AHC: Create an exotic party system
- Thread starter Born in the USSA
- Start date
Despite all the changes, I'm trying to keep the actual central issues that governed each party system the same, just repurposing historical third parties to create new solutions to those issues. The fifth party system essentially revolved around a realignment in the face of the Great Depression and America's new superpower status, while the sixth party system started fracturing in relation to the Vietnam war. Obviously there won't be a Vietnam War, but an analogue will definitely produce interesting currents. As I'm currently looking at it I'm not thinking of including the Greens, though one of the resulting parties would certainly be a good home for Green politics.
Pan-American Perfect Order Party (PAPOP) - a weird party that's some unholy combination of something like fascism, libertarianism and technocracy. Essentially wants to run the country like a corporation where there are no elections but instead everyone is promoted to their position, meaning that you can literally get to the position of supreme leader starting from a street sweeper. Ludicrous insistence on "personal responsibility" but would allow "equal-opportunity" social measures like free healthcare and education, as long as you don't disqualify yourself. Ultrapopulist in rhetoric despite their ideology being perhaps the embodiment of elitism. "You break it, you buy it" essentially. Imagine a psychotic version of Longism. They're carried mostly because wherever they get elected on a local level (usually really bad places) they quickly whip em into shape, and turn those places into little nexuses of influence. Mostly reactionary/conservative urbanite supporters. Obsessive with a rather intimidating aesthetic.
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Strange Bedfellows: Fifth Party System (1930-1968)
In many ways the cause of libertarianism in America was a victim of its own success. Charting a course from the Liberty Party through the National Reformers to the ultimately doomed Socialist Party, the movement would have a far reaching influence, providing a successful example to the world of a political tradition that was at once spiritually rich, pluralistic, and focused foremost on the common good of all people. Certainly the Cuban Liberation would demonstrate that the true believers could be a bit bellicose in the cause of expanding the Empire of Liberty, but that would ultimately pale in the face of the Communal Republics.
Without American involvement in the Great War the conflict would ultimately drag on an extra year, leaving all parties exhausted but none moreso than the defeated Entente. With Russia swept up in Nihilist revolution, strange currents also began to bubble in England and France. Although outnumbered at the start of the conflict, the Owenites and libertarians in both countries had cast the conflict in terms of national self-determination in the vein of America's Cuban adventure. The end of the war and the ensuing national soul searching quickly elevated the newly organized Communalist parties to national prominence, driving both empires to federalize and devolve governance to former subjects. And this naturally caught the eye of Germany.
Germany, along with several other nations on both sides of the Great War (and a significant segment of the US population) had looked in alarm at the implications of Communalism and Nihilism both, particularly as the former swept through Africa and South Asia in a great green tide. The result in the more conservative nations would be the growth of Distributism, advocating social conservatism and economic intervention and redistribution, the better to undercut the allure of the party line in the Communalist Entente. In the United States the most apt pupil would be disaffected Progressive Huey Long.
Idolizing President Bellamy and wary of the cultural implications of the Socialist Party, Long would ultimately reshape the Progressives in his image. He would argue at length (ultimately successfully) that the Panic would have been far better dealt with if not for American Party mismanagement. Both political factions had changed drastically as the issues of the day shifted, it was true, but both also maintained traces of their roots. In the case of the American Party, this would prove their undoing, with a half-hearted attempt to transition to bullion currency at the onset of the crisis widely reviled as having made the situation worse. As the 1932 elections approached Long was in a good place to recapture the presidency, and it would be at the head of a party that shared his convictions.
Although regarded with the same disdain as the Communalists by their mutual enemies, the Russian Nihilists were an altogether more rabid animal, advocating the complete destruction of the state, religion and all other exploitative social institutions before a truly libertarian society could be created. Needless to say they were regarded with some alarm. Nevertheless they had their fair share of fellow travelers, from the Poles and Ukrainians chafing under the German yoke to the many peoples suffocating under the degenerate Qing to the long suffering indigenous peoples of the conservative Republic of Canada. From the onset of the Panic the Nihilists had been planning. One great push to topple the world order. And so on new years day 1940 the signal was sent.
Facing Nihilist insurgencies on every continent the sane powers of the world were forced to turn to and rely on one another, forming an unlikely and short lived alliance between the Distributist Powers and the Communalist Entente for the first and only time, the newly interventionist United States forced to play peacemaker between them. The war would come to an official end after the use of the atomic bomb on several Russian cities, though Nihilist insurgencies would continue for many years.
Leading the nation through the crisis (and serving an unprecedented five terms in office), Huey Long would live to see the world divided between the waning Distributists and the surging Communalists, the Empire of Liberty standing confidently astride the New World and casting the decisive vote in the newly minted Congress of Nations, though the fragmentation of the party he had led to glory would only come after his death.
