Here's a scenario I've been brainstorming I've wanted feedback on. It's super near future a scenario mind you, to the point you could say the PoD is April 15th when a civilian getting home from work turns left on a street in Chicago and gets into a car crash.
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Let's say Democrats do manage to basically eat into the GOP's base post-Trump and win senate seats out in the plains more often, it could make stuff like an expanded Green Party get more ability to grow without a Nader-like disaster that nips it in the bud.
In this scenario, democrats stay harder moderate and have Klobuchar as Joe's VP. Tragedy strikes, a right wing extremist shoots Joe Biden and the GOP's response alienated a large faction of voters from the Reagan coalition in a party that had already descended into infighting without a clear leading figure anymore. This hands democrats 2022 and 2024 with relative ease as Klobuchar manages to create a more moderate-conservative Democratic Party. Mind, the left flank of the Democratic Party, lacking a place to go increasingly turn to the Green Party who had gotten over 5% in the 2020 elections without harming the democrats all that much. In 2024 the Greens do better, and democrats broke into the plains winning states like Montana, Kansas, North Dakota and such. The 2024 elections see the greens eek out a couple small state wins, most notably Vermont. This is where things change, as the greens rebrand into the Green-Labour party 2024 onwards and actively court working class voters in direct competition with democrats. Democrats in 2028 nominate Pete Buttigieg, who despite initial concerns managed to keep the bulk of the coalition Klobuchar had built in 2028 and win a plurality. Yes, a plurality. Since the Green-Labour Party in 2028 manages to win more states this time around, notably winning Michigan and Wisconsin. They also win states the GOP should've won like West Virginia and Kentucky. Mainly due to vote splitting and democrats spoiling against the GOP. The 2028 election also nets the GLP multiple senators and a fair amount of house seats, with even the more progressive democrats shifting to the GLP while more reactionary democrats go to the GOP who Pete plays a Macron-like game with when he isn't thwarting Russia's imperial ambitions.
The fears of the GLP spoiling however, come to life in 2032 when the GOP wins a plurality in the EC with Jeanette Nunez as president. The GOP however, does not win a senate majority however, since the GLP won more seats and the loss of the plains kept the GOP from having a senate majority and in general the senate being more swingy than before.
President Jeanette Nunez (who was governor of Florida for 6 years) manages to get the democrats to sign some conservative policies in spite of that, which is something that comes back to haunt the democrats by allowing the GLP to be the most vocal opposition to DeSantis for both his terms. The Democrats lose big in 2036, coming in a humiliating 3rd place to the GLP. A massive fall for the party that had won every election except 2016 and 2032 since 2008 as more of the liberal parts of their coalition shifted to the GLP. Devon also managed to have a strategy that courted the religious left.
A result that would carry into the GLP being the dominant opposition in the second term of the Nunez administration, acting much more aggressively and vindictively as opposition in a way that entertained the hell out of voters who came to despise Jeanette Núñez for a myriad of reasons of varying degrees of fairness. So much that Devon Micheals, the GLP's nominee capitalized on the dynamic and won big in 2040, basically rewriting the whole party system in the process.
Devon Micheals is basically a former southern baptist pastor and a former GLP governor of Georgia who followed a very christianized form of socialism, idealizes Rosa Luxembourg and leveraged his past as a pastor in his rhetoric to devastating effect.
The GLP dominates the 2040's due to the GOP and Democrats fighting for the role of main opposition, the GOP naturally winning out but not enough to win plurality in 2044. The GLP restructures a lot of stuff, perhaps too rapidly with regards to workers cooperatives and their bizarre foreign policy priorities. Their reforms did benefit people and did reduce inequality, mind, but some of their choices proved controversial as hell to the point even the more democrat nominee staffed courts intervened against them. The GLP president getting a second term however, provoked the Democrats and Republicans to merge into a new Democratic-Republican party. The DRP proceeds to win in 2048 and brings back the equilibrium state of a 2 party system between the GLP and the DRP.
Such a merging of coalitions may lead to some Japan-like situation where the DRP acts like the liberal Democratic Party in being de facto single party or something like Britain where the GLP wins sometimes but not a lot and they end up having to moderate to win more that leads to lots of infighting despite said moderate successor doing electorally excellent and staffing the courts with actually left activist judges. Them getting into a war to stop a genocide overseas may not have helped.
