Stretch
Donor
You might be interested in a story on Writers Forum called Hunting Rabbits 2022 Edition. Basically post-pandemic, going out in fursonas is way more popular, I believe partially because it stops COVID transmission?
Alternate Wikipedia Infoboxes VI (Do Not Post Current Politics or Political Figures Here)
- Status
Late Italian First Republic party system with M5S politicians
A table inspired by the wide variety of positions taken by (current or former) Five Star Movement politicians.
The final years of Prima Repubblica (these are the top twelve parties in 1992 general election) were the beginning of a period of radical transformation of the Italian party system: it saw decades-old declining forces, renewed parties and brand new movements briefly coexist. Five Star movement (sans the decades-old thing) has been all of the three things above.
The only modification, in terms of party names, was to rename Pannella List as Radical Party because of the actual leader's name in the party name.
A table inspired by the wide variety of positions taken by (current or former) Five Star Movement politicians.
The final years of Prima Repubblica (these are the top twelve parties in 1992 general election) were the beginning of a period of radical transformation of the Italian party system: it saw decades-old declining forces, renewed parties and brand new movements briefly coexist. Five Star movement (sans the decades-old thing) has been all of the three things above.
The only modification, in terms of party names, was to rename Pannella List as Radical Party because of the actual leader's name in the party name.
"Since the re-establishment of the Bonaparte dynasty in 1848, the great powers of Europe have spent a large amount of blood and treasure ensuring that the center of the continent - the wide sweep from the Rhine to the Vistula - is as fragmented as possible. The cast of characters engaged in that effort has changed, but the effort itself has been relatively consistent...
"The First Great European War, which the participants themselves refer to as the Prussian War, saw a rising Prussia threaten Austria, at the time dominant over the German Confederation. French aid to Austria allowed it to compete with Prussia's technologically superior army, thus allowing Napoleon III to expand his influence over the Rhineland regions his uncle had gained and lost; British attempts to contest the region only served to divide it further, initiate a series of proxy wars, and send a stream of refugees who inadvertently helped bring about the Texian Revolution.
"The Second Great European War (or Italian War) was similarly fought between Austria and a rising power, in this case the new Roman Empire. This time, foreign support from Russia allowed the rising power to take on the falling one - the Roman Pope's armies annexed Tyrol, Carniola, and Dalmatia, while Bohemia, Galicia, and Transylvania declared independence with Russian support. But Italian hegemony was little more acceptable to the great powers, most notably Britain and France, than the status quo had been - the 1905 death of Napoleon Joseph, whose adroit political skill was coupled with a deep passivity in foreign affairs, allowed a change in policy, and the coordinated invasion of the Piedmont and Roman Africa prompted dissension between Italian and Slavic nationalists and eventually allowed the independence of Austria's former 'captive nations' and the division of Italy between French protectorates and the British-aligned Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. When British control was broken, first by the effects of overly-aggressive Protestant missionaries and then by the British Revolution, Russia moved in to pick up the pieces.
"With division from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, the Third Great European War was fought instead by choice. Fearful that Russia was consolidating its control over Central Europe, radical members of the Royalist Montagnard League first engineered a provocation in the form of a largely-invented spy scandal in coup against Napoléon Alexandre, resulting in the Dual Monarchy under General Emmanuel Forestier and Princess Hélène, then supported Polish independentists, Pannonian irredentists, and Swedish Occidentalists in the hopes of pushing the Jancović line east. It worked when a group of the latter successfully launched a coup against King Oscar III - in other words, the recent beneficiary of a coup started a coup in order to check the power of the beneficiaries of a long-ago coup. The result was a eight-year war along a frontline that stretched from icebound Spitsbergen to arid Persia, one which claimed more than ten million lives on four continents - and to no real effect. Both France and Russia claim the Third Great European War as a victory, but neither claim it as a particularly honorable, meaningful, or decisive one, though individual heroes and villains receive their own credits.
"Now, half a century after the Treaty of Richmond, what does European grand strategy look like in the XXIth century? It is clear after two decades that Constantine's War had little effect on Russia's long-term aims - an ideological commitment to autocracy has given way to Georgy Rublev's formulation of a 'democracy of the demos' in which each country is formally sacrosanct in its internal affairs, but the view from Petrograd (or, for that matter, Sevastopol, Turku, and Vladivostok) remains fundamentally the same. In France, the same is true - Empress Jeanne's presidential rule has changed the methods of politics from the hands-off governance of her parents, but the goals and effects of that politics remains substantially the same to foreign nations. The substantive changes, instead, have pertained with the second rank of powers. The British Workers' Republic's longstanding insularism has given way to a new generation eager to deal with the Continent. The emergence of Poland, cordially hostile to Russia but far from a mere protectorate of France, has upset the balance of Germany and Slavonia alike. Egypt and Spain also seek to assert their independence from France, and Turkey from Russia: between them, they have transformed the Mediterranean from the 'red circle and purple slice' of Durand's graphical histories to a far more complex situation. Periodic crackdowns on unificationism in Germany and Italy increasingly only water those forbidden fruits; in 2012, for the first time in a century, an explicitly unificationist party (the People's Liberal Party) was allowed into government in a German state, albeit Hanover. And China increasingly puts its hand in, as well, to the consternation of diplomats in the Kremlin and the Élysée alike. It is clear that a bifurcated Europe will no longer be an accurate model."
