Stupid Luck and Happenstance, Thread II

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FickleCrossroad

FickleCrossroad

Peabody-Martini said:
Harriman won in the House, the issue is that he broke apart the New Deal Coalition in the process.
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I'm trying to figure out how that would happen, what the Southern Dems had to do to pull off such a pyhrric victory. 25 state delegations to win, (unless Alaska and Hawaii are states now, then 26)...

I mean, there's obviously "something something racism" involved, but the specifics of picking up 12-13 states outside the south with things still blowing up has me wondering just what happened.
 

ejpsan

Look for 4 years of gridlock and Hubert Humphrey and the rest of the Northern Liberal Democrats go full Langest in 1964.
Of course the Southern Democrats will not keep their end of this "Devil's Bargain" and Harriman will go down as the worst President since James Buchanan.
 

ejpsan

FickleCrossroad said:
I'm trying to figure out how that would happen, what the Southern Dems had to do to pull off such a pyhrric victory. 25 state delegations to win, (unless Alaska and Hawaii are states now, then 26)...

I mean, there's obviously "something something racism" involved, but the specifics of picking up 12-13 states outside the south with things still blowing up has me wondering just what happened.
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My speculation is that an agreement could not be reached between Rockefeller and Harriman to ace the South out and then it became a straight party line vote.
So the possible vote in the House was 17 for Rockefeller (Republican majority), 4 abstaining (split delegation), and depending on whether or not Alaska and Hawaii are States 27 or 29 for Harriman (11 Old Confederacy, 4 Border States, Oklahoma and West Virginia, 10 or 12 Democratic majority depending once again on whether or not Alaska and Hawaii are states).
If I were brokering the deal I would have let Rockefeller become President in turn for a massive Civil and Voting Rights Act that would be enforced to the max and I would have had Harriman become Secretary of State to at least a year to show "National Unity".
 

FBKampfer

Banned
The clear democratic split perhaps sets up an ATL Southern Strategy.

If the south is getting iced out, they might careen right under the guise of "states' rights" again, especially federal policy under the Democrats starts swinging against them.
 

ejpsan

Any march backwards on Civil Rights is not going to greeted with passivity this time around and violence directed against African-Americans by white supremacists will be met by armed resistance.
 
Rinasoir

Rinasoir

ejpsan said:
Any march backwards on Civil Rights is not going to greeted with passivity this time around and violence directed against African-Americans by white supremacists will be met by armed resistance.
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While I like and hope for that, I would again like to point to a lack of WW2 that means the American national psyche is going to be very different.

The impact WW2 had in empowering and encouraging the African American community can not be understated. With that gone, and what we've seen in its place, there is no guarantee a rollback on Civil Rights would receive a truly united pushback.
 

Theoretical_TJ

It does when the %∞!§@£+ South essentially holds the entire country hostage to its particular whims like a noxious bully. You don't have to like black people to decide that you'd rather have their political rights be a possibility than be guaranteed to be held hostage by the same folks that would love to refight the Civil War and win.

Based on just how nasty this bargain seems to have been, the South (especially with lower population due to all of the migration North) is just begging to get thwacked with a constitutional amendment.
 

mkemp

Theoretical_TJ said:
It does when the %∞!§@£+ South essentially holds the entire country hostage to its particular whims like a noxious bully. You don't have to like black people to decide that you'd rather have their political rights be a possibility than be guaranteed to be held hostage by the same folks that would love to refight the Civil War and win.

Based on just how nasty this bargain seems to have been, the South (especially with lower population due to all of the migration North) is just begging to get thwacked with a constitutional amendment.
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Start with repealing "Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

If it's enforced then the end of slavery will be at hand. Endemic violence is one thing, continual systematic abuse by the planter class for financial gain is something else.
 

ejpsan

While this is going to definitely split the Democratic Party in two, the Republicans are not going to escape the fallout to this.
For the Republicans in the North have been getting a fair number of African-American voters but it looks like that is going to be thrown away by the Goldwaterites who are chasing the "Lilly-White" Southern Republicans.
This may lead to a major realignment for both parties as this situation is shaken out.
Some of the demands that the South may have is a Fugitive Debtor Act that forces States to honor warrants from other states that have criminal debtor laws, overturning any and all desegregation rulings on the Federal level, having the Supreme Court declare unconstitutional any state laws that prohibits discrimination among other things.
 

mkemp

ejpsan said:
While this is going to definitely split the Democratic Party in two, the Republicans are not going to escape the fallout to this.
For the Republicans in the North have been getting a fair number of African-American voters but it looks like that is going to be thrown away by the Goldwaterites who are chasing the "Lilly-White" Southern Republicans.
This may lead to a major realignment for both parties as this situation is shaken out.
Some of the demands that the South may have is a Fugitive Debtor Act that forces States to honor warrants from other states that have criminal debtor laws, overturning any and all desegregation rulings on the Federal level, having the Supreme Court declare unconstitutional any state laws that prohibits discrimination among other things.
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The Southrons are delusional if they think that'll fly. Of course, Southron Delusion Syndrome if one of their defining characteristics.

Edit: "Fugitive Debtor Law?" More like version 2 of the "Fugitive Slave Law."
 
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Theoretical_TJ

You know what would be a real jerk move Constitutional amendment response to a fugitive debt act and etc...? One that consolidates every state in the South into a single state or just a few, taking them from several dozen senators to two.

That'd have actually been a very interesting move for Reconstruction to do.
 

ejpsan

What the real takeaway should be is that both parties had just basically sold out their African-American voters for short term gain.
 

ejpsan

FickleCrossroad said:
Without Jim Crow gone, that isn't much of a loss, though.
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I was posting about African-American voters outside the South, IOTL before 1964 the Republican Party got between 32% to 40% of the African-American vote and sometimes in Statewide elections the Republicans would get a majority of the African-American vote.
This may lead to AA voters to form their own localized party and use it to get concessions from the other parties, I can also see a push to form certain financial institutions like banks and brokerages houses that cater to the emerging African-American Middle Class.
 
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