Alternate Wikipedia Infoboxes VI (Do Not Post Current Politics or Political Figures Here)

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The 1998 German federal election was held on the 21st June 1998 to elect the 14th Bundestag, with the incumbent CDU/CSU government led by Chancellor Wolfgang Schäuble seeking a third term in office.

During his second term, Schäuble had made progress on the European single currency programme and on helping along the process of expanding the European Union. More controversially, his government had continued to seek to cut labour costs and taxes in the hope that expanding its austerity measures would aid in cutting public debt and reduce unemployment. However, unemployment continued to rise, which proved problematic for the government.

The CDU/CSU and FDP campaigned for re-election on the basis of Schäuble’s prominence in European politics, particularly stressing the leading role he had played in intervening in the Croatian and Bosnian Wars to try to bring peace to the region (which, with the onset of the Kosovo War the year of the election, proved resonant with voters).

The opposition SPD had nominated Minister-President of Lower Saxony Gerhard Schröder as their Chancellor candidate after he won a second majority in the state’s Landtag in 1998. Extremely popular in his home state, Schröder was initially favoured to give the SPD a very good chance of victory in the Bundestag election, but his campaign soon began to inadvertently disincentivise the party’s base as he adopted a centrist ‘third way’ ideology, akin to politicians like Tony Blair in the UK, rather than advocating another ‘plural left’ alliance with the KPD and Greens. In a surprise move, he announced he would be willing to negotiate with the FDP if it were numerically possible for the SPD to form a coalition with their support, a stance which had been unheard of since the two parties split in 1982.

While Schröder had hoped this big-tent stance would strengthen the SPD’s appeal, in actuality it made him appear alienating to the left and damaged his party’s chances. Ironically, the Greens under Joschka Fischer and the KPD of Lothar Bisky were open to the prospect of another ‘red-green -red’ coalition and Schröder did not disclaim this prospect, which enabled Schäuble and the CDU/CSU to paint Schröder as an unprincipled opportunist. Furthermore, the seeming ideological closeness of the two main parties is believed to have depressed turnout, which fell to just 77.5%, the lowest since before the Second World War.

The general antipathy to the campaign was reflected in the results, which saw little change from 1994 aside from the decline in turnout reducing the Bundestag’s membership; the CDU/CSU gained a few seats, the SPD lost a few (and notably the two main parties’ constituency gains cancelled each other out), and the Greens and KPD made minor gains, but fewer than they had hoped. The CDU/CSU-FDP coalition retained a small majority, and while Schröder did try to secure the support of the FDP and Greens for a ‘traffic light coalition’ which would have had a larger majority in the Bundestag than a renewed Schäuble cabinet, Schäuble was re-elected in the Bundestag’s Chancellor election, marking him the first Chancellor to win a third term since Ludwig Erhard in 1962.

The 600 seat Bundestag elected in 1998 remains the smallest elected since 1970.

(Again, sorry for the long delay between updates on this TL!)
 

whall15

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The lore of the scenario

British conservatism saw itself as discredited following the premierships of Chamberlain and Lord Halifax, leading to both the re-emergence of the Liberals as a political force, and Labour becoming seen as the natural party of government. By the late 1950s, with Labour having occupied the treasury benches for almost two decades under first Clement Attlee and his successor, Hugh Gaitskell.

Anti-socialist forces saw the need to coalesce around a single party, given the United Kingdom’s first-past-the-post system, and by 1961, the Conservatives and Liberals would merge, forming the Neoliberals. This merger would prove fruitful, with Ted Heath entering Number 10 in 1964, though Heath would only serve one-term before Labour’s regained their majority in 1969 under Jim Callaghan. Stagflation would dog Callaghan’s term and while he was able to extremely narrowly retain office he would resign in 1976 with David Owen taking over. Owen would prove a highly fractious Labour leader, his agenda of ‘economic modernisation’ in the face of the Stagflation crisis was criticised by all quarters of the Labour Party and they would lose the 1979 election in a landslide to Margaret Thatcher’s Neoliberals who won a majority of seats in Parliament with close to a majority of the popular vote.

One challenge to Owen in 1979 would come from Stafford Beer. Fresh off his transformation of Chile’s economy with his project of computerised economic planning, Beer started his own party, Cybersyn with a promise of resuscitating the British economy, and proved surprisingly successful winning close to 15% of the vote, with 24 seats. With the collapse of the Labour Party, the coming years would see Cybersyn’s parliamentary membership swell to 56.

Thatcher’s radical economic agenda of privatisation, deregulation, strike-breaking and European integration would prove extremely controversial, and not just on the left. Enoch Powell would lead a walkout of a half-dozen far-right Neoliberal MPs, forming ‘Return to Tradition’. Amidst Thatcher’s crackdown against the miners, National Union of Mineworkers’ leader Arthur Scargill would be elected to Parliament in a by-election, originally as a member of the rump Labour Party.