-Hannibal Student Ponce de León, A Student's Guide to Geopraxis (2015)
Last edited:
This is great, really creative! The only doubt I have is on Di Battista, he holds anti-capitalist and anti-globalist ideals, but he also come from a MSI family (his father was an hardcore Fascist and IIRC a communal councilor for MSI), and never really had a net cut from his father, so I don't know if Rifondazione is the best place for him. An alternative leader for PRC could be Matteo Mantero, who left the Movement after voting against the Draghi government and joined Potere al Popolo!, becoming their first Senator. In these days he's pushing for the discussion in Parliament of an anti-delocalisation DDL he wrote with the GKN striking workers.
I didn't dig too deep in all of M5S politicians background, and I probably kinda wanted all the bigger names to be present. I only knew about Di Maio coming from a MSI and then AN sympatizing family. I thought of ADB as a moderate in 1990s PRC, although the left of PDS may suit him better.
"Japan is a rump paranoid state that's surrounded by enemies. Russia to the north and China to the west, it's no surprise that it became the hermit nation regressing back to the Tokugawa era!" - Former Chinese Chancellor Hu Jintao
Heya! I think this is the right place for this! But this is from my New Luxembourg Timeline, enjoy!
Well, it may have been several months but I figured I'd pick up on Japan in my China TL.
*
The 2021 Japanese election was held on the 4th October 2021, to elect the 465 members of the House of Representatives. It was called after a motion of no confidence was passed by the House in Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who took power the previous September.
Suga had had a period of sizeable popularity after his election as Prime Minister, but from mid-2021 onwards started to come under severe criticism due to the perceived mishandling of COVID-19 restrictions and of the 2021 Tokyo Olympics by the government, which many in the public saw as being conducted without proper consideration to the risks to public health. He also tried to court support from the right by championing socially conservative groups like the ultranationalist Nippon Kaigi, which proved contentious and helped unite leftists against him.
Sensing an opportunity to retake power for the first time in a decade, JSP leader Yukio Edano aggressively criticized Suga for the government’s poor Covid response and in August managed to organize a motion of no confidence with the other opposition parties. This motion passed and forced Suga to dissolve the House.
On the campaign trail, two major issues started to cause problems for the major parties. On the LDP side, dissent against Suga started to come to a head, as several LDP members made it clear they would support an alternative leader taking over; it attracted mockery for the possibility of the party changing leaders mid-election, an almost unprecedented scenario, particularly as Suga was merely unpopular rather than at any health risk as Keizo Obuchi had been.
At the same time, however, a pact the opposition made for contesting the FPTP constituencies came to light which allowed the LDP and NIK (Nippon Ishin no Kai, formerly the Innovation Party but now using its Japanese name in all languages) to attack it. The JSP, LPJ, JCP and Reiwa Shinsengumi (a left-wing populist party formed by former actor Tarō Yamamoto) agreed to stand only one candidate between them in various districts, a common practice in the gubernatorial elections in Japan’s prefectures. However, due to some of the rather controversial policies being promoted by the more radical parties and candidates, such as introducing gay marriage laws, tax increases on the rich and replacing nuclear power programmes, the combined endorsements came under fire from the right, who nicknamed them ‘fellow travellers’.
The election saw, as expected, significant gains for the JSP, which achieved a net gain of 80 seats and became the biggest party for the first time since before the 2011 election. However, its allies performed worse than expected, particularly the LPJ, which suffered badly from the ‘fellow travellers’ attacks and dropped from 39 to 26 seats. In other areas, the unified candidates served the opposition well, like Hokkaido, where every FPTP seat went to the JSP.
The total count gave the left-wing and centre-left parties a combined 246 seats between them, enough for an overall majority without the Komeito in an unusual situation in modern Japanese politics. The House voted to make Yukio Edano the new Prime Minister, and his government has set out several rather radical plans, including expanding healthcare funding and introducing a gay marriage bill (LGBTQ advocates in Japan have joked that he is racing with Chinese President Jiang Jielian to be the first country in Asia to recognize it) while working to expand Covid vaccinations and testing.
*
The 2021 Japanese election was held on the 4th October 2021, to elect the 465 members of the House of Representatives. It was called after a motion of no confidence was passed by the House in Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, who took power the previous September.
Suga had had a period of sizeable popularity after his election as Prime Minister, but from mid-2021 onwards started to come under severe criticism due to the perceived mishandling of COVID-19 restrictions and of the 2021 Tokyo Olympics by the government, which many in the public saw as being conducted without proper consideration to the risks to public health. He also tried to court support from the right by championing socially conservative groups like the ultranationalist Nippon Kaigi, which proved contentious and helped unite leftists against him.
Sensing an opportunity to retake power for the first time in a decade, JSP leader Yukio Edano aggressively criticized Suga for the government’s poor Covid response and in August managed to organize a motion of no confidence with the other opposition parties. This motion passed and forced Suga to dissolve the House.
