The protest movements of the 60s are going to be a lot nastier then.
The North Star is Red: a Wallace Presidency, KMT Victory, Alternate Cold War TL
- Thread starter TastySpam
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It's a pretty grey v. black distinction, but it is probably somewhat less bad to arrest people on BS charges than to arrest, torture, and murder people on BS charges.
Chapter 126 - United States of America, 1960 Election
United States of America, 1960 Election
The final bomb thrown into the race was a contentious Supreme Court case. A widely suspected theory (proven true by his papers) was that Supreme Court Justice Roy Cohn purposely timed the hearing of the case to be right before the 1960 elections. In Roe v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court ruled on a Connecticut "comstock law" that banned the use oral contraception. Chief Justice Douglas wrote a "majority" opinion that only had one other justice sign on (Arthur Goldberg, the newest justice, having replaced Harold Burton in 1959). However, Justices Roy Cohn himself as well as Sam Ervin and Felix Frankfurter signed onto a concurring opinion. Dissenting were Hugo Black, Robert Kennon, Stanley Reed, and William Hastie.
The case threw in an issue that nobody had really expected to be in the campaign - birth control, far removed from the complex issues of "constitutional government" and "foreign policy" that both Kennedy and Chase Smith prepared to wage. Eleanor Roosevelt, still an ally of John F. Kennedy, had earlier declared that due to Kennedy's support of organized labour, the Equal Rights Amendment (once a Republican proposal opposed by labour) was no longer a threat to labour unions. Immediately, Congress voted to pass the ERA on a bipartisan vote - the woman who had introduced it in the Senate was Senator Margaret Chase Smith of Maine.
The Kennedy campaign, while supporting the ERA and supporting the decision in Roe v. Connecticut, cleverly had surrogates make the argument that that the ERA led to decisions like Roe v. Connecticut and could lead to future decisions of the sort (despite the fact that the ERA had not actually been yet ratified by 38 states, the required supermajority due to the admission of Hawaii and Alaska under President McCarthy).
In many ways, the election was a death knell to the ability of the Dixiecrats to influence national politics. For the first time in an American election since Wallace's desegregation of the army, there was no candidate on the national state sucking away electoral votes as a supporter of Jim Crow. Even though Strom Thurmond was on the Republican ticket, the official Republican platform vociferously rejected Jim Crow, which by 1960, was dying. A constitutional amendment was formally ratified in late 1959 to finally outlaw poll taxes, which combined with the 1957 Civil Rights Act and 1958 Voting Rights Act, guaranteed black suffrage. Bereft of their purpose, the Dixiecrats scattered among both major parties. Most remained with the Democratic Party, though some of them defected to the Republicans (such as Strom Thurmond). However, all was not well with black America.
Crime rates had just started to explode in the late 1950's, a reality that primarily hurt black communities (as black Americans, especially in the urban North, were disproportionately concentrated in high-crime areas). This was exacerbated as this being the exact time that the Douglas Court was systematically incorporating most of the amendments, especially the 4th Amendment. Mostly in contentious 5-4 or 6-3 decisions (Justice Cohn was usually the one swinging between the two sides), the Supreme Court was constantly limiting the ability of police to operate freely. In many ways, this was considered an act of resistance against J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, since most constitutional rulings governing local police also governed abusive FBI practices. However, this allowed FBI partisans to blame skyrocketing crime rates on making it harder for the FBI to wiretap political opponents. Ironically, the FBI typically just ignored these court rulings, since it was mostly local police departments getting sued by the ACLU, not the actual American deep state.
Kennedy had no real plan with crime whatsoever, but he was able to pull out tons of FBI stalwarts who went on record saying that a Chase Smith presidency would be weak on crime by limiting the powers of the FBI. It wasn't clear whether this worked. If anything, it just made Republicans remarkably resentful of the FBI. Polls taken after the famous FBI press conference saw Chase Smith's numbers go up. On the eve of the election, Gallup had a dead-heat tie between Kennedy and Chase Smith, 48-48 (although technically, it was 48.5 Kennedy, 48.1 Chase Smith). With an unpredictable electoral map due to Strom Thurmond, the election was viewed as once again, razor-thin.
In practice, it wasn't. Strom Thurmond got Chase Smith most of the states he had won in 1948, but none others. Chase Smith managed to take all of the states MacArthur won in 1956 and even swung most of the Midwest (such as Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Ohio), but failed to break into most of the other states. The closest states were Michigan and Delaware and those would still be undecided for a while after election night, but they just didn't matter. The polls were off - Kennedy had convincingly won. Moreover, the polls had completely misread the impact of gender on the election. Polls taken before the election had Kennedy leading 2 points with men and trailing 1 point among women. Actual exit polls indicate that Chase Smith had actually won male voters by 3 points. In contrast, she had lost women by double digits - 10 points. It was notably the first election since the start of women's suffrage in 1920 that women had voted more Democrat than Republican and perhaps the largest gender gap in American history. American women saw the first female party nominee in history - and then voted her down in flames.
