Cinco de Mayo
- Thread starter KingSweden24
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Great updates on Ireland! It looks like the Orangemen are going to be more and more 'punching up' against the Homerule Nationalists and are going to pay the price for it in the end.
Thanks! That's sort of the idea. The Curragh Mutiny is one of those clusterfucks that managed to damage everybody - the Liberals (in losing government), the Tories (in being unpopular right off the bat in gaining government), and the Ulstermen (for, uh, literally revolting against the authority of the Crown, but totally in the name of the Crown). It being the Orangemen who trigger TTL's Easter Rising rather than the IRB/Sinn Fein makes a big difference in public opinion and the elite Unionism can't carry forever.
Midleton being in a role of influence is very important to that end.
The former. Dominion means total self government without a position at Westminster, but within the Empire. So basically a more formally British version of the Free State
You know, the moment that happens that's going to seriously upset the apple cart at Westminster in terms of who is sitting who and in what proportions... wasn't Jix supposed to be PM in the 20s.
It at least sets up the best of both worlds for Ireland after breaking off compared to achieving independence but still having to deal with the festering sore of NI and being outside of the UK’s economic sphere
Mmhmm. You’re seeing how that comes to fruition
An Unfinished Revolution: The Second Chinese Republic, 1912-1924
"...began reconsidering how smart that had been after all. Wang Zhanyuan being far from the capital on campaign did help the civilians of the Jinbudang government continue to structure the bureaucracy in Nanking to better fit their priorities, particularly considering the tenuous nature of their hold on the National Assembly, but every word of Wang's victories in the West made him even more of a popular figure amongst those well-educated Chinese who were capable of reading and also regarded Li's administration as inept, of which there were a great many.
The final fall of Kansu and Qinghai in the autumn of 1914 was thus a double-edged sword for the Jinbudang. The Western Expedition had by and large been a success, with the mercurial and aloof Shansi warlord Yan Xishan lending his support for the push, which formally - or so Tang Jiyao thought - brought Taiyuan and its environs to heel as an added bonus to securing the rebellious provinces beyond. After two years of sporadic resistance, promises of an amnesty led Ma Qi to outmaneuver the rest of his vast family, via both subterfuge and violence, to become head of the Ma clan's fiefdoms in the West and declare in writing, "Long Live the Republic!" Some Ma members chose exile, but the vast majority chose to throw down their swords in return for keeping their position of privilege and putting down any restive Mongol or Tibetan rebels in the porous, fluid-bordered region despite what may have been on maps. By any reasonable measure, the Revolutionary Wars were over, fifteen years after the first small-scale Boxer uprisings in northern China during the autumn of 1899, before things spiraled so wildly out of control.
The China left behind by fifteen years of war and revolution looked very different, though. Along with the Philippines, it was one of two declared republics in Asia established by revolution, a set of circumstances that made many foreign powers and neighbors look at it askance. The borders of the Qing Dynasty had melted in the summer of 1901, both via the secession of Tibet, Mongolia and Turkestan, as well as nibbles taken along the Amur River by Russia and then the coastal enclaves seized as war booty by the other Nine Nations. Imperial authority had collapsed, first in the Southeast with the declaration of the Mutual Protection Society in 1900 and then the First Republic a year later, followed by the deposition of the Xi'an Loyalists in 1906 and the outbreak of the Civil War two years later that finally, only in the previous twenty-four months, had seen the Qing driven back across the Wall to Manchuria where they belonged, but thus also meant that in practical terms yet another massive chunk of China's old borders was gone via Wu-Sazonov Treaty.
To men like Li, this was not entirely a problem, though his public revanchism was the party line and eventually was adopted by most of the right wing of the Guomindang as well. China was physically smaller but with the exception of Manchuria, the provinces lost had been peripheral and populated mostly by non-Han ethnic minorities, leaving behind a China more ethnically homogeneous than before and needing to be less sensitive to the needs of other cultures and peoples. This, in theory at least, should make China easier to govern with fewer immediately restive provinces, though no Chinese nationalist would have ever admitted such.
