My second wikibox, sorry for crappy quality, takes place in au where north secedes but is defeated
Alternate Wikipedia Infoboxes V (Do Not Post Current Politics Here)
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My second wikibox, sorry for crappy quality, takes place in au where north secedes but is defeated
So this is me trying my hand at something sort of House of Cards-styled, where there's no definite POD and fictional characters coexist in the universe's history alongside real historical figures. I got the first four maps by playing an online civics game designed for kids, where the preexisting leanings of each state are entirely random, then tried to create a universe around them and to figure out how this universe might exist past the fourth map. So here it is:
The presidential election of 1964 served as a stunning rebuke of the notion that the Republican party had and would maintain a firm grip of electoral control of the American Midwest. In the previous cycle, Republican Nelson Rockefeller defeated Democrat George Smathers in a landslide, Smathers winning only the states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina. Yes, the Democratic solid south was alive and well, but 1960 yielded the party's worst results since 1872. The last thing any even marginally-politically involved American expected was a 368 vote win for any southern Democrat. When the party nominated David King, a U.S. senator from Louisiana, most predicted a repeat of every election from '52 to '60; a Republican landslide. These predictions seldom changed in the face of the King campaign's choice of governor Albert Boyle of Oklahoma, a candidate from a state that many considered to also be southern, if not "south-Midwestern," for vice presidential candidate.
Where the Democratic ticket got its strength, however, was from the populist platform of then nominee King. King proposed the implementation of a national healthcare service, however limited, like those being tested in Europe, agricultural subsidization, and the "gradual" end of segregation in the south. The latter of these three, as it was seen by southern voters, was veiled language denoting King's intentions to drag out the desegregation process to the point of a near stand-still. This helped to subdue possible faithless electors in the deep south, while simultaneously being interpreted as a devotion to civil rights by voters in the northeast and west coast. Republican Allen Boulton, having acknowledged King's strength among rural Midwestern voters, believed he could manage a victory by appealing to manufacturing laborers, who formed a powerful bloc from Minnesota down across the Great Lakes and east to New Jersey and Virginia. The Republicans also expected, naturally, to carry the Midwest regardless, but the Boulton campaign ignored campaigning there to the point of neglect, the candidate himself believing victory lied in states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and California.
When the day came, the solid south, as expected, remained as such. New York and southern New England were acceptable losses for the Republicans, but the first point of concern came about with King's victory in Ohio, a state that Boulton had put considerable effort into turning in his favor. These defeats began to stack higher, with the surprise stars of election night being North Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Colorado. All four of these states went to King, and the election had been called in his favor by the time Texas had finished counting its votes. Now, a man who had campaigned as a different candidate from one state to another, supporting segregation in Alabama and opposing it in Massachusetts, would have to decide what kind of president he was really going to be.
King, in his first term, managed to fuse the do-it-yourself attitude that won him with the Midwest with the governmental intervention that the region really needed. He implemented a new series of welfare programs, dubbed the "Common Man's Deal," which improved the food stamp system and mandated a new federal minimum wage of $1.25/hour, the highest in the country's history. The Common Man's Deal also greatly improved the benefits received by farmers via improved rural infrastructure and subsidies for equipment, and included the passage of a number of anti-monopoly bills that helped to slow corporate control of farming in America. What did not look good for King, however, was his silence on civil rights. It appeared as though Alabama's King was winning over Massachusetts' King in the White House, and this hurt the perception of the president in the west and northeast.
When the time came for King's reelection, there was no doubt that the president would have a leg up on whoever came forward to challenge him. What was unknown, however, was whether or not he could maintain this advantage as the civil rights situation became increasingly more urgent and as congress looked poised to pull itself apart due to the south feeling emboldened by King's inaction. The Republicans, looking to pick the Midwest back up, nominated Bennett Suanne, U.S. representative and former mayor of Denver. Suanne, with Democratic control of the south being too firm to shake, took up a Steel Belt strategy, targeting the country's manufacturing regions around the Great Lakes. Key Republican targets in '68 included Minnesota, Iowa, Ohio, and West Virginia, as well as California, which had gone for King by less than two percent in '64.
While the Midwest's support for the president did waver, with only Kansas supporting King, the Republicans could not break Democratic control of the Mississippi River states. A five percent total swing from Boulton to Suanne led to the Republican victories in California, Washington, and most of the Midwest. However, this wasn't enough to lead to a Suanne victory, and King was soon slated for another four years.
Merely three weeks after the election, King turned on the region responsible for his victory, calling for action on a civil rights bill that had been proposed earlier that year. Most states had, by then, outlawed segregation, with Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and South Carolina being the only states that continued to hold the institution in place. The bill, garnering support from a wave of newly elected pro-civil rights Republicans in the south, passed as expected, with the president's support being viewed as a last minute attempt to pander to some non-specific group in congress and/or the electorate. The Civil Rights Act of 1969 outlawed segregation in all states, but was rarely associated with David King. King's inconsistency on civil rights became an example of how to turn a presidency bad in its final years. The Democrats felt as though they could learn from King's mistake; to support civil rights and liberties ahead of the curve, and to stop pitching its platform to the south, a region that had essentially held the president hostage for the entirety of his tenure.
The obvious choice was Will Reich. The progressive Wisconsin governor had fought for minority and women's rights in his own state, and the (majority of the) party had hoped he'd do the same for all of America. Reich was also seen to have a serious chance at flipping the steel belt in favor of the Democrats with his pro-union policy agenda. Reich took the well-liked elements of King's government; the Common Man's Program, the National Healthcare Network, and support for western and Midwestern farmers, and promised to continue and strengthen them. Many believed that Reich would also win the south through party loyalty alone.