A confident Republican Party was in total shock as the downballot turned out even worse - Chase Smith actually ran ahead of them. Although not as bad as 1958, it was clearly a bad election that handed almost every major gubernatorial office down to the Democrats. Their losses in the House expanded, as the Democrats built up a 255-180 majority. The Democrats finally took a 3/5ths majority, 61-39, which humiliatingly included flipping Senator Chase-Smith's old seat in Maine (that she had vacated to run for President), won by Democrat Frank Coffin. The polls had been off pretty much across the board, allowing the Democrats to sweep almost every tossup and even take several targets seen as not actually competitive (such as Maine's Senate race). Kennedy got to celebrate seeing one of his two most acerbic critics in the Senate, Senator Clifford Case of New Jersey and Senator Leverett Saltonstall go down in flames. The latter was notably replaced by Edward Brooke, a new African-American senator (in an almost all-white body).
Having lost every presidential election going back from 1932-1960, making this their 8th straight defeat, the Republican Party really didn't know what to do. Several of those elections, including 1948, 1952, 1956, and 1960 were all seen as incredibly competitive. Yet, they couldn't close the deal. After each of those elections, the message was to "try something else." Yet, each single time, trying something else didn't work. The moderate Dewey, conservative Taft, liberal MacArthur, and whatever the hell they tried in 1960 - none of them worked. The Republican Party entered the 1960's with nobody really knowing what the hell to do. However, soon, dramatic developments would transform the party in ways few people expected.
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Following with interest, but one minor point re "The Democrats finally took a filibuster proof majority, 61-39":
I haven't seen that the Senate rules have changed in this TL, so cloture would still require 2/3*-- 3/5 only came in OTL in 1975.
* Of course, this being a contentious topic, the "definition" of "2/3" and "cloture" changed repeatedly-- 1949, 1959, and 1970
I haven't seen that the Senate rules have changed in this TL, so cloture would still require 2/3*-- 3/5 only came in OTL in 1975.
* Of course, this being a contentious topic, the "definition" of "2/3" and "cloture" changed repeatedly-- 1949, 1959, and 1970
"dramatic developments would transform the party in ways few people expected."-I don't know honestly if the Republicans can recover from not winning an election since the 30s.
Maybe the republicans can make a comeback in 1964 if Kennedy takes a trip to Dallas in 1963...
Considering Kennedy's OTL sex life, i suspect that a sex scandal is more likely
Technically 1920's...
Well, he got hit with a sex scandal in the 1960 elections...which dropped his approvals from like 65%~ to roughly 40%. Still, he won, albeit not by a landslide - and the juiciest details aren't out yet.
Bookmark1995
Banned
Yeah. The Democrats have governed the US for 30 years now.
The only living Republican President at this point is Herbert Hoover, who left office with the stigma of not reviving the US economy.
The generation raised in the 1930s and 1940s has known nothing but Democratic control.
So it will be interesting to see the GOP does.
I wonder if anything is happening regarding to immigration to the US.
That actually brings up an interesting point. Will the Soviet Union fully implement the OGAS to try to automate their system? (that's where I assume the Union will go)
Chapter 127 - The Battle of Haifa
The Battle of Haifa
The IDF had been furiously researching in preparation for their defense of Haifa. Obviously, considering that their opponents were known to largely be trained in the Soviet way of warfare, being literally embedded with famous Soviet tank commanders of the Second World War as advisers, the relevant battles to study were the Battle of Berlin, the Battle of Helsinki, the Battle of Zagreb, and the Battle of Belgrade. All four were Soviet victories where horribly outgunned and outnumbered forces made the Soviets pay for every inch, but were still ultimately defeated by excellent Soviet elan, training, and firepower. However, the IDF ironically also studied three other battles - Rehe, Dalian, and Mukden, where the PLA defended three cities, ultimately triumphing in the third. The IDF understood that their opponents were some of the most experienced troops in urban warfare in the world. However, the IDF also had advantages.
Israeli troops were also some of the most motivated and trained in the world. Although most of the reservists were not as well-trained, they were quickly led by grizzled IDF veterans, many who had fought in Egypt and were excellent soldiers. Combined, the Israelis had around 20,000 regular troops and 180,000 reservists. The Israelis had no air cover, but roughly 240 tanks (200 from Egypt, 40 who survived the loss of Northern Israel) and 150 artillery pieces. Luckily for the Israelis, Haifa also had one advantage. Haifa largely faces the sea, with the southern and eastern edges of the metropolitan area largely guarded by Mount Carmel. As such, the only way to advance into Haifa was from the Northeast alongsides the coast of the Haifa Bay, which meant that the Israelis knew exactly where the main assault would have to come from - they would attack the Krayot, the northern suburbs of Haifa.
