A Bridge to the 21st Century

SLCer

The Soul of the Party

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She was in it to win it.

Carly Fiorina, with the Golden Gate Bridge as her backdrop, announced her campaign to unseat a sitting Republican president - forcing a major primary challenge for an incumbent for the first time since 1992.

President Huckabee, whose combative and divisive rhetoric had alienated so many in his party, entered an election season with the lowest approval numbers in polling history. Alan Murray, president of Pew Research, didn't pull any punches - Mike Huckabee was not only unlikely to win the general election, he was unlikely to win his own party's nomination.

It looked that way after Fiorina announced her campaign for president, which was a soap opera of its own. Fiorina, of course, served as Huckabee's vice president up until only a couple months prior to her announcement. Nothing like this had happened in modern American politics, with only Vice President Thomas Jefferson's victory over President John Adams 212 years prior comparing.

But this was not an ordinary presidency. Huckabee's win wasn't even ordinary - winning a small plurality in a contested, nasty four-way race. From the start, the President's presidency seemed doomed. He could never rally Republicans to support his bailouts to Wall Street and the auto industry. Though the first one barely passed congress after a stock market flash crash in 2009, the auto bailout died in the House - killed by free market Republicans who could not get on board with the idea of the U.S. government bailing out private auto industries. In the wake of that shock, the dissolving of General Motors and the collapse of Ford, the rust belt region saw a huge spike in unemployment. Though a few factories remained, building automobiles for overseas car companies who picked at the scraps of the U.S. auto industry, the damage was vast and not just to the country's morale - it crippled the President's domestic agenda.

The tipping point, though, was the Supreme Court's surprise ruling legalizing same-sex marriages across the country. With that move, something shifted in Huckabee, who lambasted the ruling and attacked what he called sodomites hell-bent on bringing down Christianity. For many Republicans, even conservative Christian Republicans, the tone was wild and careless.

It fractured the party and almost every elected member went fleeing for safety. Huckabee, who had little allies within his own party to begin with after the Bailout Fights of '09, now had virtually zero support.

Fiorina was able to sidestep the damage, and her image within the party was largely positive - 65% of Republicans approved of her. In a head-to-head poll, she garnered 55% of the Republican vote. Huckabee came in at a paltry 30%. It was clear, for a man who invested so much in religion and God - Huckabee needed a prayer to win.

In her announcement speech, Fiorina stressed, ""Our party freed the slaves, fought for the advancement of women's rights and Civil Rights. As a woman, I will not sit idly by and watch as Mike Huckabee does his best to unravel the groundwork of so many great Republican presidents. We must stand up to bigotry in all forms, even if it's from people we thought we knew."

After the speech, Fiorina pressed Huckabee to debate, but he refused, saying he wouldn't share the stage with a supporter of sin. Predictably, his comment was lambasted by top Republican officials, many who had already thrown their support behind Fiorina - from Dick Cheney to former president George H.W. Bush.

President Huckabee had no such endorsements. His biggest was Michele Bachmann, the former congresswoman from Minnesota who lost her reelection bid in 2010.

Unsurprisingly, Huckabee announced that she was his choice for vice-president and he put her up for a vote in front of the congress.

There was never any serious movement to confirm her - and certainly not enough votes. The Democratic Senate dragged their feet, essentially denying Huckabee, entering the final two years of his presidency, a viable vice president.

The President fought back, demanding they uphold their constitutional duties and suggesting they were putting the government at risk by not acting.

"I am a wanted man - people want me killed! Ungodly members of Satan's army! You do not have a successor to be presidency if I were to be martyred! This is unacceptable."

Token hearings were held but, time and time again, senate leaders would announce they lacked the votes to confirm Huckabee's nominee.

That didn't stop the President from announcing Bachmann as his running-mate, though.

"If the corrupt, immoral Congress won't act - I will! Today, I announce that Michele Bachmann will be vice presidential running-mate. I am so proud to have this Godly woman on the ticket and together we will make America great again!" Huckabee said, flanked by Bachmann, in his announcement declaring his intentions to run for a second term.

