2017-2025: Hillary Rodham Clinton/Elizabeth Warren (D) (45)
2025-2033: Amy Klobuchar/Cory Booker (D) (46)
2033-2041: Joseph P. Kennedy/Will Burns (D) (47)
The death of the Republican Party, the Grand Old Party of Lincoln, had been predicted for years, and it finally began with the nomination of Donald Trump in 2016. Hillary Rodham Clinton won in a landslide and became the forty-fifth President of the United States. Despite his loss, Trump was still popular with the Republican base, and ran again in 2020. When he failed to clinch the nomination, he did as he'd promised in 2016, and walked out of the convention. He and his supporters, angry with the Republican establishment, formed the American Party (they were well aware of the implications). Hillary's re-election was an even more resounding landslide.
This led to a kind of second Era of Good Feelings. Moderates started turning to the Democrats, and the rest were split between the Republicans and Neo Know Nothings (they didn't call themselves that). For the next twenty years the Democratic Party controlled Congress and the White House. But it was not all sunshine and rainbows. A spectre was hanging over the Democratic Party: the spectre of Bernie Sanders.
The left wing of the Democratic Party was incredibly restive. Nomination after nomination, progressive candidates tried and failed. And the Democratic supermajorities in Congress required an ideological rainbow coalition that made the left of the party feel quite stifled, including Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, and a few Millennial veterans of Bernie Sanders' 2016 campaign who had since gotten elected to Congress. In 2036 an attempt had been made to challenge President Kennedy in the general election, and it proved to only be a bump in the road; that party was the Progressive-Green Party.
In 2040 Mark Zuckerberg, the billionaire founder of Facebook and one-term senator (at the time of course), announced he would be running for the Democratic nomination. Fellow senator and former "Berner" Audrey Zinn (no relation to Howard Zinn, but the irony was helpful) of Washington rose to challenge her. It was just like 2016, and several contests in between: moderate-ish neoliberal versus loony socialist (Zinn was one of several members of the Congressional Democratic Socialist Caucus), and the outcome was the same as well. But instead of conceding, Zinn capitalized on the anger on the left, and pulled a Trump.
2040
Mark Zuckerberg/Kevin Lee (D)
Audrey Zinn/Tammy Baldwin (L)
Jerry Falwell III/Jefferson Watts (A)
Mark Zuckerberg became the forty-eighth President of the United States. But like the Republican Party after 1856, the Labor Party (officially Labor-Progressive-Green) was not dead.
2025-2033: Amy Klobuchar/Cory Booker (D) (46)
2033-2041: Joseph P. Kennedy/Will Burns (D) (47)
The death of the Republican Party, the Grand Old Party of Lincoln, had been predicted for years, and it finally began with the nomination of Donald Trump in 2016. Hillary Rodham Clinton won in a landslide and became the forty-fifth President of the United States. Despite his loss, Trump was still popular with the Republican base, and ran again in 2020. When he failed to clinch the nomination, he did as he'd promised in 2016, and walked out of the convention. He and his supporters, angry with the Republican establishment, formed the American Party (they were well aware of the implications). Hillary's re-election was an even more resounding landslide.
This led to a kind of second Era of Good Feelings. Moderates started turning to the Democrats, and the rest were split between the Republicans and Neo Know Nothings (they didn't call themselves that). For the next twenty years the Democratic Party controlled Congress and the White House. But it was not all sunshine and rainbows. A spectre was hanging over the Democratic Party: the spectre of Bernie Sanders.
The left wing of the Democratic Party was incredibly restive. Nomination after nomination, progressive candidates tried and failed. And the Democratic supermajorities in Congress required an ideological rainbow coalition that made the left of the party feel quite stifled, including Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, and a few Millennial veterans of Bernie Sanders' 2016 campaign who had since gotten elected to Congress. In 2036 an attempt had been made to challenge President Kennedy in the general election, and it proved to only be a bump in the road; that party was the Progressive-Green Party.
In 2040 Mark Zuckerberg, the billionaire founder of Facebook and one-term senator (at the time of course), announced he would be running for the Democratic nomination. Fellow senator and former "Berner" Audrey Zinn (no relation to Howard Zinn, but the irony was helpful) of Washington rose to challenge her. It was just like 2016, and several contests in between: moderate-ish neoliberal versus loony socialist (Zinn was one of several members of the Congressional Democratic Socialist Caucus), and the outcome was the same as well. But instead of conceding, Zinn capitalized on the anger on the left, and pulled a Trump.
2040
Mark Zuckerberg/Kevin Lee (D)
Audrey Zinn/Tammy Baldwin (L)
Jerry Falwell III/Jefferson Watts (A)
Mark Zuckerberg became the forty-eighth President of the United States. But like the Republican Party after 1856, the Labor Party (officially Labor-Progressive-Green) was not dead.
