A True October Surprise: The Added Surprises
- Thread starter lord caedus
- Start date
Punk is still a thing as plenty of the influences for its development were pre-POD.
Hillary Rodham Clinton
Hillary Rodham Clinton is a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth District, former potential Supreme Court nominee and one of the most influential legal writers with regards to the rights of women and children since the 1970s. Rodham Clinton, the wife of former Congressman Bill Clinton, quickly made a name for herself in the Arkansas legal community while her husband served in Congress and was appointed to the head of the Legal Services Corporation, the organization designed to help provide legal assistance to those unable to afford it, by President Huddleston. After a strong performance there, Huddleston appointed her to a vacancy in the US District Court for Eastern Arkansas in 1992.
Judge Rodham Clinton performed admirably in the role and when her husband declined to seek re-election in 1996 after several women came forth with allegations of adultery and sexual harassment from the congressman. Despite publicly supporting her husband, Rodham Clinton later admitted to marital difficulties after the affairs came to light and in the end, although she and her husband eventually reconciled. The next vacancy that opened on the Eight Court of Appeals, the superior court to the Eastern District of Arkansas occurred in 2002 and, fortunately for Rodham Clinton, the Democrats controlled the White House. President Gephardt quickly appointed her to the seat and the White House quietly added her to the list of potential Supreme Court candidates if the president were to appoint another justice.
The retirement of Griffin Bell in 2007 resulted in just this opportunity and Gephardt aides later revealed that Rodham Clinton was Gephardt’s first choice to replace Bell. However, her strong opinions in favor of preserving abortion access for women and questionable business decisions her husband had been involved in following his retirement from Congress led the White House to pass over her in favor of Sonia Sotomayor for the spot. Despite a new Democratic president in Deval Patrick, Rodham Clinton (who will turn 70 in October) is considered way too old for an appointment to the Supreme Court and reports indicate she will likely step down sometime within the next presidential term in order to allow Patrick to appoint her successor.
Judge Rodham Clinton performed admirably in the role and when her husband declined to seek re-election in 1996 after several women came forth with allegations of adultery and sexual harassment from the congressman. Despite publicly supporting her husband, Rodham Clinton later admitted to marital difficulties after the affairs came to light and in the end, although she and her husband eventually reconciled. The next vacancy that opened on the Eight Court of Appeals, the superior court to the Eastern District of Arkansas occurred in 2002 and, fortunately for Rodham Clinton, the Democrats controlled the White House. President Gephardt quickly appointed her to the seat and the White House quietly added her to the list of potential Supreme Court candidates if the president were to appoint another justice.
The retirement of Griffin Bell in 2007 resulted in just this opportunity and Gephardt aides later revealed that Rodham Clinton was Gephardt’s first choice to replace Bell. However, her strong opinions in favor of preserving abortion access for women and questionable business decisions her husband had been involved in following his retirement from Congress led the White House to pass over her in favor of Sonia Sotomayor for the spot. Despite a new Democratic president in Deval Patrick, Rodham Clinton (who will turn 70 in October) is considered way too old for an appointment to the Supreme Court and reports indicate she will likely step down sometime within the next presidential term in order to allow Patrick to appoint her successor.
I knew you'd love it.
And thanks. Hillary's not the kind of person who can ever be fully "out of the box".
It's a rule of the multiverse that HRC must be passed over for a more likable, younger person of color for the office she seeks the most.
I mean, if I'd had her marry someone like John Kasich or other OTL politician, then you'd have a point, because that is annoying and lazy. But the general point of butterflies affecting who (if anyone) Hillary Rodham would marry if the POD is before she met Bill Clinton in 1971 is still solid. The reason I had her still marry Bill is because both seemed well on their way to attending Yale Law School before the POD (both were ambitious, well-performing college upperclassmen at the time of the POD) and I figured that even ITTL they would meet, fall in love and marry similarly to OTL.
Um, why?
Then she'd have served in all three branches of the government. Also, why not?
Well, if you consider just TTL's Hillary and OTL Hillary, she already has since she was a senator for about eight years IOTL.
Yes, it does.