Without American involvement in the Great War the conflict would ultimately drag on an extra year, leaving all parties exhausted but none moreso than the defeated Entente. With Russia swept up in Nihilist revolution, strange currents also began to bubble in England and France. Although outnumbered at the start of the conflict, the Owenites and libertarians in both countries had cast the conflict in terms of national self-determination in the vein of America's Cuban adventure. The end of the war and the ensuing national soul searching quickly elevated the newly organized Communalist parties to national prominence, driving both empires to federalize and devolve governance to former subjects. And this naturally caught the eye of Germany.
Germany, along with several other nations on both sides of the Great War (and a significant segment of the US population) had looked in alarm at the implications of Communalism and Nihilism both, particularly as the former swept through Africa and South Asia in a great green tide. The result in the more conservative nations would be the growth of Distributism, advocating social conservatism and economic intervention and redistribution, the better to undercut the allure of the party line in the Communalist Entente. In the United States the most apt pupil would be disaffected Progressive Huey Long.
Idolizing President Bellamy and wary of the cultural implications of the Socialist Party, Long would ultimately reshape the Progressives in his image. He would argue at length (ultimately successfully) that the Panic would have been far better dealt with if not for American Party mismanagement. Both political factions had changed drastically as the issues of the day shifted, it was true, but both also maintained traces of their roots. In the case of the American Party, this would prove their undoing, with a half-hearted attempt to transition to bullion currency at the onset of the crisis widely reviled as having made the situation worse. As the 1932 elections approached Long was in a good place to recapture the presidency, and it would be at the head of a party that shared his convictions.
- National Party- Renamed in honor of his hero, the National Party showed notable distributist tendencies, abandoning any claim to moral libertarianism (with the exception of bone deep antiracism), focusing primarily on an aggressive policy of nationalization and wealth redistribution through a policy known as the Share Our Wealth campaign, explicitly argued as a counter to the relatively tepid Progressive reforms, inhuman American Party policies, and radical Communalism simultaneously.
Although regarded with the same disdain as the Communalists by their mutual enemies, the Russian Nihilists were an altogether more rabid animal, advocating the complete destruction of the state, religion and all other exploitative social institutions before a truly libertarian society could be created. Needless to say they were regarded with some alarm. Nevertheless they had their fair share of fellow travelers, from the Poles and Ukrainians chafing under the German yoke to the many peoples suffocating under the degenerate Qing to the long suffering indigenous peoples of the conservative Republic of Canada. From the onset of the Panic the Nihilists had been planning. One great push to topple the world order. And so on new years day 1940 the signal was sent.
Facing Nihilist insurgencies on every continent the sane powers of the world were forced to turn to and rely on one another, forming an unlikely and short lived alliance between the Distributist Powers and the Communalist Entente for the first and only time, the newly interventionist United States forced to play peacemaker between them. The war would come to an official end after the use of the atomic bomb on several Russian cities, though Nihilist insurgencies would continue for many years.
Leading the nation through the crisis (and serving an unprecedented five terms in office), Huey Long would live to see the world divided between the waning Distributists and the surging Communalists, the Empire of Liberty standing confidently astride the New World and casting the decisive vote in the newly minted Congress of Nations, though the fragmentation of the party he had led to glory would only come after his death.
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Strange Bedfellows: Sixth Party System (1968-20XX)
While the struggle against the stateless global Nihilist insurgency would demonstrate the necessity of a forum for international organization and coordination, the new Congress of Nations inaugurated in the wake of the Second Great War would, more than anything, demonstrate that the social and political divisions on the world stage weren't going anywhere. Unlike OTL, the first and second Great Wars had, if anything, actually entrenched the policy of colonialism, albeit with a friendly face.
On the one hand was the Communalist Entente, uniting the British, French, and later Portuguese Empires into a vast libertarian federation; also counting South China as a member, the result of a quietly simmering century of libertarian unrest under the Qing. In response to the growth of Communalism in the wake of the war, the Germans and their allies would reorganize into the so-called Axis Mundi, a league of Distributist states including the German sphere of influence in Europe, the Ottoman sphere in the near east, the realigned Russia, Spain, South Africa, North China and the Nusantara. More often aligned with the Axis than the Entente in those early days, the American-led New World Order was distinct enough to chart its own path, aided by Japan her subordinated Pacific Sphere, along with every Latin American nation save Axis-aligned Brazil and Entente Guyana. The so called Silent Struggle had begun even before the guns had fallen silent during the last war.
While the score-long Long Administration would see the American political scene devolve to a fairly stable two-party system between the National party of government and the American opposition, once the Great Man finally stepped aside in the early '50s cracks had begun to form in the party he had built in his own image. Though American George Patton would serve two terms from 1953 to 1961, it would be under Long's hand picked successor that things really hit the fan.
