Everyone who's been into Alternate History for more than five minutes knows who Huey Long is, so we can skip that part and go straight to the question: What if he hadn't been assassinated in 1935? Or, more to the point, What if Huey Long hadn't been assassinated in 1935, and the author isn't trying to make some President Huey Long AH?
Let's imagine the Louisiana Strongman lives, which of course leads to the next logical step, imagining what he does for the 1936 Presidential Election.
Now, allegedly Long was a strong enough candidate that Roosevelt and his campaign manager were somewhat worried, and the Governor had assembled a coterie of like-minded individuals witht he purpose of turning the Share Our Wealth Program into a national campaign for president. This is where we find ourselves with 2 possibilities:
1. That Long himself would run, gathering the support of enough New Deal dissidents, populist figures and dissaffected ex-New Dealers, from Father Coughlin to the ex-EPIC people in California and whoever else he might find, do well enough to disrupt the campaign and use the failed 1936 campaign to get exposure for a 1940 run. Ideally (for Long), a Third Party run in '36 would ensure a Republican victory and leave the path open for the next Democratic Convention, but the fact that the Republicans saw fit to nominate a man such as Alf Landon means that the best Long could hope might be numbers similar to that of Dixiecrats Strom Thurmond in '48 or George Wallace in '68.
2. Run a surrogate candidate for the Third Party Share Our Wealth program, which has the benefit of not exposing himself but the massive downsize of probably not getting him the exposure needed, unless he did the bulk of the campaigning himself anyway, or the sacrificial lamb not being strong enough, even with the support of Long, Coughlin and whoever, to put a dent into Roosevelt's nigh invulnerable machine.
For the sake of keeping things interesting, we can imagine Scenario 1, with Long getting from 6 to 10 million votes and a couple of southern states, maybe give Landon a third lily white New England state to his collection, and trying to challenge Roosevelt's Third Term project four years later, as Scenario 2 would probably just be Senator Long realizing running Some Dude was not the best strategy and fading into the miasma that is the 1930s-1940s Conservative Senate.
Long story short, would Huey Long living matter all that much, in the medium and long term, for the Democratic Party and American politics?
Let's imagine the Louisiana Strongman lives, which of course leads to the next logical step, imagining what he does for the 1936 Presidential Election.
Now, allegedly Long was a strong enough candidate that Roosevelt and his campaign manager were somewhat worried, and the Governor had assembled a coterie of like-minded individuals witht he purpose of turning the Share Our Wealth Program into a national campaign for president. This is where we find ourselves with 2 possibilities:
1. That Long himself would run, gathering the support of enough New Deal dissidents, populist figures and dissaffected ex-New Dealers, from Father Coughlin to the ex-EPIC people in California and whoever else he might find, do well enough to disrupt the campaign and use the failed 1936 campaign to get exposure for a 1940 run. Ideally (for Long), a Third Party run in '36 would ensure a Republican victory and leave the path open for the next Democratic Convention, but the fact that the Republicans saw fit to nominate a man such as Alf Landon means that the best Long could hope might be numbers similar to that of Dixiecrats Strom Thurmond in '48 or George Wallace in '68.
2. Run a surrogate candidate for the Third Party Share Our Wealth program, which has the benefit of not exposing himself but the massive downsize of probably not getting him the exposure needed, unless he did the bulk of the campaigning himself anyway, or the sacrificial lamb not being strong enough, even with the support of Long, Coughlin and whoever, to put a dent into Roosevelt's nigh invulnerable machine.
For the sake of keeping things interesting, we can imagine Scenario 1, with Long getting from 6 to 10 million votes and a couple of southern states, maybe give Landon a third lily white New England state to his collection, and trying to challenge Roosevelt's Third Term project four years later, as Scenario 2 would probably just be Senator Long realizing running Some Dude was not the best strategy and fading into the miasma that is the 1930s-1940s Conservative Senate.
Long story short, would Huey Long living matter all that much, in the medium and long term, for the Democratic Party and American politics?