Next update will be either a US political update, an Af-Pak update, or a North African update. If you could please post which one you want first, that would be great!
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Orange Tempest
- Thread starter Alternate History Geek
- Start date
Constantinople
Banned
Was there ever an actual update showing the results of the 2012 election?
I'd love to see more Obama administration and US government updates.
I'd love to see more Obama administration and US government updates.
For anyone who's confused as to what Unknown is talking about, here's my reply to his PM:
Alternate History Geek said:
Constantinople
Banned
Bump. Which'll it be, folks?
2012 would be a nice election to see, if only just to see how much they whomped them in Congress....
A bit of a domestic/not terrorism update for the USA might be nice. The progress of healthcare reform, environmental laws, how the conservatives are doing under the Democratic Dictatorship.
2012 would be a nice election to see, if only just to see how much they whomped them in Congress....
A bit of a domestic/not terrorism update for the USA might be nice. The progress of healthcare reform, environmental laws, how the conservatives are doing under the Democratic Dictatorship.
2012 elections it is, then!
Am now writing update...
Constantinople
Banned
2012 elections it is, then!
Am now writing update...
Nice. When do you think you'll have it posted?!
...and there you go!
From False Hope: The Comprehensive Story of the 2012 Presidential Election, by Roy Jenkins:
…Obama started the campaign season with a considerable advantage. As a popular incumbent president running for reelection, he could expect to face no serious opposition from his own party; the only incumbent U.S. president ever to seek renomination but be denied it was Franklin Pierce in 1856 (widely hated by the end of his term, universally regarded as one of the worst, if not the worst president in U.S. history, and considered by many to have been the one who made the Civil War inevitable), and that in any case was long before the advent of primary election. One other incumbent president, Harry Truman in 1952 (also extremely unpopular at the time), ran for reelection but dropped out very early in the race, long before any but a very few delegates had been committed. Of the nine incumbent presidents who had run for reelection since Truman, four (Dwight Eisenhower in 1956, Ronald Reagan in 1984, Bill Clinton in 1996, and George W. Bush in 2004) faced only token opposition from their own party, and three of the remaining five (Lyndon Johnson in 1964, Richard Nixon in 1972, and George H. W. Bush in 1992) had faced significant intra-party opposition but easily defeated it); only two, Gerald Ford in 1976 and Jimmy Carter in 1980, ever had a significant chance of losing their party’s nomination…
…As the first primaries and caucuses, the 26 December 2011 New Hampshire primary (the first U.S. presidential primary election to ever be held in the year preceding the election year, rather than the election year itself) and the 3 January 2012 Iowa caucus, approached, the Democrats’ expectations were borne out. Only one challenger, perennial candidate and Tennessee attorney John Wolfe Jr., even qualified for any primaries other than the extremely easy-to-qualify-for New Hampshire primary (where one need only pay $1,000 to appear on the primary ballot), appearing on the ballots in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas as well as New Hampshire, and his best showing, in Arkansas, gave him only 20.2% of the votes cast in the state; he won only 5.8% of the Louisiana vote and less than 0.1% in Texas. Thus, to no-one’s surprise, when the 2012 Democratic National Convention convened on 5 September in Charlotte, the 5,580 delegates present voted unanimously for Obama (Wolfe had earned ten delegates, nine from Arkansas and one from Louisiana, but as he did not present a delegate slate, he was stripped of all ten), who had already started campaigning for the general election and had just recovered from the concussion he had incurred in Adam Lanza’s 25 August assassination attempt…
…In sharp contrast to the uneventful Democratic primary season was the extremely hard-fought race for the Republican nomination. Four major and several minor candidates vied for the bitterly-contested prize, a contest which made history as the first major party contest since 1976 to remain undecided all the way to the national convention and is generally seen as one of the several major factors behind the crushing Republican defeat in the November general election…
…Going into the primary season, the presumptive frontrunner was seen as former Massachusetts governor and Mormon ex-missionary Mitt Romney. An unsuccessful candidate for the 2008 nomination and far and away the best-known of the Republican candidates, Romney had been preparing for the 2012 election from the moment he dropped out of the 2008 race. However, several other prominent Republicans also threw their hats into the ring. One of them was former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich, who had represented Georgia’s 6th district in the House from 1979 until 1999, and had begun preparing for a presidential run after seeing the crushing Republican loss in the 2010 midterm elections, believing the party to be in dire need of new leadership and considering himself an exemplary candidate for that role, given his long Congressional record…
…Another candidate with their eyes on the presidency was Representative Ron Paul from Texas’ 14th district. Widely seen as standard-bearer for the libertarian wing of the Republicans (and having briefly flirted with the Libertarian Party itself, being its presidential nominee in 1988), Paul had previously sought the Republican nomination in 2008, but received only a tiny fraction of the vote and little to no attention in the national press. This time, however, he was determined to make a much deeper impression…
