Anybody else feel like they’re picking up what the cat man is putting down? While also feeling like you may actually be losing your mind a little too…

Seeking a third term to finish his construction of a new dawn for the republic once and for all, incumbent President Philip La Follette has rallied his supporters within the party to almost guarantee his renomination after four years of intraparty purges of his detractors following his narrow triumph over John L. Lewis in 1948. Yet, inspired by former Vice President Lena Morrow Lewis’s deathbed plea to “save our party’s democratic soul,” burgeoning efforts from within statewide opposition groups have sought to mount opposition from within the presidential nominating process as a means of reconquering state parties.
Presidential portrait of Philip F. La Follette.
Philip F. La Follette: The heir to one of the nation’s great political dynasties, Philip Fox La Follette would emerge from the Great War and Revolution as a war hero, a reputation that, with his last name, would carry the once outspokenly anti-war young man to the Governor’s office, Lindbergh’s Supreme Court, and finally the upper echelons of the Army, where his ability to avoid taking positions on controversial issues would win him the Farmer-Labor nomination for the presidency in 1944–and finally the White House itself. Alienating much of his constituency from the outset with his determination to prosecute the war effort to its fullest, La Follette would respond to the battlefield use of two atomic weapons by Japan with a series of nuclear strikes upon the Japanese mainland that would claim final victory for the United States at the cost of the lives of over two million Japanese civilians. Appointing General Douglas MacArthur, hardly a Farmer-Laborite, as Secretary of State, La Follette has pursued the rebuilding and rearmament of a ring of anti-communist nations in Asia while pledging to avoid any future war.
Declaring that, with the age of war having closed, the republic must “win the peace,” La Follette allied himself with much of Charles Lindbergh’s base of support, saluting alongside the fascists of Alabama as he presided over the sharpest GDP growth in American history and buoyed it with executive orders to nationalize the healthcare industry while engaging in the mass sterilization of Americans and constructing an interstate highway system and hydroelectric power grid without congressional approval. With an investigation into the disappearance of Smedley Butler yielding evidence of an assassination organized under former President Lindbergh and a litany of arrests of leading anti-La Follette figures stuning the nation, the opposition would unite in an unprecedented impeachment effort.
Now, months after having saved his presidency from the first impeachment in American history, 55 year old incumbent President Philip F. La Follette has sought a new mandate for his call to “win the peace” in a quest for a third term; further, the President has taken his first major post-impeachment use of executive power to reorganize the cabinet into umbrella departments of Peace, Production, and Prosperity. Pointing to the successful slaying of the dragon of inflation and the first space launches in human history, Phil has sought the passage of a constitutional amendment reducing the legislative power to that of a veto and expanding that of the presidency while instituting a nationwide referendum system. Although practically guaranteed renomination after his purging of opponents from national power within Farmer-Labor following his narrow 1948 triumph over John L. Lewis, La Follette’s re-envisioning of Farmer-Labor has nonetheless continued to fuel a dogged but disorganized opposition movement despite the winning over of former opponents such as Washington’s Scoop Jackson, who nearly mounted a bid against La Follette himself.
Conservative former President Alf Landon, socialist Representative Norman Thomas, and the widow of Franklin Roosevelt, Anna Eleanor, campaigning in New York.
Nationwide Opposition Candidates:
With efforts to discourage any opposition campaigns in full swing, only one major figure has stepped forth to win ballot access in most states continuing to hold primaries, although many states have seen independent organizing efforts in tandem with the shared ultimate goal of the demise of fascism.
Alf Landon: 65 year old former President Alf Landon has his cross to bear. Refusing to endorse against Charles Lindbergh after withdrawing from the party’s 1936 primaries, Landon’s inaction as his 1932 campaign manager Rush Holt put Lindbergh over the line would see the Lone Eagle’s flight path on a course to the White House, from where he would crush the remaining loyal Landonites in the midterm elections of 1938. Landon emerged triumphant in 1928 by pitching his moderation as a formula for long term Farmer-Labor dominance of government, only to see the party implode under his watch. Losing the popular vote only to win a contingent election via the machinations of Clarence Dill, Landon's presidency proved eventful, most notable, perhaps for its domestic inaction. While concentrating his focus upon the Molotov-Lundeen Pact establishing friendly diplomatic relations with the Soviet government in Russia, a policy Landon championed as the catalyst for the wide scale withdrawal of foreign forces from American soil, Landon would cut economic aid across the board and refuse to bail out banks & big business in the face of record unemployment rates following the worldwide depression brought on by the collapse of the Japanese economic bubble, while focusing on driving up interest rates to control inflation.