It was a surreal moment. Bachmann, who spoke briefly, only thanked the President, and God, for giving her the opportunity to help heal the nation.

Heal the nation.

The irony was not lost on late-night critics.

If only Hunter S. Thompson was alive to see this.

The craziest campaign in the history of America had kicked off - and it was only February, 2011.
 

SLCer

The New Left

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While the Republican Party descended into chaos, the Democrats running to succeed President Huckabee - and at the moment, it looked almost certain a Democrat would - ballooned. John Edwards had announced first. So did Russ Feingold, the party's vice presidential nominee four years ago. Hillary Clinton hinted she would run, and Illinois governor Barack Obama, a rising star in the Democratic Party, nearly threw his hat into the ring - until his eldest daughter was inflicted with an illness that ultimately forced him to abandon a bid. Delaware senator Joe Biden also announced, as did Colorado senator Mark Udall, who won a narrow contest four years prior - and there was room to grow.

For the Democrats, much of the speculation followed Illinois senator Hillary Clinton, the former first lady who won a resounding victory in 2004. She had, though, kept mum on her intentions, only laying down vague remarks and refusing a Shermanesque statement. However, behind the scenes, reservations existed. Even with her popularity spike after her husband's death, and the comparison to Jackie Kennedy and Eleanor Roosevelt, Senator Clinton's popularity was always touchy. She had a bruising primary battle with Barack Obama, who would go on to win the gubernatorial election two years later, and it proved, despite the sympathy she received as Widow First Lady, she was still a very divisive figure. Even more substantial for Clinton, though, was the concerns of her daughter, Chelsea. She privately revealed to her mother that she worried the stress of the job would ultimately do to her as it did to President Clinton - and Chelsea was quick to remind her mother that she was a grandma now.

She wasn't ever going to run without the blessing of Chelsea and that weighed heavily over her potential bid. Which meant John Edwards, the three-term senator who walloped his opponent in last November's election, appeared to be one of the front-runners.

Edwards cultivated an image of a pragmatic liberal, who, while southern, was not cut from the same cloth as Bill Clinton and Mary Landrieu.

"I'm not afraid to talk populism - a movement that was the backbone of the Democratic Party," he was often quoted saying.

It was a message that resonated in Iowa, a moderate state with one helluva populist bent.

In March, 2011, a Des Moines Register caucus poll had Edwards, Clinton and Feingold statistically tied.

The Edwards Train was gaining momentum, and he had advantages Feingold didn't.

Feingold should've been the front-runner, and, in some ways, he was one of them. As the party's vice presidential nominee in 2008, Feingold was the heir apparent to the nomination - at least, on paper.

He was supposed to galvanize the left. The New Left, as it was becoming known as on the campaign trail - but he wasn't. The left was tepid toward Feingold and there were electability issues, as well. Was America ready to elect a twice divorced, single Jew to the White House?

It didn't help that Feingold's campaign struggled out of the gate. Their field operation in Iowa was non-existent, despite the fact Iowa was a border state to Wisconsin, and he had to walk back a statement where he suggested southern voters, while filled with good intentions, lacked the mental capacity to not see they were being taken advantage of by the Huckabee administration.

"God love the people out here, and I do, they're hardworking individuals with good intentions ... but I've got to wonder if they grasp they're being taken advantage of by a Zealot in Chief?"

The off the cuff remark, said after a golfing trip in Alabama shortly after his reelection in 2010, played up the image Republicans loved to use to attack Democrats - that they were snooty, out of touch elitists who really did think they were better than everyone else.

Feingold's response was muddled, at best, and it hurt his overall image, especially in the south.

Ultimately, Edwards appeared to be the man to beat - unless Hillary Clinton ran...or Al Gore.

Or maybe even New York Senator John F. Kennedy Jr.
 

SLCer

Absurdity Reigns

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America continued to dig out of the economic recession that dominated the first-half of President Huckabee's presidency, and while the gradual climb back was happening, it continued to be excruciatingly slow. In the rust-belt region of the country, towns remained shuddered, huge communities completely decimated by the auto industry's collapse in 2009. Across the country, Americans attempted to readjust to their new lot in life - an economy that was barely chugging along and mass-unemployment still laying waste to a demoralized population.

