Right now I'm thinking, based on story hints, that the aviator from Arkansas wins in 1944, then Cameron comes back in 48.
The American System: A Henry Clay TL
- Thread starter TheHedgehog
- Start date
One thing I'll be interested to see is how technology develops without WWII or the Cold War.
Interesting to see aviation development TTL,
Are Zeppelins (by the way, did they even called Zeppelins TTL?) and Seaplanes still in use?
Perhaps, perhaps...
No, but there is greater international cooperation afterwards, fueled by the French debt crisis and intervention in Spain and the Russian invasion of Persia.
Very close...
It'll develop somewhat similarly, but perhaps slower. But there will still be some conflicts, such as America's proxy wars against Argentina, that spur technological development.
Yeah, zeppelins and seaplanes are still major passenger carriers but as regular passenger plane technology advances those will get phased out.Interesting to see aviation development TTL,
Are Zeppelins (by the way, did they even called Zeppelins TTL?) and Seaplanes still in use?
105. The Interregnum Begins
105. The Interregnum Begins
“Howard Cameron’s announcement that he intended to seek a third term as President shocked the political establishment, though in hindsight it was quite obvious. From his beginnings as an eager young progressive crusader, Cameron had come to seem himself as vital to the movement’s success and longevity, and he was convinced that, should he step down, all that he had worked to accomplish would be quickly undone by the forces arrayed against him. He had come to greatly enjoy the power that came with the presidency, and he had grown accustomed to using his office to not only force through major legislation, but also pursue personal vendettas and reward his friends. However, he believed that his landslide election victories and popularity with the general public shielded him from intraparty opposition. Perhaps this explains his overconfidence preceding the convention.
He and his inner circle allowed Vice President Foster to build support for a campaign, believing that once Cameron made his intentions known Foster would loyally defer to the incumbent rather than split the party. While Foster was certainly surprised by Cameron’s bid for a third term, he was also disgusted by the decision. As he told a closed-door meeting of Whig officials, “we are faced with the greatest crisis the party has seen in generations. This is the Whig Party, not one man’s personal fiefdom. If this party is to exist independently of the President we must act, or face oblivion.” Foster’s argument was certainly a powerful one, and while President Cameron was content to rely on the inertia of incumbency and his electability to carry him through to the convention, Foster doggedly campaigned.
Having come into politics as a trial lawyer and district attorney, Foster was no stranger to both backroom handshaking and grassroots organizing. He was also appalled by the naked corruption and abuses of power committed by Cameron and his allies, especially DIP secretary Clarence Dern. Having spent much of his early career defending black men in discrimination lawsuits in New Jersey, Foster also won the support of the Whigs’ sizeable black issues faction, who were furious with Cameron for abandoning them in order to cement the loyalty of the south. Just two months after Cameron made his announcement, Foster formalized his campaign with a speech in Newark, where he decried the “cult of personality that has grown around the president, to the detriment of the rule of law and the separation of powers.” He attacked the “class warfare run rampant” and called for “an end to the industrial cartels and labor cartels… we must have a labor movement, distinct from any political party as an independent counterweight to an independent business community distinct from any political party as well.”
The speech was unprecedented, as no sitting Vice President had ever opposed the President so openly, much less actively campaigned against him for the nomination. President Cameron was furious, stripping away much of Foster’s staff and freezing him out of all administration meetings. Foster essentially abandoned the capitol, instead traveling to dozens of state and local political events to make his case for a change in party leadership. The Vice President had supported many of Cameron’s initiatives and reforms, but vocally opposed elements of the IROA and claimed that eliminating elements of the Fair Standards Code would lead to another economic boom. He focused most of his campaign on Howard Cameron himself, and his leadership style, which Foster argued was toxic to the party and to American democracy. Cameron responded with speeches reminding party members of his accomplishments and offers of patronage to state leaders should they remain loyal to him at the convention.
Rumors of these promises, combined with other rumors surrounding the large contracts awarded by the Cameron administration to contractors conveniently connected to high-ranking politicians, added fuel to Foster’s charge that the president was corrupt. Slowly, old-school Whigs began to quietly promise support to Foster, with the Vice President securing endorsements from state parties across New England, while New York’s Whig party was conspicuously silent. In March, with the convention still months away, Commerce secretary Ezra Stark Jr., who had served in that post since 1937 and was considered a close ally and friend of President Cameron, resigned. Stark made no public remarks about his resignation, but it was widely seen as done in protest of the President’s bid for a third term. Later accounts state that Stark told Cameron he was exhausted, and perhaps this is why Cameron did not initially take Stark’s resignation as a serious warning sign.