Though a popular president among the Longist Nationalists and the American Party defectors, Gerald Smith was seen as a disaster by the communalist strain that had survived in the party in the wake of the demise of the Socialists. Lashing out fiercely against what they perceived as Smith's backward attitude on race relations (meant, it was argued, as a bid to further siphon from the Americans), the more radical wing of the Nationalists would bolt the party in the wake of the Jamaican Missile Crisis and the Kongo Crisis that would follow.
The former, the opposition to the basing of atomic devices in a Jamaica that was increasingly adopting the Hudsonian policies gaining favor within the rest of the Entente, had struck the radicals as the needless opposition to a revolutionary regime simply to pander to the reactionary Axis. In the wake of the Kongo Crisis these denunciations would seem downright tepid. An unofficial protectorate of the Liberian States of Africa since the fall of the Free State, the Kongo had undergone a particularly intense Nihilist insurgency during the Second Great War, with the rebels taking a turn toward Communalism in the aftermath of the conflict. Viewing the expansion of the Entente into the Liberian sphere as an assault upon the prerogatives of the United States, President Smith became committed increasing numbers of US troops to stem the tide.
Many American soldiers would have their political awakening in the Kongo jungles, only to return home and discover that they were the unknowing heirs of a proud yet sadly suppressed American tradition of libertarianism. It was these disaffected veterans, along with dovish students and racial, religious and sexual minorities, that would form the core of the major ideological splinter of the Nationals in the disastrous 1968 election. Seeking a third term in the style of his mentor, Smith would be faced with a resurgent Socialist movement.
From the King administration to the present the American electoral landscape has shown a fairly consistent ideological sorting between the distributist Nationalists and the communalist Alliance. While the fall of the Axis at the turn of the century to bloodless revolutions was seen by many to herald the end of the ideological conflict, the new century has if anything seen ever growing rancor between traditionalists and radicals both at home and abroad. The so-called "Nihilist Relapse" that has consumed American attention on the world stage has led to increasing tension on the home front, and if we have seen nothing else it is that in the Empire of Liberty tensions frequently give way to dramatic shifts in the status quo.
On the one hand was the Communalist Entente, uniting the British, French, and later Portuguese Empires into a vast libertarian federation; also counting South China as a member, the result of a quietly simmering century of libertarian unrest under the Qing. In response to the growth of Communalism in the wake of the war, the Germans and their allies would reorganize into the so-called Axis Mundi, a league of Distributist states including the German sphere of influence in Europe, the Ottoman sphere in the near east, the realigned Russia, Spain, South Africa, North China and the Nusantara. More often aligned with the Axis than the Entente in those early days, the American-led New World Order was distinct enough to chart its own path, aided by Japan her subordinated Pacific Sphere, along with every Latin American nation save Axis-aligned Brazil and Entente Guyana. The so called Silent Struggle had begun even before the guns had fallen silent during the last war.
While the score-long Long Administration would see the American political scene devolve to a fairly stable two-party system between the National party of government and the American opposition, once the Great Man finally stepped aside in the early '50s cracks had begun to form in the party he had built in his own image. Though American George Patton would serve two terms from 1953 to 1961, it would be under Long's hand picked successor that things really hit the fan.
Though a popular president among the Longist Nationalists and the American Party defectors, Gerald Smith was seen as a disaster by the communalist strain that had survived in the party in the wake of the demise of the Socialists. Lashing out fiercely against what they perceived as Smith's backward attitude on race relations (meant, it was argued, as a bid to further siphon from the Americans), the more radical wing of the Nationalists would bolt the party in the wake of the Jamaican Missile Crisis and the Kongo Crisis that would follow.
The former, the opposition to the basing of atomic devices in a Jamaica that was increasingly adopting the Hudsonian policies gaining favor within the rest of the Entente, had struck the radicals as the needless opposition to a revolutionary regime simply to pander to the reactionary Axis. In the wake of the Kongo Crisis these denunciations would seem downright tepid. An unofficial protectorate of the Liberian States of Africa since the fall of the Free State, the Kongo had undergone a particularly intense Nihilist insurgency during the Second Great War, with the rebels taking a turn toward Communalism in the aftermath of the conflict. Viewing the expansion of the Entente into the Liberian sphere as an assault upon the prerogatives of the United States, President Smith became committed increasing numbers of US troops to stem the tide.
Many American soldiers would have their political awakening in the Kongo jungles, only to return home and discover that they were the unknowing heirs of a proud yet sadly suppressed American tradition of libertarianism. It was these disaffected veterans, along with dovish students and racial, religious and sexual minorities, that would form the core of the major ideological splinter of the Nationals in the disastrous 1968 election. Seeking a third term in the style of his mentor, Smith would be faced with a resurgent Socialist movement.
