The Union Forever: A TL

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2024 Presidential Election
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    • Mac Gregor

    2024

    U.S. Presidential Election​


    Only 57 years old in the beginning of 2024, many expected that President Navarro would seek a third term. However, after her husband Bing Rodman was found to have an inoperable brain tumor, she declined to run, though some suspected that her less than assured chances of reelection might also have contributed to her decision. This unexpected turn of events, allowed Vice President Billy Kuklinski of New York to easily secure the Democratic nomination before other candidates could enter the contest. Kuklinski and his Vice Presidential candidate former Secretary of State Miriam Serda, soon found themselves facing formidable Republican challengers.

    Desmond L. Parker

    Desmond Lowell Parker was born in 1955 to lower middleclass parents in a suburb near Kansas City, Missouri. With scarce money for college, Parker managed to secure an appointment to the Naval Academy with a rugby scholarship. After commissioning, Parker first served as an electronic warfare officer at Subic Bay with the Asiatic Fleet. By the time the United States entered the Asia-Pacific War, Parker found himself aboard the USS Manifest Destiny, along with future president Abraham Lincoln IV. Parker lost the full use of the left arm when the USS Manifest Destiny was critically damaged during the Battle of Chichi Jima in 1980. Fortunately, Parker managed to get his section and himself to the lifeboats before the ship sank.

    Parker left the Navy at the end of the war, and returned to Missouri where he married his high school sweetheart Janet Singer, and began to pursue a legal career. Shortly after graduating from law school, the Republicans convinced Parker to run for the state senate, which he did successfully in 1986. With his small law practice struggling, Parker dove into politics and was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1992, as part of the Republican wave that swept much of the country that year. In Congress, notoriously sarcastic Parker developed a reputation as a hawk on defense, and a fierce critic of the Zaal administration. In 2004, he secured one of Missouri’s two Senate seats, after heavy lobbying of the state legislature. A vocal supporter of President Rowland’s Pacific Treaty Organization, Parker became a fixture on cable news channels urging ratification, a process that helped him gain national notoriety. Parker admitted to an extramarital affair in 2011, and divorced his first wife that year. A few months later, Parker married his former mistress Shannon Barton.

    Parker made an impressive bid for the Republican nomination in 2020 but ultimately lost to fellow Senator Troy Allerton of Rhode Island. Four years later, Parker, as the presumed frontrunner, quickly built up an impressive lead in the primaries. Clinching the nomination well in advance of the convention, Parker selected Todd Fernholz, the young governor of Pasapa, as his running mate.

    The Campaign

    Parker and Fernholz delivered blistering attacks on Vice President Kuklinski and the Democrats. While one may have thought that the African War would be the primary issue, concerns over the stagnant economy took precedence for most voters. Parker lambasted the Democrats as “mole-men” for their shortsightedness in domestic, foreign, and environmental policy, a charge only exacerbated by Kuklinski's heavily bespectacled appearance. Democratic retorts that they were handling the situation in Africa, and pointing to past achievements such as the Balanced Budget Amendment, did little to reassure voters. The Republicans' vague promises of “bringing the conflict in Africa to a quick and honorable end” and “economic invigoration” found a more receptive audience.

    Results

    President Parker.png

    Desmond L. Parker
    Republican from Missouri
    41st President of the United States​

    Election night proved closer than some pundits had expected, but nevertheless Parker won the presidency after taking back most of the Caribbean from the Democrats and making impressive inroads in certain prairie states. At 69 years old, he became the oldest president ever elected to a first term, and the first president from Missouri. Congress remained unchanged with Republicans in control of the House and an evenly divided Senate.

    2024 election.png
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    Last edited:
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    • Jim Smitty

    Jim Smitty

    Mac Gregor said:
    Why would you think that?
    Click to expand...
    Sounds hawkish on defensive. Sounds very anti-tech/China. Sounds charismatic. He is old. Divorced and remarried.

    Which to me sounds like he could be an ITL Reagan. It was hard to gauge his domestic positions in the update. However he came off like a Reagan or Thatcher mold to me through. At least on the foreign front
     

    Kirook

    Jim Smitty said:
    Sounds hawkish on defensive. Sounds very anti-tech/China. Sounds charismatic. He is old. Divorced and remarried.

    Which to me sounds like he could be an ITL Reagan. It was hard to gauge his domestic positions in the update. However he came off like a Reagan or Thatcher mold to me through. At least on the foreign front
    Click to expand...
    Didn't the Republicans remain the more socially progressive party ITTL, though?
     

    Mac Gregor

    Jim Smitty said:
    Sounds hawkish on defensive. Sounds very anti-tech/China. Sounds charismatic. He is old. Divorced and remarried.

    Which to me sounds like he could be an ITL Reagan. It was hard to gauge his domestic positions in the update. However he came off like a Reagan or Thatcher mold to me through. At least on the foreign front
    Click to expand...

    I suppose there are some similarities. Good eye. We will have to wait and see if Parker will have the same impact as OTL’s Reagan.
     
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