The convention opened in New York City’s Madison Square Garden on July 19th, with the uncontroversial approval of the party platform, which generally echoed the sentiments of the 1940 document. The real controversy began during the nominating speeches, when Foster’s backers announced their choice: former Commerce secretary and respected party figure Ezra Stark Jr. Stark spoke only briefly, praising the accomplishments of President Cameron and declaring “I was proud to serve in his administration for over seven years, and I am proud of what we achieved together. But now it is time for a changing of the guard in the party. Now is the time for us to chart a new direction, as Washington intended almost a hundred and fifty years ago.” The convention was shocked by Stark’s presence, much less his open endorsement of the man challenging his long-time friend. As Stark explained, “I have grown to know Vice President Foster as a man. He is a lifelong champion of the Whig cause, of lifting up the working man and building not just a society, not just a nation, but a true community.”
Cameron, who was at a hotel just a block away, was observed by aides and advisors to pale visibly, but he said nothing. The convention was a mixture of cheering and furious heckling, compounded by Interior secretary Peter Gambel’s rather uninspired and dull nominating speech for Cameron. Three other candidates were nominated, but none had any serious support. Even with Stark’s surprise endorsement of Foster, delegates widely expected that Cameron would secure the nomination on the first ballot. Indeed, as the states were called out in alphabetical order, the President emerged with a strong lead, even with the defections of Connecticut and some delegates from Bighorn and Auraria. The south remained united behind the President, as did much of the west. In an initial sign of trouble, two thirds of Iowa’s delegation backed Foster, which was then compounded by Kansas and Lakota giving him their votes as well. As New York prepared to cast its votes, Cameron held 325 delegates to Foster’s 230. While New York had remained neutral, Cameron was confident that his promises of generous patronage would sway their votes. To his shock and fury, Edward Pierce reported ninety votes for Foster, three for Ezra Stark Jr., and just one for Howard Cameron. Now, Foster was just six votes behind Cameron, with several more delegate-rich states left to vote.
Both campaigns began furiously whipping votes on the convention floor, but the momentum was shifting. Foster won all but five of Pennsylvania’s delegates, where he had been expected to win at most a dozen. Then Shasta broke for him, then Tacoma. While Tennessee and Texas voted with the rest of the south for Cameron, Virginia rebuked the President and gave 31 of its 44 delegates to Congressman Nathan Elkins, 10 to Foster, and just three to Cameron. At the conclusion of the first ballot, Howard Cameron had 512 delegates, over thirty short of a majority. The President reportedly began shouting at aides in his hotel, and summoned Samuel Wolcott, the leader of the New York Whig party, to his suite. Wolcott reportedly was interrupted several times as Cameron demanded he change New York’s vote, while Wolcott kept refusing and insisting on anti-corruption as a party priority. As Cameron’s personal secretary David Cannon would later write, “it was more harangue than negotiation; though they were sat on an equal level, the president conducted himself as if he was sitting on a throne and Wolcott was prostrating himself at its foot.” The row ruined any chances of New York supporting him, and as other negotiations played out over the next several hours, it was clear that Cameron’s position was eroding. Delegates also began to resent his campaign’s continued efforts to delay the next ballot, including several attempts to violate convention rules.
Finally, four hours after the first ballot, the delegates gathered once more to vote. Cameron shed a handful of delegates from Auraria and Illinois, but big movements were observed as large numbers of delegates from Iowa, Indiana, and Jefferson crossed over to Foster. Still, the battle lines held steady, until Ohio voted. Amid a deafening commotion, a majority of the state’s delegates switched from Cameron to Foster, a severe blow to the President’s chances. All but six of Shasta’s delegates broke for Foster, and then in the turning point of the convention, the Virginia delegation switched its vote from Elkins to Foster, allowing the Vice President to take the nomination when the next state, Wisconsin, voted. With this news, the convention descended into chaos. Fistfights broke out, with some delegates smashing chairs and wielding splintered legs amid the brawl. The convention adjourned until the next day for the remainder of the proceedings, where Foster attempted to unite the party by offering Cameron’s closest ally, Clarence Dern, the vice presidency. However, Cameron via Dern made several major demands such as effective control over the DIP, which Foster rejected. He next asked Peter Gambel, who initially accepted, until Cameron reportedly demanded he withdraw his name. A similar story has been documented about Foster’s offer to party chairman Michael Danforth.
