Into the Cincoverse - The Cinco de Mayo EU Thread and Wikibox Repository

1912 United States Presidential election
The United States Presidential election of 1912 was the 32nd quadrennial Presidential election of the United States, occurring in all 32 states on November 5th, 1912. Incumbent President William Randolph Hearst, a Democrat, was defeated by Charles Evans Hughes, the Liberal Governor of New York.

The election was the first - and to date, last - time an incumbent two-term President has sought a third term in office; after the "Washington Precedent" set by George Washington, America's first President, of refusing to seek a third term voluntarily, it had become something of an unspoken "rule" of American politics. Hearst, elected by a wide margin in 1904 and re-elected by an even more decisive landslide four years later in 1908, would have as it was been the first President since Andrew Jackson to serve two full terms, and in early 1912 he informally made it plain that he would seek an unprecedented third term as President.

Hearst's decision was extraordinarily controversial; while personally popular with the electorate to the point that his career was regarded as era-defining by contemporaries, Hearst's Democratic Party was presiding over a mediocre recovery from the severe 1910-11 recession and social upheaval by labor unions and campaigners for women's suffrage, alcohol prohibition and the abolition of slavery in the Confederate States and Brazil hung over the American electorate. Democrats opposed to his third term in office attempted to stop him at the 1912 Democratic Convention but failed, splitting the party despite a public coalescing behind Hearst as the candidate. The opposition Liberals, meanwhile, moved to the center after two straight landslide losses with tickets headed by doctrinaire conservatives seen as rigid by a progressive, upwardly mobile electorate and chose as their standard bearer Charles Evans Hughes, a moderate and reformist former Governor of New York who indeed had worked for Hearst during the latter's tenure in the same office between 1899-1903. The election was regarded as being up in the air, a contest of Hearst's personal pull with his electoral base and oratorical magnetism against his questionable decision to run and Hughes' staid but competent image. Hughes defeated Hearst, albeit narrowly; several states were decided by miniscule margins that could have thrown the electoral college badly in flux, and both Prohibition and Socialist candidates did well thanks to disenchantment with both major-party candidates.

The election in the end proved rather pivotal in American history. Since Hearst's defeat, no President has attempted to seek a third full term in office, unofficially enshrining the Washington Precedent even if it is not formal law; its narrowness in many states despite Hughes' relatively comfortable popular vote lead just twelve years after the perilously close election of 1900 led many Liberals to join with Democrats in expressing skepticism over the electoral college and provided further momentum to its abolition in 1923. However, over and above that, the election was the last to occur prior to the Great American War, and Hughes' Presidency would be almost entirely defined by the war itself.


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I'll keep that secret too (for now) since I've spoiled everything else, haha
Ah, I think you've spoiled some of that too... (Spoilering it for those who don't want to know)
1920 is a Democratic landslide, as I think is pretty explicit, and it was said that they would hold on from 1921 to 1933, with the Liberals (presumably, but not certainly) regaining the presidency in 1932. Also established is President Al Smith winning at least one of the terms (though which one(s) and whether he runs for/wins reelection is not clear), and that it may go that each of three terms is served by someone different in order to begin establishing a 'one-term precedent' (as in, it is more common for presidents to forego reelection in comparison to OTL). IIRC we already got an update in the main thread that was beginning to trace one of Al Smith's biographies in order to begin setting up his presidency, which seemed poised to occur in the late 20's.
Beyond this has not specified, and of course all is ultimately up to whatever KingSweden actually wants to do when the time comes.
 
Ah, I think you've spoiled some of that too... (Spoilering it for those who don't want to know)
1920 is a Democratic landslide, as I think is pretty explicit, and it was said that they would hold on from 1921 to 1933, with the Liberals (presumably, but not certainly) regaining the presidency in 1932. Also established is President Al Smith winning at least one of the terms (though which one(s) and whether he runs for/wins reelection is not clear), and that it may go that each of three terms is served by someone different in order to begin establishing a 'one-term precedent' (as in, it is more common for presidents to forego reelection in comparison to OTL). IIRC we already got an update in the main thread that was beginning to trace one of Al Smith's biographies in order to begin setting up his presidency, which seemed poised to occur in the late 20's.
Beyond this has not specified, and of course all is ultimately up to whatever KingSweden actually wants to do when the time comes.
More or less accurate but I’ll 🤐 on specifics
 
What's being talked about is in your what-if post on the 1912 election you basically spoiled who wins the US elections till 2004.