On the campaign trail, two major issues started to cause problems for the major parties. On the LDP side, dissent against Suga started to come to a head, as several LDP members made it clear they would support an alternative leader taking over; it attracted mockery for the possibility of the party changing leaders mid-election, an almost unprecedented scenario, particularly as Suga was merely unpopular rather than at any health risk as Keizo Obuchi had been.
At the same time, however, a pact the opposition made for contesting the FPTP constituencies came to light which allowed the LDP and NIK (Nippon Ishin no Kai, formerly the Innovation Party but now using its Japanese name in all languages) to attack it. The JSP, LPJ, JCP and Reiwa Shinsengumi (a left-wing populist party formed by former actor Tarō Yamamoto) agreed to stand only one candidate between them in various districts, a common practice in the gubernatorial elections in Japan’s prefectures. However, due to some of the rather controversial policies being promoted by the more radical parties and candidates, such as introducing gay marriage laws, tax increases on the rich and replacing nuclear power programmes, the combined endorsements came under fire from the right, who nicknamed them ‘fellow travellers’.
The election saw, as expected, significant gains for the JSP, which achieved a net gain of 80 seats and became the biggest party for the first time since before the 2011 election. However, its allies performed worse than expected, particularly the LPJ, which suffered badly from the ‘fellow travellers’ attacks and dropped from 39 to 26 seats. In other areas, the unified candidates served the opposition well, like Hokkaido, where every FPTP seat went to the JSP.
The total count gave the left-wing and centre-left parties a combined 246 seats between them, enough for an overall majority without the Komeito in an unusual situation in modern Japanese politics. The House voted to make Yukio Edano the new Prime Minister, and his government has set out several rather radical plans, including expanding healthcare funding and introducing a gay marriage bill (LGBTQ advocates in Japan have joked that he is racing with Chinese President Jiang Jielian to be the first country in Asia to recognize it) while working to expand Covid vaccinations and testing.
Last edited:
I'm really interested what the CofE looks like in this universe. More puritan? more Presbyterian?
A Doctor Who infobox I put together. Some is made up, the rest comes from Series 2 and Series 3, particularly the last 3 episodes of Series 3.
Harold Saxon (10 July 1970 - 9 June 2008) was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for two days in 2008 before his murder. He was a gifted, charismatic man who was elected as MP for Bromley and Chislehurst in a by-election in 2006 for the Labour Party, winning a Conservative safe seat and showing his ability. This showed when he was appointed Secretary of State for Defence shortly after by Prime Minister Harriet Jones. He grew to quickly be a large, popular voice in the cabinet, consistently bringing in successful policy moves but after a controversy surrounding the now-unpopular Jones, Saxon split from the Labour Party, forming the Harold Saxon Independents, which attracted numerous Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat and SNP MPs into joining it as a big-tent alliance. In the 2008 general election, Saxon’s party won a massive majority of 633 seats, the biggest in any British general election. He was sworn in as Prime Minister on 7 June 2008, appointing his cabinet. However, shortly after the cabinet’s first private meeting, the cabinet were all found dead in their chairs in what is believed to have been a gas attack perpetrated by Saxon. After this, Saxon became detested by the British public and the remaining MPs of his own party, and a grass-roots rebellion started to occur along with campaigns for him to resign. He was condemned as committing mass murder by the United Nations, who placed sanctions on Britain. Two days after the massacre, Saxon was shot dead by his own wife, Lucy, who had woken up to his crimes. The members of the Harold Saxon Independents soon went back to their own parties, and British politics began to continue as normal.
Harold Saxon (10 July 1970 - 9 June 2008) was a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom for two days in 2008 before his murder. He was a gifted, charismatic man who was elected as MP for Bromley and Chislehurst in a by-election in 2006 for the Labour Party, winning a Conservative safe seat and showing his ability. This showed when he was appointed Secretary of State for Defence shortly after by Prime Minister Harriet Jones. He grew to quickly be a large, popular voice in the cabinet, consistently bringing in successful policy moves but after a controversy surrounding the now-unpopular Jones, Saxon split from the Labour Party, forming the Harold Saxon Independents, which attracted numerous Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democrat and SNP MPs into joining it as a big-tent alliance. In the 2008 general election, Saxon’s party won a massive majority of 633 seats, the biggest in any British general election. He was sworn in as Prime Minister on 7 June 2008, appointing his cabinet. However, shortly after the cabinet’s first private meeting, the cabinet were all found dead in their chairs in what is believed to have been a gas attack perpetrated by Saxon. After this, Saxon became detested by the British public and the remaining MPs of his own party, and a grass-roots rebellion started to occur along with campaigns for him to resign. He was condemned as committing mass murder by the United Nations, who placed sanctions on Britain. Two days after the massacre, Saxon was shot dead by his own wife, Lucy, who had woken up to his crimes. The members of the Harold Saxon Independents soon went back to their own parties, and British politics began to continue as normal.
UEFA Euro 1992 in a TL where the expansion to 16 teams occurred in 1984 instead of 1996.