…The last of the four major candidates was attorney and ex-Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. A devout Catholic and staunch social conservative, Santorum had, during his two terms in the Senate, attempted to push through legislation promoting the teaching of intelligent design in schools. He was also the youngest of the four major candidates and hoped to reinvigorate the Christian religious branch of the party and use it to propel him to victory…
…Several more minor candidates rounded out the field. The most prominent of these were former Utah governor and then ambassador to China Jon Huntsman Jr., Representative Michele Bachmann from Minnesota’s 6th district, and former Texas governor Rick Perry, but a whole host of small-profile or fringe candidates also jockeyed for a place in the limelight, ranging from Georgia businessman Herman Cain to Pennsylvania State Senator Stewart Greenleaf…
…Although the primaries and caucuses themselves did not start until late December 2011, most of the candidates had already kicked their campaigns into high gear long before then, in preparation for the 13 August straw poll in Ames, Iowa. Although it has no official bearing on the outcome of the race and major candidates often decline to participate, the straw poll often serves as a useful barometer to gauge public support or lack thereof for presidential hopefuls, and candidates who invest themselves heavily in the straw poll yet garner lackluster results often see fit to drop out of the race then and there. Of the major candidates for 2012, Romney declined to participate in the straw poll, and this split public opinion regarding it; among those still seeing him as the indisputable frontrunner, interest in the straw poll dropped sharply, while others saw his lead eroding as he handed the other candidates a chance to shine without him in the room…
…Going into the summer, Santorum had been seen as the favorite out of the candidates participating in the poll, yet when the results came in, they were a shock: Paul had won, followed by Gingrich and only then Santorum. Bachmann, Cain, and Huntsman came in fourth, fifth, and sixth, respectively, and Perry finished dead last, leading him to terminate his campaign that night…
…With the field thus narrowed, the candidates prepared for the first real battle, the New Hampshire primary on 26 December (the same date as the Democratic primary, but covered far more by the media than the latter, for obvious reasons). While originally scheduled for early March, as had long since been the norm it was repeatedly pushed back all the way to 26 December 2011, with state law mandating that the New Hampshire primary be held on a Tuesday at least a week before any other state held its primary. This was the first-ever time that a U.S. presidential primary election would be held before New Year’s Day, and the candidates spent lavishly on campaigning in the Granite State…
…Although the other candidates had caught up significantly by then, Romney was still seen by most as the frontrunner, and thus it came as a massive shock when the results came in:
PAUL: 79,371
GINGRICH: 61,280
ROMNEY: 55,357
SANTORUM: 26,896
BACHMANN: 8,679
HUNTSMAN: 5,463
It would be a very interesting primary season indeed…
From False Hope: The Comprehensive Story of the 2012 Presidential Election, by Roy Jenkins:
…Obama started the campaign season with a considerable advantage. As a popular incumbent president running for reelection, he could expect to face no serious opposition from his own party; the only incumbent U.S. president ever to seek renomination but be denied it was Franklin Pierce in 1856 (widely hated by the end of his term, universally regarded as one of the worst, if not the worst president in U.S. history, and considered by many to have been the one who made the Civil War inevitable), and that in any case was long before the advent of primary election. One other incumbent president, Harry Truman in 1952 (also extremely unpopular at the time), ran for reelection but dropped out very early in the race, long before any but a very few delegates had been committed. Of the nine incumbent presidents who had run for reelection since Truman, four (Dwight Eisenhower in 1956, Ronald Reagan in 1984, Bill Clinton in 1996, and George W. Bush in 2004) faced only token opposition from their own party, and three of the remaining five (Lyndon Johnson in 1964, Richard Nixon in 1972, and George H. W. Bush in 1992) had faced significant intra-party opposition but easily defeated it); only two, Gerald Ford in 1976 and Jimmy Carter in 1980, ever had a significant chance of losing their party’s nomination…
…As the first primaries and caucuses, the 26 December 2011 New Hampshire primary (the first U.S. presidential primary election to ever be held in the year preceding the election year, rather than the election year itself) and the 3 January 2012 Iowa caucus, approached, the Democrats’ expectations were borne out. Only one challenger, perennial candidate and Tennessee attorney John Wolfe Jr., even qualified for any primaries other than the extremely easy-to-qualify-for New Hampshire primary (where one need only pay $1,000 to appear on the primary ballot), appearing on the ballots in Arkansas, Louisiana, and Texas as well as New Hampshire, and his best showing, in Arkansas, gave him only 20.2% of the votes cast in the state; he won only 5.8% of the Louisiana vote and less than 0.1% in Texas. Thus, to no-one’s surprise, when the 2012 Democratic National Convention convened on 5 September in Charlotte, the 5,580 delegates present voted unanimously for Obama (Wolfe had earned ten delegates, nine from Arkansas and one from Louisiana, but as he did not present a delegate slate, he was stripped of all ten), who had already started campaigning for the general election and had just recovered from the concussion he had incurred in Adam Lanza’s 25 August assassination attempt…