From 1921-1981 it's a pattern of 3 D wins followed by 2 L wins.
Since the Liberals don't win a third term again they lost in 1980 and the Dems win a third term in 2000 than 80,92,96 are D wins and 84,88 are L wins
 
2023 Saskatchewan general election - Coverage
2023 Election Night Coverage - CBC.ca
3/14/2023

"...with most ridings having now counted the majority of first-preference votes, it appears that the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation of Saskatchewan will lead the next government. As of right now, the CCF sits on 34 seats, two short of a majority government, on first preferences; CBC can project the CCF as Likely to win a majority. With only first-preferences, the Reform SK government of Premier Brad Trost appears to have been reduced to 25 seats having headed into the election with 29, and the Conservatives under Brad Wall appear to enjoy 12 seats, having entered the election with 7. Canadian Action, which had hoped to enter a second provincial legislature after their federal breakthrough three years ago and subsequent securing of Official Party status in Manitoba in 2021, do not appear to have sufficient first preferences in any current seats and are at this time unlikely to enter the Legislature of Saskatchewan...

...at Reform SK's election night event in Saskatoon, Premier Brad Trost confirmed that he intends to resign as leader of Reform SK, the provincial arm of the Reform Party, following a leadership election within the next nine months. Trost declined to comment further, other than stating, "It appears once again that the Conservative Party, contrary to its name, represents itself rather than a united front against socialism in Saskatchewan and I congratulate Brad Wall on helping elect Cam Broten as our Premier...

...Wall, on his second go as leader of the provincial Tories, declared that the evening's results were a vindication of his decision to return to the helm of the Saskatchewan Conservative Association in 2018 after the indictment and resignation of former party leader Bill Boyd and further supported his triggering an election eight months early. "The people of this great province have shown that they do not trust people like Brad Trost in power and that they will punish a government that increasingly ceases to represent fiscal responsibility and a broad popular mandate..."

...national elections analyst Cynthia Sellers noted that once again, the "Shy Reform" effect has appeared in the west, as Trost's Reformers have dramatically outperformed polling that suggested they would slip to third position and that Wall's Tories were likely to form the official opposition. While both parties have a good chance to changing their seat counts on second preferences, it is unlikely that either will do so to the point that the Tories can make up a thirteen-seat gap...

...noise out of CCF headquarters where Broten just spoke to supporters that questioned certain campaign decisions made by the Broten camp and are left wondering what could have been, despairing that Reform SK will still form the opposition and that polling that indicated the CCF could win upwards of 45 seats on first preferences...

...the Prime Minister's office issued a statement of congratulations to Broten and the provincial CCF on their electoral triumph, which now brings the number of Co-operative provincial governments to two, along with British Columbia, in support of the incumbent federal Cabinet..."


"FOR SASKATCHEWAN, A CLEAR CHOICE."
- Editorial Opinion, SK Today

"...when Saskatchewanians go to the polls on Tuesday the 13th, they face perhaps the clearest choice since Canadians told the Manningites "no more!" at the federal level in 2004. Forget for a moment what one may think of Brad Trost's reactionary cultural views, his contempt for the electorate's intelligence and his difficult relationship with the truth - this is not about whether Brad Trost is a good man (he probably isn't), this is about whether Brad Trost and his fellow neanderthals in Reform SK deserve another four years to run the province of Saskatchewan into the ground and continue to be the laggard economically and socially of this great country. The answer to that question is no, and the data supports it.