With the Cameronite faction of the party pulling up the drawbridges and refusing to cooperate with the push for party unity, Foster was forced to turn to his own faction for a running mate. Ultimately, a reluctant Ezra Stark was persuaded to accept the nomination, after former party chair and former ambassador to Prussia Lowell Hughes persuaded him to do so. Stark’s nomination was approved, despite the abstention of hundreds of Cameronite delegates. Then, the convention chair approved President Cameron’s request to address the delegates. Foster and his staff expected a speech urging conciliation, but much to their disbelief and, as Foster later recounted, “abject disgust at such a breach of decorum and good sportsmanship,” Cameron was surly and bitter. His speech infamously opened with “I hope you all are happy with your thirty pieces of silver,” openly accusing his opponents of disloyalty and betrayal. He denounced Foster as too conservative and a schemer, questioning “what has happened to the party that you abandon the movement so readily?” In a half-hearted attempt at reconciliation, he offered a tepid endorsement of the platform, but his brief speech stunned Madison Square Garden into silence.
Then, as Thomas Foster took the podium to deliver his acceptance speech, the Alabama delegation stood up and walked out, followed, one by one, by Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Michigan and all of the southern delegations save Virginia, Missouri, and Kentucky. Surviving video footage [1] shows Foster staring in surprise at the walkout before gathering his composure and beginning his address. Foster pledged to “continue the work, keep the fire burning in the fight for the working man,” but vowed “honesty in government and fairness in all dealings.” He criticized Cameron’s intervention in Costa Rica as “a war of conquest” and articulated a foreign policy vision of limited intervention and restraint. While on its own it was a strong speech, if dry and policy-focused in parts, it was quickly overshadowed by the absolute circus that preceded it. Even as party-affiliated newspapers like the Pennsylvania Advocate wrote breathlessly at how he had “slain the beast” in Madison Square Garden, the party’s division had only just begun.
The delegates who had walked out of the convention convened in Detroit, where Howard Cameron had hastily organized a convention of the Committee of 43, a group of his close allies formed to advocate for Cameronist progressive policies in all 43 states. Cameron addressed the delegates, exhorting them to “fight for the cause so that it may never die,” though he declined to personally run on a third party ticket, as he privately believed that a splinter ticket was doomed to lose and he did not want to lose a general election. Instead, he urged the nomination of Secretary Clarence Dern, who he described as “the noblest of crusaders in the war against the Invisible Government that seeks to destroy progress and crush the worker and farmer under their corrupt heels.” As the fervor grew, Cameron shouted “we stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord!” [2], eliciting wild cheering from those assembled. Clarence Dern was unanimously chosen as the presidential nominee of the new Progressive Broad Front, the union of the Committee of 43, Cameronite Whigs, and the National Democrats. The 1944 election was now a three-man race.”
-From THE DETROIT LION by John Philip Yates, published 2012
“The Democratic convention, held in advance of the Whig convention, was held without a serious expectation of victory. It was widely assumed that President Cameron would secure the nomination for a third time, and cruise to victory. As a result, few presidential hopefuls chose to make the plunge. The only candidate with any semblance of national prominence was Richard Nelson, the Governor of Delaware. He was an avowed liberal who ran on free trade and weaking the Department of Industry and Planning’s price controls and Fair Standards Code. He was also from a small state and did not have much of a record of major government initiatives, aside from a series of tax cuts and an effort to establish Wilmington as a corporate tax haven, so he was seen by the party as a safe candidate to staunch downballot bleeding. After the devastation of 1940 had destroyed much of the party’s southern wing, the Democratic party had managed to win thirty-one seats in the House in 1942, mostly in the north, with major victories in New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. This was paired with strong gains in the Senate, eroding the Whig supermajority [3].
Nelson had played a major role in candidate selection for a number of key races along the east coast, elevating his star with party leadership, and while he had a reputation as a dull campaigner and dry, academic speaker stemming from his prior career as a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania. His viability as the nominee was further boosted by the southern wing’s dramatic collapse, as one potential candidate, Harold McCord, had won a congressional seat as a National Democrat [4], and another, Arkansas governor Harry Smith, was nearly seventy and unwilling to run. As a result, Nelson had emerged as practically the only serious contender for the nomination, and the party’s Boston convention easily crowned him the nominee in June. The party platform moderated from William Butterworth’s radical liberal one of 1940, while still retaining pledges to roll back parts of the Code, cut taxes, and relax price controls and wage floors. For vice president, Jefferson senator John Howard, a fairly standard northern liberal Democrat, was nominated, as Harry Smith declined to be nominated.
