Timeline 191 - Possibility of a Southerner becoming US President

Towards the end of In at the Death it is mentioned that the US intends to reintegrate the defeated Confederacy back into the US, and that the Confederacy will never again exist as an independent nation.

Imagine for a minute, that the US is successful in its attempts to reabsorb the defeated Confederate states of America, and that by 1959, or so, the last former Confederate state has been readmitted back into the United States of America. By 1959, all of the former Confederate citizens are now US citizens, and those who didn't like the idea of becoming US citizens have left North America for other parts of the world.

How many decades would it take before someone from the "New South" could be elected to the office of President of the United States of America? Also, Article II of the Constitution states that only a natural born citizen may become president, but the Constitution does not specifically define what the phrase "natural born Citizen" actually means.


Suppose that a Southern politician born during the era of the Confederacy runs for the US presidency during the 1970s. Could the supporters of the southerner running for president argue that the Confederate States were never really a legitimate country, it was an illegal regime forced upon the North American continent by outside forces, and therefore, any and all persons born in the Confederacy are automatically defacto US citizens?

or...

Would the US have to amend its constitution sometime during the 1950s, in order to give people born in the Confederacy the right to run for the office of US President, after their state has been readmitted back into the Union?


Of course by this time the Freedom Party is illegal, and I'm imagining that the Confederate Whigs have joined the US Democrat Party to become known as Dixiecrats, while the Radical Liberals have joined the US Republican Party.
 

Baldrick

Banned
To be honest, I imagine that only a Southerner born after the military occupation of the Confederacy ended and his home state was readmitted to the Union could run for the Presidency. I imagine that the first Confederate states would be readmitted sometime in the late 60s-early 70s, after an uprising or two akin to what happened in 1920s Canada. Since you have to be 35 to run for the Presidency, been born in a US State and to have lived in the US continuously for 14 years, I don't see any Southerner stepping into the White House (or Powel House), until the 21st century. I assume that the candidate will be arrested and his campaign shut down if even the slightest trace of neo-Freedomism or Confederate nationalism is present in his message.

Of course, the question remains: how much support will he get? By 2000, the number of Second Great War veterans left will be fairly small, and those who remember the war will mostly have memories from childhood. Assuming that there was at least one rebellion in the 1950s or 1960s, some middle-aged people will remember those, especially if they moved south with carpetbagger parents and were caught in the rebellion. So, I see the elderly voting solidly against this candidate. It should go without saying that the USA's black population (however large that may be), will vote against him as well. However, Southerners of all ages will identify with this candidate and most likely vote for him. Canadian voters will also likely back him, as it will set a precedent for a Canadian president (if one has not already been elected). Young people will also not associate this Southern president with the ex-Confederacy either and might support him as a progressive gesture. In a way, it might be like the OTL 2008 election, where Barack Obama gained support from certain groups and opposition from others as the first African-American president.

It should also go without saying that this candidate will not have a prayer of success if his name is Jake...
 
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born after the military occupation of the Confederacy ended

But if that were the case, and only Southerners born after the official end of the occupation could become president, then that would essentially mean that Southerners are not "real" US citizens, and that they do not have true representation in the national government. Would such a situation be tenable for such a long period of time? Would Southerners agree with it?

I don't know if the elderly voters in the North would necessarily be that opposed to a Southerner inhabiting the White House, and I base this idea on two points:

1. By the time that the 1970s arrive, other events will have occurred throughout the world which will greatly overshadow the events of the Second Great War. By the 1970s there will be jet-airliners, computers, grocery-stores, a nuclear arms race, and eight lane super highways all over the place. When the people living in the 1970s watch black and white news reel footage of the Second Great War, they will see footage from a different historical era. They will see quaint old-fashioned people who have different concerns and worries from theirs, and the world seen in the old grainy black and white footage will be completely different from the one they are living in, thirty-five years later.

2. Nobody wants peace more than someone who has actually been through a horrific war. By the 1970s, the generation that fought the Second Great War will now be in their fifties and sixties, and even their memories of the Second Great War will have mellowed somewhat over the years. Imagine that a sitting US president is considering sending US troops to another part of the world in 1971, to fight a Vietnam style war thousands of miles away from US shores. Suddenly an opposition candidate emerges ahead of the 72 elections who say, "Now wait a minute, how does sending 80,000 young boys to another part of the world benefit the American people?" Would the generation that lived through the Second Great War necessarily be in favor of sending US soldiers to fight and die in a "needless" war?

