It's not a dystopia. The full title is "Ruins of a Party System", in reference to chaotic politics. Read the original TL if you want to know more.
Ruins Revisited: The Robert Taft Story
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It's not a dystopia. The full title is "Ruins of a Party System", in reference to chaotic politics. Read the original TL if you want to know more.
Nope, read the original three threads, it's worth it. You got backstabbing, New Deal policies on steroids, FBI Special Agent Richard Nixon taking on the Klan and so much more
Depends on your politics. If you're left-wing it's borderline utopian. If you're right-wing its a dystopian nightmare.
It's also quite sweet if you're Jewish. No holocaust and one of America's Presidents is a real mensch.
As the others said, it's not dystopic, and is actually a pretty incredible TL.
Here's the tropes page, which contains links to all three threads.
Oh its ruins of a party system. I've read that...Oh God THE HORROR, THIS WORLD IS TERRIFYING BUT I CAN'T STOP READING ABOUT IT, ITS JUST TOO CRAZY! 
As you can tell, I'm excited to see what comes next. Of all the "America goes leftwing stories", this is a good one. Saying a lot cause 99% of the time I find them terrible, dull, and uninspired.
Damn it @Emperor Julian I was going to use this very same style fairly soon!
Well not quite the same style as I was writing it as a screenplay, but I was caught a bit off-guard seeing you use it; so much for the potential of unique flair on my part.
Well not quite the same style as I was writing it as a screenplay, but I was caught a bit off-guard seeing you use it; so much for the potential of unique flair on my part.
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Given the references to CBS as privately-owned and presented as the rival of the ABC, I presume that they're basically equivalents of ITV and the BBC respectively?
Sorry; somehow I forgot to include links to the original TL threads in the OP. That has now been rectified.
I figured this would be a way to show stuff going forward while also covering the events in depth. And in enough of a different style that it would be unique.Damn it @Emperor Julian I was going to use this very same style fairly soon!
Well not quite the same style as I was writing it as a screenplay, but I was caught a bit off-guard seeing you use it; so much for the potential of unique flair on my part.
Yes, more or less. CBS isn't the only private competitor to the ABC, but it's the biggest as of 2002 when this "documentary" aired.
Sorry, meant it as more of a tongue-in-cheek thing, but the lack of that last emoticon made it come across as more serious. Given my track record I doubt I'd have ever gotten around to using it anyhow.
The Supreme Court Nomination Battle
The Supreme Court Nomination Battle
The makeup of the Supreme Court in late 1947 was a Progressive majority:
(images of the justices appear on the screen)
Chief Justice Earl Warren, appointed by Fiorello La Guardia in 1943
Justice Robert F. Wagner, appointed by Floyd Olson in 1936
Justice Albert C. Cohn, appointed by Fiorello La Guardia in 1937
Justice Harry S. Truman, appointed by Fiorello La Guardia in 1938
Justice Stanley F. Reed, appointed by Fiorello La Guardia in 1939
Justice William O. Douglass, appointed by Fiorello La Guardia in 1939
Justice Robert H. Jackson, appointed by Fiorello La Guardia in 1940
Justice Harold H. Burton, appointed by Robert Taft in 1946
Justice Simon Sobeloff, appointed by Robert Taft in 1947
Even with Robert H. Jackson and Stanley F. Reed frequently disappointing the Progressives, the 7-2 majority meant that the left bloc of the court won whenever the court was divided along ideological lines. Taft's appointments of Burton and Sobeloff were uncontroversial, as they both had fairly moderate records and were replacing conservative justices. However, the death of left-leaning Justice Wagner created an opportunity for President Taft to shift the balance of the court to the right.
Historian Martin Luther King Jr., PhD: "While many of the decisions made by early Warren court on matters of regulatory authority and labor rights saw the large progressive majority vote together, on matters of civil rights the majority simply was not as solid. Many decisions striking down school segregation, upholding statewide women's rights legislation, and other matters of justice simply did not have as overwhelming majorities. Afro-American, or at the time, Negro, voters trusted Taft personally for his civil rights actions. But they didn't trust other conservatives."
Historian Marsha Spielberg, PhD: "Justice Sobeloff, Taft's previous appointee, would later become a staunch voice for civil rights on the court. But having only been appointed months prior, the possibility of 5-4 decisions being overturned was very real to many progressives."
Justice Simon Sobeloff
President Taft faced a dilemma over who to nominate.
Businessman Warren Buffett (at a net worth of 21 billion USD, the richest man in America*): "My father as Chief of Staff advised the President to nominate the most conservative justice he could." An image of Howard Buffett speaking to President Taft is shown. "He specifically suggested John Marshall Harlan, a conservative lawyer appointed to the Second Circuit by President Taft in 1945. He believed that if you nominated a moderate, the Progressives would pick him apart and you'd get nothing. But if you start with a conservative, when they reject him the moderate would look a lot more reasonable."
Chief of Staff Howard Buffett
Other members of the Taft administration had different ideas. Attorney General Thomas Dewey and Vice President Leverett Saltonstall convinced the President that nominating a doomed justice to begin with would give the Republicans cover to reject him, and would make the president look weak for having a nominee rejected. They convinced President Taft to nominate someone who could appease minority voters and conservatives. They eventually decided upon Georgia district judge Elbert Tuttle.
Tuttle in his old age decades later
While Elbert Tuttle didn't consider himself an extremist, on paper he had one of the most hostile records to organized labor of anyone on the federal bench appointed since the Great Depression.
Taft Biographer Alexander Patterson, PhD: "The Progressive Party was simply determined to block anyone Taft nominated, and they would twist any ruling, no matter how reasonable, to make it seem like a Taft nominee was a crazed reactionary extremist."
Paul Robeson Jr.: "President Taft believed that ruling against the most blatant forms of Jim Crow discrimination would excuse a candidate who had spent his legal career fighting against employee privacy, employee political rights, and worker safety regulations. It simply was not so."
President Taft soon found himself in a battle with Progressives in the Senate to get his Supreme Court nominee confirmed... a battle that would define the Progressive Presidential nomination!
*$21 billion in Ruins 2002 is about 3.2 billion in 2017 dollars
Seeing some really thought out political reasoning here. That's a good sign.
At a guess, more federal spending, which means more inflation.
The gold standard was terminated ITTL, according to a quick search; maybe that went further than OTL and abolished convertibility of gold decades earlier than OTL. If that’s so, it’s another factor.
Also the fact that the richest man in the US in 2002 had the equivalent of 3 billion dollars is a very good sign about the state of income inequality. It is clear that America is a much more economically equal country in ITTL present day.
For comparison, Bill Gates, who held the title in our 2002, had a net worth of 43 billion, or about 60 billion adjusting for inflation. He was 20 times richer.
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