2018 Presidential Election

[lord caedus]

OOC: Because I just finished Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72, I figured that I should round-out the presidential primaries that have taken place in this thread and the old one.

Here's the GOP's 2010 primaries, where Glen Allen Walken rebounded from his defeat at the hands of Arnold Vinick four years earlier to take the nomination:

​

And here's the 2014 Democratic primaries, where Bob Russell gets a solid majority of votes, but that doesn't matter, since Electoral College presidential primary rules are a bitch.

 

[lord caedus]

Tuesday, September 10th 2019

BigHorse nominated to head Bureau of Indian Affairs

Longtime congressman and former presidential candidate Scott BigHorse (D-SD) was announced as President Seaborn's nominee to head the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) earlier today. BigHorse, the sole member of the House of Representatives for South Dakota, has said the decision to accept the president's offer came "after long debate" within his extended family. "I love representing South Dakotans of all colors, races and creeds," BigHorse said, "but I came to the conclusion that an opportunity to shape federal policy for indigenous peoples towards in a more responsive—and positive—direction was an opportunity I could not pass up."

BigHorse has represented South Dakota for nine terms, first being elected in 2000 at the age of 33. A full-blooded member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, he has been the point man for the Democratic majority on Native American issues since the Democrats took control of the House in 2006, and was also talked about as a potential successor to James Gatsby as the Democratic leader on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

However, he did not have a great 2018; after dropping out of the presidential race after winning less than one percent of the vote in the Iowa caucuses, BigHorse won reelection by less than three percent, his lowest margin yet. South Dakota's rapid shift to becoming a Republican stronghold led to speculation that he would opt to retire rather than seek re-election in what will likely be a costly and expensive race if he runs.

Senators Robert Roanoke (R-OK) and David Kuhio (D-HI), the chair and ranking members of the Senate Indigenous Affairs Committee, praised the selection of BigHorse, signalling a swift confirmation vote. "He may raise buffalo while I raise cattle," Roanoke said, alluding to both his own cattle company and the BigHorse family's involvement and sponsorship of the Oglala's raising of bison herds on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, "but I've never once known Scott BigHorse to do anything but his damndest to help out any Native person who came into his office, whether or not they were from South Dakota."

If confirmed, BigHorse would be the first enrolled member of a Lakota band to lead the Bureau, which has had a troubled history with the Lakota even into the 20th century. The BIA's support of corrupt and authoritarian Pine Ridge Chief Dick Wilson played a major part in the Wounded Knee Incident of 1973, when American Indian Movement (AIM) activists occupied the site of the 1890 massacre in defiance of federal officials, which led to two AIM activists' deaths. The poverty and other socioeconomic problems endemic in Pine Ridge and other Lakota reservations similarly has many roots in past Bureau policies and poor oversight.

Congressman BigHorse (credit: Benjamin Bratt)​

 

[WestWingNut]

Do the World Trade Center and bin Laden still exist in this timeline?

 

[lord caedus]

Do the World Trade Center and bin Laden still exist in this timeline?

I think it's maybe not the most appropriate day to ask that question.

Since bin Laden was mentioned by name in the show (in a pre-9/11 episode), I'll say that with his health issues and career path, I would not be surprised if his WW counterpart had died prior to 2019.

 

[WestWingNut]

I think it's maybe not the most appropriate day to ask that question.

Since bin Laden was mentioned by name in the show (in a pre-9/11 episode), I'll say that with his health issues and career path, I would not be surprised if his WW counterpart had died prior to 2019.

Right my bad. It just came to mind well because of today. Again I'm sorry.