It's not a likely path I'll admit, since the pretext is that democrats stay on the course of moderating and being a effectively Conservative party despite currently still showing interest in being a center-left party. It also asserts the GOP basically having a black swan event that collapsed them and hands democrats the coalition to have a coalition to the right of the progressives enough you get a party of socialists and progressives with significant clout that democrats (or republicans) don't try to pivot into for votes. However it is a scenario that doesn't feel outside the realm of possibility due to the very clear tripolar divides in American culture that could manifest in a temporary period of three political parties. I just wanted to sound off on that as to what takes people here have on this since it has happened in the past with stuff like the AIP or Progressive Party where you had temporary periods of more than 2 parties with significant activity And I could see it happening.
The democrats essentially succeeded in splitting the Great Plains against the GOP, making them all swing states and breaking the GOP stranglehold on the senate. OR and WA going to the GLP being from plurality victories more or less. Their hopes of winning CA in 2024 were a bit overly ambitious, needless to say. OH and PA were also due to spoiler effect throwing their votes to the GOP, much to the frustration of democrats. In 2028 Democrats got a plurality and the GLP threw their support to Pete Buttigieg in the house which the GOP... Didn't take to well, even though it was totally irrational to expect a party of socialists and progressives to support their exceptionally homophobic nominee.
Mind, expanding this into a more detailed timeline would show it's not nearly as smooth and civil as it looks here. Biden getting assassinated is the tip of the ice berg- you also had an Assassination attempt on basically every democrat president in the 2020's and lots of right wing extremist activity and the GLP when it got stronger even attempted to organize a general strike in 2030 over when the shaky alliance of convenience with Pete since the GOP literally were enabling domestic terrorism started to fall apart. Nunez as a figure was somewhat of a "moderate" who ended up doing a lot of nationalist stuff anyways that polarized courts fought over and she also tried to gin up a third red scare that fell flat so hard they accidentally gave the GLP free media advertising. To the point the comically out of touch red baiting attempts caused the democrats to go from a triumphant party that had won multiple elections and defeated domestic terrorism to rapidly bleeding voters to the party of left wing populism. This would factor into how Devon Micheals won the presidency in 2040 against basically all odds, with a decisive majority that gave clear mandate for a range of popular reforms.
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I also think it would be funny from an identity standpoint that democrats who get more minority votes also happen to only nominate white people for the 12 years they have in power (admittedly, one is a woman and another is gay, but still) while the GOP fails to get their white guy and finally wins in 2032 with a cuban woman from Florida. The GLP I would want similar such identity contradictions because I live for that shit so their standard bearer president being a former pastor who gives a borderline theocratic element to a party with heavily socialist leanings because Rosa Luxembourg sorta laid the precedent for that in my view and moral cause allows for more flexible rhetoric. Socialist billionaire as the GLP nominee who wins in 2060 or something perhaps?
I think there's a lot of interesting stuff here, beyond the one big lie of democrats somehow not moving left enough to keep their progressive flank from bolting to the GLP. Than proceeding to lose the liberal voters over bargining with the GOP in the 30's making the GLP look like the much more credible left opposition. That's another dynamic in a 3 party situation that I see where opposition parties would basically compete/win based on whose opposition strategy gets more public approval, admittedly here I am just treating democrats like giant lib dems from Britain mixed with the CDU from Germany but still. Like when democrats were reigning for 12 years straight as the "adults in the room" as they like to claim they had opposition from the left and right like in Germany. Than when the GOP is running things again the parties to their left fought for the opposition spotlight and when the GLP was running things you had that happen from the right. I figured at some point a merge of 2 of these parties would occur since the US systemically favors 2 parties too much for that not to happen at some point. Naturally that merger I figured would be between democrats and republicans should the GLP push further to the left with a VP perceived as too radical after 8 years of a GLP president who had managed to peel democrat votes and did the bulk of the reforms a lot of people in the US wanted to see anyways (trying to end private property and actually push to collectivization legislatively and trust busting Disney in the second term was where the GLP lost the US). Devon Micheals also put the US in an awkward position foreign policy wise due to actually forming a socialist internal that the DRP sorta kept with just due to the trade pacts despite being an explicitly anti-communist party.