Pitted against a hostile Congress led by Clarence Dill, the man whose legislative acumen carried him to the White House and who now stands as La Follette’s loyal Secretary of Peace, Landon found much of his party arrayed against him in the face of a veto of the Thomas Bill nationalizing natural gas distribution & the telephone industry despite prior promises from Landon to support both proposals. With the complete breakdown of legislative-executive relations, Dill forced through the Recovery Act of 1931, the largest omnibus bill in American history, enacting vast economic reforms over the disgruntlement of Landon. Winning the primaries of 1932 in a landslide, only to lose at the convention in the face of the backroom dealings of Clarence Dill, Landon would fail in a 1936 comeback attempt that would inadvertently pave the way to fascism.
In partisan exile, Landon would unsuccessfully organize against President Lindbergh, only to watch his followers be resoundingly defeated in the midterm elections of 1938; finding himself at the upper echelons of power anew as an unofficial negotiator with the United Kingdom under President Luce, Landon would organize political comeback in 1945 by winning election to the United States Senate after the death of George Norris. Working from there on policy issues such as advocacy of the Parliament of Nations and support for presidential programs such as the Interstate Highway system, Landon and his remaining caucus of conservatives have been at the fore of anti-La Follette intraparty organizing from the campaign of John L. Lewis to the movement for impeachment. Throwing his hat into the ring once more, Landon has used his stature to argue that only his brand of moderation can resurrect the Farmer-Labor of old as a viable party independent of the control of the fascists brought to power by his own neglect.
Commodore Robert A. Heinlein photographed shortly before his role in the Attack on Pearl Harbor. Heinlein has mounted a presidential bid separate entirely from other opposition efforts.
Robert A. Heinlein: Launched to international fame as the senior naval officer during the American attack on Pearl Harbor, 45-year-old former Commodore Robert A. Heinlein has used the events of December 7th, 1941 as a springboard for a lucrative career as a science fiction author. Emphasizing scientific accuracy in novels with titles such as Red Planet and Rocket Ship Galileo, Heinlein would step from the military and literary arenas to the political at the urging of his publisher James Laughlin and associate Ezra Pound, the poet and former New York Governor who has attempted to revive the American social credit movement. In turn, with Laughlin, Pound, and office holders such as Senators Hans Wight and John Horne Blackmore and Representative Solon Earl Low in tow, Heinlein has capitalized on his war hero stature to campaign for the presidency entirely unrelated to those of every other candidate campaigning against La Follette and instead intended to revitalite the American social credit movement.
Falling curiously between the social credit wing of Farmer-Labor and radicals of the Liberty League, Heinlein has described himself as a libertarian while supporting a social credit monetary system balancing a nationalized monetary supply with a requirement of a 100% reserve on money lending as described in his seminal novel For Us, The Living; further, he has coupled his experience in the Navy with his science fiction work to argue that he is uniquely able to continue President La Follette’s attempts to reach for the stars through a space program and argued for a currency backed by the very goods owned by the government itself. A firm believer in the concept of a national draft and a militarist at heart, Heinlein has resurrected positions such as support for the repeal of the Jesus Amendment, the concomitant secularization of the United States government, and support for a constitutional amendment requiring a national referendum prior to any declaration of war resulting in the drafting of supporters.
A comic book promoting Sid McMath for office.
Regional Opposition Candidates:
Note: If voting for the regional opposition, please leave a comment indicating to whom you wish your support to be counted.
With opposition Farmer-Labor organizations persisting around the nation and fighting to recapture control of their state parties, anti-La Follette factions across the nation have rallied around regional candidates in states permitting competitive primaries in an attempt to rise the tide of the down ballot opposition. Thus, all of the following candidates are only on the ballots of one or several states.