The Republicans put forward Donald Stutton, a senator from Massachusetts. Stutton, on the campaign trail, praised the Civil Rights Act of 1969, but also campaigned in formerly segregated states, specifically against Reich as opposed to directly in favor of himself. On the eve of the election, it seemed that the south had failed to be embraced by either party, and was soon seen as "anyone's game."
While Reich's support of King's popular welfare and agriculture programs won him the support of a portion of the Midwest, the solid south simultaneously became the semisolid south. Additionally, Stutton, being viewed as a moderate, was able to pick up New York and New England and hold control of California. These two wins, combined with the Republican gain of Texas, was enough to push Stutton over 270 and into the White House.
Stutton's administration was marked by corruption and a fundamental breakdown and restructuring of America's perception of its own government. Through an array of reports leaked from within the White House, along with a congressional subpoena of Stutton's tax returns, it was revealed that the president had failed to report large amounts of income from corporate and foreign donations. These revelations, combined with Stutton's poor handling of the war in Vietnam, quickly turned public opinion against the president.
With congressional proceedings moving quickly to impeachment and a likely removal from office, Stutton resigned on December 24, 1975. Former Speaker of the House Ed Katzenburg, who had taken vice president Rod Hannity's place early on in 1975, was sworn in the next day. Katzenburg proved himself effective at distancing his administration from that of Stutton, choosing not to pardon the former president after he had been arrested for tax fraud five months after resigning. Katzenburg also managed a peace in Vietnam, the prospect of which Stutton had completely abandoned, and ensured a future for a U.S.-friendly South Vietnam.
Though Katzenburg still had to bare the burden of being Sutton's former vice president, thus continuing to be associated with the president, he soon proved popular. He refrained from interfering with welfare funding, winning him favor in the south and the lower Midwest, and constructed a new foreign policy by signing disarmament treaties with the U.S.S.R. and opening trade with East Europe and China.
Still, it was natural that the American people would be looking for change after almost three years of corrupt Republican government. The Democrats chose Francis Boyer, a social-progressive with libertarian tendencies who looked poised to finally lock down the west. On November 2, 1976, the election was closer than a lot of Republicans would have wanted, but it was a victory nonetheless.
Although Katzenburg could have feasibly won a second term, he announced his intentions not to shortly after the election. The next four years were essentially a repeat of the previous one, with Katzenburg maintaining popular social service programs and continuing to support the socially conservative policies put forth by Stutton and, to a lesser degree, King.
With Katzenburg declining to seek a second term, the Democrats felt they had a serious chance at winning the Oval Office back. Anderson French, house minority leader, fully embraced the concept of a solid blue west, and battled hard on the campaign trail to bolster the history of the party as one that had fought in the legislature to help the region specifically. On the other side of the isle, New Hampshire representative and former Stutton Secretary of State Clarence Paulson won the Republican nomination nearly unopposed. He painted his opposition as having fallen into the trappings of socialism, and promised to end the National Health Network (NHN) in favor of a privatized system.
The election was not as close as it was in '76. There was a half-a-point swing toward the Republicans, who picked up Missouri and Vermont while losing Nevada, Arizona, and South Dakota. Mississippi remained the only southern Democratic state, experiencing an abnormally higher black and youth turnout than its neighbors.
1980 was the election that replaced the solid south with the solid west.
In a race between "as little government as possible" and "government when necessary," the former had won. Paulson cut funding for the NHN and deregulated corporate America, doing no favors for his rural supporters. The U.S. also conducted invasions of Grenada and Nicaragua under Paulson's command, severely damaging the relations that had been built between America and the eastern bloc by president Katzenburg. Even more, Paulson's sudden and severe economic deregulation led to serious uncertainty both at Wall Street and around the world. These conditions mounted for three years until August of 1983, when the markets collectively crashed, driven at first by damage done to the oil market by Iranian and Iraqi embargoes in response to Paulson's foreign policy.
The states quickly fell into a recession. This gave the Democrats an easy opportunity to attack the president for perceived incompetence, to mobilize the youth vote, and to field an array of promises that, if implemented, would hopefully reverse the damage done to the economy and government programs.
After a long and brutal campaign, Duff Angleton, the senior senator from California, narrowly beat out Katherine Gardener, the mayor of Chicago, for the Democratic nomination. Angleton, recognizing Gardner's desire for genuine change and her serious presidential aspirations, chose the woman as his vice presidential candidate. Angleton pitched his campaign as one for a return to normalcy, citing president Paulson's sudden and drastic overturn of the nations norms, as well as his occasional brash and irreverent attitude toward dissent, as something that would serve to only worsen the condition of the country. Angleton also ran on a very pro-NHN and near-social democratic platform, and promised to expand the NHN to be truly universal.
Paulson attempted to smear Angleton's promises as "communistic, fiscally irresponsible," and "sure to further deteriorate our stagnant economy." But Paulson's efforts revealed themselves to be in vein. Angleton and Gardner defeated Paulson and VP Nick Yates in the 1984 election with a majority of the popular vote and a 30 vote electoral college lead.
Angleton's first order of business was stabilizing the American economy. He ended tensions with Iran and Iraq, as well as several North African oil-producers, by reaching out to heads of state and signing a number of new trade deals and treaties. Angleton also moved to re-thaw relations with the Soviet Union and China, who had some degree of leverage over the Middle East after Paulson's alienation of their governments. After Alexei Sokolov took control in the Soviet Union, Angleton took every chance he could get could make contact with Sokolov, sensing the premier's desire to move his country away from the authoritarianism that had prevailed since its founding.
