Seeing Republicans as Blue and Democrats as Red is kind of odd.View attachment 589169The 1976 United States presidential election was the 48th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 2, 1976. Incumbent Republican President Gerald Ford from Michigan defeated Democrat Jimmy Carter of Georgia. Ford's victory was the third of three consecutive victories for Republican candidates, but the election would be the party's last victory until its resurgence in the 1990s. This was the last election to be held using the Electoral College system.
President Richard Nixon had won the 1972 election with Spiro Agnew as his running mate, but in 1973 Agnew resigned and Ford was appointed as vice president via the 25th Amendment. When Nixon resigned in 1974 in the wake of the Watergate scandal, Ford ascended to the presidency, becoming the only president to have never been elected by the Electoral College. He faced a strong challenge from conservative former governor Ronald Reagan of California in the Republican primaries, but Ford narrowly prevailed at the convention. Reagan would later run in the 1980 presidential election as an independent candidate, winning a substantial percentage of the popular vote but ultimately being eliminated in the first round after coming in a narrow third place. Carter was little-known at the start of the Democratic primaries, but the former governor of Georgia emerged as the front-runner after his victories in the first set of primaries. Campaigning as a political moderate and Washington outsider, Carter defeated opponents such as George Wallace and Henry "Scoop" Jackson to clinch the Democratic nomination.
Ford pursued a "Rose Garden strategy" in which he sought to portray himself as an experienced leader focused on fulfilling his role as chief executive. Carter emphasised his status as a reformer who was "untainted" by Washington. Saddled with a poor economy, the fall of South Vietnam and his unpopular pardon of Nixon, Ford trailed by a wide margin in polls taken after Carter's formal nomination in July 1976. However, Ford's polling rebounded after a strong performance in the first presidential debate, and the race was close on election day.
The 1976 election results have been widely regarded by historians as the closest in American history; a winner could not be declared for multiple weeks following the election as the results were far too close to be reliably called by the media on election night, but most speculated that Carter had most likely won the election. After extensive recounts, Carter held on to the contested states of Hawaii and Mississippi by slim margins while Ford managed to claim Ohio. However heading into December the key state of Wisconsin had not yet been called-until it was certified by Governor Patrick Lucey and Secretary of State Doug La Follette that Ford had carried the state (and therefore the Presidency) by an astoundingly small margin of 183 votes.
This was the fourth election in US history in which the winner of the national popular vote was not elected President, a fact that prompted calls for the abolition of the Electoral College system and ultimately resulted in the ratification of the 27th, 28th, and 30th amendments to the Constitution. [*] As Ford himself would say shortly after his inauguration in 1977, "I may have become President by rightful and legal means, and I may have won an election, and I may have worked-and will continue to work-tirelessly on behalf of all of the American people, but they, in their totality, have never elected me their President. That in my mind is wrong in principle, and for that I must humbly request your forgiveness and your trust."
- - - - -My own take on a classical '76 timeline, in which Ford wins his re-election in a very Bush 2000-esque fashion.
To get this result, I multiplied Ford's votes in every state by 1.01762754, and Carter's by 0.9829727564.
[*]
27th Amendment: The Bayh-Cellar Amendment as proposed under the 91st Congress, but modified to require 50% of the popular vote to win rather than the original 40%.
28th Amendment: The Federal Election Amendment, increasing the power of Congress to control and regulate federal elections.
29th Amendment: The Equal Rights Amendment, passed in the 70s ITTL thanks to Ford's cautious but open support and far better relationship with Congress than Carter.
30th Amendment: The Majority Amendment: Guarantees that the voting systems used to elect any and all public officials in the United States require 50% of the vote to win.
31st Amendment: OTL's 27th Amendment.
Alternate Wikipedia Infoboxes VI (Do Not Post Current Politics or Political Figures Here)
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Seeing Republicans as Blue and Democrats as Red is kind of odd.
I was wondering that too. Is this the alternate universe where JK doesn't get so much creative control and it gets Americanised or something? Because ngl I'd kinda like to see a wikibox for that if it isn't.
You're not wrong, it's odd for me too. But I would think that a Ford victory in '76 would butterfly away a Reagan nomination, which was the reason for ABC's switch to using Red for Republicans in the first place-before then it was still the classic Republican Blue and Democratic Red. And it would also discredit the Southern-influenced wing of the party and make the New Democrats an unlikely coalition in the future, the centrism of which has been the only good justification for using blue to represent the party today.
That was an oversight on my part, he’s obviously an Air Force/Luftwaffe guy.
Quick question did your post Get inspiration From a FutuRama episode
"Nixon's back!" And the bit about two terms rather implies OTL with a later head resurrection rather than holding power all the way along. Especially as we see a previous President die in S1.
I trust before Sonny Bono died the two of them recorded an embarassing duet in support of a Republican presidential candidate?
Not really, though I’d imagine the two interacting, I’d picture Jesse agreeing with some of Sonny’s policies. I see Jesse as a mix between Paul Tsongas, Sonny, and Jack Kemp.I trust before Sonny Bono died the two of them recorded an embarassing duet in support of a Republican presidential candidate?
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That last line has me curious about exactly how bad the situation managed to get.
I trying to imagine which states were also dissolved between 2062 and 2078. My bets are Louisiana, Hawaii, Massachussets, Connecticut and Rhode Island (although Delaware and New Jersey are also possibilities, and Puerto Rico if it managed to be made into a state)
Florida v. United States was a Supreme Court case that determined whether or not the federal government could unilaterally dissolve a state of the United States of America. The case was one of several precipitated by the National Reorganization Act of 2061, which redrew state borders due to the effects of climate change. Although most of the boundary changes were done with the consent of the states involved, this was not the case with Florida due to an incident known as the Florida Fraud. The court ruled that unilateral dissolution (ie, without the consent of the state) was unconstitutional.
