GOP victory in 08" after 04" Kerry victory: Democratic version of Tea Party in 10"?

Let's say Kerry won the electoral college in 2004 but lost the popular vote to Bush (which was a very plausible scenario). Let's say Bush won 49.9% of the popular vote to Kerry's 49.1%. The GOP nominee would likely defeat Kerry in 2008 by a larger-than-1988 margin, given that Kerry would probably be a very unpopular incumbent. (I would see a Democratic victory in 2004 too late a POD to delay the financial tsunami...)

The GOP may gain a few seats in the Congress in 2006 but I still think the GOP, at best, could only manage to have no net loss of seats in Senate, more likely losing one or two seats. (Hey, tell me how you could get Rick Santorum re-elected?) The GOP at best could gain only one or 2 seats in 2008. I could see Democrats losing Louisiana, while the GOP retains Minnesota, Colorado, Alaska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, but not Virginia. Lautenberg will be vulnerable in TTL however, but he may pull it off narrowly.

When it comes to 2010, however, the OTL backlash towards Obama may happen to the GOP president as some sort of a reversal of 1994. The GOP will possibly lose both the Senate and the House, though perhaps a narrow loss in the House in this case given that the GOP would have gained seats in 2002, 2004 (in my scenario a gain of 1 or 2 seats still possible), 2006 and 2008 in TTL, which is insane - when did you see a single party gaining seats in 4 consecutive election:eek: For Senate, a Democratic victory would be all but certain, at least it's much easier than for Republicans to regain the Senate in OTL 2010.

HOWEVER, is it possible for an anti-establishment, anti-war, socialist-leaning and uncompromising opposite of the OTL Tea Party among Democrats to primary incumbents and favorites, as well as pushing America towards the left in 2010? Who will be their leader? Perhaps Dennis Kucinich:eek:, but anyone that makes more sense? Thoughts?
 
The Tea Party was started by Ron Paul supporters and then co-opted by angry conservatives.

This could be started by supporters of someone similar (Kucinich, Gravel, etc), or perhaps by Adbusters like Occupy Wall Street.
 
Let's say Kerry won the electoral college in 2004 but lost the popular vote to Bush (which was a very plausible scenario). Let's say Bush won 49.9% of the popular vote to Kerry's 49.1%. The GOP nominee would likely defeat Kerry in 2008 by a larger-than-1988 margin, given that Kerry would probably be a very unpopular incumbent. (I would see a Democratic victory in 2004 too late a POD to delay the financial tsunami...)

The GOP may gain a few seats in the Congress in 2006 but I still think the GOP, at best, could only manage to have no net loss of seats in Senate, more likely losing one or two seats. (Hey, tell me how you could get Rick Santorum re-elected?) The GOP at best could gain only one or 2 seats in 2008. I could see Democrats losing Louisiana, while the GOP retains Minnesota, Colorado, Alaska, New Hampshire, North Carolina, but not Virginia. Lautenberg will be vulnerable in TTL however, but he may pull it off narrowly.

When it comes to 2010, however, the OTL backlash towards Obama may happen to the GOP president as some sort of a reversal of 1994. The GOP will possibly lose both the Senate and the House, though perhaps a narrow loss in the House in this case given that the GOP would have gained seats in 2002, 2004 (in my scenario a gain of 1 or 2 seats still possible), 2006 and 2008 in TTL, which is insane - when did you see a single party gaining seats in 4 consecutive election:eek: For Senate, a Democratic victory would be all but certain, at least it's much easier than for Republicans to regain the Senate in OTL 2010.

HOWEVER, is it possible for an anti-establishment, anti-war, socialist-leaning and uncompromising opposite of the OTL Tea Party among Democrats to primary incumbents and favorites, as well as pushing America towards the left in 2010? Who will be their leader? Perhaps Dennis Kucinich:eek:, but anyone that makes more sense? Thoughts?


Its unlikely that it would be Socialist, but would likely harken back to New Deal liberalism; as this is just after the economic meltdown, I could see this group pushing for higher taxes for the rich, national healthcare, and regulation of business. Since Romney would be the most likely Republican candidate in 2008 in this scenerio, and thereby be President, I could see some interesting bipartisan support for Healthcare (Romneycare writ large ... so, you know, pretty much what we ended up with), and the big sticking points being taxes and regulation (the exact sort of thing which Occupy seemed to be focused on).

As for leaders? Oh god, I would hope it wouldn't be Kucinich. I could see Feingold in the Senate being seen as one of the leaders (although Feingold was never as radical of people sometimes think he is).
 
As for leaders? Oh god, I would hope it wouldn't be Kucinich. I could see Feingold in the Senate being seen as one of the leaders (although Feingold was never as radical of people sometimes think he is).

Bernie Sanders already has a sizable Internet following, FWIW.
 
The Democratic version of the Tea Party for the most part took the form of the Occupy Movement, or at the very least the elements that would make up such a hypothetical movement.

The problem here though is that we are talking about the Midterms, when the voting public typically is to the Right, at least compared to standard elections in Presidential years. Politicians to the Far Left are going to find their path to victory far rockier than those who were to the Far Right, unless they are in relatively safe districts. This could very well mitigate Republican losses, maybe produce some gains, but I wouldn't bet money on that.

The Democratic Primaries would be interesting to say the least.
 