Second Ya'alon Cabinet
The Thirty-third Government of Israel or the Second Ya'alon Cabinet has been led by Prime Minister Moshe Ya'alon and his Likud ("Consolidation") party since its victory in the 2013 elections. Ya'alon's government currently has 65 out of 120 seats in the Knesset, with his Likud party having nearly half of the total, with 27. The remaining 28 seats are scattered among other right-wing parties in the government: the religious Zionist Mafdal (10), secular hard-right Our Home (10) and the ultra-orthodox The Jewish Union (8).
The government has overseen a continued crackdown on the Palestinians in the West Bank following Operation Righteous, despite international opposition, including from the Riley administration. Prime Minister Ya'alon has similarly continued Israeli settlement policies in the Palestinian territories acquired in the Six-Day War of 1967 despite unanimous international opposition. As such, there has been little progress made in negotiations with the Palestinians, although the post-Yarafat fracturing of the Palestinian leadership has not given him a single negotiating partner who can command legitimacy to most, if not all, Palestinians.
With Knesset elections due later in the year, polls seem to be leaning towards Ya'alon's right-wing coalition returning for a third term with the center-left opposition in disarray. The task for opposing Ya'alon has fallen to former Likudnik Tzipi Livni as leader of the Zionist Union, a large electoral alliance staunchly opposed to the former Israeli Defense Force general-turned-prime minister and his right-wing government's hawkish stance towards the Palestinian conflict- perhaps a telling sign of the formerly solidly left-wing nation's shift to the right since the midpoint of the 20th century.
The government has overseen a continued crackdown on the Palestinians in the West Bank following Operation Righteous, despite international opposition, including from the Riley administration. Prime Minister Ya'alon has similarly continued Israeli settlement policies in the Palestinian territories acquired in the Six-Day War of 1967 despite unanimous international opposition. As such, there has been little progress made in negotiations with the Palestinians, although the post-Yarafat fracturing of the Palestinian leadership has not given him a single negotiating partner who can command legitimacy to most, if not all, Palestinians.
With Knesset elections due later in the year, polls seem to be leaning towards Ya'alon's right-wing coalition returning for a third term with the center-left opposition in disarray. The task for opposing Ya'alon has fallen to former Likudnik Tzipi Livni as leader of the Zionist Union, a large electoral alliance staunchly opposed to the former Israeli Defense Force general-turned-prime minister and his right-wing government's hawkish stance towards the Palestinian conflict- perhaps a telling sign of the formerly solidly left-wing nation's shift to the right since the midpoint of the 20th century.
Author's note: The reasons I didn't make a standard infobox for Israel are: wanting to utilize different infobox templates than just election infoboxes (don't worry- there's plenty of those left), and personal dislike of the style of infoboxes used for Israeli elections since they regularly have 9+ parties making it into the Knesset (both ITTL & IOTL).
On March 24, Ford informed congressional leaders of both parties of the reassessment of the administration policies in the Middle East. "Reassessment", in practical terms, meant canceling or suspending further aid to Israel. For six months between March and September 1975, the United States refused to conclude any new arms agreements with Israel. Rabin notes it was "an innocent-sounding term that heralded one of the worst periods in American-Israeli relations".[105] The announced reassessments upset the American Jewish community and Israel's well-wishers in Congress. On May 21, Ford "experienced a real shock" when seventy-six U.S. senators wrote him a letter urging him to be "responsive" to Israel's request for $2.59 billion in military and economic aid. Ford felt truly annoyed and thought the chance for peace was jeopardized. It was, since the September 1974 ban on arms to Turkey, the second major congressional intrusion upon the President's foreign policy prerogatives.[106] The following summer months were described by Ford as an American-Israeli "war of nerves" or "test of wills".[107] After much bargaining, the Sinai Interim Agreement (Sinai II), was formally signed on September 1, and aid resumed.
Adding to that, every OTL Republican president who took office after 1967 has either opposed Israel's settlements in Palestine as illegal (Nixon, Ford & both Bushes) or at the very least done nothing to oppose the State Department's position that they violated international law while urging Israel not to build more (Reagan).
