Hey guys, so I had this weird alternate history idea: what butterflies and stuff would be necessary to make California liberal and Texas conservative.
Don't ask me, I'm stumped.
Don't ask me, I'm stumped.
DBWI: California is Liberal and Texas is Conservative
- Thread starter Scorpio Retindar
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- california dbwi switched texas weird
Maybe it could be resolved with Texas getting all its claims up to Rio Grande and swallowing up most of New Leon and Lincoln state. There was a fair Texan "exceptionalism" working on in the XIXth, and keeping alive most of this frontieer self-identity instead of a fairly enclaved (in regards to the south) state might help. I know that these regions are quite Liberal or Socialist IOTL, but with a bigger Texas whom politics would be more tied up to anti-federalist tendencies in fear of having government splitting up Texas as IOTL, it could go fairly well easily in the democratic-conservative ensemble taking the rest of its state with it.
(How viable would be a rump New Leon ITTL is another story : probably put together with Lincoln, easily beating Sequoyah as the weirdest state shape).
(How viable would be a rump New Leon ITTL is another story : probably put together with Lincoln, easily beating Sequoyah as the weirdest state shape).
Marc
Donor
Settle down and have a bite...
It's easy as Chili - no beans! - and chicken fried steak.
Just have Sam Houston be successful in preventing Texas from joining the utterly wrong side of the War of the Rebellion.
Once you all figure out the ramification of that act of sanity, we can help ourselves to a second meal of an In-N-Out Double-Double and a bowl of fresh guac and chips.
Moderate, and not so moderate conservative Republicans largely ran California for about forever, until the very bad recession of the early 1990's and xenophobia took over the vanishing white political majority - timing as good as Texas joining the South in 1861.
The deeply ironic joke, for those us old enough to remember political history over the past 50 years, is that California could have stayed the Republican bastion it was for generations, if California conservatives had actually kept to their principles and not let the reactionaries take over.
FillyofDelphi
Banned
While the other posters here have covered the social factors, I ultimately agree with the 'Pocketbook Primacy" theory of politics: IE the majority of the people (The working class population) make their political decisions based far more on economic policy that their "feels" on social issues. In that sense, you could have easily seen huge numbers of Texans defect from the Democratic party and Liberalism in general if the party had decided to hollow out its New Deal platform and put the emphasis on social issues (to appeal to the suburban middle class that was increasingly creating pressures in the Northern states and California) in order to gain donation money over volinteers and votes. Like in most manufacturing and primary resource production states, the fact that the Dems. basically have a monopoly on the "Hard-Hat" Union vote does wonders to make those state reliably liberal, especially since it's helped keep the average wages in those states so much higher (Unlike in Cali... don't you folks realize that inviting in all that Mexican labor was for the sake of saving the corperate conservatives a buck and co-opting the Catholic position on social issues to lock in traditionalist Republican domination? There's a reason the rest of the country jokes that its safer to be a fetus in the state than a farmer). Given the up and coming personalities in the party during those mid-century decades, such a shift would have been a real possability, especially if we ended up putting up some presidential candidate that focused on using mass media appeal rather than traditional campaigning styles via local party leaders and policy-based advertising (Somebody young and hopeful perhaps... maybe using the television to duplicate Roosevelt's tactic of "Fireside Chats?").
OOC: IMO, thanks for mentioning my hometown; IMO, central Texas would be a more likely location for the movie film industry ITTL...
FillyofDelphi
Banned
(One of the reasons Hollywood really took off was the fact that it was isolated on the other side of the Rockies and close by the Mexican border though; it was a nice bolt-hole for the local media moguls if they ran afoul with the Motion Picture Association based in New York. Corpus Christi certainly fills that bill, though its probably a bit close to the Mexican border during turbulent times for comfort, enough to still be a reasonable location for TTL)
If you want Calfornia to become liberal your going to have to do four things.
