14th Amendment enforced in early 1900s

WI the provisions of the US Constution requiring the reduction in Congressional representation for states where male citizens were denied the right to vote.

I wonder whether that would actually have changed the 1916 election result.

I picture a black guy from say New York complaining that his voice in Congress was reduced by the over representation of places like Mississippi and South Carolina where most black people were denied the vote but counted in the population.

Of course the Supreme Court insisting on the full enforcement of the Constitution in say 1902 is verging on ASB but....


Is there any way that such a step could have prevented the two parties swapping places and made Republicans more progressive.

(I am thinking that 1916 was an excellant election to lose in the short term and that Conservative Democrats might have had the White House from 1921 to 1933)

Of course 1928 election was an even better won to lose.
 
This might be far-fetched but not implausible: had Theodore Roosevelt won as a Republican with a united party behind him in 1912, chances are his opposition would have been minimal in 1916. Thus, with both houses of Congress firmly in Republican hands, and Progressive-minded appointees on the Supreme Court, it's conceivable the issue could have been brought to a head around, say, 1917. A reduction in representation could have been in effect for the 1918 congressional elections and for the 1920 presidential election, which would make a takeover by the Democrats that much more difficult. That in turn could have cemented the Republicans in power uninterrupted until the 1930s, and wedded many African-Americans more firmly still to Lincoln's party.
 
The twenties were a prosperous period and a strong president was not needed for the booming laissez-faire economy. The depression though, or some version of a recession, was inevitable given the long term business cycles.

You would need to have an indecisive democrat in office when the economy crashed. Then the GOP could return to its liberal, pro-active, pro-civil rights stand and bring its own version of the New Deal. Is is possible to butterfly FDR into the republican party, since the POD happens so much earlier in the century?
 
You would need to have an indecisive democrat in office when the economy crashed. Then the GOP could return to its liberal, pro-active, pro-civil rights stand and bring its own version of the New Deal. Is is possible to butterfly FDR into the republican party, since the POD happens so much earlier in the century?

I liked that idea. I wonder whether Eleanor (who has huge blackmail power because of FDR's naughtiness, might be a Republican if there were the ideological patters I imagine...)
 
You would need to have an indecisive democrat in office when the economy crashed. Then the GOP could return to its liberal, pro-active, pro-civil rights stand and bring its own version of the New Deal. Is is possible to butterfly FDR into the republican party, since the POD happens so much earlier in the century?

how soon they forget, FDR was a Democrat in 1912, he'd been elected a New York State Senate in 1910, in 1913 Woodrow Wilson appointed him Assistant Secretary of the Navy
 
Top