Gold Conservatives keep control of Dems in 1890s

Could the more conservative establishment elements have retained control of the Democrats?

If so could a Bryan led populist party have replaced them?
 
Bryan was the mainstream Democrats seeking to draw in and co-opt the Populist ferment. If the Democratic party resisted being drawn leftward at least in rhetoric, I do think that between the People's Party (which was essentially agrarian and to some extent miner based) and a parallel rise in more urban-labor based radical populism leading to more or less social-democratic parties with or without radical anarchist/communist elements in the mix, some sort of hard-left party might have jelled. Or more likely, several, the disunion between them giving the old mainstream parties cause for hope but perhaps overconfidence--especially if the various populist movements could arrive at some sort of strategic alliance.

If that happened, I doubt Bryan would lead any of them.

But it's pretty hard to see why neither mainstream party would move to co-opt at least some of the radicals and they could probably (certainly did, OTL) win over enough of them to hold the radicals in third-party Limbo. The leadership of both would have to be hopelessly dim and hidebound not to have among them some mavericks (like oh say, William Jennings Bryan--or Theodore Roosevelt!) who'd ride the storm to power within a mainstream party and thus navigate a reformist course. And the monied powers that backed the mainstream parties would also have to overwhelmingly be both stupid and stubborn not to see the advantage of a moderate co-option of this radicalism and willing to take some risk of a certain amount of public regulation against the benefit of such mild interventionism actually leading to a stronger and more profitable, as well as more popular, capitalist order. Which is again what happened OTL.

Of course such stupidity and stubbornness among the privileged classes is the stuff of which plausible Red America scenarios are made of!:p And darn if they don't make such things look plausible sometimes too.:eek:
 
A Republican wins the popular vote in 1888, and a Silverite Dem wins in 1892. In 1896 the Democrats turn Gold, splitting the Silverites into the Populist Party (coopted in 1892 ITTL).
 
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