El Chapo White House:
2021-2023: Joseph R. "Joe" Biden (Democratic-Delaware)/Kamala D. Harris (Democratic-California)
2020 Def. President Donald J. Trump (Republican-New York)/Vice President Micheal "Mike" R. Pence (Republican-Indiana)
After a heavily contested primary season, a series of backroom deals between the campaigns of Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren sees Biden as the Democratic nominee under the condition that Biden would concede a few policy planks on the platform to the Warren camp and that Warren herself would get to select a handful of cabinet appointees. Sanders, narrowly behind in the delegate count and narrowly ahead in the popular vote, begrudgingly accepts this deal much to the chagrin of his supporters, although Sanders outright refuses to actively campaign for Biden due to the objective shadiness of the conditions by which Biden was nominated. The general election period is a total trainwreck, with Biden and Trump trading blows in fashion similar to 2016, with numerous gaffes between the two of them peppering the news cycle in between. The debates are a perfect personification of this and all three of 2020's presidential debates are rated among the worst in recent history. Eventually, by value of sheer turnout, Biden manages to eek out a victory over Trump on election night, taking Wisconsin and Pennsylvania at 2:00 A.M the following morning.
Biden's Presidency is about as much of a trainwreck as the election which saw him vaulted to the office. With the Republicans narrowly holding the Senate and the Democrats holding the House, the congressional inaction that plagued the second half of the Obama Administration similarly plagues Biden. During his first two years in office, Biden fails to push through a major tax reform bill, three infrastructure packages, and his planned public healthcare option. While he would eventually manage to pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill and appoint a supreme court nominee to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg, his numerous legislative failures would hang over him for the remainder of his time in office. In an ironic twist of fate, the deal which Biden had made with Warren would ultimately come back to bite him, with constant conflict between cabinet members resulting in dysfunction not just within congress, but within the Administration itself. This dysfunction would only get worse after the 2022 midterms, with the Republicans making gains in the House and a number of insurgent progressives, backed by a very bitter Bernie Sanders and his allies, would manage to unseat several incumbent moderate Democrats, making Biden's job worse and worse.
Unfortunately for Biden, he would never really have time to overcome these challenges. While on a diplomatic trip to Syria, Biden would suffer a stroke that, while it would not end the President's life, would require life-saving treatment and would eventually see Biden resign, with Acting President Harris taking over.
2023-2023: Kamala D. Harris (Democratic-California)/VACANT
2023-2025: Kamala D. Harris (Democratic-California)/Thomas "Tom" Wolf (Democratic-Pennsylvania)
Much of the Harris Administration would be engulfed in the shadow of President Biden's stroke and resignation, with the shock of the whole affair creating a dark atmosphere in Washington. Perhaps somewhat ironically, it was in this dark atmosphere that Harris, no stranger to the struggles of a dysfunctional executive branch, was able to accomplish more than her predecessor. Working together with Senate Minority Leader Sherrod Brown, a veteran parliamentarian with a rouge streak and her new Vice President, the former Pennsylvania Governor Thomas Wolf, Harris was able to shepard a raise in the minimum wage and the expansion of Obamacare to a public option, utilizing the chaos in the capitol to bypass legislative roadblocks posed by the dominant opposition.
While Harris would see some success in the aftermath of Biden's stroke, they were nowhere near enough to overcome the legacy of the Biden Administration and Harris would lose reelection in 2024.
2025-2033: Ron DeSantis (Republican-Florida)/Josh Hawley (Republican-Missouri)
2024 Def. President Kamala Harris (Democratic-California)/Senator Sherrod Brown (Democratic-Ohio)
2028 Def. Former Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Gillum (Democratic-Florida)/Governor Sara Nelson (Democratic-Oregon)
Ron DeSantis was an interesting case study in the new Republican Party. A former Governor of Florida, DeSantis was firmly aligned with the Trumpist faction of the Republicans, holding both deeply conservative views on issues like immigration and social issues as well as strange hybrid right-left populist views on the economy and foreign policy that differed from conservative orthodox, often referred to by contemporary historians as "New Populism" or "Trumpist Populism". In particular, DeSantis's willingness to accept the reality of man-made climate change differed heavily from many in the Republican Party. As it turns out, this odd synthesis of political ideas from across the spectrum was exactly what many in the new, post-Trump Republican Party wanted. Branding himself a "Social Nationalist", DeSantis would take the primaries by storm, usurping former Vice President Mike Pence and his primary competition, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley. With his running mate, the younger right-populist Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, DeSantis would successfully defeat Harris by securing the Rust Belt and Florida, utilizing working class dissatisfaction with the Biden and Harris Presidencies to run an opportunistically populist campaign.