The above scenario probably isn't likely, since historically it often is more one of the traditional parties absorbing the bloc of a third party. Be it the GOP with the AIP and Reform in the 20th century or Democrats with the Socialists/Progressives in the early 20th century.
Update; Yeah this is me public brainstorming as a sounding board.
Like in other ideas, 2048 GLP primaries I figure end up like a bizarro version of the democrat 2016 primaries where a more coalitionist liberal/moderate who was seeing the writing on the wall is screwed out of the nomination in favor of the VP that cleared the field who ran on ideological purity to catastrophic results. That would probably set up the GLP moving to the "right" after losing multiple times to the DRP to get liberal voters back though that Disney stunt costed them election wins for a decade regardless before winning in 2060. It basically is a 2 party system again by that point.
The idea that you don't have a straight white guy for decades (not till 2048) after Biden was assassinated and Klobuchar shifted the Democratic Party to one that wins senate seats in the plains isn't as weird as you may think since Pete played conservative enough that the Klobuchar coalition stuck to him despite mutterings behind the scenes and the GOP had come to see Cubans as white while Jeanette Nunez did a lot of economic populist stuff anyways (she also did stuff that drove people to the GLP after the democrats did a bipartisan). The furthest right still didn't like her despite picking a VP that pandered to them and that caused in fighting like Bush Jr encountered in his second term. That didn't get too bad until the second term where they straight up turned on Nunez. Even than that ultra nationalist right was more sexist than racist and had found their clout in the GOP reduced after costing the GOP a totally winnable election in 2028 by somehow losing the plains that flipped to Klob in 2024. The plain states that went to Klobuchar in 2024 to the GOP's shock went to Pete instead of the raving, notoriously incompetent mess that was Don Jr's campaign. (think the 2020 Taiwan election for how bad they screwed up, like he was straight up using homophobic slurs Without even a dog whistle and was just generally was less likable in his persona. Pete managed to connect Don Jr to the domestic extremism on the US and the GLP avoided campaigning or running candidates in the Plains. He failed to capture the kind of presence Trump had and was even mocked by his aging, senile father during the election. Also he threatened to roll back the reforms Klobuchar put in place people in those plain states very much liked).
President List;
D - Joe Biden (2020-2022) [assassinated by far right extremists]
D- Amy Klobuchar (2022-2028)
D- Pete Buttigieg (2028-2032)
R- Jeanette Nunez (2032-2040)
GL- Devon Micheals (2040-2048)
DR- ??? (I haven't thought about this time period as much as it seemed out of scope of the scenario beyond being a punchline for "well, back to 2 parties")
DR - ??? (just the above guy's VP)
GL - ??? (a Socialist billionaire with very high ambitions, is Huey-like)
...
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Cultural norms in 2050 have shifted more than they did from 1990-2020 as you may notice by implication. The Democratic-Republican party's outlook is markedly different in their idpol for one, with the culture wars between the GL and DR parties being in a different place entirely with a large contingent of middle class swing voters and both parties playing the dual rule game even when not in the White House. The GL can and does organize large general strikes and protests and the DR would when the GL won in 2060 again form emergency interstate pacts to act as a proclaimed defense against communist rule.
Election maps;
Yellow = Green-Labour Party
2020
The great Bidenslide that basically is the beginning of the end of the GOP as we know it. While it didn't affect EC results, the Green Party manages a surprise 7% of the vote (The GOP got a paltry 37% of the vote and Democrats got 55 of the vote while libertarians got an impressive 1%)
2024
Klobuchar had surged on the heels of the Biden assassination and the GOP's poor optics in their stances on the raft of ongoing domestic extremism causing the GOP to lose a lot more places than they usually do. The GLP meanwhile managed to win a couple states despite the rally from progressives while gaining in the house and winning a senate seat. The GOP had depressed turnout from factional infighting and splinter parties/independents spoiling a lot of elections. Another major helper for democrats was the automatic voter registration Biden pushed and Klobuchar delivered on.
