in U.S. in ‘ 76, ‘88, or ‘92, a liberal Democrat wins and has reasonably successful presidency.
- Thread starter GeographyDude
- Start date
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
I’m going to kick at that figure. Because Holy Cow!, as late as 1992 half of American adults had a problem with interracial marriage ? ?
I do accept the general premise that we still have real issues with accepting people of different races, and with African-American persons in particular. For example,
That crack cocaine was treated more harshly than powder cocaine, and just mass incarceration itself,
That African-American kids in school are “tracked,” either for harsher punishment than what a Caucasian kid would get for the same offense, or for special ed in which kids are supposed to get more help but also mainstreaming, but in practice often it’s just warehousing kids. Which is— obviously very wrong!
Everything going on right now, that at least a certain percentage of police will more readily and more quickly use deadly force against an African-American person than against a person perceived as middle American. A black person is middle America! An African-American person, Asian-American person, Hispanic-American person, an Aleutian Island person, etc, etc, is as middle American as anyone else.
And one which sticks with me, at least one study found that African-American persons get less good deals at car dealerships than did middle-aged white men. White women also get less good deals. Even after the study leader taught negotiation techniques which often work, the black men were still not able to get the same good deals [my speculation is that too much of the sales person’s ego was wrapped up in not letting a black person “beat” them]
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GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
Thank you.
And I wonder what led to the upward bump between around 1995 and ‘97?
Clinton, even with impeachment, arguably did have a successful presidency given the times. The issue with saving the middle class in the 88/92 time frame is that there were a large number of economic forces working against that middle class. This was an era of free trade, deregulation, lax antitrust enforcement, a weakening of the labor movement, outsourcing and general deindustrialization. If you really want to change things, elect Mo Udall in 1976 and wave away the economic crisis of 79-80 and the Iran hostage crisis. You really need something pre-1980 to avoid the Reagan-era changes on trade and Carter's initial steps toward deregulation and a more market oriented approach.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
A refreshing change from just running with our usual cast of characters! 😇
Marc
Donor
Frankly, I'm skeptical that any truly progressive candidate could win. The mean of American politics traditionally has been right of center - it's worth noting that two of the three most progressive presidents were accidental: TR and LBJ.
Now if a candidate could run to the right in a general election and win, and then swerve left, as did FDR... but that likely only worked due to the calamity of the Great Depression.
Now if a candidate could run to the right in a general election and win, and then swerve left, as did FDR... but that likely only worked due to the calamity of the Great Depression.
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GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
and with NAFTA, Mexican farmers also lost to large agribusiness.
Yes, Mexican citizens had cheaper items on their supermarket shelves and that’s a benefit. But also fewer jobs in the countryside. A fair number of young men drifted into the cities and some percentage of this group became foot soldiers for the drug cartels.
Of course the major casual factor is people in North America and elsewhere buying the damn drugs in the first place.
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1976 was a poisoned chalice. Might as well cross that off the list since successful is one of the goals.
Long-term success is impossible because there are always new ways to offshore jobs and depress wages. (Look at overseas call centers.)
Long-term success is impossible because there are always new ways to offshore jobs and depress wages. (Look at overseas call centers.)
Thomas1195
Banned
I have to say the only one who could pull off a 1980 re-election is a living Robert Kennedy. Otherwise, the Republicans should take 1976. By 1980, we would most likely have President Hugh Carey.
Plenty of high-ranking Democrats, including Majority Leader Dick Gephardt, were pretty fervently against it.
A sideways option would be to have some more solid liberal (let's say then-Governor Patrick Lucey) win in 1976, then have them defeated in 1980 but whoever won then (likely Reagan, with John Connally as a left-field option) botch their presidency, then have Lucey pull a Cleveland and run and win in '84. @Yes sketched out a scenario something not dissimilar to that, but there are plenty of variations (for instance, Connally's milk-chickens could come home to roost):
It is but a small bagatelle. But it's free to a good home
- Original-recipe butterflies (that is to say, climatic ones) bring in a low-pressure system across the Gulf of Thailand during the Mayaguez Incident. As a result, having lost that USAF Super Jolly Green in suspicious circumstances up around the Thai-Cambodian border, regional commanders with PACOM wave off the planned jerry-rigged heliborne landing of Marines on Koh Tang Island. As a result of the delay, and also the low disrupting flight patterns, a Navy P-3 spots the crew aboard a Khmer Rouge boat that morning, being returned to sender.
