#like man I get not trusting Harris as a centrist but candidate B is just throwing out unvarnished racism

[snugglyporos]

// your update on the election

choice A: a black woman who was once a cop who may not be the perfect embodiment of every liberal dream but who is certainly different and now has the endorsement of Taylor Swift

choice B: a man who claimed on live tv that immigrants are eating dogs in America and that we needed a bloody story to deport people

truly, how could we choose

[evilelitest2]

Who should each candidate pick as their VP?

Oh this is a fun question, ok lets talk through the major cannidates who I think have a real chance of winning

First however, what is the point of a VP?  Well they play 3 major roles

1) They take over if you die...which matters

2) They can do official duties that nobody else can

3 )Finally and sadly most importantly, they help you electorally by bringing in a different segment of the party.  So in 2016, Trump was struggling with the evangelical vote, but bringing in Mike Pence, one of their own, really got them into his campaign.  Obama was (rightly) worried that white America wouldn’t vote for a black man, so he got an old centrist white dude to be his VP.  This is doubly important after difficult primaries, because you need to bring the rest of the party into your fold, which is what Clinton failed to do when she nominated Tim Kaine.  

So ok, what does each of the major candates need for a VP.

Warren has many options, she can try to reach out to the centrist wing or she can try to get Sanders die hards on her side.  I think her two biggest weaknesses as a cannidate are 

A) Being a women, a lot of democrats are going t obe like “oh nooo women can’t win wahhhh” and she might want to pick a man VP to make people feel less insecure

B) Since her victory would come at the expense of Biden, she would want to push back the view of her campaign being too white.  

So a PoC VP is a must, and likely a man, though maybe Warren would just be super daring and pick Stacey Abrams so she can compete in Georgia more..  I don’t think Sanders should be VP, I think he should be Labor Secretary.  

Personally I think she should pick Castro, both because he makes Texas Competitive, he can help with the Latino vote, he is very competent and I think they have similar technocratic approaches.  Also I really wish Castro had done better in the primary.  

Sanders has a unique problem, because....well he might die in office, he is 78 years old, had a heart attack and is dealing with the most high stress job on the planet.  And unlike Biden, who also might die in office, Sanders has to pick a VP who he can trust to continue a progressive legacy, if he picked Kristen Gillibrand to be his VP, she could take the country in a direction Sanders wouldn’t like.  So I think his only real option is Elizabeth Warren, because she is the only progression with enough experience who could continue his work if he died in office.  

So for Biden, his win will come at the expense of the progressive wing of the party, and his campaign platform of “only a man can beat Trump” will rub a lot of women the wrong way, so he would do well to choose a female VP.  He also should pick a young person who makes up for his being old. Anyways, he has three good options for VP.

1) Bring in somebody from the progressive wing to make them less upset at his election, and since AOC is too young, and Sanders is too hold, that would likely be Warren.  Which is why claims that she is trying to make herself his VP are silly, she is already an attractive option

2) Find an African American candidate who is closely aligned to his policies, like Cory Booker or maybe even Kamala Harris, or Stacey Abrams who secure his connection to the African American population who helped get him his primary win and are necessary for 2020

3) Choose a member of his own wing of the party who is younger and more dynamic.  

So for Biden, I would say his VP should be either Elizabeth Warren or Stacey Abrams.  I didn’t put as much thought into Biden because like...I don’t care.  

Apparently Sanders has already floated this idea, and of also making her Treasury Secretary which is brilliant 

[emblem-333]

In Retrospect, William Jennings Bryan and the Election of 1896

What we are currently seeing in the infancy of the 2020 Presidential Election is the focusing of the electorate on economics rather than foreign policy or a less pressing issue, like “honesty” and “integrity” which usually dominate campaigns. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren are the favorites to win the nomination in a hotly contested Democratic primary that isn’t yet finished fielding potential candidates. But these two specifically have declared unapologetic warfare against Wall Street. They put in simple terms explaining why the middle class is in its dilapidated state is the aristocratic class hoards all the capital amassed by the proletariat. While centrist candidates Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand dance around whether they’ll dismantle the private insurance industry, Sanders is the only one decisively saying yes, he would go as far to implement his Medicare-For-All legislation.

