Truman II: The Revenge.
Is it me or does Grayson kind of look like Hitler in that picture? Sans the mustache.
Alternate Wikipedia Infoboxes III
- Thread starter shiftygiant
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Truman beats Dewey
A few thousand extra votes for Dewey in a handful of swing states nets the Republican ticket an electoral victory in '48. Just think of Dewey ITTL as an old timey George W. Bush.
That's not fair. Bush is a conservative. Dewey is a liberal, and I like Dewey.
Boredom, I guess?:
With PODs in 2014, I'd imagine, neither Trump nor Sanders runs in 2016. For the Democrats, Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination far easier than OTL, with Brian Schweitzer emerging as her primary opponent. While Schweitzer causes Clinton's support among progressives to drop fairly significantly, frequent gaffes cause Schweitzer to fizzle out not long after Super Tuesday. For the Republicans, Bush manages to limp to victory after beating Ted Cruz at the contested Republican convention. With both parties nominating very unpopular, dynastic establishment figures, Jesse Ventura enters the race as an independent, quickly winning over the support of Donald Trump (who has become a vocal Bush critic) as a prominent donor. Clinton and Bush's unpopularity, plus Ventura's populist campaign, allow him to rise significantly in the polls, as does Clinton's selection of Tim Kaine as running-mate, a selection made to win over moderate Ventura voters that instead causes progressives to opt for Ventura. On Election Day, nobody wins a majority of the Electoral College, sending the election to Congress. While Ventura won a plurality of the popular vote by a fairly decent margin (and despite Clinton winning the most electoral votes), a deal of sorts between the Republicans and Democrats results in Bush being elected President and Kaine being elected Vice President, an outcome that doesn't really satisfy anyone, especially Ventura's supporters.
The Bush/Kaine administration proves to be somewhat of a disaster, especially considering the daily public fights between the President and the Vice President as well as the lingering bad feelings over 2016. A recession beginning in mid 2019 certainly doesn't help matters. Come 2020, the Democrats nominate Kaine, feeling that as the sitting Vice President he'd best be able to take on Bush, though his centrist/moderate policies really alienate progressives and he is barely able to fend off a primary challenge from Al Franken. With 2016 seemingly stolen from him and a Republican/Democratic administration having led the country into a severe recession, Ventura runs for President once again. Thanks to the poor economy, outrage over 2016, and populist appeal (particularly among progressive Democrats put off by Kaine's centrism), Ventura manages to win an outright majority in the Electoral College.
Ventura's term, like Bush's, quickly proves to be a disaster, however. Without allies in either the House of Representatives or the Senate, he is unable to enact really any of his campaign promises, and effectively becomes a lame duck the moment he is sworn into office. With Ventura unable (and in some cases unwilling) to work with congressional leaders, and vice versa, the government is routinely deadlocked, and measures designed to help boost the economy fail to make it through congress, worsening and prolonging the recession. In 2024, with the bases of both parties frustrated after election after election of establishment-backed candidates far closer to the centre than they would like, both the Democrats and Republicans nominate ideologue, outsider candidates. For the Democrats, this is in the form of Florida Senator Alan Grayson, the populist progressive with few allies among his senate colleagues. For the Republicans, this is in the form of Ben Carson, the socially conservative doctor and Bush-era cabinet official with no experience in elected office. With both parties nominating more ideological candidates the race ends up narrowing, with Ventura managing to gain in the polls (despite his troubles) thanks to support from moderates turned off by both parties. Ultimately, while the Democrats had initially been favoured, Grayson's disastrous campaign in the general election, combined with the unpopularity of the Ventura administration, results in the 73-year old Carson being elected President.
One thing I only realized now is that all Bush Presidents leave office in the middle of a recession and that W and Jeb are both elected under extremely odd circumstances. Huh. Funny, that.
Ewwwww. Also, Kaine isn't moderate. He got endorsed by Sanders. He is boring though.
You should have had one of the Republican states go blue so that a hung EC happened.
