Progressive Party (USA)

The following characters supported one of the various political parties in United States history which used the name''' "Progressive Party." '''All such parties were short-lived, so no successful politician was a career Progressive.

The first and most famous Progressive Party, known informally as the "Bull Moose Party," existed from 1912 through 1916. Many Progressives were never formally affiliated with the party at all; quite a few were Republicans who supported Progressive candidates rather than Republicans. Others supported the Progressive platform while belonging to another party.

Despite its short lifespan, the Progressive Party holds a special place in American political history. In 1912, the Progressives' Presidential ticket of Theodore Roosevelt and Hiram Johnson became the most successful third party ticket since the founding of the modern American two-party system. (The party had been created that year specifically to give Roosevelt a Presidential ticket after he was defeated in a vicious intra-party struggle to wrest the Republican nomination from William Howard Taft.) However, the Progressives, even with an incredibly popular and dynamic candidate, still finished so far behind the victorious Democratic ticket of Woodrow Wilson and Thomas Marshall that they realized they could never become a serious contender. In 1916, at the Progressive convention, Roosevelt was once again nominated to head the presidential ticket, but this time he refused to accept the nomination and campaigned for the Republican candidate, Charles Evans Hughes. The party dissolved promptly thereafter, with most of its former Republican members returning to the GOP fold. Some eventually found their way into the Democratic camp, while others became involved in fringe parties. The most successful Progressive alumnus was Johnson, who, throughout his Senate career, ran on the ticket of California's surviving Progressive apparatus as well as the Republican ticket.

In some states, chapters of the Party survived and continued to contest local elections for quite some time, but after 1916 the Progressives' days as a viable national party were done. Former Wisconsin governor Robert LaFollette, who had been defeated by Roosevelt at the Progressive convention in 1912, attempted to revive the party in 1924, but he was able to create only a rump party, and the ticket of LaFollette and Burton Wheeler met with the far more usual fate of third party Presidential candidates, namely an embarrassingly distant third-place finish. Since then, several other tickets have run under the Progressive banner, all of them inconsequential. The last Progressive ticket in a Presidential election consisted of Henry Wallace and Glen Taylor in 1948; despite being regarded as a powerful force during the campaign, this ticket came in a distant fourth place in the election, and carried no electoral votes. In 1955, the last American political entity to use the name "Progressive Party" was dissolved; as of this writing, no revival has been attempted.

In their heyday, the Progressives ultimately managed to elect two Senators, thirteen Congressmen, a governor, a lieutenant governor, and a number of lower state and local officers.

Progressive Party in "Powerless"
The Progressive was legal in the West Coast Democratic People's Republic, but it was not favored the way the Communist Party was. Moreover, the Progressive Party didn't function as a opposition party. Consequently, the Progressive Party was viewed with the same kind of skepticism that the CPWCDPR was.