alternatehistory.com
Part 49: United States presidential and legislative elections, 2016
By 2016, despite having by all accounts a good presidency and having been mostly exonerated by the Senate/Justice Department investigation, President Riley's poll numbers had suffered irreparably after the lobbyist scandal. While Vice President Castle had never been a serious candidate to run again (turning 77 in 2016), the administration's poor reputation effectively scuttled the presidential ambitions of several potential GOP candidates, including Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, whose close work with the administration to pass several New Covenant bills caused him to be the target of a whisper campaign until he announced he would not run to succeed Riley.
The resulting campaign was, as a result, lacked serious congressional contenders and as a result, the party's nomination fight went down to Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam and former Texas Governor John B. Connally III. Connally was hurt both by his age (he would turn 70 during the general election) and his fumbling of the issue of his post-gubernatorial corporate career and ties with big business. As a result, Haslam won the nomination after the Super Tuesday primaries went for him by a convincing margin. He selected former Minnesota Senator Tim Pawlenty (a former contender who had opted not to run because he had worked closely with the unpopular administration) as his running mate, pledging to "clean up Washington".
The Democratic primaries were packed, with candidates such as Florida Congresswoman Gwen Graham, Kentucky Senator Daniel Mongiardo, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Pennsylvania Senator Joe Sestak and West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin all throwing their hat into the ring.
Graham was the first to withdraw, endorsing Mongiardo after her poor showing in the South Carolina primary. Manchin was the next to find himself out, being viewed as a has-been and with his voters going instead to Sestak and Mongiardo. Despite his own relatively moderate record, Patrick soon emerged as the candidate of the party's center-left and left-wing primary voters and soon was winning primaries as Mongiardo and Sestak split the moderate vote. When Mongiardo got a leg up over Sestak, the Kentucky senator made a serious tactical error and made a series of attempts to show that he was more electable than Patrick, but in ways that many thought played to both fears that Patrick's race would cause him to lose the election and also to white primary voters' racial prejudices. The result was a massive backfire and Patrick was able to appear presidential while Mongiardo's campaign faded quickly. Sestak, rather than fight on in what was most likely to be a futile bid to stop Patrick, agreed to withdraw in exchange for being placed on the ticket, which Patrick agreed to. The Patrick-Sestak ticket would be the first major party ticket headed by an African-American in US history.
Despite Haslam being, by most accounts, a good presidential candidate who united the Republican Party around him, the momentum was always with the Patrick campaign. Patrick was able to energize minority turnout, and Haslam, as a white southerner, was forced to devote large portions of his campaign of keeping the support of his base while distancing himself from racially-charged criticisms of Patrick's tenure in the Huddleston and Gephardt Justice Departments before he was elected governor. Haslam's campaign message of cleaning up Washington also struck many swing voters as a naked attempt to distance himself from Riley despite being in the same party and even increasingly desperate appeals to racial prejudices by conservative activists informally affiliated with the RNC did little to sway such voters to giving their votes to Haslam.
The Democratic ticket won a solid Electoral College victory, making Deval Patrick the 45th President of the United States and the first African-American president in US history. Despite winning the popular vote by over 5 percent, Patrick lost every state in the south except Virginia, and even lost the formerly strong Democratic state of West Virginia in the only state that saw a substantial increase in the Republican vote, which most assigned to racial prejudice overriding economic concerns in the mountainous state.
Congressional races also favored the Democrats, especially with the increased minority turnout brought about by the Patrick campaign's coattails.
In the Senate, the Democrats increased their majority by three, picking up seats in Arkansas, Arizona (defeating former presidential contender John McCain), New Hampshire and Ohio while losing a seat in Colorado following Ben Nighthorse Campbell's retirement.
House Republicans held on desperately as John Kasich angled for a continuation of Republican control over the House. Kasich's speakership, weak out of necessity owing to the Republicans only winning one more seat than the Democrats in 2014, did little to inspire Republican confidence and the election results could have been disastrous for the party had the party not had a solid crop of incumbents and favorable districts in key states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. Despite this, the Democrats made a net gain of 13 seats and the House as Steny Hoyer became the first Democratic speaker in a decade.
As Deval Patrick took the Oath of Office on a chilly January day in 2017, observers of his Inaugural Address noted several clear callbacks to an earlier president, whose commitment to the civil rights Patrick had worked so hard to protect was legendary. Pledging to continue what his predecessors, from Washington to Riley had started, a synthesis of two great presidential spirits came in Patrick's exhortations to "continue building a more perfect Union...by remembering that our government should be judged not by its scope or its size but by how it treats the young, the old, the sick and the disadvantage, and all those who by birth or circumstance have a more treacherous road to true liberty and equality..."
