WI: No Huey Long Assassination

What would be the effects of Hey Long not being assassinated?

I dunno. Long was pretty damn popular down in LA, though, and if he lived long enough, Huey might just be able to run for President after the end of the war. Can you say, Long/Wallace '48, anyone? :p
 
I personally think the possibilities of Long becoming president as opposed to a political flash in the pan were enormously overblown.

I dunno. Long was pretty damn popular down in LA, though, and if he lived long enough, Huey might just be able to run for President after the end of the war. Can you say, Long/Wallace '48, anyone? :p

Agricultural Iowa and Deep South? Can't see that being competitive on the East or West Coast. Or in the South for that matter, since Long isn't greatly adored by the extremely strong and entrenched political machines of the South.
 
He runs as a third party candidate in 1936 and does better than his supporters did. They got 2 % of the vote. He cuts into Roosevelt's margin but not all that much.
 
He runs as a third party candidate in 1936 and does better than his supporters did. They got 2 % of the vote. He cuts into Roosevelt's margin but not all that much.

I thought his plan was for that ticket to let the Republicans win, then run 1940 when they screwed up again?

But on to the OP question: I think he wouldn't have won the Presidency, ever. He might have run, but he ain't getting close. I could see him becoming a Senate Long stayer:cool:. He probably would have learned in the Senate how things worked and become the old man of the Democrats, he wasn't in favor of segregation, so he would probably have stayed on the Democrats had things go like OTL. Maybe becoming Senate Majority leader if he stays and builds connections with other members, at 43 years old he had a lot of potential.
 
He runs as a third party candidate in 1936 and does better than his supporters did. They got 2 % of the vote. He cuts into Roosevelt's margin but not all that much.
I've come to the opinion that Huey Long surviving is the type of "What if" that really would have led to nowhere, regardless of the hoped possibility of the person the POD is based around and those hoped possibilities are the basis of a lot of alternate history. It's like WI the Nazis won: alternate history trope is Nazis become a massively advanced superpower ruling vast swaths of the world if not the whole world. In actuality, Nazi Germany rules for a while, but it's economic recovery and boom was based on war, and when that ended, so did the boom and it would probably hit the rocks badly, and it probably wouldn't colonize Mars by 1970 and all of that. Or WI the Confederates won: alternate history trope is they become a power on par with the United States, live through to today, expand into the west and into a "tropical empire", and so on. In reality, the Confederate States was always probably a lost cause very inferior to the United States it seceded from, totally disunified and based on a wealthy gentry ruling and dictating vast swaths of rural and backwards territory. If it somehow managed to win (which would require European support) it would be borderline a banana republic whose disunity would lead to total national disorder and probably mean states secede from it with even a limited impetus to do so, deteriorating the CSA into a number of small republics easily gobbled up by the United States one by one. I was actually thinking of making a thread on that type of thing; the alternate history scenarios that everyone has this idea of but really wouldn't have gone anywhere.

For Long, I've come to the personal thought that he would have run, but would not have won, and his idea of walking into the White House with Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover and all that was all just a pipe dream that wouldn't have happened. It's just one of those things that really wouldn't have ended up going anywhere in reality, at least in my opinion after seeing so many of these discussions.
 
But on to the OP question: I think he wouldn't have won the Presidency, ever. He might have run, but he ain't getting close. I could see him becoming a Senate Long stayer:cool:. He probably would have learned in the Senate how things worked and become the old man of the Democrats, he wasn't in favor of segregation, so he would probably have stayed on the Democrats had things go like OTL. Maybe becoming Senate Majority leader if he stays and builds connections with other members, at 43 years old he had a lot of potential.

That would fit pretty well with what I've read about him, he was a strong populist but I think Long would appreciate the power, prestige, and influence given by his Senate position. OTL he pretty much ran Louisiana from the Senate through his cronies so I could see him gravitating more in the direction of being the power behind the throne and eventually pushing for Senate Leader for the Democrats.

For something REALLY fun to consider just imagine what Long and LBJ could pull off working together if/when Johnson is elected Senator :eek:
 
For something REALLY fun to consider just imagine what Long and LBJ could pull off working together if/when Johnson is elected Senator :eek:

They'd either be Bff's or strangle each other on the Senate floor:eek:.

This just in, two Southern Senators strangled each other to death on the Senate floor after one insulted the others mother, more at 11.
 
They'd either be Bff's or strangle each other on the Senate floor:eek:.

This just in, two Southern Senators strangled each other to death on the Senate floor after one insulted the others mother, more at 11.

Probably both, knowing them :D
 
By the time Long was assassinated, FDR's New Deal was proving popular. For Long to deliver the election to Landen, you'd probably also need several things to go wrong for FDR in the time between Sept 1935 and the following years election. I agree that Long's man (he wasn't planning to run himself was he?) probably gets more votes with a living Long supporting, but FDR still wins a similar landslide.