Much to the surprise of the IDF, the attack didn't come at first. They had expected the attack to come immediately...but for a week, nothing happened. In fact, the Syrian Army seemed to completely avoid Haifa, much to the shock of most Israelis and most North Chinese. Conspiracy theories abounded as to why this was happening, many suspected that the Syrians had been scared off by an Israeli nuclear program (the Israelis had a nuclear program, but they had no functioning nuclear weapons). It would only be years later that the details of the Assad-Begin Agreement would be revealed.
Prime Minister Menachem Begin's first call was in fact to the most famous commander of Syrian forces in the war, General Mustafa Tlass, who had become an anti-Zionist icon after one of his men, who he then personally congratulated and lauded, was video-taped beheading a dozen helpless Israeli POWs with an axe. Begin's aides were repulsed that this would be the man, largely viewed as responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Israeli Jews in Northern Israel, that Begin would first contact. However, much like how Tlass's anti-Israeli credentials were unquestionable, Begin's (who was once an Irgun terrorist bombing British forces on behalf of Israeli independence) credentials as a hardline Zionist were also unquestionable. In an angry rebuke of his aides, Begin screamed at one that the world had abandoned Israel and that he was ready to do anything to ensure its survival. Begin, a sharp political thinker, had quickly realized that there had erupted great tension between the Syrians and the North Chinese, especially as the North Chinese edged out Syria's hopes of simply annexing Northern Israel with their creation of Judeopalestine. He aimed to take advantage of this.
Discussing the issue directly with Tlass's deputy, Hafez al-Assad, the deal hammered out was fairly simple. Israel would share all of its nuclear research with the Syrians and give them several advanced French, British, and American weapons that had been gifted to Israel. In addition, Israel would release most of the Palestinian guerillas and fighters in its custody, delivering them to Syrian custody. In return, the Syrians would essentially cease large offensives into Israeli territory (chiefly Haifa), re-orientating instead to take advantage of another situation. The Syrians, increasingly unsympathetic to the North Chinese, their Kurdish allies in Communist Iraq, and whatever the hell Judeopalestine was meant to be, had grown to favor instead the Iraqi Nationalists instead.
Finally, the Jordanian monarchy had grown incredibly unpopular due to their refusal to engage in the war against Israel, largely because the British had threatened to cut off support to Jordan if they engaged in the war against Israel (because Israeli troops were at the time aiding British troops in Egypt). The Jordanians needed British support for their war defending the Iraqi Hashemite royalists, so they complied. Ironically, the invasion forced Israel to withdraw all of its troops from Egypt anyways, and the immediate collapse of the security situation in Egypt meant that the British could maintain their support of Jordan, but they would be unable to step it up. Taking all of the Palestinian fighters, the Syrians would then unleash them on the distracted Jordanians, hoping to spark a crisis. Instead of advancing on Haifa, Syrian forces wheeled around far to the east of Haifa, pretending as if they would bypass Haifa. In reality, their target was the Jordanian-annexed Palestinian West Bank. The informal deal between Begin and Assad would be that Israeli and Syrian forces would continue to skirmish, but that they wouldn't launch major offensives. Some might suspect there was a rotten deal between Israel and Syria - but very few people did. After all, considering how many massacres Tlass and Assad had overseen against Israeli civilians...nearly everyone assumed the two couldn't possibly have come to any kind of agreement.
The North Chinese were livid when the Syrians informed them that they would be "bypassing" the city of Haifa, viewing it as strategically unimportant. That was an obvious lie, because Haifa was Israel's only natural harbor, which is why the IDF viewed defending Haifa as Israel's last stand. In a secret internal meeting, the North Chinese politburo declared Syria a social-fascist-imperialist state based on Arab chauvinism, building closer relations to the Kurds of Northeast Syria. In the meantime, after a short delay, the decision was made - the People's Volunteer Army would still be attacking Haifa. They had come far too long to give up now.
With only around 100,000 troops (60,000 PLA, 30,000 local Arabs, 10,000 Kurdish Peshmerga), the PVA was actually outnumbered by the IDF. However, the PVA had 1,200 tanks, 1,400 artillery pieces, and air dominance, wildly outgunning the Israelis. In addition, they had better equipment. Ironically, the primary weapon of Israeli reservists were surplus German Kar-98K rifles from the Second World War, which typically had their swastikas defaced and replaced with Stars of David. They were plentiful and this allowed the IDF to arm most of the reservists. However, they were not well-suited for urban warfare in the same way that the PVA troops, armed primarily with Type 56 (the North Chinese AK-47), surplus SVT-40s, and surplus PPSH-41s. Luckily for civilians, the delay allowed the Israelis extra-time to evacuate civilians from Haifa, though Prime Minister Begin ordered that the primary job of the merchant marine was to bring in more soldiers, not evacuate civilians, because it was feared that evacuating all of the civilians would allow the North Chinese to intensify air support and artillery bombardment (despite Tlass's massacres in Judeopalestine, the North Chinese argued they were engaging in a "humanitarian intervention"). As a result, only children and the elderly were evacuated from Haifa (other residents were handed spare rifles).