By 1986, the economy seemed to be on the rebound as Angleton's policies took full effect. In 1987, the newly Democratic congress cooperated with the president in passing the National Healthcare Network Expansion Act, which mandated that the NHN become directly connected with the Department of Health and Human Services, with all operations being funded through general taxation. This was made easier by the new congress' passage of a tax hike that raised income tax to 75% for all earners making over 89 thousand dollars a year (this after Paulson had lowered the rate for this bracket to 45%). Angleton had definitely succeeded in bringing the country back to normalcy, but it soon became time to see if the president could win the mandate he needed to oversee some meaningful change.
The progressive wing of the Democratic party had become the establishment, and the south had been essentially ejected, with a single Mississippi representative and one Georgia senator being the only southern Democrats in national government. The Republicans, via their proxy, Frank T. Conrad, derided this shift as socialism, tyranny, and everything un-American. Conrad was aggressive against Angleton, digging up every infraction or inconsistency in Angleton's past for use at debates. The American public soon became aware (at least more so than before) of Angleton's D.U.I., "carpetbagging" from New York to California, and college-age association with the American Democratic Socialist Party. However, the election ended up being more of a referendum on the candidates' personalities, with voters being attracted to Angleton's eloquent speaking ability and composed demeanor over Conrad's aura of anger and smug self-righteousness. The Republicans certainly learned their lesson.
Angleton's second term proved vastly more eventful than his first, and in a manner that benefited the president. Shortly after his reinauguration, Angleton signed a trade deal with Canada and Mexico, managing to convince Mexican president Manuel Cerrado to improve his country's union and wage laws in exchange for increased U.S.-Canada investment and to prevent an excess of cheap or exploitative labor from forming as a potential result of the deal and damaging the economies of both countries. The deal, while significantly reducing tariffs, did not eliminate them entirely, preventing Mexico and Canada from being oversaturated with cheap American exports.
Later that same year, Angleton championed a national assault weapons ban alongside senate majority leader Samantha Colligan. This move was not received well in the west, which perceived the president as having crossed the line between libertarianism and progressivism that had won the Democrats the region's favor for the past 12 years.
In March of 1990, after former president Paulson died in a car crash, Angleton displayed the maturity and respect that had helped to win him the election of '88, eulogizing Paulson with an expression of genuine sadness and some regret.
Angleton ended his presidency with pride, the NHN expansion becoming the administration's crowing achievement and holding a significant level of public approval in its effectiveness and accessibility. Angleton entrusted his vice president, Katherine Gardener, to continue his legacy, and gave her his official endorsement after she announced her intentions to run again in '92. However, this Democratic ticket faced a serious roadblock; West Virginia governor Howard Schafley. Schafley, disaffected from a Democratic party that he felt had abandoned the libertarian elements of its libertarian-progressive platform, left the party in 1990, and created a serious split in the party's base with his campaign.
On the other side of the isle, the Republicans put the lessons of '84 and '88 to use, opting for the moderate Gordon Stark. This decision payed off, the Republicans even managing to put a dent in the "solid west."
Schafley's performance worried some Democrats into believing that the libertarian wing of the party was on its way to rebellion, but this seemed to be a fluke, as independents and radical Democrats fared poorly in the 1994 midterms. The Republicans also managed to take control of congress in '94, allowing president Stark to push the passage of a repeal of Angleton's assault weapons ban. Otherwise, and besides a few notable tax cuts, Stark's first term was relatively uneventful.
Ever since Gardner's defeat in '92, Kansas billionaire and political activist Dick Van Holland had had his eyes on the Democratic nomination. Van Holland was a real American success story, having been raised by a working-class immigrant family in rural western Kansas only to begin his own investment firm and become the United States' eleventh wealthiest man. He had a certain "western appeal," which made him the Democratic party's best bet for 1996.
Stark, however, had proven himself to be so "charmingly" predicable and uncontroversial that the voting public decided for once that they preferred the disinteresting to the charismatic.
While the personality lesson that the Republicans had taken to heart in 1988 had been proving itself useful, much of the party's base felt as though Stark hadn't done enough to reverse the "damage" done by Angleton and the cooperating 98th through 103rd congresses. Despite Stark's high approval ratings, the Republicans felt they'd be safe in running a candidate who was as much of a polar-opposite to him as they get, running purely off of Stark's aforementioned popularity. Their choice was Dana Graham, a representative from Alabama and Clarence Paulson's youth relations adviser during the 1984 election. Graham had a history of opposing the Democrats at every possible turn, having voted against almost every single Democrat-introduced piece of legislation in the house. He had a reputation as one of the nation's few well-known members of the house, despite the fact that he held no position of leadership. Graham was the face of every anti-immigration or pro-tariff position.
On the Democratic ticket, New Mexico senator Barry Paxton stepped forward to represent the moderate wing of the party. Paxton had supported the NHN expansion, but opposed the assault weapons ban and U.S.-Canada-Mexico trade deal. Paxton selected Tennessee governor Rod Smarten as his pick for VP, and ran on a platform of significantly increasing social spending without limiting citizens' liberties.
Paxton proved himself at the debates, taking away Graham's early polling leads after Graham had spoken with seeming difficulty and a limited understanding of the issues. Graham had shown himself to be incapable of recreating Stark's capacity for compromise and persuasion.
The 2000 election would, seemingly out of nowhere, be the straw to break the proverbial Republican camel's back.
In the four years spanning Paxton's first term, unemployment had dropped from a steady 5~ percent to a low of 2.2 in mid-2004. The U.S. had become, more or less, a social state, with social spending taking up 31 percent of the national budget following a massive cut to military funding. The NHN received a spending boost, and union membership reached 18% nationally as labor collectives were granted significant bargaining ability. The Republican party opposed most of these changes, solidifying itself as the party of Dana Graham rather than that of Gordon Stark. In 2006, the Democratic and Republican parties of Michigan merged in a sudden display of bipartisan cooperation out of frustration in the direction both national parties were taking.
