Collaborative Timeline: A World of Diversity - Kerry wins in 2004

March 2nd, 2005: After a close race and a series of contentious recounts, Democrat Erskine Bowles is declared the winner of the Senate race in North Carolina, defeating Republican Richard Burr by less than a hundred votes. It's a small victory in an otherwise bleak picture for the Democrats in that chamber of Congress. Despite John Kerry's narrow victory in the Electoral College, the Republicans gained five seats in the Senate, largely piggybacking off of high Republican turnout for the Republicans in the South and among other conservatives voters. Notably, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle was defeated in South Dakota by former Representative John Thune. The only gain Democrats were able to make was in Illinois, where state legislator Barack Obama narrowly defeated businessman Jack Ryan. [1]

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[1] Two important things to note from the last sentence: in this scenario, Peter Coors defeats Ken Salazar for the Colorado seat. Also, Jack Ryan's divorce records remain sealed in this scenario... and he loses anyway.

This may be what Stolengood was talking about, but the first post specifically states that Daschle held his seat while the Republicans had a net gain of four.
 
October 10th, 2004: Hurricane Matthew makes landfall in Iberia Parish, Louisiana as a Category 1 storm, causing moderate damage to southeastern Louisiana, including New Orleans, over the course of the 10th and 11th, before dissipating over southwestern Alabama on the 12th.

February 28th, 2005: President Kerry's incoming FEMA Director R. David Paulison is handed a report indicating that some levees in the New Orleans area performed below expectations during Hurricane Matthew the previous year. An aide later recalled during a Congressional hearing following Hurricane Lee that Paulison had read the report but expressed skepticism the Republican-dominated Congress would approve the funds necessary for any significant improvements in flood control for New Orleans.

April 19th, 2005: Nineteen days after the death of Pope John Paul II and following two previous ballots, it is announced in the Vatican City that Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Buenos Aires had been elected Pope and would accede as Pope Paul VII. He is the first Pope born outside Europe in over a millennia, since the Syrian Pope Gregory III.

August 29th, 2005: Hurricane Jose dissipates over Oaxaca, Mexico six days after forming over the Bahamas. It had battered southern Florida as a Category 1 hurricane and the Yucatan Peninsula as a Tropical Storm with remnants causing heavy rain and mudslides in Chiapas and Oaxaca, causing moderate damage overall.

Not technically after Katrina. And while the particular weather pattern, similar to OTL Katrina but with a different course, intensity, and name due to butterflies, fails to have a huge impact, this does not preclude a storm of a similar to magnitude to OTL Katrina forming; this is the mentioned Hurricane Lee.

EDIT: Also, HUD Secretary wasn't covered in any discussions of potential Kerry cabinet picks I found, so I picked James Hahn just by looking at the Mayors of large US cities at the time, skipping NYC and Chicago as I already knew Bloomberg and Daley were in office respectively, so he was first on the list and seemed to be a decent Mayor. Any thoughts on if that was a good or likely call?
 
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Tuesday bump of the thread. Events up to March 31, 2006 would be opened once there are 35 replies in this thread. I also do an update combining by when this TL reaches page 4.
 
Wikipedia said:
On 25 July 2006, one reactor was shut down after an electrical fault.[3][4] According to the Swedish Nuclear Power Inspection authority SKI, the incident was rated 2 on the International Nuclear Event Scale. Initially it was rated 1 since two generators remained online. But once it was discovered that all four generators could have failed due to the same fault, the event was upgraded to 2.
At the request of the Swedish Government, IAEA launched an OSART mission to Forsmark.
Lars-Olov Höglund, a former construction chief at Vattenfall, claimed it was the most serious nuclear incident in the world since the Chernobyl disaster and it was pure luck that prevented a meltdown.[5]

December 25, 2005: This "electrical fault" happens on this day and is more severe than OTL due to the cold weather/snow/...

