Cleveland-Camelot:
Bill Clinton/Al Gore (Democratic) 1993-1997
1992 Def. George H.W. Bush/Dan Quayle (Republican), Ross Perot/James Stockdale (Independent)
Bob Dole/John McCain (Republican) 1997-2001
1996 Def. Bill Clinton/Al Gore (Democratic), Ross Perot/Dave Boren (Reform)
Bill Clinton/Bill Richardson (Democratic) 2001-2001{1}
Bill Richardson/vacant (Democratic) 2001-2002
Bill Richardson/Colin Powell (Democratic) 2002-2006 {2}
Colin Powell/vacant (Democratic) 2006-2006
Colin Powell/Gordon Smith (Democratic/Republican) 2006-2007
Colin Powell/Gordon Smith (Independent) 2007-2009
2000 Def. Bob Dole/John McCain (Republican)
2004 Def. Jim Gilmore/George Pataki (Republican), Ron Paul/Bob Barr (Libertarian)
Jesse Ventura/Angus King (Independent) 2009-2010
Jesse Ventura/Angus King (People's) 2010-2013
Jesse Ventura/Jim Sykes (People's) 2013-2017
2008 Def. (Backed by Libertarian-Green-Reform-Nader08 Alliance) Jim Oberweis/Dick Murphy (Republican), Jerry Springer{3}/Chris John (Democratic), Virgil Goode/Barry Goldwater Jr. (Constitution), Walt Brown/Peter Camjeo (Socialist)
2012 Def. Ken Blackwell/Mitch Daniels (Republican), Rick Larsen/Mark Dayton (Democratic)
Gresham Barrett/Joe Scarborough (Union) 2017-????
2016 Def. Nancy Jacobson/David Zuckerman (People's)
2020 Def. Kris Roberts/Connie Johnson (People's)
{1} Killed in 9/11
{2} Resigned due to corruption + Pedophilia Scandal
{3} Allowed to run due to 28th Amendment
Bill Clinton's political return was quite a strange one. After losing in a shocker in 1996, largely blamed on the return to power of the Communist Party in Russia, along with a surprisingly energetic Bob Dole campaign, Clinton spent four years plotting his return to the political scene. During that time he campaigned with Democratic candidates across the nation, and helped lead the way for the "New New South" in the 1998 midterms, where Democrats surprisingly swept the south and made massive gains. With this momentum in mind, Clinton announced his much-awaited return to politics, and after defeating a primary filled with losers, low-lifes, and surprisingly... Ted Turner?, Democrats nominated ol' Bill for a third time, but this time he was without his old partner Al Gore, who had returned to Tennessee to stand in the background and mumble while his wife yelled about violent video games. Instead, Bill Clinton chose his old buddy from New Mexico Bill Richardson, and with it created a legendary "Bill & Bill" combo.
As it turned out, Americans had more than enough of Bob Dole by the time the 2000 election had rolled around. Dole had failed to stay popular after a term full of controversial cuts to social programs and a large lack of charisma. Even his biggest campaign promise, keeping Americans safe from Russia by couping their government and destabilizing their country, failed when the American-backed military junta spit out an insane Zhirinovsky-Vlasov-Limonov alliance that took power and shortly thereafter angered all of America's allies and actually posed a bigger threat than some weak, watered down, "Socialist" Russia. So the neoconservatives swung back to Clinton, he crushed Dole with his charisma, built back the Clinton coalition and got ready for another great 4 years in office.
Of course, Clinton barely got to boot up his computer in the White House before tragedy struck. On September 11, 2001, President Bill Clinton was sitting in the Oval Office, when a plane hijacked by Al-Qaeda rammed into the White House and killed the President, his family, and much of the staff. The attack was a coordinated plan by the terrorist organization to destabilize America by hitting the White House, Pentagon, and Twin Towers. Vice President Bill Richardson, who was too busy campaigning in California for a special election to be murdered, was sworn in that day with hopes that he would help the country rebuild. Hey, he even got that old man who hated politics so much, Colin Powell, to be his Vice President
Unfortunately, the country wanted more than just to rebuild, they wanted violent revenge, and Richardson, being a people-pleaser, went along with this, and declared war on Afghanistan, which later turned into a declaration of war on Iraq, which later turned into a declaration of war on Syria, which later turned into a declaration of war on Libya, which later turned into a declaration of war on North Korea. The security state was let loose and many personal freedoms Americans once held dear were stripped away. Republicans, who went along with many of these proposals, entered the political wilderness, being crushed in the 2002 and 2004 elections despite a Jim Gilmore/George Pataki ticket that just screamed "We Want To Be The 9/11 Party Too!".
