There's an excellent dissertation/book out there under the (incredibly creative

) name
Lessons from the Great Depression: The Economic Effects of the Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930 and the Beginning of the Great Depression that I managed to get my hands on a while back. It's truly impressive as an economics text and makes a pretty rock solid (well, at least as rock solid as economic texts can be) case that the Smoot-Hawley tariff is almost uniquely responsible for turning what would have been a sharp but short recession in the later half of 1929 and the early part of 1930 into the decade long depression we're all familiar with.
I was so impressed with this argument that I immediately wanted to examine a timeline using some way of avoiding the tariff as a PoD. I've been meaning to do so for a while and that intention was more or less the entire reason I made an account here. I'm doing some preliminary research on the details of the PoD (there was a time in early 1930 when the Act looked like it would die in the Senate, but several Senators gave up on opposition and switched to the pro-tariff side in exchange for rate hikes on products important to their own states...I just need to find out exactly who these Senators were and how I can keep them in the opposition).
However, i have an additional problem. I don't know
that much about contemporary politics in America, and I know almost nothing at all about politics elsewhere in the world.
Let's say there is a relatively minor recession which clears up by the second half of 1930 in the US and most of the rest of the world. Systematic difficulties continue (Germany's economy, for instance, remains under the burden of war reparations, albeit with the forgiveness and allowances of things like the Young Plan), but otherwise the slightly unstable but prosperous economy of the 1920's continues across the developed world.
How do other events work out? How does the situation in Germany evolve? Britain? France?
Does Hoover stand a chance at a second term? Who would be his competition, both in the Republican primaries and his Democratic challenger in the General?
What are the odds of a Civil Rights Movement being birthed in a more economically secure 30's, two decades ahead of time? Perhaps as a reaction to the segregationist excesses of the 10's and 20's?
What else might happen? What other social and political pressures are going to be seeking an outlet?
This would be a bit of an in-depth project, so I want to make sure I do it right. I want it to be as detailed and 'true to life' as I can make it, and I would love to get some help from the knowledgeable, educated crowd here at AH.com.