…In sharp contrast to the uneventful Democratic primary season was the extremely hard-fought race for the Republican nomination. Four major and several minor candidates vied for the bitterly-contested prize, a contest which made history as the first major party contest since 1976 to remain undecided all the way to the national convention and is generally seen as one of the several major factors behind the crushing Republican defeat in the November general election…
…Going into the primary season, the presumptive frontrunner was seen as former Massachusetts governor and Mormon ex-missionary Mitt Romney. An unsuccessful candidate for the 2008 nomination and far and away the best-known of the Republican candidates, Romney had been preparing for the 2012 election from the moment he dropped out of the 2008 race. However, several other prominent Republicans also threw their hats into the ring. One of them was former Speaker of the House of Representatives Newt Gingrich, who had represented Georgia’s 6th district in the House from 1979 until 1999, and had begun preparing for a presidential run after seeing the crushing Republican loss in the 2010 midterm elections, believing the party to be in dire need of new leadership and considering himself an exemplary candidate for that role, given his long Congressional record…
…Another candidate with their eyes on the presidency was Representative Ron Paul from Texas’ 14th district. Widely seen as standard-bearer for the libertarian wing of the Republicans (and having briefly flirted with the Libertarian Party itself, being its presidential nominee in 1988), Paul had previously sought the Republican nomination in 2008, but received only a tiny fraction of the vote and little to no attention in the national press. This time, however, he was determined to make a much deeper impression…
…The last of the four major candidates was attorney and ex-Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. A devout Catholic and staunch social conservative, Santorum had, during his two terms in the Senate, attempted to push through legislation promoting the teaching of intelligent design in schools. He was also the youngest of the four major candidates and hoped to reinvigorate the Christian religious branch of the party and use it to propel him to victory…
…Several more minor candidates rounded out the field. The most prominent of these were former Utah governor and then ambassador to China Jon Huntsman Jr., Representative Michele Bachmann from Minnesota’s 6th district, and former Texas governor Rick Perry, but a whole host of small-profile or fringe candidates also jockeyed for a place in the limelight, ranging from Georgia businessman Herman Cain to Pennsylvania State Senator Stewart Greenleaf…
…Although the primaries and caucuses themselves did not start until late December 2011, most of the candidates had already kicked their campaigns into high gear long before then, in preparation for the 13 August straw poll in Ames, Iowa. Although it has no official bearing on the outcome of the race and major candidates often decline to participate, the straw poll often serves as a useful barometer to gauge public support or lack thereof for presidential hopefuls, and candidates who invest themselves heavily in the straw poll yet garner lackluster results often see fit to drop out of the race then and there. Of the major candidates for 2012, Romney declined to participate in the straw poll, and this split public opinion regarding it; among those still seeing him as the indisputable frontrunner, interest in the straw poll dropped sharply, while others saw his lead eroding as he handed the other candidates a chance to shine without him in the room…
…Going into the summer, Santorum had been seen as the favorite out of the candidates participating in the poll, yet when the results came in, they were a shock: Paul had won, followed by Gingrich and only then Santorum. Bachmann, Cain, and Huntsman came in fourth, fifth, and sixth, respectively, and Perry finished dead last, leading him to terminate his campaign that night…
…With the field thus narrowed, the candidates prepared for the first real battle, the New Hampshire primary on 26 December (the same date as the Democratic primary, but covered far more by the media than the latter, for obvious reasons). While originally scheduled for early March, as had long since been the norm it was repeatedly pushed back all the way to 26 December 2011, with state law mandating that the New Hampshire primary be held on a Tuesday at least a week before any other state held its primary. This was the first-ever time that a U.S. presidential primary election would be held before New Year’s Day, and the candidates spent lavishly on campaigning in the Granite State…
…Although the other candidates had caught up significantly by then, Romney was still seen by most as the frontrunner, and thus it came as a massive shock when the results came in:
PAUL: 79,371
GINGRICH: 61,280
ROMNEY: 55,357
SANTORUM: 26,896
BACHMANN: 8,679
HUNTSMAN: 5,463
It would be a very interesting primary season indeed…
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CONTINUED
I don't understand how, in a world where the government is seen as having been necessary to repair the nation (after the various disasters), Paul and the libertarians (which would be a good name for a band) do better. Is it just the more moderate voters staying home, or is something else going on?
Thanx!
You're back! I was wondering where you went. Long time no see