After 2004, Richardson looked like he would retire in the upper echelon of presidents as long as he won his wars and kept his personal life clean. His administration, despite strife abroad, had begun many socially liberal policies, pushing for greater environmental and labor protections and the liberalization of government policies on LGBTQ+ people. That was of course until 2006, when Richardson was caught both on corruption charges, and even worse, on pedophilia charges after being tied to famed New York financier Jeffery Epstein. Richardson resigned in disgrace after achieving a nearly 1% approval rating and an expected near-unanimous impeachment trial even with a 60+ seat Democratic senate. Now I know what you're thinking "oh this must've been a fantastic time for Republicans right?" Well you'd think so, until Republican Dennis Hastert, who just so happened to be one of the faces of the Republican congressional campaign was caught also being a corrupt pedophile, and was forced to resign after a bloody standoff within his party.
Americans, now looking at two political parties that they felt held corrupt pedophiles from top to bottom, began to look for other options. In the 2006 campaign, over 30 members of third parties and independents were elected to the house, while 4 were elected to the senate. Greens, Libertarians, Reformers, Constitutionalists, hell, even a member of the Oregon Socialist Party, now had representation in the house. This came underneath president Colin Powell, who originally hoped to continue being a Democrat, but who after appointing Oregon senator Gordon Brown to be his VP, decided it was time to leave petty partisanship and become a "President for All Americans". Luckily for Powell, he survived his term, but the dominant political system of the United States would not.
The election of multiple third party candidates in 2006 forced the press to ask themselves "is there any person who can unite this sort of anti-establishment feeling and unite it behind a single cause?" The answer was yes, Jesse Ventura, the retired two-term governor of Minnesota, had long been a strong anti establishment political figure. With this, Ventura, along with freshman senator Angus King, announced a presidential campaign. Ventura's campaign, notable for being the most competitive third party campaign in 16 years, sucked up all the air in the room as his candidacy went around the nation picking up endorsements, raising money, and getting ballot access through any means necessary. Ventura write-in campaigns entered almost every party, big or small's primary. Ventura's strategy of disrupting the party system through multiparty collaboration worked out very well, as his supporters hijacked almost every third party, from the most major Reform, Libertarian, and Green ones, to the most minor, like the Vegan and Prohibition Parties, while polling quite well within the major parties. Hell, Ventura write-ins managed a victory in the Oregon Democratic and Hawaii Republican primaries.
The Ventura saga sucked all the air out of the room for what was truly a wacky election. Democrats nominated freshman senator Jerry Springer as their candidate in the hopes of attracting enough media attention to save the party's meger poll numbers. Springer was only allowed to run because of a new Amendment that passed allowing foreign-born citizens to run, but his campaign hit a wall due to the Democrats having to defend the many failures of the wars they were fighting, the growing recession, and of course Richardson's resignation. As for Republicans, they nominated Jim Oberweis, who had been narrowly elected governor in 2006 and ran an outsider campaign for the nomination. Of course, this wasn't a fantastic look considering that Oberweis was endorsed by Hastert who campaigned heavily for him in 2006, but hey if it works it works.
If you weren't interested in Ventura, Springer, or Oberweis, there was always two more third parties who remained Ventura-less. The first was the Constitution Party, who Ventura didn't want to touch with a 10-foot pole due to his ardant pro-choice beliefs and liberal policies. Instead they nominated Jim Gilmore's replacement as governor Virgil Goode, who had begun to break from the Republican Party before officially doing so in 2006. Then there was the Socialists, who nominated their 2004 nominee but this time had national ballot access. They polled in the 5% range as the recession continued forward, and many began to look at a more radical economic outcome.
In the end, none of it mattered, Ventura pulled off a massive victory as he was the only candidate not connected to some shady business or who was actually relevant. Ventura's "radical centrist" platform mixed with heavily populist rhetoric and policies allowed for him to win over the hearts and minds of Americans, hoping for some amount of change in dark times. However, when Ventura entered the White House he felt strapped for allies, and his cabinet, which included people such as former Vice President John McCain, former Representatives Ron Paul, Tim Penny, Jim Traficant, and Dennis Kucinich, former governors Dick Lamm, Lowell Weicker, Gary Johnson, close allies Mae Schunk, Jack Gargan, Russell Means, Dean Barkley, and Tom Golisano, and random cranks like Ted Weill, Leonard Umina, Mike Gabbard, William Schluter, Bob Healey, Gene Burns, and Ralph Steadman, along with his third party opponents Virgil Goode and Walt Brown, that all caused a controversy one way or the other.