Reform's entire raison d'etre has ostensibly been to capture the genuinely reformist and populist spirit of the Progressives who emerged from the United Farmers movement of the early 20th century and update it for the age of mass media, globalization and, by the time Preston Manning was able to make them relevant, a Canada adrift both within the Commonwealth and internally, as the Quebecois independence movement finally forced the issue in October 1991. In practice, of course, "Reform" has meant a program more right-wing than the traditionalist, elitist Tories ever proposed, particularly on cultural matters. I do not doubt that what many Reformers believe is sincerely held; I do strongly doubt that their cultural agenda is relevant to the concerns of most Saskatchewanians. The collapse of the provincial Tories in the 1990s and high-profile Liberal corruption scandals left a massive gap in the opposition to the then-all-powerful CCF that Reform quickly filled, denying the CCF a third majority government in 1999 and then winning their own majority four years later in the wake of the end of the commodities boom and at the nadir of the 2002-05 economic depression, which like all economic pullbacks struck Saskatchewan particularly hard as demand for oil, potash and grains overseas dropped sharply. Into this fray stepped the slick, populist Reform Party of Saskatchewan, now known as Reform SK, behind Elwin Hermanson and a very media-savvy operation that, upon winning government from the flailing CCF government in November 2003, instituted easily the most reactionary policy agenda in the previous hundred years of Canadian history, rewinding the clock back to the 19th century, and what has followed since has been a legacy of nothing but failure.

Reform SK has governed Saskatchewan for roughly sixteen of the last twenty years, with the sad and misbegotten Dwain Lingenfelter interregnum of 2011-15 the only break. In that time, what have they reformed, exactly? Set aside the more colorfully infamous policies of the past two decades like the "boot camps" for juvenile offenders and look at the hard facts. Saskatchewan is the only province in the Confederation that has seen school divisions go to a three-day school week because they cannot afford to pay teachers and administrators (and in one infamous case, keep the lights on). It is both somehow the province with the highest birthrate, highest rate of single motherhood, and also the oldest province with the highest pension and welfare costs. Rather than reinvest in the province, Reform SK privatized provincially-owned crown corporations to the highest bidder and slashed income taxes for high-earners while raising taxes on groceries. First Nations communities have been terrorized by provincial police studded with former paramilitary commanders, labor protests violently put down, and the province's mental hospitals shut down, leaving Regina and Saskatoon with some of the highest rates of homelessness and drug abuse in Canada. Saskatchewan today, despite its vast mineral wealth in potash, uranium and oil and gas, receives the highest amount of equalization payments in Canada and yet has objectively the lowest-ranked and most expensive provincial health care, school and police services. Saskatchewan has barely seen population growth in the last three decades, and has the highest rate of outmigration of any Canadian province, particularly of college graduates and ethnic minorities. No province, even Alberta, has an economic base that pollutes or emits more and attempts to do less about it, and Reform SK has shown itself hostile to the dignity of the disabled, the gay community, and the poor.

Rather than shy away from this record of mind-boggling incompetence, Reform SK has doubled-down. Trost, a failed former Reform MP chucked out on his rear in 2008, slithered back into power thanks largely to the self-immolation of former Premier David Anderson's career mere weeks after leading Reform to a minority government supported by the Tories in 2019. The Anderson-Patzer Affair would have shamed most party leaders into a more sober and moderate course - not Trost, one of the most famously inflammatory federal Reformers. Rather than fix Reform SK's well-deserved reputation for scandal, he has instead spent most of his time since becoming Premier in March of 2020 picking fights with the federal Julian Cabinet and defending Cabinet ministers who were members of paramilitaries in the 1990s (Ken Murphy), have been convicted for taking bribes from Chinese Triads (Matt White), been caught plying underage women with drugs and alcohol to do God knows what at a Free Churches convention in Calgary (Matt Lynne), and engaging in a mass firing of educators and school administrators at the height of a recession in order to debut curricula that denounces Louis Riel as a terrorist and offers mealy-mouthed apologia for government death squads operating in Quebec at the height of the Troubles (Leslie Wyndham), and that is before one gets into the bevy of backbenchers with drunk driving or domestic violence accusations. One could say that this is the action of a government straight out of 1963 rather than 2023, but the old-fashioned God, King and Canada-style, Orange-hued Tories of days gone by would have punted Trost and his ilk straight from the party.