 

[lord caedus]

Longest-Serving Members of the U.S. Congress (accurate as of September 11, 2019)

Overall

1. Carl Hayden (D-AZ) : 56 years, 319 days [H: 1912-1927, S: 1927-1969]
2. Joseph Furman (R-TX) : 56 years, 107 days [H: 1953-1967, S: 1967-2009]
3. Arthur Carney (D-OR) : 50 years, 248 days [H: 1969-]
4. Harry Wade (D-CA): 50 years, 115 days [H: 1968-2019]
5. Carl Vinson (D-GA): 50 years, 61 days [H: 1914-1965]
6. Jack Wooden (R-OK): 50 years, 0 days [H: 1969-2019]
7. Emanuel Celler (D-NY): 49 years, 305 days [H: 1923-1973]
8. Sam Rayburn (D-TX): 48 years, 257 days [H: 1913-1961]
9. Mark Richardson (D-NY): 48 years, 27 days [H: 1971-2019]
10t. Robert Miner (R-AR): 48 years, 0 days [S: 1967-2015]

Arthur Short (R-PA): 48 years, 0 days [H: 1953-2001]
​

Senate

1. Robert Miner (R-AR): 48 years, 0 days [served: 1967-2015]
2. Bill Glomer (R-IA): 46 years, 0 days [served: 1951-1997]
3. Joseph Furman (R-TX): 42 years, 107 days [served: 1967-2009]
4. Sean Bruce (D-AK): 42 years, 0 days [served: 1969-2011]
5. Carl Hayden (D-AR): 41 years, 305 days [served: 1927-1969]
6. Jesse Calhoun (D/R-SC): 41 years, 174 days [served: 1948-1989]
7. John Stennis (D-MS): 41 years, 58 days [served: 1947-1989]
8. Patrick Little (D-DE): 40 years, 33 days [served: 1955-1986]
9t. Clark Gibson (R-ID): 38 years, 248 days [served: 1981-]

Samuel Wilkinson (R-KS): 38 years, 248 days [served: 1981-]
​

House of Representatives

1. Arthur Carney (D-OR): 50 years, 248 days [served: 1969-]
2. Harry Wade (D-CA): 50 years, 115 days [served: 1968-2019]
3. Carl Vinson (D-GA): 50 years, 61 days [served: 1914-1965]
4. Jack Wooden (R-OK): 50 years, 0 days [served: 1969-2019]
5. Emanuel Celler (D-NY): 49 years, 305 days [served: 1923-1973]
6. Sam Rayburn (D-TX): 48 years, 257 days [served: 1913-1961]
7. Mark Richardson (D-NY): 48 years, 27 days [served: 1971-2019]
8. Arthur Short (R-PA): 48 years, 0 days [served: 1953-2001]
9. Wright Patman (D-TX): 47 years, 3 days [served: 1929-1976]
10t. Thom Grunder (D-MN): 46 years, 248 days [served: 1973-]

Clay Richmond (D-MO): 46 years, 248 days [served: 1973-]​

----------------------​

OOC: Did this list the other day and want to get it off my sketchpad before work and travelling get in the way.

As you can tell, most of the list are TWW characters, although Carl Hayden remains the longest-serving member of Congress ever and isn't likely to be caught anytime soon. The person with the second-most time IOTL (Robert Byrd) was name-dropped in the old thread, but he was retired by a TWW character in the mid-90s, thus missing out on a spot on the list.

Jesse Calhoun wasn't established as being a Democrat originally, but I figured that since he was established as having begun his term in 1940s South Carolina (where Democrats would regularly win >90% of the vote in statewide races), he would have begun his career as a Dixiecrat before joining the Republicans like so many southern conservative Democrats of his generation.

Of the serving members of Congress who are the longest-serving who aren't listed:

• Overall: Grunder, Richmond and William Wiley (D-WA, congressman from 1973 to 1983 and senator since then) are at 46 years, 248 days. They'll all pass Miner and Short if they're in Congress on January 4, 2021.
• Senate: Wiley's two years behind Gibson and Wilkinson at 36 years, 248 days. Assuming both of the latter stay in the Senate and pass Little, Wiley will break the top ten if he makes it to February 6, 2023.
• House: Patrick Quinton (R-TX), the longest-serving Republican. Assuming that Grunder and Richmond stay in the House, Quinton will overtake fellow Texan Wright Patman for tenth on the list of longest career in the House on January 7, 2022.

