Alternate Electoral Maps III
- Thread starter killertahu22
- Start date
I really like the look of this, but I'm curious what prefectures correspond to which bits of Hoenn (if any) and who HM corresponds to in Hoenn?
Those aren't prefectures, but provinces. As for the monarch, Hoenn is an elective monarchy whose queen is chosen by and from among the leaders of the various gardevoir clans, though both humans and maju (pokémon) participate in government otherwise.
I'm flattered, but also not sure where to start looking. .w.;
Ah nice. I'm guessing that Mauville City is part of why the Higo district is the most populous?
Tbh the balance looks alright from what I recall of Hoenn, maybe Buzen or Bungo could be more populous since that's analogous to where Lilycove City (which iirc is the second city of Hoenn) is.
Yeah, Kumamoto Prefecture is coterminous with Higo Province, as is Miyazaki Prefecture with Hyūga Province.
Close; Lilycove is in Ōsumi province (Kanoya, Kagoshima).
I haven't done an 'alt US elections' TL in a hot minute, and I felt like doing one based on an obvious scenario I don't think I've done before.
*
It goes without saying that 1968 was one of the most tumultuous presidential races in American history. With Richard Nixon running a 'Law and Order'-based Republican campaign and George Wallace leading a third party ticket based around his segregationist views, the Democrats were on the back foot, and before he had even won the nomination, Robert F. Kennedy had had an attempt on his life thwarted.
Despite picking President Johnson's ideological ally Senator Ralph Yarborough of Texas as his running mate, calling for a bombing halt in Vietnam and condemning racism after the murder of Martin Luther King, RFK spent much of the campaign trailing Nixon- but then in the lead-up to the election the Paris negotiations appeared to make a 'Halloween Peace' in Vietnam possible. Nixon had his campaign aide H. R. Haldeman sabotage this, and the Kennedy campaign had this leaked.
Despite Kennedy, Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen viewing Nixon's actions as treasonous, they held their tongues in public and allowed the news cycle to lambast him. It paid off handsomely, and not only did Nixon lose to a second Kennedy, but his career in politics was destroyed.
Kennedy/Yarborough (Democratic): 345 EVs, 45.6%
Nixon/Agnew (Republican): 136 EVs, 40.2%
Wallace/LeMay (American Independent): 57 EVs, 13.7%
*
1972
Kennedy's first term would prove eventful, as he took America off the Gold Standard, ended the draft, introduced OSHA and defended the Philadelphia Plan to help support the hiring of African-Americans, implemented busing for American schoolchildren of colour, negotiated towards peace in Vietnam with a settlement being reached in 1971, pushed for détente with the USSR and and passed the 26th Amendment to lower the voting age from 21 to 18. The economy had also remained solid despite the 'Kennedy shock'- if anything, most consumers were happy with Kennedy's decision to implement price controls.
However, his leadership had proved quite divisive, particularly being despised by conservatives, and California Governor Ronald Reagan seized on this. He ran a hardline campaign which condemned the 'hippie in the White House', claiming Kennedy was not leading a strong enough fight against Communism and pledging he would create 'a truly great society' by rolling back the welfare reforms of the preceding three Democratic administrations. His running mate, Governor Jim Rhodes of Ohio, shared his views.
Despite his opponent's aggressive campaign, Kennedy's response was strikingly cordial. When the two men debated, Reagan hammered him on his policies, and Kennedy calmly defended himself, as well as pointing out controversies from Reagan and Rhode's governorships like the Bloody Thursday crisis and the Kent State Massacre. Further hurting Reagan was the third-party campaign of Congressman Pete McCloskey, to whom the Republican campaign bled votes.
Kennedy/Yarborough (Democratic): 302 EVs, 50.8%
Reagan/Rhodes (Republican): 235 EVs, 46.3%
Hospers/Nathan (Libertarian): 1 EV, 0%
In his autobiography, Reagan reflected on the 1972 election as 'one from which I learned many lessons about political campaigns'. Despite this, it did little to temper his ideological convictions, as his following presidential run would show.
