alternatehistory.com
big-sick - Charles Curtis '33
A few things behind this one: I wanted to experiment with one of the labor party PODs I posted a while back, and to do something different from the right-wing dystopias so common in this thread. Possibly not the most realistic scenario - I'm sure globalization would shake it up a little in later years, although having a strong left labor movement in America would probably lessen its severity compared to OTL. If bits of it seem familiar it's because I posted some boxes from a previous version over in the wikibox thread.
1929-1932: Calvin Coolidge (Republican-MA) / Charles Curtis (Republican-KS)
def. 1928 Al Smith / Joseph T. Robinson (Democratic)
1932-1933: Charles Curtis (Republican-KS) / vacant
1933-1937: Al Smith (Democratic-NY) / Cordell Hull (Democratic-TN)
def. 1932 Charles Curtis / none (Republican)
1937-1945: Herbert Hoover (Republican-CA) / Raymond E. Baldwin (Republican-CT)
def. 1936 Al Smith / Cordell Hull (Democratic), Huey Long / John R. Brinkley (Share Our Wealth), Norman Thomas / George A. Nelson (Socialist)
def. 1940 Paul V. McNutt / William H. Murray (Democratic), Philip La Follette / Victor Reuther (FLP), Walt Disney / Ernest Lundeen (America First)
1945-1951: Thomas A. Dewey (Republican-NY) / John W. Bricker (Republican-OH)
def. 1944 Alben W. Barkley / Scott W. Lucas (Democratic), John D. Dingell / J. Henry Stump (FLP)
def. 1948 Walter Reuther / Lewis B. Schwellenbach (FLP), Prentice Cooper / W. Averell Harriman (Democratic)
1951-1953: John W. Bricker (Republican-OH) / vacant
1953-1961: Paul Douglas (FLP-IL) / George A. Nelson (FLP-WI)
def. 1952 Harold Stassen / William F. Knowland (Republican), Brien McMahon / Richard Russell (Democratic), Eugene Siler / Howard Buffett (Constitution)
def. 1956 Earl Warren / Thurston B. Morton (Republican), Douglas MacArthur / Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. (Democratic)
1961-1965: Philip Willkie (Republican-IN) / George McGovern (Republican-SD)
def. 1960 Claude Pepper / Michael Harrington (FLP), Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. / John C. Stennis (Democratic)
1965-1973: Walter Reuther (FLP-MI) / Virginia Foster Durr (FLP-AL)
def. 1964 George McGovern / Charles A. Halleck (Republican), George Smathers / William O’Dwyer (Democratic)
def. 1968 John A. Volpe / Hubert Humphrey (Republican), Sam Ervin / Sam Yorty (Democratic)
1973-1977: Arnold Miller (FLP-WV) / George W. Crockett, Jr. (FLP-MI)
def. 1972 Hugh Scott / John V. Lindsay (Republican), Strom Thurmond / James Eastland (Democratic)
1977-1983: Tom McCall (Republican-OR) / Lowell P. Weicker, Jr. (Republican-CT)
def. 1976 Arnold Miller / George W. Crockett, Jr. (FLP), Strom Thurmond / various (Democratic)
def. 1980 Michael Harrington / LaDonna Harris (FLP), William Proxmire / William Safire (Conservative Republican)
1983: Lowell P. Weicker, Jr. (Republican-CT) / vacant
1983-1989: Lowell P. Weicker, Jr. (Republican-CT) / James Carter (Republican-GA)
def. 1984 Ron Dellums / John Murtha (FLP)
1989-1997: Barbara Ehrenreich (FLP-MT) / Tony Mazzocchi (FLP-NY)
def. 1988 Lowell P. Weicker, Jr. / James Carter (Republican), Trent Lott / Clarence Thomas (Democratic Conservative)
def. 1992 Bill Blythe / Al Gore (Republican)
1997-2001: Terry Branstad (Republican-IA) / Paul Tsongas (Republican-MA)
def. 1996 John Sweeney / John Conyers (FLP)
2001-2009: Barbara Jordan (FLP-TX) / Rick Nolan (FLP-MN)
def. 2000 Terry Branstad / Paul Tsongas (Republican)
def. 2004 Barack Obama / Ted Olson (Republican)
2013-2017: Terry Branstad (Republican-IA) / Cory Booker (Republican-NJ)
def. 2012 Matt Gonzalez / Bernard Sanders (FLP), Rick Santorum / Paul Broun (Democratic Conservative)
2017-0000: Liz Shuler (FLP-OR) / John Fetterman (FLP-PA)
def. 2017 Richard Hanna / John McCain (Republican), Terry Bolea / Rick Santorum (Democratic Conservative)
Calvin Coolidge, Jr., remains in good health, and his father runs for a second full term in office. His response to the Great Depression is callous and austere. Not even his death several weeks before the election can ameliorate the detached, elitist conservatism with which he imbued the GOP’s image. With unemployment nearing 30%, the Democrats win a historic Congressional landslide, and Al Smith carries all but three states.
