1920 United States general election

The 1920 General election was 34th quadrennial election for the office of President and the the 67th Congress of the former United States of America, held on Tuesday, November 2nd, 1920. Having occurred right in the aftermath of the Biennio Rosso, and the disgrace of National Unity(Later Democratic) President Thomas Marshall and First Secretary Champ Clark, This election—the first of the three-way elections that would predominate the Later Second Republic, saw a victory for Massachusetts general and former Secretary of War Leonard Wood, a noted reformer who won the acclaim of both revolutionaries and the bourgeoisie alike by defusing the upsurge of the Biennio Rosso and negotiating reforms. Contesting against him in the election was the now five-time candidate Eugene Debs, running for election from prison, and Democratic nominee John Davis, a racist Southerner who notably did have progressive sympathies and was opposed to the excesses of capitalism.

With the fizzling of the Biennio Rosso, and the beginning of the “Roaring Twenties”, as economic conditions improved, support for the WPA withered among the more moderate segments of the population. That, combined with an alliance with the burgeoning populist Democratic-Farmer-Labor-Party(allowing the Republican-DFL alliance to break the democrat “Solid South), and Leonard Wood’s remarkably Libertarian policies(In contrast with most capitalist administrations of the era, such as the McKinley, Marshall, and later Hoover and illegitimate MacArthurite administrations), allowed Wood to comfortably win the subsequent election of 1924.

In Congress, the Republicans and Communists both made respectable gains, at the expense of the Democratic Party, now restricted to the south. The Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party won also won its first seats in Congress, with 5 seats in the House and 8 in the Senate. Although the Republicans and First Secretary James Mann had a significant majority in the Senate, their razor thin majority in the House meant that consistent bipartisan support was required to pass any legislation successfully.

Wood’s victory would ensure the contemporary Reformist policy of the Republicans to hold, although the Conservatives, barely sidelined, would gain control after Wood’s assassination and the later Great Depression. For the Democrats, this election was only the start of their marginalization and confinement to the Deep South, and the end of the one-party system in the former Slaver States with both the DFLP (and through it, the Republicans) and the Workers’ Party making significant inroads. Outside the South, this marked the end of the “Fourth Party System” with the 2 major Parties of the Republicans and Democratics and a minor yet significant Communist opposition, and the beginning of a Fifth-Party System, with the Republicans and Socialists being the only two major parties present.