2028
The GLP makes massive gains, blindsiding the democrats considerably. The GOP led by the divisive Don Jr manages to regain their usual states but fails to achieve a plurality in the EC, with Pete managing to retain the bulk of the plains states due to the agrarian reforms that heavily benefited them being threatened by Don Jr and Pete benefitting from a better economy. He also benefited from the GOP continuing their infighting. The GLP kept the house from being in republican hands as well and the GLP's party members threw the election to Buttigieg despite the environment of tension that pervaded with him in the shaky, controversial alliance they formed with someone who they saw as a neoliberal shill. But the alternate was a full on reactionary and Pete had the plurality, so they bit the bullet.
2032
Yeah that didn't work out. The brief lived coalition between democrats and the GLP fell apart for various reasons and the GOP finally got its shit together. Florida governor Jeanette Nunez put a fresh face on the party and the far right faction had finally lost a primary race due to even the more ethno-nationalist types dreading another Don Jr type catastrophe. This paid off by the GOP managing to get cooperation from the Democrats in getting Jeanette Nunez as the leader. A controversial move that would have no major consequences, surely.
2036
The democrats played themselves. Lots of liberal defections to the GLP occurred and you see the GLP managing more surprise wins and the GOP getting the plains back. Democrats fell to a humiliating third and the GLP became the clear voice of opposition against the Nunez administration who won plurality again.
2040
This is where the GLP finally breaks through under the leadership of Devon Micheals who managed to herd cats to create a powerful coalition that blew their rivals out of the water. Democrats made a comeback and won a lot of states at the expense of the GOP. The Democrats moved left a bit and won more but mostly had a similar electoral result to the GOP (they won the popular vote against the GOP however). The GLP however stole the show regardless, completely upending US history in the process as they won many former democrat strongholds.
2044
The GOP manage to get a lot of power back in 2044, winning the fight for voice of opposition but losing the election. The GLP lost the south but kept other parts of their coalition while Democrats were in the rocks yet again, life is suffering for a mid 2030's to mid 2040's Democrat.
2048
Ignore the republican, the red represents a coalition party merger between the Republicans and Democrats into the Democratic-Republican party that surges in 2048 against an overly idealistic VP. Of whom caused lots of people to defect to the DRP whose messaging more successfully depicted the GLP as attacking America itself. Said VP for the GLP didn't help with that image.
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Let's say Democrats do manage to basically eat into the GOP's base post-Trump and win senate seats out in the plains more often, it could make stuff like an expanded Green Party get more ability to grow without a Nader-like disaster that nips it in the bud.
In this scenario, democrats stay harder moderate and have Klobuchar as Joe's VP. Tragedy strikes, a right wing extremist shoots Joe Biden and the GOP's response alienated a large faction of voters from the Reagan coalition in a party that had already descended into infighting without a clear leading figure anymore. This hands democrats 2022 and 2024 with relative ease as Klobuchar manages to create a more moderate-conservative Democratic Party. Mind, the left flank of the Democratic Party, lacking a place to go increasingly turn to the Green Party who had gotten over 5% in the 2020 elections without harming the democrats all that much. In 2024 the Greens do better, and democrats broke into the plains winning states like Montana, Kansas, North Dakota and such. The 2024 elections see the greens eek out a couple small state wins, most notably Vermont. This is where things change, as the greens rebrand into the Green-Labour party 2024 onwards and actively court working class voters in direct competition with democrats. Democrats in 2028 nominate Pete Buttigieg, who despite initial concerns managed to keep the bulk of the coalition Klobuchar had built in 2028 and win a plurality. Yes, a plurality. Since the Green-Labour Party in 2028 manages to win more states this time around, notably winning Michigan and Wisconsin. They also win states the GOP should've won like West Virginia and Kentucky. Mainly due to vote splitting and democrats spoiling against the GOP. The 2028 election also nets the GLP multiple senators and a fair amount of house seats, with even the more progressive democrats shifting to the GLP while more reactionary democrats go to the GOP who Pete plays a Macron-like game with when he isn't thwarting Russia's imperial ambitions.
The fears of the GLP spoiling however, come to life in 2032 when the GOP wins a plurality in the EC with Jeanette Nunez as president. The GOP however, does not win a senate majority however, since the GLP won more seats and the loss of the plains kept the GOP from having a senate majority and in general the senate being more swingy than before.