Geez, it's been about a year since my last Thomas & Friends related infobox. Well time to add another one.
With recent information in the Thomas fandom coming out over the past year or so, I've decided that my next infobox will be about a class of British steam locomotives that in real life were all scrapped (though two replicas were later built) but one survives in Awdry's universe and works on the North Western Railway. Introducing, the LNWR Bloomer Class!
The LNWR Bloomer Class are a class 2-2-2 steam locomotives. 74 of them were built between 1851 and 1862. They were all withdrawn from service between 1866 and 1888.
NWR 13 Bloomer
All the members of the Bloomer Class were all thought to have been scrapped, however, in 1970, one was found in an old shed in Wigtownshire by the Sir Charles Topham Hatt (1914-1997), who served as the Controller of the North Western Railway on the Island of Sodor from 1954 to 1984. It would be taken to the Crovan's Gate Works on the Island of Sodor and would be restored. The locomotive would be named Bloomer (after the class itself) and would be numbered 13 for the North Western Railway.
Shortly after Bloomer had his restoration completed in 1975, he would attend the Shildon cavalcade to celebrate the 150 year anniversary of the Stockton and Darlington Railway.
Since the 1975 celebrations, Bloomer has been used on enthusiast special trains on the North Western Railway, usually along the Ffarquhar Branch Line. He has also been given a pair of observation saloon coaches for him to pull.
Sources
Awdry's Railways of Sodor Lecture (1972) mentions info about Bloomer among several other things.
With recent information in the Thomas fandom coming out over the past year or so, I've decided that my next infobox will be about a class of British steam locomotives that in real life were all scrapped (though two replicas were later built) but one survives in Awdry's universe and works on the North Western Railway. Introducing, the LNWR Bloomer Class!
North Western Railway
Thread VI page 34: NWR #1 Thomas
Skarloey Railway
Thread VI page 35: SKR #1 Skarloey
Thread VI page 41: SKR #2 Rheneas
Thread VI page 43: SKR #3/Former MSR #3 Sir Handel (formerly Falcon)
Thread VI page 44 : SKR #4/Former MSR #4 Peter Sam (formerly Stuart)
Thread VI page 95: SKR #5 Rusty
Thread VI page 100: SKR #6 Duncan
Thread VI page 107; SKR #7 Ivo Hugh
Thread VI page 110: SKR #8/Former MSR #1 Duke
Thread VI page 143: SKR #9 Fred
Thread VI page 144: SKR #10 Bertram
Other things
Thread VI page 36: Fletcher, Jennings and Co.
Thread VI page 55: The Island of Sodor
Thread VI page 66: British Warning Signs, including Sodor
Thread VI page 302: LNWR Bloomer Class (you are here)
Thread VI page 34: NWR #1 Thomas
Skarloey Railway
Thread VI page 35: SKR #1 Skarloey
Thread VI page 41: SKR #2 Rheneas
Thread VI page 43: SKR #3/Former MSR #3 Sir Handel (formerly Falcon)
Thread VI page 44 : SKR #4/Former MSR #4 Peter Sam (formerly Stuart)
Thread VI page 95: SKR #5 Rusty
Thread VI page 100: SKR #6 Duncan
Thread VI page 107; SKR #7 Ivo Hugh
Thread VI page 110: SKR #8/Former MSR #1 Duke
Thread VI page 143: SKR #9 Fred
Thread VI page 144: SKR #10 Bertram
Other things
Thread VI page 36: Fletcher, Jennings and Co.
Thread VI page 55: The Island of Sodor
Thread VI page 66: British Warning Signs, including Sodor
Thread VI page 302: LNWR Bloomer Class (you are here)
The LNWR Bloomer Class are a class 2-2-2 steam locomotives. 74 of them were built between 1851 and 1862. They were all withdrawn from service between 1866 and 1888.
NWR 13 Bloomer
All the members of the Bloomer Class were all thought to have been scrapped, however, in 1970, one was found in an old shed in Wigtownshire by the Sir Charles Topham Hatt (1914-1997), who served as the Controller of the North Western Railway on the Island of Sodor from 1954 to 1984. It would be taken to the Crovan's Gate Works on the Island of Sodor and would be restored. The locomotive would be named Bloomer (after the class itself) and would be numbered 13 for the North Western Railway.
Shortly after Bloomer had his restoration completed in 1975, he would attend the Shildon cavalcade to celebrate the 150 year anniversary of the Stockton and Darlington Railway.
Since the 1975 celebrations, Bloomer has been used on enthusiast special trains on the North Western Railway, usually along the Ffarquhar Branch Line. He has also been given a pair of observation saloon coaches for him to pull.
Sources
Awdry's Railways of Sodor Lecture (1972) mentions info about Bloomer among several other things.
1916 and 1920
1932
"...fuck you - shut the hell up and fuck you - what those invalids don't understand is, their puppeteers aren't aiming for the - I said shut the hell up - they aren't after the President, they are after you - Dyer's just standing in their way!..."
