Well, what it looks like is that there's a political spectrum from internationalism to nationalism, which is correlated with but more salient than the left-right economic axis.
Alternate Wikipedia Infoboxes VII (Do Not Post Current Politics or Political Figures Here)
- Thread starter BigVic
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Bargaining With the Devil: In Which Some Deferred Events Finally Explode
The party divided rarely triumphs against the party united. It doesn't matter whether it produces an actual split; that party will lose anyway. Of course, that split somewhat helps crystallize division. Sometimes, anyways.
The Republicans, for their part, said they simply didn't half-win. Either they lost, or they won resoundingly. It seemed like 1896 was the last time a Democrat had lost only narrowly, and Herbert Hoover had just extended that a little bit further. Maybe it was just something the Republicans told themselves to feel better after the disappointments of 1916, 1924, and 1928. But it seemed like that was what had just happened.
The story of 1928 is one of chaos. After resoundingly winning a second term, President Underwood seemed ready to tackle a repeal of Prohibition as the big legislative effort of his second term. It would be difficult, but the president was a former veteran of congressional leadership in both chambers, had arguably run on repeal as his primary platform to differentiate himself from Lowden, and the policy was increasingly unpopular anyways; with Wayne Wheeler dead, the ASL was a lot less effective, too. And then he caught a fever and died.
Well, not quite; it was actually a series of strokes, over the course of the transition period. Medical care, however iffy it was in that age, managed to aid the president somewhat, enough to get him to feebly take his second oath as president and prevent his soon-to-be successor from having to deal with questions of constitutionality over the death of a president-elect, but it was not enough; Oscar Wilder Underwood, 30th president of the United States, died March 25, 1929, making Charles W. Bryan the new president of the United States. What his older brother couldn't do in three presidential bids over two decades prior, Bryan had effectively just been handed because of his name.
Now, there is a lot of debate regarding Bryan's actions as president, but perhaps the best way to contextualize them is to note that his experience prior to serving in the presidency consisted of two years as the mayor of Lincoln and two years as Governor of Nebraska, before spending four years in the most notoriously do-nothing job in the United States that mostly consisted of breaking the ties of the 48-46-2 Senate of the second quarter of Underwood's presidency, courtesy of Samuel Ralston's death. While Underwood's administration certainly left much to be desired, the man certainly knew how to handle his party; it was how he had won the 1924 nomination, after all. Charles Bryan did not have that tact. He was his brother's brother, and already had a dicey relationship with Congress over his perceived radicalism. His decision to veto to a bill that would have partially repealed the Volstead Act and legalized beer, wine, and other low-concentration alcoholic beverages - likely intended as a precursor to a constitutional amendment to repeal the 18th Amendment and return the regulation of alcohol to the states - effectively broke the Democratic Party. To many he had just spat on the grave of his predecessor. Congress would stay hostile to President Bryan for the rest of his presidency, worsened when the Republicans finally took it back in the 1930 midterms.
When the Stock Market Crash came in April 1931 and took the wind out of an already-faltering economy, Bryan's presidency was already dead in the water. Bryan's economically interventionist policy proposals went nowhere with a Congress hostile to them. As economic calamity spread to the whole economy instead of just the Great Plains, many felt the government did nothing to save them and held Bryan, as the president, chiefly responsible. The president's popularity plummeted.
The 1932 Republican National Convention was almost jubilant with hope for taking back the White House. Several contenders, from William Borah to James Eli Watson to Charles Curtis all tried to win the nomination, but none were a match for Herbert Hoover, a well-regarded administrator who'd served in the Wilson and Harding administrations, and won national renown for his term-and-a-half as Governor of California. Using his name recognition and respect, his place as a bridge between the progressive and conservative factions of the party, and the division of his opponents, Hoover ran a "buyer's remorse" campaign as the second-placer from the 1928 convention, and wrapped up the nomination improbably quickly.
