Socialist (Not Cummunist-Stalinist) USA.

[Mark E.]

Given the mini "red scare" in the US circa WWI, socialism would be a rather hard sell, unless you butterfly away the Soviet Union. Then, without Stalin in control, the notion of collectivization is not automatically associated with seizure.

The ensuing hard economic times might encourage some European regions to experiment with "partial socialism," particularly if the terms and conditions of Versailles do not ravage the German economy as seriously as OTL.

The Great Depression hits the US on schedule. In OTL, a socialist candidate received electoral votes in 1932, so the sympathy for socialism was there. I will not propose any radically different line of leadership, but without the Soviet prototype, more communities might voluntarily or partially "collectivize" in response to hard times.

I am not sure how to carry that logic past WWII, but it's a start.

 

[zoomar]

Er what your proposing there isn't really what the OP refers to. I mean what your referring to basically entails a strict ideological movement bordering on a religious form of national socialism somehow gaining mass appeal in the US and taking power rather than the OP's idea of a populist social democratic party being in government for a while.

No, I am suggesting a democratic movement which would combine elements of agrarian socialism and the Farmor-Labor movement with an explicit Christian moral basis, giving it wider appeal. I perhaps over emphasized the possible anti-semitism and anti-catholicism of this movement - this would be no more extreme that the standard attitude of run-of-the-mill southern protestants.

 

[karl2025]

If William Jennings Bryan (Democrat) had picked Tom Watson (Populist) as his running mate in 1896, you could certainly see a more divided government where the populists remain a noteworthy third party for some time. If/When Theodore Roosevelt runs for his second term as president, they'd likely choose to throw their support behind him instead of the more conservative Democrats. This could cause major political upsets as the Liberals are being pulled away from the Democratic Party and moving to the Populist or Republicans. Then you might not see the split between TR and Taft, and even if you do the Democratic Party would be more divided and TR could easily win (He'd either run on the Populist ticket or the Progressives would absorb the Populists).

With this particular mix of politics, they'd have the farmers in the south and west and labor in the North, and could have a stranglehold on electoral politics for some time. Strangely, you could see a merging between the conservative elements of the Democratic and Republican parties in opposition, but the political spectrum of the country would have shifted to the left dramatically.