-Leonidas C. Dyer's 1936 running-mate, speaking at a campaign rally after being interrupted by a heckler
After the 1932 elections, Leonidas C. Dyer entered office with sizable congressional majorities for Republicans (along with some other progressive pro-Fair Deal third party senators). He and his allies in Congress quickly took action to enact a wide array of agenda for economic relief via various public works projects and unemployment benefits, as well as financial industry reforms to prevent the issues that led to the great depression in the first place, an end to prohibition, and the establishment of federal old-age insurance. By 1934, the unemployment rate was still quite high but had dropped substantially, falling around 10 percentage points from a peak in 1932 of 25%. The full extent of the Fair Deal's role in that decline is debated among economists, but the general consensus is that the Fair Deal overall played at least some nontrivial role in the economic recovery, and back in the 1930s, this view was certainly common among the general public. Dyer and his allies in congress saw high popularity due to the Fair Deal legislation and programs. In the 1934 congressional midterm elections, the Republicans and their allies made gains in the senate and house, extending dominance outside of the south and, despite Democratic voter suppression and gerrymandering in the south, even made modest gains in the south, in part due to the Fair Deal having sizable crossover support among poor white people in the south
After the 1934 elections, Republicans initially intended in plans for the 1936 presidential election to focus on the same sort of strategy they ran with in 1932, to defend their gains in the upper south (and seeking to gain or increase control in those areas at the state legislature level) and perhaps also aim for Texas and Arkansas (both of which Democrats somewhat narrowly held in 1932) while ignoring the deep south. But certain developments had been occurring within the Democratic Party
The Democratic Party had been dominated by conservative voices since before the civil war, with the exception of the progressive era with the rise of William Jennings Bryan in the party and then Wilson's turn towards support for some progressive policies. The late 1910s and 1920s had seen the conservative wing of the party take back dominance, but the Great Depression had led to a resurgence of more moderate to progressive leaning Democrats. On one hand there were the "Me too Democrats", who generally supported many Fair Deal policies but attacked some for excess and corruption and campaigned saying they could administer the Fair Deal more efficiently. On the other hand, there was also a wing of the party that took things even further, with a populist argument that the Fair Deal didn't go far enough, that it and Dyer were too friendly to the interests of big business, too cautious in regards to deficit spending and regulations, and so on. The Democratic Party in the early 30s remained generally controlled by the conservative wing, but the rise of these moderate and populist factions caused a sizable amount of infighting, and helped the Republicans make gains in the south in the 1930, 1932, and 1934 elections. And after 1934, the south was more or less split three ways, with the conservative Democrats being the largest group, but with the populist Democrats having a sizable minority of support as well as outright control in a few southern states
The Governor of Louisiana, Huey Long, was the most prominent politician from that populist faction, and most prominent critic of Dyer from the left. Known by some to be an outspoken man of the people, and by others to be a corrupt and dangerous demagogue, he was at any rate the controller of a highly effective political machine in his own state, as well as influential among the progressive wing in several other southern states. Long was widely expected to make an attempt at the Democratic presidential nomination for 1936, to try and wrench the party away from the conservatives. He was, however, doubtful that the party establishment would allow a fair fight, and was privately becoming doubtful that his party had electoral viability at that point even with a potential sharp realignment, given Republican popularity
Shortly after the 1934 elections, Long put out feelers to the Republicans. Dyer and other high-level Republicans were highly skeptical, but were willing to engage in some preliminary discussions with the governor. Long came to the Republicans with proposals to essentially tear his own party in two, and ally his wing with the Republicans, giving the hypothetical Republican-Longist alliance the potential to sweep the south (and thus the country) and to rip the south from the conservative Democratic dominance. Of course, Long came with demands of his own, including extending the Fair Deal (he'd preferred his own Share Our Wealth Program but was willing to settle for Fair Deal extensions and a shift away from Dyer's insistence on balanced budgets rather than deficit spending), and of course the requirement that Long himself replace La Guardia for the Vice President nomination. Republicans were very weary of this proposal, with many being satisfied with their existing dominance of the north and being fearful of putting Long a heartbeat away from the Presidency (especially with the disabled Dyer) as well as potentially in the position to take control of the party after Dyer's two terms (surely, many thought, a cripple like Dyer wouldn't even want to try what Teddy Roosevelt did, to run for a third term, right?). But Long was able to throw in a major offer