The Democratic ticket spent its first month the clear underdog, trailing badly in all estimations against Howard Cameron. Cameron’s upset defeat at the Whig convention in July dramatically changed the game, placing Nelson and Foster neck-and-neck. The Committee of 43 held its convention at the end of July, and the entrance of Clarence Dern into the race tilted the playing field once more, as the Whig party’s split handed Nelson the advantage. With these shifts in the race, Nelson and his advisors focused on a vague message of change, largely avoiding specific policy proposals for the duration of the campaign, though the innately wonkish Nelson often seemed uncomfortable steering clear of the details at speeches and campaign appearances. The Democratic party’s avoidance of specifics drew fire from Clarence Dern, though his own campaign also ignored policy, mostly because the Committee of 43 had a great deal of overlap with Foster’s mainline Whigs.
Throughout October, all three candidates campaigned vigorously, but it became increasingly clear as Election Day neared that the split in the Whig party had effectively destroyed either Foster’s or Dern’s chance of winning. The real battle quickly became the house and senate elections, where the Whigs were still mostly united, although the party split meant that Cameron’s friendly political machines conspired against pro-Foster officeholders and vice-versa. Eight years of patronage, scheming, and personalist politics had meant that a good deal of the Whig party’s machinery, especially at the lower levels, were firmly aligned to Cameron and the Committee. It proved a wise move for the Democrats to abandon the policy wonk lane, as the election had been boiled down to a simple referendum on President Cameron and his policies: did the voters want Cameronism, Cameronism without Cameron, or something else entirely?
In the end, the voters decided that they wanted something else entirely, although 57 percent of the country voted for either of the two Whig candidates, they split almost evenly between Dern and Foster. Richard Nelson cruised to a landslide in the electoral college with just forty percent of the popular vote, winning many states with bare pluralities. He w0n 419 electoral votes, including narrow plurality wins in Whig strongholds like Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa. Across the prairies, civil wars between Foster supporters and Cameronites weakened state parties, especially in Iowa. Dern and the Progressive Broad Front emerged as the runners-up with nearly 30 percent of the vote and 62 electoral votes. Dern had appeared as the nominee of the official Whig party in Cameron’s home state of Michigan, leading to his easy victory there. Cameronist control of state Whig parties in the south led to Dern’s narrow victories in Georgia, Alabama, and Tennessee, with narrow losses in Kentucky and Washita. He also won a tight three-way contest in Hidatsa, where less than five percentage points separated the three main candidates.
Vice President Foster led the mainline Whigs to an embarrassing third place, with wins in the mountain west, Maine, Wisconsin, and his home state of New Jersey. Downballot, where the Whigs were more united, they narrowly clung to the House and Senate, despite losing almost eighty seats in the house and eight in the senate. Most losses came from northern districts and states, with the Democrats winning a senate seat in Pennsylvania for the first time since before 1900. Despite making enormous gains, the Democrats ultimately could not overcome the simply enormous majorities the Whigs had built up and maintained since the landslides of 1934, 1936, and 1940. As a result, Richard Nelson entered office without a popular mandate owing to his plurality win, and without friendly majorities in congress. While Howard Cameron welcomed Nelson to the Executive Mansion and began the transition process, he vowed to remain active in politics, and quietly plotted his comeback. For while President Cameron was now out of office, he was not out of power, and the Cameron Era was far from over…”
-From THE LONG TWENTIETH CENTURY: AMERICA 1940-2003 by Greg Carey, published 2009
[1] This convention will be the first to be recorded, for later newsreels, but live televised conventions won’t be for another decade or so.
[2] Theodore Roosevelt said this IOTL at the 1912 Progressive convention.
[3] Despite gaining almost a dozen seats, the Democrats still only have 32 Senators, showing just how enormous the Whig supermajorities were that they could lose 10 seats and still have 50 Senators (54, with the National Democrats included).
[4] McCord also accepted an offer from Clarence Dern to serve as his running mate.
“Howard Cameron’s announcement that he intended to seek a third term as President shocked the political establishment, though in hindsight it was quite obvious. From his beginnings as an eager young progressive crusader, Cameron had come to seem himself as vital to the movement’s success and longevity, and he was convinced that, should he step down, all that he had worked to accomplish would be quickly undone by the forces arrayed against him. He had come to greatly enjoy the power that came with the presidency, and he had grown accustomed to using his office to not only force through major legislation, but also pursue personal vendettas and reward his friends. However, he believed that his landslide election victories and popularity with the general public shielded him from intraparty opposition. Perhaps this explains his overconfidence preceding the convention.