This merger, which would go on to become the Popular Republican party, was supportive of fiscally conservative and socially liberal policies, opposing the Democrats on the economy and the Republicans on the interpretation of civil rights and liberties. These policies appealed heavily to voters in the Steel Belt, a historically Republican region. Needless to say, the Popular Republicans' expansion to the national level made Paxton's reelection essentially guaranteed.
With the decline of the Republican party evident, the Democrats began to reshape themselves into a classical social democratic party. Paxton's second term consisted of defending and upholding the welfare state that America had been molded into, and causes such as feminism and minority rights became increasingly important to the government. For the first time in decades, the United States became one of the world's top ten nations in terms of educational performance, had the sixth highest healthcare performance rating in the world, and (while still high) national gun violence rates had dropped significantly. The United States had become increasingly "European" with the passage of the past 40 years, and the Republicans were the only significant force attempting to seriously deny that.
Paxton proved himself to be even more popular than president Stark, leaving office with a 58 percent approval rating. His successor seemed clear; Patricia Horton, Paxton's secretary of defense and a former military contractor from New York. Horton was seeking, more or less, to continue Paxton's legacy and policy platform. She made a constant effort to connect herself to Paxton, constantly getting the president to speak at her rallies and events. This ended up paying off, immensely.
Horton won by a larger margin than Paxton ever had and, in their war to assert dominance as the country's main right-wing party, the Republican and Popular Republican parties had essentially rendered themselves non-threats.
After 2008, it became clear that a new party system was coming into being. The Republicans held only 23 house and 10 senate seats after the 2010 midterms, with only the most hardcore isolationist and nationalist elements hanging on after 2008.
On the Democratic side, president Horton, while definitely continuing Paxton's economic legacy, was viewed by many Americans as being too radical on social issues. Horton's approval was middling, but the election of 2012 came down to the simple premise of voters wanting change, regardless of whether or not it was good for them.
2012 yielded the first non-Democrat or Republican victory in a general election since 1848. Alex Rainwater won with his appeal to the center of both the Popular Republican (now Populist) and Democratic parties. Rainwater, in his first term, rolled back affirmative action and hate crime legislation passed during Horton's tenure. Although Rainwater would often express support for the ends being sought by these laws, his concerns more so lied in the means, and he argued that socio-racial equity could be achieved through methods much less "jarring" to the public.
Rainwater also limited the power and extent of several social programs, suggesting that the impoverished, what few of them remained in America, would become totally dependent on those programs rather than doing what they could to help themselves. The NHN was targeted as a major drain on government spending, with the Populists seeking to cut funding for it and other social services down to 28 percent of the budget from the 31 percent it had been at before 2012.
With America's urban centers on their side, along with almost all of the west and central Midwest, the Democrats felt that they would have the votes they needed to take the White House back if they could manage to play up Rainwater's aggressions against the social programs that had come to define the United States in the eyes of both foreigners and its own citizens. For the 2016 campaign, Democratic voters selected Patrick Galway, a young senator from Montana and the first Democratic nominee to actually describe himself as a socialist.
2016 pitted left-wing populism against centrist populism and, in an almost cruel twist reminiscent of 1876 or 1888, the electoral college denied the former the win many felt it deserved.
The presidential election of 1964 served as a stunning rebuke of the notion that the Republican party had and would maintain a firm grip of electoral control of the American Midwest. In the previous cycle, Republican Nelson Rockefeller defeated Democrat George Smathers in a landslide, Smathers winning only the states of Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina. Yes, the Democratic solid south was alive and well, but 1960 yielded the party's worst results since 1872. The last thing any even marginally-politically involved American expected was a 368 vote win for any southern Democrat. When the party nominated David King, a U.S. senator from Louisiana, most predicted a repeat of every election from '52 to '60; a Republican landslide. These predictions seldom changed in the face of the King campaign's choice of governor Albert Boyle of Oklahoma, a candidate from a state that many considered to also be southern, if not "south-Midwestern," for vice presidential candidate.
Where the Democratic ticket got its strength, however, was from the populist platform of then nominee King. King proposed the implementation of a national healthcare service, however limited, like those being tested in Europe, agricultural subsidization, and the "gradual" end of segregation in the south. The latter of these three, as it was seen by southern voters, was veiled language denoting King's intentions to drag out the desegregation process to the point of a near stand-still. This helped to subdue possible faithless electors in the deep south, while simultaneously being interpreted as a devotion to civil rights by voters in the northeast and west coast. Republican Allen Boulton, having acknowledged King's strength among rural Midwestern voters, believed he could manage a victory by appealing to manufacturing laborers, who formed a powerful bloc from Minnesota down across the Great Lakes and east to New Jersey and Virginia. The Republicans also expected, naturally, to carry the Midwest regardless, but the Boulton campaign ignored campaigning there to the point of neglect, the candidate himself believing victory lied in states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and California.
When the day came, the solid south, as expected, remained as such. New York and southern New England were acceptable losses for the Republicans, but the first point of concern came about with King's victory in Ohio, a state that Boulton had put considerable effort into turning in his favor. These defeats began to stack higher, with the surprise stars of election night being North Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Colorado. All four of these states went to King, and the election had been called in his favor by the time Texas had finished counting its votes. Now, a man who had campaigned as a different candidate from one state to another, supporting segregation in Alabama and opposing it in Massachusetts, would have to decide what kind of president he was really going to be.