The south had been dominated by white supremacist political leadership and broader social organization since the end of Reconstruction in the 1800s. Since the fall of Reconstruction, some among the Republicans had wished to make a renewed push for civil rights for Black Americans - indeed, Dyer had been one such Republican, having pushed very publicly for anti-lynching laws in the early 1920s. Now, Long was somewhat different from the average southern Democrat. He was no bold civil rights advocate, but nonetheless opposed the Klan, refused to utilize race-baiting as a political strategy, and enacted programs in his state for economic relief that Black people were actually allowed to benefit from (as opposed to in southern states with more conservative leadership) - he was not, then particularly opposed to the idea of racial equality, even if it wasn't chief among his political concerns. And he'd correctly guessed that Dyer's silence on racial issues as Missouri governor and in the 1932 campaign was more a matter of political pragmatism than any real shift in personal beliefs. So, in return for accepting his demands, he offered to do all he could after the 1936 elections to wrangle his populist Democratic allies in the south to vote for civil rights legislation, and (without publicly campaigning on it during the election) doing all he could before and during the 1936 elections to ensure the election in the south of more populist democrats who would be willing (or able to be pressured via carrot and/or stick) to vote for civil rights legislation. Despite complaints from advisors and Republican leadership, Dyer accepted this deal, intensely craving to achieve civil rights victories, as well as to simply punch back hard at the people who had nearly killed him. La Guardia accepted Dyer's deal, having frankly been rather bored by the office of the Vice President, being willing to return to New York politics and appreciating the potential political ramifications of the deal
As the 1936 elections drew closer, some predicted (and in the case of conservative democrats, shrieked and frothed at the mouth over the idea) that Dyer would make a push for civil rights if he won a decisive victory. The Republican admission of three states (AK, HI, and DC) further fueled those fears among some, with the admissions of those states being seen as a potential means to shift Congressional control further in favor of progressive Republicans and potentially overcome a filibuster by southern democrats and the remnant conservative faction of Republicans (which was the actual intent), but publicly Republicans opposed this suggestion, instead just defending the admissions with nationalistic rhetoric of American expansion. Furthermore, in an attempt to maximize potential to expand political support in the south (and with some inspiration from Lincoln's own run on the "National Union" ticket rather than "Republican" ticket in 1864), Dyer himself ran with Long as independents, and organized a "Share Our Fair Deal" coalition of the willing including the Republicans, the emerging Longist faction of the Democrats, and several other smaller parties and independent candidates, on which supporters of the Fair Deal and Dyer-Long ticket could run without having to be quite so attached to the Republican name (which was not well loved in the south). The mainline Democratic nomination also benefitted the Dyer-Long ticket: it was predicted that a moderate "Me too Democrat" would win the nomination, given the national mood, but with the rupture with the Longists, the Democrats instead nominated an ardent anti-Fair Dealer (and one who even went so far as criticizing former President Copeland's relief measures as having been too much government intervention), former North Carolina senator Josiah Bailey
As such, with the popularity of the Fair Deal, the crossover support Long was able to pull, and the unpopularity of mainline Democratic conservatism, the Dyer-Long ticket was able to absolutely crush the mainline Democratic ticket. The 1932 Republican victory had already been the largest landslide since 1820 (in the popular vote, at least), but the Dyer-Long 1936 win was even larger, winning nearly 70% of the vote and all but two states. And their coalition rode their coattails to further increase their numbers in Congress and the state level. In the south, as Long had promised, the conservative democrats had been dealt a heavy blow
After the elections, the Dyer administration quickly worked to pass legislation to implement various expansions of the Fair Deal that the Longists had demanded, and quickly did an about-face on civil rights, shifting from previous silence to an aggressive push for major legislation. The administration succeeded on both fronts, passing the Civil Rights and Voting Protections act to ban discrimination (on the basis of race, and in what some historians suggest was a failed "wrecking amendment", also on the basis of sex, along with other factors like religion and national origin) and ban measures intended to suppress the nonwhite vote, while also significantly expanding the Fair Deal
The south saw a swift and major backlash against the administration with the passage of civil rights, but the effect of millions of nonwhite people finally being able to vote provided something of an electoral counterbalance against that. Furthermore, the expanded Fair Deal measures were successful in dragging unemployment down even further, largely returning the economy to a state of normalcy (albeit with a much larger government), which served as another nail in the coffin for the mainline Democratic Party outside of the south, and also helped the Fair Deal coalition maintain decent support among poorer (or poorer-until-very-recently) southern white people and remain competitive throughout the south even in areas Republicans hadn't dreamed of standing a chance in immediately after the 1932 elections
The Republican Party and its allied Fair Deal coalition felt on top of the world, having saved the economy and having achieved a huge victory for civil rights 60 years after the death of Reconstruction, and a victory that seemed likely to be rather more durable than Reconstruction itself was. But there were still concerns. Long's demagoguery had certainly helped politically in the short term, but many in the Republican Party and other allied parties feared the potential for Long to use his position as a stepping-stone to greater power, and that he might take the country in a rather more authoritarian direction. After all, as many whispered, Dyer wouldn't live forever... could the crippled man even make it to the end of his second term, some wondered. And while America saw a bright recovery that didn't need to trample on civil liberties, in the rest of the world, various countries saw an increasing slide to authoritarianism and totalitarianism, with fascism and fascist powers on the rise. America had a solid isolationist lean since the Great War, but even if things did go ideally domestically, a growing number of Americans worried that the country might be dragged into foreign conflicts, regardless of what the general public wished. There was much uncertainty in regards to the future...
1932
"...fuck you - shut the hell up and fuck you - what those invalids don't understand is, their puppeteers aren't aiming for the - I said shut the hell up - they aren't after the President, they are after you - Dyer's just standing in their way!..."