The resulting campaign was, as a result, lacked serious congressional contenders and as a result, the party's nomination fight went down to Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam and former Texas Governor John B. Connally III. Connally was hurt both by his age (he would turn 70 during the general election) and his fumbling of the issue of his post-gubernatorial corporate career and ties with big business. As a result, Haslam won the nomination after the Super Tuesday primaries went for him by a convincing margin. He selected former Minnesota Senator Tim Pawlenty (a former contender who had opted not to run because he had worked closely with the unpopular administration) as his running mate, pledging to "clean up Washington".
The Democratic primaries were packed, with candidates such as Florida Congresswoman Gwen Graham, Kentucky Senator Daniel Mongiardo, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Pennsylvania Senator Joe Sestak and West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin all throwing their hat into the ring.
Graham was the first to withdraw, endorsing Mongiardo after her poor showing in the South Carolina primary. Manchin was the next to find himself out, being viewed as a has-been and with his voters going instead to Sestak and Mongiardo. Despite his own relatively moderate record, Patrick soon emerged as the candidate of the party's center-left and left-wing primary voters and soon was winning primaries as Mongiardo and Sestak split the moderate vote. When Mongiardo got a leg up over Sestak, the Kentucky senator made a serious tactical error and made a series of attempts to show that he was more electable than Patrick, but in ways that many thought played to both fears that Patrick's race would cause him to lose the election and also to white primary voters' racial prejudices. The result was a massive backfire and Patrick was able to appear presidential while Mongiardo's campaign faded quickly. Sestak, rather than fight on in what was most likely to be a futile bid to stop Patrick, agreed to withdraw in exchange for being placed on the ticket, which Patrick agreed to. The Patrick-Sestak ticket would be the first major party ticket headed by an African-American in US history.
Despite Haslam being, by most accounts, a good presidential candidate who united the Republican Party around him, the momentum was always with the Patrick campaign. Patrick was able to energize minority turnout, and Haslam, as a white southerner, was forced to devote large portions of his campaign of keeping the support of his base while distancing himself from racially-charged criticisms of Patrick's tenure in the Huddleston and Gephardt Justice Departments before he was elected governor. Haslam's campaign message of cleaning up Washington also struck many swing voters as a naked attempt to distance himself from Riley despite being in the same party and even increasingly desperate appeals to racial prejudices by conservative activists informally affiliated with the RNC did little to sway such voters to giving their votes to Haslam.
The Democratic ticket won a solid Electoral College victory, making Deval Patrick the 45th President of the United States and the first African-American president in US history. Despite winning the popular vote by over 5 percent, Patrick lost every state in the south except Virginia, and even lost the formerly strong Democratic state of West Virginia in the only state that saw a substantial increase in the Republican vote, which most assigned to racial prejudice overriding economic concerns in the mountainous state.
Congressional races also favored the Democrats, especially with the increased minority turnout brought about by the Patrick campaign's coattails.
In the Senate, the Democrats increased their majority by three, picking up seats in Arkansas, Arizona (defeating former presidential contender John McCain), New Hampshire and Ohio while losing a seat in Colorado following Ben Nighthorse Campbell's retirement.
House Republicans held on desperately as John Kasich angled for a continuation of Republican control over the House. Kasich's speakership, weak out of necessity owing to the Republicans only winning one more seat than the Democrats in 2014, did little to inspire Republican confidence and the election results could have been disastrous for the party had the party not had a solid crop of incumbents and favorable districts in key states like Ohio and Pennsylvania. Despite this, the Democrats made a net gain of 13 seats and the House as Steny Hoyer became the first Democratic speaker in a decade.
As Deval Patrick took the Oath of Office on a chilly January day in 2017, observers of his Inaugural Address noted several clear callbacks to an earlier president, whose commitment to the civil rights Patrick had worked so hard to protect was legendary. Pledging to continue what his predecessors, from Washington to Riley had started, a synthesis of two great presidential spirits came in Patrick's exhortations to "continue building a more perfect Union...by remembering that our government should be judged not by its scope or its size but by how it treats the young, the old, the sick and the disadvantage, and all those who by birth or circumstance have a more treacherous road to true liberty and equality..."
- lord caedus
- Word Count: 950