Reporting for Duty: The Presidency of John Kerry and Beyond

Chapter XIX: June 2006.
Chapter Nineteen
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The ruins of Abu al-Zarqawi's compound following the fatal airstrike.
The start of the summer saw two developments related to the War on Terrorism; first was the Royal Canadian Mounted Police thwarting a planned truck bomb attack in Toronto that was inspired by Al Qaeda. The plotters, all of whom were young immigrants from Pakistan, were reportedly just days away from executing the attack when investigators closed in on them, only narrowly avoiding a major tragedy unlike any other in Canadian history. While authorities had success at home when it came to such plots, the hellscape that Iraq had devolved into was nearing its bloody peak as casualties from sectarian violence continued to surge. But while continuous attacks on American and coalition forces in the country hamper counter-terrorism operations, the Islamist movement in the country was dealt a serious blow when Abu al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian born leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq, was killed in an airstrike on his compound. The death of al-Zarqawi is a major blow to the insurgency and a key propaganda victory for the United States at a time when the pervasive sense of pessimism over the course of the war was running high.

After a lengthy fight in the House of Representatives, the DREAM Act was passed 225-210, advancing to the Senate. Though the Republican Party overall was largely opposed to the bill due to their opposition to “amnesty,” there remained a significantly vocal minority that was supportive of the administration’s efforts. Led by Senator John McCain (R-AZ), a number of Republican Senators broke rank and voiced their support for the bill. This effort was largely a result of the Arizona Republican’s presidential ambitions, which he had been entertaining since his 2000 campaign was scuttled. Regardless of his motivation, McCain was able to bring Senators Collins (R-ME), Chafee (R-RI), DeWine (R-OH), Domenici (R-NM), Murkowski (R-AK), and Snowe (R-ME) on board in support of the legislation, and his group became known as the “Gang of Six.” The Senate also took up the nomination of Tom Daschle to head the Department of Health and Human Services in June, but his nomination was scuttled by concerns about his tax returns emerged in the press; the former Senate Democratic leader was simply too polarizing in such a partisan atmosphere to push through such an evenly split chamber in any event. After Daschle pulled his name out of consideration, President Kerry instead named Deputy Secretary Mary Wakefield to the position. Confirmation hearings for Wakefield commenced relatively quickly towards the end of the month, with her administrative expertise putting otherwise skeptical Republicans at ease as the federal bureaucracy comes into focus following the healthcare fiasco.

Joe Lieberman, the 2000 Democratic Vice Presidential nominee, had been a fierce critic of the President’s Iraq policies from the very beginning. With the situation in Iraq growing worse by the day, the Senator was increasingly at odds with the Democratic base over the course of America's future in the conflict. Facing a strong primary challenge from the left in the form of Ned Lamont, Lieberman stunned Washington when he announced his decision to leave the Democratic Party and join the Republicans at a Capitol Hill press conference on the morning of Wednesday, June 14th, 2006. This decision gave the Republicans the one additional seat needed to break the tie in the Senate, resulting in McConnell taking over as the Majority Leader of the Senate. Lieberman’s defection resulted0 in Alan Schleslinger, the Republican Senate candidate, dropping out of the race under pressure from the state GOP, who subsequently nominated Lieberman as their candidate after a meeting of the Connecticut Republican Party’s executive committee. The loss of Joe Lieberman was a crippling blow to the Democratic Party's momentum heading into the midterm elections, with Lieberman - a relatively reliable liberal on social issues for the most part - becoming an in-demand guest on conservative radio shows and on Fox News in the days that followed.

Lieberman’s defection was a big hit for Democratic morale, in spite of his unpopularity among members of the party. The loss of the Senate majority ended Vice President Edwards tie-breaking role, and endangered the passing of the DREAM Act. The Republican Party capitalized on the Lieberman defection by recruiting a number of strong candidates in 2008, including Governor John Hoeven (R-ND) and Congressman Mike Castle (R-DE) among others. As the midterms drew increasingly close, Senator Elizabeth Dole (R-NC)’s leadership as chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee was hailed by her colleagues. Though the Republican Party was grappling with the Foley scandal, Dole’s leadership kept her fellow Republicans on message and their campaigns well funded. The unpopularity of both the ACA and the DREAM Act was enough to stoke the fire of the Republican base, which was committed to actualizing Mitch McConnell’s ambition to make John Kerry a one term President.


