Well, that was... brutal. Effective though. I imagine when organized opposition to the Sadat regime starts to redevelope, probably in the 90's, it will have a different ideological flavor from the Islamists that just got boppa booey'd. Honestly a bad time to be an Islamist in the Middle East as both the Soviets and the West have their secular friends they prefer to play with. Whatever the 'Impact' is, looks like it will be quite interesting.
Bicentennial Man: Ford '76 and Beyond
- Thread starter KingSweden24
- Start date
Probably not, but it takes some big names off the table for the future more than anything else
Thank you!
Interesting… an Arab Spring a decade earlier (the late 1990s are not going to be a time of booming plenty ITTL) is actually not a bad idea.
Would certainly enhance the irony of an Arab Spring occurring around the time of, well…
There is going to be some big stuff in Europe before the “Impact,” this is more just a way to create a common theme as I jump between various Islamic countries in the buildup
You can get easily have widespread unrest across the region but the Arab Spring as it occurred in OTL was driven by social media and satellite TV which you probably can't pull forward to the 1990's absent a significant acceleration in technological development.
One more strongman purging his political opponents being tolerated due to aligning with American interests... I know, I know, ultimately too indistinct a description, I can take my pick from all throughout the planet...
But it does remind me of the Philippines in particular...
No reason to believe Marcos Sr. has been affected by the butterflies here so much as to affect him lifting martial law in 1981 like he did in our timeline, no? Not that the damage his time in office has done to the country can be mitigated at this point anyway
Apologies if this is still a bit away, but I do wonder if Ninoy Aquino will survive returning in 1983? Will the opposition rally around him as a candidate in TTL instead of his wife?
Do hope the archipelago gets a more stable rest of the 80's regardless, even marginally (less coups and brownouts I suppose, it'll have enough to deal with in the Central Luzon earthquake and Pinatubo's eruption come the turn of the decade)
But it does remind me of the Philippines in particular...
No reason to believe Marcos Sr. has been affected by the butterflies here so much as to affect him lifting martial law in 1981 like he did in our timeline, no? Not that the damage his time in office has done to the country can be mitigated at this point anyway
Apologies if this is still a bit away, but I do wonder if Ninoy Aquino will survive returning in 1983? Will the opposition rally around him as a candidate in TTL instead of his wife?
Maybe People Power I won't be a bloodless revolution as it was OTL?
Do hope the archipelago gets a more stable rest of the 80's regardless, even marginally (less coups and brownouts I suppose, it'll have enough to deal with in the Central Luzon earthquake and Pinatubo's eruption come the turn of the decade)
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I haven’t entirely decided what I’m doing with the PI to be honest; I’d like to play around with “surviving Ninoy” but we’ll see.
Thanks for reading!
Was rereading the previous chapters as I usually do, and I wonder if each continent or region will have their own version of the La Década Perdida or The Lost Decade. I also remember that the Lost Decade contribute to the political instability to the Latin American Nations, so I wonder how in this version of the dirty wars will play out in this context. Given that lots of people will be poorer and more desperate this time around for change, any kind of change.
Sort of, yeah. One of the general ideas behind the TL is what if the 1980s was more like the 70s, and make of that comparison what you will.
But the Década Perdida coming alongside much worse political and anti-American instability does mean the 80s and even 90s in LatAm will be considerably worse
To Health and Solidarity - Part I
To Health and Solidarity - Part I
Democrats, especially of the traditional liberal New Dealer wing, jaded by the politics of the previous sixteen years had finally found their champion in Hugh Carey. He has not a sunny optimist like FDR or JFK, no, but he was perhaps something more necessary for the bleaker, tougher conditions of the early 1980s, in which the United States was emerging from its worst economic slump since the Depression and a society-cleaving military humiliation in Vietnam followed by the embarrassing debacle of Panama. While the national press was starting to finally catch onto his mood swings that he had papered over well on the campaign trail in 1980, he was a no-nonsense straight-talker who seemed to swivel from strength to strength, having conquered a relatively impressive field of fellow Democrats in the primary, knock out the rising star of the radical right in Ronald Reagan [1], and return the Democratic Party to a position of hegemony with supermajorities in Congress a mere eight years after it had lost a 49-state landslide with only little liberal Massachusetts in its column. The first six months of Carey's first year in office had seemed to be more of the same - he had passed a massive economic rescue package that would develop a straightforward American industrial policy for the 80s, appointed the second woman to the Supreme Court, and successfully captured Omar Torrijos in the successful Operation Pit Viper. As cautiously optimistic economic data was released, the August recess looked to be drawing to a close, and the Labor Day weekend that signified the beginning of fall both for football fans and for political junkies eager to get into the meat of the second half of Carey's first year, the President was riding high on a wave of goodwill and strong approval ratings consistently in the mid-to-high 60s.