In office, he proves to be nowhere near as decisive or radical as he was on the campaign trail. Disdaining the efforts of populists like Huey Long as contrary to Progressive traditions of good government, Smith lends his support to a farm aid bill and some limited public works projects – none of which make much of an impression on the economic situation. In 1936, both Smith and the Republicans are so unpopular that Long runs himself after losing the Democratic nomination, rather than try to split the vote with a dummy candidate. The nascent CIO considers mounting a third-party run but decides against it – they’re fighting jurisdiction battles with the AFL and suppression from state governments across the country, and they’re too busy to waste resources on a quixotic campaign.
Long and Smith predictably split the vote and put Herbert Hoover, the former Commerce Secretary and popular philanthropist, in the Oval Office. (He makes much of the fact that Coolidge famously detested him.) Hoover acts a little bit more decisively than Smith, expanding the public works program and working alongside congressional Democrats to create a national old-age pension scheme. The economic recovery is real – but very sluggish. Hoover’s protectionism doesn’t help. He remains unpopular with labor by helping block a bill to establish collective bargaining rights, and begins to alienate isolationist conservatives by making noise about military aid to Great Britain.
After Huey Long’s assassination, his party begins to drift to the far right. Philip La Follette, who has been considering bringing his Progressive Party national to fill the yawning gap on the political left, approaches the CIO with an offer to unite the third parties of the upper Midwest with the power of industrial unionism. Disgusted by the Democrats’ choice of the anti-labor thug Paul McNutt for the Presidency, John L. Lewis and the rest of the CIO agree. Daniel Hoan, the Milwaukee “sewer socialist” chairing the declining SPA, voices his support for the ticket, and the Socialists and Farmer-Laborites run joint candidates in 1940. The parties will soon merge (apart from a minority of Trotskyites, who do what they do best and split). The new party wins control of Minnesota and Wisconsin, elects a respectable number of Congressional candidates and outpolls the increasingly fascistic Long outfit in the Presidential election. After war breaks out, the strength of the CIO and the Farmer-Labor Party forces President Hoover to create a National Labor Relations Board in return for a no-strike pact in war industries.
The Flanders Hall Affair – the discovery that leading isolationists, especially vice-presidential candidate Ernest Lundeen, were being funded and manipulated by Nazi agents – shakes America’s political landscape in the waning days of the war. The “brown scare” of the postwar years leads to the destruction of many a career, including those of Walt Disney and ex-president Smith. It also sinks the presidential tickets of W. Averell Harriman and Joe Kennedy - the former for his business ties to Nazi Germany, the latter for his father's role in the isolationist movement.
Beloved war leader Hoover hands the Presidency off to his anointed successor, the young Tom Dewey, who easily dispatches challenges from the declining Democratic Party and the rising Farmer-Laborites. The surrender of Japan several months into the invasion of the Home Islands, and the test of the first atomic bomb in Nevada the next year, leave America as the unquestioned world power. However, demobilization, reconversion, fears of a double-dip depression and the disastrous leadership of John Bricker – who ascended to the Presidency after Dewey’s untimely death in an airplane crash – mean that the Republicans’ reign is soon cut short. It is Paul Douglas, left-liberal economist and war hero, and his socialist dairy farmer running mate, who will win the peace.
From there, most of this should speak for itself. Douglas brings social democracy to America, gets to work on civil rights, and puts the atomic bomb under UN control. Willkie moves the Republicans left but then is brought low by corruption scandals. Reuther entrenches the CIO as a cornerstone of American life, presides over a social market and the desegregation of Northern neighborhoods, and squabbles with the Soviet Union. Miller is caught off guard by Tom McCall, who establishes the Republicans as the liberal party of a clean government and a clean environment. He dies in office and is succeeded by Weicker, who carries on that mantle. Farmer-Labor, by now more heavily Labor than Farmer, also adjusts itself towards greater social liberalism and environmentalism under Ehrenreich and Jordan as the CIO now fully represents America’s diverse and integrated workforce. Terry Branstad serves non-consecutive terms.
