[X] Accept an offer by Senator Long and a collection of southern Governors who offered to find unemployed southern workers to reopen the factories.
I don't particularly trust Option 3 to work. It's more of what nearly fucked us during the election, just reiterating our plans to people who are tired of hearing about them. Something has to change, and I'm not feeling pliable to giving Reed what he wants. Long's deal is the quickest route we have to keeping our economy
going for Long enough to implement our own policies as well.
I fully expect it'll kick off some violence, ala Bloody Harlan, but it's better than the alternatives.
Crushing the strikers means going back on one of our election platforms in a major way while making it kind of impossible for them to trust us after we've broken their teeth with an iron gauntlet and just offered them a velvet glove.
Reiterating our current plan is a mistake we've already made, and I'd like to point out that
in the update it's mentioned that people are basically getting tired of our promises. I really wish we could just lean on what we've previously said, but it's not connecting with people. As has previously been said by
@Pillar 0F Atlan2, this one also relies on us being able to mobilise our political resources in time, which I don't trust. I fully expect we'd get painted as out of touch and unresponsive by our opponents if we picked Option 3.
Finally, giving in to Reed is extremely dangerous for our coalition, especially given that fuckhead MacArthur is liable to try and shit down our necks. Something like this worked in Kaiserreich lore, but we're off that path and we can't guarantee it'll end as well, given how tenuous our coalition currently is. Which is another benefit of the Long deal, I think. It's
some kind of concession to the conservatives and such, which may shore up our coalition's stability a little more. What's more, didn't Reed say he couldn't guarantee what the demands of the strikers would be? I don't know how much that factors in here, but my brain is saying it might interfere with the actual practical effectiveness of the option.
If I had to rank the options it'd be:
1) Long
2) Reed
3) Fair Deal
4) Hardline
Long's deal shores up our coalition and keeps our economy rolling long enough for us to implement our own plans, at the risk of giving Long an inch and of prompting violence against strikebreakers. Reed's deal is probably the most effective at dealing with the strike, but looks likely to be absolutely devastating for our stability. Fair Deal is the one with the most integrity and, optimistically, would be the best possible result if it worked, but we're not in an optimistic world right now and nobody wants to hear us say what they've already gotten disillusioned with us saying, especially since saying and doing are two very different things in this political climate. It's the one my heart is set on, but which my head doesn't like at all. Hardline is for if we're bored of the buildup and want to trigger the civil war ASAP. It probably wouldn't immediately start it, but it's the one that raises the temperature fastest.