King, in his first term, managed to fuse the do-it-yourself attitude that won him with the Midwest with the governmental intervention that the region really needed. He implemented a new series of welfare programs, dubbed the "Common Man's Deal," which improved the food stamp system and mandated a new federal minimum wage of $1.25/hour, the highest in the country's history. The Common Man's Deal also greatly improved the benefits received by farmers via improved rural infrastructure and subsidies for equipment, and included the passage of a number of anti-monopoly bills that helped to slow corporate control of farming in America. What did not look good for King, however, was his silence on civil rights. It appeared as though Alabama's King was winning over Massachusetts' King in the White House, and this hurt the perception of the president in the west and northeast.
When the time came for King's reelection, there was no doubt that the president would have a leg up on whoever came forward to challenge him. What was unknown, however, was whether or not he could maintain this advantage as the civil rights situation became increasingly more urgent and as congress looked poised to pull itself apart due to the south feeling emboldened by King's inaction. The Republicans, looking to pick the Midwest back up, nominated Bennett Suanne, U.S. representative and former mayor of Denver. Suanne, with Democratic control of the south being too firm to shake, took up a Steel Belt strategy, targeting the country's manufacturing regions around the Great Lakes. Key Republican targets in '68 included Minnesota, Iowa, Ohio, and West Virginia, as well as California, which had gone for King by less than two percent in '64.
While the Midwest's support for the president did waver, with only Kansas supporting King, the Republicans could not break Democratic control of the Mississippi River states. A five percent total swing from Boulton to Suanne led to the Republican victories in California, Washington, and most of the Midwest. However, this wasn't enough to lead to a Suanne victory, and King was soon slated for another four years.
Merely three weeks after the election, King turned on the region responsible for his victory, calling for action on a civil rights bill that had been proposed earlier that year. Most states had, by then, outlawed segregation, with Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and South Carolina being the only states that continued to hold the institution in place. The bill, garnering support from a wave of newly elected pro-civil rights Republicans in the south, passed as expected, with the president's support being viewed as a last minute attempt to pander to some non-specific group in congress and/or the electorate. The Civil Rights Act of 1969 outlawed segregation in all states, but was rarely associated with David King. King's inconsistency on civil rights became an example of how to turn a presidency bad in its final years. The Democrats felt as though they could learn from King's mistake; to support civil rights and liberties ahead of the curve, and to stop pitching its platform to the south, a region that had essentially held the president hostage for the entirety of his tenure.
The obvious choice was Will Reich. The progressive Wisconsin governor had fought for minority and women's rights in his own state, and the (majority of the) party had hoped he'd do the same for all of America. Reich was also seen to have a serious chance at flipping the steel belt in favor of the Democrats with his pro-union policy agenda. Reich took the well-liked elements of King's government; the Common Man's Program, the National Healthcare Network, and support for western and Midwestern farmers, and promised to continue and strengthen them. Many believed that Reich would also win the south through party loyalty alone.
The Republicans put forward Donald Stutton, a senator from Massachusetts. Stutton, on the campaign trail, praised the Civil Rights Act of 1969, but also campaigned in formerly segregated states, specifically against Reich as opposed to directly in favor of himself. On the eve of the election, it seemed that the south had failed to be embraced by either party, and was soon seen as "anyone's game."
While Reich's support of King's popular welfare and agriculture programs won him the support of a portion of the Midwest, the solid south simultaneously became the semisolid south. Additionally, Stutton, being viewed as a moderate, was able to pick up New York and New England and hold control of California. These two wins, combined with the Republican gain of Texas, was enough to push Stutton over 270 and into the White House.
Stutton's administration was marked by corruption and a fundamental breakdown and restructuring of America's perception of its own government. Through an array of reports leaked from within the White House, along with a congressional subpoena of Stutton's tax returns, it was revealed that the president had failed to report large amounts of income from corporate and foreign donations. These revelations, combined with Stutton's poor handling of the war in Vietnam, quickly turned public opinion against the president.
With congressional proceedings moving quickly to impeachment and a likely removal from office, Stutton resigned on December 24, 1975. Former Speaker of the House Ed Katzenburg, who had taken vice president Rod Hannity's place early on in 1975, was sworn in the next day. Katzenburg proved himself effective at distancing his administration from that of Stutton, choosing not to pardon the former president after he had been arrested for tax fraud five months after resigning. Katzenburg also managed a peace in Vietnam, the prospect of which Stutton had completely abandoned, and ensured a future for a U.S.-friendly South Vietnam.
Though Katzenburg still had to bare the burden of being Sutton's former vice president, thus continuing to be associated with the president, he soon proved popular. He refrained from interfering with welfare funding, winning him favor in the south and the lower Midwest, and constructed a new foreign policy by signing disarmament treaties with the U.S.S.R. and opening trade with East Europe and China.
Still, it was natural that the American people would be looking for change after almost three years of corrupt Republican government. The Democrats chose Francis Boyer, a social-progressive with libertarian tendencies who looked poised to finally lock down the west. On November 2, 1976, the election was closer than a lot of Republicans would have wanted, but it was a victory nonetheless.
Although Katzenburg could have feasibly won a second term, he announced his intentions not to shortly after the election. The next four years were essentially a repeat of the previous one, with Katzenburg maintaining popular social service programs and continuing to support the socially conservative policies put forth by Stutton and, to a lesser degree, King.
With Katzenburg declining to seek a second term, the Democrats felt they had a serious chance at winning the Oval Office back. Anderson French, house minority leader, fully embraced the concept of a solid blue west, and battled hard on the campaign trail to bolster the history of the party as one that had fought in the legislature to help the region specifically. On the other side of the isle, New Hampshire representative and former Stutton Secretary of State Clarence Paulson won the Republican nomination nearly unopposed. He painted his opposition as having fallen into the trappings of socialism, and promised to end the National Health Network (NHN) in favor of a privatized system.