But the end of the war was not something entirely brought ease with it. South-central China continued to thrive but the vast central and northern plains and the millions of souls within them were still blasted from over a decade of war and famine and the political and socioeconomic divide symbolized by the Huai He only deepened over the remainder of the Second Republic's twelve-year existence. [1] The Jinbudang, while a marked improvement over the ex-mandarins and other thuggish oligarchs who had run the First Republic, were proving themselves to quickly be only somewhat less corrupt but equally inept at actually getting the provinces to listen to their authority. Yan in Shansi was a perfect example - he had helped bring the Mas to heel, but once Wang's armies were being discharged and the General himself headed back to Nanking, Yan's supplication to formal Republican authority became rather amorphous and circumstantial, though his successful and aggressive modernization efforts in the province over the next forty-five years of his life and use of the militantly loyal powerbase he cultivated there to influence Nanking's decisions suggest that there was probably not much they could have done to dislodge him, anyways. Similar arrangements quickly formed not only in Kansu-Qinghai as a consequence of the treaty that ended the war but increasingly in the ambiguously-governed Yunnan, Sichuan, and even in Zhili as various cliques of ambitious officials sought to cultivate a faction based in the old Imperial capital.
Worst of all seemed to be the question of General Wang, whom British envoy Sir John Jordan - who had spent his entire life in the British diplomatic service in East Asia and was a thorough Sinophile - described as "a Caesar of the Orient, a conqueror who took Peking and now Kansu and is regarded as the iron-spined, stoic hero to the masses whom the wobbly President Li, the Pompey Magnus of the hour here in Nanking, most certainly is not." Unfamiliar as most Chinese were with Roman history, the comparison was at a glance apt. Li had in the course of just under three years become a figure of scorn and ridicule to the educated, growing middle-class and an ambiguous, vague object of apathy to the illiterate, politically "unawakened" peasantry, limiting his base of support largely to the civil service and his own party, which had a number of ambitious men within it who nonetheless appreciated his unifying position at the head helping avoid the need for them to make moves unilaterally. So the emergence of such a populist figure, especially one just as deeply tied into the establishment as Wang was, as a person of renown to the Chinese street was a potentially politically lethal development to not just Li but many of his allies in the Jinbudang, and for a moment, it looked like China would possibly plunge back into war, this time as part of an attempted putsch by Wang.
The complicating wrinkle, then was the Guomindang and their growing dominance of the South, almost ruling it by fiat separately from Nanking's authority - if it came to violence, what would they do...?"
- An Unfinished Revolution: The Second Chinese Republic, 1912-1924
[1] Spoiler, I guess, but it's in the title of the in-universe book. And no, we are not looking at a Qing restoration south of the Wall.
The final fall of Kansu and Qinghai in the autumn of 1914 was thus a double-edged sword for the Jinbudang. The Western Expedition had by and large been a success, with the mercurial and aloof Shansi warlord Yan Xishan lending his support for the push, which formally - or so Tang Jiyao thought - brought Taiyuan and its environs to heel as an added bonus to securing the rebellious provinces beyond. After two years of sporadic resistance, promises of an amnesty led Ma Qi to outmaneuver the rest of his vast family, via both subterfuge and violence, to become head of the Ma clan's fiefdoms in the West and declare in writing, "Long Live the Republic!" Some Ma members chose exile, but the vast majority chose to throw down their swords in return for keeping their position of privilege and putting down any restive Mongol or Tibetan rebels in the porous, fluid-bordered region despite what may have been on maps. By any reasonable measure, the Revolutionary Wars were over, fifteen years after the first small-scale Boxer uprisings in northern China during the autumn of 1899, before things spiraled so wildly out of control.