Also, Forsmark is understaffed on this general holiday, and the inadequately trained ersatz staff cannot prevent a total meltdown in 3 of the 4 reactors...
 
December 25, 2005: This "electrical fault" happens on this day and is more severe than OTL due to the cold weather/snow/...

Also, Forsmark is understaffed on this general holiday, and the inadequately trained ersatz staff cannot prevent a total meltdown in 3 of the 4 reactors...

Dates after August 2005 aren't open yet.

August 15th, 2005: Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney announces plans to to run for reelection in 2006 and rules out speculation he was planning to run for President in 2008. In a later interview, Romney stated he was heartened by modest 2004 gains in the Massachusetts legislature for Republicans despite John Kerry easily carrying the state in the previous year's Presidential election and by his Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey's good strong but ultimately failed electoral fight against Niki Tsongas in the special election two months prior, while on the other hand being pessimistic Republican primary voters would be receptive to choosing a moderate Massachusetts Republican as their challenger against fellow Bay Stater John Kerry.
 
Dates after August 2005 aren't open yet.

August 15th, 2005: Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney announces plans to to run for reelection in 2006 and rules out speculation he was planning to run for President in 2008. In a later interview, Romney stated he was heartened by modest 2004 gains in the Massachusetts legislature for Republicans despite John Kerry easily carrying the state in the previous year's Presidential election and by his Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey's good strong but ultimately failed electoral fight against Niki Tsongas in the special election two months prior, while on the other hand being pessimistic Republican primary voters would be receptive to choosing a moderate Massachusetts Republican as their challenger against fellow Bay Stater John Kerry.

Sorry. I misinterpreted the conjunctive and indicative, and was delighted too early...

Tony, feel free to retcon or accept Forsmark...
 
May 5th, 2005: The Labour Party under Tony Blair wins a third term in the United Kingdom general election. While the party retained a majority, Blair's flagging popularity and increasing public discontent with the War in Iraq, particularly after John Kerry's election in the United States, lead to significant losses for Labour and gains for the opposition. The Conservatives saw a net gain of 34 seats, barely missing leader Michael Howard's goal of 200 seats, while the Liberal Democrats surged, with a net gain of 29 seats due to left wing discontent with Blair, which also allowed the newly formed Respect Party to win two seats, electing George Galloway in Bethnal Green and Bow and Salma Yaqoob in Birmingham Sparkbrook and Small Heath.

The full results were;

  • Labour: 332 seats (-69) Labour majority of 8 seats
  • Conservatives: 199 seats (+34)
  • Liberal Democrats: 80 seats (+29)

  • Democratic Unionist: 9 seats (+4) stood in Northern Ireland only
  • Scottish National: 7 seats (+3) stood in Scotland only
  • Sinn Fein: 5 seats (+1) stood in Northern Ireland only
  • Social Democratic and Labour: 3 seats (±0) stood in Northern Ireland only
  • Plaim Cymru: 2 seats (-2) stood in Wales only)
  • Respect – The Unity Coalition: 2 seats (+2)
  • Health Concern: 1 seat (±0) stood in Wyre Forest constituency only
  • Ulster Unionist: 1 seat (-5) stood in Northern Ireland only
  • Independent: 1 seat (+1) (Peter Law)

  • Speaker and deputies: 4 seats (±0)

May 6th, 2005: Conservative Party leader Michael Howard announces his intention to resign and call a leadership election following a review of the party's election procedures.
 
August 29, 2005: Hurricane Katrina slams into Jacksonville, FL as a Category 4. The storm causes immense damage in Savannah and Atlanta as it moves inland.
 
Regardless of politics the hurricane season of 2005 will still occur, though I'd be interested to see how the media reacts to a Democratic administration handling the event all things being equal.
 
Regardless of politics the hurricane season of 2005 will still occur, though I'd be interested to see how the media reacts to a Democratic administration handling the event all things being equal.