 

[Marky Bunny]

BBC.CO.UK/politics
Thursday September 12th 2019

Labour leadership candidates clash for the final time ahead of the closing of voting today

The five contenders for the Labour leadership election clashed for the fourth and final time at a debate held in Birmingham and hosted by Channel Four News. The clash came just over twelve hours before voting closes at midday today.

The two front-runners Jack Coll and Oliver Kendrick clashed once again over the themes of "experience" and "change" whilst Kendrick said he would serve under a Coll leadership if he won the election, Coll refused to say if he would serve under Kendrick saying "it was only hypothetical" and that he believed that he "would win".

Four of the contenders Coll, Kendrick, Lilburn and Butler did there best to freeze out former Chancellor Daniel Lamont as he struggled to get in his answers. Former Foreign Secretary Rachel Lilburn had her best performance of the debates saying that she was a "realist" and "I am the only candidate who can unite this party" adding "Daniel doesn't like this but if we are to win the next general election, we need to win over moderate Conservative voters, we have to remember we have not won the popular vote at a General election since 2000, even in 2007 when we scrapped a very narrow majority, more people still voted Conservative, that is a political fact".

Voting closes by post and on-line at midday today, with the result due to be announced on Saturday morning from a special conference in Westminster.

 

[WestWingNut]

Vice President Hunter is played by Ed Helms right? Is there a chance some embarrassing photos of him at a bachelor party could emerge in a news story (The Hangover)?

 

[MountainDew17]

Atlantis Cable News

Beer Diplomacy? As CRA vote looms, White House sends Edwards to recruit swing-state Republicans

Washington D.C- With the final vote on the Civil Rights Act of 2019 approaching, the White House has moved into full overdrive. Leading this effort is Deputy Communications Director John Edwards, who has held several meetings over the pasts few weeks with key swing vote Republicans. Chief among these has been Ruth Stewart-Norton, who has reportedly been a key target of the White House. According to a source close to the Ohio Senator, the majority of Edwards' pitch stems from the idea that "the GOP will continually lose votes" until they change the party line on same-sex rights.

According to several sources within the White House, Edwards has been saddled with the unenviable task of selling the CRA to moderate Republicans, including the politically unpopular section of "gender identity.". According to one Democratic source, the idea of being forced to vote on "gender identity" is the key barrier to an "easy passage" of the CRA.

 

[Marky Bunny]

Saturday September 14th 2019

Jack Coll elected Labour leader after four ballots 55.12% to 44.88% over Oliver Kendrick.

Rachel Lilburn came third, Daniel Lamont fourth and Ruth Butler last.

(Full results to be posted later)

 

[lord caedus]

 

[mspence]

So if I understand British politics correctly, the next PM in the WW TL will be voted on by the ruling party? It seems the closest thing we have to a PM is Speaker of the House or Senate Majority Leader.

 

[RRusso1982]

There haven't been any stories about Seaborn and Jack Hunter so I take it they are getting along ok?

 

[lord caedus]

So if I understand British politics correctly, the next PM in the WW TL will be voted on by the ruling party?

Yes. Richard Samuels has stated that he will step down before the next general election is due in 2023, so whomever the Conservatives elect to replace him will become prime minister, as the Conservatives have a majority of seats in the House of Commons.

There haven't been any stories about Seaborn and Jack Hunter so I take it they are getting along ok?

For the most part, yes. They've known each other for nearly a decade now (both came into the Senate after the 2010 election) and both are big sports fans (Hunter used to own the Minnesota Twins, Sam used to have a Los Angeles Lakers pennant on the wall in his WH office), which is what defined their relationship before they became president & vice president, respectively. If they were just Sam and Jack, not President Seaborn and Vice President Hunter, they probably would just end up talking about baseball's playoff race, or the start of football season instead of debates about tax credits or gay rights.