The Democrats, withered to a Southern core since the 50s, merge with disaffected right-wing Republicans and are eventually revived as a Christian conservative party. The Democratic Conservatives are a suburban, petit-bourgeois force, a threat to the Republicans more than Farmer-Labor – but even led by the charismatic Rev. Bollea, they’re not much more than a spoiler. After all, there hasn’t been a conservative in the White House since 1953.
1929-1932: Calvin Coolidge (Republican-MA) / Charles Curtis (Republican-KS)
def. 1928 Al Smith / Joseph T. Robinson (Democratic)
1932-1933: Charles Curtis (Republican-KS) / vacant
1933-1937: Al Smith (Democratic-NY) / Cordell Hull (Democratic-TN)
def. 1932 Charles Curtis / none (Republican)
1937-1945: Herbert Hoover (Republican-CA) / Raymond E. Baldwin (Republican-CT)
def. 1936 Al Smith / Cordell Hull (Democratic), Huey Long / John R. Brinkley (Share Our Wealth), Norman Thomas / George A. Nelson (Socialist)
def. 1940 Paul V. McNutt / William H. Murray (Democratic), Philip La Follette / Victor Reuther (FLP), Walt Disney / Ernest Lundeen (America First)
1945-1951: Thomas A. Dewey (Republican-NY) / John W. Bricker (Republican-OH)
def. 1944 Alben W. Barkley / Scott W. Lucas (Democratic), John D. Dingell / J. Henry Stump (FLP)
def. 1948 Walter Reuther / Lewis B. Schwellenbach (FLP), Prentice Cooper / W. Averell Harriman (Democratic)
1951-1953: John W. Bricker (Republican-OH) / vacant
1953-1961: Paul Douglas (FLP-IL) / George A. Nelson (FLP-WI)
def. 1952 Harold Stassen / William F. Knowland (Republican), Brien McMahon / Richard Russell (Democratic), Eugene Siler / Howard Buffett (Constitution)
def. 1956 Earl Warren / Thurston B. Morton (Republican), Douglas MacArthur / Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. (Democratic)
1961-1965: Philip Willkie (Republican-IN) / George McGovern (Republican-SD)
def. 1960 Claude Pepper / Michael Harrington (FLP), Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. / John C. Stennis (Democratic)
1965-1973: Walter Reuther (FLP-MI) / Virginia Foster Durr (FLP-AL)
def. 1964 George McGovern / Charles A. Halleck (Republican), George Smathers / William O’Dwyer (Democratic)
def. 1968 John A. Volpe / Hubert Humphrey (Republican), Sam Ervin / Sam Yorty (Democratic)
1973-1977: Arnold Miller (FLP-WV) / George W. Crockett, Jr. (FLP-MI)
def. 1972 Hugh Scott / John V. Lindsay (Republican), Strom Thurmond / James Eastland (Democratic)
1977-1983: Tom McCall (Republican-OR) / Lowell P. Weicker, Jr. (Republican-CT)
def. 1976 Arnold Miller / George W. Crockett, Jr. (FLP), Strom Thurmond / various (Democratic)
def. 1980 Michael Harrington / LaDonna Harris (FLP), William Proxmire / William Safire (Conservative Republican)
1983: Lowell P. Weicker, Jr. (Republican-CT) / vacant
1983-1989: Lowell P. Weicker, Jr. (Republican-CT) / James Carter (Republican-GA)
def. 1984 Ron Dellums / John Murtha (FLP)
1989-1997: Barbara Ehrenreich (FLP-MT) / Tony Mazzocchi (FLP-NY)
def. 1988 Lowell P. Weicker, Jr. / James Carter (Republican), Trent Lott / Clarence Thomas (Democratic Conservative)
def. 1992 Bill Blythe / Al Gore (Republican)
1997-2001: Terry Branstad (Republican-IA) / Paul Tsongas (Republican-MA)
def. 1996 John Sweeney / John Conyers (FLP)
2001-2009: Barbara Jordan (FLP-TX) / Rick Nolan (FLP-MN)
def. 2000 Terry Branstad / Paul Tsongas (Republican)
def. 2004 Barack Obama / Ted Olson (Republican)
2013-2017: Terry Branstad (Republican-IA) / Cory Booker (Republican-NJ)
def. 2012 Matt Gonzalez / Bernard Sanders (FLP), Rick Santorum / Paul Broun (Democratic Conservative)
2017-0000: Liz Shuler (FLP-OR) / John Fetterman (FLP-PA)
def. 2017 Richard Hanna / John McCain (Republican), Terry Bolea / Rick Santorum (Democratic Conservative)
Calvin Coolidge, Jr., remains in good health, and his father runs for a second full term in office. His response to the Great Depression is callous and austere. Not even his death several weeks before the election can ameliorate the detached, elitist conservatism with which he imbued the GOP’s image. With unemployment nearing 30%, the Democrats win a historic Congressional landslide, and Al Smith carries all but three states.