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Senator Joe Lieberman (R-CT)
 
Chapter XX: July 2006.
Chapter Twenty:
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President Kerry embraces Senator Obama after the passage of the DREAM Act.
The summer heat was matched by the simmering tension in Congress; despite losing the Senate majority due to the defection of Senator Lieberman, the administration was hell bent on passing the DREAM Act in the Senate before the August recess. As Senators and Congressmen and women prepared to go home to their district for another round of townhall meetings and other events with their constituents, there was a great sense of foreboding across Washington. Remembering the hard opposition to the ACA, the Great Teacher for Every Child Act, and the growing opposition on both sides of the aisle to the wars overseas, the President was as anxious to get the DREAM Act passed as anyone else. With the midterm elections nearing, the President found himself with a fleeting amount of political capital. Though Mitch McConnell, the newly minted Majority Leader remained stridently opposed to the plan, which he warned would lead to amnesty and increased inflow of undocumented immigration. But he simply did not have the votes to stop it. When debate over the DREAM Act ended, Senator George Allen (R-VA) filibustered for 12 straight hours against the bill by reading letters from across the country written in opposition to the act. The effort failed when Allen at last yielded the floor, followed by a (much, much shorter) searing rebuttal from Senator Obama, whose emotional remarks before the Senate were widely hailed in the press. The following day, the DREAM Act passed 59-40 in the Senate (Senator Byrd of West Virginia was hospitalized at the time of the vote). President Kerry signed the DREAM Act into law the day after, relieved to have won one last major political battle ahead of the impending elections.

In Afghanistan, a helicopter with fifteen Marines on board was shot down by the Taliban on July 1st, resulting in the deaths of everyone inside in a fiery mountainside crash. The incident, which was one of the deadliest actions of the war in recent months, was celebrated by Osama Bin Laden, who released another rambling audio tape calling for jihad against the western forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. But another tragedy would soon share the headlines. On July 4th, as the nation marked Independence Day, festivities were marred by tragic news from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The NASA space shuttle Discovery explodes midair just minutes after liftoff. Horrified onlookers watched in disbelief as the burning core of the shuttle comes crashing down from the sky, landing in the ocean a few miles off the coast. All crew members were killed in the explosion, the cause of which was unknown. As an investigation into the crash commenced, NASA announced an indefinite suspension of future Space Shuttle flights until the cause of the Discovery disaster is determined.

The disaster was followed by an insult from North Korea, who successfully fired a missile over Japan during a test. As the North Koreans continued their nuclear program, the administration found itself facing the daunting task of stopping the nuclearization of the Korean peninsula. It came as a pleasant surprise, but also a rare opportunity, when a letter written by the North’s Foreign Minister arrived at the White House days after the missile test. The letter expressed a willingness from the North Korean government to pause their nuclear program and re-engage with the United States, Russia, South Korea, China, and Japan in the "Six Party" talks. The President accepts the offer, having determined that the previous missile launch was a display of force, and Secretary of State Richard Holbrooke is dispatched to Japan and South Korea for further discussions with regional partners to determine how to best move forward.

The Department of Homeland Security and the FBI announced the arrests of several Muslim men (Saudi Arabian and Yemeni by nationality) living in the New York City for plotting a fantastical terror attack that involved blowing up a truck bomb in the Holland Tunnel with the intent of flooding lower Manhattan. All of those involved in the plot purported to be inspired by Anwar al-Awlaki, a Yemeni born cleric who lived for years in the United States, who was quickly becoming a common thread in several Al Qaeda inspired terrorist plots. President Kerry, after having discussed the matter with Homeland Security Secretary Jane Harman and his National Security Adviser Susan Rice, decided to add al-Awlaki’s name to a kill/capture list. Unfortunately for the White House, the whereabouts of their newest target was unknown.

Presidential Approval Rating (July, 2006)

Disapprove: 50%
Approve: 41%
Undecided: 9%
 
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Yup. Depending on badly the GOP bungles the '08 election we could be looking at an earlier Trump presidency!

For some real hilarity, Kerry screws up badly enough for ¡JEB! to win in 2008, and Trump runs as a Democrat in 2012.

Would have to move this to Chat but we have to do that anyway when it gets to 2011.
 
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JLan1485

Banned
Hmmm wouldn't 41 Senators been sufficient to prevent an end of the debating of the Dream Act, and therefore caused it to wallow endlessly in the Senate?
 

JLan1485

Banned
For some ral hilarity, Kerry screws up badly enough for ¡JEB! to win in 2008, and Trump runs as a Democrat in 2012.

Would have to move this to Chat but we have to do that anyway when it gets to 2011.
Don't get the ¡JEB!

Hmmm. I was going to dismiss a Trump Democrat Presidency in 2012. But think about it: Hillary would run too and she and Obama would undercut each other, Trump might actually be able to squeeze through the two as they fight and end up winning it all, though at that point it's still a long, long, long, longshot.
 