The alternatives are, to be sure, lacking. Brad Wall successfully brought the Tories back from the dead nearly twenty years ago into a third-party of federal Liberals and Conservatives put off by polarized Saskatchewan politics, but his second stint since taking over for Bill Boyd in 2018 has been less than promising with his shift to the right to pick off disenchanted Reformers, and until the "Battle of the Brads" this past January that brought down Trost's government in a confidence vote eight months ahead of the anticipated election sometime by early November his Tories had provided the confidence that allowed Trost's kakistocracy to reign supreme. His proposals are classically Tory - culturally elitist, thuggishly protectionist, and softly developmentalist, claiming to be inspired by the ability of similar resource economies such as neighboring Alberta or Texas to pivot to a more diversified growth model but offering few tangible ideas on how to deliver other than vague bromides covered up by his avuncular good charm. While Canadian history is dotted with worst-to-first stories, Wall seems unlikely to do much more than split off moderate conservatives appalled by Reform SK, which perhaps is good enough.

The CCF's Cam Broten is not exactly the second coming of Tommy Douglas, Allen Blakeney or Roy Romanow. He is not a particularly talented speaker, has faced pernicious criticism from supporters of disgraced former CCF leader Erin Weir as well as the party's hard-left, and his unsure command of policy issues suggests a lightweight. However, considering the alternative, Broten will at least appoint serious-minded Cabinet ministers rather than criminals, and he has seemed much more sure of himself on the big stage now than in 2019, when he was suddenly thrust into the role after Weir was forced out over sexual harassment allegations. Considering the scandals, indictments and media circuses that have surrounded all three of the province's parties in the last six years, perhaps a dull, technocrat center-left social democrat such as Broten is the best solution to our crumbling health care system, failing schools, and incessant brain drain to other provinces or greener pastures south of the border. For that reason, we endorse Broten, and suspect that the polling that indicates a fairly decisive loss for Reform SK is correct that the people of our great province endorse him too.

Because God help us all if they don't."


(Note: All Party leaders, Premiers etc are real people - the four criminal Cabinet members are all fictional. Part of the “blend” I promised to eventually come)
 
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2023 Election Night Coverage - CBC.ca
3/14/2023

"...with most ridings having now counted the majority of first-preference votes, it appears that the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation of Saskatchewan will lead the next government. As of right now, the CCF sits on 34 seats, two short of a majority government, on first preferences; CBC can project the CCF as Likely to win a majority. With only first-preferences, the Reform SK government of Premier Brad Trost appears to have been reduced to 25 seats having headed into the election with 29, and the Conservatives under Brad Wall appear to enjoy 12 seats, having entered the election with 7. Canadian Action, which had hoped to enter a second provincial legislature after their federal breakthrough three years ago and subsequent securing of Official Party status in Manitoba in 2021, do not appear to have sufficient first preferences in any current seats and are at this time unlikely to enter the Legislature of Saskatchewan...

...at Reform SK's election night event in Saskatoon, Premier Brad Trost confirmed that he intends to resign as leader of Reform SK, the provincial arm of the Reform Party, following a leadership election within the next nine months. Trost declined to comment further, other than stating, "It appears once again that the Conservative Party, contrary to its name, represents itself rather than a united front against socialism in Saskatchewan and I congratulate Brad Wall on helping elect Cam Broten as our Premier...

...Wall, on his second go as leader of the provincial Tories, declared that the evening's results were a vindication of his decision to return to the helm of the Saskatchewan Conservative Association in 2018 after the indictment and resignation of former party leader Bill Boyd and further supported his triggering an election eight months early. "The people of this great province have shown that they do not trust people like Brad Trost in power and that they will punish a government that increasingly ceases to represent fiscal responsibility and a broad popular mandate..."

...national elections analyst Cynthia Sellers noted that once again, the "Shy Reform" effect has appeared in the west, as Trost's Reformites have dramatically outperformed polling that suggested they would slip to third position and that Wall's Tories were likely to form the official opposition. While both parties have a good chance to changing their seat counts on second preferences, it is unlikely that either will do so to the point that the Tories can make up a thirteen-seat gap...

