AHC and WI: Huey Long Presidency?

So, I know that the ol' Kingfish gets quite a bit of flak on this forum, and rightly so; Coughlin, his ally, was an evil man. But then, like MacArthur, there's the whole idea about him being a potential American fascist, but I don't think he had it in him. Populism, sure, but not that.

Anyway, here's my question: what's a good POD for a Long presidency to happen, and what would it be like? If he survives his assassination?
 
I don't think they would have let him get close to the Democratic nomination, especially against FDR in 1936.
 
Perhaps as a third party candidate, then? Perhaps a hypothetical Populist or Reform party?

Third parties don't really succeed in American politics as a whole, you'd have to seriously destabilize the political party system of the 1930s for that to happen.

I'm sorry if I'm coming across as a bit abrasive.
 
All right. Here's a POD for you: FDR loses the primary to John Nance Garner somehow, and Garner and Smith beat Hoover, but then they aren't competent, and thus, Long gets voted in from a more destabilized political system.

My inspiration came partially from an actual book that Long actually wrote called My First Days in the White House, which portrays Long as basically the messiah of American politics, and I was wondering what a more realistic take on this would be.

I grant this is somewhat implausible, but not impossible.
 
Most likely if he got in a lot of his program would have been blocked by congress and the supreme court. A lot of what he advocated would have been considered extreme by even the most radical New Deal Democrat. It also didn't help that he was very unpopular within his own party; none of the bills he proposed as Senator were passed, despite a significant Democrat majority. Either Long would be forced to significantly water down his Share the Wealth program, and other populist policies, or he would have to confront the power structures of the US head on, which would be an uphill battle. Most likely scenario is that Long is remembered as a toothless idealist who promised the world but was hobbled by the realities of politics. Fun scenario is that Long calls on his supporters to rise up against the American government that is opposing the will of the people and serves only the interests of the Wall Street elite.

One area that might be interesting is his stance on Civil Rights and African-Americans. According to wikipedia:

Long was also notable among southern politicians for avoiding race baiting, and attempting to improve the lot of poor blacks as well as poor whites
However, even if Long was sympathetic to Civil Rights it was never as central to his program as his other policies, and, given how hard it would have been to get those through congress, it's possible that he would be willing to throw Civil Rights under the bus in order to avoid alienating the Southern Democrats.
 
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Perhaps as a third party candidate, then? Perhaps a hypothetical Populist or Reform party?

Had Long survived, I don't see any realistic chance of his winning the presidency in 1936. What bothered FDR was not the prospect of Long actually winning as a third party candidate but of his getting as many as four million votes--almost one-tenth of the electorate. That this was possible was suggested by a secret poll commissioned by Jim Farley in early 1935: "The Democratic National Committee conducted a secret poll on Long's bid for national power which disclosed, to our surprise, that he might poll between 3,000,000 to 4,000,000 votes at the head of a third party." *Jim Farley's Story,* p. 51 https://archive.org/stream/jimfarleysstory017770mbp#page/n69/mode/2up

Of course we now know that even had Long gotten that many votes it couldn't possibly have changed the outcome, FDR having defeated Landon by over eleven million votes. But FDR had no way of knowing that in 1935; many people expected the 1936 race to be close. And FDR even suspected that Long, despite his rhetoric about redistribution of wealth, was in a secret alliance with the conservative Liberty League to bring about a Republican victory in 1936.

In any event, it is very doubtful that Long could even win those four million votes. In general, third party candidates do worse in actual elections than in polls, especially polls taken several months before the election. (The "novelty factor" wears off and the "it's a wasted vote because he can't win" argument becomes more widely accepted as Election Day approaches.) Furthermore, in this case, there is an additional reason to expect Long's support to decline--the economy improved considerably between the time Farley's poll was taken in 1935 and Election Day of 1936. In 1936, "real GDP grew 13.1 percent and the unemployment rate fell 4.4 percentage points." http://tippie.uiowa.edu/economics/tow/papers/hausman-fall2012.pdf
 
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