Once the bombardment began, IDF troops hunkered down in the homes of the Kravot. Although they took large losses, enough of them had survived the bombardment to harass North Chinese tank columns (ironically once again, their primary weapons were German-made Panzerfausts). Although the Panzerfausts didn't work very well against T-54s, they generally were able to disable or even destroy T-34s caught off guard. This severely slowed the North Chinese advance, ending hopes of a quick breakthrough, especially as Israeli counter-battery fire, although much smaller, disorganized advancing North Chinese troops. The Israelis, with their artillery set up on top of the Haifa University buildings at Mount Carmel, had actually sent their special forces to guard the artillery there, the 35th Paratroopers Brigade. Hoping to disable those brigades, the North Chinese assigned the Kurdish Peshmerga to fight up Mount Carmel and disable the Israeli artillery. Although the Kravot did eventually fall, it took two entire weeks, buying the Israelis crucial time in Haifa itself.
Interestingly, the Israelis adopted a very different tactic, hoping not to repeat the defeats of Berlin, Belgrade, and Zagreb. In fact, they had directly learned from the North Chinese triumph at Mukden - the name of the game was offense. Slowly giving up ground to North Chinese troops throughout the city of Haifa, only once North Chinese forces had secured most of the low-ground (pushing most Israeli forces up the slopes of Mount Carmel) did the Israeli counter-attack commence, with IDF regulars leading squads of IDF reservists in a bid to swarm Chinese advanced guards with sheer numbers and lightning fast attacks. In the congested and largely destroyed urban landscape of downtown Haifa, better-armed North Chinese troops were quickly surrounded in detail by numerically superior Israeli squads. The advanced guards of the North Chinese army were utterly annihilated, even as their automatic weapons quickly inflicted horrible losses on attacking Israelis. The survivors, taking captured weaponry, quickly attacked the main force of the North Chinese army, grinding the offense to a halt and even starting to push the line back several blocks to the point where control of downtown Haifa was once again contested. A grinding stalemate was quickly established, both in Haifa itself and on Mount Carmel, where neither the Peshmerga nor the Israeli commandos showed any willingness to budge (engaging in 24/7 skirmishes). Eventually, upon hearing of unexpected political developments, the PVA signaled an orderly retreat, as their troops withdrew from the ruins of downtown Haifa into the Krayot suburbs, where North Chinese air support and armored strength could interdict any further Israeli offensives in the more open-terrain.
A great deal of criticism would be eventually leveled at Prime Minister Begin, but for now, it seemed that the Israeli last stand had not turned into a last stand at all. However, the human costs to Israeli were immense. Over two and a half months, their industrial center and harbor of Haifa was more or less completely destroyed, and an estimated 60,000 Israelis (civilians, military, and um, well, some who didn't fit into either category) had perished in the battle (compared to roughly 20,000 PVA-aligned forces). The psychological damage to the PVA was tremendous - having taken proportionally heavy losses, the PVA retreated back into North Israel (Judeopalestine). Blaming the Syrians for their defeat in Haifa, the PRC officially cut off military relations with the Syrians, choosing instead to fortify North Israel against both the Israelis and Syrians. With the immediate threat of destruction put off, this would give the IDF critical time to rapidly modernize and expand, which they hoped would prevent Israel from ever being so horrifically outgunned in equipment as it was during the Nazareth and Haifa offensives. Indeed, the IDF would quickly develop into one of the world's most advanced armies.
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So as a vague status update, I am not dead. And neither is the TL. But having been my first TL, I am not quite at all satisfied with a lot of the earlier updates. I just don't think they're very good. And I'm not exactly a fan of what I've done with the USA, 1946-1950, I don't think it actually leads super well into the current 1960 TL. As I like the second half of my TL better than the first, I'm going to tweak the first half.
So I've been essentially rewriting some of the earlier updates, especially dealing with the USA, in what is a pretty big retcon, including a PoD shift. Obviously, for the convenience of all current readers, I will keep and post a list of all changes in a consolidated post once I'm done.
So I've been essentially rewriting some of the earlier updates, especially dealing with the USA, in what is a pretty big retcon, including a PoD shift. Obviously, for the convenience of all current readers, I will keep and post a list of all changes in a consolidated post once I'm done.
That's great to hear! I'd still like to see what happens even if the TL ends up being rewritten.