The election was not as close as it was in '76. There was a half-a-point swing toward the Republicans, who picked up Missouri and Vermont while losing Nevada, Arizona, and South Dakota. Mississippi remained the only southern Democratic state, experiencing an abnormally higher black and youth turnout than its neighbors.
1980 was the election that replaced the solid south with the solid west.
In a race between "as little government as possible" and "government when necessary," the former had won. Paulson cut funding for the NHN and deregulated corporate America, doing no favors for his rural supporters. The U.S. also conducted invasions of Grenada and Nicaragua under Paulson's command, severely damaging the relations that had been built between America and the eastern bloc by president Katzenburg. Even more, Paulson's sudden and severe economic deregulation led to serious uncertainty both at Wall Street and around the world. These conditions mounted for three years until August of 1983, when the markets collectively crashed, driven at first by damage done to the oil market by Iranian and Iraqi embargoes in response to Paulson's foreign policy.
The states quickly fell into a recession. This gave the Democrats an easy opportunity to attack the president for perceived incompetence, to mobilize the youth vote, and to field an array of promises that, if implemented, would hopefully reverse the damage done to the economy and government programs.
After a long and brutal campaign, Duff Angleton, the senior senator from California, narrowly beat out Katherine Gardener, the mayor of Chicago, for the Democratic nomination. Angleton, recognizing Gardner's desire for genuine change and her serious presidential aspirations, chose the woman as his vice presidential candidate. Angleton pitched his campaign as one for a return to normalcy, citing president Paulson's sudden and drastic overturn of the nations norms, as well as his occasional brash and irreverent attitude toward dissent, as something that would serve to only worsen the condition of the country. Angleton also ran on a very pro-NHN and near-social democratic platform, and promised to expand the NHN to be truly universal.
Paulson attempted to smear Angleton's promises as "communistic, fiscally irresponsible," and "sure to further deteriorate our stagnant economy." But Paulson's efforts revealed themselves to be in vein. Angleton and Gardner defeated Paulson and VP Nick Yates in the 1984 election with a majority of the popular vote and a 30 vote electoral college lead.
Angleton's first order of business was stabilizing the American economy. He ended tensions with Iran and Iraq, as well as several North African oil-producers, by reaching out to heads of state and signing a number of new trade deals and treaties. Angleton also moved to re-thaw relations with the Soviet Union and China, who had some degree of leverage over the Middle East after Paulson's alienation of their governments. After Alexei Sokolov took control in the Soviet Union, Angleton took every chance he could get could make contact with Sokolov, sensing the premier's desire to move his country away from the authoritarianism that had prevailed since its founding.
By 1986, the economy seemed to be on the rebound as Angleton's policies took full effect. In 1987, the newly Democratic congress cooperated with the president in passing the National Healthcare Network Expansion Act, which mandated that the NHN become directly connected with the Department of Health and Human Services, with all operations being funded through general taxation. This was made easier by the new congress' passage of a tax hike that raised income tax to 75% for all earners making over 89 thousand dollars a year (this after Paulson had lowered the rate for this bracket to 45%). Angleton had definitely succeeded in bringing the country back to normalcy, but it soon became time to see if the president could win the mandate he needed to oversee some meaningful change.
The progressive wing of the Democratic party had become the establishment, and the south had been essentially ejected, with a single Mississippi representative and one Georgia senator being the only southern Democrats in national government. The Republicans, via their proxy, Frank T. Conrad, derided this shift as socialism, tyranny, and everything un-American. Conrad was aggressive against Angleton, digging up every infraction or inconsistency in Angleton's past for use at debates. The American public soon became aware (at least more so than before) of Angleton's D.U.I., "carpetbagging" from New York to California, and college-age association with the American Democratic Socialist Party. However, the election ended up being more of a referendum on the candidates' personalities, with voters being attracted to Angleton's eloquent speaking ability and composed demeanor over Conrad's aura of anger and smug self-righteousness. The Republicans certainly learned their lesson.
Angleton's second term proved vastly more eventful than his first, and in a manner that benefited the president. Shortly after his reinauguration, Angleton signed a trade deal with Canada and Mexico, managing to convince Mexican president Manuel Cerrado to improve his country's union and wage laws in exchange for increased U.S.-Canada investment and to prevent an excess of cheap or exploitative labor from forming as a potential result of the deal and damaging the economies of both countries. The deal, while significantly reducing tariffs, did not eliminate them entirely, preventing Mexico and Canada from being oversaturated with cheap American exports.
Later that same year, Angleton championed a national assault weapons ban alongside senate majority leader Samantha Colligan. This move was not received well in the west, which perceived the president as having crossed the line between libertarianism and progressivism that had won the Democrats the region's favor for the past 12 years.
In March of 1990, after former president Paulson died in a car crash, Angleton displayed the maturity and respect that had helped to win him the election of '88, eulogizing Paulson with an expression of genuine sadness and some regret.
Angleton ended his presidency with pride, the NHN expansion becoming the administration's crowing achievement and holding a significant level of public approval in its effectiveness and accessibility. Angleton entrusted his vice president, Katherine Gardener, to continue his legacy, and gave her his official endorsement after she announced her intentions to run again in '92. However, this Democratic ticket faced a serious roadblock; West Virginia governor Howard Schafley. Schafley, disaffected from a Democratic party that he felt had abandoned the libertarian elements of its libertarian-progressive platform, left the party in 1990, and created a serious split in the party's base with his campaign.
On the other side of the isle, the Republicans put the lessons of '84 and '88 to use, opting for the moderate Gordon Stark. This decision payed off, the Republicans even managing to put a dent in the "solid west."