For some ral hilarity, Kerry screws up badly enough for ¡JEB! to win in 2008, and Trump runs as a Democrat in 2012.

Would have to move this to Chat but we have to do that anyway when it gets to 2011.
I won't spoil who ends up winning, but I will say that Trump does have a big role in this (President or not), thus this will have to go to chat. I was planning on covering everything through the 2012 election in this thread though. Though I'm more than willing to end this a bit earlier in 2011 in order to comply with the current politics rules. This will continue in chat eventually regardless.

Hmmm wouldn't 41 Senators been sufficient to prevent an end of the debating of the Dream Act, and therefore caused it to wallow endlessly in the Senate?
You are correct, actually. I failed to remember to take that into account. I modified the initial post, and added two extra votes to the DREAM Act tally in favor of passage. I figure the political climate at the time in the ATL would make immigration less polarizing an issue than in the post-2008 environment of OTL. I could envision one or two reasonably conservative Senators from agrarian states casting votes in favor of the bill due to labor issues, etc. Think someone like John Thune, etc.
 
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I won't spoil who ends up winning, but I will say that Trump does have a big role in this (President or not), thus this will have to go to chat. I was planning on covering everything through the 2012 election in this thread though. Though I'm more than willing to end this a bit earlier in 2011 in order to comply with the current politics rules. This will continue in chat eventually regardless.


You are correct, actually. I failed to remember to take that into account. I modified the initial post, and added two extra votes to the DREAM Act tally in favor of passage. I figure the political climate at the time in the ATL would make immigration less polarizing an issue than in the post-2008 environment of OTL. I could envision one or two reasonably conservative Senators from agrarian states casting votes in favor of the bill due to labor issues, etc. Think someone like John Thune, etc.

Some non reconciliation bills pass with less than 60. They filibuster a lot more than they used to but they don't always use it.
 
For some real hilarity, Kerry screws up badly enough for ¡JEB! to win in 2008, and Trump runs as a Democrat in 2012.

Would have to move this to Chat but we have to do that anyway when it gets to 2011.
Don't get the ¡JEB!
In OTL he printed JEB! signs. It came out that he registered as Hispanic in Florida even though he isn't, so a joke that got some circulation was calling him ¡JEB!
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JLan1485

Banned
In OTL he printed JEB! signs. It came out that he registered as Hispanic in Florida even though he isn't, so a joke that got some circulation was calling him ¡JEB!
No no haha, I wasn’t saying I didn’t understand it, I was just memeing “get the Jab”
 
No no haha, I wasn’t saying I didn’t understand it, I was just memeing “get the Jab”

Ah, OK - I thought you were asking about the leading exclamation point :cheers:

"Don't get the Jeb" is good. Another one (which Democrats and some disgruntled Republicans used OTL) was "Stay outta da Bushes".
 
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Chapter XXI: August 2006.
Chapter Twenty One:
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Senator Rick Santorum and challenger Bob Casey Jr. debate in Pennsylvania ahead of a key Senate race.
By August, the President was starting to worry. Despite his legislative achievements, the Republicans led by nine points against Democrats on a generic ballot according to polling. While Kerry’s polling shows he was still (relatively) popular, his numbers had undergone a steady decline in the wake of polarizing fights over healthcare and immigration in Congress. With an excited opposition desperate to render him a lame-duck President, the administration viewed the midterms as an absolute priority. August marked the start of the general election phase of the campaign, with primaries across the country taking place in House, Gubernatorial, and Senate elections as well as for a myriad of other state and local races as well. These primaries produced interesting results; in Virginia, businessman Harris Miller defeated Jim Webb and Tim Kaine to win the nomination to take on Senator George Allen. In Pennsylvania, incumbent Rick Santorum was set to face off against Bob Casey Jr, while down south in the Sunshine State, the Mark Foley scandal cleared the way for Adam Putnam to crush polarizing fellow Congresswoman Katherine Harris to earn the right to challenge Bill Nelson as the Republican candidate. Gubernatorial elections were equally contested; while some, like Florida, were expected to be easy Republican holds, other races such as the Ohio gubernatorial race were going down to the wire, with Mayor Michael Coleman of Columbus taking on Secretary of State Ken Blackwell.

Beyond politics, it seemed as if the world was spinning with such speed that it could burst into flames. In Somalia, an Islamist group with Al Qaeda ties known as the Islamic Courts Union began to expand outward, quickly taking over a large chunk of the country and implementing sharia law. The rise of the Islamic Courts Union was accompanied by increased pirate activity off the coasts of the Horn of Africa. As the Islamists planned to march on Mogadishu, the capital city and home of the country’s practically nonexistent central government, Secretary of State Holbrooke was again dispatched abroad, this time to Africa where he appeals for an African Union intervention in the failed Somali state. Though Ethiopia and Kenya both offered to spearhead such an effort, they remained skeptical that they could restore order to Somalia.

