AHC/WI: Make Texas as Liberal as Possible

A successful slave revolt in alliance with Tejanos during the Civil War, backed up by Union guns, secures democracy in Texas. While other Southern states experience white coups during Reconstruction, Texas' demographics ensure that it remains a black/brown republic to the present. While access to white capital is limited, the oil boom of the 20th century brings great wealth to the Texan elite and attracts black petty bourgeoisie and workers from across the country to set up shop in the state. While not "liberal" in the cosmopolitan progressive sense, modern day Texas is black majority and the most solidly Democratic state in the Union.
 
How about have a situation similar to how the NDP took power in Alberta? Have a conservative "dynasty" control the state for 45 years and the people get sick and tired of them and vote in liberal Democrats. That's my best guess.

But the NDP coming in power required the right-wing vote to be split between Wildrose and the PC. And the NDP win doesn't seem to have kept Alberta from remaining the most conservative Canadian province.
 
The problem I only see here is the Cubans, who chose Miami as their place of abode OTL.
How can they be convinced of settling in San Antonio (and the rest of South Texas in general)?

Probably would have to give them more job opportunities in Texas than in Florida
 
Here's the thing with Cuban immigration to Texas. Miami was literally just over the water from Cuba, making it the logical destination, and furthermore, it had its own features to attract new migrants, most notably proximity to the growing markets of the Caribbean and Latin America making it a logical trade hub as well as substantial military investment. And even if the Cubans went to Texas, they were, for a very long time, a famously conservative and anti-communist voting bloc. They're arguably the reason why Florida hasn't yet followed Virginia in becoming a solid blue state as opposed to a purple one -- there's still a massive bloc of conservative older (Gen-X and up) Cubans in South Florida, those who either came over on the boats or had parents who did and raised them on stories of how they escaped the communists. (See: Marco Rubio.) From my reading on the history of Univision, I remember that there was an incident in 1986 where half of their Miami staff went on strike in protest of the network hiring a news correspondent who was seen as sympathetic to Castro's Cuba, a backlash that led Televisa (who had pushed to hire this correspondent) to sell their stake in the network.
 
If you look at the current numbers for the 2016 elections, Texas seems almost on the verge of becoming a swing-state. Although that may have something to do with a certain GOP candidate, aren't the changing demographics also leading in this direction?

Otherwise, how about Austin somehow becoming a megalopolis?

Texas was already on pace to become a swing state by 2024, Trump has only accelerated the process.
 
A simple change where its the Republicans and conservatives are the environmentalists, and liberals/ Democrats don't care about the environment and consistently oppose any environmentalist proposal, would help the Democrats in Texas.
The only problem with that is that the GOP is generally pro-business, and environmentalism tends to clash with that.
 
The only problem with that is that the GOP is generally pro-business, and environmentalism tends to clash with that.
So we create an environment where environmentalism clashes just as much, if not moreso, with labor, and gets co-opted by the conservatives as a result. You can see some of this in OTL with the fights between environmentalists and the coal industry, which have caused the former Democratic labor stronghold of Appalachia to swing hard to the right, blaming regulations (as opposed to cheap natural gas) for the coal mines shutting down and putting them out of work. Texas' oil industry means that there's little love for environmentalism there.

In other words, for Texas to become a liberal bastion, a key step would be to have an American liberalism that does not identify with environmentalism, and an American conservatism that does. An idea for a late POD would be to heavily alter or prevent the sagebrush rebellion, and especially the Reagan administration's reaction to it. Back in the '70s and '80s, there was a populist movement in the western US opposing the federal management of the vast public lands in those states. While some of the figures in the movement were conservationists and sportsmen who felt that the authorities were slacking in their duties and allowing overgrazing and mining to run amok and destroy the land, many more were themselves ranchers and miners who felt that the government's regulations were too much. It was the latter group of anti-environmentalists that took over the movement, especially after Reagan appointed James G. Watt as Secretary of the Interior. My idea would be to have a dam disaster in the '70s (I'm specifically thinking of the Glen Canyon Dam, which almost failed in OTL in 1983 and would've caused disaster in four states) cause the environmentalists to take over instead, seeing the government's perceived mismanagement of the land and "development for development's sake" as having had severe consequences for people and nature alike, leading to a conservative President in the '80s (I'm assuming Reagan, but given that he's from California, which would've been affected by the Glen Canyon Dam disaster, this could alter his trajectory) either spurning it due to his pro-business leanings or co-opting it due to his small-government leanings. In the former scenario, you've got a western US that's been pulled to the left as a bastion of the environmental movement, which likely wouldn't alter Texas' rightward trajectory much; oil is still king. However, if you get conservative Republicans to instead embrace environmentalism, in a fusion of small government with "small is beautiful" a la E. F. Schumacher, you could well push Texas to the left as it sees the conservatives as out to destroy their bedrock industry. Related to this, you'd also see Appalachia and Big Coal remain solidly in the Democratic column.

Alternatively, starting from a present-day POD, you could have a future where Texas finds itself ravaged by climate change-induced drought, while at the same time, wind and solar power become big (west Texas has plenty of potential for both). Theoretically, this could produce a robust environmental movement in Texas, and furthermore, one that meshes with the Democrats' pro-development, green energy policies. Couple that with immigration and increasingly liberal cities like Austin and Houston, and you could have a left-wing Texas built on the pillars of environmentalism, urban liberals, and Latinos.
 
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Wallet

Banned
No operation wetback that deported thousands of Hispanics in the 50s

No Vietnam war, LBJ wins in 1968 is is super successful. No war, so he lives longer and later becomes governor of Texas bringing the great society directly to the Hispanics.

Nixon wins in 1972 and 1976 (didn't run in 1968)

John Conally wins in 1980 who stays as a democrat
 
But Connally was conservative even before he switched parties.
Eh, kind of. He was an odd duck, neither really conservative nor liberal.
Plus which, even though he was conservative in many ways, his election could keep the Texas Democrats afloat. A more centrist Democratic party, sure, but on balance that could make Texas more liberal.
 
Seems the key is to "Californiaize" Texas, by increasing Hispanic immigration to the state until it becomes majority-minority.

Texas is already majority-minority. Hispanics don't vote enough. A Texan proposition 187 would be helpful, but the vote suppression infrastructure of Jim Crow is going to keep it from going as hard blue as California.
 
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