Schafley's performance worried some Democrats into believing that the libertarian wing of the party was on its way to rebellion, but this seemed to be a fluke, as independents and radical Democrats fared poorly in the 1994 midterms. The Republicans also managed to take control of congress in '94, allowing president Stark to push the passage of a repeal of Angleton's assault weapons ban. Otherwise, and besides a few notable tax cuts, Stark's first term was relatively uneventful.
Ever since Gardner's defeat in '92, Kansas billionaire and political activist Dick Van Holland had had his eyes on the Democratic nomination. Van Holland was a real American success story, having been raised by a working-class immigrant family in rural western Kansas only to begin his own investment firm and become the United States' eleventh wealthiest man. He had a certain "western appeal," which made him the Democratic party's best bet for 1996.
Stark, however, had proven himself to be so "charmingly" predicable and uncontroversial that the voting public decided for once that they preferred the disinteresting to the charismatic.
While the personality lesson that the Republicans had taken to heart in 1988 had been proving itself useful, much of the party's base felt as though Stark hadn't done enough to reverse the "damage" done by Angleton and the cooperating 98th through 103rd congresses. Despite Stark's high approval ratings, the Republicans felt they'd be safe in running a candidate who was as much of a polar-opposite to him as they get, running purely off of Stark's aforementioned popularity. Their choice was Dana Graham, a representative from Alabama and Clarence Paulson's youth relations adviser during the 1984 election. Graham had a history of opposing the Democrats at every possible turn, having voted against almost every single Democrat-introduced piece of legislation in the house. He had a reputation as one of the nation's few well-known members of the house, despite the fact that he held no position of leadership. Graham was the face of every anti-immigration or pro-tariff position.
On the Democratic ticket, New Mexico senator Barry Paxton stepped forward to represent the moderate wing of the party. Paxton had supported the NHN expansion, but opposed the assault weapons ban and U.S.-Canada-Mexico trade deal. Paxton selected Tennessee governor Rod Smarten as his pick for VP, and ran on a platform of significantly increasing social spending without limiting citizens' liberties.
Paxton proved himself at the debates, taking away Graham's early polling leads after Graham had spoken with seeming difficulty and a limited understanding of the issues. Graham had shown himself to be incapable of recreating Stark's capacity for compromise and persuasion.
The 2000 election would, seemingly out of nowhere, be the straw to break the proverbial Republican camel's back.
In the four years spanning Paxton's first term, unemployment had dropped from a steady 5~ percent to a low of 2.2 in mid-2004. The U.S. had become, more or less, a social state, with social spending taking up 31 percent of the national budget following a massive cut to military funding. The NHN received a spending boost, and union membership reached 18% nationally as labor collectives were granted significant bargaining ability. The Republican party opposed most of these changes, solidifying itself as the party of Dana Graham rather than that of Gordon Stark. In 2006, the Democratic and Republican parties of Michigan merged in a sudden display of bipartisan cooperation out of frustration in the direction both national parties were taking.
This merger, which would go on to become the Popular Republican party, was supportive of fiscally conservative and socially liberal policies, opposing the Democrats on the economy and the Republicans on the interpretation of civil rights and liberties. These policies appealed heavily to voters in the Steel Belt, a historically Republican region. Needless to say, the Popular Republicans' expansion to the national level made Paxton's reelection essentially guaranteed.
With the decline of the Republican party evident, the Democrats began to reshape themselves into a classical social democratic party. Paxton's second term consisted of defending and upholding the welfare state that America had been molded into, and causes such as feminism and minority rights became increasingly important to the government. For the first time in decades, the United States became one of the world's top ten nations in terms of educational performance, had the sixth highest healthcare performance rating in the world, and (while still high) national gun violence rates had dropped significantly. The United States had become increasingly "European" with the passage of the past 40 years, and the Republicans were the only significant force attempting to seriously deny that.
Paxton proved himself to be even more popular than president Stark, leaving office with a 58 percent approval rating. His successor seemed clear; Patricia Horton, Paxton's secretary of defense and a former military contractor from New York. Horton was seeking, more or less, to continue Paxton's legacy and policy platform. She made a constant effort to connect herself to Paxton, constantly getting the president to speak at her rallies and events. This ended up paying off, immensely.
Horton won by a larger margin than Paxton ever had and, in their war to assert dominance as the country's main right-wing party, the Republican and Popular Republican parties had essentially rendered themselves non-threats.
After 2008, it became clear that a new party system was coming into being. The Republicans held only 23 house and 10 senate seats after the 2010 midterms, with only the most hardcore isolationist and nationalist elements hanging on after 2008.
On the Democratic side, president Horton, while definitely continuing Paxton's economic legacy, was viewed by many Americans as being too radical on social issues. Horton's approval was middling, but the election of 2012 came down to the simple premise of voters wanting change, regardless of whether or not it was good for them.
2012 yielded the first non-Democrat or Republican victory in a general election since 1848. Alex Rainwater won with his appeal to the center of both the Popular Republican (now Populist) and Democratic parties. Rainwater, in his first term, rolled back affirmative action and hate crime legislation passed during Horton's tenure. Although Rainwater would often express support for the ends being sought by these laws, his concerns more so lied in the means, and he argued that socio-racial equity could be achieved through methods much less "jarring" to the public.
Rainwater also limited the power and extent of several social programs, suggesting that the impoverished, what few of them remained in America, would become totally dependent on those programs rather than doing what they could to help themselves. The NHN was targeted as a major drain on government spending, with the Populists seeking to cut funding for it and other social services down to 28 percent of the budget from the 31 percent it had been at before 2012.
