George H.W. Bush wins in 1992?

[mianfei]

If Bush won in 1992, it would certainly make for a much more different game in 1996, no doubt about it.

The Republicans would have won four presidential elections in a row, and the retirement of the old Southern Democrats allows them to claim the House of Representatives and Senate in 1994. If Bush wins in 1992, the Republicans also get to achieve a 9—0 advantage on the Supreme Court – once Byron White retires, there would have been zero Democratic appointees left on the Court. Although White was probably the most conservative Democratic appointee since James Clark McReynolds, Bush would certainly have wanted to replace him with someone even further to the right, and so would most of the rich businessmen who fund the Republican Party. Even if White and/or Harry Blackmun had stayed on the bench until the 1996 election, there is no certainty of a Democratic appointee from that election.

Under such conditions, and with urban communities of color perceived as increasingly threatening during the 1990s due to the (real and perceived) violence of rap music, it is easy to imagine that the Republicans would go all out to completely disenfranchise such communities, to the extent of reducing voter turnout there to below the pre-Smith v. Allright South. In The Psychopathology of American Capitalism, Thomas Paul Bonfiglio argues that these urban communities of color are actually truly disenfranchised. This is not merely because so many (up to one-third) cannot vote due to felony convictions or actual incarceration, but because poor urban communities of color absolutely require a mass radical left party (revolutionary socialist) to represent them, while the US media, big business and the extremely racist attitudes of poorer whites simply forbid one developing. (Citizens United was designed to prevent a mass radical left party, which will necessarily have limited funds as radical left ideals are designed to expropriate the very wealthy to the last cent, from developing.)

Achieving such complete voter suppression will not be easy, but I can imagine a Republican Party holding all branches of government as investing heavily in working out how to completely reverse gains in nonwhite voter participation back to before Smith.

Alongside, and related to, using much more complete voter suppression (and potentially 15th amendment repeal if they had the ability) to stay in power, a more vigorous culture war would have been likely, and one waged from the White House. The view of free people of color as ipso facto deviant is so deeply engrained in US culture – at least white US culture – that a much larger war is likely, not a delayed culture war, and with much more Republican power established.

[mianfei]

As I said, law and order will still be an issue, in part because the extremely radical urban culture of the late 1980s and early 1990s would mean that law and order would remain part of the Republicans’ mid-term campaign.

If it is felt that the GOP has not done a good job on law and order, it actually could, contra my previous post, delay the “Republican Revolution”. If law and order did not improve after 1994, it would certainly give a moderate Democrat a chance of winning in 1996, but what they would have to do to solve a real or perceived crime problem is an interesting question.

If conditions of law and order do improve, I could see the Republicans, with a 9—0 Supreme Court majority, recruiting Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia as running mate, something which Bob Dole apparently considered but which would certainly be more realistic had Bush Senior been re-elected. Scalia’s hardcore ideological conservatism might be considered extremely valuable with a more intense culture war as I predicted in my previous post, and it would be difficult for Clinton to gain the support he did in many rural counties of Appalachia and the Midwest.