Following the Hamas takeover of Gaza and the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit, an Israeli Defense Force member taken prisoner by militants, tensions in the Holy Land ran high. In retaliation for the kidnapping, the Israeli air force bombed the home of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah in Beirut. Nasrallah escaped injury, and the failed assassination attempt was widely condemned across the Arab world. In response, both Hezbollah and Hamas launched rocket and mortar fire across the border into the Jewish State. After a rocket leveled an Israeli school (resulting in three deaths and over fifty injuries), the IDF struck back with an unyielding campaign of aerial bombardment against Hamas targets in Gaza. As the aerial war commenced, the Israeli navy simultaneously blockaded the coast. Privately, Secretary Holbrooke warned that an Israeli attack on Lebanon in conjunction with the campaign in Gaza could result in an unprecedented backlash against the west in the region, but the Israeli government would simply hear none of it. At a press conference after a meeting between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Secretary Holbrooke, Olmert did not rule out sending ground troops into Gaza and occupying it, a position that Olmert had not previously addressed with the visiting Secretary of State. The image of the American government’s top diplomat standing stunned and confused behind the Prime Minister as he announced such a possibility resulted in angry mobs protesting outside American embassies across the Middle East. There would be fatal consequences because of Olmert’s threat, not in Israel, but rather, in Seattle.

On the morning of Wednesday, August 9th, Naveed Hafzal Haq, a Pakistani-American, shot eight women fatally at Seattle's Greater Jewish Federation offices before being killed by a responding police officer. Five others, all law enforcement, were also injured before the gunman was slain after a firefight. The FBI classified the incident as a hate crime and states that there is no apparent connection to terror groups on the outset, though it is quickly revealed that Haq had been radicalized by Anwar al-Awlaki as well. The gunman has been motivated to act following the Israeli-Palestinian conflict's escalation. The shooting is considered one of the worst acts of terror to take place in the United States since the 9/11 attacks, and the failure of Attorney General Eric Holder to quickly label the attack as a terrorist incident becomes fodder for the President's Republican critics, all of whom use the massacre as an example of the administration's lax national security policies.


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The war in the Middle East became a huge headache for the Kerry administration.

Just two days later, Prime Minister Olmert orders a massive cross-border attack on Hezbollah installations in southern Lebanon. UN Secretary General Koffi Annan calls for Israel to immediately pull their forces back across the border, but Israel’s Ambassador to the UN demands in return that Lebanon take more aggressive action against such organizations that operate within their borders or face a potential occupation of the border regions. The IDF’s push into Lebanon is successful, with militants quickly scattering as the Israelis take control of weapons caches and uproot training camps and bomb making centers near their borders. After establishing what Olmert describes as a “buffer zone,” the IDF’s focus shifted towards an uncertain occupation of the region. Iranian President Ahmadinejad openly declared his support for further rocket attacks on Israel, demanding that “the Zionist ulcer” be removed from the map in his typically bombastic speeches, and Iranian special forces were alleged to be on the ground assisting their allies in Hezbollah throughout the conflict's duration.

As Secretary Holbrooke tried to calm down the crisis between Israel and Lebanon, Secretary Nunn was attempting to calm down the insurgency in Iraq. Following Israel’s incursion into Lebanon, insurgent activity grew even worse as Islamists used the conflict to their advantage during a sustained propaganda campaign aimed at growing their support. Saddam Hussein, hardly a friend of Al Qaeda, also used the conflict between Israel and her neighbors to justify his deposed regime's various actions. Though he was on hunger strike and subsequently force fed at a Baghdad hospital, Saddam frequently would use his ongoing trial for crimes against humanity to call for continued resistance against the American occupation. The President was aware of the ripples caused by the Israeli invasion, and attempted to talk the King of Jordan into potentially acting as a mediator. Though he was one of the most progressive and pro-western leaders in the Middle East, the King was weary of trying to step into the middle of the crisis, bouncing the ball back to the hapless foreign policy establishment across the Atlantic in Washington.
 
I won't spoil who ends up winning, but I will say that Trump does have a big role in this (President or not), thus this will have to go to chat. I was planning on covering everything through the 2012 election in this thread though. Though I'm more than willing to end this a bit earlier in 2011 in order to comply with the current politics rules. This will continue in chat eventually regardless.


