DBWI - The Democrats as liberal and GOP as conservative

I'm not sure if this is ASB but could we manage a polar flip in the alignments of the two major US political parties? As we all know the Republicans are the party of Lincoln and have the vast majority of support from blacks and other ethnic minorities. Republicans are more in favour of social welfare programs and a strong federal government as well as taking a stance against guns.

The Democrats, also known as 'That Southern Party' by some of its detractors, are the more conservative political grouping. Fiscal conservatives, evangelical Christians and open racists make their home in the Democratic Party which is very pro-gun rights, pro-states' rights and in favour of an increase in military spending.

Your challenge then is to come up with a way for which the Democrats are the liberal party and the Republicans are the conservative party. Feel free to also branch off of our current two party dominated political landscape as long as the Democrats and Republicans are the two major parties.
 
That's... absolutely insane!

We're talking about the GOP, the party that freed the slaves. And the Democrats, who at the Civil War were split between those who wanted secession and the Unionists!

I'm sorry but... It sounds seriously ASB...
 
I can think of a way to make the GOP fiscally conservative and the Democrats fiscally populist, but socially, of course, is ASB.

McKinley isn't shot. As simple as it is, Theodore Roosevelt was the first of the progressive Republicans, with his support of business efficiency and regulations. This would avoid the presidencies of Theodore Roosevelt, Taft, and Hughes. Perhaps then the Democrats continue to wave the flag of Bryan.

I think what really put it into stone was the 1920s. After Hughes' controversial entry into WWII, the Democrats dominated the "decade of normalcy", and after Franklin Roosevelt fucked up the nation with his conservative economics, people elected LaGuardia in a massive landslide. That solidified the two parties more than anything. I am of the view that making Wilson beat Hughes won't be enough as Wilson was truly very conservative in his second term. If he won a second consecutive term instead of a non-consecutive won, he'd still have a second term marked by conservatism.
 
One thing might be to keep Huey Long from breaking with the Democrats over their lacklustre response to the depression. After he left he took quite a few of their progressives with him. After he died in 47 the American Union Party split, with the majority under Wallace finding common cause with the Republicans, particularly on labour and civil rights. The minority attempted to restart the Farmer-Labor Party, hoping to shift the centre of political debate to the left, but after Glen Taylor failed to capture a single state in 1948 the party went into decline on a national level, with most of its branches either falling into obscurity, or in the case of the Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party, were absorbed by the Republicans.

In addition this migration of progressives into the Republican Party, along with their perceived soft approach to Communism (especially after Warren replaced Hoover with Dewy) and enthusiastic support civil rights, led to more than a few right-wing Republicans jumping ship to the Democrats, most notably McCarthy.

So maybe if Huey or another progressive candidate won the Democratic ticket in 32, you might be able to keep a significant progressive faction within the party, but whether it would be powerful enough to boot out the bourbon establishment, especially once civil rights become a major issue, is unlikely.
 
Last edited:
Thomas Dewey, one of the greatest FBI Directors in history and respected by all parties. It is easy to see why the FBI headquarters building was renamed the Thomas E. Dewey Federal Office Building in 1972.
 
There actually is an interesting POD as late as 1960. Apparently when Martin Luther King was arrested, John Kennedy of all people wanted to call Coretta King and otherwise intervene on behalf of MLK, but was dissuaded by his advisors. Nixon made the call instead.

Nixon of course won a close election and got all the civil rights legislation through. But as hawkish as Kennedy was on foreign policy, if he had become president he would have built on the tentative steps Eisenhower had already taken, and it would have been the Democrats who would have been known as the pro-Civil Rights party. Instead you had Smathers trying to take advantage of the white backlash after his upset victory of Lyndon Johnson for the 1964 nomination.
 
I wonder what would happen to the moral majority in a left-democrat world, of which Jerry Fallwell tried to run for president in 1980. Would they still exist, but just run Republican candidates.
 
So maybe if Huey or another progressive candidate won the Democratic ticket in 32, you might be able to keep a significant progressive faction within the party, but whether it would be powerful enough to boot out the bourbon establishment, especially once civil rights become a major issue, is unlikely.

You'd need his challenge to FDR at the 1932 convention to succeed for that, and try as he might there was no way anyone outside the south would trust him. In a way, it's a good thing that happened, because when he split and formed his vanity party it left the Democrats (and more importantly, the South) irrelevant as a force for twenty years, long enough for LaGuardia to desegregate the military, pass State Pension without fucking over the blacks, and undo Wilson's damage by desegregating the Civil Service.

Really it was Huey Long making the South irrelevant that paved the way for Hubert Humphrey to pass the Civil Rights Act in 1962.
 
Top