President Jeanette Nunez (who was governor of Florida for 6 years) manages to get the democrats to sign some conservative policies in spite of that, which is something that comes back to haunt the democrats by allowing the GLP to be the most vocal opposition to DeSantis for both his terms. The Democrats lose big in 2036, coming in a humiliating 3rd place to the GLP. A massive fall for the party that had won every election except 2016 and 2032 since 2008 as more of the liberal parts of their coalition shifted to the GLP. Devon also managed to have a strategy that courted the religious left.
A result that would carry into the GLP being the dominant opposition in the second term of the Nunez administration, acting much more aggressively and vindictively as opposition in a way that entertained the hell out of voters who came to despise Jeanette Núñez for a myriad of reasons of varying degrees of fairness. So much that Devon Micheals, the GLP's nominee capitalized on the dynamic and won big in 2040, basically rewriting the whole party system in the process.
Devon Micheals is basically a former southern baptist pastor and a former GLP governor of Georgia who followed a very christianized form of socialism, idealizes Rosa Luxembourg and leveraged his past as a pastor in his rhetoric to devastating effect.
The GLP dominates the 2040's due to the GOP and Democrats fighting for the role of main opposition, the GOP naturally winning out but not enough to win plurality in 2044. The GLP restructures a lot of stuff, perhaps too rapidly with regards to workers cooperatives and their bizarre foreign policy priorities. Their reforms did benefit people and did reduce inequality, mind, but some of their choices proved controversial as hell to the point even the more democrat nominee staffed courts intervened against them. The GLP president getting a second term however, provoked the Democrats and Republicans to merge into a new Democratic-Republican party. The DRP proceeds to win in 2048 and brings back the equilibrium state of a 2 party system between the GLP and the DRP.
Such a merging of coalitions may lead to some Japan-like situation where the DRP acts like the liberal Democratic Party in being de facto single party or something like Britain where the GLP wins sometimes but not a lot and they end up having to moderate to win more that leads to lots of infighting despite said moderate successor doing electorally excellent and staffing the courts with actually left activist judges. Them getting into a war to stop a genocide overseas may not have helped.
It's not a likely path I'll admit, since the pretext is that democrats stay on the course of moderating and being a effectively Conservative party despite currently still showing interest in being a center-left party. It also asserts the GOP basically having a black swan event that collapsed them and hands democrats the coalition to have a coalition to the right of the progressives enough you get a party of socialists and progressives with significant clout that democrats (or republicans) don't try to pivot into for votes. However it is a scenario that doesn't feel outside the realm of possibility due to the very clear tripolar divides in American culture that could manifest in a temporary period of three political parties. I just wanted to sound off on that as to what takes people here have on this since it has happened in the past with stuff like the AIP or Progressive Party where you had temporary periods of more than 2 parties with significant activity And I could see it happening.
The democrats essentially succeeded in splitting the Great Plains against the GOP, making them all swing states and breaking the GOP stranglehold on the senate. OR and WA going to the GLP being from plurality victories more or less. Their hopes of winning CA in 2024 were a bit overly ambitious, needless to say. OH and PA were also due to spoiler effect throwing their votes to the GOP, much to the frustration of democrats. In 2028 Democrats got a plurality and the GLP threw their support to Pete Buttigieg in the house which the GOP... Didn't take to well, even though it was totally irrational to expect a party of socialists and progressives to support their exceptionally homophobic nominee.
Mind, expanding this into a more detailed timeline would show it's not nearly as smooth and civil as it looks here. Biden getting assassinated is the tip of the ice berg- you also had an Assassination attempt on basically every democrat president in the 2020's and lots of right wing extremist activity and the GLP when it got stronger even attempted to organize a general strike in 2030 over when the shaky alliance of convenience with Pete since the GOP literally were enabling domestic terrorism started to fall apart. Nunez as a figure was somewhat of a "moderate" who ended up doing a lot of nationalist stuff anyways that polarized courts fought over and she also tried to gin up a third red scare that fell flat so hard they accidentally gave the GLP free media advertising. To the point the comically out of touch red baiting attempts caused the democrats to go from a triumphant party that had won multiple elections and defeated domestic terrorism to rapidly bleeding voters to the party of left wing populism. This would factor into how Devon Micheals won the presidency in 2040 against basically all odds, with a decisive majority that gave clear mandate for a range of popular reforms.