Beneath the surface, though, the truth was somewhat more complicated, and the reality was that between the ESA and several pieces of more small-bore legislation passed by Congress in the first hundred days, much of the low-hanging fruit for Democrats had been plucked. The party could essentially be seen as three separate factions united under a big tent that, while cooperative, also often had little in common - there were of course the post-Dixiecrat Southern populist conservatives, who while not the arch-segregationists of yesteryear often had more in common with Republicans on certain social and spending matters than they did their fellow co-partisans; the traditional New Deal liberals, a curious hybrid of unionized blue-collar workers and technocratic administrators; and finally the New Left, a mishmash of young Silents and Boomers who had largely come of age politically in the hot and polarizing days of the late 1960s and then ascended into the gears of politics via the insurgent McGovern campaign or as Watergate Babies in 1974. What made managing these three factions difficult, especially after a decade in the political wilderness for Democrats since their last trifecta, was that they did not necessarily map ideologically cleanly. Among the Southern Democrats you had staunch conservatives like Mississippi's James Eastland and developmentalists like Alabama's freshman Senator Jim Folsom Jr., united only by their neighboring states and penchant for bringing home pork to their home states. Figures associated with the New Left were even harder to pin down ideologically, as it included genuine left-wing firebrands like New York's Liz Holtzman and moderate, technocratic "neoliberals" like Colorado's Gary Hart. In a Congress where Democrats controlled roughly 70% of the seats and many, if not most, of the body's most exciting names had been elected post-1974 in a time when GOP fortunes were in gradual decline and anticipation for the next Democratic ascendancy was high, everybody had new ideas about where to go and what to do with the moment before them.
The debate around labor policy and healthcare thus came to consume Carey's administration as the end of August approached and the promise of Ted Kennedy's "Great Healthcare Debate" in September looming alongside the potential start of a strike of the country's air traffic controllers. As the unforeseeable crisis waiting at the end of October was not yet on anybody's radar, Carey and his chief advisors steeled themselves for what promised to be a difficult few months of contentious domestic politics balancing the needs of organized labor - by far Carey's largest constituency personally - and the dream of Democrats to finally deliver universal health coverage to all Americans. The importance of the moment was punctuated, as it were, by the massive Solidarity Day March on Labor Day weekend in DC, where hundreds of thousands of union members, organizers, activists and others gathered on the mall to demand new pro-labor legislation and a national health care act of some kind. A needle had presented itself to be threaded... [2]
[1] Alliteration!
[2] I elected in this entry to merely set the stage for this debate and split it up, in part because I needed to head to work; more to come.
Some good labor reforms could really pay political dividends to the Democrats in the long term. Also another mention of the October crisis.
Whatever happens in October will be big, maybe Saudi Arabia will go up in flames? On an unrelated note, I wonder if the Carey administration will be able to reinvigorate the ERA and finally complete its ratification.
Idk if even Carey could get a full repeal of Taft-Hartley with so many Southern Dems in the fold (the Senate becomes the problem here) but I’d be curious if anyone has other thoughts on what kinds of legislation Dems would prioritize on that front (other than UHC) in the early 1980s.
And I’d honestly forgotten about the ERA lol I’ll need to touch on that, maybe in 1982?
The oft-mentioned October Crisis is not in Saudi Arabia, which will have to wait for its time in the sun
Well, it’s either going to be in the Warsaw pact, An Iraq-Iran war, or a continuation of the Korean War. Those are my best three guess.
If I were Carey I’d give a public option a try. It can compete with private insurance to drive down price but still maintain free market insurance programs so Republicans don’t later try and overturn it whenever they get Congress back.
And a public option can largely pay for itself as well. Will Carey pass a hospital price cap and medical prescription bill? To keep costs low and more affordable for average Americans.
Also what is the minimum wage here? $3.35 as per OTL 1981? Maybe $3.50 per hour to help people out even a little bit.
And a public option can largely pay for itself as well. Will Carey pass a hospital price cap and medical prescription bill? To keep costs low and more affordable for average Americans.
Also what is the minimum wage here? $3.35 as per OTL 1981? Maybe $3.50 per hour to help people out even a little bit.
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That’s the direction I’m leaning. I don’t know very much about health insurance so I’ve been leaning on this article but the various variants of Nixoncare, Cartercare and Kennedycare I struggle to differentiate:
History of health care reform in the United States - Wikipedia
I’d just say the minimum wage hike is probably in the ESA, though maybe only to $3.40 out of inflationary concerns with how many other spending programs were in the bill
Nixoncare and CarterCare seem to be variants of what we have as Obamacare. Public option is my go-to for any kind of health reform as you wouldn’t have to raise taxes for it, people pay into it and because it is non-profit and hopefully as efficient administration wise as Medicare/Medicaid that will cut down on costs tremendously.That’s the direction I’m leaning. I don’t know very much about health insurance so I’ve been leaning on this article but the various variants of Nixoncare, Cartercare and Kennedycare I struggle to differentiate:
History of health care reform in the United States - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
I’d just say the minimum wage hike is probably in the ESA, though maybe only to $3.40 out of inflationary concerns with how many other spending programs were in the bill
Hey, a raise is a raise. And $3.40 for 1981 is about $11.26 in 2023 money so not bad.
I would also suggest Veteran Affairs Reform, with more mental health programs to help soldiers. Especially due to the mini-Vietnam of Panama.
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