TLIAW: Profiles in Cowardice
- Thread starter Alexander North
- Start date
Oh, yeah, forgot to state this clearly earlier- the TL's over, unless I decide to return to this universe again, but I'm still willing to answer people's questions about it.
Great tl.
I am curious tohugh. How do the two parties' coalitions differ from OTL?
I am curious tohugh. How do the two parties' coalitions differ from OTL?
As of 2023? The most concise way to describe it would be that the Reformers are like the OTL 2008-2012-ish Republicans, but replace the Rockefeller Republicans with Blue Dog Democrats and make them warier of going low and/or getting their hands dirty. The Democrats are more 1/3 OTL's 2020-ish UK Labour Party, 2/3 OTL's 2019-2020-ish Democrats but replace the Blue Dog Democrats with Rockefeller Republicans, add more Tom Steyer and Bill Halter types, and make them more willing to go low and/or get their hands dirty.
So Reformers as a weird mix of more _and_ less(not willing to go extralegal) populist than our GOP while democrats are more socially/economically liberal but in some ways more antipopulist than evne OTL(more rockefeller reps+elitist elements in labour)?
Pretty much, yeah. Populist Democrats who hold elected office do exist, but they're de facto confined to parts of the South and Midwest; as for the "Rockefeller Republicans" in TTL's Democratic Party, Charlie Baker is a pretty good model for where I'd imagined them being politically. (I intended at one point to have a throwaway line mentioning him as a Democratic New York Senator, but forgot to include it.)
So ironically even more regionally polarized election maps between coasts/interior but overall less polarized or dramatic politics than OTL, basically?
Sorry, I don't quite understand the question. What are you specifically asking about?
Basically, yeah.
The same sort of thing happened to TTL California that happened to OTL Wisconsin under Scott Walker in terms of gerrymandering, suppression of organized labor, and the like, just in the 1990s rather than the 2010s. I think I dropped a few hints that Walker himself was involved in Californian politics ITTL, but I don't remember if I ended up cutting those out.