-Leonidas C. Dyer's 1936 running-mate, speaking at a campaign rally after being interrupted by a heckler
After the 1932 elections, Leonidas C. Dyer entered office with sizable congressional majorities for Republicans (along with some other progressive pro-Fair Deal third party senators). He and his allies in Congress quickly took action to enact a wide array of agenda for economic relief via various public works projects and unemployment benefits, as well as financial industry reforms to prevent the issues that led to the great depression in the first place, an end to prohibition, and the establishment of federal old-age insurance. By 1934, the unemployment rate was still quite high but had dropped substantially, falling around 10 percentage points from a peak in 1932 of 25%. The full extent of the Fair Deal's role in that decline is debated among economists, but the general consensus is that the Fair Deal overall played at least some nontrivial role in the economic recovery, and back in the 1930s, this view was certainly common among the general public. Dyer and his allies in congress saw high popularity due to the Fair Deal legislation and programs. In the 1934 congressional midterm elections, the Republicans and their allies made gains in the senate and house, extending dominance outside of the south and, despite Democratic voter suppression and gerrymandering in the south, even made modest gains in the south, in part due to the Fair Deal having sizable crossover support among poor white people in the south
After the 1934 elections, Republicans initially intended in plans for the 1936 presidential election to focus on the same sort of strategy they ran with in 1932, to defend their gains in the upper south (and seeking to gain or increase control in those areas at the state legislature level) and perhaps also aim for Texas and Arkansas (both of which Democrats somewhat narrowly held in 1932) while ignoring the deep south. But certain developments had been occurring within the Democratic Party
The Democratic Party had been dominated by conservative voices since before the civil war, with the exception of the progressive era with the rise of William Jennings Bryan in the party and then Wilson's turn towards support for some progressive policies. The late 1910s and 1920s had seen the conservative wing of the party take back dominance, but the Great Depression had led to a resurgence of more moderate to progressive leaning Democrats. On one hand there were the "Me too Democrats", who generally supported many Fair Deal policies but attacked some for excess and corruption and campaigned saying they could administer the Fair Deal more efficiently. On the other hand, there was also a wing of the party that took things even further, with a populist argument that the Fair Deal didn't go far enough, that it and Dyer were too friendly to the interests of big business, too cautious in regards to deficit spending and regulations, and so on. The Democratic Party in the early 30s remained generally controlled by the conservative wing, but the rise of these moderate and populist factions caused a sizable amount of infighting, and helped the Republicans make gains in the south in the 1930, 1932, and 1934 elections. And after 1934, the south was more or less split three ways, with the conservative Democrats being the largest group, but with the populist Democrats having a sizable minority of support as well as outright control in a few southern states
The Governor of Louisiana, Huey Long, was the most prominent politician from that populist faction, and most prominent critic of Dyer from the left. Known by some to be an outspoken man of the people, and by others to be a corrupt and dangerous demagogue, he was at any rate the controller of a highly effective political machine in his own state, as well as influential among the progressive wing in several other southern states. Long was widely expected to make an attempt at the Democratic presidential nomination for 1936, to try and wrench the party away from the conservatives. He was, however, doubtful that the party establishment would allow a fair fight, and was privately becoming doubtful that his party had electoral viability at that point even with a potential sharp realignment, given Republican popularity
Shortly after the 1934 elections, Long put out feelers to the Republicans. Dyer and other high-level Republicans were highly skeptical, but were willing to engage in some preliminary discussions with the governor. Long came to the Republicans with proposals to essentially tear his own party in two, and ally his wing with the Republicans, giving the hypothetical Republican-Longist alliance the potential to sweep the south (and thus the country) and to rip the south from the conservative Democratic dominance. Of course, Long came with demands of his own, including extending the Fair Deal (he'd preferred his own Share Our Wealth Program but was willing to settle for Fair Deal extensions and a shift away from Dyer's insistence on balanced budgets rather than deficit spending), and of course the requirement that Long himself replace La Guardia for the Vice President nomination. Republicans were very weary of this proposal, with many being satisfied with their existing dominance of the north and being fearful of putting Long a heartbeat away from the Presidency (especially with the disabled Dyer) as well as potentially in the position to take control of the party after Dyer's two terms (surely, many thought, a cripple like Dyer wouldn't even want to try what Teddy Roosevelt did, to run for a third term, right?). But Long was able to throw in a major offer
