Tibby's Graphics and Grab-Bag Thread.

[Turquoise Blue]

Democratic Choice is a left-wing socialist party that emerged out of the decades-long alliance between the primary left-wing parties of the post-Exchange America, the Green Party and the Radical Party. The Green Party emerged out of middle-class anger at the Social Conservatives and a wish to embrace a much more left-wing agenda, especially amongst the younger middle-class people who always opposed the Soc-Cons and thus voted for the centrist Forward in Unity and then their successor the broad-tent Reform Party.

The Radicals on the other hand, emerged out of working-class anger at the system itself and at the Third Great Depression (after the 1920s one and the 1960s one) caused by the Exchange. The Radicals were more willing to damn the system and burn everything down in the pursuit of socialism, while the Greens always carried a sense of "bourgeois socialism" to them, a middle-class attitude that although they gladly signed up to socialism and its ideals, guided them to a much more moderate path than many Radicals would like.

But back in 1984, there were other forces seeking to exploit people's anger, including outright fascists, theocrats and "merely" hardline nationalists, and the two parties agreed to form an electoral pact to present an united left-wing platform. This included an united ticket of Radical Tadeo Murillo and Green Arya Moon - the idealistic and charismatic elder statesman and the young but pragmatic Governor of California. The ticket won the election and faced the struggle of the next eight years together. As Murillo was shot and Moon became an incredibly transformative president, the electoral pact increased in its closeness and in 1992, was formalised as Democratic Choice.

Joining them was the party both of them split off, the broad-tent Reform Party, by then a rapidly shrinking party and increasingly incoherent as the people who were left were firmly left-wing people who thought the Radicals were upstarts and centrists who thought the Greens were too left-wing. By the end of the century, the party would disband and be split up between Radicals and Greens. The DC dominance of American politics enabled them to 24 years of almost uninterrupted success [excepting the National Alliance winning 1992 with a Third Way candidate] but in the end it would all come falling down in 2008 as the coalition turned on to itself.

President Robert Cermak, first elected in 2004, was a former Reformist and implemented centrist economics, including tax cuts for corporations which offended the Radicals' sensibilities and led to their founder Marcus Julian Watson announcing that he would seek to withdraw the Radicals from Democratic Choice, which in turn led the Greens to panic and pressure Cermak into compromising with the Radicals. Unfortunately, the president they helped elect in 2004 was a stubborn maverick who refused to compromise on his policies and immediately declared that he was seeking a second term as an independent, ripping the coalition apart in the process. Greens were split on if they would support Cermak or the person the DC ended up nominating in 2008, the Radical William Blaine. In the end, the Greens lost a lot of seats thanks to this, which led to discontent in DC's ranks and accusation that the Radicals "sabotaged" it all, which would take a while to heal.

President Henry E. Rockefeller was the first conservative president in 24 years [not counting the moderate President Kate Barclay from 1993 to 1997] and he proved an ideal scapegoat to distract the Democrats from factional bickering, what with his scandalous term and the perception that he was dismantling all that the Democrats established in their era of dominance, with even fearmongering being used - "Rockefeller will dismantle Americare!" being a popular one. In the end, the midterms proved to give them some gains but not enough. And then came 2012.

In 2012, the Democrats nominated the second Radical in a row, former Senator John Malone of Iowa. The convention almost nominated someone who was a radical for the Radicals, Fred McCombs, but the Greens rallied behind the more "moderate" Malone who promised them cabinet posts and was a distinct break from past Radicals. The Radicals in the past tended to be primarily labor unionists and slightly social conservative, but Malone was a heavily socially-liberal intellectual who knew how to convince unsure Greens that he was indeed their man, and to his credit, he did unite the coalition more than anyone else could and led it into the election and to the narrowest of defeats possible.

Rockefeller's second term proved to be a gruelling one for the Democrats as the rise of Our Millennium, a movement based around radical democratic reform, ending control of "dynasties" in politics, cleaning Washington corruption out and broadly socially-liberal centrism, cut heavily into the Green vote-share and led to more factional bickering as the Radicals were by then the biggest party in Congress while the Greens were struggling to stay above five percent (the share needed for proportional seats). The idea of merging the parties to bypass the factional tensions and to highlight unity became more popular at this time and a commission was set up to look into the idea in summer 2016.