...noise out of CCF headquarters where Broten just spoke to supporters that questioned certain campaign decisions made by the Broten camp and are left wondering what could have been, despairing that Reform SK will still form the opposition and that polling that indicated the CCF could win upwards of 45 seats on first preferences...

...the Prime Minister's office issued a statement of congratulations to Broten and the provincial CCF on their electoral triumph, which now brings the number of Co-operative provincial governments to two, along with British Columbia, in support of the incumbent federal Cabinet..."


"FOR SASKATCHEWAN, A CLEAR CHOICE."
- Editorial Opinion, SK Today

"...when Saskatchewanians go to the polls on Tuesday the 13th, they face perhaps the clearest choice since Canadians told the Manningites "no more!" at the federal level in 2004. Forget for a moment what one may think of Brad Trost's reactionary cultural views, his contempt for the electorate's intelligence and his difficult relationship with the truth - this is not about whether Brad Trost is a good man (he probably isn't), this is about whether Brad Trost and his fellow neanderthals in Reform SK deserve another four years to run the province of Saskatchewan into the ground and continue to be the laggard economically and socially of this great country. The answer to that question is no, and the data supports it.

Reform's entire raison d'etre has ostensibly been to capture the genuinely reformist and populist spirit of the Progressives who emerged from the United Farmers movement of the early 20th century and update it for the age of mass media, globalization and, by the time Preston Manning was able to make them relevant, a Canada adrift both within the Commonwealth and internally, as the Quebecois independence movement finally forced the issue in October 1991. In practice, of course, "Reform" has meant a program more right-wing than the traditionalist, elitist Tories ever proposed, particularly on cultural matters. I do not doubt that what many Reformites believe is sincerely held; I do strongly doubt that their cultural agenda is relevant to the concerns of most Saskatchewanians. The collapse of the provincial Tories in the 1990s and high-profile Liberal corruption scandals left a massive gap in the opposition to the then-all-powerful CCF that Reform quickly filled, denying the CCF a third majority government in 1999 and then winning their own majority four years later in the wake of the end of the commodities boom and at the nadir of the 2002-05 economic depression, which like all economic pullbacks struck Saskatchewan particularly hard as demand for oil, potash and grains overseas dropped sharply. Into this fray stepped the slick, populist Reform Party of Saskatchewan, now known as Reform SK, behind Elwin Hermanson and a very media-savvy operation that, upon winning government from the flailing Calvery government in November 2003, instituted easily the most reactionary policy agenda in the previous hundred years of Canadian history, rewinding the clock back to the 19th century, and what has followed since has been a legacy of nothing but failure.

Reform SK has governed Saskatchewan for roughly sixteen of the last twenty years, with the sad and misbegotten Dwain Lingenfelter interregnum of 2011-15 the only break. In that time, what have they reformed, exactly? Set aside the more colorfully infamous policies of the past two decades like the "boot camps" for juvenile offenders and look at the hard facts. Saskatchewan is the only province in the Confederation that has seen school divisions go to a three-day school week because they cannot afford to pay teachers and administrators (and in one infamous case, keep the lights on). It is both somehow the province with the highest birthrate, highest rate of single motherhood, and also the oldest province with the highest pension and welfare costs. Rather than reinvest in the province, Reform SK privatized provincially-owned crown corporations to the highest bidder and slashed income taxes for high-earners while raising taxes on groceries. First Nations communities have been terrorized by provincial police studded with former paramilitary commanders, labor protests violently put down, and the province's mental hospitals shut down, leaving Regina and Saskatoon with some of the highest rates of homelessness and drug abuse in Canada. Saskatchewan today, despite its vast mineral wealth in potash, uranium and oil and gas, receives the highest amount of equalization payments in Canada and yet has objectively the lowest-ranked and most expensive provincial health care, school and police services. Saskatchewan has barely seen population growth in the last three decades, and has the highest rate of outmigration of any Canadian province, particularly of college graduates and ethnic minorities. No province, even Alberta, has an economic base that pollutes or emits more and attempts to do less about it, and Reform SK has shown itself hostile to the dignity of the disabled, the gay community, and the poor.