- New Alliance Party- A broad party born from the unification of diehard Socialists, dissident Nationalists, and the Black Panther veteran's organization (based in form if not in function on the black nationalism of the LSA), that would form the core of the the New Alliance Party. Standing strongly against the encroaching racialism of the Smithite Nationalist Party the RCP would argue for further action on nationalisation, the empowerment of local authorities over state and federal govrnrments, and greater protection for "dissenters of all stripes".
From the King administration to the present the American electoral landscape has shown a fairly consistent ideological sorting between the distributist Nationalists and the communalist Alliance. While the fall of the Axis at the turn of the century to bloodless revolutions was seen by many to herald the end of the ideological conflict, the new century has if anything seen ever growing rancor between traditionalists and radicals both at home and abroad. The so-called "Nihilist Relapse" that has consumed American attention on the world stage has led to increasing tension on the home front, and if we have seen nothing else it is that in the Empire of Liberty tensions frequently give way to dramatic shifts in the status quo.
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Strange Bedfellows: Strange New World
To understand the dramatic shifts that characterized the start of the new century, I think it's best to start by looking backward to one of the most widely read novels of the last one. Of course I'm talking about Brave New World. Written in 1932 by C.S. Lewis (under his more famous pen name Elwin Ransom), the dystopian novel demonstrates eerie resonances with the rest of the twentieth century, a fact which has no doubt kept it in print. A dissident British distributist, Lewis wrote the novel as a political polemic, harshly critiquing communalism and the then ascendant force of Longism in equal measure.
Set in the then far-off year of 1999, the novel is set in the waning days of a period he calls the Triumvirate. Although there is no Second Great War, Nihilist Russia collapses and is reformed into an Axis-aligned Orthodox state. The three global power blocs, realizing that open war would not be in their interest, inaugurate the Triumvirate, a darker and more authoritarian mirror of the Congress of Nations that would form less than two decades after the publication of the novel. Locked into a pattern of covert proxy wars, the major powers each warp and change under the strain, creating the altered political landscape of the alternate 1999.
Having renamed themselves the Eurasian Axis, the distributist alliance is one on the decline. Although stretching from Mitteleuropa to the Middle Kingdom and have by the far the largest population and the greatest military strength, the "peace" that would characterize the Triumvirate put this resource to poor use and left the Axis disadvantaged against its communalist rival. Although a lifelong supporter of the Axis Mundi, Lewis was frequently critical of what he perceived to be the unwillingness of moderate elements to fight for what he viewed as the only noble cause in geopolitics, and it is this view that characterizes the entity in the novel. Even the change in the name represents the betrayal of the founding goal of the movement, and this general lack of will is decried by the protagonist. Having stopped pressing outward, the Axis has begun to stagnate and turn inward, a move only accelerated by the Amero-Axis split.
Although the first several decades would see Longist America allied to the Axis, Lewis had watched the future president's rise with alarm, viewing the libertarian roots of the (then) Progressive Party as a sign of possible communalist cracks in the foundation. In the novel Long is described as having been even more successful than he would turn out to be in reality, winning an improbable number of terms and in effect turning the United States (and its vast and now official American Empire) into a Progressive one party state in all but name. The problem, as Lewis's viewpoint character bemoans, is that Long truly was a closet communalist, introducing libertarian policies very gradually right under the nose of the gullible public. By the time he finally leaves office in the 1970s, honest, faithful conservatives are being herded into communalist reeducation camps and the nation has grown so decadent as to betray the Axis, shifting power in the Triumvirate decisively in favor of the Green Menace.
As would later develop in actual history, the founding members of the Entente would unify over the course of the twentieth century, though unlike the vast federalized Entente that persists well into the new millennium, the Angevin Community of the novel is an autocracy, government solely by the continental Metropole. It is for the Angevin society that Lewis reserves the most vitriol, viewing it as the apotheosis of communalist insanity and the nadir of civilization. Governed at every level by a hedonistic Catharite revival, the state dulls the population by saturating them in radical individualism, pervasive sexuality and material excess.
Told from the perspective of a closet conservative and secret Axis agent, Brave New World reads like an elegy for the human race, casting aside tradition and propriety for the pursuit of independence and self-gratification. The climax of the story centers on our unnamed protagonist attempting to bring his handlers evidence of a secret meeting between the leaders of the American Empire and the Angevin Community. In his naivete he argues that the Axis should attack the conference, decapitating the communalist world in one stroke. But it's too late, and to his horror the Axis falls to revolt as the masses clamor for the pleasures they have been rightly denied. Now a man without a cause, our hero can only sit in stunned silence and the world turns upside down and the World Community is declared. It is revealed on the last page that the authorities knew of his activities all along. He was a nonentity, and therefore beneath dealing with. It is 1999. Outside the most haunting novel of the age the Axis Mundi would collapse in 2000.