Over the preceding decades, many states had seen sea level rise and other disastrous weather events that had radically altered their land territory and populations. One such state was Florida, which was by far the most impacted by these events, having lost over 40% of its land territory to the sea, swamps, and other factors such as storms which rendered the state nearly uninhabitable. Florida's decline was hastened by the Relocation Act of 2049, which granted federal assistance in relocation to residents of any state impacted by climate change who wished to move to another state. In 2055, the Florida State Legislature passed the controversial "Expulsion Law" which was used by the state government to force resistant residents to out of the Disaster Zone to safer territory. The Southeastern Migration Compact allowed for entire communities to relocate to newly built homes in neighboring states. By the late 2050s, Florida's population had dwindled to the low hundreds of thousands. It soon became the least populated state in the union, a fact which would be confirmed in the 2060 census.
However, during this time, the Florida Independence Party rose to power in state government, largely due to a lack of electoral participation from fleeing Floridians. The Independence Party resisted attempts from the federal government to dissolve Florida by either merging its lands into neighboring Georgia, turning it into a territory, or placing it under martial law. Florida successfully sued the Escalante administration when President Escalante placed the state under martial law. However, this case was largely decided due to fears of abuse of martial law in other states which were experiencing political violence and unrest. After the 2060 Census, Florida had a population of 84,606. Governor Jameson Young of the Independence Party arranged the transfer of most of Florida's inhabited land to Georgia. This left the state of Florida with a population of 109 people, among them Governor Young and his family, and his business partners. Young, a transplant from Indiana, had moved to Florida and bankrolled the FIP with the intention of severing the state and leaving a rump state which would have full representation in Congress but no voter base, thus allowing him and his partners to have a oversized say in federal affairs. After successfully executing this scheme, Young abolished the Florida State Legislature, leaving himself as the only vestige of statewide government. The state's senators were his husband Portnoy Young and his FIP co-financier Dennis Rinaldi. Florida's Congressman was his nephew Don DeMaio.
In response, Congress included in the Reorganization Act a provision which would dissolve the State of Florida and replace it with the unorganized Territory of Florida, to be overseen by the federal government, with habitable areas owned by Young and his associates annexed to Georgia. Although this decision was made with near unanimous support in Congress (passed 602-18-5 in the House, 105-3 in the Senate) and was very popular nationwide, there were concerns about the federal government's authority to make such a decision, and whether it could be used against a "real" state. Florida sued, with the Supreme Court having original jurisdiction. Florida argued that the federal government lacked the constitutional authority to dissolve a state, and cited Texas v. White as precedent that states entered into an "indissoluble relation." The U.S. argued that there was no prohibition against the dissolution of states, as the constitution was silent on the issue. The Constitution only spoke on the admission and creation of states.
The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice Azari, upheld Texas v. White's interpretation of the "indissoluble relation", citing Article IV of the Constitution, which states "the United States shall guarantee to every state...a republican form of government" and that "the citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states." A concurring opinion by Justice Papik agreed that the federal government had no power to dissolve a state, but argued that since Florida no longer had a state government to speak of, so the Congress was the only authority on the matter. Thus, even if the consent of both parties was necessary, the state had rendered itself defunct and its consequent silence was tantamount to agreement with all decisions of the federal government. The dissent, written by the most junior justice of the court, Carlos Fremont Jackson, agreed with the federal government's argument that there is nothing prohibiting the dissolution of a state. Furthermore, Fremont wrote that Florida had become "an obscenity" and that it's continued existence constituted an act of domestic violence against the other states. A partial dissent by Justice Tang argued that although the federal government had no explicit power to dissolve a state, but it was necessary to dissolve Florida in order to preserve the national interest.
Legal scholars have described the case as a quagmire with no clear answer. The opinions produced by the court were thoroughly criticized for being tailored to meet political ends. Justices who wanted Florida dissolved but did not wish to set a precedent for dissolution dissented. Justices who supported dissolution in general and justices who opposed Florida dissolution but were agreeable to dissolution in principle assented. The decision was met with public outrage and resulted in a series of actions from the federal government which prompted further lawsuits. First, both houses of Congress unseated Florida's members. Their suits were dismissed by the courts as political matters, since Congress can determine its own qualifications for membership. Secondly, Congress introduced a constitutional amendment to allow for state dissolution. Thirdly, Congress eliminated all disbursement to Florida from the federal budget. Furthermore, President Razak instituted martial law in Florida, in defiance of Parilla v. Chow. The latter two incidents prompted lawsuits from Florida, but the cases were never heard, as the dissolution amendment was ratified by the states and used to eliminate Florida with extreme haste. Florida was the first of five states which would be dissolved by the federal government unilaterally before the passage of the 38th Amendment in 2078, which introduced stricter requirements and regulations necessary to dissolve a state.
Also, dear lord, the world by 2062 must be nearing distopia if the American government is so nonchalant in undoing states (and governors are managing to turn their states into their own pseudo-kingdoms with the government unspoken permission)
Yes, things are quite bad all around. Louisiana is definitely one of the states that was dissolved, I didn't think much about it so the other states could have been dissolved for any reason. Florida is a bit of an extreme case because sea level rise combined with extreme weather events and incompetent leadership prompted mass migration on a scale much greater than any other state. Now that I looked into it, 40 years is probably too short of a time scale to get to this stage, maybe I should have set it another 40 years down the line. But generally speaking, the world, America, and everything is in bad shape.
a more realistic version of this could be set in the 2120’s or 2150’s but at a state level say Louisiana with Plaquemines Parish or Monroe County in Florida being nearly totally depopulated due to climate change and the same issues being brought up.
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