Many Republicans were confused, in turn, by the Democratic Convention. Bryan's deep unpopularity and the fault lines in the party which he had incessantly exacerbated during his presidency left very vulnerable to a nomination challenge; very few were willing to do so in a year that seemed to promise such doom for the party, however. Only Al Smith, eager to prove the electoral power of urban Catholics and still holding a grudge from the Bryans' support of McAdoo in the convention eight years prior, was willing to provide that challenge. Many were confused by the death match nature of the convention as Bryan and Smith seemed to fight over a poison chalice, but logical considerations had left that convention a long time ago. In the end Smith managed to cobble together a narrow majority of the delegates and, after a bitter fight, succeeded in getting the two-thirds rule repealed; this paved the way for him to take the nomination from Bryan, choosing his polar opposite Senate Democratic Leader Joe Robinson of Arkansas as his running mate. The president, of course, was, like his brother, not going to go down after a single fight, and managed to get the Farmer-Labor Party to nominate him as their candidate for presidency, overriding the previous candidacy of Jacob S. Coxey (of Coxey's Army fame). William Gibbs McAdoo, desperate to regain relevance after his second stint at the Treasury Department had ended in disgrace, was Bryan's questionable choice of a running mate, intended to appeal to socially conservative Southerners who liked Bryan's dry position but were more skeptical of his economic populism. So 1912 had come again - but this time for the Democrats.
The general election, obviously, was a gigantic mess. Smith's Catholicism was the target of extreme amounts of prejudice across the nation, in particular in the Solid South; indeed, Bryan, upon accepting the Farmer-Labor nomination, planned on trying to win by sweeping the South and West, where his natural constituencies were, a plan somewhat complicated by his association with the severe economic downturn. Indeed, many of the voters Bryan hoped to peel away from Smith ended up in Hoover's camp, as the California Governor, remembering Warren G. Harding's competitiveness in the region twelve years prior, remained rather content to play footsie with bigots and his campaign surrogates down South reassured the region that no, the Republican Party was not for race-mixing or whatever other racist lunacy the segregationists were going on about that particular day. Meanwhile the Farmer-Labor Party was actually rather divided on Bryan's run; most of the party's Catholics, unsurprisingly, backed Smith, but the influence of Robert M. LaFollette Jr.'s, though a Republican, albeit one the Farmer-Labor Party's faithful were very willing to listen to, decision to endorse Smith over Bryan or Hoover was critical in preventing Smith's voter base in the frequently anti-Catholic Prairies from completely collapsing; indeed, in states like North Dakota and Wisconsin, Smith pluralities were arguably enabled by Bryan siphoning votes primarily from Hoover.
Indeed, Hoover's appeal to anti-Catholicism and a Smith vote that refused to totally collapse thanks to loyalty to the old party (save in Mississippi and South Carolina, where Bryan was the official Democratic candidate and Smith was not on the ballot) allowed a Republican performance down South that harkened back to Reconstruction, this time achieved without a single Black vote (well, a few, actually, but those were few and far between and had been on their way out of the party anyways since 1912, and would only be majority-Republican for a few more cycles) and becoming the first Republican to win Texas and Georgia in history. In the Northeast, where Bryan was often a non-factor, Smith's Catholic base held, to the shock of many, both Massachusetts and Rhode Island for him, and New Hampshire, New York, and Connecticut were all closer than many Republicans were comfortable with. Utah went for Smith as a result of a complicated political brawl over tariffs between Reed Smoot and President Bryan dragging down both the Republican and Bryan vote in the state. It was, in the end, a complex result for a complex election, and many Republicans were looking at those Southern results with enthusiasm.
The party divided rarely triumphs against the party united. It doesn't matter whether it produces an actual split; that party will lose anyway. Of course, that split somewhat helps crystallize division. Sometimes, anyways.
The Republicans, for their part, said they simply didn't half-win. Either they lost, or they won resoundingly. It seemed like 1896 was the last time a Democrat had lost only narrowly, and Herbert Hoover had just extended that a little bit further. Maybe it was just something the Republicans told themselves to feel better after the disappointments of 1916, 1924, and 1928. But it seemed like that was what had just happened.