President Sam Husain, unexpectedly thrown into the office after the deaths of Rockefeller and his vice-president Alois Krause, proved to increase the Democrats' disunity even more as part of his tripartisan cabinet, he appointed Greens to his cabinet which led to some saying the Greens should work with Our Millennium instead of the Radicals. Clearly the coalition was falling apart.

And then the Democrats elected to nominate the third Radical in a row, but just like Malone, this was no "standard" Radical. Najat Belkacem was Malone's campaign manager in 2012, and carried on his "liberal-socialist" ideals that she genuinely believed could unite the coalition and lead them to victory, or at least a strong result. In the end, they got a very close third place, just a few thousand votes from getting into the runoff, and endorsed the eventual winner, Vice-President Angie Bennett.

On paper, the result downballot looks awful for the Green Party, with them falling below 5% for the first time and only getting four Congresspeople, but by this point the Greens and Radicals were mostly running as Democrats downballot and the four Greens elected were those who chose to run as specifically Greens. The result for the Radicals includes many Greens who ran as Democrats instead, a test for the party merger that came less than two years later after many haggling and negotiation between the two sides, that ended up with more Greens in leadership positions than expected for their small size, something often attributed to a few facts - the Radicals wanted an amenable merger, the Greens were overall pretty nervous about their future and wanted a big slice of the new party's future in exchange for their agreement and they still had more Senators than the Radicals so they still had clout despite their decreasing House results and overall popularity.

With President Bennett and Our Millennium's popularity in doubt after the terrorist attack in California, the now fully-united Democratic Choice prepares to fight like they've always done, for justice, equality and socialism. And who knows, in 2020 maybe they can make history and elect the first president who is just simply a Democrat, not a Radical or a Green. A lot of them are eager and willing for that to be them.

 

[Turquoise Blue]

Welcome back to another episode of The Crossroads of Destiny: The Definitive Edition where I take you into an election game and tell you all about what happened, who happened, how it happened, all that, it should be normal... like... always...

*FLASH OF WHITE*

Hey, it's Crimson Rouge here and welcome back to my timeline about a surviving CSA! We're on the very last CSA election before the war happens, and I know you're all waiting for the war update, which I promise you will come within the next week! ^^

This election was held in a period of heightened national tension and jingoistic mood to "bash the damn Yankees once and for all" which benefited one party, the right-wing populist Firebreather Association, which had the silent endorsement of the incumbent President and a wave of national anger backing them. In the Firebreather convention, they ended up nominating Governor of Texas Efrem Zimbalist, who was the first Jew nominated for the presidency by a major party, continuing the "Multiracial Democracy" stance Confederate society, and particularly the Firebreathers, took where all races - white, Jewish, Hispanic, Asian, were perfectly fine people as long as they all agreed to kick the African-Confederate down. And Zimbalist was no different, he authorised further empowerment of the white and Hispanic dominated police so that they could further crack down on "gang" violence in the urban areas, which "success" earned him a landslide re-election in 1978 and catapulted him to the nomination. He chose to run with charismatic pastor Jack Stevenson who preached to his "People's Temple" all about how God made the blacks an inferior people and how war with the United States would save Confederate society from its "sins".

Opposing them is the Populist Party, a party originally rising from poor farmers and urban laborers, it has tended to be the most conciliatory to African-Confederates ever since the split that led to the "Green Hoods" faction leaving to join the Firebreathers. Its 1981 nominee, Governor of Puerto Rico Tadeo Jose Murillo, was no different. Known nationwide for his meeting with the NAACP's head Alexander Freeman-Smalls, he managed to get explicit support of civil rights in the party's platform and expressed his desire for a "new Confederacy for a new millennium". This led to some old-school Populists declaring that they would rather go for Zimbalist, but he rode that out and declared his running mate would be Senator Jack Daniels of Kentucky, ensuring that the Appalachian region would stick with the party and preventing a possible walk-out.

