samcster94

Banned
With a POD of at least 1960 how can you get the states of Washington, Oregon, and California to be Republican on the state and federal levels? The GOP must stay fisically conservative, but can be more socially liberal than OTL. How does the Democratic Party change? What other states are affected because of the west coast being Republican?
Can they have things like occasionally flipping or a conservative Dem as a Senator as a sole statewide office???
 

jocay

Banned
Richard Nixon wins the 1960 presidential election and proceeds over passage of Civil Rights legislation. The GOP's brand remains poison among the majority of the South and becomes the American equivalent of the UK's Conservative Party. Fiscally conservative but an socially liberal and multicultural outlook, or at least more than IOTL. That makes it more acceptable for more liberal suburban whites and minorities to vote for them. California and the West Coast become swing states. At the same time, Democrats remain the party of the working man - strong on traditional bread and butter issues, less so on social matters.
 
Last edited:
Pass Right to Work laws in all three. Have Diane Feinstein win in 1990 over Pete Wilson, with her passing Prop 187 in 1994 to secure re-election; thus alienating Hispanics to the Democrats. Stronger Black conservatism.

All of these are implausible and/or insufficient:

(1) The right-to-work Proposition 18 lost by a landslide (3-2) in 1958, and was considered partly to blame for William Knowland's landslide loss. After that, right-to-work was dead in California. In fact, it is only in relatively recent years that it has succeeded in big industrial states outside the South. (It has indeed been argued that such laws are more a symptom than a cause of union weakness; I don't want to get into that debate, but in any event California was not a likely state to adopt them. )

In 1966, even Ronald Reagan boasted "I also was a leader of our Guild in the fight in 1958 against the right-to-work bill. I am still opposed to right-to-work." https://books.google.com/books?id=ZlRpAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA190

(2) Feinstein opposed Proposition 187 in OTL even though she was facing a tough re-election race for the Senate. http://articles.latimes.com/1994-10-22/news/mn-53251_1_illegal-immigrants I don't see why she would act differently as governor. Even if she did, it would be obvious to Hispanics that the Republicans were far more heavily behind Proposition 187 than the Democrats (after all, President Clinton was also opposed to it).

(3) I am skeptical about the prospects for black conservatism, but in any event California is only 6.5 percent African American https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_California Washington 3.6% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_(state)#Population and Oregon only 1.8% https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oregon#Population If, say, 90% of California's African American now vote Democratic and you could somehow reduce that to 60%--even assuming there is some way to do this without alienating any white voters--you would still only be changing less than 2% if the state's overall vote.
 
Top