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I also think it would be funny from an identity standpoint that democrats who get more minority votes also happen to only nominate white people for the 12 years they have in power (admittedly, one is a woman and another is gay, but still) while the GOP fails to get their white guy and finally wins in 2032 with a cuban woman from Florida. The GLP I would want similar such identity contradictions because I live for that shit so their standard bearer president being a former pastor who gives a borderline theocratic element to a party with heavily socialist leanings because Rosa Luxembourg sorta laid the precedent for that in my view and moral cause allows for more flexible rhetoric. Socialist billionaire as the GLP nominee who wins in 2060 or something perhaps?
I think there's a lot of interesting stuff here, beyond the one big lie of democrats somehow not moving left enough to keep their progressive flank from bolting to the GLP. Than proceeding to lose the liberal voters over bargining with the GOP in the 30's making the GLP look like the much more credible left opposition. That's another dynamic in a 3 party situation that I see where opposition parties would basically compete/win based on whose opposition strategy gets more public approval, admittedly here I am just treating democrats like giant lib dems from Britain mixed with the CDU from Germany but still. Like when democrats were reigning for 12 years straight as the "adults in the room" as they like to claim they had opposition from the left and right like in Germany. Than when the GOP is running things again the parties to their left fought for the opposition spotlight and when the GLP was running things you had that happen from the right. I figured at some point a merge of 2 of these parties would occur since the US systemically favors 2 parties too much for that not to happen at some point. Naturally that merger I figured would be between democrats and republicans should the GLP push further to the left with a VP perceived as too radical after 8 years of a GLP president who had managed to peel democrat votes and did the bulk of the reforms a lot of people in the US wanted to see anyways (trying to end private property and actually push to collectivization legislatively and trust busting Disney in the second term was where the GLP lost the US). Devon Micheals also put the US in an awkward position foreign policy wise due to actually forming a socialist internal that the DRP sorta kept with just due to the trade pacts despite being an explicitly anti-communist party.
The above scenario probably isn't likely, since historically it often is more one of the traditional parties absorbing the bloc of a third party. Be it the GOP with the AIP and Reform in the 20th century or Democrats with the Socialists/Progressives in the early 20th century.
Update; Yeah this is me public brainstorming as a sounding board.
Like in other ideas, 2048 GLP primaries I figure end up like a bizarro version of the democrat 2016 primaries where a more coalitionist liberal/moderate who was seeing the writing on the wall is screwed out of the nomination in favor of the VP that cleared the field who ran on ideological purity to catastrophic results. That would probably set up the GLP moving to the "right" after losing multiple times to the DRP to get liberal voters back though that Disney stunt costed them election wins for a decade regardless before winning in 2060. It basically is a 2 party system again by that point.
The idea that you don't have a straight white guy for decades (not till 2048) after Biden was assassinated and Klobuchar shifted the Democratic Party to one that wins senate seats in the plains isn't as weird as you may think since Pete played conservative enough that the Klobuchar coalition stuck to him despite mutterings behind the scenes and the GOP had come to see Cubans as white while Jeanette Nunez did a lot of economic populist stuff anyways (she also did stuff that drove people to the GLP after the democrats did a bipartisan). The furthest right still didn't like her despite picking a VP that pandered to them and that caused in fighting like Bush Jr encountered in his second term. That didn't get too bad until the second term where they straight up turned on Nunez. Even than that ultra nationalist right was more sexist than racist and had found their clout in the GOP reduced after costing the GOP a totally winnable election in 2028 by somehow losing the plains that flipped to Klob in 2024. The plain states that went to Klobuchar in 2024 to the GOP's shock went to Pete instead of the raving, notoriously incompetent mess that was Don Jr's campaign. (think the 2020 Taiwan election for how bad they screwed up, like he was straight up using homophobic slurs Without even a dog whistle and was just generally was less likable in his persona. Pete managed to connect Don Jr to the domestic extremism on the US and the GLP avoided campaigning or running candidates in the Plains. He failed to capture the kind of presence Trump had and was even mocked by his aging, senile father during the election. Also he threatened to roll back the reforms Klobuchar put in place people in those plain states very much liked).