Also, I think that some idealistic young people might be more inclined to support a dove from the New South than they would be to support a conservative hawk from another part of the country.
 
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Canadian voters will also likely back him, as it will set a precedent for a Canadian president
I don't think the series ever said so, but... is it likely that Canada minus Quebec is going to be annexed to the US/set up as actual states? The south, sure, eventually, but they were once part of the country and had a similar system of government, etc.
 
They’d probably join the Socialists actually,

But what if the Socialist Party no longer exists, and are the Radical Liberals of the Confederacy really socialists themselves, or were they more libertarian. After all, what does socialism stand for?
 
But what if the Socialist Party no longer exists, and are the Radical Liberals of the Confederacy really socialists themselves, or were they more libertarian. After all, what does socialism stand for?
Wait at the end of the series the socialists don’t exist anymore????
 
I always thought that this would be a distinct possibility. The only issue I see is that it would have to be someone who was born AFTER the state was (re)admitted to the Union to get around the Constitutional provision that only a natural born person could be President.
 
In my own list of US presidents after 1945, I imagined that the 1996 election featured three candidates, one of them being William Clinton for the Socialists. He and the Democratic candidate split the vote, allowing the Republican candidate to win. Even during the 90's, most people still don't trust someone of Confederate descent to become President of the United States.
 
Wait at the end of the series the socialists don’t exist anymore???

But I'm talking about events occurring three decades after "In at the Death" during the 1970s. The Socialists lost the presidential election of 1944 after bungling the plebiscites of 1941, which led to the Second Great War, so what are the Socialists going to do in order to regain their credibility with the voters of the US?
 
But I'm talking about events occurring three decades after "In at the Death" during the 1970s. The Socialists lost the presidential election of 1944 after bungling the plebiscites of 1941, which led to the Second Great War, so what are the Socialists going to do in order to regain their credibility with the voters of the US?
Just because the screwed up doesn’t mean they’d be tossed to the side. It takes a whole lot to displace a party and there were plenty of socialists who weren’t so dovish and would survive the war with reputations intact.
 
That remind me the old question of the jewish german canchellor...COuld happen but i see very hard...ULTRA HARD, maybe harder OTL Obama, you need one of the most modern and progressive wave, one could unify

About the Socialist, for me 1944 is a setback but like UK conservartive they will comeback of that, maybe during a 60's when labour issues become a big issue and something they could capitalize

Other side...i can see republican getting a revival, in part of the south and canada(if they bother to integrated it..i think they will...just because have nothing to do) as they can reinvent as a new party without the war stigma of socialist and one would work as a centre between socialist and dems... i can see dems being the equivalent of OTL republicans(if too modern politics will refrain in the future but this comparasion is vital) with the most conservatives views of the south(of course any of racist is not allowed and maybe ITTL the equivalent of defamation and libel) will be integrated when the gop can apease the more progressive urbanite are not the cosmopolite of socialist.
 
when labour issues become a big issue and something they could capitalize

Maybe, maybe not. But here is something to take into consideration when thinking about the future within the 191 universe. The base of the Socialist Party seems to be rooted mainly in in older dense urban manufacturing centers such as Manhattan, Detroit, Youngstown, and so on. (In our timeline Lower Manhattan had a sizable garment manufacturing district which leaned towards the left.) However, after the end of WWII, in our timeline, urban sprawl begin to occur as people moved out of the older dense manufacturing cities in search of a better life in the suburbs.

I think that something similar would also happen in the 191 universe, as both factories and their workers flee the high rents of Manhattan, and relocate in New Jersey. This would kind of serve to diffuse the Socialist Party base, and as workers who once lived in tenement apartments now find themselves living in suburban single family track houses, the ideals being promoted by the Socialist Party would seem irrelevant to the prosperous new middle-class workers of the postwar years.

Also, in our timeline, it is true that US labor unions in our time were at the height of the power during the 1950s and 60s, they obtained their power after earlier more or less divorcing themselves from the from far left groups, during the 1920s and 30s, and becoming more mainstream. I think that there would also be a powerful US labor movement in the postwar years of the 191 universe, but I don't see it being linked to socialism anymore.