*
1976
Kennedy's second term would be just as eventful as his first, but far less cordial. The Yom Kippur War and oil crisis that followed seriously hampered the economy, and despite his efforts to broker a peace in the Middle East, Kennedy was seen as incompetent for allowing it to happen. His government was also seen as complicit in the 1973 Chilean coup d'etat, which outraged leftists, and his continued efforts towards détente and peace became more frustrating to Americans as Vietnam fell to Communist control and hostility grew towards the Eastern bloc.
While Reagan was determined to run again, his 1972 defeat haunted him and other Republicans, and he made sure to make his speeches more conciliatory and pragmatic, focusing on slogans over shocking ideological statements. While he made it clear he would support paring back the welfare provisions of the Great Society, he also pledged he would not endanger the finances of impoverished Americans. His pick of running mate also emphasised his new image- Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee. Baker, the first Republican elected to the South since Reconstruction, was a moderate conservative who had respect from politicians on both sides of the aisle.
On the Democratic side, things were significantly more heated. It was rumoured that the President's brother, Senator Ted Kennedy, would be a candidate, but he refused to run. In his place came several prominent Democrats, including Washington Senator Henry M. 'Scoop' Jackson, Arizona Congressman Mo Udall, and most controversially, former Alabama Governor George Wallace. Wallace performed shockingly strongly, vocally renouncing his segregationist views at the beginning of his candidacy, but came second to Reagan's successor as Governor of California, Jerry Brown.
Brown sought to undermine Reagan's strategy by picking popular Southern Governor Dale Bumpers of Arkansas as his running mate, but his campaign ran into a similar problem to Reagan's but in reverse- he was perceived as being too liberal, and Reagan argued that he would expand on existing measures of the Kennedy administration. Kennedy and Brown tried to turn this association into a benefit to Brown, particularly with his support for and involvement with the United States Centenary celebrations, but Reagan was able to frame himself even more effectively as a political outsider due to this.
Reagan/Baker (Republican): 434 EVs, 56.3%
Brown/Bumpers (Democratic): 104 EVs, 43.0%
Just nine states out of 50 voted for 4 more years of Democratic control of the White House, and the Republicans also managed to regain control of the Senate for the first time in 22 years. Despitehis ticket's resounding defeat, Brown would return to Sacramento and serve out another term and a half where he continued to implement his agenda in the Golden State, while Reagan would struggle to implement his on the national stage.
*
1980
Now that he had finally secured control of the White House, Reagan announced at his first State of the Union Address that he would 'revitalise' the economy by significantly cutting back the Great Society and its 'excesses'. These cuts almost immediately deepened unemployment and failed to curb inflation. He also ended up deepening his unpopularity by unashamedly backing authoritarian regimes in South America, and ended détente, calling the Soviet Union an 'evil empire'.
To make matters worse, Reagn's attempt to broker positive relations with the People's Republic of China to capitalise on its frosty relationship with the USSR collapsed humiliatingly. The invitation of Deng Xiaoping to the US was announced in late 1978 and took place in January 1979, then the month afterwards China invaded Vietnam. Reagan had been convinced to meet with Deng to build up to recognising it as the legitimate Chinese government by Henry Kissinger, continuing to serve as Secretary of State having been assigned to that position by Kennedy in 1973, but the Sino-Vietnamese War stifled this. While this was more damaging in the long run to China, contributing to a difficult 1980s where its attempts to economically and politically liberalise were frequently hamstrung until the Tienanmen Square Revolution in 1989, in the short term it hampered Reagan considerably.
This would not be the foreign policy crisis in the forefront of most Americans' minds by the time of the 1980 election, though- that would be the one taking place in Iran. The 1979 Iranian Revolution had seen the hardline Islamist Ayatollah Khomenei take control of the country and hostages from the American Embassy were taken. Despite negotiation attempts and Operation Eagle Claw being conducted to try to retrieve the hostages, all American attempts to recapture them failed prior to Election Day.