Which it does, just differently (and perhaps slightly less severe), although there are still some very strong storms; "Katrina" (the actual alt-Katrina was Hurricane Jose, which didn't strengthen past Category 1 and passed over southern Mexico) hitting Georgia and northern Florida, and Lee hitting New Orleans as OTL Katrina did.

Does anyone have thoughts on what the effects are on British politics following such a bad night for Labour? Having lost nearly seventy seats and holding only a narrow majority, would Blair resign much sooner than he did OTL? Someone should also cover the events in Afghanistan and Iraq. Plus we still need to go generally over Kerry's first year in office.

October 28th, 2004: Swedish journalist and aspiring novelist Stieg Larsson checks into a Stockholm hospital after suffering chest pains. After an examination, doctors inform him that his heart is weak, likely inherited from his grandfather who had died of a heart attack at age 50, and he will require a transplant

July 31st, 2005: Stieg Larsson is discharged from the hospital following a successful heart transplant, a day prior to the release of his first novel Män som hatar kvinnor, which had already generated critical interest.

August 3rd, 2005: A tropical depression forms east of Bermuda, fueled by water heated by an unusually extreme summer. The next day, it developed into a tropical storm and was designated Tropical Storm Harvey.

August 5th, 2005: Tropical Storm Harvey strengthens, becoming a Category 1 Hurricane, while moving over the unusually warm North Atlantic. Meteorologists begin predicting that it could hit the Atlantic coast of Europe.

August 8th, 2005: Harvey passes over the Azores as a Category 2 Hurricane, slightly down from it's peak Category 3 intensity. It is the strongest hurricane to hit the Azores in recorded history, killing twenty-nine people and causing more than €150 million in damages in the islands.

August 10th, 2005: Hurricane Harvey makes it's second landfall near Porto as a Category 1, battering Galicia and northern Portugal and causing a further fourteen fatalities and some €550 million in damages. Having killed more than forty people, caused more than two thirds of a billion Euros in damage, and left three million people in Spain and Portugal without power, it is one of the worst natural disasters in recent European history.
 
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No more interest in this?

(Hint: this being the 35th post, events up to the end of March 2006 are now open... ;))
 
January 13th 2006

Speculation about Republican Presidental Candidates increases with Jeb Bush and Rudy Guilliani the front runners. Mitt Romney has ruled out running in 2008.
 
June 14th, 2005: Prince William County Board of Supervisors Chairman Sean Connaughton narrowly wins the crowded Republican Party primary for Governor of Virginia, defeating former Attorney General Jerry Kilgore, Warrenton Mayor George Fitch, and State Senator Bill Mims. Connaughton had built up a successful record as Chairman, attracting several major companies to the county and managing it well financially.

September 4th, 2005: At a Detroit Tigers-Chicago White Sox game in Chicago, a spectator is hit in the forehead by a foul ball from White Sox outfielder Joe Borchard and taken off the scene in an ambulance. The victim is reported to be baseball writer and statistician Nate Silver, who two years earlier had become prominent for developing the PECOTA sabermetric system. He is released from the hospital the following afternoon.

September 16th, 2005: Nate Silver is found dead at his Chicago residence. An autopsy shows he had died from an undetected brain injury stemming from being struck with a foul ball while spectating the Tigers-White Sox game roughly two weeks prior.

November 8th, 2005: With conservatives outraged with President Kerry's "illegitimate" victory, the Republican Party has a very good night in the few off-year elections. Despite the popularity of incumbent Democratic Governor Mark Warner (prohibited from serving consecutive terms under state law) Sean Connaughton defeats Lieutenant Governor Tim Kaine to be elected Governor of Virginia by an eight-point margin, while businessman and 2002 Senate nominee Doug Forrester is elected Governor of New Jersey by a narrow margin (less than two points) over Senator Jon Corzine. Liberal Republican New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg wins reelection with over sixty percent of the vote.
 
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