What's the geographic distribution of the states that would lose seats? Remember, this is still way past the permanent reapportionment act
That is a serious issue and I think we might see violence from the white South and maybe other hard-right conservatives. Though I'm not sure that would help their cause. Thankfully the Senate does provide somewhat of a counterweight against the west coast, though it still results in loss of two GOP seats when compared to OTL.
If Washington has to pick between placating the West Coast or Dixie I don't think it would be a decision for them at all. Again, the dominant Democratic coalition sees the south as an irritating thorn in their side while the new states can provide a rock solid ally.
Not Well, I think.
I used the 1970 Census and population figures from July 2019, along with a Python script. I got an additional 32 seats for CA and 4 for OR, but Washington boosted 8 seats rather than 7.
As for who lost, the short answer is "basically everybody, but the bigger states more". New York gives up four seats, PA/TX/IL/OH lose three, Michigan and Florida lose two. TN/AL/OK/AR/NE/UT/NM/ME/RI/HI are all in the high end of their seat ranges so getting shifted down keeps them in that tier. ND/DE/NV/VT/WY/AK were at 1 anyway. Everyone else loses one.
I was going to say 'hardly', but looking deeper I think you might be right. California goes from a net of two or three Democrats to around +60. Washington and Oregon go from a combined 8-3 Democratic advantage to probably 20ish Democrats and 3 or so Republicans. Now, some of these 75 new Democrats will come at the expense of Democratic seats elsewhere (how many, depends on who controls the redistricting process in those states, and the 1968 officeholders likely won't be the ones who do it), but the notion that the Democratic caucus won't expand significantly and have a much more powerful liberal contingent is hard to believe. As for the Senate, I'd bet that Mike Mansfield, Senate Majority Leader for sixteen years, will be able to outmaneuver the Dixiecrat contingent with the help of Everett Dirksen, Hugh Scott, and Howard Baker. There is going to be some anger there, you're right, but I think the condemnation of history will weigh on people who aren't fire-breathing segregationists, which at least in the Outer South should be a decent portion.
With such a massive change in 1968, projecting that Ford and Carter will win all the same states eight years later that they did OTL is more than a little silly.
This was still the era of Great Society and to a lesser extent the New Deal. The dominant faction of the party was very forward thinking, in some ways moreso than the Californian Democrats who are still in a lot of ways the product of the Reagan Revolution. There will be A LOT of culture shock and the current situation with COVID and the riots means you're not going to have a squeaky clean image to present to the rest of the country but in the immediate term there is absolutely no incentive for the downtime Democrats to not take advantage of the situation.
Theyre at an interesting crossroads right now. If they stay the course they're probably fucked so they have to make up their minds about what kind of party they actually are and do it fast.
Organized labour still makes up a large part of the democratic political scene, so a lot of the moderate operative types from California are gonna end up drawn into their orbit out of necessity anyways, nevermind the actual progressives.To be honest organized labour is also going to be kinda foreign to uptime democrats too
The democrats will have to contend with the fact that they gave up on the New Deal's legacy after Reagan trounced them.
It's not something the republicans are well placed to capitalize on though, so I fully expect another go at the southern strategy, especially as the dixiecrats realize this isn't their party anymore.
Man, I'd love to be a fly on the wall at those Politiburo meetings. The Brezhnev stagnation gets confronted with the full knowledge of what that stagnation would lead to. OTOH, Suslov and other hardliners will point to Gorbachev's rule as the primary cause of the USSR's collapse.
Do you think they would get over their political infighting and fully implement the SOFE program?
On that note: the ISOT is on June 1 and the Soviets invaded to stop the Prague Spring on August 21. How they deal with Czechoslovakia will greatly influence uptimer opinion of them.