Seeing Reagan's vulnerability, the Democratic primary was hotly contested, with Ted Kennedy standing this time and initially appearing the frontrunner. However, his momentum would be dampened by the arrival of a dark horse- Senator Gary Hart of Colorado. Hart had won the Senate race in his home state despite the 1974 midterms seeing national losses for the Democrats, and positioned himself as a 'New Democrat' who would delicately handle the nation's finances. With this strategy, he established an even stronger lead over Reagan than Ted Kennedy- and slowly but surely usurped his strong standing in the primaries.
Having served as Brown's campaign director in 1976 and had a prominent role in the Senate investigations into the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster, Hart had slowly begun to build a name for himself nationally, and with a strong grassroots campaign he gradually came from behind to beat Kennedy to the nomination. The two retained a respectful relationship, with Kennedy speaking favourably of Hart at the convention, in noted contrast to liberal Republicans like Charles Mathias and John Anderson breaking off from Reagan's ticket.
To compensate for any attacks on his lack of experience, Hart nominated House Majority Leader Jim Wright, who had represented Texas in the House for 25 years and been senior in the House for the last 3. Supporters unofficially used a slogan that was a play on two slogans from the 1964 election, which had been a Democratic landslide- 'In your Hart, you know we're Wright, and in your guts, you know he's nuts' (the 'he' of course being Reagan).
Hart/Wright (Democratic): 509 EVs, 58.8%
Reagan/Baker (Republican): 29 EVs, 39.6%
Hart defeated Reagan by an even bigger landslide than Reagan had beaten Brown by. Only seven states voted to give him a second term, all of which but New Hampshire were in the West and which together made up only 29 electoral votes. By taking over 500 EVs, and recapturing the Senate while he was at it, Hart interpreted his election as a massive mandate for the 'New Democrats'.
However, other Democrats would interpret it quite differently, and this would complicate things once he entered office...
*
It goes without saying that 1968 was one of the most tumultuous presidential races in American history. With Richard Nixon running a 'Law and Order'-based Republican campaign and George Wallace leading a third party ticket based around his segregationist views, the Democrats were on the back foot, and before he had even won the nomination, Robert F. Kennedy had had an attempt on his life thwarted.
Despite picking President Johnson's ideological ally Senator Ralph Yarborough of Texas as his running mate, calling for a bombing halt in Vietnam and condemning racism after the murder of Martin Luther King, RFK spent much of the campaign trailing Nixon- but then in the lead-up to the election the Paris negotiations appeared to make a 'Halloween Peace' in Vietnam possible. Nixon had his campaign aide H. R. Haldeman sabotage this, and the Kennedy campaign had this leaked.
Despite Kennedy, Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Everett Dirksen viewing Nixon's actions as treasonous, they held their tongues in public and allowed the news cycle to lambast him. It paid off handsomely, and not only did Nixon lose to a second Kennedy, but his career in politics was destroyed.
Kennedy/Yarborough (Democratic): 345 EVs, 45.6%
Nixon/Agnew (Republican): 136 EVs, 40.2%
Wallace/LeMay (American Independent): 57 EVs, 13.7%
*
1972
Kennedy's first term would prove eventful, as he took America off the Gold Standard, ended the draft, introduced OSHA and defended the Philadelphia Plan to help support the hiring of African-Americans, implemented busing for American schoolchildren of colour, negotiated towards peace in Vietnam with a settlement being reached in 1971, pushed for détente with the USSR and and passed the 26th Amendment to lower the voting age from 21 to 18. The economy had also remained solid despite the 'Kennedy shock'- if anything, most consumers were happy with Kennedy's decision to implement price controls.
However, his leadership had proved quite divisive, particularly being despised by conservatives, and California Governor Ronald Reagan seized on this. He ran a hardline campaign which condemned the 'hippie in the White House', claiming Kennedy was not leading a strong enough fight against Communism and pledging he would create 'a truly great society' by rolling back the welfare reforms of the preceding three Democratic administrations. His running mate, Governor Jim Rhodes of Ohio, shared his views.
Despite his opponent's aggressive campaign, Kennedy's response was strikingly cordial. When the two men debated, Reagan hammered him on his policies, and Kennedy calmly defended himself, as well as pointing out controversies from Reagan and Rhode's governorships like the Bloody Thursday crisis and the Kent State Massacre. Further hurting Reagan was the third-party campaign of Congressman Pete McCloskey, to whom the Republican campaign bled votes.