Set in the then far-off year of 1999, the novel is set in the waning days of a period he calls the Triumvirate. Although there is no Second Great War, Nihilist Russia collapses and is reformed into an Axis-aligned Orthodox state. The three global power blocs, realizing that open war would not be in their interest, inaugurate the Triumvirate, a darker and more authoritarian mirror of the Congress of Nations that would form less than two decades after the publication of the novel. Locked into a pattern of covert proxy wars, the major powers each warp and change under the strain, creating the altered political landscape of the alternate 1999.
Having renamed themselves the Eurasian Axis, the distributist alliance is one on the decline. Although stretching from Mitteleuropa to the Middle Kingdom and have by the far the largest population and the greatest military strength, the "peace" that would characterize the Triumvirate put this resource to poor use and left the Axis disadvantaged against its communalist rival. Although a lifelong supporter of the Axis Mundi, Lewis was frequently critical of what he perceived to be the unwillingness of moderate elements to fight for what he viewed as the only noble cause in geopolitics, and it is this view that characterizes the entity in the novel. Even the change in the name represents the betrayal of the founding goal of the movement, and this general lack of will is decried by the protagonist. Having stopped pressing outward, the Axis has begun to stagnate and turn inward, a move only accelerated by the Amero-Axis split.
Although the first several decades would see Longist America allied to the Axis, Lewis had watched the future president's rise with alarm, viewing the libertarian roots of the (then) Progressive Party as a sign of possible communalist cracks in the foundation. In the novel Long is described as having been even more successful than he would turn out to be in reality, winning an improbable number of terms and in effect turning the United States (and its vast and now official American Empire) into a Progressive one party state in all but name. The problem, as Lewis's viewpoint character bemoans, is that Long truly was a closet communalist, introducing libertarian policies very gradually right under the nose of the gullible public. By the time he finally leaves office in the 1970s, honest, faithful conservatives are being herded into communalist reeducation camps and the nation has grown so decadent as to betray the Axis, shifting power in the Triumvirate decisively in favor of the Green Menace.
As would later develop in actual history, the founding members of the Entente would unify over the course of the twentieth century, though unlike the vast federalized Entente that persists well into the new millennium, the Angevin Community of the novel is an autocracy, government solely by the continental Metropole. It is for the Angevin society that Lewis reserves the most vitriol, viewing it as the apotheosis of communalist insanity and the nadir of civilization. Governed at every level by a hedonistic Catharite revival, the state dulls the population by saturating them in radical individualism, pervasive sexuality and material excess.
Told from the perspective of a closet conservative and secret Axis agent, Brave New World reads like an elegy for the human race, casting aside tradition and propriety for the pursuit of independence and self-gratification. The climax of the story centers on our unnamed protagonist attempting to bring his handlers evidence of a secret meeting between the leaders of the American Empire and the Angevin Community. In his naivete he argues that the Axis should attack the conference, decapitating the communalist world in one stroke. But it's too late, and to his horror the Axis falls to revolt as the masses clamor for the pleasures they have been rightly denied. Now a man without a cause, our hero can only sit in stunned silence and the world turns upside down and the World Community is declared. It is revealed on the last page that the authorities knew of his activities all along. He was a nonentity, and therefore beneath dealing with. It is 1999. Outside the most haunting novel of the age the Axis Mundi would collapse in 2000.
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Strange Bedfellows: Afterward
To get a feel for this alternate dystopia, think of the Axis as a theocratic Brazil, the Angevins as Brave New World classic if John the Savage wrote the whole book, and America as It Can't Happen Here with more orgies.
And there we go! I could take Strange Bedfellows into a Seventh Party System but I'd like to see how it shakes out so that's off the table. Still I enjoyed working through the tweaks on this little project, recycling American third parties and social movements and along the way seeing Owenite Socialism completely suppress Marxism and Distributism completely butterfly Fascism while Russia falls to Nihilism. And of course there's the fun asides of an expansionist Liberia where the Leopard Society (probably sans cannibalism) is the dominant secret society as opposed to the Freemasons and a South China that's essentially a Taiping Heavenly Republic.
Any thoughts or questions? I hope if nothing else this little exercise has inspired you all to have a bit of fun with alternate party systems. Every country has their weird currents and strange politics, and I for one think it's incredibly entertaining to follow these traces and see where they can lead.
And there we go! I could take Strange Bedfellows into a Seventh Party System but I'd like to see how it shakes out so that's off the table. Still I enjoyed working through the tweaks on this little project, recycling American third parties and social movements and along the way seeing Owenite Socialism completely suppress Marxism and Distributism completely butterfly Fascism while Russia falls to Nihilism. And of course there's the fun asides of an expansionist Liberia where the Leopard Society (probably sans cannibalism) is the dominant secret society as opposed to the Freemasons and a South China that's essentially a Taiping Heavenly Republic.
Any thoughts or questions? I hope if nothing else this little exercise has inspired you all to have a bit of fun with alternate party systems. Every country has their weird currents and strange politics, and I for one think it's incredibly entertaining to follow these traces and see where they can lead.