1. Make college campus's more liberal
during the 1960s the counter culture movement, hippies, feminists, various power groups essentally went crazy and ended up in charge of the henhouse. At first things were fine and then the movement became very ugly with various student activist groups turning on normal students who just wanted to study and each other.
It all came to a head during the berkly riots where student activists killed 12 students who didn't want to join a protest by burning them alive....
The state pretty much purged them and black listed any one with a history of political activism, to this day california colleges are very a political, but we have a lot of them and if they were more liberal that could swing the state.
2. Prevent Brown from becoming governor.
Brown was the one who firmly posioned the well for democrats, not cracking down on riots, reining in student activists and running the economy into the ground. It took 10 years for the state to fix the damage, and we still haven't forgotten that.
3. Prevent immigration from east asia and eastern europe.
California accepted a lot of refugees from communist china, from vietnam, north korean escapies, we also got a lot of imigrants from poland and eastern europe during the solidarity protests, which turned into the solidarity massacers. To this day at least a 10th of the states population is formed from people who either escaped communism or who's parents escaped communism.
This is not a group of people who are going to have friendly feelings to anything that smells remotely like communism.
4. Have the republicans lose the black vote
The republican party sent the freaking airborn to desegergate schools, and successfully passed the civil rights act of 56 which convinced a lot of african americans to stay with the party. Theres also the fact that the african american community loathes illegal imigrants and sees them as computition for 'their' jobs. However even then this could have been salvaged...
Except for the LA riots.
Things used to be better between the latino and black communities before that happened.
(Started when an african american officers beat up a latino man who was resiting arrest on TV)
Saw black store owners having to stay on roof tops with shot guns, and La rassa protestors burning down much of compton, the black community has never forgiven or forgotten that incident.
Take away these 4 things and it wouldn't be that hard to run the state purple if not a deep blue.
1. Make college campus's more liberal
during the 1960s the counter culture movement, hippies, feminists, various power groups essentally went crazy and ended up in charge of the henhouse. At first things were fine and then the movement became very ugly with various student activist groups turning on normal students who just wanted to study and each other.
It all came to a head during the berkly riots where student activists killed 12 students who didn't want to join a protest by burning them alive....
The state pretty much purged them and black listed any one with a history of political activism, to this day california colleges are very a political, but we have a lot of them and if they were more liberal that could swing the state.
2. Prevent Brown from becoming governor.
Brown was the one who firmly posioned the well for democrats, not cracking down on riots, reining in student activists and running the economy into the ground. It took 10 years for the state to fix the damage, and we still haven't forgotten that.
3. Prevent immigration from east asia and eastern europe.
California accepted a lot of refugees from communist china, from vietnam, north korean escapies, we also got a lot of imigrants from poland and eastern europe during the solidarity protests, which turned into the solidarity massacers. To this day at least a 10th of the states population is formed from people who either escaped communism or who's parents escaped communism.
This is not a group of people who are going to have friendly feelings to anything that smells remotely like communism.
4. Have the republicans lose the black vote
The republican party sent the freaking airborn to desegergate schools, and successfully passed the civil rights act of 56 which convinced a lot of african americans to stay with the party. Theres also the fact that the african american community loathes illegal imigrants and sees them as computition for 'their' jobs. However even then this could have been salvaged...
Except for the LA riots.
Things used to be better between the latino and black communities before that happened.
(Started when an african american officers beat up a latino man who was resiting arrest on TV)
Saw black store owners having to stay on roof tops with shot guns, and La rassa protestors burning down much of compton, the black community has never forgiven or forgotten that incident.
Take away these 4 things and it wouldn't be that hard to run the state purple if not a deep blue.
[OOC] Since this is in the pre-1900 section, the implication is that as of 1900 California was more liberal than Texas. Which was not necessarily the case--Henry Gage's administration in California was hardly progressive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Gage
Any post on "make California conservative and Texas liberal" or "DBWI: Make California liberal and Texas conservative" really belongs in the post-1900 section.
Any post on "make California conservative and Texas liberal" or "DBWI: Make California liberal and Texas conservative" really belongs in the post-1900 section.