The China left behind by fifteen years of war and revolution looked very different, though. Along with the Philippines, it was one of two declared republics in Asia established by revolution, a set of circumstances that made many foreign powers and neighbors look at it askance. The borders of the Qing Dynasty had melted in the summer of 1901, both via the secession of Tibet, Mongolia and Turkestan, as well as nibbles taken along the Amur River by Russia and then the coastal enclaves seized as war booty by the other Nine Nations. Imperial authority had collapsed, first in the Southeast with the declaration of the Mutual Protection Society in 1900 and then the First Republic a year later, followed by the deposition of the Xi'an Loyalists in 1906 and the outbreak of the Civil War two years later that finally, only in the previous twenty-four months, had seen the Qing driven back across the Wall to Manchuria where they belonged, but thus also meant that in practical terms yet another massive chunk of China's old borders was gone via Wu-Sazonov Treaty.
To men like Li, this was not entirely a problem, though his public revanchism was the party line and eventually was adopted by most of the right wing of the Guomindang as well. China was physically smaller but with the exception of Manchuria, the provinces lost had been peripheral and populated mostly by non-Han ethnic minorities, leaving behind a China more ethnically homogeneous than before and needing to be less sensitive to the needs of other cultures and peoples. This, in theory at least, should make China easier to govern with fewer immediately restive provinces, though no Chinese nationalist would have ever admitted such.
But the end of the war was not something entirely brought ease with it. South-central China continued to thrive but the vast central and northern plains and the millions of souls within them were still blasted from over a decade of war and famine and the political and socioeconomic divide symbolized by the Huai He only deepened over the remainder of the Second Republic's twelve-year existence. [1] The Jinbudang, while a marked improvement over the ex-mandarins and other thuggish oligarchs who had run the First Republic, were proving themselves to quickly be only somewhat less corrupt but equally inept at actually getting the provinces to listen to their authority. Yan in Shansi was a perfect example - he had helped bring the Mas to heel, but once Wang's armies were being discharged and the General himself headed back to Nanking, Yan's supplication to formal Republican authority became rather amorphous and circumstantial, though his successful and aggressive modernization efforts in the province over the next forty-five years of his life and use of the militantly loyal powerbase he cultivated there to influence Nanking's decisions suggest that there was probably not much they could have done to dislodge him, anyways. Similar arrangements quickly formed not only in Kansu-Qinghai as a consequence of the treaty that ended the war but increasingly in the ambiguously-governed Yunnan, Sichuan, and even in Zhili as various cliques of ambitious officials sought to cultivate a faction based in the old Imperial capital.
Worst of all seemed to be the question of General Wang, whom British envoy Sir John Jordan - who had spent his entire life in the British diplomatic service in East Asia and was a thorough Sinophile - described as "a Caesar of the Orient, a conqueror who took Peking and now Kansu and is regarded as the iron-spined, stoic hero to the masses whom the wobbly President Li, the Pompey Magnus of the hour here in Nanking, most certainly is not." Unfamiliar as most Chinese were with Roman history, the comparison was at a glance apt. Li had in the course of just under three years become a figure of scorn and ridicule to the educated, growing middle-class and an ambiguous, vague object of apathy to the illiterate, politically "unawakened" peasantry, limiting his base of support largely to the civil service and his own party, which had a number of ambitious men within it who nonetheless appreciated his unifying position at the head helping avoid the need for them to make moves unilaterally. So the emergence of such a populist figure, especially one just as deeply tied into the establishment as Wang was, as a person of renown to the Chinese street was a potentially politically lethal development to not just Li but many of his allies in the Jinbudang, and for a moment, it looked like China would possibly plunge back into war, this time as part of an attempted putsch by Wang.
The complicating wrinkle, then was the Guomindang and their growing dominance of the South, almost ruling it by fiat separately from Nanking's authority - if it came to violence, what would they do...?"
- An Unfinished Revolution: The Second Chinese Republic, 1912-1924
[1] Spoiler, I guess, but it's in the title of the in-universe book. And no, we are not looking at a Qing restoration south of the Wall.
