more left-wing Diane Feinstein.
Also, what’s the plan with the House? I know Tip O’Neil is gonna stay leader but maybe we see someone like Phil Burton take the reins instead of a Jim Wright? Just something to consider. This concept is so well done. I enjoy how grounded it is. I feel like people always go too big with their concepts but this is very realistic in how it views the timeline.
What about Rep. William H. Gray III of Pennsylvania?
Yeah, Cuomo could be a Koch-length mayor, though idk if I’ll keep him around quite that long; I have some ideas for mid-80s NYC and NYS that I’m not sure exactly how he fits into.
Thank you! That’s one reason I punter Foley upstairs, incidentally. Brademas might still be a midterm casualty here, so Wright’s ascendancy still seems likely to me, but who comes after him is wide open. Brock Adams didn’t get picked as a Cabinet Secretary ITTL and he was widely viewed as a future Speaker (sort of like Chris Van Hollen or Xavier Becerra OTL before they got tired of waiting for Nancy to retire, or to use a more recent example Hakeem Jeffries), which considering his, uhhh, “extracurriculars” could get interesting/awkward if he’s the Dem house leader or even Speaker.
Long term though the plan is for a Speaker Ferraro.
Could get high up in the pecking order in time, he definitely seemed on pace for it. But didn’t he (like many Philly pols) have a hard time keeping his fingers out of the pie? Or am I mixing him up with somebody else from around that time?
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William Gray III was actually who I had in mind when you referenced a first black President. It'll be cool to see who you have in mind, but I'm more than content to wait because that would be a yuge spoiler.
Ah, really? Interesting. After that previous comment I did hit him up on Wikipedia and he was sort who I remembered (who I was really remembering was Bill Jefferson from Louisiana, who was cartoonishly corrupt). Gray running for Senate/Gov would def set him up for bigger things but no, he’s not who I have lined up as the first Black President ITTL
I wonder how Al Gore will fit ITTL’s Democratic Party, IRL the shift of America to conservatism made Al Gore a mainstream democrat but here he’d just be another southern conservative democrat. Although with Tennessee likely having double digit unemployment at the height of the late 70s crisis Gore will probably be more populist with rhetoric
Always sad to see Trudeau bow out early - very specific love for the single most quirked-up and mercurial western-bloc leader. His 80s prospects also quickly get weird - this is the point when he suddenly gets religion on nuclear disarmament and international development, plus there's the whole NEP debacle and broader Canadian economic nationalism that seems so central to 80s resource issues which I've never seen waded into.
What can I say? Favorite PM.
What can I say? Favorite PM.
Not a bad guess! If nothing else certainly an underused person in alt-hists
Yeah, definitely more populist. Since 84 promises to be a better Dem year than IOTL (where Gore still won, so) he’d still be in the Senate but whether he can survive a much tougher ten year itch midterm in 1990 is an open question. In other words, not entirely sure what to do with him yet
Yeah I have a soft spot for PET since as you say he was such a bizarre, strange, fascinating figure (mercurial is a good term!) though the sense I got is that his 1980-84 term probably did some lasting damage to his legacy, even if his “walk in the snow” was as close to leaving in your own terms as a man like that can have.
Would be curious what your take on “successful Joe Clark” is as this TL develops since suffice to say some of the Canadian users in here I asked expressed some serious doubts about the plausibility 😂