With America's urban centers on their side, along with almost all of the west and central Midwest, the Democrats felt that they would have the votes they needed to take the White House back if they could manage to play up Rainwater's aggressions against the social programs that had come to define the United States in the eyes of both foreigners and its own citizens. For the 2016 campaign, Democratic voters selected Patrick Galway, a young senator from Montana and the first Democratic nominee to actually describe himself as a socialist.
2016 pitted left-wing populism against centrist populism and, in an almost cruel twist reminiscent of 1876 or 1888, the electoral college denied the former the win many felt it deserved.
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In memorial of the former President.
In this scenario, I just left it open for interpretation.
Is it just me who hates the new naming system for wikipedia articles, for instance 'United States presidential election, 2016' would become '2016 United States presidential election.' I don't know why I don't like this.
It's awkward, but it makes sense when you think about it, because it means that elections are organized by where they take place before the date they take place. So all U.S. elections begin with the same text, as would any other country, province/state/region, or city.
The 1940 United States presidential election was the 39th quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 5, 1940. The election was contested in the shadow of World War II in Europe, as the United States was emerging from the Great Depression, and the war in Europe featured as one of the campaign's key battlegrounds. The eventual victorious nominee, Republican Robert Taft, opposed American entry into the war and supported the U.S' continued policy of isolation. His Democratic opponent and incumbent, Franklin D. Roosevelt, did not publicly declare his support for involving the country in the war, but refused to rule out providing material support to the Allies. Whilst he was a popular president going into a record third election, he was defeated by a strong isolationist campaign from the Republicans, with their campaign slogan "Let's Get On With It" resonating with many Americans, who preferred to focus on domestic issues and the economic recovery that the country had began to experience. Whilst Roosevelt won the popular vote, thanks mainly to piling up votes in the South, his narrow losses in New York, Ohio and Illinois would see the Republicans win the electoral vote despite this.
Encino Passerini (also known by his nickname, the Italian Mustang) was an Italian wrestler was wrestled for WWE, proclaiming to the first WWE wrestler from continental Europe. Passerini's dad was a footballer who competed for local Italian clubs. Passerini first became interesting in wrestling whenever he, as an exchange student in the United States, first heard of WWE and went to see WrestleMania 35. After coming back to Italy, he started training with Manilo Damico Jr. In 2021, during a show with an Italian company, Passerini impressed Shane McMahon, who was in attendance, so much that he flew to the UK to meet with Triple H and William Regal just a week later to sign with NXT UK. In June 2024, it was announced that Encino Passerini would be placed on the WWE roster.
Passerini became an acclaimed wrestler, earning these Championships:
- WWE Universal Championship (5 times)
- WWE Championship (9 times)
- WWE United States Championship (3 times)
- WWE Intercontinental Championship (4 times)
- WWE European Championship (2 times)
- WWE Tag Team Championship (1 time)
- NXT Championship (1 time)
- NXT United Kingdom Championship (2 times)
That was incredible and I loved it. Something about the names just...SOUNDED Presidential.
Interesting.I think this has been done before, but whatever, right?
The Tokyo Treaty was one of the many important treaties of disarmament that began following the First World War with the Washington Naval Treaty and continued in London, Geneva, Berlin, and New York. While the earliest treaties focused on naval arms limitation, Geneva expanded the League's arms limitation efforts, resulting in what was widely regarded as an unsatisfying and flawed treaty, but one that made considerable forward steps, notably expanding the naval arms limitation beyond the Big Five, introducing limitations on aircraft, and banning chemical, biological, and incendiary weapons. Berlin and New York increased the scope of limitations, creating schedules for air and land arms limitations and coastal defenses.
Tokyo limited infantry weapons, a first for the treaty series. Shotguns, most bayonets, barbed wire (outside certain types of permanent fortification), and mortars and recoilless rifles with calibers above 3.2 inches were banned; static coastal fortifications were limited to guns of no greater than 8 inches (and New York treaty schedules for coastal defense guns were adjusted to take this into account). Additionally, the Five Powers Annex, signed by the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, France, and the Netherlands, limited the building of any new island fortifications in the South Pacific, and the Three Powers Annex, signed by the US, UK, and Japan, unilaterally revised carrier aircraft restrictions for the three powers, a move that caused significant consternation in France and Italy, but ultimately no major consequence.
Attack on the Virginia
"Is the Era of the Battleship Over?"
And the placeholder box I did to get to this one, which is also good:
The Tokyo Treaty was one of the many important treaties of disarmament that began following the First World War with the Washington Naval Treaty and continued in London, Geneva, Berlin, and New York. While the earliest treaties focused on naval arms limitation, Geneva expanded the League's arms limitation efforts, resulting in what was widely regarded as an unsatisfying and flawed treaty, but one that made considerable forward steps, notably expanding the naval arms limitation beyond the Big Five, introducing limitations on aircraft, and banning chemical, biological, and incendiary weapons. Berlin and New York increased the scope of limitations, creating schedules for air and land arms limitations and coastal defenses.
Tokyo limited infantry weapons, a first for the treaty series. Shotguns, most bayonets, barbed wire (outside certain types of permanent fortification), and mortars and recoilless rifles with calibers above 3.2 inches were banned; static coastal fortifications were limited to guns of no greater than 8 inches (and New York treaty schedules for coastal defense guns were adjusted to take this into account). Additionally, the Five Powers Annex, signed by the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, France, and the Netherlands, limited the building of any new island fortifications in the South Pacific, and the Three Powers Annex, signed by the US, UK, and Japan, unilaterally revised carrier aircraft restrictions for the three powers, a move that caused significant consternation in France and Italy, but ultimately no major consequence.
Attack on the Virginia
"Is the Era of the Battleship Over?"
Super creative. I definitely want to see more stuff like this in the future please.
It was called "Win the White House." It's really easy to blow through once you figure it all out.
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