With how destructive this Chinese Civil War is, I can see a lot of people being desperate to leave to go to greener pastures. I’m sure those Confederate immigration recruiters are really focusing on getting Chinese laborers to head to the Confederacy.
I wonder if this will create a larger stream of Chinese people into the American South, and what effect that will have on the cultural mosaic of the region. It’s also interesting to see how the Chinese people being brought in will interact with any returning Afro Confederates. Considering they would be being utilized for agricultural work.
Ah, poor China. Only 12 years of (relative) peace, and then things get turned on their head all over again. The whole 'long divided must unite, long united must divide' cycle just seems to be getting more and more rapid.
Any hints as to what goes down?
Any hints as to what goes down?
Well from what's been hinted at before, the nastiness of the OTL 30s and 40s has basically been pushed forward to the 00s and 10s, so while they won't be necessarily politically the most stable, I think by and large the warfare has started to die down. It's less about "what government will control China" and now more political maneuvers to fight for who's on top.
Yeah, there’ll definitely be a cheap labor stream to the South from China, as there was all over the Americas, especially with the labor shortages that’ll rapidly emerge postwar
Sort of this, yes. There’ll be warlordism, just a little tamer, and feuds with neighbors, just nothing like the war that led to the Rape of Nanking (a China forged in the heat of what it just went through since 1900 has more military competence, especially if it gets some time to figure its shit out).
As for 1924, just recall that the GMD is strong and much more revolutionary in character, and views itself largely as the only legitimate voice of the Chinese people, so to speak, and that’ll start making things more and more complicated for Li and the gang
Programming Note: Though the narrative is sort of vaguely late September/early October-ish of 1914 depending on where we're checking in on, we're going to do the US midterm updates A) so that all my ideas are fresh and B) so I can get several bullet points of said ideas out of my notes page, then we'll jump back to the October developments of the war that influence said midterms to a miniscule extent before pressing on to the end of 1914.
Further, I have a good idea now of how I'll tie up this piece of the Cinco de Mayo story in 1915 before launching the sequel thread. It won't be my original plan, but I'm happy with the cutoff point.
Further, I have a good idea now of how I'll tie up this piece of the Cinco de Mayo story in 1915 before launching the sequel thread. It won't be my original plan, but I'm happy with the cutoff point.
Actually really looking forward to some political updates - I've been wanting to see how the homefronts are developing during the course of this war, and it will be interesting to see how the Dems run; they have a bit of a needle to thread as they will need (and, lets me honest, are naturally inclined) to run supporting the war and not undermine it, but also finding some issues to differentiate themselves with. My gut tells me that they could run on the high casualties along the front; but the more I think of it, they may well choose to avoid that, as it could potentially inflame anti-war sentiment, which they do not want to do. Its going to be interesting.
How is the propaganda front developing, by chance?
How is the propaganda front developing, by chance?
I think/hope that if you are the Dems you run solely on a campaign of "the brave men on the front are being let down by this inept administration/state government."
Tough needle to thread for sure but I feel you can't attack anyone actually in uniform because it will backfire drastically.
United States elections, 1914
United States elections, 1914
United States Senate elections, 1914
United States Senate elections, 1914
The 1914 midterms are forever known as the "War Election," due to the circumstances under which they were held, and as a result historians have looked back on them for over a century scratching their heads at how the Senate results diverged so sharply from the more typical midterm pattern that manifested itself in the House elections and particularly state gubernatorial and legislative contests (more on that below). Democrats defeated the Socialist turncoat Richard Pettigrew in Dakota and retook the Maryland Senate seat briefly held by Liberal appointee William Jackson but managed to lose three of their own seats, two of them in the Pacific Northwest thanks to the politics in those states polarizing on rural-urban lines, with Democratic machine bosses in the cities of Seattle, Portland and Spokane seeing their machines collapse in the face of Fusion voting, in which a bizarre coalition of pragmatic Socialists and progressive reform Liberals - a sentence unseen elsewhere in the country but perfectly befitting the unusual politics of the Northwest - managed to make the races a contest of competent urban reformers vs. the corrupt alliance of county and city bosses holding tight control over local patronage, and with that the "Fusion Liberals" Ole Hanson (Washington) and Walter Lafferty (Oregon) were elected, the former by defeating the populist incumbent, Seattle-machine product George Cotterill, and the latter taking advantage of incumbent George Chamberlain retiring due to controversy around his Mississippi roots and the temporary coalitional flux caused by the temperance debate in Oregon to narrowly eke out a win on the same ticket as fiercely "dry" Democrat Oswald West.
