Coming soon: Prime Minister USA

[RI Democrat]

I've been working on this for a while and I should be ready to release the first scenario soon - I'm planning on scenarios for 2008, 2012, and 2016. This is another one of my alternate history setups, in this case based on the idea that, instead of a late 18th-century revolution, independence sort of "evolved" over time in the United States with dominion status granted in the 1850s shortly before the same happened in Canada. This also means no Civil War, as slavery would have been abolished when it was outlawed across the British Empire earlier n the 19th century, though race relations, particularly in the South, are still a major issue.

The big difference is that the U.S. is a Westminster democracy, with its systems resembling those of Britain, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. There's a largely ceremonial Governor-General with a Prime Minister who holds most of the actual executive power, and most Cabinet members are MPs in the House of Commons. The Senate exists but has less power, and governments are dependent solely on Commons majorities. In keeping with this premise, the political party structure is probably most similar to Britain's and Canada's, specifically:

The Conservative Party encompasses most of the Republican Party, with some of the conservative Democrats (primarily from the Midwest and South) as the "Red Tory" faction. They've been in government for two terms under George W. Bush, who announces his resignation in late 2007 with John McCain as the default leader.

The Labour Party encompasses most of the left-of-center economic populists, i.e. down-the-line progressive Democrats as well as some socially conservative Dems who are more left-wing on economics, the social safety net, etc, plus other leftists such as Bernie Sanders and Ralph Nader. Obama will be their default leader in 2008, but as part of the party's more moderate, "New Labour"-ish wing.

The Liberal Party encompasses most of the economically centrist "New Democrat" types along with the remaining moderate, Rockefeller Republican types. They are skeptical of too much business regulation and pro-free trade, but supportive of a social safety net and mostly left-of-center on cultural issues. Hillary Clinton is the default leader in 2008.

The National Party is a relatively recent splinter from the Conservatives, consisting mostly of hard-right and paleoconservative MPs who broke away when the Conservative Government tried to push immigration reform through in 2006. Part of the idea for the three scenarios is that they'll be gaining support at the Conservatives' expense, with movements like the Tea Party fueling them (though the Tea Party will have a different name since its historical antecedent wouldn't have occurred) and Trump becoming one of their leading spokesmen by 2016. The default leader in 2008 is Tom Tancredo.

All of the parties will have numerous alternate leaders available. (Also of interest for American political junkies: Jim Traficant appears as an Independent MP with a reputation for getting kicked out of the Commons for breaking the Rules of Order.) Labour and the Liberals are on better terms than their counterparts in Britain and Canada and negotiate non-competition agreements in certain ridings, as neither of them is likely to overtake the Conservatives alone. However, they are not a permanent coalition along the lines of Australia's Liberal-National Coalition, and they do jockey for position with each other as the "real" alternative to the Conservatives. The Conservatives and the Nationals do not have any such agreement, though circumstances might force them into one by the time 2012 rolls around.

[Patine]

Are you spying on me RI Democrat? I just happened to think of this very idea (though with a number of variations in practical details; for instance, I hadn't considered parties or candidates, and I was planning on also including Canada and maybe Bermuda and some Anglo-Caribbean nations/territories, in a Dominion of North America using the old US-Canada union map made some years ago on this forum) yesterday, though I didn't think there'd be much interest in the modern community (some of the older posters here may have shown more interest though). I'm serious, and not making this up.

[RI Democrat]

That's interesting. While I've always been kind of fascinated by the hypothetical of a U.S.-Canada merger, the problem is that Canada's population is so small by comparison that I'd have to keep their seat count relatively low or assume that somehow everyone agreed to let Canada have far fewer people per riding than the U.S. Even when I did that "United Commonwealth" scenario a while back, I had to give Britain a slightly larger quota per seat in order to give Canada, Australia, and New Zealand about the same number of seats combined as Britain had.

[streiner]

This is a tremendous idea.

[RI Democrat]

The ridings have descriptive place names along the lines of Britain or Canada, as opposed to just District 1, 2, 3, etc. Nancy Pelosi, for example, represents a riding called "San Francisco North & Central." I came up with this idea when I was messing around with Dave's Redistricting to see what the congressional maps might look like without any gerrymandering or deliberate creation of majority-minority districts, so the ridings are loosely based on that.

The Pauls are around, though they are maverick members of the Conservative Party rather than indies, at least as of 2008. I had thought that perhaps libertarian conservatives would end up migrating to the National Party and still haven't decided if I'm going to do that for the 2012 or 2016 scenarios. While they might have some common ground on economic policies, the libertarian conservatives also tend to be anti-war whereas some of the Nationals are hawks. And Trump - who will be one of the main Nationals in 2016 - is actually somewhat moderate on economic issues and probably has very little in common with libertarians.

Most of the independents are sort of idiosyncratic centrists or populist small-c conservatives who don't quite fit into any of the four major parties. Jim Traficant, Walter Jones, Walt Minnick, and John Spratt are the ones with strong chances of winning seats in 2008.

[RI Democrat]

Incidentally, I'm also developing the backstory in more detail on an alternate history forum here:

http://althistoria.proboards.com/thread/484/america-parliamentary-democracy-2002-present

BTW, does anyone participate in the original AlternateHistory.com forums, or know the mods there? I registered there about a month ago but never got my activation e-mail, and have received no responses through the "Contact Us" form either.

[Patine]

I get fictitious flags and maps pop up a lot from the Alternate History and other similar sites while Google searching for obscure, but real world, flags and maps, some of which (the Alternate History ones) look quite intriguing and colorful - but no, I'm not an active participant, I'm afraid.