Rather than shy away from this record of mind-boggling incompetence, Reform SK has doubled-down. Trost, a failed former Reform MP chucked out on his rear in 2008, slithered back into power thanks largely to the self-immolation of former Premier David Anderson's career mere weeks after leading Reform to a minority government supported by the Tories in 2019. The Anderson-Patzer Affair would have shamed most party leaders into a more sober and moderate course - not Trost, one of the most famously inflammatory federal Reformites. Rather than fix Reform SK's well-deserved reputation for scandal, he has instead spent most of his time since becoming Premier in March of 2020 picking fights with the federal Julian Cabinet and defending Cabinet ministers who were members of paramilitaries in the 1990s (Ken Murphy), have been convicted for taking bribes from Chinese Triads (Matt White), been caught plying underage women with drugs and alcohol to do God knows what at a Free Churches convention in Calgary (Matt Lynne), and engaging in a mass firing of educators and school administrators at the height of a recession in order to debut curricula that denounces Louis Riel as a terrorist and offers mealy-mouthed apologia for government death squads operating in Quebec at the height of the Troubles (Leslie Wyndham), and that is before one gets into the bevy of backbenchers with drunk driving or domestic violence accusations. One could say that this is the action of a government straight out of 1963 rather than 2023, but even the old-fashioned Orange-hued Tories of days gone by would have punted Trost and his ilk straight from the party.

The alternatives are, to be sure, lacking. Brad Wall successfully brought the Tories back from the dead nearly twenty years ago into a third-party of federal Liberals and Conservatives put off by polarized Saskatchewan politics, but his second stint since taking over for Bill Boyd in 2018 has been less than promising with his shift to the right to pick off disenchanted Reformites, and until the "Battle of the Brads" this past January that brought down Trost's government in a confidence vote eight months ahead of the anticipated election sometime by early November his Tories had provided the confidence that allowed Trost's kakistocracy to reign supreme. His proposals are classically Tory - culturally elitist, thuggishly protectionist, and softly developmentalist, claiming to be inspired by the ability of similar resource economies such as neighboring Alberta or Texas to pivot to a more diversified growth model but offering few tangible ideas on how to deliver other than vague bromides covered up by his avuncular good charm. While Canadian history is dotted with worst-to-first stories, Wall seems unlikely to do much more than split off moderate conservatives appalled by Reform SK, which perhaps is good enough.

The CCF's Cam Broten is not exactly the second coming of Tommy Douglas, Allen Blakeney or Roy Romanow. He is not a particularly talented speaker, has faced pernicious criticism from supporters of disgraced former CCF leader Erin Weir as well as the party's hard-left, and his unsure command of policy issues suggests a lightweight. However, considering the alternative, Broten will at least appoint serious-minded Cabinet ministers rather than criminals, and he has seemed much more sure of himself on the big stage now than in 2019, when he was suddenly thrust into the role after Weir was forced out over sexual harassment allegations. Considering the scandals, indictments and media circuses that have surrounded all three of the province's parties in the last six years, perhaps a dull, technocrat center-left social democrat such as Broten is the best solution to our crumbling health care system, failing schools, and incessant brain drain to other provinces or greener pastures south of the border. For that reason, we endorse Broten, and suspect that the polling that indicates a fairly decisive loss for Reform SK is correct that the people of our great province endorse him too.

Because God help us all if they don't."


(Note: All Party leaders, Premiers etc are real people - the four criminal Cabinet members are all fictional. Part of the “blend” I promised to eventually come)
Huh, Saskatchewan has oil. Things you learn on AH.com...

At least I could name two cities in Saskatchewan. (Saskatoon & Regina). I can only name one city in Manitoba. :(
 
Never thought I'd see Saskatchewan stuck in the resource curse but here we are!

Great stuff sir.
Thanks!
Huh, Saskatchewan has oil. Things you learn on AH.com...

At least I could name two cities in Saskatchewan. (Saskatoon & Regina). I can only name one city in Manitoba. :(
Not nearly as much as Alberta, granted (Sask is more of a potash/uranium mining hub) but it still produces a fair deal of Canada’s petroleum and natural gas.

Well that’s because there only is one city in Manitoba lol
 
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