The Tea party is a current successor of a portion of the right wing I'll just label the Whacky Right. It has always existed, or at least has for quite a long time, even though it seemed to go into hibernation for a long time. This is the kind that revels in conspiracy theories and knee jerk nationalism and berates its enemies as the most evil, wicked people on the planet without any humor or letting bygones be bygones because it views their political adversaries as being within an inch of completely turning the United States into a dictatorship with breadlines and poor economics, and it views anything outside its political views as literally going to make the United States a socialist dictatorship overnight. And they don't know what Socialism is except for a boogeyman where any government initiative or involvement means Socialism, and Socialism means things will look like North Korea as a result and three centuries of democracy will be wiped out. And they don't know what Socialism is, and assume all these Conspiratorial things and heinous falsehoods are true because they are generally low information individuals who get their information from academics and media personalities who themselves got that false information from other people of their same type or are otherwise cooks.

The Whacky Right wing existed in an especial strength in the post-WW2 Cold War era, and if you study that it's very surprising how much that whacky right was like this one. Of special note is the John Birch Society, founded by the father of the Koch brothers by the way. It was the king daddy of the whacky right, and espoused how everyone from Ike to Truman to Roosevelt to Jack Kennedy were actually Communists, how fluoridation of water and polio vaccines and all that were actually conspiracies to poison us or weaken us, how there was a massive global Communist conspiracy going on within the United States, and how the Communist world had infiltrated absolutely everything in the West and the United States, and how this and that were all Socialist plots, how Medicare would destroy freedom and lead to an end of democracy in America where grandparents would have to explain to their grand children what it was once like to be free, how the United Nations was a seditious and evil organization that wanted to dictate America and how such a globalist government would override the Constitution, etc, etc. And that was the kind of thinking shared overall by that whacky right. The John Birch Society called for the impeachment of Earl Warren for his allowing Liberal legislation to get through, and they were the ones that handed out those fliers in Dallas you might have seen calling President Kennedy a traitor guilty of treason, and they called him a Communist. Sound familiar?

The Conservative Right has, in its political region, a tradition of that which is unfortunate. These aren't the people who are Conservative because they believe in small government (or at least that isn't the prime reason), which is perfectly legitimate and reasonable. These are the people who are low information voters, who are paranoid, and who are told all this stuff is happening and are made to be warriors for that because the cooks in the leadership positions of the movement want them to be, and because of their own zealous ignorance. And the worst part is that the leadership in moderate Conservativism in mainstream politics have been willing to play to them. Goldwater was during 1964, Wallace was during 1968, and the modern GOP is now that it has resurged with such irrational and ignorant vengeance. And the problem certainly now is that because the GOP has done that to garner votes, it makes those cooks seem legitimate, and has brought them into elected positions, and drawn the GOP closer to that irrational right-wing, and then because that is part of the mainstream politics, we have to be proper and respectful and act like its reasonable or both parts are guilty, and I'm not going to do that.

The closest the Left has ever had to that is the New Left, but it's insulting to think the New Left were like that whacky right wing (though they did have their admittedly dickish features in their own right). The New Left was focused on social change to a more left wing society, with things such as being able to have long hair and bears and women's rights and civil rights, and the most conspiratorial they got was thinking the government blew away Kennedy and the CIA was responsible for all these bad things going on (and though that is bologna on a lot of areas, and most certainly the most government-as-omnipotent ideas, the government was probing left wing groups and individuals and monitoring them and screwing with them). And the closest it ever got in modern times has been Occupy Wallstreet.
 
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The closest the Left has ever had to that is the New Left, but it's insulting to think the New Left were like that whacky right wing. The New Left was focused on social change to a more left wing society, with things such as being able to have long hair and bears and women's rights and civil rights, and the most conspiratorial they got was thinking the government blew away Kennedy and the CIA was responsible for all these bad things going on (and though that is bologna on a lot of areas, and most certainly the most government-as-omnipotent ideas, the government was probing left wing groups and individuals and monitoring them and screwing with them). And the closest it ever got in modern times has been Occupy Wallstreet.

I was generally with you up until the last paragraph. Although I agree with you about the ideologial roots of the Tea Party (and the interesting parrellels between the movement, and previous outbursts of the Wingnut Right), I would not agree that the Left does not possess a similar conspiracy bent from time to time. Don't forget that the New Left, especially in its more radical wings, gave us the SLA, the Weathermen and several other such organizations. During the later 1960s and early 1970s, as Vietnam continued to drag on, the economy declined, and so forth, conspiracy theories became fairly commonplace on the Left; blame for the current conditions were blamed on everyone from the Rockefeller family to other prominent businessmen.

However, save for periods of high stress, the Left has generally done a better job of jettison its own lunatic fringe than the Right.

Back to the topic at hand, I do agree, that any Liberal *Tea Party movement would resemble the Occupy movement in a lot of its demands and ideology.
 
The Democratic version of the Tea Party for the most part took the form of the Occupy Movement, or at the very least the elements that would make up such a hypothetical movement.

Yes and no. Two major features distinguishing Occupy from the Tea Party is its disdain for electoral politics and refusal to identify with any major party. I've heard just as many harsh things said in Occupy about Democrats as I have heard stuff aimed at the GOP. I think the big reason why the anti-two party attitude exists is partially because of the co-option of the Tea Party happening in 2009 and 2010 along with Obama's perceived failures. If you don't have the Tea Party movement happening in 2008-2009 and you have something similar to Occupy starting up at the same time I think they'll be much more identifiably with the Democratic Party and focusing on elections, candidates, and voting than it did OTL.
 
Kerry would have three real problems by 2008:
1. There would be Katrina in 2005.
2. His withdrawal from Iraq would also be controversial - and if it becomes chaotic, then that raises new issues for the Democrats.
3. Then the financial meltdown of 2008 happens on his watch.
 
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