Such strange (and, as both Hanson and Lafferty would discover in their 1920 landslide defeats when they sought reelection, impossible to replicate) results did not repeat elsewhere. James Phelan, running on a platform of Sinophobia that would only accelerate in the back part of the decade as he became the central protagonist of the Yellow Peril Politics, was comfortably reelected. Democrats and Liberals held serve in their Mountain West and New England strongholds alike, respectively. Both Senate leaders were up for reelection and despite spirited challenges (the Senate made no attempt to tamper down partisanship in the way their House colleagues did) were reelected more narrowly than they had before. The only major flip of a seat was in Hughes' home state of New York, where two-term Senator and on-again-off-again Hearst ally George B. McClellan, Jr. retired in order to serve on the front full time (having been absent from the Senate since February of 1914) and, according to some, to prepare a run for the Presidency in 1916 without the distraction of incumbent office. In his place Democrats nominated Tammany machine figure William Sheehan, who dominated in Irish wards but failed to make much impact upstate, and he was narrowly defeated by outgoing Lieutenant Governor James W. Wadsworth, husband of the daughter of the late President John Hay and thus married into Liberal royalty.
CA: James D. Phelan (D) Re-Elected
CO: James Bradley Orman (D) Retired; John Andrew Martin (D) ELECTED
CT: Henry Roberts (L) Re-Elected
DK: Richard Pettigrew (S) DEFEATED; John Burke (D) ELECTED D+1
ID: Moses Alexander (D) Re-Elected
IL: Richard Yates Jr. (L) Re-Elected
IL (special): Shelby Moore Cullom died in office; Joseph Medill McCormick (L) Re-Elected [1]
IN: John W. Kern (D) Re-Elected
IA: Claude R. Porter (D) Re-Elected
KS: George H. Hodges (D) Re-Elected
MD: Isidor Rayner (D) died in office; William Jackson (L) Appointed and DEFEATED; Blair Lee (D) ELECTED D+2
MO: James Tilghman Lloyd (D) Re-Elected
MT: Joseph Toole (D) Retired; Henry L. Myers (D) ELECTED
NV: Francis Newlands (D) Re-Elected
NH: Winston Churchill (L) Re-Elected
NY: George McClellan Jr. (D) Retired; James W. Wadsworth (L) ELECTED L+1
OH: Newton Baker (D) Re-Elected
OR: George Earle Chamberlain (D) Retired; Walter Lafferty (Liberal/Fusion) ELECTED L+2
PA: Boies Penrose (L) Re-Elected
VT: George H. Prouty (L) Re-Elected, in Absentia
WA: George F. Cotterill (D) DEFEATED; Ole Hanson (Liberal/Fusion) ELECTED L+3
WI: Robert La Follette (L) Re-Elected
United States House of Representatives elections, 1914
The races were completely different in the House, where depending on what state one lived in the elections were either aggressively fought or mutually uncontested, with both Speaker Mann and Minority Leader Clark having encouraged state parties not to disrupt the "War Congress" with feisty partisanship. In some states, such as Ohio or Michigan, this was adhered to at the Congressional level; in New York, however, it was not, and half of the twelve seats lost by Liberals came from that state alone, while also shedding seats in Illinois and traditional strongholds like Pennsylvania and Massachusetts where Democrats held the creaky old Liberal machines there in total contempt. Where Democrats found a great deal of success, however, was in coming after Socialists, especially in the West, flipping seats in Washington, Nevada, Colorado and Montana and nearly nabbing one in Idaho, too. While Democrats lost some seats here and there across the country, as was bound to happen (particularly on the West Coast, which was rapidly diverging from the Mining Belt and Prairie States in terms of its political culture), they ended with a net gain of 17 seats, ending up two seats shy of retaking the House with an outright majority - meaning they would be reliant on some kind of unique confidence-and-supply agreement, which Victor Berger and Ed Boyce, the co-leaders of the Socialists, agreed to provide. [2]