The story of 1928 is one of chaos. After resoundingly winning a second term, President Underwood seemed ready to tackle a repeal of Prohibition as the big legislative effort of his second term. It would be difficult, but the president was a former veteran of congressional leadership in both chambers, had arguably run on repeal as his primary platform to differentiate himself from Lowden, and the policy was increasingly unpopular anyways; with Wayne Wheeler dead, the ASL was a lot less effective, too. And then he caught a fever and died.
Well, not quite; it was actually a series of strokes, over the course of the transition period. Medical care, however iffy it was in that age, managed to aid the president somewhat, enough to get him to feebly take his second oath as president and prevent his soon-to-be successor from having to deal with questions of constitutionality over the death of a president-elect, but it was not enough; Oscar Wilder Underwood, 30th president of the United States, died March 25, 1929, making Charles W. Bryan the new president of the United States. What his older brother couldn't do in three presidential bids over two decades prior, Bryan had effectively just been handed because of his name.
Now, there is a lot of debate regarding Bryan's actions as president, but perhaps the best way to contextualize them is to note that his experience prior to serving in the presidency consisted of two years as the mayor of Lincoln and two years as Governor of Nebraska, before spending four years in the most notoriously do-nothing job in the United States that mostly consisted of breaking the ties of the 48-46-2 Senate of the second quarter of Underwood's presidency, courtesy of Samuel Ralston's death. While Underwood's administration certainly left much to be desired, the man certainly knew how to handle his party; it was how he had won the 1924 nomination, after all. Charles Bryan did not have that tact. He was his brother's brother, and already had a dicey relationship with Congress over his perceived radicalism. His decision to veto to a bill that would have partially repealed the Volstead Act and legalized beer, wine, and other low-concentration alcoholic beverages - likely intended as a precursor to a constitutional amendment to repeal the 18th Amendment and return the regulation of alcohol to the states - effectively broke the Democratic Party. To many he had just spat on the grave of his predecessor. Congress would stay hostile to President Bryan for the rest of his presidency, worsened when the Republicans finally took it back in the 1930 midterms.
When the Stock Market Crash came in April 1931 and took the wind out of an already-faltering economy, Bryan's presidency was already dead in the water. Bryan's economically interventionist policy proposals went nowhere with a Congress hostile to them. As economic calamity spread to the whole economy instead of just the Great Plains, many felt the government did nothing to save them and held Bryan, as the president, chiefly responsible. The president's popularity plummeted.
The 1932 Republican National Convention was almost jubilant with hope for taking back the White House. Several contenders, from William Borah to James Eli Watson to Charles Curtis all tried to win the nomination, but none were a match for Herbert Hoover, a well-regarded administrator who'd served in the Wilson and Harding administrations, and won national renown for his term-and-a-half as Governor of California. Using his name recognition and respect, his place as a bridge between the progressive and conservative factions of the party, and the division of his opponents, Hoover ran a "buyer's remorse" campaign as the second-placer from the 1928 convention, and wrapped up the nomination improbably quickly.
Many Republicans were confused, in turn, by the Democratic Convention. Bryan's deep unpopularity and the fault lines in the party which he had incessantly exacerbated during his presidency left very vulnerable to a nomination challenge; very few were willing to do so in a year that seemed to promise such doom for the party, however. Only Al Smith, eager to prove the electoral power of urban Catholics and still holding a grudge from the Bryans' support of McAdoo in the convention eight years prior, was willing to provide that challenge. Many were confused by the death match nature of the convention as Bryan and Smith seemed to fight over a poison chalice, but logical considerations had left that convention a long time ago. In the end Smith managed to cobble together a narrow majority of the delegates and, after a bitter fight, succeeded in getting the two-thirds rule repealed; this paved the way for him to take the nomination from Bryan, choosing his polar opposite Senate Democratic Leader Joe Robinson of Arkansas as his running mate. The president, of course, was, like his brother, not going to go down after a single fight, and managed to get the Farmer-Labor Party to nominate him as their candidate for presidency, overriding the previous candidacy of Jacob S. Coxey (of Coxey's Army fame). William Gibbs McAdoo, desperate to regain relevance after his second stint at the Treasury Department had ended in disgrace, was Bryan's questionable choice of a running mate, intended to appeal to socially conservative Southerners who liked Bryan's dry position but were more skeptical of his economic populism. So 1912 had come again - but this time for the Democrats.