I was so tempted to flip one of Nebraska's congressional districts. But I needed Bush re-elected.
More of a perception thing (kind of like Clinton right now). Plus the fact that he was anti-abortion and so forth until fairly recently wouldn't help.
Senate picks from the top two for Vice President and the House picks the top three for President
I blame Aaron Burr (sir)
Yup, there you go. Which also explains why Kaine became veep.
Also, while the Senate gives each senator a vote for VP, the House has state delegations vote by contingent (that is, the delegation votes internally and then casts a single vote for their state) for President. It's a weird system.
No Republican Vermont
No, it went to the Democrats in 1992 by such a huge margin that even the perfect storm of an awful campaign I describe in my TL probably wouldn't flip it.No Republican Vermont
That said, I'm setting up some medium-term political trends I think you of all people should find interesting once we hit 2000 or so...
Just a really quick update on my mini-TL.
A Rainbow Fades: 1988 Congressional Elections
The unprecedented success of the Bush/Quayle ticket was a surprise to many, even those who knew Jackson would lose in a landslide. What shook U.S. politics to its core however, was how much this success translated down-ticket. Before the election the Democratic party held strong majorities in both the House and Senate, now they had lost both. The House by a specifically large margin, with the Republicans missing the 300 seat mark by one. Neither party had held that many seats since 1939.
The Democrats took less of a hit in the senate elections, though they gained exactly 0 seats. Most credit this to the fact that several of their most influential senators were up in this election (Ted Kennedy, Robert Byrd, etc.), and managed to pull off victories despite Jackson's loss. Some surprises did occur on election night however. In Virginia incumbent Senator Paul Trible defeated popular former Governor Chuck Robb, and in New Jersey wall street exec and Heisman Trophy winner Pete Dawkins defeated incumbent Senator Frank Lautenberg. However, the biggest surprise of the night was in Maryland where hard-right conservative Alan Keyes defeated incumbent Senator Paul Sarbanes by less than 30 votes. His victory is credited to the Jackson campaign's poor performance, as well as low voter turnout among Democrats. Because of this a surprisingly large portion of Maryland voters who would have otherwise supported Sarbanes, had simply stayed home.
NOTE: I admit that Keyes winning is just a tad ASB, but his victory seemed to fit this TL too well not to do it. Just a little extra knife-twisting in the Democrats collective guts.
A Rainbow Fades
United States Presidential Election, 1988
A Rainbow Fades: 1988 Congressional Elections
The unprecedented success of the Bush/Quayle ticket was a surprise to many, even those who knew Jackson would lose in a landslide. What shook U.S. politics to its core however, was how much this success translated down-ticket. Before the election the Democratic party held strong majorities in both the House and Senate, now they had lost both. The House by a specifically large margin, with the Republicans missing the 300 seat mark by one. Neither party had held that many seats since 1939.
The Democrats took less of a hit in the senate elections, though they gained exactly 0 seats. Most credit this to the fact that several of their most influential senators were up in this election (Ted Kennedy, Robert Byrd, etc.), and managed to pull off victories despite Jackson's loss. Some surprises did occur on election night however. In Virginia incumbent Senator Paul Trible defeated popular former Governor Chuck Robb, and in New Jersey wall street exec and Heisman Trophy winner Pete Dawkins defeated incumbent Senator Frank Lautenberg. However, the biggest surprise of the night was in Maryland where hard-right conservative Alan Keyes defeated incumbent Senator Paul Sarbanes by less than 30 votes. His victory is credited to the Jackson campaign's poor performance, as well as low voter turnout among Democrats. Because of this a surprisingly large portion of Maryland voters who would have otherwise supported Sarbanes, had simply stayed home.
NOTE: I admit that Keyes winning is just a tad ASB, but his victory seemed to fit this TL too well not to do it. Just a little extra knife-twisting in the Democrats collective guts.
A Rainbow Fades
United States Presidential Election, 1988
That's scary, though that's everything I'd expect in the event of madafucking Jesse Jackson being the Democratic nominee.
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