When people are doing better economically, they tend to realize that Socialists are Socialists, and that in reality Socialists are not Democrats. If Socialists were really believed in Liberal Democracy, then they would stop calling themselves "Socialists" and they would start calling themselves "Liberal-Democrats" instead. The goal of socialism is to change the means of ownership, but how many people are going to want such radical change in postwar America?

Also, I don't think that you can successfully merge the defeated Confederacy back into the US with the US Socialist Party still in operation, it isn't practical to keep the defeated Confederacy under martial law for fifty years, because it would require millions of men serving as US occupation troops, and many people in the defeated CS have bad memories of the Red rebellions occurring during both wars. Therefore the powers that be in the US government are faced with two possible choices.

1. Pacify the defeated Confederacy by using chemical weapons to kill 99% of the population. There is actually precedence for this in the 191 universe with Custer's slaughter of Native Americans, and the Freedom Party's industrialized murder of CS blacks. It would be a relatively low price to pay, and it would bring about a permanent lasting peace.

or

2. The US Democrat and Republican parties conspire against the Socialists, and remove them as a viable political party. With the Socialists out of the picture, it will be much easier to integrate the semi-dormant CS Whig and Radical Liberals into the Democrat and Republican parties, respectively,

I think that Socialism / Marxism would most definitely die off in the more prosperous regions of North America (US, Canada, and Mexico) but it might begin to expand in other parts of the world following the collapse of the Old World empires.
 
Maybe, maybe not. But here is something to take into consideration when thinking about the future within the 191 universe. The base of the Socialist Party seems to be rooted mainly in in older dense urban manufacturing centers such as Manhattan, Detroit, Youngstown, and so on. (In our timeline Lower Manhattan had a sizable garment manufacturing district which leaned towards the left.) However, after the end of WWII, in our timeline, urban sprawl begin to occur as people moved out of the older dense manufacturing cities in search of a better life in the suburbs.

I think that something similar would also happen in the 191 universe, as both factories and their workers flee the high rents of Manhattan, and relocate in New Jersey. This would kind of serve to diffuse the Socialist Party base, and as workers who once lived in tenement apartments now find themselves living in suburban single family track houses, the ideals being promoted by the Socialist Party would seem irrelevant to the prosperous new middle-class workers of the postwar years.

Also, in our timeline, it is true that US labor unions in our time were at the height of the power during the 1950s and 60s, they obtained their power after earlier more or less divorcing themselves from the from far left groups, during the 1920s and 30s, and becoming more mainstream. I think that there would also be a powerful US labor movement in the postwar years of the 191 universe, but I don't see it being linked to socialism anymore.

When people are doing better economically, they tend to realize that Socialists are Socialists, and that in reality Socialists are not Democrats. If Socialists were really believed in Liberal Democracy, then they would stop calling themselves "Socialists" and they would start calling themselves "Liberal-Democrats" instead. The goal of socialism is to change the means of ownership, but how many people are going to want such radical change in postwar America?

Also, I don't think that you can successfully merge the defeated Confederacy back into the US with the US Socialist Party still in operation, it isn't practical to keep the defeated Confederacy under martial law for fifty years, because it would require millions of men serving as US occupation troops, and many people in the defeated CS have bad memories of the Red rebellions occurring during both wars. Therefore the powers that be in the US government are faced with two possible choices.

1. Pacify the defeated Confederacy by using chemical weapons to kill 99% of the population. There is actually precedence for this in the 191 universe with Custer's slaughter of Native Americans, and the Freedom Party's industrialized murder of CS blacks. It would be a relatively low price to pay, and it would bring about a permanent lasting peace.

or

2. The US Democrat and Republican parties conspire against the Socialists, and remove them as a viable political party. With the Socialists out of the picture, it will be much easier to integrate the semi-dormant CS Whig and Radical Liberals into the Democrat and Republican parties, respectively,

I think that Socialism / Marxism would most definitely die off in the more prosperous regions of North America (US, Canada, and Mexico) but it might begin to expand in other parts of the world following the collapse of the Old World empires.
I think with excatly dealing the former CSA(and canada don't forget those guys) that change the things of urbanites and suburb, heck post 1940 world would be something very unique itself and maybe beyond what could think, as you can easily think socialist would collapse, i can easily see a revival them a slump and other revival(Socialist keep the name but could be anything from old world revolution socialist to more modern social democrats to liberal democrats and other as become a big tent)

In general is unique how TL-191 world would evolve...
 

bguy

Donor
When people are doing better economically, they tend to realize that Socialists are Socialists, and that in reality Socialists are not Democrats. If Socialists were really believed in Liberal Democracy, then they would stop calling themselves "Socialists" and they would start calling themselves "Liberal-Democrats" instead. The goal of socialism is to change the means of ownership, but how many people are going to want such radical change in postwar America?

