I love this. This is absolutely fantastic. Thanks so much!
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NEW BIRTH OF FREEDOM: The Wilmot Proviso Passes
- Thread starter TheHedgehog
- Start date
County-BAM.
County-BAM
Here is where I shall post updates to my County-BAM, so they do not flood the Map Thread.
www.alternatehistory.com
Ahhh I see. For some reason I hadn’t noticed your posts were old ones- and I’d forgotten bits of the TL. Thanks!
Will there be any mention of a Virginian whose name sounds like "Bake Leatherman"?
Jake Featherston? I might mention a particularly ardent segregationist with a similar name, but a man with Featherston’s, shall we say, extreme beliefs simply wouldnt exist in TTL.
Dammit. I used Mike Mansfield’s wikibox as a base, and I forgot to change that part. I guess just pretend it says “Freedomite Caucus” .
Happy 2021 y'all! Here's something I've been working on:
The Freedom Party's logo is the OTL Reform Party, and the National Party borrows from OTL's Australian National Party.
Wow, there's some stuff there. Bigger House of Representatives. 52 states. 6 territories?! And some state abbreviations that aren't immediately clear to me, of course.
YL : Yellowstone
SR : Sacramento
DK: Dakota
Not sure what FM or TL might be. Hopefully we'll find out in due time!
The six (merely a preliminary number) US territories are mostly in the Pacific, though there are going to be between one and two in the Atlantic.
You've got those three state abbreviations right, and FM is Fremont and TL is Taylor.
The Freedomites have a social democrat faction, but the bulk of the party belongs to the 'Business Progressive' faction, which is basically like Rockefeller Republicans or Dewey's Eastern Establishment. The Freedom Party's very much the party of business, so donors and party bigwigs don't exactly want someone who supports heavy regulations and high corporate taxes as their nominee.
The National Party is where you would find the most Social Democrats, though they would generally have a religious tinge and be, on average, more socially conservative. That's what the 'Christian Welfarism' is, religious social democracy. I'd call it a mixture of Billy Graham and Harry Truman. The Nationals also have a more secular, socially liberal Social Democratic wing, which is mostly industrial unions (think Walter Reuther).
So all the actual leftists got ran out or killed as OTL I expect?
I would have expected Freedomites to have a harder time getting rid of their left leaning inclinations than the OTL republicans considering they're attracting more radical figures, but I guess that would be too good for America.
I mean anything a bit more serious than "maybe vaguely social democratic stuck in a pro business or fiscally conservative party".
I expect it's just going to be a case of convergent "end of history" victory of liberalism though, despite the different US derailing all the political trends of the future.
Well, the Nationals aren't a fiscally conservative party. They have a small faction that wants a balanced budget, but in a Ross Perot sense and not a Newt Gingrich sense. The vast majority of the party supports welfare, healthcare, unions, infrastructure investments, high taxes on the rich, business regulations, and the like.
The Freedom Party also supports welfare and other social spending, but is anti-regulation and anti-union, for the most part (there are some regulationists, but they're like the Blue Dog Democrats and hold 20-25 seats in Congress, two or three in the Senate).
But I don't think anything more leftist than liberalism or social democracy could really exist in a USA that didn't experience some sort of major crisis that destroyed people's trust in liberal solutions, and such an event will not happen in this TL. It would have taken something massive for Eugene Debs or Father Coughlin to become President.
ITTL, there is a Socialist Party for those who are more leftist than either of the two main parties, but it's more on the scale of the Libertarian Party, though a bit bigger. (it holds two or three seats in the House).
Also, it's not some convergent 'end of history' thing. TTL's US political parties are quite different, with different divides and factions and policies. It's just that I feel it would be unrealistic to have these more radical ideologies present. Why would labor back a socialist when they can get what they want by backing the Nationals? Why should businesses endorse some corporatist when the Eastern Establishment does just fine? Of course, many socialists in TTL's USA would feel locked out of the 'political establishment' but TTL's USA, is a nation where the voters prefer the center-left, center, and center-right, not any radical solutions.