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Write up some ideas! A Decembrist Party (probably with a catchier name) would have innumerable effects on the course of the Russian Empire given the movement's focus on American-style constitutionalism.
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There were some odd movements afoot. Some of which would be very stereotypically Russian by the standards of 2020.
Here's a little something from @Newne76 :
The 1880 United States presidential election was held on Tuesday, November 2, 1880. Incumbent President Fredrick Douglass was defeated for re-election by Mississippi State Representative Isaiah Montgomery. This election represented the 4th consecutive presidential election won by an African American candidate.
Following disagreement among the white supremacist wings and the moderate wings of the Prohibition Party, the white supremacist wing broke off and joined the Nullification party, officially entering into an electoral joint ticket of Montgomery as President and South Carolina Representative Benjamin Tillman as Vice President.
During the campaign, Montgomery was largely sidelined at various campaign events in favor of Ben Tillman, who promised a policy white's rights. He campaigned to officially end white slavery in the north, a policy implemented by vengeful radical reconstructionists, spearheaded by the efforts of President Harriet Tubman. The Douglass campaign vowed to gradually phase out the policy in an effort to gain the votes of poor whites throughout the south while boosting efforts to turn out immigration groups, as the Nullification party was still haunted by it's breif and disastrous flirtation with the Know Nothing president Millard Fillmore. The wealthy black plantation class was infuriated at Ben's calls for their political disbandment, arguing that the "white man was not ready for emancipation." Former Confederate President and prominent Caucasian-American civil rights activist Alexander Stephens enthusiastically endorsed Montgomery's quest for the presidency.
In the end, Fredrick Douglass would go on to be soundly defeated by Montgomery 249 to 120, with Douglass losing in lopsided double digits in the critical states of Ohio, Michigan and New York, all former National Union strongholds.
__
The 1884 United States presidential election was held on Tuesday, November 4, 1884. Incumbent President Isaiah Montgomery and Vice President Benjamin Tillman were narrowly re-elected to a second term, defeating former President Fredrick Douglass and female prohibition activist Carry A. Nation.
The hallmark of the Montgomery Presidency was the passage of the 16th Amendment, which formally abolished indentured servitude and slavery. While Caucasian-American civil rights leaders such as Stephens and Rebecca Felton applauded such efforts, the northern states that were still in the hands of the black leadership vehemently protested such efforts. The poor whites were tied to the land, revenge for the enslavement of southern African Americans in the southern united states.
White women still carried significant sway in the overall political process, frequently petitioning their local representatives to grant women the right to vote. As of the 1884 election, only 4 states granted women suffrage (Colorado, Nevada, Nebraska and Iowa). If they could not vote, they could at least run for office, convincing their husbands and male counterparts to vote "across gender lines" for female candidates. A supreme court decision in 1883 upheld that, while women could not vote in presidential elections, they would be permitted to run for office themselves "as loyal representatives-elect of their husband's domains." (The decision was ruled after the 4 states granted women's suffrage, but the language of the ruling clarified that those 4 states could still have women vote in the upcoming presidential election of 1884, but not after any other election.)
The National Union national convention held in Topeka, Kansas was divided between a female contingent that wished to nominate another white women and a contingent that wished to nominate a black women. The one name thrown around for the black woman was Harriet Tubman. After Tubman politely declined the opportunity to run for a nonconsecutive third term, arguing it was in violation of the Benjamin Concurrence, the nomination was handed to the white faction, who picked progressive prohibition activist "terror of the saloon" Carry A. Nation.
In the end, despite black governors best attempts at suppressing the white vote in the north, Douglass swept much of the northern states, improving on his 1880 performance by flipping the states of Ohio, Michigan and Illinois. However, Montgomery's pact with Tillman enabled a narrow coalition of a few thousand recently enfranchised poor whites to carry the tipping point state of Pennsylvania, backed by colored troops to the chagrin of the african-americans supremacy group and terrorist organization Turner Foundation, named after black slave revolt leader Nat Turner.
Toleration Party: Initially founded in Connecticut by Episcopalians disgruntled with the state government's favoritism towards the Congregational Church, this party soon began to attract support from other minority religious groups, including Catholic and Jewish immigrants, with its support for strict separation of church and state. By 1900, the Toleration party dominated politics in America's major cities. World War I would prove challenging, as the Toleration Party's open embrace of "hyphenated Americans" led to a loss of 24 House seats and investigations by the Department of Justice, but the Toleration Party recovered in the 1920s and 1930s as the natural home of anti-Prohibitionists. In the 1960s and 1970s, the Toleration Party embraced the sexual revolution, legalizing abortion and homosexuality in states where it controlled the legislature, and opposed conscription during the Vietnam War. This cost the party support among its traditional working class Catholic base, but gained votes from middle class Baby Boomers. The party suffered electorally during the socially conservative backlash of the 1980s and 1990s, but its opposition to censorship and the 'War on Drugs' gained it the loyalty of a new generation of young voters, leading to an electoral revival in the mid-2000s.