John Haynes Holmes: 73 year old Unitarian minister John Haynes Holmes served as a leading advisor to William Jennings Bryan, guiding the post-revolutionary nation through the unsteady waters of foreign occupation as he used the White House pulpit to preach his gospel of pacifist socialism. Playing a key role in the pardons of former revolutionaries, Holmes would serve in Alf Landon’s inaugural diplomatic delegation to Bolshevik Russia before reluctantly supporting Charles Lindbergh for his opposition to war with Japan. Nonetheless, a consistent opponent of fascism from his days as a seminary student denouncing young Governor Milford W. Howard’s new order in Alabama, Holmes has been a consistent bulwark in the struggle against the party’s fascist wing, renouncing President La Follette once it became clear that he would not end the Third Pacific War and using the word impeachment as early as the atomic bombings of 1945, which Holmes has denounced as a violation of the Jesus Amendment. Running on restoring the party’s former core of Christian socialism, Holmes has been put forth across New England as the flag bearer of the opposition, with a fundraising team led by widow Anna Eleanor Roosevelt, a distant cousin of the former President.
Sid McMath: Hoisting the banner of opposition across the Deep South and Southwest is 40 year old Arkansas Senator Sid McMath. Primarying longtime incumbent Farmer-Laborite Garrett Whiteside in 1948 only to face off against the organization of Progressive strategist Osro Cobb, known as the “wizard of Arkansas” for his success in what was once the nation’s most Farmer-Laborite state, McMath would win an upset victory running on his record as a war hero and ties to Smedley Butler and Evans Fordyce Carlson. Horrified at revelations of the murder of Butler by the Lindbergh Administration, McMath would vote for the removal of Philip La Follette after a midnight visit from his former commanding officer in the Marine Corps David Shoup, transforming himself from an enigma to a pariah overnight as fascists across the nation have descended upon Arkansas to challenge him in 1954, with La Follette forces already organizing behind challenger Orval Faubus in a move that has placed McMath in an unexpected alliance with former rival Osro Cobb.
An interview with Governor Frank Zeidler.
Jimmy Hoffa: 39 year old labor leader Jimmy Hoffa inherited the mantle of leadership of the Congress of Industrial Organizations from longtime President John L. Lewis after the arrest of Lewis and his deputy Tony Boyle. A moderate with sympathies to both the party’s right and left seen as balancing with fellow CIO leader Walter Reuther’s socialism, Hoffa has put the interests of labor above all from his days leading the Teamsters Union. A fiery speaker who many credit with saving the CIO from collapse after the arrest of its leonine leader, Hoffa’s name is only on three ballots, but he has emerged as the choice of handfuls of CIO-affiliated delegates across the nation as a protest vote against the continued nationalization of the General Trades Union.
Jerry Voorhis: The Senate’s sole member from the Single Tax Party, California’s Jerry Voorhis has nonetheless served as the lightning rod around which disparate California anti-La Follette Farmer-Laborites have organized owing to the state ordinances permitting political crossfiling. Having described “the Kingdom of God” as being a world “all producing wealth is owned publicly” in his Claremont University thesis, Voorhis would oppose President Lindbergh from the beginning as a Farmer-Labor socialist before joining the Single Tax Party in 1946, reviving it in the state of California in an attempt to find a new vehicle for his politics. Seen as a contender for the presidency regardless of party affiliation, Voorhis’s draft movement among California oppositionists has been heralded as the first step of the left wing knight’s hypothetical return to a rebuilt Farmer-Labor Party. Among his surprising supporters has been former Lindbergh-La Follette stalwart Reverend Robert P. Shuler, who has praised Voorhis for crossing ideological and party lines to defend his right to free speech in moralistic attacks on Henry Luce’s romantic life.
Frank P. Zeidler: 40 year old Wisconsin Governor Frank P. Zeidler has stood as a socialist in the heart of La Follette country, successfully resisting primary challenges to maintain his grasp on the office amidst a tenuous alliance with Joseph McCarthy. Entering politics following the death of his rising star brother Carl, Frank has accepted the ballot line of the opposition in several Midwestern states following the death of former Senator Herbert S. Bigelow, once anticipated as a socialist challenger himself. A socialist to the core, Zeidler supporters point to his history of fiscal success and balanced budgets as evidence of his acumen in economic management and ability to control inflation as a possible future chief executive.
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