WI: Reagan Elected to the House as a Democrat in 1952

It was in his role of SAG President that Ronald Reagan came in contact with an actress named Nancy Davis, she was having trouble with being confused with another actress named Nancy Davis who was on the Blacklist.
Representative Reagan wins re-election in 1954 and 1956 and in 1958 runs for the Senate and wins the Democratic Party nomination against fellow Congressman Clair Engle and then beats Goodwin Knight handedly in the general election.
He is known as a "Scoop Jackson" Democrat strong on defense, anti-communist, and socially liberal.
In the Senate he is very focused on making sure that California gets every Dollar possible from Defense and Space spending, he supports the Civil Rights Act in 1964, opposes Prop 14 that would allow discrimination in housing (he opposed that IOTL), wins re-election easily in 1964, supports the Voting rights Act in 1965 (Goldwater also voted for the VRA IOTL).
Reagan supports Johnson on the Vietnam War and in 1968 he is the placeholder for Johnson in the California Primary and when Johnson drops he runs as a favorite son candidate in the primary and almost wins because RFK and McCarthy splits the Anti-War vote, it is only in a last minute switch that RFK prevails.
After RFK is killed Reagan as the second place vote getter gets all the California delegates and with support from the Southern delegates he forces Humphrey to go with a Pro-War plank in the platform.
 
In the Senate he is very focused on making sure that California gets every Dollar possible from Defense and Space spending, he supports the Civil Rights Act in 1964, opposes Prop 14 that would allow discrimination in housing (he opposed that IOTL), wins re-election easily in 1964, supports the Voting rights Act in 1965 (Goldwater also voted for the VRA IOTL).
Reagan supports Johnson on the Vietnam War and in 1968 he is the placeholder for Johnson in the California Primary and when Johnson drops he runs as a favorite son candidate in the primary and almost wins because RFK and McCarthy splits the Anti-War vote, it is only in a last minute switch that RFK prevails.
After RFK is killed Reagan as the second place vote getter gets all the California delegates and with support from the Southern delegates he forces Humphrey to go with a Pro-War plank in the platform.

I'm not sure that Reagan would continue to support the war by 1968. Remember that RFK and Humphrey were staunch anti-communists, but both had serious misgivings about the war and eventually opposed it either in public (Kennedy) or in private (HHH). It's not unreasonable to think that Reagan would come to a similar conclusion himself, although he would be hesitant to speak against Johnson. By the time of the Nixon administration I imagine that he could become an outspoken critic of the war, albiet a much more moderate one than McGovern.
 
I agree on both points, except for the elephant in the room: Iran-Contra.
I think Reagan had even bigger problems than that. From a couple of previous threads of mine:

Sept. 26, '83, false alarm (Petrov save) & 'Able Archer' two separate danger peaks?
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...o-separate-danger-peaks.348794/#post-10530261
Yes, the military exercise Able Archer took place from Nov. 2 to 12th, 1983.

AHC: Pres. Reagan in dock for role in early '80s Guatemalan genocide some ten years later?
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...temalan-genocide-some-ten-years-later.427928/

Yes, the whole cold war was ugly. And Reagan certainly had his fair share, and then some.
 
I think Reagan had even bigger problems than that. From a couple of previous threads of mine:

Sept. 26, '83, false alarm (Petrov save) & 'Able Archer' two separate danger peaks?
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...o-separate-danger-peaks.348794/#post-10530261
Yes, the military exercise Able Archer took place from Nov. 2 to 12th, 1983.

AHC: Pres. Reagan in dock for role in early '80s Guatemalan genocide some ten years later?
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...temalan-genocide-some-ten-years-later.427928/

Yes, the whole cold war was ugly. And Reagan certainly had his fair share, and then some.

In his defense, Reagan did manage to negotiate the INF (even if the treaty might have been created earlier if not for Reagan's first term brinksmanship). But it's true that the Able Archer incident was partly his fault, as his rhetoric and actions fanned the flames of Russian paranoia. There's a reason that Reagan changed his Cold War policies in the mid-1980s: he himself realized that his efforts had made things worse, so he did his best to make things better.
 
. . .he himself realized that his efforts had made things worse, so he did his best to make things better.
And, I’ve read that Reagan phased back what had been the plans for an expanded version of Able Archer in 1983.

He asked, are they really scared, or are they just huffing and puffing? And I think it was Bud McFarlane who told him, They’re really scared. And then Reagan made the executive decision that he would not be involved in this drill as a "principal" as had been originally planned. And I think he made this decision easily and comfortably, without a lot of agonizing.

The Reagan Reversal: Foreign Policy and the End of the Cold War

Beth A. Fischer, University of Missouri Press, 1997.

https://books.google.com/books?id=J... would not take part in the exercise"&f=false

' . . . Because of the high state of anxiety between East and West, it was finally decided that President Reagan would not take part in the exercise, but that other leaders would participate in a staggered sequence. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and German Chancellor Helmut Kohl played integral roles in the drill, although they did not participate simultaneously. . . '
And taking the edge off of this poker raise, so to speak, may have been the single best thing that President Reagan did during his presidency. And because he had a reputation as a conservative and a cold warrior, he could do so easily and confidently.

