Recent content by hcallega

Campbell is an interesting figure. He was pretty similar to other southern Republicans in his views, and had a pretty long career in the House and Governorship. I think bad timing played a part in his lack of ever running for President. Dole was the clear front-runner in 1996, and by 2000...

That's possible. However, Al Gore ran largely as a "power to the people" populist in 2000, but it didn't stop the Bush campaign for slamming his environmental and gun control records. Just because she wasn't emphasizing those views in 2008 (quite the contrary on gun control, as you noted)...

Thanks for the support guys. The thought of restarting "Madam President" has definitely crossed my mind, and I may do so sometime in the future (I'd like to see some of her cabinet picks IOTL and her first 100 days to get a better idea of her governing style). Building on my previous post...

I see her picking Vilsack. Choosing Bayh would cost the Dems a much needed Senate seat in Indiana without bringing in any voters which Vilsack wouldn't appeal to anyway (i.e. moderates in both parties and indies). As for governing: The key question is whether Hillary has a Supermajority in the...

I can see him chairing the Foreign Relations Committee after Kerry steps down, or the Budget Committee before that (he was on both during his tenure in the Senate). He would certainly be one of the more moderate-to-conservative Democrats in the Senate, particularly on fiscal issues (he voted for...

Humphrey would be a strong candidate.

Another POD is Gerald Ford winning reelection. There's a good chance that he appoints Alan Greenspan as Fed Chair instead of Volcker. He'd probably take an equally hawkish monetary policy while supporting deregulation.

As an aside, Geoffrey Kabaservice posits in "Rule and Ruin" (a history of moderate Republicans since Ike) that Rockefeller was a net negative for the progressive/moderate wing of the GOP. He kept running for President in fits and starts, and spending an awful lot of money in the process. This...

I don't think his political career goes much further than the Texas State House if he remains a Democrat. Maybe he gets a job in the Carter Administration, but he was too conservative to win a Presidential primary and seemed to have little interest in serving in Congress.

A couple of helpful PODs.... -The October Surprise: LBJ reveals that Nixon tried to hinder Paris peace talks. Humphrey wins by a decent margin, and is able to expand upon the Great Society/War on Poverty (UHC, a stronger version of Humphrey-Hawkins, federalizing welfare, etc.) -No...

Well, all alternate history is purely speculative. Predicting STV may be a bit more difficult, but it's still a fun thought experiment. I imagine that the 1918 governing coalition would be pretty similar to OTL (Coalition Conservatives, Coalition Liberals, Coalition National Democratic, and...

Based on my relatively thin knowledge of UK history, I imagine it would benefit the Liberal Party. Obviously there were several factors that contributed to their decline (WWI, Lloyd-George v. Aisquith, the somewhat inevitable rise of Labour support among the working class), but FPTP really hurt...

Bentsen was much too conservative to win the nomination in 1988.

I can see Birch Bayh or Mo Udall winning the '76 Democratic nomination in this scenario. Neither were particularly offensive to any major factions of the party. Bayh is my pick, as he checked all the necessary boxes, had a lot of support with labor, and had red-state (blue back then) appeal...

I'm actually working on a timeline that deals with this scenario.