New York gubernatorial election, 1994
The New York gubernatorial election in 1994 was perhaps one of the most-watched races throughout 1994, a function of the candidates involved. Incumbent Governor Ron Brown, the first African-American governor elected in the United States since Reconstruction, was a relatively weak incumbent owing to sluggish growth in the Empire State and the national anti-Democratic mood. Brown's historic status and closeness with the party establishment made him one of the top targets for the Republican Party going into 1994. Congressman Joseph J. DioGuardi, rather than seek a sixth term, became the presumptive front-runner for the campaign. However, another high-profile New Yorker that the Republican Party had been seeking to recruit for high office in the future brashly announced his candidacy: real estate mogul Donald Trump. Trump had veered from a Republican to a "Huddleston Democrat" over the president's Secure Borders Act and then back to the GOP over the administration's negotiations with the weakened Soviet Union. Several prominent New York Republicans had urged Trump to consider running for office in 1996. Trump, however, both disliked Brown and needed more publicity after a series of investments in New Jersey failed and so declared his candidacy for governor.
Despite high name recognition, Trump’s self-aggrandizing tendencies, lack of political experience and penchant for outrageous remarks set the party establishment against him, even as his law-and-order stance and his calls for "a stronger 'Secure Borders Act'" proved popular with the party grassroots. DioGuardi ended up winning the Republican nomination handily- but the Conservative Party of New York then named Trump as their candidate, ensuring that Trump would remain on the ballot in November and splitting the right-wing vote.
Brown, who later recalled that if the Conservatives had endorsed DioGuardi, would likely have lost his bid for re-election, ran a remarkably subdued campaign. Trump's outrageous statements and antics resulted in national media attention and DioGuardi watched with horror as Trump overtook him for second place against Brown. Briefly, Trump and Brown were neck and neck- but a live microphone caught Trump making racially insensitive remarks in early October and the mogul's numbers fell. DioGuardi gained enough soft Trump voters to break 20%, but Trump still ran way ahead of him- into a distant second behind Brown.
The electoral results would have national consequences. Brown's victory would ensure that he would remain politically viable for Dick Gephardt to pick him as a running mate in 2000, the first African-American on a major party ticket. The subsequent rightwards drift of the New York Republican Party in order to prevent the Conservatives from nominating their own candidates and splitting the vote resulted in New York becoming even less competitive on a federal level, resulting in Democrats controlling all but three members of the state's congressional delegation by 2017. As for Trump, the loss embittered the real estate developer towards elected office, and briefly resulted in a downturn in his finances— although by the start of the new millennium, Trump’s net worth would be higher than it ever was as memories of the election began to fade.
Despite high name recognition, Trump’s self-aggrandizing tendencies, lack of political experience and penchant for outrageous remarks set the party establishment against him, even as his law-and-order stance and his calls for "a stronger 'Secure Borders Act'" proved popular with the party grassroots. DioGuardi ended up winning the Republican nomination handily- but the Conservative Party of New York then named Trump as their candidate, ensuring that Trump would remain on the ballot in November and splitting the right-wing vote.
Brown, who later recalled that if the Conservatives had endorsed DioGuardi, would likely have lost his bid for re-election, ran a remarkably subdued campaign. Trump's outrageous statements and antics resulted in national media attention and DioGuardi watched with horror as Trump overtook him for second place against Brown. Briefly, Trump and Brown were neck and neck- but a live microphone caught Trump making racially insensitive remarks in early October and the mogul's numbers fell. DioGuardi gained enough soft Trump voters to break 20%, but Trump still ran way ahead of him- into a distant second behind Brown.
The electoral results would have national consequences. Brown's victory would ensure that he would remain politically viable for Dick Gephardt to pick him as a running mate in 2000, the first African-American on a major party ticket. The subsequent rightwards drift of the New York Republican Party in order to prevent the Conservatives from nominating their own candidates and splitting the vote resulted in New York becoming even less competitive on a federal level, resulting in Democrats controlling all but three members of the state's congressional delegation by 2017. As for Trump, the loss embittered the real estate developer towards elected office, and briefly resulted in a downturn in his finances— although by the start of the new millennium, Trump’s net worth would be higher than it ever was as memories of the election began to fade.