AHC/WI: Make Harry F. Byrd President
- Thread starter gilmore
- Start date
-
- Tags
- ahc harry byrd president
A person or a group of people who crack after the economic meltdown of 2008 and blames the government bomb Congress. Bush/Obama, Cheney/Biden and Pelosi are killed, Byrd as 3rd in line takes office.
Byrd was a candidate at the 1932 Democratic national convention but never got more than 25 votes, almost all of them from VA. His only hope was to emerge as a compromise choice in the event of a Smith-FDR deadlock. But there were more plausible chances in the event of such a deadlock; Byrd's support was almost limited to VA.
However, there may have been a chance of a *vice* presidential nomination:
"The Roosevelt forces, under the leadership of James Farley and Louis M. Howe, were looking for a formula that would give Roosevelt the necessary votes to win the nomination. They made overtures to the Garner forces, offering Speaker of the House John N. Garner second place on the Roosevelt ticket if California and Texas would switch to Roosevelt. *Byrd was also offered tho vice-prcnidontial nomination by the Roosevolt forces under Louis Howe, if ho would release the Virginia delegation.* [my emphsais--DT] The offer to Byrd was mado thrtough his brother, Admiral Richard E. Byrd, and was rofused. 79 Garner finally decided to release his delegates. The move assured Garner second spot on the Democratic ticket." https://scholarship.richmond.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2149&context=masters-theses So if Garner refused to release his delgates but Byrd agreed to release his, and FDR was nominated, Byrd could be the vice-preisdential nominee.
Of course if nominated and elected VP, all we need for Byrd to become president is for Zangara to kill FDR...
However, there may have been a chance of a *vice* presidential nomination:
"The Roosevelt forces, under the leadership of James Farley and Louis M. Howe, were looking for a formula that would give Roosevelt the necessary votes to win the nomination. They made overtures to the Garner forces, offering Speaker of the House John N. Garner second place on the Roosevelt ticket if California and Texas would switch to Roosevelt. *Byrd was also offered tho vice-prcnidontial nomination by the Roosevolt forces under Louis Howe, if ho would release the Virginia delegation.* [my emphsais--DT] The offer to Byrd was mado thrtough his brother, Admiral Richard E. Byrd, and was rofused. 79 Garner finally decided to release his delegates. The move assured Garner second spot on the Democratic ticket." https://scholarship.richmond.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2149&context=masters-theses So if Garner refused to release his delgates but Byrd agreed to release his, and FDR was nominated, Byrd could be the vice-preisdential nominee.
Of course if nominated and elected VP, all we need for Byrd to become president is for Zangara to kill FDR...
Last edited:
gilmore
Banned
If so, is FDR-Richard Russell Jr. 1932, with Russell becoming President after Zangara kills FDR equally plausible? (Carter Glass was simply far too old by 1932).
Last edited:
No. Russell had no delegates to use as a bargaining chip--he was just entering national politics and had ahead of him a difficult primary campign for US senator against Represetative Charles Crisp. (Russell won it largely by portraying himself as a pro-FDR progressive and Crisp as a reactionary.)
If Byrd got in, would there be any support for William Macdoo's idea of a disablity/african american homeland in Alaska? The Garvey movement, and the Peace movement of Ethopia are still around at this time. If it was strictly voluntary and incentivised perhaps a small number would say yes?
No. Byrd in the 1930's was not obsessed with race. "Massive resistance" was far in the future.
"Angered by two recent lynchings in the state and influenced by the editorials of Norfolk Virginian-Pilot editor Louis Isaac Jaffé, Byrd, who had no use for the Ku Klux Klan, pressed the assembly to pass one of the toughest antilynching laws in the country. The assembly, however, also passed a law to segregate public assemblies in Virginia, but without his signature. Byrd was not a racial demagogue like many other southern politicians, but he would play the race card to his advantage when the machine was in a tight election contest." https://encyclopediavirginia.org/entries/byrd-harry-f-1887-1966/
I don't know why this forum takes racial-separatist (as opposed to segrgationist) fringe movements so seriously. Even Bilbo wasn't into them until late in his career. https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...ricans-to-liberia.531261/page-7#post-23364418
Last edited:
When did McAdoo advocate this? I know he was Georgia born and that he had typically southern-white attitudes on the "race question" but I have never seen any reference to him proposing anything like this in either the standard biogrpahy of McAdoo--William Gibbs McAdoo: The Last Progressive (1863–1941) https://www.proquest.com/openview/cd53ec292226de8b256c946d4f53fa3b/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=18750 or anywhere else.
Newton Baker was the most obvious one, His past advocacy of the League of Nations was a drawback (it earned him the opposition of Hearst) but he was backtracking on that in 1932. https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,743091-1,00.html Owen D. Young was another but "Young's boom ended on May 16, 1932 ,when he declared that he could not accept the nomination. His wife's health was such that Dr. Chace could not be sure whether she would survive a campaign, and Young was not prepared to take the risk. Only two days before Young's announcement, FDR had written to Daniels to report that Young was the first choice of the 'Smith-Shouse-Raskob crowd,' but in the event that he declined to run, 'they will turn with a deep sigh' to Baker. The *New York Times* agreed; Young's withdrawal, it argued, had removed the 'strongest prop' from the stop-Roosevelt movement, leaving the conservative coalition with only Baker as a nationally acceptable candidate..." https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/president-owen-d-young.384828/
Last edited:
Seems like the Dems would be nominating their version of the Harding ticket: extremely uninspiring but still win a massive landslide due to the conditions
Glass led Davis in delegates at the 1924 convention before Davis’ boom. Maybe with a little tweaking he sustains the momentum and instead emerges as the compromise candidate.
Off topic, but now I'm wondering what it would have been like Admiral Byrd had got into politics.
i knew he was anti Klan. For myself my interest came about because as a child. i heard the story from my physical therapist who had heard of it from Nj attorney General Arthur sills, an intimate of Fdr, and polio patient at warm springs.
I think he was a paternalist not a hater.
As to where it came from. He spoke to a meeting of a the Ethiopian Peace movement at the famous Klan bake democratic convention in 24.
"our colored citizens should exercise greater autonomy, if they could do that in their own territory white fears of Negro domination would be quaffed."
Disabilty groups were frustrated at the height of eugenics. Perhaps that frustration could lead to the warmth of other suns, argument
Not to derail, but a VP (and/or President Baker) is an interesting what-if, given his georgist and wilsonian internationalist leanings. In many way he was a throwback to an earlier progressivism.
Maybe Thomas Marshall is killed in the senate bombing or Wilson is convinced to drop him and Baker is elected veep in 1916?