Do y'all think this is a good idea for a TL?

  • Yes

    Votes: 41 95.3%
  • No

    Votes: 2 4.7%

  • Total voters
    43
  • Poll closed .

SsgtC

Banned
Sure why not. I'm writing one too incidentally. But my work schedule is so screwed up I don't get to update it often
 
Groovy. Working on the first entry now. Hope it ends up better than my Colonial war one...

(Don't look for it, I'm embarrassed by it)
 
Love the idea - there have been several like it so I'm interested to see a different spin on it. It'd be interesting if he can draw the black vote to the Progressives somehow.

You'll have a tough time getting him enough electoral votes, but Wilson being hurt and/or having a stroke at the wrong time, or maybe Clark getting the nod and not appealing to as many (though Wilson waas an awful campaigner I've heard so that's be hard to be less appealing) or something could do it. Or, maybe there's a POD I don't know about where Wilson really loses his way. For all I know you'll do half a dozen election of 1912 posts to show how it happens a la McGoverning.
 
The idea is fine. My one suggestion is that getting TR the Republican nomination in 1912 (and having him then win in November) while not easy is IMO more plausible than having him win as a third party candidate (yes, even if the Democrats nominate Champ Clark or some other candidate instead of Wilson).
 
I wonder if it's possible to engineer a Democratic Party split somehow.

Bryan deciding to take another crack at the nomination and generating a split in the party between his partisans and those who say "enough is enough" might be able to get you that. You'd have to find enough policy point differences between the two though.
 
Bryan deciding to take another crack at the nomination and generating a split in the party between his partisans and those who say "enough is enough" might be able to get you that. You'd have to find enough policy point differences between the two though.
Maybe get Hearst to run independent? He has the money to self-fund and an ego that could maybe do it. Get some conservative Democrat nominated that he would decide to revolt against.
 
Maybe get Hearst to run independent? He has the money to self-fund and an ego that could maybe do it. Get some conservative Democrat nominated that he would decide to revolt against.

Good point. The man also had connections with the whole Tammany Hall machine structure, so if the urban bosses and industrial Progressives feel the Southern and agrarian wing of the party is playing them false you could see a revolt. Maybe have them split over a revived gold/bimetal standard debate? (For a cause,Mexico might provide an example if the post-Porfireo regeime flips the peso back from being gold backed to silver backed to reliqudate it's own market)
 
Maybe get Hearst to run independent? He has the money to self-fund and an ego that could maybe do it. Get some conservative Democrat nominated that he would decide to revolt against.

Hearst preferred Champ Clark to Wilson, yet in the end the Hearst newspapers endorsed Wilson. The only plausible Democratic candidate that Hearst really hated was Bryan (for not backing him in 1904). But (1) I doubt that Bryan could get the nomination (and he may have been sincere in saying he didn't want it). Just the rumor that a Clark-Wilson deadlock could lead to a Bryan nomination was enough to make bosses like Roger Sullivan of Illinois and Tom Taggart of Indiana switch from Clark to Wilson (thiough there were other reasons as well). (2) In 1908 Hearst backed a new party, the Independence Party, to oppose Bryan and Taft. It got 0.55% of the vote. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1908

In the unlikely event Bryan was nominated, even he would win in 1912; he would get the core Democratic vote and maybe even some OTL Debs voters, and that would be enough in a three-way race.

As I said, TR winning the GOP presidential nomination would be difficult and even if nominated he would by no means be guaranteed a victory in November (I think he could win but he would have to make moves to reconcile with the Taftites). But it still seems to me a lot more likely that he could be the successful Republican nominee than that he could win as a third party candidate.
 
I am starting a TL about what if Roosevelt won in 1912 and brought the US into WWI early.


The one (even if achievable) does not imply the other.

TR could almost certainly not have brought America into the war before 1917. Public and Congressional support for intervention was negligible prior to the renewal of USW in Feb '17, and nothing TR said or did would be likely to change that.

For Americans, it just wasn't their war - until the Germans made it so. And given that the Germans backed down even to Wilson, they will do so even faster with TR as POTUS.

Nor is it clear that TR would even want to. A lot of his bellicose language probably stemmed from frustration at being kept on the sidelines, and if his OTL presidency is any guide, a TR in office will be far more cautious. He also has to consider that if he does so, everyone will assume that it's to give himself an excuse for seeking a fourth term. If he goes to war with anyone before 1917, it's more likely to be Mexico.
 
The one (even if achievable) does not imply the other.

TR could almost certainly not have brought America into the war before 1917. Public and Congressional support for intervention was negligible prior to the renewal of USW in Feb '17, and nothing TR said or did would be likely to change that.

For Americans, it just wasn't their war - until the Germans made it so. And given that the Germans backed down even to Wilson, they will do so even faster with TR as POTUS.

Nor is it clear that TR would even want to. A lot of his bellicose language probably stemmed from frustration at being kept on the sidelines, and if his OTL presidency is any guide, a TR in office will be far more cautious. He also has to consider that if he does so, everyone will assume that it's to give himself an excuse for seeking a fourth term. If he goes to war with anyone before 1917, it's more likely to be Mexico.

No doubt it was easier for him to advocate this as a critic than to actually do it as POTUS--but let's say he does seize every German vessel interned in an American port after the Lusitania incident.
 
He would be winning under slightly different circumstances, but remember that Woodrow Wilson almost was injured in a train accident in our timeline. If he is injured but not killed there could be question as to whether he could govern, especially because his actions after his stroke indicate that even if he were badly wounded he would refuse to step aside.

You could have TR wooing some progressives in the North but the Progressive Party refusing to pander to the southerners who supported Wilson and wanted to segregate Federal departments and such, and that could lead to a more southern Democrat - as opposed to someone like Cleveland who just ignored whatever integration there was in Washington DC - trying to get on the ballot in some states and just a general mess. The trick there would be not to make it sound like 1968 because the country was not very Progressive racially, however you would have enough issues that if the Wilsonian wing felt they were being robbed because Wilson insisted on staying in the race, you could see someone like a McAdoo or Underwood trying to become the nominee for the entire nation and get on the ballot because, in their minds, Wilson was not healthy enough.
 
Last edited:
No doubt it was easier for him to advocate this as a critic than to actually do it as POTUS--but let's say he does seize every German vessel interned in an American port after the Lusitania incident.

That, of course, would shift the onus of declaring war onto the Germans - who probably wouldn't.

Ironically, it could actually lead him into difficulties with Britain, who in international law could refuse to recognise the change of flag. So if a confiscated German ship, now flying the Stars and Stripes, is intercepted by a British warship, there could well be an incident.
 
He would be winning under slightly different circumstances, but remember that Woodrow Wilson almost was injured in a train accident in our timeline. If he is injured but not killed there could be question as to whether he could govern, especially because his actions after his stroke indicate that even if he were badly wounded he would refuse to step aside.

Constitutionally, of course, it wouldn't be up to Wilson, but to the Democratic Presidential Electors - who in practice would probably do what the Democratic National Committee told them to do.

In practice, they would probably elevate Thomas Marshall to the head of the ticket, and just pick another VP. They would have until January to do so.
 
Top