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It's well-known that the relationship between the southern Democrats and the northern Democrats between the 1930s and the 1960s went from bad to worse. Separate Dixiecrat presidential campaigns erupted in 1948, 1960, and 1968; lesser eruptions occurred in 1944 and 1956, and in 1964 Barry Goldwater was the de facto beneficiary of the movement.

In general, though, the Dixiecrats were effectively the gang that couldn't shoot straight when it came to Presidential elections. There was no real leadership, and the Dixiecrats themselves ended up split between parties as the years went on.

Let us assume a couple of factors collude to give them a bit more order, if through nothing more than increased tension with the national party. The first is going to be the removal of LBJ and Sam Rayburn from the political scene. LBJ is easy enough: He barely won the Democratic primary in 1948, and only pulled that off by hook and crook. All you need to reverse this is for Coke Stevenson to drag another couple hundred votes out of some precinct somewhere else, or for his margin to be just big enough that LBJ can't "count" it away. Coke Stevenson may stick around for a few terms, but the key is that he is by no means LBJ, and was in fact apparently a 'mainstream' racist for 1940s Texas.

Rayburn is a bit more difficult. Ultimately, let's assume that he has a nasty bout with cancer in the early 1950s that effectively sidelines him for a year or two. He stays on as Speaker for a while, but ultimately is forced out of being the figure he once was. The cancer ultimately does him in by 1955 (six years ahead of schedule) during a relapse, but by this point he's really a shadow of who he was IRL.

Finally, the dog that didn't bark in all of this is 1952, the last time the Democrats stuck a flatly pro-segregation figure (John Sparkman) on a ticket. 1952 is also the only year that didn't feature substantial Dixiecrat activity in some form or another. This can be resolved by removing Stevenson from the mix or having him pick someone else for VP. Kefauver is actually a possibility (he was on the shortlist in '52, and was actually picked in '56, albeit by the convention; additionally, Stevenson's nomination was something of an accident of circumstances, and Stevenson personally was quite reluctant to run.

So assume that these factors, which kept the Democrats from having an open crack-up in the 1950s, are reversed: LBJ loses to Stevenson; Rayburn is out and effectively replaced by McCormack; and Stevenson picks Kefauver (ultimately deciding that the risk of a Dixiecrat revolt is worth a stronger effort in the North). At this point, the Southern Democrats carry out another walkout and begin sharpening their knives.

In general, the effect on the 1952 election is close to nil: Stevenson carries Tennessee, Missouri, and Rhode Island (which he lost IRL) but drops Louisiana to Ike as an unpledged slate takes 20% of the vote. In a true shocker, he also loses South Carolina to Ike (the unpledged slate there has the support of Strom Thurmond, and takes over 20%, while Ike edges him out on a razor's edge). Other support is scattered and often based on local personalities pushing one slate or another. Ike still has his landslide, and the down-ballot results are identical to what we saw, with major GOP gains.

Back in Washington, attempts to elect a Democratic Senate Minority Leader come January. The party finds itself irreconcilably divided: The 20 Southern Senators (I exclude Al Gore, Sr. and Estes Kefauver, both of Tennessee; both refused to sign the Southern Manifesto, so I suspect they break with their regional bretheren) ultimately settle on Richard Russell (D-GA) as their candidate. Russell is unacceptable to northerners, and ultimately Carl Hayden is elected after tense negotiations between everyone not from the South. The Southern Democrats do remain within the party, but the affiliation is social at best, and even that requires a bit of good humor that is often lacking. The election meeting of the caucus actually has to be recessed for fifteen minutes after two Senators nearly get into a fistfight. The election in the House of Representatives doesn't go much better, with the Southern Democrats putting up their own candidate in a measure of spite.

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So, thoughts? Comments? Ideas on where to go with this? I know I'm not doing the "normal" single PoD (I'd say there are really two: LBJ's defeat and Rayburn's health; the VP selection in '52 flows from the latter to some extent), but I think you need to get the two cagiest Southern Democrats in DC out of the way to make things work out.
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