Whether you love him for being a pro-Eurasian neoliberal or hate him for being a pro-Eurasian neoliberal, Michael Ignatieff and his two term presidency left massive impact upon the United States, to compare the America of 1997 with the America of 2005 would be a difficult task. How much of these changes were because of him and how much of them were because of the simple fact that the United States continued to passivel recover from the Communist era is… also difficult to measure, but he was an active enough President to leave himself written in common memory for years to come. This, coupled with the fact that Ignatieff never groomed himself a successor nor actively tried to associate himself with any political party, meant that the field of candidates competing in the election of 2005 was greater than ever before. Almost three dozen of them filled out the paperwork to be registered, although only some of them remained by the time the race truly began and not all of them were equally capable. Political pundits and worldwide analysts, awaiting the next President of the United States, first turned to Congress to see what the coalition which took charge after the election of 2004 might field, and saw chaos. Ultimately, the House of Representatives formed a coalition between Warren Buffett’s Labor, Mitch McConnell’s Democratic-Republicans and Sarah Palin and John McAfee’s Sovereign Liberals - even ignoring the ideological mishmash of Hoppesians and post-communists, it did not seem like a gang which could possibly agree on anything. In her first speech as Speaker of the House of Representatives, Sarah Palin described the coalition as an “alliance of those outside normal, corrupt politics, unite to bring real change for the people” - which newspapers immediately took and ran with, announcing the Democratic-Republicans, one of the two oldest and possibly most corrupt political parties in the country, to be the newest addition to the ranks of populists. And this coalition really did last about as long as people predicted, but that is a story for a little bit later.
The election of 2005 was an election of firsts, it saw the first female and the first African-American candidate in a Presidential election - though neither one of them were… ordinary. Representing the wealthy upper business class of Chicago, the businessman David Steward was far removed from the African-American political consensus, that is, staunch Southern social conservatism and the political machines of the Deep South, where the priesthood still found the audience of millions and local politicians operated through a familial network which all tied back to the NAACP. Steward was not a member of the NAACP and did not pay lip service to its ideological stance, so the African-Americans did not turn out for him. The only people he could appeal to were the urban liberals of the East Coast, to whom the progressive ideas of the East were no longer foreign and to whom Steward appeared the closest to those ideals. It was a demographic, but it was a small demographic nonetheless. The first female Presidential candidate in United States history was Nancy Pelosi, an independent diplomat most famous for two things. As a member of President Ignatieff’s board of advisors and America’s ambassador in Moscow, she made herself known by participating in negotiations with the EU on admission and lifting of trade barriers. The second is that she, as expected of any politician her age, was once a member of the Communist Party, and an ardent one at that - she worked in Caspar Weinberger’s conservative faction of the CPUSSA, there was plenty of evidence that she supported the December coup attempt, and at least one video of her attending a Columbia movement rally with a United States flag raised and saying “I will not speak until someone takes down that rag!”. This made Pelosi’s position in the post-communist American political compass difficult to identify - which, shockingly enough, actually gave her greater mass appeal rather than less. Liberals and pro-Eastern politicians could turn a blind eye to her former communism and appreciate her experience as a protege of Ignatieff with obvious foreign affairs experience and a pro-Eastern bent - conservatives and Communist era sympathizers could know that she was not one of those bloody degenerate middle class liberal types talking about abortions and gay rights. Pelosi was composed, she could talk back in a debate, and she brought her own meaningless term to the political vocabulary of American culture - expressing that partisan politics in the United States have grown decayed and the Congress has asserted too much power in the system, she proclaimed that she was championing “new politics”, whatever that meant.
To no one’s surprise, Warren Buffett put himself forward as the candidate from the Labor Party, and immediately turned towards his coalition allies to find an endorsement among them. To say that the Democratic-Republicans were reluctant would be an understatement - McConnell found it rather difficult to convince his party to give up their chance to seize the Presidency in 2001, and now he’s supposed to ask them to do the same again, and for a bunch of populists and oligarchs, no less? There were discussions of drafting old man Cheney for a second shot, others hoped to pull off the Robert Dale gambit with more commitment this time, finding a capable independent who could seize the Presidency in a crowded field. Neither of these opinions got a chance to prevail, however, because while the DRUSA might have only been reluctant, the Sovereign Liberals were completely livid. What else do you think their new name “For President McAfee!” stands for, if not the Rightful President returning from his exile to overturn the corrupt oligarch conspiracy which kept him out of the White House four years ago? And John McAfee was clearly not going to give up his chance, signing up for the race and proudly declaring that he’s going to “eat his dick if he’s not in the White House by next year”. Though the apogee of his popularity was four years ago and has since receded, McAfee still had plenty of firepower in his campaign, and the victory of the Sovereign Liberals in the Congress election of 2004 gave rise to legitimate fear that the political establishment’s enemy number one was going to win. This time, however, they were prepared. Four years was more than enough time for law enforcement to start gathering a rather large portfolio on McAfee, not just on the illicit actions through which he constructed his business empire, but also the use of his position in the House of Representatives in the four years he’s spent there so far. A rather strong case for removal from office and imprisonment for several years, perhaps even a seizure of assets, all suddenly submitted to the US Supreme Court all at once. McAfee could tell which way the wind was blowing at this point, packed his things and fled to China, where he obviously declared himself to be a political emigre fleeing suppression by his opponents, and presumably ate his dick with soy sauce.