- Platform: Socially libertarian, the Toleration Party supports civil rights for members of various minority groups, but tends to be skeptical of state interventions to support social equality and 'political correctness.' On economic affairs, the Toleration Party supports strong universal welfare benefits, a legacy of its 19th and 20th century domination by working class immigrants and a strategy to preserve individual freedom from economic coercion by families and religious groups. In foreign policy, the Toleration Party is traditionally skeptical of idealistic rhetoric, and tends to promote refugee resettlement as an alternative to humanitarian intervention.
- Platform: Strongly supportive of expansionary monetary policy, low tarriffs, and agricultural subsidies. The Silver Party also embraces regulation of business, especially banking.
- Platform: Views electoral politics as secondary to the fight for unionization, and adopts whatever position the union leaders suggest. In recent years, the Workingmen's party has focused on opposition to trade agreements, which are seen as selling out the workers' interests to Wall Street, and environmental regulation.
- Platform: Interventionist in both economic and foreign policy, the Progressive Party's signature issues include support for the environmental movement, humanitarian intervention, and anti-trust policy, and affirmative action.
- Platform: Opposed to business regulation and high taxes, with a laissez-faire social policy.
- Platform: Strongly socially conservative and militaristic in foreign policy, the SRDP generally allies with the Whigs and NDP when it comes to economic policy.
- Platform: Economically pro-business, realist on foreign policy, and officially neutral on social policy.
- Platform: Supports the nationalization of industry, reparations for historically oppressed peoples, and the complete dismantlement of the US military.
A post-Civil War list of presidents and Vice Presidents for the above list:
1861-1865: Abraham Lincoln (W)/Stephen Douglas, Andrew Johnson (National Union)
1865-1869: Andrew Johnson (D)
1869-1877: Ulysses S. Grant (W)/Schuyler Colfax (W)
1877-1885: Rutherford B. Hayes (W)/William A. Wheeler (W)
1885-1889: Gover Cleveland (D)/Adlai Stevenson (D)
1889-1893: Benjamin Harrison (W)/Levi P. Morton (W)
1893-1897: Grover Cleveland (D)/ Adlai Stevenson I (D)
1897-1901: William McKinley (W)/Garret Hobart, Theodore Roosevelt (W)
1901-1907: Theodore Roosevelt (W)/Charles W. Fairbanks (W)
1907-1913: William Howard Taft (W)/James S. Sherman (W)
1913-1919: Theodore Roosevelt (Progressive)/Hiram M. Johnson, Robert La Follette (Progressive)
1919-1921: Robert La Follette (Progressive)
1921-1929: Aaron S. Watkins (Prohibition)/Herbert Hoover (Whig) - Fusion ticket
1929-1933: Herbert Hoover (Whig)/William F. Varney (Prohibition)
1933-1945: Franklin D. Roosevelt (Progressive)/Henry A. Wallace (Progressive)
1945-1949: Henry A. Wallace (Progressive)
1949-1961: Dwight Eisenhower (W)/Alben W. Barkley (NDP) - Fusion ticket, Richard Nixon (W) - nominated as Eisenhower's running mate after Barkley's death
1961-1963: John F. Kennedy (T)/Hubert H. Humphrey (Progressive) - Fusion ticket
1963-1969: Hubert H. Humphrey (Progressive)/Robert F. Kennedy (T) - Fusion ticket
1969-1977: Richard M. Nixon (W)/John Connally (NDP) - Fusion ticket
1977-1981: Edward M. Kennedy (T)/Walter Mondale (Progressive) - Fusion ticket
1981-1989: Ronald Reagan (SRDP)/George H.W. Bush (W) - Fusion ticket
1989-1993: George HW Bush (W)/Pat Buchanan (SRDP) - Fusion ticket
1993-2001: Mario Cuomo (T)/Ross Perot (NDP) - Election decided by the House of Representatives, Ralph Nader (Progressive) - Fusion ticket
2001-2009: George W. Bush (W)/Bill Frist (SRDP) - Fusion ticket
2009-2017: Barack Obama (Progressive)/John Edwards (Progressive), Mitt Romney (T) - Fusion ticket
1861-1865: Abraham Lincoln (W)/Stephen Douglas, Andrew Johnson (National Union)
1865-1869: Andrew Johnson (D)
1869-1877: Ulysses S. Grant (W)/Schuyler Colfax (W)
1877-1885: Rutherford B. Hayes (W)/William A. Wheeler (W)
1885-1889: Gover Cleveland (D)/Adlai Stevenson (D)
1889-1893: Benjamin Harrison (W)/Levi P. Morton (W)
1893-1897: Grover Cleveland (D)/ Adlai Stevenson I (D)
1897-1901: William McKinley (W)/Garret Hobart, Theodore Roosevelt (W)
1901-1907: Theodore Roosevelt (W)/Charles W. Fairbanks (W)
1907-1913: William Howard Taft (W)/James S. Sherman (W)
1913-1919: Theodore Roosevelt (Progressive)/Hiram M. Johnson, Robert La Follette (Progressive)
1919-1921: Robert La Follette (Progressive)
1921-1929: Aaron S. Watkins (Prohibition)/Herbert Hoover (Whig) - Fusion ticket
