A President Forever FH vignette using @Puget Sound's scenario:
To say the past three years have been a disaster would be the understatement of the year. America faces the worst economic crisis since the Great Recession, while President Trump has seen scandal after scandal engulf his administration. By far the worst has been the Supersoldier scandal, in which Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos created a program to genetically engineer brainwashed children to fight for the armed forces, while Trump turned a blind eye to this.
Evan McMullin, who ran in 2016 as an independent option for anti-Trump conservatives, getting 0.54% of the vote and 21.54% in his home state of Utah, announced that he would be opposing the President for the nomination. However, his run failed to generate any steam, and he was crushed by the President, losing every state except Utah, and winning just 20% of the primary vote nationwide, but staying in until the convention, after which he announced another independent run, choosing former Senator from Connecticut and 2000 Democratic vice presidential nominee Joe Lieberman as his running mate. Meanwhile, Trump chose Vice President Pence again as his running mate
Four candidates have declared their intention to run for the Democratic nomination. Leading the establishment and progressive wing is Senator Kamala Harris of California, and leading the outsiders and moderates is Governor Steve Bullock of Montana. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the 2016 Democratic nominee, who lost to Trump, is also running for one last time, but has a low chance of getting the nomination. Meanwhile, representing the socialist wing is 2016 Green nominee and physician Dr. Jill Stein, but she has an even smaller chance of winning than Clinton. After one of the closest primary seasons in recent memory, Harris finally won the nomination during the final contests on June 9th. Thanks to Bullock's relative strength in caucuses and Harris's strength in primary contests, the popular vote made the race look much more decisive than it actually was, and despite pulling 11% percent of the primary vote nationwide, Clinton failed to win a single state, dashing her hopes of pulling it out in a contested convention. After finishing in fourth with a disappointing three percent of the vote, Stein was nominated by the Socialist Party to be its candidate in the general election, choosing Winona LaDuke, environmental activist and the Green Party vice presidential nominee in 1996 and 2000, as her running mate. Meanwhile, after a divisive battle, Harris chose Bullock as her running mate.
Once again, to the chagrin of liberals across the nation, the Electoral College favored Trump, and he still won the Rust Belt states of Iowa, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. But even the Electoral College couldn't save him from a 11% defeat in the popular vote, the first double-digit margin since Reagan's wipeout of Mondale in 1984. Despite Stein pulling 12.3% of the left-wing vote, Harris was able to win back Michigan by 4%, as well flip North Carolina by 2.6 percent, as well as Florida and Arizona by shocking margins of 15.4% and 8.9%, as Latinos became for the Democrats in 2020 what the white working class was for Republicans in 2016, turning out in droves to flip once purple and deep red states blue. In the end, Harris was able to finish the night with 304 electoral votes, retake the White House for the Democrats, and finally break the glass ceiling as the first female President. In more shocking news, Evan McMullin became the first third-party or independent candidate since George Wallace in 1968 to win a state, taking his home state of Utah by 4.1% over President Trump, and qualifying for FEC funding by getting five percent of the vote, while Stein barely missed out. Only time will tell what happens next? Will Harris help lead America out of this economic crisis like Obama did? How will she address the Supersoldier program? And what happens to the Republicans now? Will they be able restore themselves as the Party of Reagan and Bush, or will the Trump wing and alt-right remain dominant for years to come? And if the latter, will McMullin be able to build a third option for principled conservatives, or even replace the Republican Party as the main right-wing option in American politics? Finally, where do Stein and the Socialists go from here? Do they fade away after a disappointing performance, or do they build on this and position themselves as a left-wing alternative to Harris and the Democratic establishment? Might we be seeing the death of the two-party system in America?