No area of the country was immune from the dire straits - and any hope of Washington implementing additional stimulus packages, despite the economy wheezing, seemed as unlikely as Mike Huckabee being the grand marshal of the 2011 Washington D.C. pride parade.

That was the reality that extended out of Washington in the early-half of 2011. Despite the Democrats controlling the congress, having expanded their control in the Senate and taking back the House in the 2010 midterms, President Huckabee vowed to veto any bill that came out of 'that godless body' as he had taken a liking to calling them. But as the mood continued to sour, Democrats and Republicans alike knew something needed to be done to prevent the already anemic economy from backsliding into another recession.

Republicans, who had been decimated in the midterms, knew their positioning was the weakest it had been since the beginning days of Franklin Roosevelt's presidency. Huckabee had proven an albatross across the neck of so many that the President found hardly any support within the Senate Chambers (the far-right of the party in the House was a bit more tolerant to the President's craziness). Still, the senators that did remain were from largely conservative states, and despite Huckabee being massively unpopular nationwide - he was still relatively popular among the actual hardcore base. This put many Republicans, like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, in a tough spot. Huckabee, in Kentucky, had an approval rating of 40%, which was not great for any Republican, but still better than McConnell's approval, which sat at 38%. McConnell, who was not up for reelection in 2010, knew he would be on the chopping block in 2014 if he read things incorrectly. As he put it in a meeting with Senate Republicans in April of 2011, "Until the President is out of the picture, we're screwed six-ways from Sunday."

And it was true. Huckabee had put every Republican in a tough spot: work with the Democrats to create a veto-proof majority or let the President continue to veto every economic relief package, and infrastructure bill that came down the pike. It was not an enviable position and yet, the party across the aisle couldn't help but relish in the absurdity of it all.

Mary Landrieu wasn't looking so bad these days the Democrats would often joke.

So bad was the relationship between Huckabee and the congress that in February, 2011, he refused Speaker Pelosi's request to deliver the State of the Union, instead opting to release it in a letter to the members. It was short, damning and full of Huckabee's fury. His 1,500 word speech ended with:

"I am no martyr but you all are certainly Judas."

Huckabee spent the early portion of 2011 revving up his base, phoning into the 700 Club multiple times in the week, often riffing for 30-plus minutes of the one-hour program about those who have wronged him and undermined not only his presidency, but God's plan for the United States. But that is all the President had: a bubble of his supporters who had rallied around him in the wake of former Vice President Carly Fiorina resigning, and then announcing her run for president.

Even still, the President was content with his base. He relished in their support.

For the rest of the Republican Party, that albatross continued to dangle, with the only relief in sight potentially being his doomed reelection campaign.

What made Huckabee so difficult, beyond his refusal to acknowledge the legislative body, was the fact that despite his incompetence and rhetoric and complete inability to actually serve, none of it was impeachable - at least significant enough to lead to his conviction, and removal, in the United States Senate. Pelosi had floated the idea with her colleagues in the House, but what exactly would they impeach Huckabee for beyond his inability to actually do the job? Despite his bluster, and the refusal to work with the congress, there was nothing illegal about what the President had done - or at least anything that was clearly illegal.

Of course, Andrew Johnson was pretty much impeached just for being Andrew Johnson. The House officially did so because he violated the Tenure of Office Act, but one of the articles, which he was impeached over, alleged that he had made, "with a loud voice, certain intemperate, inflammatory, and scandalous harangues, and did therein utter loud threats and bitter menaces ... against Congress [and] the laws of the United States duly enacted thereby, amid the cries, jeers and laughter of the multitudes then assembled and within bearing."

Certainly that fit Huckabee's bombastic language.

But could the House really impeach the president over just that? And would it be enough to force a conviction in the Senate? The Democrats had a significant majority - but not near enough members to remove the President. Even then, even after Johnson was impeached, the Senate still, by one vote, refused to remove. Would impeaching Huckabee on crass, and inflammatory language, just embolden him?