Kennedy/Yarborough (Democratic): 302 EVs, 50.8%
Reagan/Rhodes (Republican): 235 EVs, 46.3%
Hospers/Nathan (Libertarian): 1 EV, 0%
In his autobiography, Reagan reflected on the 1972 election as 'one from which I learned many lessons about political campaigns'. Despite this, it did little to temper his ideological convictions, as his following presidential run would show.
*
1976
Kennedy's second term would be just as eventful as his first, but far less cordial. The Yom Kippur War and oil crisis that followed seriously hampered the economy, and despite his efforts to broker a peace in the Middle East, Kennedy was seen as incompetent for allowing it to happen. His government was also seen as complicit in the 1973 Chilean coup d'etat, which outraged leftists, and his continued efforts towards détente and peace became more frustrating to Americans as Vietnam fell to Communist control and hostility grew towards the Eastern bloc.
While Reagan was determined to run again, his 1972 defeat haunted him and other Republicans, and he made sure to make his speeches more conciliatory and pragmatic, focusing on slogans over shocking ideological statements. While he made it clear he would support paring back the welfare provisions of the Great Society, he also pledged he would not endanger the finances of impoverished Americans. His pick of running mate also emphasised his new image- Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee. Baker, the first Republican elected to the South since Reconstruction, was a moderate conservative who had respect from politicians on both sides of the aisle.
On the Democratic side, things were significantly more heated. It was rumoured that the President's brother, Senator Ted Kennedy, would be a candidate, but he refused to run. In his place came several prominent Democrats, including Washington Senator Henry M. 'Scoop' Jackson, Arizona Congressman Mo Udall, and most controversially, former Alabama Governor George Wallace. Wallace performed shockingly strongly, vocally renouncing his segregationist views at the beginning of his candidacy, but came second to Reagan's successor as Governor of California, Jerry Brown.
Brown sought to undermine Reagan's strategy by picking popular Southern Governor Dale Bumpers of Arkansas as his running mate, but his campaign ran into a similar problem to Reagan's but in reverse- he was perceived as being too liberal, and Reagan argued that he would expand on existing measures of the Kennedy administration. Kennedy and Brown tried to turn this association into a benefit to Brown, particularly with his support for and involvement with the United States Centenary celebrations, but Reagan was able to frame himself even more effectively as a political outsider due to this.
Reagan/Baker (Republican): 434 EVs, 56.3%
Brown/Bumpers (Democratic): 104 EVs, 43.0%
Just nine states out of 50 voted for 4 more years of Democratic control of the White House, and the Republicans also managed to regain control of the Senate for the first time in 22 years. Despitehis ticket's resounding defeat, Brown would return to Sacramento and serve out another term and a half where he continued to implement his agenda in the Golden State, while Reagan would struggle to implement his on the national stage.
*
1980
Now that he had finally secured control of the White House, Reagan announced at his first State of the Union Address that he would 'revitalise' the economy by significantly cutting back the Great Society and its 'excesses'. These cuts almost immediately deepened unemployment and failed to curb inflation. He also ended up deepening his unpopularity by unashamedly backing authoritarian regimes in South America, and ended détente, calling the Soviet Union an 'evil empire'.
To make matters worse, Reagn's attempt to broker positive relations with the People's Republic of China to capitalise on its frosty relationship with the USSR collapsed humiliatingly. The invitation of Deng Xiaoping to the US was announced in late 1978 and took place in January 1979, then the month afterwards China invaded Vietnam. Reagan had been convinced to meet with Deng to build up to recognising it as the legitimate Chinese government by Henry Kissinger, continuing to serve as Secretary of State having been assigned to that position by Kennedy in 1973, but the Sino-Vietnamese War stifled this. While this was more damaging in the long run to China, contributing to a difficult 1980s where its attempts to economically and politically liberalise were frequently hamstrung until the Tienanmen Square Revolution in 1989, in the short term it hampered Reagan considerably.