Beer, a cigar-chomping Rolls Royce driving tech millionaire would find distrust on the left, despite his development of a modern, socialist economy under Allende in Chile. Scargill was a vocal critic against the ‘plutocrat’, and with some other Labour leftovers would form the Luddite Movement despite some jeers, decrying Cybersyn as a cover for Thatcherism. Cybersyn and the Luddites would reveal an ideological divide on the socialist left, with Beer and Cybersyn opting for the utilisation of modern computing technology and a national network of telex machines to allow for worker self-management of the economy, with Scargill and the Luddites preferring a Soviet-style command economy.

By 1983, the British economy seemed on the verge of collapse, with mass industrial actions and rolling blackouts affecting most of the country in Thatcher’s Winter of Discontent. Enoch Powell would lead a vote of no confidence in Mrs Thatcher forcing a new election that would upend the United Kingdom’s traditional party system forever. Beer’s Cybersyn Party would win a comfortable majority of 345 in the House of Commons with 42% of the popular vote. Enoch Powell’s Return to Tradition would gain 158 seats with 23% of the vote, becoming the official opposition. Mrs Thatcher’s Neoliberals would be relegated to third-party status with 121 seats and 21% while Scargill’s Luddites would end up with 19 seats and 9%.
 
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Aztekk

Aztekk

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Marcus Edwin Seward (November 16, 1927 -- July 24, 1999) was the 7th and last president of the First Republic of Hawaii, serving from 1970 to the Hawaiian Revolution in September 1973. Born in Honolulu, he was a scion of the prominent Seward family of landowners and fruit exporters; his father, Eliazar Seward, was one of the wealthiest men in Hawaii, with close ties to the white political establishment. After attending college in Chicago and Harvard, receiving a degree in economics, Seward returned to Hawaii to work in his family's business. In 1966, he became the new chairman of the Seward and Woodhouse Corporation. His involvement in politics began with his financial contributions to the National Republicans, Hawaii's de facto ruling party since the founding of the republic, which earned him considerable influence. In 1968 Seward became a member of the party's executive committee and was later appointed chief financial advisor to President Arthur J. Cooke. In March 1969, he hosted an American congressional delegation led by future president Frank Sinatra.

In the summer of 1969, Marcus Seward emerged as a compromise candidate as the National Republicans' presidential nominee, making his succession to the presidency all but assured. After an election in which he ran virtually unopposed, Seward became the President of Hawaii.

He inherited a country on the verge of catastrophe. Labor riots over the last decade had crystallized into a powerful, underground communist militancy. Led by the Hawaiian Communist Party-led Mana o Kanaka Front (MKF). The unrest only intensified under Seward's administration; awash with American foreign aid and seeking to protect the business interests of the white elite, he cracked down on dissent with brutality. Honolulu burned after weeks of intense protests and riots, which served to aid the communists. By 1973, the violence had reached a boiling point. Revolutionary leader Kenan Makani decreed the beginning of a "proletarian revolution", which quickly overtook the main settlements of Hawaii. Entering September, government control had been reduced to Honolulu and the surrounding areas.

Seeing the fight was decaying until defeat seemed almost inevitable, Seward and his government secretly relocated to the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor. From there, he continued to direct an increasingly hopeless defense of the capital. Seward lobbied the U.S. to deploy soldiers to stabilize the situation and push back the communists. There was a glimmer of hope in mid-September when American troops arrived to Pearl Harbor in force, but these sentiments were short-lived as President Sinatra declared that there would be no intervention in Hawaii. By the end of September, with communist forces encroaching on the base, an evacuation was initiated. Seward, his family, and members of his government were airlifted out of Hawaii to the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk, and from there on to exile in the United States; he would never return to his homeland.

In the aftermath of the Hawaiian Revolution, Seward and other white Hawaiians were stripped of their citizenship by the new regime. While in exile, Seward served as president of the Republic of Hawaii Association, a society of anti-communist Hawaiians in exile, and continued to lobby against the regime in Honolulu. He alternated his time between California and Chicago. After the return of democracy in 1990, Seward and others had their citizenship reinstated; however, by then Seward's health had declined considerably. He died in July 1999 at the age of 71 of pancreatic cancer at his longtime residence in Sacramento, California.
 

Newne76

" Who's this idiot named Napoleon? Conquered half the world? That's easy, Let's do that again, but with TANKS!"

"De Gaulle... you're an idiot."

Charles De Gaulle and some French General prior to the start of Operation Fusilier, the invasion of Belgium on April 24, 1939.
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Lance Free

Lance Free

What If Chrysler created the first hybrid to race at Le Mans?

"The Patriot GTX isn't a car it's a Jet engine with wheels." - Alan Kulwicki in an interview with Motor Trend magazine January 2003.

"A One of a Kind Car for a One of a Kind Race."-Janet Guthrie introducing the car at a 2003 press conference.

"This sure is faster then Granddads old Superbird he'd have twice as many championships, if they built cars like this during his day." - Adam Petty was quoted saying in Car and Driver April 7, 2003.

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The Dodge Patriot GTX a was Sports prototype race car based the Dodge Viper platform; It was designed by Chrysler-Mitsubishi engineer Ian Sharp and Aerospace Engineer turned Race Driver Janet Guthrie. The Patriot GTX used a natural gas powered electric turbine engine becoming the first hybrid to race at both Daytona and Le Mans in 2003. The Car became a force to be reckoned with the IMSA racing series for the next 10 years.
 
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