There are many imitators, but only one O.G. What we’re seeing is the beginning stages of the fruits of the labor the Sanders 2016 campaign planted turning over the establishments apple cart and paving the way for likeminded, younger representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and IIhan Omar to carry on the mantle for his various causes like Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt did for William Jennings Bryan. Championing the cause for the downtrodden middle class and poor masses left behind by an oligarchic United States.

Before William Jennings Bryan the Democratic Party was made up of fiscal conservatives laissez-faire style of economics, strict adherent to the gold standard and primarily the party of big business. The Republicans of the late 19th century weren’t different in anyway besides treating black people objectively better than the Democrats. Though in this era Jim Crow laws ran rampant in the south and the GOP did little to resist the disengagement of blacks. Any progress accomplished by the Union winning the American Civil War, the subsequent Civil Rights Act of 1866 and 1875 and the concurrent Reconstruction Era in the South became undone completely in this time period of the 1890’s.

Just like their predecessors both parties kicked the can down the road when it came to the plight of blacks. As both parties stomaches fattened as a result of getting cozier with Wall Street, the railroad industry and the gold standard, the southern and midwestern farmer wasted away thanks to rampant inflation and bearing the brunt of the various panics and depressions in the 1870’s and 1890’s. Historians rather assume flatly Reconstruction ended because of the American people’s and the Republican Party losing collective interest in protecting blacks in the Deep South, when in actuality the Panic of 1873 cost the U.S serious capital and thus by 1877 federal troops were withdrawn from the Confederate states.

Debates ragged on whether the United State should do the unthinkable: become the first country to abandon the gold standard for a currency system favoring silver. The topic arose multiple times since the 1870s. You’d find silver leaning men in both the Republican and Democratic parties. Populist James B. Weaver won 8.5 percent of the popular vote campaigning on the free coinage of silver. But the movement truly came of age under the man William Jennings Bryan. The 36-year-old former Nebraskan representative commanded the Democratic Party and held a tight grip around its throat from 1896 up until his retirement in 1915. In those sixteen-years Bryan transformed the Democrats from a party of fiscal conservatism to pro-labor with more emphasis on aiding the yeomen farmer. While Bryan himself would never see the White House, his likeminded followers Woodrow Wilson and F.D.R carried the torch for him.

Playing the ultra-boring, but simultaneously fun “Campaign Trail” choose your own adventure game on AmericanHistoryusa.com I played as Bryan and in order to win I toned down the radical rhetoric somewhat. Instead of advocating on the unlimited free coinage of silver, I pivoted to a moderate stance of coinage at a 30-to-1 ratio to allow the treasury time to adjust to the effects of bimetallism and to avoid another run on the hoards of gold the U.S held. Taking home 248 electoral votes and 51.8 percent of the popular vote Bryan steals Illinois from the establishment candidate William McKinley to secure the presidency. The is the text the game reads upon victory.

Congratulations! You have won the 1896 election.

"The Great Commoner" will soon be President of the United States! Nobody with your political views has ever sniffed the Presidency, let alone won it, and with that in mind your supporters are rioting frenziedly in the streets. The sweetest speech of all will be your victory speech tomorrow in Lincoln, Nebraska. Prepare to enact your reform agenda and most importantly the free coinage of silver.”

Yup. I sure will. If only the game allowed you to be president after securing the Oval Office then I can try out this radical departure from the norm. But, alas, somethings are meant to be left to the imagination.

So, Jennings Bryan is President. Instantly the United States financial sectors panic and rally around opposition to halt Bryan’s measures. In the midterm election of 1898 the Democrats, fully taken over by Silverites, wrangler control of the House from the Republicans and a moderate, but nonetheless, radical change to our currency system is implemented. By 1899 the United States is off of the gold standard. Soon, Japan, Great Britain and France follows. Albeit reluctantly. This is how it happened in real life. Only the United States was the last to be brought to heel eventually in 1933 when Franklin Roosevelt did what Bryan dreamt of for so long.