And this differs from the quoted source which implies a long decision process within the administration. I've read elsewhere that pretty much as soon as Reagan found out the Soviets were really scared, he decided that he himself would not be part of the military exercise.
 
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Jimmy Carter’s Blood-Drenched Legacy

counter punch, Matt Peppe, Aug. 18, 2015

https://www.counterpunch.org/2015/08/18/jimmy-carters-blood-drenched-legacy/

Guatemala, 1977

'The Carter administration issued a report critical of the human rights records of the military government and officially cut off aid. However, Blum argues that this was little more than a public relations stunt while tangible support continued: “the embargoes were never meant to be more than partial, and Guatemala also received weapons and military equipment from Israel, at least part of which was covertly underwritten by Washington. As further camouflage, some of the training of Guatemala’s security forces was reportedly maintained by transferring it to clandestine sites in Chile and Argentina.” [2] . . . '

-----------------------

Blum, William. Killing Hope: U.S. Military and C.I.A. Interventions Since World War II – Updated Through 2003. Common Courage Press, 2008. Kindle edition.
I do try to be an equal opportunity offender when such is factual. And during the cold war days, whether it was a Democratic or a Republican administration didn't seem to make a whole heck of a lot of difference.

My country's foreign policy during the cold war was lousy and shitty, and that's the fact of the matter.
 
Potentially no big flip of the south's alliegances in ttl, with a socially conservative, fiscally new dealer/populist, basically the "Wardoliberalism" of NSS's democrat party lead by types like Reagan, Jackson, Wallace, Conally, HHH being a thing and the GOP being anti-labor, social moderate/uncaring.
 
My country's foreign policy during the cold war was lousy and shitty, and that's the fact of the matter.

Major mistakes were made, but IMO this is too pessimistic. Remember that the US and its Allies did a great deal of good during the Cold War including the Marshall Plan, the Berlin Airlift, the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, SALT I and II, and the INF.
 
. . . but IMO this is too pessimistic. Remember that the US and its Allies did a great deal of good during the Cold War including the Marshall Plan, . . .
Pres. Truman believed he had to scare hell out of the American public in order to sell the high price tag of the Marshall Plan. That is, take existing anti-communism and whip it up a little.

Any leftward change of governments we were against because it might conceivably lead to communism. We become our own type of fanatics, and missed a lot of opportunity for positive interactions (just like individual humans can do with potential friends). Similar to the religious wars of the Middle Ages, the real, genuine fanaticism which people felt in their gut was anti-Catholicism or anti-Protestantism. Well, we rather duplicated this in the 20th century.

Be that as it may, I agree with you that we should look for positives — as rare as they might be! — and build from there. :)
 
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Cannon does not say that Reagan was considered for the 22nd District. But in the event that Reagan received the party endorsement, ran, but lost in the 22nd District anyway he could certainly be able to close the gap against Holt. For a good historical reference look at Bill Clinton: despite losing a race for a conservative House seat in 1974, Clinton's enhanced status made him a rising star in the Democratic Party and he later ran for and won other offices which propelled him to national prominence. It's not unreasonable to think that a defeated Reagan could, or would, follow a similar path. Further, if established as a Democratic politician in 1952, Reagan's later career at GE and "weakening" support for the Democrats would be butterflied away.

Clinton was able to make 1974 close in AR-03 because it was a very Democratic year. 1952 was a Republican year in the US in general and in CA-22 in particular. CA-22 voted for Ike over Stevenson by 63.2-37.8 (88,087 to 51,246). https://books.google.com/books?id=WfZBkikMdI8C&pg=PA11 (BTW, though AR-03 was conservative, it was not yet all that heavily Republican--it went for Jimmy Carter in 1976. It turned furiously against him in 1980 due largely to the Cuban refugees crisis https://encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/cuban-refugee-crisis-4248/ and was heavily Republican thereafter, though it did give Clinton a narrow plurality in 1992 at a time he was carrying Arkansas as a whole by a landslide.)

I think Mankiewicz and others were simply indulging in wishful thinking that Reagan was still (in anything more than a technical sense) a Democrat in 1952--"if only we could have saved him for the party by nominating him in 1952"--and are ignoring the extent to which he was already drifting away from the party. But in the unlikely event he could have been prevailed on to run, he would have lost decisively and the extent of his defeat might if anything have convinced him that he had no future as a Democrat and could even have accelerated his conversion to Republicanism.

And by the way, let's not forget that even apart from the conservatism of the district, Holt had some advantages. He had served in both World War II and Korea--in the latter he had been wounded and received a Purple Heart. He had the strong backing of Senator Nixon, who thought Holt was the kind of young veteran the party needed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_F._Holt
 
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