President List;
D - Joe Biden (2020-2022) [assassinated by far right extremists]
D- Amy Klobuchar (2022-2028)
D- Pete Buttigieg (2028-2032)
R- Jeanette Nunez (2032-2040)
GL- Devon Micheals (2040-2048)
DR- ??? (I haven't thought about this time period as much as it seemed out of scope of the scenario beyond being a punchline for "well, back to 2 parties")
DR - ??? (just the above guy's VP)
GL - ??? (a Socialist billionaire with very high ambitions, is Huey-like)
...
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Cultural norms in 2050 have shifted more than they did from 1990-2020 as you may notice by implication. The Democratic-Republican party's outlook is markedly different in their idpol for one, with the culture wars between the GL and DR parties being in a different place entirely with a large contingent of middle class swing voters and both parties playing the dual rule game even when not in the White House. The GL can and does organize large general strikes and protests and the DR would when the GL won in 2060 again form emergency interstate pacts to act as a proclaimed defense against communist rule.
Election maps;
Yellow = Green-Labour Party
2020
The great Bidenslide that basically is the beginning of the end of the GOP as we know it. While it didn't affect EC results, the Green Party manages a surprise 7% of the vote (The GOP got a paltry 37% of the vote and Democrats got 55 of the vote while libertarians got an impressive 1%)
2024
Klobuchar had surged on the heels of the Biden assassination and the GOP's poor optics in their stances on the raft of ongoing domestic extremism causing the GOP to lose a lot more places than they usually do. The GLP meanwhile managed to win a couple states despite the rally from progressives while gaining in the house and winning a senate seat. The GOP had depressed turnout from factional infighting and splinter parties/independents spoiling a lot of elections. Another major helper for democrats was the automatic voter registration Biden pushed and Klobuchar delivered on.
2028
The GLP makes massive gains, blindsiding the democrats considerably. The GOP led by the divisive Don Jr manages to regain their usual states but fails to achieve a plurality in the EC, with Pete managing to retain the bulk of the plains states due to the agrarian reforms that heavily benefited them being threatened by Don Jr and Pete benefitting from a better economy. He also benefited from the GOP continuing their infighting. The GLP kept the house from being in republican hands as well and the GLP's party members threw the election to Buttigieg despite the environment of tension that pervaded with him in the shaky, controversial alliance they formed with someone who they saw as a neoliberal shill. But the alternate was a full on reactionary and Pete had the plurality, so they bit the bullet.
2032
Yeah that didn't work out. The brief lived coalition between democrats and the GLP fell apart for various reasons and the GOP finally got its shit together. Florida governor Jeanette Nunez put a fresh face on the party and the far right faction had finally lost a primary race due to even the more ethno-nationalist types dreading another Don Jr type catastrophe. This paid off by the GOP managing to get cooperation from the Democrats in getting Jeanette Nunez as the leader. A controversial move that would have no major consequences, surely.
2036
The democrats played themselves. Lots of liberal defections to the GLP occurred and you see the GLP managing more surprise wins and the GOP getting the plains back. Democrats fell to a humiliating third and the GLP became the clear voice of opposition against the Nunez administration who won plurality again.
2040
This is where the GLP finally breaks through under the leadership of Devon Micheals who managed to herd cats to create a powerful coalition that blew their rivals out of the water. Democrats made a comeback and won a lot of states at the expense of the GOP. The Democrats moved left a bit and won more but mostly had a similar electoral result to the GOP (they won the popular vote against the GOP however). The GLP however stole the show regardless, completely upending US history in the process as they won many former democrat strongholds.
2044
The GOP manage to get a lot of power back in 2044, winning the fight for voice of opposition but losing the election. The GLP lost the south but kept other parts of their coalition while Democrats were in the rocks yet again, life is suffering for a mid 2030's to mid 2040's Democrat.
2048
Ignore the republican, the red represents a coalition party merger between the Republicans and Democrats into the Democratic-Republican party that surges in 2048 against an overly idealistic VP. Of whom caused lots of people to defect to the DRP whose messaging more successfully depicted the GLP as attacking America itself. Said VP for the GLP didn't help with that image.
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