PODs for a Leftier USA

The Business Plotters are slightly less stupid and approach literally anyone other than other than Smedley "War is a Racket" Butler as their frontman. Seriously, there's a difference between point out a scam and saying you want in on it.

George Mosely perhaps? Well connected, fascist leanings. Anyway the plot goes further before it's thwarted, resulting in a nationwide antifascist backlash.

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It could work out this way. I certainly hope it would. But . . . the conspirators might win and then we really would have a fascist government! :p

At least for a while we would. And even when things loosened up, we would still have have a center right government, economics and unemployment be damned, we’d just blame poor people for being poor. Like in OTL in which some branches of the American Legion at least informally attacked camps of unemployed men during the Great Depression (the local leadership probably could have prevented it).

And even later when we elect a progressive government, the army might stay in reserve much like an opposition party. This has happened with some Latin American countries, a goodly number of which we helped to put the dictatorship into power in the first place.
 

samcster94

Banned
Ann Richards defeats Bush and wins re-election in 1994. This prevents Bush from bringing Texas Hispanics into the Republican Party and keeps Texas a swing state. Bonus points, she convinces a popular Hispanic politician to run for Lt Gov to replace her uber conservative Democratic Lt Governor. This leads to earlier large scale Hispanic participation in Texas elections.

Thus, the GOP can’t rely on Texas as a cornerstone of its conservative Red Wall and the US is spared GWB and his lackluster performance in the Middle East.
That seems like a tall order given Texas was already pretty Republican by that point. Preventing Jeb from being elected might be more effective and realistic(given it'd make Florida more Democratic).
 
That seems like a tall order given Texas was already pretty Republican by that point. Preventing Jeb from being elected might be more effective and realistic(given it'd make Florida more Democratic).

Everyone thought Ann Richards was going to win. If she did, I could see her helping keep it a purple state. Also, Jeb did lose election that year.
 

Thomas1195

Banned
A small POD: McCarthy lost to LaFollette in 1946 (this should have happened if LaFollette took McCarthy seriously and campaigned from the beginning)
 

BigBlueBox

Banned
Reagan losing in 1976 to humphrey, loses to him again in 1972 with even more of a backlash ticket* so you get 2 terms of HHH followed up by Nixon in '76 and '80. UHC, some expansion on the great society and 6 liberal or at worst center-left justices on the SC from HHH. Basic income or expansion of one from Nixon, assuming HHH doesn't do it.

Vietnam won in the sense of Cambodia and South Vietnam remaining in the US orbit so no base for "neocon" foriegn and to a lesser extent domestic policy.

* Reagan/Wallace would be ASB sadly, but him/Goldwater is BARELY possible.
If the US actually succeeded in Vietnam then there would be even more warmongering, not less. The proto-neocons would view it as proof that America can succeed at anything.
 

samcster94

Banned
Everyone thought Ann Richards was going to win. If she did, I could see her helping keep it a purple state. Also, Jeb did lose election that year.
One way to do this would be the DUI accounts come out early. Why not put her against a different Republican?
 

Thomas1195

Banned
- If you can get a more liberal Republican elected in 1968 - maybe George Romney or Nelson Rockefeller - you could get universal childcare (which Nixon vetoed).
Well, lets move back to 1944 or 1948 to have Dewey winning elections, and his victory would neutralize the conservative wing.
 
1) post-WWII . . . as people became richer they tended to become more conservative,

2) the heady immediate post-war years, say from 1945 to 1950, where surprise the economy is not slipping back into recession or depression as many had expected, but very good surprise, the overall economy is moving forward, plus you had the GI Bill which had teeth and really meant something. Well . . . these heady early days and years were lost, and people kind of figured out that they themselves weren't going to be that much included in the big economy, not like they dreamed, not like they had allowed themselves to hope, and then they kind of moved to scapegoating such as blaming Civil Rights and African-Americans.
 
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