This would not be the foreign policy crisis in the forefront of most Americans' minds by the time of the 1980 election, though- that would be the one taking place in Iran. The 1979 Iranian Revolution had seen the hardline Islamist Ayatollah Khomenei take control of the country and hostages from the American Embassy were taken. Despite negotiation attempts and Operation Eagle Claw being conducted to try to retrieve the hostages, all American attempts to recapture them failed prior to Election Day.
Seeing Reagan's vulnerability, the Democratic primary was hotly contested, with Ted Kennedy standing this time and initially appearing the frontrunner. However, his momentum would be dampened by the arrival of a dark horse- Senator Gary Hart of Colorado. Hart had won the Senate race in his home state despite the 1974 midterms seeing national losses for the Democrats, and positioned himself as a 'New Democrat' who would delicately handle the nation's finances. With this strategy, he established an even stronger lead over Reagan than Ted Kennedy- and slowly but surely usurped his strong standing in the primaries.
Having served as Brown's campaign director in 1976 and had a prominent role in the Senate investigations into the Three Mile Island nuclear disaster, Hart had slowly begun to build a name for himself nationally, and with a strong grassroots campaign he gradually came from behind to beat Kennedy to the nomination. The two retained a respectful relationship, with Kennedy speaking favourably of Hart at the convention, in noted contrast to liberal Republicans like Charles Mathias and John Anderson breaking off from Reagan's ticket.
To compensate for any attacks on his lack of experience, Hart nominated House Majority Leader Jim Wright, who had represented Texas in the House for 25 years and been senior in the House for the last 3. Supporters unofficially used a slogan that was a play on two slogans from the 1964 election, which had been a Democratic landslide- 'In your Hart, you know we're Wright, and in your guts, you know he's nuts' (the 'he' of course being Reagan).
Hart/Wright (Democratic): 509 EVs, 58.8%
Reagan/Baker (Republican): 29 EVs, 39.6%
Hart defeated Reagan by an even bigger landslide than Reagan had beaten Brown by. Only seven states voted to give him a second term, all of which but New Hampshire were in the West and which together made up only 29 electoral votes. By taking over 500 EVs, and recapturing the Senate while he was at it, Hart interpreted his election as a massive mandate for the 'New Democrats'.
However, other Democrats would interpret it quite differently, and this would complicate things once he entered office...
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Huge swaths of the text in your post are hard-coded to black, which makes them impossible to read for users using the forum's Black color scheme.
I didn't realise that, sorry. I've removed the black formatting, hopefully it should be readable on that colour scheme now.
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1984
Hart's 'New Democrat' credentials would be put to the test in his first term. He acquiesced to the party's left on many issues where doing so was popular, particularly infrastructure spending on technology (leading to the nickname of him and his allies as 'Atari Democrats') and stimulus funding to alleviate the farm crisis. At the same time, he did not fully restore welfare provisions to their previous levels or push for universal healthcare as left-leaning Democrats desired.
By far the most controversial topic during Hart's first term, however, proved to be gun control. In March 1981, just two months after taking office, Hart survived an assassination attempt by an insane man named John Hinkley Jr., and a push for reform of gun laws was made. Hart supported background check expansions and bans on assault weapons, but liberal Democrats felt he did not go far enough and conservatives were outraged- conspiracy theories circulated among the extreme right that Hart's assassination attempt had been staged.
As this fact implies, the Republican far right were in ascendancy in response to Hart. The ticket they nominated, Senator Paul Laxalt of Nevada for President and Senator Bob Smith of New Hampshire for Vice President, was a bit more mainstream- Laxalt had been a steadfast confidant of Reagan- but it remained greatly out of step with most Americans. Liberal Republican Jim Jeffords subsequently commented that he believed the Reagan wing of the party had prevented the Republicans regaining control of Congress in the 1982 midterms, and his perspective was vindicated by the 1984 election result.