You are correct, actually. I failed to remember to take that into account. I modified the initial post, and added two extra votes to the DREAM Act tally in favor of passage. I figure the political climate at the time in the ATL would make immigration less polarizing an issue than in the post-2008 environment of OTL. I could envision one or two reasonably conservative Senators from agrarian states casting votes in favor of the bill due to labor issues, etc. Think someone like John Thune, etc.
There could’ve been Senators who voted for cloture, to end the filibuster, but didn’t vote for the bill.
 
Chapter XXII: September 2006.
Chapter Twenty Two:
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Lilly Ledbetter had become known as a prominent Equal Pay advocate.
The beginning of September saw the Equal Pay for Equal Work Act passed by the House of Representatives; the bill had been introduced earlier in February, but Speaker Hastert enforced the rule named after him for one last time. After months of lobbying, protests, and activism, the Speaker finally brought the bill up for a vote when a narrow majority of his caucus voiced support for the bill. The final vote of 347-88 saw the bill at last advance towards the Senate, where Senators Patty Murray (D-WA) and Hillary Clinton (D-NY) introduced it to a much friendlier upper-chamber. Pushed by activist Lilly Ledbetter, the Equal Pay Act's swift passage became a priority for the Kerry administration as the elections loomed. Meanwhile, President Kerry’s designated nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, Mary Wakefield, was confirmed by the Senate in a 87-13 vote, giving the administration an additional victory and filling at last the vacancy in the cabinet left by Howard Dean’s resignation and the subsequent failed Daschle nomination.

On September 11th, President Kerry led the nation in mourning those lost five years earlier during 9/11. After a wreath laying ceremony at the Pentagon, the President traveled to New York for a memorial service at Ground Zero, where he met with survivors of the attacks and paid tribute to those killed. Though the United States had yet to experience terrorism on the same scale since, the lingering trauma of 9/11 remained fresh in the minds of Americans across the country. The war precipitated by the attacks raged across Afghanistan five years later with no end in sight as Bin Laden remained at large. Despite the inability to find the elusive terrorist leader, public support for the war in Afghanistan was more widespread than the war in Iraq, the latter of which seemed like an illegitimate conflict in the eyes of many.

Across the ocean, a key American ally was set to retire. After ten years in Downing Street, Prime Minister Tony Blair announced he would stand down as Prime Minister and leader of the Labour Party. This set his intended successor, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown, on the path to the Premiership. Despite the deep discontent with the Labor Party’s left wing, the Chancellor would go on to be unopposed in the following leadership election. A similar change in leadership occurred in Japan, where the Liberal Democratic Party nominated Shinzo Abe as their new party leader and Prime Minister. The new Japanese Prime Minister would become known early on into his premiership for his more aggressive foreign policy vision, citing the growing influence of China in the region.


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Harris Miller's hot-mic comments about voters doomed his campaign.
Elsewhere, other changes in politics were taking place. In Rhode Island’s Republican Senate primary, challenger and Cranston Mayor Steve Laffey defeated incumbent Senator Lincoln Chafee. In spite of the primary loss, Chafee announces he will continue his candidacy as an independent. In New York, former Judge Janean Pirro beats Ed Cox (Nixon’s son-in-law) in the Republican primary for Senate, while Hillary Clinton is nominated once more unopposed. The midterm’s general election began to kick into full gear as the primary season ended; the first controversy of the campaign cycle is in Virginia, where Democratic Senate candidate Harris Miller’s hot-mic comments after a local television interview about Allen and Webb votes being “stupid rubes” effectively sunk his candidacy out of the gate. It also gave a valuable soundbite for the Republican Party and Fox News to weaponize, painting the Kerry administration and the Democratic Party as the party of “San Francisco values.” October’s onset brought the election into its final end stage, with President Kerry’s approval ratings collapsing as a Republican wave begins to crest.
 
Hi there! First time reviewer of this timeline in particular so I'm going to just go over my general thoughts. Kerry to me seems a very...odd sort of President, and I mean that not as an insult to your writing but as a testament to the oddness of the campaign he ran. While I like a lot of the legislation he's passing and I think he's generally taking the country in a somewhat decent direction, he curiously doesn't really seem to have that many hardcore supporters. I sincerely hope the mid-terms go a lot better than the current posts seem to indicate for the Democrats because that Miller line is, er, shit? To say the least?

I speak from a English perspective, so I do think that this is an interesting way of shining a light on aspects of what would have been Bush's second term in office that have been lost to the passing of time. Specifically I'm talking with regards to stuff like the shooting described in the most recent chapters. There are a few checkpoints in the Dubya presidency that I know of, but the details in-between those checkpoints often get lost.

Overall, I can't wait to see where we go from here.
 
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