President Ignatieff had glared daggers at Labor and DRUSA to not even dare obstruct the crackdown on McAfee - and neither of them had any issue with removing a seriously unstable possible opponent who was very clearly starting to go more than a little insane after losing 2001. The bad thing is that this instantly killed the “alliance of populists” after only a few months of working together. Sarah Palin and all the other members of the Sovereign Liberal Party who spoke on the podium in the Capitol building after McAfee’s disappearance and trial in absentia sounded as if they were one shoe slip away from pulling out an assault rifle and gunning down the rest of the legislature. That didn’t happen, of course, even though, at that point, it was the only thing they could do to change the course. Well, that and bitterly refuse to cooperate with any of the other parties while holding a quarter of the Representative seats, thus turning Congress effectively moribund until the Presidential election, and forcing Ignatieff to govern the rest of his term with executive orders. Once the dust started to settle and the DRUSA began searching for their “reformed former communist” to continue Robert Dale’s legacy, they realized that they were looking into one all along. Nancy Pelosi and her political agenda might not have brought a smile to the face of someone like Cheney or Buchanan, but she certainly did not appear to be a threat to their interests and had sent out feelers towards the left in her speeches before. Ironically, the large mass of McAfee supporters who were now lacking a candidate to rally around ended up turning out for Pelosi on election day - almost as a complete misunderstanding. When it came to presidential candidates speaking out on the issue of McAfee’s court case, she was the only one who did not openly declare that the man was guilty and China should extradite him - because she did not address the issue at all, considering it to be of minor importance. There was never any evidence that she supported McAfee or believed him to be innocent, but the masses he commanded took the bait anyway and shifted towards her.
For the National Union, or the Christians and Democrats as they called themselves at this point, 2005 was going to be the breakout year. Ever since 2000, it had been decreed to be a dying party, a movement for a shrinking class of Communist era victims and staunch pro-Eastern liberals, and yet it defied expectations by remaining relevant in the election of 2004. Few people outside of the NU liked the NU, but the drama surrounding their opponents in government and a long enough time outside of government that most people might have forgotten hating them already gave John Edwards and his party hope that they might be able to put their man in charge. To pull off this one last chance for victory, they drafted the 80 year old Norman Mailer for a shot, a draft which the founding father of modern America was very reluctant to accept. Even Mailer could tell that the average American did not exactly… like him. The Columbia Movement was history, now they remembered him as the man who destroyed the collective farms and brought forth a decade and a half of economic decay. His age was definitely not helping, either - and yet, Edwards, uncertain if he would be able to muster the same gravitas in the election, was insistent and ultimately bent the geriatric founding father. Mailer rose to the stage with a surprisingly complex and eloquent program, citing that fifteen years of post-communist life have not been kind to America, but promising a change in direction to integrate the country closer with the East and thus allowing it to benefit from the vast Eurasian markets. In his entire campaign, Mailer was hoping for one straw to be his campaign’s lifesaver - an endorsement from President Ignatieff, which, unfortunately, never came. Ignatieff was afraid of appearing to be biased at the very end of his career and sinking his legacy by betting on the wrong horse, especially one clearly associated with an establishment party, even though Mailer was technically an independent. And so, though holding on to some support, Mailer’s campaign very swiftly sank.
While one political veteran returned, another stepped down. Few could understand why David Duke, a man whose name always appeared on the ballot in any Presidential election, chose to not put himself forward this election. Was the impact which constant campaigning would have on a person’s health finally caught up to him? Probably not, Duke was as… sharp… as ever. However, he chose to endorse a fellow member of his party, Francis Collin, and though he might not have been as high profile as his superior was, his ideas were no less crazy. Collin took the vehemently, unabashedly racist, anti-semitic, White nationalist rhetoric of his party and combined them with left-wing thought, more specifically, with nostalgia towards the Communist period, into an ideology which was dubbed by others as “National Communism” or “National Fosterism”. He proudly dubbed the USSA to have been the “first great American empire”, a White American empire which subjugated North America for them and only them - the claims that they were supposedly internationalist and rather violently suppressed pre-revolutionary American culture is just hoaxes and misinterpretation, they defended America from interventions from abroad and were the real defenders of the American nation while the counter-revolutionaries were just foreign stooges. Collin received many names and pejoratives during his campaign, some of whom he actually ended up adopting, such as the “Red KKK” - and so he promptly began attending campaign rallies with a blood red costume and hood. What was just as shocking is that Duke actually supported this rather lefty interpretation of his party’s ideas, despite having once been an anti-communist dissident himself, and stated that this emphasis of the merits of the USSA does not contradict anything in the White Royal League. And it appeared that many Americans took a liking to them, too, to a point where it was actually starting to turn a little… worrying.
Finally, if all the partisan politics leave you exhausted, if all the political infighting and screaming matches leave you longing for calm and stability, and if you absolutely frikkin’ hate liquor, you can take a pilgrimage to Arkansas, where the Clinton Foundation and their Prohibition Party reign supreme. Compared to every other major candidate in the election, Bill Clinton appeared like he was from a completely different world - dressing in simple, casual workingman’s clothes, travelling across the country with a small band of followers in purple shirts, he portrayed himself as the most down to earth and warm-hearted candidate in the race. He loved jazz, he repaired cars, he worked in the fields, and he constantly spoke fiery sermons against all the evil which alcohol, drugs, and all of the other vices which have befallen American society. The first attempt of Clinton’s Prohibition Party to field a presidential candidate saw themselves not do any better than they usually do in Congressional elections - that is, dominance in Arkansas thanks to a deep rooted and omnipresent political machine, and pretty much complete obscurity everywhere else. Clinton never sought to win the election, however, and his campaign was only there to build up national prominence for his anti-alcohol message - and so, he could walk away as one of the two winners of the election.
The other winner was the candidate which could collect votes from all sides without appearing to be too dedicated towards any one. The one whose campaign weathered the constant storms of the 2005 race while many of their peers ended up succumbing to the winds. The one who was bankrolled by Bernie Sanders just so he does not have to look Buffett in the eyes next time and concede that he lost the bet.