The south had been dominated by white supremacist political leadership and broader social organization since the end of Reconstruction in the 1800s. Since the fall of Reconstruction, some among the Republicans had wished to make a renewed push for civil rights for Black Americans - indeed, Dyer had been one such Republican, having pushed very publicly for anti-lynching laws in the early 1920s. Now, Long was somewhat different from the average southern Democrat. He was no bold civil rights advocate, but nonetheless opposed the Klan, refused to utilize race-baiting as a political strategy, and enacted programs in his state for economic relief that Black people were actually allowed to benefit from (as opposed to in southern states with more conservative leadership) - he was not, then particularly opposed to the idea of racial equality, even if it wasn't chief among his political concerns. And he'd correctly guessed that Dyer's silence on racial issues as Missouri governor and in the 1932 campaign was more a matter of political pragmatism than any real shift in personal beliefs. So, in return for accepting his demands, he offered to do all he could after the 1936 elections to wrangle his populist Democratic allies in the south to vote for civil rights legislation, and (without publicly campaigning on it during the election) doing all he could before and during the 1936 elections to ensure the election in the south of more populist democrats who would be willing (or able to be pressured via carrot and/or stick) to vote for civil rights legislation. Despite complaints from advisors and Republican leadership, Dyer accepted this deal, intensely craving to achieve civil rights victories, as well as to simply punch back hard at the people who had nearly killed him. La Guardia accepted Dyer's deal, having frankly been rather bored by the office of the Vice President, being willing to return to New York politics and appreciating the potential political ramifications of the deal
As the 1936 elections drew closer, some predicted (and in the case of conservative democrats, shrieked and frothed at the mouth over the idea) that Dyer would make a push for civil rights if he won a decisive victory. The Republican admission of three states (AK, HI, and DC) further fueled those fears among some, with the admissions of those states being seen as a potential means to shift Congressional control further in favor of progressive Republicans and potentially overcome a filibuster by southern democrats and the remnant conservative faction of Republicans (which was the actual intent), but publicly Republicans opposed this suggestion, instead just defending the admissions with nationalistic rhetoric of American expansion. Furthermore, in an attempt to maximize potential to expand political support in the south (and with some inspiration from Lincoln's own run on the "National Union" ticket rather than "Republican" ticket in 1864), Dyer himself ran with Long as independents, and organized a "Share Our Fair Deal" coalition of the willing including the Republicans, the emerging Longist faction of the Democrats, and several other smaller parties and independent candidates, on which supporters of the Fair Deal and Dyer-Long ticket could run without having to be quite so attached to the Republican name (which was not well loved in the south). The mainline Democratic nomination also benefitted the Dyer-Long ticket: it was predicted that a moderate "Me too Democrat" would win the nomination, given the national mood, but with the rupture with the Longists, the Democrats instead nominated an ardent anti-Fair Dealer (and one who even went so far as criticizing former President Copeland's relief measures as having been too much government intervention), former North Carolina senator Josiah Bailey
As such, with the popularity of the Fair Deal, the crossover support Long was able to pull, and the unpopularity of mainline Democratic conservatism, the Dyer-Long ticket was able to absolutely crush the mainline Democratic ticket. The 1932 Republican victory had already been the largest landslide since 1820 (in the popular vote, at least), but the Dyer-Long 1936 win was even larger, winning nearly 70% of the vote and all but two states. And their coalition rode their coattails to further increase their numbers in Congress and the state level. In the south, as Long had promised, the conservative democrats had been dealt a heavy blow
After the elections, the Dyer administration quickly worked to pass legislation to implement various expansions of the Fair Deal that the Longists had demanded, and quickly did an about-face on civil rights, shifting from previous silence to an aggressive push for major legislation. The administration succeeded on both fronts, passing the Civil Rights and Voting Protections act to ban discrimination (on the basis of race, and in what some historians suggest was a failed "wrecking amendment", also on the basis of sex, along with other factors like religion and national origin) and ban measures intended to suppress the nonwhite vote, while also significantly expanding the Fair Deal
The south saw a swift and major backlash against the administration with the passage of civil rights, but the effect of millions of nonwhite people finally being able to vote provided something of an electoral counterbalance against that. Furthermore, the expanded Fair Deal measures were successful in dragging unemployment down even further, largely returning the economy to a state of normalcy (albeit with a much larger government), which served as another nail in the coffin for the mainline Democratic Party outside of the south, and also helped the Fair Deal coalition maintain decent support among poorer (or poorer-until-very-recently) southern white people and remain competitive throughout the south even in areas Republicans hadn't dreamed of standing a chance in immediately after the 1932 elections
The Republican Party and its allied Fair Deal coalition felt on top of the world, having saved the economy and having achieved a huge victory for civil rights 60 years after the death of Reconstruction, and a victory that seemed likely to be rather more durable than Reconstruction itself was. But there were still concerns. Long's demagoguery had certainly helped politically in the short term, but many in the Republican Party and other allied parties feared the potential for Long to use his position as a stepping-stone to greater power, and that he might take the country in a rather more authoritarian direction. After all, as many whispered, Dyer wouldn't live forever... could the crippled man even make it to the end of his second term, some wondered. And while America saw a bright recovery that didn't need to trample on civil liberties, in the rest of the world, various countries saw an increasing slide to authoritarianism and totalitarianism, with fascism and fascist powers on the rise. America had a solid isolationist lean since the Great War, but even if things did go ideally domestically, a growing number of Americans worried that the country might be dragged into foreign conflicts, regardless of what the general public wished. There was much uncertainty in regards to the future...
Last edited:
Deleted member 139407
Very cool wikiboxes and timeline! My only note is that in the previous 1932 page you have Leonidas Dyer as a Republican (as he was IOTL), but under "President Before Election" in the 1936 Presidential election wikibox, you have him as a Democrat. Did I miss something?
Oops, fixed (that was just a leftover from the otl 1936 base that I forgot to change)
And thanks!
- Status