In short, I don't see president Long happening without either FDR screwing up more than he did in OTL, or the 1933 assassination attempt on FDR's life being a success.

Perhaps if Long remains influencial enough to scare FDR (a stretch imho, but just about possible) he could have some say over who the VP nominee is in either 1940 or 1944?

It'd also be interesting to speculate how Long's views develop. IOTL he was an isolationist, question is, does he remain so after the outbreak of War in December 1941?

His influence over future politicians is also something to consider-I remember reading that George Wallace admired Long, for one thing.
 
Given his opposition to segregation, could he have provided a counterweight to the Dixiecrats and prevented the conservative dominance of politics in the South in the 50s and 60s?
 
Long had forged an alliance with the Radio Priest, Father Coughlin, before the election, and FDR himself wrote in one of his letters that the only opponent he feared was Long. Coughlin was ready to throw his full support behind Long and had the nationwide radio audience to make that a powerful factor in the election. By then Coughlin was one of the major silver speculators in the country, thanks to the dimes and quarters donated by his listeners, so he had the money to make a Long candidacy credible.

If Long had lived, he would likely have run for president IMO, especially if he could count on Coughlin's support. He might not have won, but he could have siphoned enough votes away from FDR to insure he lost.
 
I don't see any signs of that much discontent with Roosevelt. oOTL Father Coughlin was preaching against FDR and he didn't hurt him that much.
 
I don't see any signs of that much discontent with Roosevelt. oOTL Father Coughlin was preaching against FDR and he didn't hurt him that much.
That's certainly not how FDR felt. It's easy today to underestimate how powerful Coughlin was, but in the 1930s he was a true pioneer in the use of radio to influence popular opinion. Radio was McLuhan' s "hot media," and Coughlin became an expert at manipulating it. He supported FDR enthusiastically in 1932 with the idea that he would become the power behind the throne. When FDR made it clear that wouldn't happen, Coughlin turned on him without, apparently, a second thought. He saw Long as his best chance at achieving what he hadn't been able to do with FDR.
 
Even with Coughlin preaching against him FDR still wins with 60.8 percent of the vote.
FDR got 60.8 percent of the vote with Coughlin supporting Lemke, a weird little man from North Dakota who had minimal national recognition and no political presence. Long would have taken a much larger chunk of votes than the 1.95 percent that Lemke won. FDR would likely still have won in the electoral college, but the experience would have had an effect on his presidency, I believe, and it would have set Long up for a rematch in 1940.
 
FDR got 60.8 percent of the vote with Coughlin supporting Lemke, a weird little man from North Dakota who had minimal national recognition and no political presence. Long would have taken a much larger chunk of votes than the 1.95 percent that Lemke won. FDR would likely still have won in the electoral college, but the experience would have had an effect on his presidency, I believe, and it would have set Long up for a rematch in 1940.

I really don't see it.

It's easy to give FDR a harder run through the White House than OTL, I just don't think Huey Long is the man to deliver it, you're dealing with FDR, after all, a man who despite his many flaws created one of the strongest and longest-standing political coalitions ever. It literally only fell apart nearly 20 years after his death during LBJ's tenure. That sort of thing is so rare as to be considered a miracle in Washington.

But you also have to consider that FDR's agenda, which while pretty moderate (giving the trappings of a welfare state to a country that had never had it along with government-directed spending projects), was viewed as tantamount to revolutionary socialism by conservative (and indeed several not-so-conservative) aspects of American society. What I think the sort of backlash FDR's policies received was a demonstration of was primarily two things: that America was (and still is) a fundamentally conservative country in the economic sense, and that FDR was someone who had pushed the limits of what was then considered tolerable government policy, and he definitely found times where his policies (namely the NRA and court-packing) resulted in major backlash from more than just a vocal minority of the population.

Huey Long was ultimately too radical for American discourse. He pushed the economic question far further to the left than what was acceptable at the time, he was hated in his home region of the South for his stance on the race issue (which is to say he wasn't racist enough), the party bosses among the Democrats hated him because he was an outsider who was willing to destroy party structure to achieve his own power, and in-general had a legion of potential enemies from either the Democratic or Republican parties who would happily tear him down.

Huey Long is, well, a longshot for the presidency. He can be governor of Louisiana (whether in formal title or de-facto) for as long as he can form a full sentence (and possibly even after), but his chances on a national scale against well-organized, well-funded political machines that will regard him as a non-compliant, and therefore a threat, are pretty minimal.

Also, someone like Father Coughlin has no real appeal outside of the urban East Coast and Midwest, antisemitism isn't really a mass-mobilizing sentiment in areas where there are no Jews.
 
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