1929-1933: Herbert Hoover (Whig)/William F. Varney (Prohibition)
1933-1945: Franklin D. Roosevelt (Progressive)/Henry A. Wallace (Progressive)
1945-1949: Henry A. Wallace (Progressive)
1949-1961: Dwight Eisenhower (W)/Alben W. Barkley (NDP) - Fusion ticket, Richard Nixon (W) - nominated as Eisenhower's running mate after Barkley's death
1961-1963: John F. Kennedy (T)/Hubert H. Humphrey (Progressive) - Fusion ticket
1963-1969: Hubert H. Humphrey (Progressive)/Robert F. Kennedy (T) - Fusion ticket
1969-1977: Richard M. Nixon (W)/John Connally (NDP) - Fusion ticket
1977-1981: Edward M. Kennedy (T)/Walter Mondale (Progressive) - Fusion ticket
1981-1989: Ronald Reagan (SRDP)/George H.W. Bush (W) - Fusion ticket
1989-1993: George HW Bush (W)/Pat Buchanan (SRDP) - Fusion ticket
1993-2001: Mario Cuomo (T)/Ross Perot (NDP) - Election decided by the House of Representatives, Ralph Nader (Progressive) - Fusion ticket
2001-2009: George W. Bush (W)/Bill Frist (SRDP) - Fusion ticket
2009-2017: Barack Obama (Progressive)/John Edwards (Progressive), Mitt Romney (T) - Fusion ticket
Progress and Congress
*Because who says moral advancement is forced to follow OTL patterns? This idea popped into my head while I was watching a documentary about American eugenics. Just a heads up regarding a certain outdated term that retains its former favored place in the American lexicon, as well as a significantly divergent tone for an alternate modern day*
Originating at the turn of the last century, the political duopoly between the Progressives and the Populists has shaped the twentieth century and beyond.
[2]Because "International" is too tainted by "Marxist materialism". Basically a decentralized Franco-Russian alliance, armed for defensive warfare by choice but with a truly staggering soft power. Saying that all people deserve the chance to live virtuous and fulfilling lives makes you popular among the lower classes, who knew?
[3]Not Nazis by any means, but a high level of sterilized social undesirables nonetheless. All with a stiff upper lip, wot?
Originating at the turn of the last century, the political duopoly between the Progressives and the Populists has shaped the twentieth century and beyond.
- Progressive Party- Splintering off from the now defunct Unionist-Republican Party[1] under the helm of Theodore Roosevelt, the Progressive Party was purpose built to be the natural home of socially progressive impulses, from conservation to labor reform to eugenics, and was perfectly willing to fight both at home and abroad to better society. Forming close ties with the Race Betterment Foundation and the Negro Academy, ties that endure to the modern day, the Progressives have built a robust coalition with a strong colored contingent. On the world stage the Progressives stand firm against the backward radicalism of the Centrum[2] and are fully in support of the Aryan Bund[3].
- Populist Party- With the Democratic Party diminished by the flight of the party's progressive wing to Roosevelt's new political project, the surviving Democrats would morph into the latest iteration of the Populist Party, building on the legacy of former presidential contender William Jennings Bryan under candidate (and later president) Clarence Darrow. At its founding an isolationist Christian conservative party opposed to the inhumanity of eugenics and other Progressive policies, the party would grow and change as Catholics, Jews and other "un-assimilable" populations would join en masse seeking a vehicle to preserve and protect their rights to free speech and free exercise in the face of Progressive onslaught. The influx of lower class negroes into the party would provoke another shift in the party.
[2]Because "International" is too tainted by "Marxist materialism". Basically a decentralized Franco-Russian alliance, armed for defensive warfare by choice but with a truly staggering soft power. Saying that all people deserve the chance to live virtuous and fulfilling lives makes you popular among the lower classes, who knew?
[3]Not Nazis by any means, but a high level of sterilized social undesirables nonetheless. All with a stiff upper lip, wot?
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I might expand this out a little further, jumping around and focusing on small updates set outside the US. I'm particularly excited about the Dominion of India 🤔
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Unrelated to my second in-thread mini TL: could butterflying away the creation of the Australian Labor Party create a scenario where the Protectionist and Free Trade parties continue to play a central role in Australian politics past their 1909 historical demise?