The TL-191 Socialist Party twice ran Al Smith as a presidential candidate, so they clearly aren't that radical by the 1930s. Likewise their main legislative goal during the Blackford and Smith administrations was to enact something akin to social security (hardly that radical an idea.)

Also, I don't think that you can successfully merge the defeated Confederacy back into the US with the US Socialist Party still in operation, it isn't practical to keep the defeated Confederacy under martial law for fifty years, because it would require millions of men serving as US occupation troops, and many people in the defeated CS have bad memories of the Red rebellions occurring during both wars. Therefore the powers that be in the US government are faced with two possible choices.

1. Pacify the defeated Confederacy by using chemical weapons to kill 99% of the population. There is actually precedence for this in the 191 universe with Custer's slaughter of Native Americans, and the Freedom Party's industrialized murder of CS blacks. It would be a relatively low price to pay, and it would bring about a permanent lasting peace.

So you think conducting the largest genocidal campaign in all of human history (something that would be guaranteed to cause a massive rebellion in the former CSA territory and would make the United States an international pariah) would be easier than simply maintaining martial law?

2. The US Democrat and Republican parties conspire against the Socialists, and remove them as a viable political party. With the Socialists out of the picture, it will be much easier to integrate the semi-dormant CS Whig and Radical Liberals into the Democrat and Republican parties, respectively,

It's pretty hard to hound a large political party out of existence. The US political system (being a first past the post system) strongly incentivizes voting for one of the two main parties so as not to "waste your vote", which will make it real hard for the Republicans to gain traction and sooner or later a Democrat president is going to preside over a recession after which the Socialists will be back in power.
 
1. Pacify the defeated Confederacy by using chemical weapons to kill 99% of the population. There is actually precedence for this in the 191 universe with Custer's slaughter of Native Americans, and the Freedom Party's industrialized murder of CS blacks. It would be a relatively low price to pay, and it would bring about a permanent lasting peace.
Dear God. That's horrible. And really not likely to work. First, the US doesn't have anything like the extremely potent modern chemical arsenals. And it would be damn hard to use them 'everywhere' to get rid of 'everyone'... the simple matter of wind and weather is going to reduce it's effectiveness. How are you going to blanket the whole South to get everyone? Even if they could, doing so would cause an enormous disruption in nature as well as the human population. The north would have to do what the south did and round everyone up and run them through gas chambers... and you think that wouldn't cause any problems? Along with international outrage (and likely a lot in the north too), the defeated south is about guaranteed to go 'fuck this, they're going to kill us anyway... REVOLT!" The north can still likely win, but it's going to cost them dearly...
 
It’s going to be a long time after the Second Great War before a Southerner is elected President.

Beyond the legacy of eight decades of animosity directed against the Union’s immediate enemy, the central institutions of political power in the reunified US will remain north of the Mason-Dixon Line for decades. The two dominant parties in 1944 (the Democrats and the Socialists) also appear to be run (like our world’s pre-1970s/1980s Democrats and GOP) by a relatively small number of party bosses and influential insiders - these are the people who (before the era of primaries and caucuses) decide who gets the nomination, and no one is going to push for someone too “Southern”.

By the time the Democrats and Socialists move away from this kind of party structure (which may very well be later than in our world), the core of the former CSA is still unlikely to produce a serious presidential contender for any of the major parties. Popular prejudice in the rest of the US against the South will not disappear even as memories of the SGW recede.

Not to mention that unlike our world’s South (which experienced major post-WWII economic and population growth like the rest of the “Sunbelt”), the South of this world will take a long time to recover from the demographic collapse of TL-191’s early Twentieth Century: the FGW, the Red Rebellions, the SGW, the Destruction, and a likely large scale postwar flight by large numbers of former Confederates out of US-controlled territory. In other words, the major parties are unlikely to seriously consider a Southern candidate based on the idea that such a candidate would net large numbers of electoral votes.

