Popular Front

The Popular Front was an electoral alliance forged between the Workers' Communist Party and the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, along with a number of state-level Non-Partisan Leagues ahead of the 1932 United States elections. The grouping was officially formed at the WCP's 1932 National Convention, which thereafter made the initially controversial decision to appoint the Christian socialist Norman Thomas as candidate for president, in spite of some dissent from the party's Ultra-Left fractions. In spite of his black sheep status, Thomas' inclusive approach and charisma appealed greatly to members of the DFLP and alienated members of the American public, proving to be a strong uniting figurehead. Thomas would lead the Front to a landslide victory in the elections against the beleagured Democratic and Republican parties, and the parties of the alliance would also gain a supermajority in the House of Representatives, and a plurality in the Senate. In response to the result, reactionaries under the leadership of Douglas MacArthur coerced the outgoing government of Herbert Hoover into submitting to a coup d'etat on Feburary 1, 1933, the day the new government was due to be sworn in. Key officials of the DFLP and WCP in Washington were assassinated by the forces of MacArthur's fascist Government of National Salvation, including Thomas. States governed by the PF member parties refused to recognize the government, instead recognizing former running mate Upton Sinclair as Acting President of the Provisional Government, also supported by a number of Republican and Democratic dissidents. The National Salvation Front government was ultimately unable to prevent much of the rest of the country from falling to revolutionary uprisings, and soon, the tide of the Second American Civil War had turned. The Red May Revolution would see the Provisional Government officially dissolve the United States, forming the Union of American Socialist Republics. Most of the remaining rump Democrats and Republicans would ultimately agree to the new formation, with those opposing the Revolution forming the True Democrats.

With the NSF having been forced to evacuate to Cuba by the end of the year, the UASR loyalists among the Democrats and Republicans would re-constitute themselves as the Democratic-Republican Party, eventually developing a market socialist orientation. With the UASR holding its first elections in April 1934, the parties of the Popular Front would be joined by the "progressive bourgeois" DRP to form the United Democratic Front, encompassing all three of the main parties supporting the new state, itself reaching an even stronger supermajority against the shrunken True Democrats, which represented those ostensibly opposed to both the Putsch and Revolution. The UDF would dissolve itself by 1936, as the new Republic held its first competitive elections.