Hart/Wright (Democratic): 525 EVs, 60.5%
Laxalt/Smith (Republican): 13 EVs, 38.7%
Hart won an even bigger landslide than in 1980, helped by a big swing in his favour in the West (aside from Laxalt's home state, the only one to flip against him), and strengthened the Democrats' position in Congress further still. Ironically, this would only increase the pressure on him from the party's left, as they believed it was time to abandon his 'New Democrat' strategy and implement a bolder agenda.
This would turn out not to be the case with his second term.
*
1988
Hart's second term was an extremely complex time for America's place in the world. New Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was an adamant reformer and he and Hart shared a desire to de-escalate the Cold War, managing to do so through diplomatic processes including a nuclear freeze, several prominent meetings and even expressions of mutual condolences in late 1986 for each nation's recent tragedies, the Challenger disaster and the Chernobyl nuclear accident.
As a result of this, the Democrats actually avoided the 'six-year itch' in the 1986 midterms, not helped by continued conservative dominance in the Republican Party- but this would turn around dramatically by the election year. In October 1987, the 'Black Monday' stock market crash dented the strong economy that had characterised the Hart administration up to that point, and almost overnight Hart's image became that of a lame duck.
The Democrats running to succeed him were mostly liberal-leaning and wanted to push the economy in a more bold interventionist direction- they ranged from radicals like the Reverend Jesse Jackson to union-aligned politicians like Missouri Congressman Dick Gephardt. The figure to come out on top would turn out to be Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts, who benefited from his colourful profile as a Greek immigrant who rose to lead a successful leftist state government. In keeping with Democratic tradition, he balanced his ticket with a Southerner, namely Senator Bob Graham of Florida.
On the Republican side, a fierce battle emerged between the conservative wing of the party, spearheaded by Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, and the moderate wing, which rallied around Governor James Thompson of Illinois. Thompson managed to win out, helped by other conservatives splitting the vote against Dole and refusing to endorse him, and picked Governor of Florida Bob Martinez, a former Democrat, to try to undermine Democratic support in the South.
Thompson enjoyed a lead over Dukakis from the start, and this only extended when his campaign began to attack Dukakis over failures by his state government's furlough scheme and pollution in Massachusetts Bay. He also provided notably more moderate answers on the issues of gun control and the death penalty than Dukakis, who was further damaged by a very impersonal answer he gave to a controversial question about what he would do if his wife were murdered during the debates.
Thompson/Martinez (Republican): 466 EVs, 57.8%
Dukakis/Graham (Democratic): 71 EVs, 41.9%
Dukakis went down to the worst defeat for any Democrat in the Electoral College since 1864, with only eight states supporting him. Republican support greatly rebounded across the West and Northeast, helped by Thompson's more moderate policy agenda and Martinez's status as the first Hispanic American on a party's ticket. On top of Thompson winning the election, the Republicans gained control of the House for the first time in 34 years and the Senate for the first time in 8.
Just as with Hart, though, Thompson's pivot to the centre would be met with significant dissent within his party...
*
1992
The Thompson administration came out of the gate seeking to combat the recession with tax cuts and negotiations for more favourable foreign trade. Interestingly enough, an opportunity would fall into his lap midway through his first year in office that Reagan had inadvertently sown the seeds of. The mainland Chinese government had been forced to implement significant economic and social reforms in the wake of the Tiananmen Square Revolution, and Thompson met with its new President Zhao Ziyang to reach a fairly favourable trade deal in exchange for diplomatically recognising the country's government.
A similarly favourable trade deal struck with Japan and friendly relations being established with the newly seceding Soviet republics also aided America's position on the world stage under Thompson, and by 1992 his popularity had reached a high watermark; the USA emerged triumphant from the Cold War as the USSR fell, and Operation Desert Storm saw an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait quelled by UN forces, putting a 'short successful war' under Thompson's belt.
Consequently, many prominent Democrats chose to sit out the Presidential race and focus on trying to hold onto their positions in down-ballot elections. The party's eventual nominee would be the popular Governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton, whose campaign was marred with allegations of infidelity to his wife and attacks from the Republican right for his draft-dodging. If anything, the more interesting rival to Thompson was independent billionaire Ross Perot, who attacked him for his support of the North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA). Early in the race he performed well, but lost momentum after briefly dropping out and returning.
