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The major issues with Freidman are that he puts his thumb on the scales when it comes to RFK winning, and his hatred of hippies/counter-culture/rock music.

You make some good points, however, I would argue that anti-leftism was a big part of New Democrats' thinking in the 80's when Jesse Jackson's Rainbow Coalition was the major opponent within the party - hence the Sister Soljah moment.

I would classify Jimmy Carter as a transitional figure between an old-school Democrat (albeit a highly technocratic one), given his interest in universal health care and other traditional priorities and the New Democrats (given his prioritization of inflation over unemployment, his embrace of...

If I recall correctly, didn't the French navy's officer corps suffer huge turnover due to the high proportion of nobility who left/were turfed out during the Revolution? You had Saint-André fighting in the Glorious First of June, etc.

I think that's a bit harsh, especially given that the Labor movement kept growing throughout the 1950s, and was incredibly politically powerful in the 1960s. I do agree it limited it, but I think the Cold War made that inevitable. Lots of questions here which require answers: Lewis left the...

This is the million dollar question. In OTL, the Populists wracked up a lot of victories despite having to deal with the Democratic Party competing with them. They might have done better without the competition. Likewise, the resilience of the Democratic Party among the Northern working class...

I disagree. I think Roosevelt saw spheres of influence as different from imperial control; certainly his posture towards Stalin vis-a-vis Poland and East Germany would suggest he understood the practical necessity of a Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. Instead, Roosevelt saw...

Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin were already working out spheres of influence during the war. And in Roosevelt's mind especially, these weren't traditional empires, but rather also included the idea of areas of mixed influence, and "open cities" where different nations would come together to...

One pretty simple change can greatly empower the UN: Instead of a universal veto, permanent members of the Security Council get a veto strictly involving their sphere of influence (FDR's original intent, btw). In OTL, a full half of the vetoes ever used in the Security Council came from the...

I think this is a bit of an exaggeration. To begin with, plans for some kind of income guarantee had been developing since the War on Poverty had begun. Nixon's FAP was a limited program: it applied to families with children only, it established a rather low minimum income of $1,600 (below the...

Would WWI even happen? I don't see the French being stupid enough to try to fight Germany when Britain can invade and blockade them at will.

And that's kind of my point - it all depends on what you consider racial equality. If there is formal legal equality, distribution of land, and political power established by the 1870s, I think your Wendell Phillipses and Frederick Douglasses would call that as good as it gets, and pass on the...

This. Depending on one's definition of racial equality in 1900. I don't see popular racial attitudes shifting to the extent that they had by the 1960s or the present day, but I could see formal legal equality and a rough economic equality potentially becoming the norm if Reconstruction was a...

Electoral College isn't the issue. The problem is the effects of FPTP in Congress and the rise of the presidency as an institution of power. If you get proportional voting, or any kind of multiple-member districts, then multiple parties have room to flourish. Probably the smallest PoD to...

The key thing is the clearing union. Balanced trade, although perhaps with a grace period for European recovery, would dramatically reshape the history of pretty much every country in the union. Countries that became persistent trade debtors, like the U.S (although a lot of that was...

I'm not even going to go in to the rest of it because I don't want to start a flamewar, but you have to realize that historically speaking, these are incompatible and mutually contradictory positions in 19th century politics. Pro-gold meant an adherence to deflation and a fear of inflation...

Tariffs would be the starting point; there's a huge amount of trade/industrial policy that the rest of the world does that we've never done (domestic content requirements, procurement, etc.). But even more so, fixing U.S monetary policy at the right time was crucial. U.S industry was still...

I'd love to see this continue, if only to combat the reductive belief people have that Al Smith was a conservative Democrat full-stop. Al Smith became a conservative after 1928, probably as a reaction to getting curb-stomped in '28 and his vendetta with FDR and making a lot of Wall Street...

Simply spread the levels of loyalist organization and inter-American bushwhacking that occurred in the South in OTL to the rest of the 13 colonies.

When it comes to political grudges, I tend more towards the Thaddeus Stevens than the Lincoln approach. I'm not particularly surprised that Goldwater became pro-choice and pro-ERA, but that was never the problem with him. I don't think it could. I think moderation convinced a lot of...