Warren Harding does not die, and runs again in 1924, despite being hit by a series of scandals. He wins, but his victory is much weaker than Coolidge's OTL landslide. Meanwhile, butterflies prevent the D.C. Stephenson scandal from ever appearing, and the KKK continues to grow in influence. Further scandals erupt in Harding's second term, forcing him to resign midway through. Al Smith manages to narrowly win in 1928, beating a Republican Party hit by so many scandals and political infighting. President Smith then faces the Depression, and tries a series of half-measures, akin to Hoover. These fail to alleviate the situation, and the country snaps back to the early 1920s Republican dominance, with huge waves wrecking the Democrats in 1930 and 1932. Smith's Catholicism leads to a huge surge in KKK activity, with the Klan now under the full control of Stephenson seizing control of many Southern Democratic Parties and Republican state parties across the country. Conservative Republican Senator James Eli Watson wins 1932 in a landslide, and decides to return to the conservatism of the 1920s rather than the moderate Progressivism of the failed Smith administration. This fails to help the economy, and Watson soon finds himself out of touch with the American people.
The 1934 midterms see a massive revolt of the left against two parties which have failed the American workers. The Farmer-Labor Party spreads from Minnesota, while the Progressive breakaway of the LaFollettes gains support outside of Wisconsin. Meanwhile in the South, populist Huey Long is seen by many as the one man capable of standing up to the KKK, and begins to tear the Democrats apart. In 1936, a terribly unpopular Watson is renominated due to Stephenson's support, leading to a revolt of Progressive Republicans. The Democratic Party is also torn apart, with conservatives backing Garner and leftists backing Long. The left-wing breakaways unite under charismatic and popular Minnesota governor Floyd Olson, who chooses Long as his running mate to unite north and south. At the beginning of the campaign, Olson is seen by many as the one man who can save America, and enjoys a huge lead against a divided opposition.
Within weeks of being nominated Olson dies of cancer.
The left faction, suddenly without its leader, chooses Huey Long to be its new standard-bearer. Long wins in a landslide, but without clear majorities in Congress loyal to him. His radical and ill thought out proposals soon stall in the legislature, so he begins to enact a series of increasingly controversial executive orders. When the courts strike down his orders, Long defies them, knowing that he has enough loyalists in the Senate to prevent himself from getting removed from office. Terrified of an increasingly radical, obviously incompetent president who is blatantly defying the Constitution, several big businesses join a conspiracy to remove Long from office. Led by General George Van Horn Moseley and backed by the KKK, they carry out a coup. Long is killed, his administration and supporters in Congress arrested for treason, and Moseley takes control during a state of emergency. When communist-lead unions erupt in open revolt, businesses continue to back Moseley as he crushes communism and saves capitalism in America.
Too late to those same businessmen realize that now that opposition from the far-left has been crushed, Moseley has the tools to destroy all opposition. Too late does D.C. Stephenson realize that Moseley sees him as a threat; his sexual crimes are exposed and he is executed, with the KKK being dissolved, its members instead joining the new National Police Force or the military directly. Moseley outlaws all civil rights organizations, with the ACLU and NAACP being declared criminals. Southern-style segregation soon begins to be introduced across the nation, as black people are disenfranchised country-wide. Prohibition is escalated, with a reign of terror carried out against the Catholic Italian and Irish communities, and restrictions getting enacted against marijuana as well. A moralist crackdown against homosexuals, feminists, atheists, and other minorities begins. But the minority group most afraid in the U.S. is the Jewish community, as Supreme General Moseley meets repeatedly with his newfound ally, Adolf Hitler, with whom he shares many views and opinions...