In office, he proves to be nowhere near as decisive or radical as he was on the campaign trail. Disdaining the efforts of populists like Huey Long as contrary to Progressive traditions of good government, Smith lends his support to a farm aid bill and some limited public works projects – none of which make much of an impression on the economic situation. In 1936, both Smith and the Republicans are so unpopular that Long runs himself after losing the Democratic nomination, rather than try to split the vote with a dummy candidate. The nascent CIO considers mounting a third-party run but decides against it – they’re fighting jurisdiction battles with the AFL and suppression from state governments across the country, and they’re too busy to waste resources on a quixotic campaign.
Long and Smith predictably split the vote and put Herbert Hoover, the former Commerce Secretary and popular philanthropist, in the Oval Office. (He makes much of the fact that Coolidge famously detested him.) Hoover acts a little bit more decisively than Smith, expanding the public works program and working alongside congressional Democrats to create a national old-age pension scheme. The economic recovery is real – but very sluggish. Hoover’s protectionism doesn’t help. He remains unpopular with labor by helping block a bill to establish collective bargaining rights, and begins to alienate isolationist conservatives by making noise about military aid to Great Britain.
After Huey Long’s assassination, his party begins to drift to the far right. Philip La Follette, who has been considering bringing his Progressive Party national to fill the yawning gap on the political left, approaches the CIO with an offer to unite the third parties of the upper Midwest with the power of industrial unionism. Disgusted by the Democrats’ choice of the anti-labor thug Paul McNutt for the Presidency, John L. Lewis and the rest of the CIO agree. Daniel Hoan, the Milwaukee “sewer socialist” chairing the declining SPA, voices his support for the ticket, and the Socialists and Farmer-Laborites run joint candidates in 1940. The parties will soon merge (apart from a minority of Trotskyites, who do what they do best and split). The new party wins control of Minnesota and Wisconsin, elects a respectable number of Congressional candidates and outpolls the increasingly fascistic Long outfit in the Presidential election. After war breaks out, the strength of the CIO and the Farmer-Labor Party forces President Hoover to create a National Labor Relations Board in return for a no-strike pact in war industries.
The Flanders Hall Affair – the discovery that leading isolationists, especially vice-presidential candidate Ernest Lundeen, were being funded and manipulated by Nazi agents – shakes America’s political landscape in the waning days of the war. The “brown scare” of the postwar years leads to the destruction of many a career, including those of Walt Disney and ex-president Smith. It also sinks the presidential tickets of W. Averell Harriman and Joe Kennedy - the former for his business ties to Nazi Germany, the latter for his father's role in the isolationist movement.
Beloved war leader Hoover hands the Presidency off to his anointed successor, the young Tom Dewey, who easily dispatches challenges from the declining Democratic Party and the rising Farmer-Laborites. The surrender of Japan several months into the invasion of the Home Islands, and the test of the first atomic bomb in Nevada the next year, leave America as the unquestioned world power. However, demobilization, reconversion, fears of a double-dip depression and the disastrous leadership of John Bricker – who ascended to the Presidency after Dewey’s untimely death in an airplane crash – mean that the Republicans’ reign is soon cut short. It is Paul Douglas, left-liberal economist and war hero, and his socialist dairy farmer running mate, who will win the peace.
From there, most of this should speak for itself. Douglas brings social democracy to America, gets to work on civil rights, and puts the atomic bomb under UN control. Willkie moves the Republicans left but then is brought low by corruption scandals. Reuther entrenches the CIO as a cornerstone of American life, presides over a social market and the desegregation of Northern neighborhoods, and squabbles with the Soviet Union. Miller is caught off guard by Tom McCall, who establishes the Republicans as the liberal party of a clean government and a clean environment. He dies in office and is succeeded by Weicker, who carries on that mantle. Farmer-Labor, by now more heavily Labor than Farmer, also adjusts itself towards greater social liberalism and environmentalism under Ehrenreich and Jordan as the CIO now fully represents America’s diverse and integrated workforce. Terry Branstad serves non-consecutive terms.
The Democrats, withered to a Southern core since the 50s, merge with disaffected right-wing Republicans and are eventually revived as a Christian conservative party. The Democratic Conservatives are a suburban, petit-bourgeois force, a threat to the Republicans more than Farmer-Labor – but even led by the charismatic Rev. Bollea, they’re not much more than a spoiler. After all, there hasn’t been a conservative in the White House since 1953.
- big-click
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