United States State elections, 1914
An entirely third election was occurring at the state level, where Democrats did not backslide or make modest gains but rather delivered something approximating the 1902 landslide. The Governorships of New York (James Gerard), Ohio (James M. Cox), Michigan (Woodbridge Ferris, making a comeback after his Senate defeat in 1910), Wisconsin (John Karel), Oregon (Oswald West) and most shockingly Massachusetts, which elected David Walsh as its first Democratic Governor in thirty years. At the legislative level things went even worse - Democrats achieved supermajorities in the New York Senate and California Assembly (a recompense for not being able to defeat Governor Hiram Johnson in his reelection bid), padded existing majorities in states like Indiana, Minnesota and Colorado, and flipped the entire Michigan legislature, the Ohio Senate, and the Illinois House while dramatically narrowing their deficits in Pennsylvania while coming close to defeating the Liberal nominee Gifford Pinchot, who won thanks to a fervently progressive platform that made major efforts in reaching out to Democrats. While the Senate and House results went in two different directions, the state elections of 1914 were nothing short of a decisive drubbing up and down the ballot in favor of Democrats surging back in the post-Hearst years.
64th United States Congress
Senate: 33D-31L/FL [3]
President of the Senate: Herbert Hadley (L-MO)
Senate President pro tempore: George Turner (D-WA)
Chairman of Senate Liberal Conference: Boies Penrose (L-PA)
Chairman of Senate Democratic Conference: John Kern (D-IN)
California
1. John D. Works (L) (1911)
3. James D. Phelan (D) (1903)
Colorado
2. John Shafroth (D) (1913)
3. John Andrew Martin (D) (1915)
Connecticut
1. George P. McLean (L) (1911)
3. Henry Roberts (L) (1911)
Dakota
2. Fountain Thompson (D) (1901)
3. John Burke (D) (1915)
Delaware
1. J. Edward Addicks (L) (1905)
2. Henry A. du Pont (L) (1907)
Idaho
2. Fred Dubois (D) (1907)
3. Moses Alexander (D) (1905)
Illinois
2. Joseph Medill McCormick (L) (1914)
3. Richard Yates Jr. (L) (1909)
Indiana
1. Benjamin Shively (D) (1905)
3. John W. Kern (D) (1903)
Iowa
2. William D. Jamieson (D) (1913)
3. Claude R. Porter (D) (1909)
Kansas
2. Dudley Doolittle (D) (1913)
3. George H. Hodges (D) (1909)
Maine
1. Frederick Hale (L) (1911)
2. Frank Guernsey (L) (1911)
Maryland
1. John W. Smith (D) (1908)
3. Blair Lee (D) (1913)
Massachusetts
1. Henry Cabot Lodge (L) (1893)
2. John Weeks (L) (1913)
Michigan
1. Charles E. Townsend (L) (1911)
2. William Alden Smith (L) (1907)
Minnesota
1. John Lind (D) (1911)
2. Knute Nelson (D) (1901)
Missouri
1. James A. Reed (D) (1905)
3. James T. Lloyd (D) (1903)
Montana
2. Thomas Walsh (D) (1913)
3. Henry L. Myers (D) (1915)
Nebraska
1. Richard Lee Metcalfe (D) (1905)
2. Gilbert Hitchcock (D) (1913)
Nevada
1. Denver Sylvester Dickerson (1911)
3. Francis Newlands (D) (1903)
New Hampshire
2. William Chandler (L) (1889)
3. Winston Churchill (L) (1909)
New Jersey