(In the continuation that I wrote, a politician from the former CSA technically does get elected President in 2008. However, this politician from Cuba, a former CS state that demonstrated immediately after the war a willingness to completely repudiate the former CSA).

The pre-Freedom Party Confederate parties (the Whigs and Radical Liberals) will not re-emerge: both because they were more or less already decimated by Featherston’s dictatorship, and because the US authorities will never allow for the emergence of any kind of Southern regional party.
 
the US doesn't have anything like the extremely potent modern chemical arsenals

In the 191 universe, they use chemicals weapons on the battlefield all the time....?

Anyway, I don't think that a mass-genocide of the defeated Confederacy would actually occur, but it might be something that is in on the table as US officials consider the fate of the CS during the first few months immediately after the war. After all, from their point of few which is worse; a genocide in which 30-40 million people get killed in 1945, or a nuclear war between the US and CS occurring in 1990 in which billions are killed?

Actually I think that the US could bring the defeated Confederate people in line within a few years by using the carrot and stick approach. Areas of the defeated Confederacy which toe-the-line are treated well, and their better living conditions are shown in propaganda films to essentially captive audiences in other parts of the defeated Confederacy. If a particular area is too seditious, their utilities are cut off (electricity, water, telephone) and they are starved into submission. Also, I think that the US would be able to discredit the Freedom Party by showing the defeated Confederate people newsreel footage of Freedom Party bigwigs who have fled overseas, and are now living the high life in other parts of the world as the Confederate people themselves continue to suffer due to shortages of everything.

Perhaps tens of thousands of former Confederate citizens might die during the occupation years, but probably not tens of millions.
 
Here is what I think a list of US presidents might look like following, In at the Death.

Tuesday, November 7, 1944 - Dewey wins presidential election in surprise landslide over Socialist incumbent Charles W. La Follette, and Republican challenger, Harold Stassen.


Tuesday, November 2, 1948 - US President Dewey defeats Socialist candidate Jim Curley, and Republican challenger Adlai Stevenson II, and is elected to a second presidential term. (Following the election, the leadership of the US Socialist Party are thrown into prison during Dewey’s Great Purge.)


Tuesday, November 4, 1952 - Democrat Earl Warren wins the 1952 presidential election over Republican San Francisco Mayor, Pat Brown. Richard Nixon becomes Vice President.


Tuesday, November 6, 1956 - Earl Warren wins second term as US President over Republican Ohio Senator, Frank Lausche.


Tuesday, November 8, 1960 - Democrat Richard Nixon wins the 1960 presidential election over Minnesota Republican Senator Hubert Humphrey Jr. John F. Kennedy will serve as Vice President.


Tuesday, November 3, 1964 - Richard Nixon wins second term as president over Republican challenger, Los Angeles Mayor, Sam Yorty.


Tuesday, November 5, 1968 - Democrat Barry Goldwater wins presidential election over Republican Minnesota Senator, Eugene McCarthy. Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. will serve as Vice President.


Tuesday, November 7, 1972 - Republican William Carter wins the presidential election over incumbent, Barry Goldwater. Hubert H. Humphrey Jr. will serve as Vice President.


Tuesday, November 2, 1976 - William Carter win second term over Republican Congressman, Charles Mathis. (Carter fails to keep his promise to keep the US out of an overseas war, greatly tarnishing his own image, and also the image of the Republican Party.)


Tuesday, November 4, 1980 - Democrat Ronald Reagan wins presidential election over the Republican Governor of Mississippi, Cliff Finch. George H. W. Bush will serve as Vice President


Tuesday, November 8, 1988 - George H.W. Bush wins presidential election over Republican challenger, Paul Simon. Alexander Haig becomes Vice President.


Tuesday, November 3, 1992 - Independent Candidate Ross Perot wins the presidential election over incumbent president, George H.W. Bush, and Republican challenger, Jerry Brown. John Silberman becomes Vice President.


Tuesday, November 5, 1996 - Ross Perot wins his second term as US President over Democratic challenger, Steve Forbes, and Republican challenger, Michael Dukakis.
 
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