In any case, the 1992 election was a foregone conclusion to many voters, and turnout was notably low.
Thompson/Martinez (Republican): 425 EVs, 50.3%
Clinton/Dinkins (Democratic): 109 EVs, 32.1%
Perot/Stockdale (Independent): 4 EVs, 17.2%
While Clinton did improve on Dukakis' performance slightly, gaining New York thanks to his VP choice of NYC Mayor David Dinkins (the first African-American on a major presidential ticket), Thompson won another landslide victory, and Perot only managed to win over Alaska and one of Maine's congressional districts, mostly due to their sympathy for third parties rather than much real conviction to his cause. Having defeated both a leftist Democrat and a 'New Democrat' and become the first Republican to be re-elected since 1956 (and only the fourth in the party's history), and retaining a Congress sympathetic to him, Thompson looked set for a second successful term.
Things would not play out quite so smoothly, though...
Hart's 'New Democrat' credentials would be put to the test in his first term. He acquiesced to the party's left on many issues where doing so was popular, particularly infrastructure spending on technology (leading to the nickname of him and his allies as 'Atari Democrats') and stimulus funding to alleviate the farm crisis. At the same time, he did not fully restore welfare provisions to their previous levels or push for universal healthcare as left-leaning Democrats desired.
By far the most controversial topic during Hart's first term, however, proved to be gun control. In March 1981, just two months after taking office, Hart survived an assassination attempt by an insane man named John Hinkley Jr., and a push for reform of gun laws was made. Hart supported background check expansions and bans on assault weapons, but liberal Democrats felt he did not go far enough and conservatives were outraged- conspiracy theories circulated among the extreme right that Hart's assassination attempt had been staged.
As this fact implies, the Republican far right were in ascendancy in response to Hart. The ticket they nominated, Senator Paul Laxalt of Nevada for President and Senator Bob Smith of New Hampshire for Vice President, was a bit more mainstream- Laxalt had been a steadfast confidant of Reagan- but it remained greatly out of step with most Americans. Liberal Republican Jim Jeffords subsequently commented that he believed the Reagan wing of the party had prevented the Republicans regaining control of Congress in the 1982 midterms, and his perspective was vindicated by the 1984 election result.
Hart/Wright (Democratic): 525 EVs, 60.5%
Laxalt/Smith (Republican): 13 EVs, 38.7%
Hart won an even bigger landslide than in 1980, helped by a big swing in his favour in the West (aside from Laxalt's home state, the only one to flip against him), and strengthened the Democrats' position in Congress further still. Ironically, this would only increase the pressure on him from the party's left, as they believed it was time to abandon his 'New Democrat' strategy and implement a bolder agenda.
This would turn out not to be the case with his second term.
*
1988
Hart's second term was an extremely complex time for America's place in the world. New Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev was an adamant reformer and he and Hart shared a desire to de-escalate the Cold War, managing to do so through diplomatic processes including a nuclear freeze, several prominent meetings and even expressions of mutual condolences in late 1986 for each nation's recent tragedies, the Challenger disaster and the Chernobyl nuclear accident.
As a result of this, the Democrats actually avoided the 'six-year itch' in the 1986 midterms, not helped by continued conservative dominance in the Republican Party- but this would turn around dramatically by the election year. In October 1987, the 'Black Monday' stock market crash dented the strong economy that had characterised the Hart administration up to that point, and almost overnight Hart's image became that of a lame duck.
The Democrats running to succeed him were mostly liberal-leaning and wanted to push the economy in a more bold interventionist direction- they ranged from radicals like the Reverend Jesse Jackson to union-aligned politicians like Missouri Congressman Dick Gephardt. The figure to come out on top would turn out to be Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts, who benefited from his colourful profile as a Greek immigrant who rose to lead a successful leftist state government. In keeping with Democratic tradition, he balanced his ticket with a Southerner, namely Senator Bob Graham of Florida.