Publicly, that's all that we've seen so far is that the two have a sort of understanding owing to the unique situation they're in: Hunter isn't expected to go out and be a loyal soldier like a "normal" VP would for the sitting president, while Seaborn can count on Hunter not to publicly go against administration policy that he disagrees with privately.

Privately, of course there's some tension and resentment (Sam for being saddled with a vice president who he can't rely on politically, and Hunter with being forced by circumstance to serve in an administration whose policies on quite a few issues he vehemently disagrees with), but none of that has made it to the surface yet.

 

[Marky Bunny]

Yes. Richard Samuels has stated that he will step down before the next general election is due in 2023, so whomever the Conservatives elect to replace him will become prime minister, as the Conservatives have a majority of seats in the House of Commons

Yes 100%, Richard Samuels was born on June 3rd 1947, he turns 73 next June, and is likely to retire next year or in 2021, thus giving his successor a good run up to the next general election.
Story wise I wanted as has happened in the real world in 2010 and 2017, that all the major parties at the next General Election would be under a new leader since the previous election. The NPP under Robert Webster also going to making a change as well, as Webster has said he will step down as leader before 2023.

 

[Bad'Wolf]

Yes 100%, Richard Samuels was born on June 3rd 1947, he turns 73 next June, and is likely to retire next year or in 2021, thus giving his successor a good run up to the next general election.
Story wise I wanted as has happened in the real world in 2010 and 2017, that all the major parties at the next General Election would be under a new leader since the previous election. The NPP under Robert Webster also going to making a change as well, as Webster has said he will step down as leader before 2023.

Does the UK have the Fixed-Terms of Parliament Act in this timeline or are the limits on a Parliament's term as they were before the 2010-2015 coalition?

 

[Marky Bunny]

Does the UK have the Fixed-Terms of Parliament Act in this timeline or are the limits on a Parliament's term as they were before the 2010-2015 coalition?

No, no Fixed-Terms of Parliament, five years in the maximum a Parliament can last, and a Prime-Minister can request to the Queen a dissolution of Parliament at any time, as did Andrew Carter in October 2013, when that Parliament was only two and half years old.

 

[Marky Bunny]

Monday September 16th 2019

Lamont resigns from the Labour Party and announces he will resign as an MP and fight by-election for the Socialist Alliance

Labour leadership candidate Daniel Lamont has announced this morning that he has resigned from the Labour Party following his fourth place finish in the Labour leadership election and would resign as an MP to fight his seat of Hackney South & Shoreditch in a by-election for the Socialist Alliance.

Flanked by Socialist Alliance leader Hamish Galloway he said "I believed that the Labour Party could be saved, it is clear to me after the result on Saturday, now, that it cannot. It is now little more than a "Tory light tribute band". Only a true Socialist party can save this nation, and I will now fight a by-election in the seat I have served for almost thirty years".

Galloway said that Lamont's defection to the party was a "game changer" and he believed that Lamont would win the by-election. The party does not have any MP's at the moment after Galloway himself lost his Glasgow seat of Glasgow North-East at the last General Election by just 49 votes.

 

[lord caedus]

OOC: Now that I'm back from travelling, I can dump some of the infoboxes I've been working on. These sets collectively could be called "Reporters and Women In Politics" or "Danny Concannon and The Seven Ladies"

Spoiler: Notes

• The numbering for White House Chiefs of Staff got messed up during the multiple infoboxes I've made for past Chiefs of Staff (Leo, CJ, Josh, Henry Shallick, Will). The correct numbering for all Chiefs of Staff since the Bartlet administration is as follows:
  