He and his inner circle allowed Vice President Foster to build support for a campaign, believing that once Cameron made his intentions known Foster would loyally defer to the incumbent rather than split the party. While Foster was certainly surprised by Cameron’s bid for a third term, he was also disgusted by the decision. As he told a closed-door meeting of Whig officials, “we are faced with the greatest crisis the party has seen in generations. This is the Whig Party, not one man’s personal fiefdom. If this party is to exist independently of the President we must act, or face oblivion.” Foster’s argument was certainly a powerful one, and while President Cameron was content to rely on the inertia of incumbency and his electability to carry him through to the convention, Foster doggedly campaigned.
Having come into politics as a trial lawyer and district attorney, Foster was no stranger to both backroom handshaking and grassroots organizing. He was also appalled by the naked corruption and abuses of power committed by Cameron and his allies, especially DIP secretary Clarence Dern. Having spent much of his early career defending black men in discrimination lawsuits in New Jersey, Foster also won the support of the Whigs’ sizeable black issues faction, who were furious with Cameron for abandoning them in order to cement the loyalty of the south. Just two months after Cameron made his announcement, Foster formalized his campaign with a speech in Newark, where he decried the “cult of personality that has grown around the president, to the detriment of the rule of law and the separation of powers.” He attacked the “class warfare run rampant” and called for “an end to the industrial cartels and labor cartels… we must have a labor movement, distinct from any political party as an independent counterweight to an independent business community distinct from any political party as well.”
The speech was unprecedented, as no sitting Vice President had ever opposed the President so openly, much less actively campaigned against him for the nomination. President Cameron was furious, stripping away much of Foster’s staff and freezing him out of all administration meetings. Foster essentially abandoned the capitol, instead traveling to dozens of state and local political events to make his case for a change in party leadership. The Vice President had supported many of Cameron’s initiatives and reforms, but vocally opposed elements of the IROA and claimed that eliminating elements of the Fair Standards Code would lead to another economic boom. He focused most of his campaign on Howard Cameron himself, and his leadership style, which Foster argued was toxic to the party and to American democracy. Cameron responded with speeches reminding party members of his accomplishments and offers of patronage to state leaders should they remain loyal to him at the convention.
Rumors of these promises, combined with other rumors surrounding the large contracts awarded by the Cameron administration to contractors conveniently connected to high-ranking politicians, added fuel to Foster’s charge that the president was corrupt. Slowly, old-school Whigs began to quietly promise support to Foster, with the Vice President securing endorsements from state parties across New England, while New York’s Whig party was conspicuously silent. In March, with the convention still months away, Commerce secretary Ezra Stark Jr., who had served in that post since 1937 and was considered a close ally and friend of President Cameron, resigned. Stark made no public remarks about his resignation, but it was widely seen as done in protest of the President’s bid for a third term. Later accounts state that Stark told Cameron he was exhausted, and perhaps this is why Cameron did not initially take Stark’s resignation as a serious warning sign.
The convention opened in New York City’s Madison Square Garden on July 19th, with the uncontroversial approval of the party platform, which generally echoed the sentiments of the 1940 document. The real controversy began during the nominating speeches, when Foster’s backers announced their choice: former Commerce secretary and respected party figure Ezra Stark Jr. Stark spoke only briefly, praising the accomplishments of President Cameron and declaring “I was proud to serve in his administration for over seven years, and I am proud of what we achieved together. But now it is time for a changing of the guard in the party. Now is the time for us to chart a new direction, as Washington intended almost a hundred and fifty years ago.” The convention was shocked by Stark’s presence, much less his open endorsement of the man challenging his long-time friend. As Stark explained, “I have grown to know Vice President Foster as a man. He is a lifelong champion of the Whig cause, of lifting up the working man and building not just a society, not just a nation, but a true community.”
Cameron, who was at a hotel just a block away, was observed by aides and advisors to pale visibly, but he said nothing. The convention was a mixture of cheering and furious heckling, compounded by Interior secretary Peter Gambel’s rather uninspired and dull nominating speech for Cameron. Three other candidates were nominated, but none had any serious support. Even with Stark’s surprise endorsement of Foster, delegates widely expected that Cameron would secure the nomination on the first ballot. Indeed, as the states were called out in alphabetical order, the President emerged with a strong lead, even with the defections of Connecticut and some delegates from Bighorn and Auraria. The south remained united behind the President, as did much of the west. In an initial sign of trouble, two thirds of Iowa’s delegation backed Foster, which was then compounded by Kansas and Lakota giving him their votes as well. As New York prepared to cast its votes, Cameron held 325 delegates to Foster’s 230. While New York had remained neutral, Cameron was confident that his promises of generous patronage would sway their votes. To his shock and fury, Edward Pierce reported ninety votes for Foster, three for Ezra Stark Jr., and just one for Howard Cameron. Now, Foster was just six votes behind Cameron, with several more delegate-rich states left to vote.