Even in defeat Bryan’s hold on the party became so strong he purged the gold standard Democrats out of the party solidifying his silver coalition of politicians sympathetic towards the farmer and laborers. No reason to believe this doesn’t happen if Bryan is elected President. In fact, it probably happens sooner than it did in real-life.

Bryan was a staunch advocate of a federal income tax, which fully was realized in the certification of the sixteenth amendment in 1909 under William Howard Taft. Initially, Bryan opposed the creation of the Federal Reserve, which happened under Woodrow Wilson. Bryan worries the Fed it gave bankers too much control of the monetary system. The bill was promptly rewritten to suit Bryan’s needs and he voted for the creation of the Federal Reserve. I think this still happens in a timeline which Bryan is election and probably sooner. Swept into office amidst populistic fervor unseen since the days of Andrew Jackson Bryan, though a novice, most likely utilizes the bully pulpit and we see Henry Teller lead the charge on the Republican side and we are witnessed to the most eventful first term of a U.S President in the country’s history.

Bryan calls for the direct election of senators once in office, subtlety supports women’s suffrage and usually this is the part in alternate history articles where the radical, moralistic protagonists falls for his idealism. Except this is all happening during the Spanish-American War and Bryan could have been blind, deaf and dumb while serving in office and the U.S still decisively runs the imperials out of Cuba and the Philippians. Only Bryan had little interest in cultivating an American Empire. An anti-imperialist and pacifist, Bryan saw war as necessary but never actively sought a fight. He saw the United States as the moral arbiter in the Cubans fight for independence. If elected there is no subsequent Philippine-American War and no further bloodshed. The United States gains serious credit among future generations.

Hawaii is not annexed and probably never really is. For all the good I can say about Bryan he was an anti-imperialist, but since he and his party didn’t want to absolve any country not made up of predominantly Whites. Hawaii therefore becomes the smallest independent country on Earth... until a later administration absorbs it or some other imperialist country, like Russia, Japan or Great Britain does it. Most likely Japan. So Bryan inadvertently washes away U.S military involvement in World War Two.

The war carries Bryan to a second-term of the presidency... only to be cut short by a bullet months after his inauguration. His vice-President former Silver Republican Henry M. Teller succeeds him.

If the United States were to abandon the gold Standard, thirty-five-years prior to Japan were the first to do it, this helps the farmer and for a brief time the country recognizes Jefferson’s dream of a country built and supported off the backs of the Yeomen farmer. Again, for a brief time. The loss of their vigorous champion Bryan farmers cannot find a suitable replacement to rally around and this allows for the big business friendly, gold standard leaning Democrats to repopulate the party nominating New York judge Alton B. Parker. A moderate trust busting advocate for labor, Parker benefits from the meteoric rise of Theodore Roosevelt and swings into the presidency since both of the main parties are fractured in the aftermath of Bryan’s effects on the political scene.

No Roosevelt means no William Howard Taft. Meaning no splitting of the Republican Party in 1912. With neither close enough to sniff the presidency Wisconsin senator Robert La. Follette is nominated in 1912 and defeats Democratic Speaker of the House Champ Clark and becomes America’s first President to serve two consecutive terms since Ulysses S. Grant. Since Wisconsin is populated with German immigrants, La Follette interferes into World War One on the side of the Central Powers. Theodore Roosevelt is given the role of Secretary of State and the German Empire crushes the Allied Powers at the Marne near Paris with the help of the United States.

A victorious Germany means no rise of Adolph Hitler. No Third Reich. No Holocaust. Great Britain’s awesome power is greatly diminished, never to recover. The ninetieth century is the German century. As it originally was supposed to be.

Back to the gold versus silver debate. I am sorry.

Eventually the gold standard is readopted and the silver versus gold issue goes on until Richard Nixon flatly ditches gold in favor of neither metal backed currency. Still you see Bryan’s ideas infecting the parties for decades after his death.

Instead of Bryan’s ideas manifesting themselves in Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt, they do so in Robert La Follette. The U.S becomes an economic power house rather a military one. Perhaps we’re all better off because of this.