- This saves some American lives, but more importantly for TTL it prevents the decimation of the USAF 21st Special Operations Squadron's CH-53s, which IOTL were shot up badly in the pyrrhic airlanding on the day, the squadron thereafter disbanded in the post-Vietnam drawdown with surviving airframes shipped off to cargo duty in Europe. Here 21st SOS survives and comes back to Florida, where they justify their budgetary existence by serving as available and obvious test airframes for the PAVE family of operational upgrades to H-53 series helicopters (this lets the USAF's search-and-rescue HH-53s just go about their business without loaning birds to the program.)
- Tangentially to this, there are two butterflied changes in command staff in particular spots in the military, one at the top of the Joint Chiefs where the Air Force do not queue-jump in 1978 and the Army gets their designated turn to have a Chairman.
- Most other things remain the same or at least similar - I tend to go by the general precepts of chaos theory that the size of the temporal ripples are tied to the mass and dimensions of the rock you've chucked into the timestream. So, when the time comes, Jimmeh makes the same kinds of decisions, and missteps, and by the autumn of 1979 we find ourselves in a situation where armed student radicals have taken over the U.S. Embassy in Tehran
- As a result of the subtle but transformative butterflies in the services, the Joint Task Force set up to respond to the situation come up with an OPLAN that, while on the cutting edge of daring, might actually work because they have people who've asked the right questions, made decisions based on the operation rather than on geopolitics and bureaucratic chess, and have refuelable helos flown by career special-ops pilots.
- As a result, when the Embassy mess drags on and on Because Trends, when Jimmeh finally has a snit and orders a military operation, they actually pull it off. It's a storming success, all things considered, casualties fairly low (at least among non-Iranians) and as B-52s prowl the Persian Gulf the wily old fox Khomeini puts the kibosh on retaliation kidnappings of Western reporters, etc., still in the country. No need to let the Great Satan kill Iran's golden goose, after all.
- But. This does great things for Carter's wimpy public image, yet it does nothing about his decision to destroy the unionized-industrial village in order to save it with punitive interest rates, or his hamfisted retail politicking during the fall campaign. It's a considerably closer race as the Anderson candidacy fizzles forcing the liberal middle to hold their noses and vote Carter in many cases, but Reagan still wins.
- However. Reagan and his folks are that much more determined to show how wildly different they are from Carter, because Carter put a scare in them with alt!RICE BOWL/EAGLE CLAW and like good authoritarian personalities they need to demonstrate dominance over what makes them widdle themselves. So they go SUPPLY-SIDE AF and strongarm it through Congress when Hinckley gets committed by his family and Saint Ronald has no sympathy bounce. Likewise, later on either Lebanon goes even further south and/or the hard-liners stay the course and nix the 1983 tax hike which means the economy is still limping by campaign season.
- Who emerges on the Democratic side in this situation? "The Man Who Was In The Room," the rootin'-tootin' sidekick for Jimmeh's Crowning Moment of Awesome, Fritz Mondale. Concerned about Saint Ronald's electoral viability the GOP are much more aggressive ratfucking Gary Hart over his wandering trousers, John Glenn is still a hugely admirable national hero who's a warm pile of oatmeal on the campaign trail, Askew and the other follow-ons can't get traction, and the country's not ready for Jesse Jackson for reasons that are Totally Not About Race No Sir Nothing To See Here.
- It's neck-and-neck in the autumn as Mondale picks a running mate calculated actually to help win, and when Ron Flubs Harder in the first debate people with purely venal motives start whispering to the press about POTUS' little lapses of concentration. This causes an internecine circular firing squad inside the campaign structure between the Bushians and the True Believers as the latter believe it's all the former's fault.
- On the day, by a narrow margin, Walter Mondale gets elected and BEHOLD THE AGE OF FRITZ.