That was the quagmire the Democrats found themselves in and, while certainly better than the realities of their friends on the other side of the aisle, their inability to actually pass laws was becoming increasingly more problematic as the country's brief recovery, however slight it may be, was now in jeopardy. If the economy were to slip back into recession, wiping out the minimal gains from the devastating 2009 recession, how many lives would be impacted by their inaction?

Despite the brutal winter giving way to the promise of spring, there was no rebirth like the Democrats had hoped when they took back the House and grew their majority in the Senate.

There would be no enjoying this spring.
 
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SLCer

The Campaign for Normalcy

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The list of Democrats who had announced their candidacy for president had grown significantly over the early months of 2011. John Edwards, the North Carolina Senator, was one of the first to announce, and was followed by:

Russ Feingold, the Democrat's Vice Presidential nominee four years prior.
Howard Dean, who had rejoined the party after an unsuccessful third-party run in 2008.
Joe Biden, the former senator from Delaware, as well as the Secretary of State in the Mary Landrieu administration.
Phil Bredesen, the Governor of Tennessee.
Deval Patrick, the former Attorney General under President Landrieu.
John Kerry, the now senior senator from Massachusetts.
Al Sharpton, the bombastic Pentecostal minister and civil rights activist.

And the list was expected to grow, with Illinois Governor Barack Obama showing interest and Senator Hillary Clinton, the former First Lady, also from Illinois, hinting she may decide to run. Even former Vice President Al Gore had met with friends in Tennessee about potentially running for president. However, his being out of the political game for so long, plus his successful career advocating on behalf of the environment, made him a long shot candidate.

The only Democrat in America, it seemed, who didn't have an interest in running was Mary Landrieu. She had taken quite a liking to her retired-from-politics life.

But out of the gate, Edwards caught the buzz of the media and quickly vaulted to the top of the polls, besting even more known candidates like Feingold, Biden and Dean. In fact, Dean was struggling gaining traction as the base of the party basically blamed him for the mess the country was in. During a rally in Iowa in spring, 2011, shortly after he announced his campaign for the nomination, Dean was heckled by some protesters yelling that he threw the election to Huckabee. Dean, in return, found himself flustered and angry, shooting back that it was the Democrats' lack of principles in 2008 that cost them the election. But this was a constant battle for Dean, and he knew it would be a significant hurdle for him to overcome if he was going to do the improbable: win the Democratic nomination.

Joe Biden, with all his foreign policy chops, was not taken as a serious candidate by many. He was too prone to gaffes and seen as too much of an old school liberal. Still, he had his charms and was great on the rope line. But it was unclear if that would be enough.

Governor Bredesen and Former Attorney General Patrick positioned themselves as outsiders, the perfect candidate to break the gridlock consuming Washington and send Huckabee to the pasture.

The problem for many Democrats was that Huckabee had also positioned himself as an outsider, a candidate with little experience in Washington, and his presidency was completely overwhelmed by the events of the day. Maybe an insider, someone with a strong understanding of how Washington works, is exactly what they needed.

That's exactly the message Senator Kerry built his campaign around: I know how to make Washington work. But the Senator, who had been in Washington for nearly 30 years, two as a member of the House and the rest as Senator, was not necessarily the fresh face of established change the voters wanted. He definitely had experience, and no one would question his liberal bona fides, but it felt like the party needed something more - a fresh face who wasn't entrenched with Washington but also understood how it worked.

And that's why John Edwards surged to the top of the polls. He was a senator, so, he had experience, but he was still young, charismatic and had a populist bent that guys like Kerry and Patrick seemed to lack.

But there was a significant personal issue that always lurked behind the Edwards campaign: the health of his wife, Elizabeth. She had already successfully battled breast cancer, and yet, right in the middle of the campaign, she had announced to the nation that her cancer had returned. This for the third time. It had returned in 2007, when Edwards was just an unknown senator, but now it was back and it forced some hard campaign questions: could he effectively campaign? And more importantly, was it even the right thing to do? Of course, the campaign was quick to tell concerned supporters that this was entirely Elizabeth's decision, and that Edwards, who never made a decision without her signing off, would end his campaign instantly if she requested.