  
  • 19. Leo McGarry (1999-2005, Bartlet)
  • 20. C.J. Cregg (2005-2007, Bartlet)
  • 21. Josh Lyman (2007-2009, Santos)
  • 22. Nate Singer (2009-2011, Santos)
  • 23. Otto Marcellas (2010-2011, Santos)
  • 24. Evan Drake (2011-2012, Walken)
  • 25. Jane Braun (2012-2014, Walken)
  • 26. Henry Shallick (2014-2016, Walken)
  • 27. Jim Hoehner Jr. (2016-2019, Walken)
  • 28. Will Bailey (2019-present, Seaborn)
    
• That's right, Braun is married to former senator Jay Cruger. Which, given that Cruger was a black, conservative Republican who somehow got elected to the US Senate in New York of all places and who happened to share the same exact name as a former contributor, has got to make him the clearest Marty Stu we've ever seen in the thread.
  
  
• Rafferty was never established as being either divorced or a former state legislator. I've added those parts of her background to make it slightly more realistic for her to get elected as a young, liberal woman in the mid-1990s.
  
  
• Blake's previous experience in the Bartlet administration doesn't show up, for previously-mentioned reasons that the Director of Legislative Affairs portfolio usually isn't shown in OTL infoboxes, and it isn't especially relevant given her later higher positions. That also has the added benefit of not having to have me guess as to when she left, since she was another character who was sent to Mandyville.
  
  Also, Blake made history as the first non-white CoS, even if it was in an acting capacity (Marcellas would presumably be the first "permanent" non-white CoS, but he could be a white man of Hispanic origin).
  
  
• Fiderer is one year younger than Lily Tomlin, who happened to be born on the same day that World War II started in Europe.

Spoiler: Notes

• Danny was established as having won the Pulitzer Prize, presumably sometime before the show and having attended Notre Dame. He was similarly listed in the old thread as having been a NYT contributor and having helped write Jed Bartlet's autobiography (What's Next?).
  
  You can tell the original cast is getting older now that Danny is starting to look less like the eager young reporter who hounded CJ in the earlier seasons of the show, and more like Santa Claus.
  
  
• Sabbith is, of course, a cross-over from The Newsroom, another Sorkin show. Jeff Daniels was double-cast as both McAvoy and Jim Arkin, and Sloan was the only other on-camera reporter in the main cast, in addition to being all in all a much better character than McAvoy (or almost every other regular on the show) so that's why I decided to make her infobox.
  
  
• Lisa Sherborne is the Vanity Fair reporter who is also Sam's former fiancée who he broke off the relationship with in order to help Bartlet run for president. Since that relationship ended over two decades ago and Sherborne is an attractive and talented reporter, I figured that she would have married by now.
  
  Since she's presumably still covering national news and/or politics, it must be incredibly weird for her every time she sees her ex-boyfriend standing behind the presidential seal.
  
  
• Zoey had a couple of conflicting birth dates since they initially established her as being 19, then moved it back to 17. The West Wing wiki lists her birth date as February 20th, but that clashes with the episode "In The Room" where Penn and Teller burn an American flag at a birthday celebration for her in the White House, which is set in mid-December. I've gone with the latter date, meaning she will turn 39 this December.
  
  Since it was never really established what exactly Zoey did after graduating Georgetown, I'm going to say that she's been involved primarily in non-profit work as well as taking over more responsibilities related to her father's library and other legacy projects, since her mother and uncle are both getting pretty elderly, and her sisters are busy being a medical researcher and running the state of New Hampshire, respectively.

Cast (all previously established)
Melinda McGraw as Jane Braun
Mel Harris as Ricky Rafferty
Michael Hyatt as Angela Blake
Lily Tomlin as Deborah Fiderer
Timothy Busfield as Danny Concannon
Olivia Munn as Sloan Sabbith
Traylor Howard as Lisa Sherborne
Elisabeth Moss as Zoey Bartlet Young

 

[Excelsior]

The less said about Jay Cruger the better...