I call it A Fjord Not a Lincoln but titles are fungible, too.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
I generally agree. For whatever combo of reasons, the graph of American politics is to the right of modern European politics.
but some exceptions . . .
Americans are pretty enthused about going after monopolies and quasi-monopolies, and
————-
Bill Clinton ran on populist economics in 1992. Among other things, he said something very much like, We’re going to ask the rich to pay their fair share so that the rest of us can finally get a break.
And then— either he let economists talk him into the view that a recovering economy didn’t need a middle-class tax cut (in fact, for long-term growth, needed to start paying down the deficit)
or— an increase in EIC (Earned Income Credit) was more targeted, which is probably true. We first got a modern EIC from Congress and Reagan in ‘86, although a small EIC was introduced by Congress and Ford in ‘75. Even today, the EIC mainly helps persons and couples with children up to and including age 18. So, through last year of high school in traditional terms.
Both of these may have been good economics . . . but terrible politics!
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GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
:06 “The Republicans . . . blocked a middle-class tax cut that would help the economy.”
:50 “We’re going to ask the rich to pay their fair share, so the rest of America can finally get a break.”
If Pres. Clinton and a Democratic Congress has followed through on a middle-class tax cut which was widely viewed as such— would have fundamentally changed American politics.
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What about Dick Gephardt? He ran in 1988, narrowly winning Iowa before burning out. Could he have become the nominee, had he won the first contest decisively?
This ad of his was quite protectionist.
This ad of his was quite protectionist.
Marc
Donor
American populism isn't really that progressive. It was and still is a blend of being against big businesses while at that same time being quite socially conservative.
In their heyday, the large industrial unions exemplified those politics, along with farmers - especially those west of the Mississippi (long standing issues with banks and railroads).
Neither major American party has ever ran a populist - it fundamentally conflicts with the ongoing dynamics.
1988 is hard because that ‘92 recession looms large and likely isn’t totally butterflied by their policies. That being said, both 1976 and 1992 are pretty doable - 1980 being a major loss was pretty much just Carter’s own fault (Khomeini might not have cared if we just addressed the issue of the Shah immediately as opposed to vacillating on it). Give us President Frank Church, for one, in ‘76 and he likely manages to weather the storm and get a lot done with the actual supermajorities that OTL Carter pissed away. Clobbering the CIA, major healthcare reform, consumer protection, repealing part of Taft-Hartley, you name it, Frank’s probably gonna do it. He’ll have enough accomplishments and support from the liberal side of things to survive without a 3P middle-finger dooming him, hell he’ll probably even thrive in ‘80, seeing as Reagan (if he’s nominated) will be calling for the removal of a lot of popular stuff President Church did. By the time ‘84 rolls around, things are likely notably better economically as they were OTL, and Church’s VP - probably a moderate southerner - gets their single term from it.
‘92 has room for Mario Cuomo and whatnot, which is kinda boring but at the same time opens the door for Ross Perot to do even better, and that’s a fun scenario to say the least. An actual Reform Party that gets members of Congress has a lot of AH potential. Senator Dick Lamm, anyone?
Neither has ran a populist because it's not really possible to do so. Populism isn't really an ideology in itself (in fact ideology as a concept is quite anti-populist), but an electoral tactic or device. Plenty of campaigns, both successful and unsuccessful, have focussed on sending a message to 'the elites' (of whatever form - political, economic, cultural, etc).
Marc
Donor
I disagree, Populism isn't an ideology, but then neither is liberalism or conservatism. Save during the late 19th century, populism wasn't formally organized in the United States. However, articulated or not, it was the thinking of such major groups such as blue collar Catholics, Upper Great Plains famers, non-catholic but white ethnic minorities: Greeks, Armenians, Orthodox Jews, etc.
It had less to do with sending a message as actively combating the power of some of the ruling economic elites.
Largely what attenuated populism in the US was the rise of middle class prosperity along with consequential social progressive movements.
GeographyDude
Gone Fishin'
Very succinctly made point.
And I agree 100%, it’s quite a challenge. But there are clearly good ways to at least partially meet this challenge. And maybe more than just partially.
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