On the Republican side, a fierce battle emerged between the conservative wing of the party, spearheaded by Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole of Kansas, and the moderate wing, which rallied around Governor James Thompson of Illinois. Thompson managed to win out, helped by other conservatives splitting the vote against Dole and refusing to endorse him, and picked Governor of Florida Bob Martinez, a former Democrat, to try to undermine Democratic support in the South.
Thompson enjoyed a lead over Dukakis from the start, and this only extended when his campaign began to attack Dukakis over failures by his state government's furlough scheme and pollution in Massachusetts Bay. He also provided notably more moderate answers on the issues of gun control and the death penalty than Dukakis, who was further damaged by a very impersonal answer he gave to a controversial question about what he would do if his wife were murdered during the debates.
Thompson/Martinez (Republican): 466 EVs, 57.8%
Dukakis/Graham (Democratic): 71 EVs, 41.9%
Dukakis went down to the worst defeat for any Democrat in the Electoral College since 1864, with only eight states supporting him. Republican support greatly rebounded across the West and Northeast, helped by Thompson's more moderate policy agenda and Martinez's status as the first Hispanic American on a party's ticket. On top of Thompson winning the election, the Republicans gained control of the House for the first time in 34 years and the Senate for the first time in 8.
Just as with Hart, though, Thompson's pivot to the centre would be met with significant dissent within his party...
*
1992
The Thompson administration came out of the gate seeking to combat the recession with tax cuts and negotiations for more favourable foreign trade. Interestingly enough, an opportunity would fall into his lap midway through his first year in office that Reagan had inadvertently sown the seeds of. The mainland Chinese government had been forced to implement significant economic and social reforms in the wake of the Tiananmen Square Revolution, and Thompson met with its new President Zhao Ziyang to reach a fairly favourable trade deal in exchange for diplomatically recognising the country's government.
A similarly favourable trade deal struck with Japan and friendly relations being established with the newly seceding Soviet republics also aided America's position on the world stage under Thompson, and by 1992 his popularity had reached a high watermark; the USA emerged triumphant from the Cold War as the USSR fell, and Operation Desert Storm saw an Iraqi invasion of Kuwait quelled by UN forces, putting a 'short successful war' under Thompson's belt.
Consequently, many prominent Democrats chose to sit out the Presidential race and focus on trying to hold onto their positions in down-ballot elections. The party's eventual nominee would be the popular Governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton, whose campaign was marred with allegations of infidelity to his wife and attacks from the Republican right for his draft-dodging. If anything, the more interesting rival to Thompson was independent billionaire Ross Perot, who attacked him for his support of the North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA). Early in the race he performed well, but lost momentum after briefly dropping out and returning.
In any case, the 1992 election was a foregone conclusion to many voters, and turnout was notably low.
Thompson/Martinez (Republican): 425 EVs, 50.3%
Clinton/Dinkins (Democratic): 109 EVs, 32.1%
Perot/Stockdale (Independent): 4 EVs, 17.2%
While Clinton did improve on Dukakis' performance slightly, gaining New York thanks to his VP choice of NYC Mayor David Dinkins (the first African-American on a major presidential ticket), Thompson won another landslide victory, and Perot only managed to win over Alaska and one of Maine's congressional districts, mostly due to their sympathy for third parties rather than much real conviction to his cause. Having defeated both a leftist Democrat and a 'New Democrat' and become the first Republican to be re-elected since 1956 (and only the fourth in the party's history), and retaining a Congress sympathetic to him, Thompson looked set for a second successful term.
Things would not play out quite so smoothly, though...
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Here's what I think the electoral college map for Obama vs Cheney 2008 scenario would look like. I swung every state that Obama lost under 10% (including Nebraska's 1st district) to him.
Weren't Cheney's approval ratings in 2008/09 in the single digits? I feel like he'd be lucky to win a maximum of 3 states (Probably Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah).
I think some other states besides them would still go to Cheney regardless of his approval ratings. Although, they would've been closer.
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Works for me and I use darkened theme so idk what these guys are seeing or if they've got things set up to be dark as hell
Works for me and I use darkened theme so idk what these guys are seeing or if they've got things set up to be dark as hell
Namely the Black color scheme.