[RI Democrat]

Cant wait will you have real canidates running for seats whether it be people who ran for president,senatros,rep.,or governors? i think it could be very intresting also ill read up on the forum when are you planning a release?

Mostly Reps and Senators, with a few Governors, presidential candidates, and cabinet members included as well, along with RL failed congressional candidates from cycles over the past 10 years to fill out all the spots. However, some of Bush's RL second-term Cabinet members are not running for re-election in the 2008 scenario - I think I only included Rice, Gates, Leavitt, and Mukasey.

[RI Democrat]

Hopefully by the end of the month. I need to tweak some of the endorsers and population statistics, and then decide if I'm going to add any fictional events.

[lok1999]

Any updates since April?

[RI Democrat]

Yeah, sorry about this - I got sidetracked for a while but I'll go ahead and post the beta sometime this week. I just need to fix a few things with the political units file, but I'm almost done with that. It doesn't yet have any events, but I'll let you all take a look and see if you think it needs any.

[Patine]

@RI Democrat Did you get my latest email (not directly related to this thread, but since you're you posted, I thought I'd ask here)?

[RI Democrat]

Not sure - let me go check. I don't always check that address very often.

Anyway, I do have a beta version ready. (Fair warning: I've noticed some odd browser redirects lately. I scanned my system with Norton and I don't think I have any malware, but I'd advise that everyone run whatever security program you have on this download.)

http://www.filedropper.com/pmusa-2008

This should work with the PMI Canada or UK engine. I've also included an Excel file that lists the ridings in the rough order that they are declared so you don't have to waste too much time going back and forth trying to figure out what's changed since last time. If you type the party name into the "Winner" column, it will automatically tally results, gains, and losses for you.

Feedback is very welcome!

 

[lok1999]

What are the CD number equivalents
 of these ridings

i.e: Indianapolis= IN-7

     State of Delaware: DE-AL

[RI Democrat]

They aren't based on real-life districts (with the exception of Oregon's, I think, because I had a hard time finding the numbers I was looking for). Single-seat states remain single-seat states. The others are based mostly on numbers that I was able to calculate with Dave's Redistricting App at http://gardow.com/davebradlee/redistricting/.

Lok, did you end up trying the scenario? What kind of results did you get?

[lok1999]

19 hours ago, RI Democrat said:

They aren't based on real-life districts (with the exception of Oregon's, I think, because I had a hard time finding the numbers I was looking for). Single-seat states remain single-seat states. The others are based mostly on numbers that I was able to calculate with Dave's Redistricting App at http://gardow.com/davebradlee/redistricting/.

Lok, did you end up trying the scenario? What kind of results did you get?

Playing as Obama (LAB-IL): 153

In coalition with Clinton (LIB-NY): 276

[willpaddyg]

The filedropper link doesn't work anymore - any chance of another way to download as I'd love to try this and see what's in store for 2012 and 2016!

 

[lok1999]

8 minutes ago, willpaddyg said:

The filedropper link doesn't work anymore - any chance of another way to download as I'd love to try this and see what's in store for 2012 and 2016!

 

I noticed that as well. You should probably use a file sharing site that doesn't invalidate the link after a couple of weeks.

 

On another point, could you also re upload the 2015 Alberta campaign?

[willpaddyg]

On 8/29/2016 at 6:43 AM, willpaddyg said:

The filedropper link doesn't work anymore - any chance of another way to download as I'd love to try this and see what's in store for 2012 and 2016!

 

Is there any chance of this? Perhaps uploading it to the 270soft Campaigns site?

[RI Democrat]

Sorry about that. Can you guys recommend a better free file-sharing site? I'll try and get both of them back up in the next couple days.

In the meantime, any feedback from anyone who did try it?

(I'd be happy to hear candidate suggestions, BTW - I had to dig pretty deep into the well of obscure losing candidates to get all the parties onto the ballot where I wanted them, and that was with the National Party not contesting every seat and Labour-Liberal non-competition agreements in certain ridings.)

[victorraiders]

41 minutes ago, RI Democrat said:

Sorry about that. Can you guys recommend a better free file-sharing site? I'll try and get both of them back up in the next couple days.

In the meantime, any feedback from anyone who did try it?

(I'd be happy to hear candidate suggestions, BTW - I had to dig pretty deep into the well of obscure losing candidates to get all the parties onto the ballot where I wanted them, and that was with the National Party not contesting every seat and Labour-Liberal non-competition agreements in certain ridings.)

hi upload in mediafire create account here works fine without bugs and delets i upload my edited scenarios to my friend

[lok1999]

So, how's progress on getting PM USA and Alberta 2015 back up going along?

[Patine]

On September 7, 2016 at 10:55 AM, victor1313 said:

hi upload in mediafire create account here works fine without bugs and delets i upload my edited scenarios to my friend

@RI DemocratPlease do NOT upload in Mediafire. And I think I've also asked victor1313 to stop doing so too (obviously, he just ignored that without comment). All those ads and false links that pop up are VERY annoying. As I told victor1313, you should be able start an account to put things in the TheorySpark scenario archive.

[RI Democrat]

I have an account to post entries at campaigns.270soft.com, but I still have to include a link in the post - how do I do that if not through a file sharing site? I just edited the Alberta entry to include a Mediafire link but I didn't see another option for including a file.

[RI Democrat]

OK, maybe I just figured it out - does this link work for people?

http://campaigns.270soft.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/PM-USA-2008.zip