As President, DeSantis found himself with a strong mandate, with both houses of congress in the hands of the Republicans and much of the Republican caucus becoming converts, some reluctant, some enthusiastic, to DeSantis's new political ideology. During DeSantis's first term, the Republicans would successfully pass a massive infrastructure bill that emphasized public-private sector cooperation to fight climate change, a ban on abortions after 24 weeks, a bill that placed vast restrictions on automation, and a vast restructuring of the American immigration system that saw the number of immigrants taken in by the United States at any given time maxed out at 100,000 while also approving massive funding increases for the Department of Homeland Security and ICE. The mass wave of deportations that followed, which rivaled those of even those under Trump and Obama, would become a massive controversy not just because of the objective inhumanity of the whole undertaking, but the administrative hassle it caused for the various Latin American and Middle Eastern nations which received the massive numbers of former immigrants, many of whom exclusively spoke English when they were "sent back" to their various home nations. While the aftermath of the Immigration Reform Act of 2027 would cause a vast radicalization among many on the left and would be a large contributor to the tension between President DeSantis and the various left-wing Latin American leaders who had been swept into power during the Second Pink Tide, the deportations, combined with the success of his Administration's infrastructure programs, were music to the ears of the Republican base and DeSantis reaped the rewards in the form of moderately high approval ratings. These stable approval ratings is what would lead to his eventual victory over former Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Gillum, who had ironically once faced him a decade prior in the 2018 Florida Gubernatorial election, in the 2028 Election, although it was a much closer affair than DeSantis would have preferred. Gillum had been one of the top-tier nominees going into the 2028 Democratic Primaries and with good reason. Having been one of Warren's selections for cabinet members back in 2020, Gillum had high favorabilty ratings among the technocratic-progressive "Warren Wing" of the party, while his support for single payer healthcare and rent control netted him support from the growing Socialist Left and his high poll numbers earning him the reluctant nod of the remaining moderates. Gillum utilized his flexible support to build a coalition to vault him over a field which included Wisconsin Governor Mandela Barnes, Illinois Senator Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, and New York Representative Lauren Ashcroft. Gillum would run a strong, if ultimately unsuccessful campaign that eventually narrowed the gap between DeSantis and Gillum from eight points to two. The exchanges between the two Floridians were also memorable and interesting, with both men being highly intelligent and ideologically dedicated speakers. However, DeSantis was able to narrowly prevail, keeping his home state of Florida while also retaining most of the Midwest, with the exception of Michigan.
DeSantis's second term was a little more problematic for the Republicans. The Democrats, led by an interesting coalition of moderate, "pragmatic" type progressives, who tended to belong to the so-called "old guard of the new guard" and a group of fire-breathing young socialists who had been swept into power as dissatisfaction with capitalism among the lower classes grew stronger as issue like automation and wealth inequality became more prominent, especially as the efforts taken by the DeSantis Administration to fight climate changed proved only moderately effective at best, managed to retake the house and come close to taking the senate. The fact that Speaker Ocasio-Cortez and Minority Leader Brown were both skilled and effective legislators with a willingness to use harsh methods to rally their caucuses when necessary meant that the Democrats were actually serving as a semi-effective opposition for the first time in decades, which also contributed to the problems DeSantis faced in his later years as President. Overall, DeSantis found it far harder to pass legislation when faced with the new congress and was largely forced to focus on international issues rather than domestic legislation. Unfortunately for President DeSantis, foriegn policy was a weak spot for the domestic-heavy Administration. DeSantis, a former Governor, hadn't taken the necessary precautions to ensure that his foreign policy would be handled as effectively as his domestic policy, perhaps no better symbolized than by the fact that the State Department was led by former U.N Ambassador Nikki Haley, who hadn't exactly proven herself an effective diplomat. Outside of the partial social security privatization (a policy DeSantis called "entitlement diversification") that managed to pass congress with the defection of several moderate Democrats, most of DeSantis's second term was focused on the fights that DeSantis would get into with the left-wing nations of the post-Second Pink Tide Latin America and many of the United States' former European allies, who had taken on a more explicitly cosmopolitan face and were nervous about the U.S new nationalist direction. One notable incident included DeSantis threatening Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Orbador with invasion if Mexico was unable to deal with the cartels that, despite AMLO's intesntive efforts, still plagued Mexico's northern states. These conflicts would go on to define DeSantis's Presidency, despite the objective success of his first term, and would deeply effect the relationship between the United States and the global community going forward; With the exception of the Russian Federation, who DeSantis often favored cooperating with on the interest of containing both radical Islamists and the People's Republic of China.