Despite this collection of personalities, Ventura actually got a mostly left-wing agenda across, becoming much more of a left-populist and ending American engagement in many foreign wars, along with an"official" ending to the war on drugs, the deconstruction of most of the FBI and CIA's power, the beginning of federal support for gay marriage, a surprisingly large tax cut that came out of the military's pockets, the ending of the famed embargo with Cuba and NAFTA, and massive infrastructure projects that both provided cheap transportation and a way for more people to get money in a recession. Ventura ended up creating the "People's Party" in late 2009 with Angus King and many others, that created a "united third party" of sorts. The People's Party, having pushed populist policies and having high popularity for an incumbent party, managed to gain house and senate seats across the nation, while also creating chaos across the country due to accusations of "vote-splitting".
Ultimately, the first part of the Ventura presidency went slightly well, despite calls from the left to do more on certain domestic issues, such as gay rights and healthcare, and calls from Libertarians to do more free trade and other libertarian shit. However, Angus King, Ventura's long suffering VP, had grown to dislike his job and had moved away from Ventura politically. He announced that he would not be joining the president for a second term, and was returning to Maine to run another senate campaign. Ventura, who continued his move to the left, chose former Green representative-turned-Secretary of Energy Jim Sykes to replace King. Sykes was quite popular, particularly in some key prairie states, and was generally regarded as a safe choice from the People's Party's left wing.
Ventura's move to the left caused the Republicans and Democrats to feel that Americas would see him as a promise-breaker and radical. This caused Republicans to nominate Ken Blackwell, a crazy conservative who won over Republicans hearts and minds with his strong right-wing stances on most issues. However, Blackwell polled poorly against Ventura, and many thought that Democrats could return to the White House after nearly institutionally collapsing. This plan failed when Democrats nominated Washington governor Rick Larsen, who was the political equivalent to white bread, and who, in a three-party race had almost no appeal or staying power. Instead the election was focused on the Ventura-Blackwell contest of personalities and policies, with both men having almost opposite views for the nation. It turned out that Blackwell's view was the less popular one, and Ventura won with a slightly reduced majority.
Ventura's second term was, admittedly, much less successful than his first. Despite promising universal healthcare and other such economic policies, most of his plans were shut down by congress, and Ventura, despite attempting to stay noninterventionist, stumbled into what would become the Third Korean War, which Ventura later described as the "biggest mistake of my presidency". Ventura also faced a level of chaos within his own party, with multiple cabinet purges and high level-primaries occuring that actively hurt the People's Party, particularly when the remaining Democrats formed an alliance with Republicans that eventually became the "Union Party". While this did help People's Party numbers go up a little, with left wing Democrats joining the People's Party, it also arguably hurt them, as the loften incoherent Left-Libertarian politics of the Ventura administration became more coherent and therefore much easier to campaign against. This caused the People's Party to lose seats for the first time in their existence in 2014, and the rise of the Union Party.
In 2016, the Union Party was the clear front-runner. While Ventura had stayed above water personal popularity-wise, the Union Party did not, and they had no one to truly match Ventura's popularity. However, 16 straight years of liberal policy on domestic issues caused the Union Party to take a much more moderate approach to politics, nominating South Carolina Governor Gresham Barrett, who entered politics as one of the most right-wing congressmen in the nation before moving steadily to the middle and becoming a more outspoken moderate during the Ventura years. Still, Barrett held a neoconservative foreign policy and was not afraid to appeal to social conservatives when necessary. The People's Party on the other hand, nominated Nancy Jacobson, who had been one of Ventura's closest allies after leaving the Democratic Party in 2006 due to her disgust over the Richardson scandal before making her way as Ventura's Chief of Staff and later as Secretary of the Treasury and as chairman of the People's Party. Jacobson wasn't particularly charismatic, but she had Ventura's support, and ran a campaign that attempted to fuse Ventura's radical centrism from '08 with his left-populism of '12, and often coming across as ungenuine. Jacobson did alright, but her campaign failed to catch up to Barrett's, and she lost hard, especially as the economy began to destabilize as election day grew closer.
Barrett, despite fearmongering about his old beliefs and policies has remained a surprisingly calm president on domestic matters, not touching Ventura's movements on gay rights and the War on Drugs. However, he has returned to the Richardson/Powell foreign doctrine, with his continued attacks on the Middle East and hard pushes in the Third Korean War that have sparked controversy across the globe. Barret has also begun to take a much harsher stance on "curbing Russia's influence" as Russia continues to expand past its boundaries and influence foreign affairs. This was largely the focal point of Kris Roberts, his People's Party opponent in 2020's campaign, but that strategy largely failed, with Americans, while not liking the wars, agreeing that Russia's influence has become dangerous and feeling good about the increasing strength of the "Barrett Economy". However, the People's Party, after losing two straight elections, looks to be returning to the white house in 2024, and they have a strong batch of candidates to do so...