They also felt optimistic about treatment plans - just as it was in 2007.

So, they continued. But for the Edwards family, it was always something that lingered in the backs of their head, especially the scary truths. The truths no one wanted to talk about. What if Elizabeth didn't make it?
 
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SLCer

The President Will Not Go Quietly Into the Night
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President Mike Huckabee had been told flat-out that the United States Congress would not seat his vice-presidential nominee Michele Bachmann, the congresswoman from Minnesota. This refusal was unprecedented and muddled the line of succession since former vice president Carly Fiorina had stepped down and announced her bid for the Republican nomination. But Huckabee would not compromise. Bachmann was his choice and if the congress refused to seat her, he'd just have her become vice president the old fashioned way: put her on the ticket.

Huckabee-Bachmann was the ticket the President wished he could have had four years prior. Sure, Fiorina was nice enough at first, and he understood the politics of putting a more moderate woman on the ticket, as his reactionist rhetoric turned off a significant amount of suburban female voters, but he was never in love with the idea. Fiorina was too liberal, in his view, on a whole host of issues: from gay rights to even abortion, though she softened her more pro-choice stances when she joined the ticket (prior to the campaign, Fiorina had declared Roe v Wade settled law). It was wholly a marriage of convenience and her later ambush of the President, due to his hostility toward gays and lesbians in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling in favor of marriage equality, only hardened his view that, as Barry Goldwater put it, "moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue."

In Huckabee's eyes, there was nothing virtues about Fiorina. He saw her as Judas, a betrayer. Huckabee was convinced, had he been able to get Bachmann on the ticket earlier, things would have gone differently for his presidency. Fiorina, he often told those closest to him, including personal friend John Hagee, a pastor and televangelist he frequently had over at the White House for guidance, was a plague sent down on the administration for putting a pro-choice, pro-sodomite on the ticket. He owned it. He sought Holy forgiveness for it. And it's why he would not bend on Bachmann.

"She believes just as I have that the corrupt forces of Satan are at America's front door. I've compromised once - I am not about to do it again," he confided in Hagee once.

Huckabee's us against the world attitude helped boost his core support. The President's approval was abysmal on historic levels, but he still maintained a significant level of support from nearly 30% of the nation, and that segment of the population was who got him into office to begin with: Huckabee did, in fact, only win 34% of the popular vote. Of course, he succeeded by the Democrats splitting their vote and there was no guarantee that would happen again in 2012. Except there was no guarantee Huckabee would even be the Republican nominee. And yet, despite his extremely poor national numbers, the President still had the support of 60% of the Republican Party. 40% of that would follow him to the gates of hell if they had to.

But Huckabee's cult of personality was a byproduct of the religious right, a segment of the Republican Party that grew in influence in the Richard Nixon, and then Ronald Reagan, administrations. Where Huckabee benefited was nearly unfiltered positive access from televangelists like Hagee and Pat Robertson, who spent most their shows calling for prayers for the President.

"Pray for our leader, as he is our only light in an otherwise darkening nation. Oh Lord, please deliver this great nation from the grips of socialism, hedonism and secularisms. Protect our president and give him strength to fight back these evil traitors - traitors not just to America but to Christianity," Robertson once said on his show.

These might have been fringe groups, often ridiculed by the national media and those on the left, however, they were powerful within the Republican Party and large chunks of America deemed 'fly-over country' by the coastal elites. It was there that Huckabee was at his strongest and why, despite his poor approval, he still remained a genuine threat to not only the Republican Party - but to winning a second term.
 
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Kitiem3000

Kitiem3000

Donor
Well, 34% is still a lot less than Trump got, so thus far this isn't a dystopia yet.
At least the republican nominee in this timeline has actual beliefs they are acting upon, instead of just power for power's sake.
 
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