The fact that the American economy faced a partial slump at the end of 2031, towards the official end of DeSantis's second-to-last year in office, didn't help, as DeSantis's greatest strength, his semi-populistic economic policy, became drowned out by the issues that came with the slump, included the even further widening income gap and rising unemployment. With the problems of his second term, it's unsurprising that DeSantis's anointed successor would be defeated by an unorthodox challenger.
2033-????: Felix Biderman (Democratic-New York)/Heidi Sloan (Democratic-Texas)
2032 Def. Vice President Josh Hawley (Republican-Missouri)/Senator Karyn Potilo (Republican-Massachusetts)
Felix Biderman has had an intriguing professional career.
Originally a co-host of El Chapo Trap House, a popular left-wing comedy podcast that became a mainstay of the political left in the internet age, upon the dissolution of the podcast in 2022, Biderman decided to throw his hat into the race to replace New York Senator Chuck Schumer. Biderman, originally an underdog, utilized his online following and absurdist political style to launch a unique, heavily online underdog campaign steeped in shitposts and confrontations with notable politicians, including the retiring Senator Schumer himself. Eventually, with the backing of Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez and after inheriting a large part of the grassroots campaign infrastructure from the former New York State Bernie Sanders campaign, Biderman would defeat his primary opponents, businessman Andrew Yang and Congressman Max Rose and would eventually defeat Donald J. Trump Jr. in the general election that November. In the Senate, Biderman, quite on brand, developed a reputation as a firebreather and renegade, often bucking Democratic orthodoxy to support progressive legislation and had a tendency to support left-wing challengers to moderate Democratic incumbents. Biderman, along with congresspeople Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Josh Collins, Rashida Talib, Elijah Manley, Micah White, and Heidi Sloan, became a major nuisance to the Biden Administration. Additionally, Biderman became a figurehead of the online left, a status he embraced further when he restarted El Chapo Trap House with his former co-hosts, hosting recording sessions from his senate office with guests often including major political figures like Ocasio-Cortez and Brace Belden.
After the Biden Administration, Biderman became a frequent critic of DeSantis, turning much of his fire that he had reserved for his fellow Democrats onto the Republicans as the party drifted further leftwards in tune with Biderman's vision. This critique of DeSantis increased his profile among more average voters and while he would decline to run in 2028, seeing DeSantis's strong hand, his allies would eventually convince the Senator to run in 2032. Biderman would face a crowded primary field, but Biderman's platform, combined with is cult following within much of the Democratic electorate would propel him to the top tier and eventually, after sweeping Super Tuesday, the nomination. Running with Congresswoman Heidi Sloan, a fellow Socialist, Biderman managed to project a sense of both shitposty charisma and serious dedication to change, which contrasted heavily with the heavily nationalistic attack dog in Vice President Josh Hawley. The Biderman/Hawley debates produced some of the most memorable moments in recent political history, with Biderman calling Hawley an "exploitative clown" during the third debate. Eventually, Biderman managed to prevail over Hawley, sweeping the Midwest, North East, West Coast, and the Lower South.
As he was only recently inaugurated, there really isn't an telling how the Biderman Administration will play out. The Democrats control both chambers of congress, albeit narrowly in the case of the Senate and most of Biderman's cabinet picks have gotten through smoothly. Biderman has chosen to surround himself with a combination of leftist policy wonks and prominent community activists. Among them are former California State Comptroller Brace Belden, who is at the helm of the State Department, economist and columnist Elizabeth Burenig, whose christian-left beliefs have made her perfect for Biderman's Treasury Department, Senator Nina Turner as Secretary of the Interior, former TYT host and Representative Cenk Uygur, who is heading HUD, and Congressman Lee Carter, who is heading the Labor Department. Although it is still to early to speak in definite terms, Biderman's overall competent cabinet and strong congressional mandate make a successful Administration all the more likely.
No matter what, the first episode of El Chapo White House, set to be co-hosted by Congresspeople Virgil Texas and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is shaping up to be pretty great.