The general election, obviously, was a gigantic mess. Smith's Catholicism was the target of extreme amounts of prejudice across the nation, in particular in the Solid South; indeed, Bryan, upon accepting the Farmer-Labor nomination, planned on trying to win by sweeping the South and West, where his natural constituencies were, a plan somewhat complicated by his association with the severe economic downturn. Indeed, many of the voters Bryan hoped to peel away from Smith ended up in Hoover's camp, as the California Governor, remembering Warren G. Harding's competitiveness in the region twelve years prior, remained rather content to play footsie with bigots and his campaign surrogates down South reassured the region that no, the Republican Party was not for race-mixing or whatever other racist lunacy the segregationists were going on about that particular day. Meanwhile the Farmer-Labor Party was actually rather divided on Bryan's run; most of the party's Catholics, unsurprisingly, backed Smith, but the influence of Robert M. LaFollette Jr.'s, though a Republican, albeit one the Farmer-Labor Party's faithful were very willing to listen to, decision to endorse Smith over Bryan or Hoover was critical in preventing Smith's voter base in the frequently anti-Catholic Prairies from completely collapsing; indeed, in states like North Dakota and Wisconsin, Smith pluralities were arguably enabled by Bryan siphoning votes primarily from Hoover.
Indeed, Hoover's appeal to anti-Catholicism and a Smith vote that refused to totally collapse thanks to loyalty to the old party (save in Mississippi and South Carolina, where Bryan was the official Democratic candidate and Smith was not on the ballot) allowed a Republican performance down South that harkened back to Reconstruction, this time achieved without a single Black vote (well, a few, actually, but those were few and far between and had been on their way out of the party anyways since 1912, and would only be majority-Republican for a few more cycles) and becoming the first Republican to win Texas and Georgia in history. In the Northeast, where Bryan was often a non-factor, Smith's Catholic base held, to the shock of many, both Massachusetts and Rhode Island for him, and New Hampshire, New York, and Connecticut were all closer than many Republicans were comfortable with. Utah went for Smith as a result of a complicated political brawl over tariffs between Reed Smoot and President Bryan dragging down both the Republican and Bryan vote in the state. It was, in the end, a complex result for a complex election, and many Republicans were looking at those Southern results with enthusiasm.
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Here's an idea for a Central Power victory TL...
This idea came to me after I noticed how similar the name of Alderney in the Channel Islands is to the name of Norderney in Germany's East Frisian archipelago.
(Anyone who wants it is welcome to it as I don't plan on actually writing a Central Power victory TL anytime soon; though I'd appreciate a credit if you do use it!)
Edit: Of course I notice after posting that the stupid map of course has OTL borders, ugh. Fixed now.
This idea came to me after I noticed how similar the name of Alderney in the Channel Islands is to the name of Norderney in Germany's East Frisian archipelago.
(Anyone who wants it is welcome to it as I don't plan on actually writing a Central Power victory TL anytime soon; though I'd appreciate a credit if you do use it!)
Edit: Of course I notice after posting that the stupid map of course has OTL borders, ugh. Fixed now.
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Colorado & Missouri
Alaska
Florida
Connecticut
Wisconsin
Washington, DC
Next up in the state soccer leagues, Delaware. This one was actually a bit trickier to do because there's just not that much in Delaware.