Both campaigns began furiously whipping votes on the convention floor, but the momentum was shifting. Foster won all but five of Pennsylvania’s delegates, where he had been expected to win at most a dozen. Then Shasta broke for him, then Tacoma. While Tennessee and Texas voted with the rest of the south for Cameron, Virginia rebuked the President and gave 31 of its 44 delegates to Congressman Nathan Elkins, 10 to Foster, and just three to Cameron. At the conclusion of the first ballot, Howard Cameron had 512 delegates, over thirty short of a majority. The President reportedly began shouting at aides in his hotel, and summoned Samuel Wolcott, the leader of the New York Whig party, to his suite. Wolcott reportedly was interrupted several times as Cameron demanded he change New York’s vote, while Wolcott kept refusing and insisting on anti-corruption as a party priority. As Cameron’s personal secretary David Cannon would later write, “it was more harangue than negotiation; though they were sat on an equal level, the president conducted himself as if he was sitting on a throne and Wolcott was prostrating himself at its foot.” The row ruined any chances of New York supporting him, and as other negotiations played out over the next several hours, it was clear that Cameron’s position was eroding. Delegates also began to resent his campaign’s continued efforts to delay the next ballot, including several attempts to violate convention rules.
Finally, four hours after the first ballot, the delegates gathered once more to vote. Cameron shed a handful of delegates from Auraria and Illinois, but big movements were observed as large numbers of delegates from Iowa, Indiana, and Jefferson crossed over to Foster. Still, the battle lines held steady, until Ohio voted. Amid a deafening commotion, a majority of the state’s delegates switched from Cameron to Foster, a severe blow to the President’s chances. All but six of Shasta’s delegates broke for Foster, and then in the turning point of the convention, the Virginia delegation switched its vote from Elkins to Foster, allowing the Vice President to take the nomination when the next state, Wisconsin, voted. With this news, the convention descended into chaos. Fistfights broke out, with some delegates smashing chairs and wielding splintered legs amid the brawl. The convention adjourned until the next day for the remainder of the proceedings, where Foster attempted to unite the party by offering Cameron’s closest ally, Clarence Dern, the vice presidency. However, Cameron via Dern made several major demands such as effective control over the DIP, which Foster rejected. He next asked Peter Gambel, who initially accepted, until Cameron reportedly demanded he withdraw his name. A similar story has been documented about Foster’s offer to party chairman Michael Danforth.
With the Cameronite faction of the party pulling up the drawbridges and refusing to cooperate with the push for party unity, Foster was forced to turn to his own faction for a running mate. Ultimately, a reluctant Ezra Stark was persuaded to accept the nomination, after former party chair and former ambassador to Prussia Lowell Hughes persuaded him to do so. Stark’s nomination was approved, despite the abstention of hundreds of Cameronite delegates. Then, the convention chair approved President Cameron’s request to address the delegates. Foster and his staff expected a speech urging conciliation, but much to their disbelief and, as Foster later recounted, “abject disgust at such a breach of decorum and good sportsmanship,” Cameron was surly and bitter. His speech infamously opened with “I hope you all are happy with your thirty pieces of silver,” openly accusing his opponents of disloyalty and betrayal. He denounced Foster as too conservative and a schemer, questioning “what has happened to the party that you abandon the movement so readily?” In a half-hearted attempt at reconciliation, he offered a tepid endorsement of the platform, but his brief speech stunned Madison Square Garden into silence.
Then, as Thomas Foster took the podium to deliver his acceptance speech, the Alabama delegation stood up and walked out, followed, one by one, by Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Michigan and all of the southern delegations save Virginia, Missouri, and Kentucky. Surviving video footage [1] shows Foster staring in surprise at the walkout before gathering his composure and beginning his address. Foster pledged to “continue the work, keep the fire burning in the fight for the working man,” but vowed “honesty in government and fairness in all dealings.” He criticized Cameron’s intervention in Costa Rica as “a war of conquest” and articulated a foreign policy vision of limited intervention and restraint. While on its own it was a strong speech, if dry and policy-focused in parts, it was quickly overshadowed by the absolute circus that preceded it. Even as party-affiliated newspapers like the Pennsylvania Advocate wrote breathlessly at how he had “slain the beast” in Madison Square Garden, the party’s division had only just begun.