1. Joseph Sherman Frelinghuysen (L) (1911)
2. Mahlon Pitney (L) (1913)
New Mexico
1. Bernard Rodey (D) (1911)
2. Octaviano Larrazola (D) (1901)
New York
1. Bainbridge Colby (L) (1911)
3. James Wolcott Wadsworth Jr. (L) (1915) [4]
Ohio
1. Frank Monnett (L) (1911)
3. Newton Baker (D) (1909)
Oregon
2. Jonathan Bourne (L) (1907)
3. Walter Lafferty (FL) (1915)
Pennsylvania
1. Philander Knox (L) (1905)
3. Boies Penrose (L) (1897)
Rhode Island
1. William Sprague (L) (1863)
2. George Wetmore (L) (1895)
Vermont
1. Carroll S. Page (L) (1908)
3. George H. Prouty (L) (1909) (sworn in in absentia)
Washington
2. George Turner (D) (1889)
3. Ole Hanson (FL) (1915) [5]
West Virginia
1. Thomas S. Riley (D) (1905)
2. John J. Davis (D) (1893)
Wisconsin
1. Francis McGovern (L) (1911)
3. Robert La Follette (L) (1903)
Wyoming
1. John Eugene Osborne (D) (1905)
2. Frank Houx (D) (1913)
House: 216D-212L-6S-1Pro (+17D)
Speaker of the House: Champ Clark (D-MO)
House Majority Leader: Marion De Vries (D-CA)
House Majority Whip: John J. Fitzgerald (D-NY)
House Democratic Caucus Chair: Thomas Gallagher (D-IL)
House Minority Leader: James Mann (L-IL)
House Minority Whip: Thomas S. Butler (L-PA)
House Liberal Caucus Chair: William Greene (L-MA)
Socialist House Leader: Victor Berger (S-WI)
Socialist House Whip: Ed Boyce (S-ID)
[1] Some of you may recall the chaotic sequence of events back in early 1914 leading to J.M. McCormick's appointment and the emerging split in the Illinois Liberal Party it caused, which will have very big knock-on effects following the war.
[2] More on this in a moment...
[3] Hat tip to @Curtain Jerker for holding me to what I've already written before and pointing out that the Liberals, in order to avoid being locked out of the Senate for like thirty straight years or something insane like that, need to actually pick up more seats in the mid-1910s than I had initially planned. That's how we wind up with WA and NY being flips, rather than just OR, which was the original plan. This wound up working out well, though, because it just adds to the "huh?" aspect of 1914, a midterm that will confound political historians for decades to come.
[4] Like the most old-money New England WASP name of all time, good lord. Also, in addition to being married into the Hay family, his daughter was Stu Symington's wife. Quite the political family, just learned this today!
[5] At this stage in his career Ole Hanson was actually pretty progressive - he was a Bull Mooser and was elected as Mayor of Seattle OTL in 1918 by running to his fellow progressive opponent's left. I promise that the long write ups that aren't just the results will cover how in the hell "Fusion Liberals" can be a thing, so hang tight - but like I said, mid-1910s politics is weird in the US, and will only get weirder.
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No, I’m still killing him off at the original drop dead date (heh)
We’ll cover a lot of that next!
I have a few ideas (through the ideas of our friend TR, of course) for 1915 but nothing set in stone
That’s more or less the only way to run. Memories are probably short enough to forget specific controversies like Herrick (I’d forgotten him lol) but voters definitely notice the absurd amounts of body bags coming home even with the rally around the flag effect.
As you can see, three totally different elections, basically, all held at the same time in the same country depending on what the election is for.
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