Alaska
Florida
Connecticut
Wisconsin
Washington, DC
Next up in the state soccer leagues, Delaware. This one was actually a bit trickier to do because there's just not that much in Delaware.
Hubert Horatio Humphrey Jr. (May 27, 1911 – January 9, 1978) was an American pharmacist and politician who served as the Majority Leader of the United States Senate from 1961 to 1978. He represented Minnesota from 1949 to 1978. As a senator he was a major leader of modern liberalism in the United States. As Majority Leader he played a major role in passing Grand Society programs while also emerging as an opponent to interventionism abroad.
Born in Wallace, South Dakota, Humphrey attended the University of Minnesota. In 1943, he became a professor of political science at Macalester College and ran a failed campaign for mayor of Minneapolis. He helped found the Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party (DFL) in 1944; the next year he was elected mayor of Minneapolis, serving until 1948 and co-founding the liberal anti-communist group Americans for Democratic Action in 1947. In 1948, he was elected to the U.S. Senate and successfully advocated for the inclusion of a proposal to end racial segregation in the 1948 Democratic National Convention's party platform.
Humphrey served five terms in the Senate from 1949 to 1978, and was the Senate Majority Leader for the last seventeen years of his tenure, the longest serving party leader in Senate history. During this time, he was the lead author of the Civil and Voting Rights Acts, helped pass Medicaid and Medicare, and chaired several committees. Humphrey worked closely with President Lyndon Johnson on the Grand Society, but vigorously opposed Johnson in many areas of foreign policy.
Humphrey was the primary face of opposition to Nelson Rockefeller from 1969 to 1977. Despite constant speculation, he would never run for President. Although he was occasionally able to find common ground with the Rockefeller Administration, he proved a leading light of progressive Democrats. In 1976 he played a key role in the elevation of his colleague, fellow Minnesotan, and protégé Walter Mondale to the Presidency. Before his death he shepherded bills through Congress establishing AmeriCare and creating the Department of Peace & Development. He died of bladder cancer at his home in Minnesota. In 2007 he was named as one of the greatest Senators ever.
Very small nitpick but the wikibox has Humphrey as Majority Leader from 1960 to 1978, not 1961 to 1978.
Sensational. I googled for the last quarter hour and I still can't decipher this. Pure Eastern European populism.We have had enough parliamentary election wikiboxes that make sense and where you can roughly figure out the political spectrum just from looking at it. We have had enough parties that neatly correspond to specific political ideologies.
Not Dead Yet, Hard at Work Completing the The Stars and Stripes Forever
Until Then
Until Then
Incredible that within 40 years of the first African American dining in the White House, America has an African-American Vice President. That America is really going places! (Henry Ford as president for the Labour Party is pretty nuts too)Not Dead Yet, Hard at Work Completing the The Stars and Stripes Forever
Until Then
Just one minor complaint, in a world where the Republicans didn't exist, the Democratic-Republicans would be known just as the Republicans, as that's what they called themselves back in the dayNot Dead Yet, Hard at Work Completing the The Stars and Stripes Forever
Until Then
Are you familiar with the French comic "Jour J"? Issue 2 (Paris:Soviet Sector) tells a story with a similar premise of divided France with Part of Paris under Soviet Occupation. I love the idea of how architecture might've developed differently in Paris if it had become a Berlin analogue.
"AFTER 42 YEARS, GEORGE MCGOVERN'S SENATE CAREER ENDS WITH DEFEAT" -- November 3, 2004
(What if McGovern won his Senate re-election in 1980? Not realistic at all but a fun thought I had.)
I would've thought McGovern would retire in 1992 but would he ITTL by 2010? He died in 2012 IOTL.
Great idea of showcasing alternative presidents.
I did notice that both President Hearst and Ford, both claim to have visited Europe first and throw out the ceremonial pitch.
Didn’t know if this was meant to be Ford not agreeing with his predecessor’s claim or doing them under different circumstances ie first to visit Europe during peace time or first to be pictured/filmed throwing the ceremonial pitch.