The delegates who had walked out of the convention convened in Detroit, where Howard Cameron had hastily organized a convention of the Committee of 43, a group of his close allies formed to advocate for Cameronist progressive policies in all 43 states. Cameron addressed the delegates, exhorting them to “fight for the cause so that it may never die,” though he declined to personally run on a third party ticket, as he privately believed that a splinter ticket was doomed to lose and he did not want to lose a general election. Instead, he urged the nomination of Secretary Clarence Dern, who he described as “the noblest of crusaders in the war against the Invisible Government that seeks to destroy progress and crush the worker and farmer under their corrupt heels.” As the fervor grew, Cameron shouted “we stand at Armageddon, and we battle for the Lord!” [2], eliciting wild cheering from those assembled. Clarence Dern was unanimously chosen as the presidential nominee of the new Progressive Broad Front, the union of the Committee of 43, Cameronite Whigs, and the National Democrats. The 1944 election was now a three-man race.”
-From THE DETROIT LION by John Philip Yates, published 2012
“The Democratic convention, held in advance of the Whig convention, was held without a serious expectation of victory. It was widely assumed that President Cameron would secure the nomination for a third time, and cruise to victory. As a result, few presidential hopefuls chose to make the plunge. The only candidate with any semblance of national prominence was Richard Nelson, the Governor of Delaware. He was an avowed liberal who ran on free trade and weaking the Department of Industry and Planning’s price controls and Fair Standards Code. He was also from a small state and did not have much of a record of major government initiatives, aside from a series of tax cuts and an effort to establish Wilmington as a corporate tax haven, so he was seen by the party as a safe candidate to staunch downballot bleeding. After the devastation of 1940 had destroyed much of the party’s southern wing, the Democratic party had managed to win thirty-one seats in the House in 1942, mostly in the north, with major victories in New York, Pennsylvania, and Illinois. This was paired with strong gains in the Senate, eroding the Whig supermajority [3].
Nelson had played a major role in candidate selection for a number of key races along the east coast, elevating his star with party leadership, and while he had a reputation as a dull campaigner and dry, academic speaker stemming from his prior career as a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania. His viability as the nominee was further boosted by the southern wing’s dramatic collapse, as one potential candidate, Harold McCord, had won a congressional seat as a National Democrat [4], and another, Arkansas governor Harry Smith, was nearly seventy and unwilling to run. As a result, Nelson had emerged as practically the only serious contender for the nomination, and the party’s Boston convention easily crowned him the nominee in June. The party platform moderated from William Butterworth’s radical liberal one of 1940, while still retaining pledges to roll back parts of the Code, cut taxes, and relax price controls and wage floors. For vice president, Jefferson senator John Howard, a fairly standard northern liberal Democrat, was nominated, as Harry Smith declined to be nominated.
The Democratic ticket spent its first month the clear underdog, trailing badly in all estimations against Howard Cameron. Cameron’s upset defeat at the Whig convention in July dramatically changed the game, placing Nelson and Foster neck-and-neck. The Committee of 43 held its convention at the end of July, and the entrance of Clarence Dern into the race tilted the playing field once more, as the Whig party’s split handed Nelson the advantage. With these shifts in the race, Nelson and his advisors focused on a vague message of change, largely avoiding specific policy proposals for the duration of the campaign, though the innately wonkish Nelson often seemed uncomfortable steering clear of the details at speeches and campaign appearances. The Democratic party’s avoidance of specifics drew fire from Clarence Dern, though his own campaign also ignored policy, mostly because the Committee of 43 had a great deal of overlap with Foster’s mainline Whigs.
Throughout October, all three candidates campaigned vigorously, but it became increasingly clear as Election Day neared that the split in the Whig party had effectively destroyed either Foster’s or Dern’s chance of winning. The real battle quickly became the house and senate elections, where the Whigs were still mostly united, although the party split meant that Cameron’s friendly political machines conspired against pro-Foster officeholders and vice-versa. Eight years of patronage, scheming, and personalist politics had meant that a good deal of the Whig party’s machinery, especially at the lower levels, were firmly aligned to Cameron and the Committee. It proved a wise move for the Democrats to abandon the policy wonk lane, as the election had been boiled down to a simple referendum on President Cameron and his policies: did the voters want Cameronism, Cameronism without Cameron, or something else entirely?
| Richard Nelson | Clarence Dern | Thomas Foster | |
| Electoral Vote | 419 | 62 | 57 |
| Popular Vote | 19,519,329 | 14,452,827 | 13,256,871 |
| Percentage | 40.7 | 29.6 | 27.4 |
Vice President Foster led the mainline Whigs to an embarrassing third place, with wins in the mountain west, Maine, Wisconsin, and his home state of New Jersey. Downballot, where the Whigs were more united, they narrowly clung to the House and Senate, despite losing almost eighty seats in the house and eight in the senate. Most losses came from northern districts and states, with the Democrats winning a senate seat in Pennsylvania for the first time since before 1900. Despite making enormous gains, the Democrats ultimately could not overcome the simply enormous majorities the Whigs had built up and maintained since the landslides of 1934, 1936, and 1940. As a result, Richard Nelson entered office without a popular mandate owing to his plurality win, and without friendly majorities in congress. While Howard Cameron welcomed Nelson to the Executive Mansion and began the transition process, he vowed to remain active in politics, and quietly plotted his comeback. For while President Cameron was now out of office, he was not out of power, and the Cameron Era was far from over…”
-From THE LONG TWENTIETH CENTURY: AMERICA 1940-2003 by Greg Carey, published 2009
[1] This convention will be the first to be recorded, for later newsreels, but live televised conventions won’t be for another decade or so.
[2] Theodore Roosevelt said this IOTL at the 1912 Progressive convention.
[3] Despite gaining almost a dozen seats, the Democrats still only have 32 Senators, showing just how enormous the Whig supermajorities were that they could lose 10 seats and still have 50 Senators (54, with the National Democrats included).
[4] McCord also accepted an offer from Clarence Dern to serve as his running mate.
I'm honestly surprised that Dern pulled ahead of foster or that the latter even got electoral votes after the fact.
Cameron's little revolution will be quite the problem for old guard whigs, won't it?
Cameron's little revolution will be quite the problem for old guard whigs, won't it?
Goddamn. That's one way to squander a once in a generation realignment and supermajority.
This feels like what could’ve happened if FDR was 1912 TR in 1940. Nice chapter!!
Amazing chapter! Awaiting the wikibox with bated breath so I can add the state results to the spreadsheet.
That last part seems like foreshadowing. Cameron pulling a Grover Cleveland perhaps?
That last part seems like foreshadowing. Cameron pulling a Grover Cleveland perhaps?
Something Cameron is going to moderate some of his policies to rebuild his machine in some states, push his people in other states and spend some capital and bribes to lock in people for 1948. Then he will focus some white hot fury on Dern and the disloyalists.
Well Cameron and his faction are by far the more popular wing of the party, though within the party it was a relatively even split. Also, the Cameronites control a good deal of the party's infrastructure, giving Dern another leg up on Foster.
Indeed it will be, especially as Cameron has no plans to just let the old guard retake control of the party...
It's not been squandered yet!
Thanks! Glad you like it!
Thanks! Wikibox is almost done
No spoilers lol
Indeed, though his second wind will involve some level of comeuppance.
Cameron won't be punishing Dern, he set the guy's candidacy up in the first place, but this whole fiasco will give Cameron an opening to not necessarily moderate, but force the rest of the party to accept his radicalism without resistance.
Part of me wants to make a shapefile in QGIS for the TTL US states lol
Random question but has being right on the Mexican border impacted San Francisco's development any? Judging by the map the border would be at around the southern edge of OTL San Jose
Random question but has being right on the Mexican border impacted San Francisco's development any? Judging by the map the border would be at around the southern edge of OTL San Jose
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I'm very curious about virginia; iirc they're more of a swing state ttl and very cameronist. Was it due to the split in the whigs that it went to the dems?
San Francisco is an important transit hub because of border traffic, probably very similar to El Paso. SF will be more industrial than it was OTL bc of the extra trade, a different tech sector focused on the Great Plains, and crime problems due to corruption and organized crime in Mexican California.
Virginia is a swing state TTL, but the Democrats did win in '44 largely because of the split Whig vote.
Lol that's just the face claim, Nelson won't be that insane
I forgot about that. Midwestern hipster techbros just might be the most cursed thing in this timeline, and that's saying a lot. Swilling kombucha and making small talk about the weather, speaking with a passive aggressive superiority that could wither a flower at 100 yards.