The incumbents, the Conservative Party, was in a tough spot. Their president pressured them to nominate someone on the right-wing, someone who carried on his right-wing platform, and was dismayed when the convention decided to go the opposite path, nominate someone on the left of the party, Congressman David Steel of Virginia. Steel was a firm conservative on fiscal matters, but he had considerably liberal views on race. Old-school Conservatives declared that they would much prefer Zimbalist to a "black-lover", and the party had a walk-out as many Deep South delegates walked out and endorsed Zimbalist, declaring that he was very much "the Conservative option" instead of the "liberal" Steel. Fortunately for Steel, he could count on the support of the Wright twins which controlled the Alabama party and had enough influence to prevent him from being removed from the ballots outright in other states. Perhaps as gratitude, he announced that his running mate would be Senator Penny Wright, ensuring that the establishment of the establishment party would stick with him.

The one thing both Steel and Murillo took comfort in, was the fact the electoral arithmetic did not favour the Firebreathers. The "core Confederacy" was decreasing in electoral votes and the party was overall not particularly popular outside it. The campaign was fierce as Zimbalist ran on "protecting our virtue" and "ending the Yankee menace", the most militaristic a Firebreather was for decades, while both Steel and Murillo aimed their campaigns solidly at Zimbalist, declaring him a "dangerous man" who would ruin the Confederacy and lead them to an unwinnable war with the United States. Both Murillo and Steel pleaded for people to see sense and vote for someone who knew better than Zimbalist.

But it was all in vain. The Confederate people were angry and they wanted revenge on the Yankees. A big chunk of them also declared that they voted Zimbalist because he was the only one who did not support rights for African-Confederates. The electoral college was the only thing that stopped Zimbalist from victory, but after recounts in both Tennessee and Georgia went his way, Efrem Zimbalist was declared the 21st President of the Confederate States of America, and the path to war and to disaster began.
====
Okay, so this is a sort of "through a glass darkly" thing where it's a timeline in a timeline, that of a CSA victory timeline in Crossroads of Destiny. Yes, David Steel is American in both worlds and from Virginia, don't ask me how or why

 

[Turquoise Blue]

A History of the American Left is a series of history books by Professor Maite Etxeberria of the University of San Francisco, published between 2003 and 2017, aiming to tell the story of the many strands that made up the past of the present American left.

Spoiler: Vol. 1: Free Soil Free Men Free Labor

Vol. 1: Free Soil, Free Men, Free Labor (published 2003) is about the Republican Party (and National Union between 1869 and 1885), starting with the founding in 1854 by anti-slavery Whigs, going through their defeat in 1856 with John Fremont, then their victory in 1860 with the unrepentantly-radical Cornelius Crittenden which ends up being assassinated as the civil war brewed, then the war was incompetently won by his successor Clement Cook. In 1868, James W. Marsh won the election in a nailbiter over the Democrat, and then had a presidency where Reconstruction was "saved" and civil rights was asserted over the whole United States. After him, it all fell apart as the Democrat won. Clement Cook's son Lewis Cook won 1880 and oversaw the worsening of the Depression, setting things up for the end of the National Union in 1884.

In 1885, the divided left-wing parties apart from the socialists voted to merge into a new party, to be called the Democratic-Republicans (later renamed Progressives). The National Unionists split, with the left joining it and the right establishing a new Republican Party, one of free-market liberalism and decidedly rejecting radicalism. Nevertheless, they languished in third place for more than a decade until the Conservative Party split over their 1892 nominee assassinating President Grover Blaine over a grudge, leading to northern Conservatives joining the Republicans and leading them to power in 1900. Unfortunately, the party as a whole was relatively inexperienced and despite their best efforts, managed to lose the next election to a resurgent Conservative Party, cementing a new duopoly between the Republicans and the Conservatives with the Progressives as a third wheel. The rise of Albert S. Fitzgerald shifted the party leftwards to what he dubbed "ethical capitalism" and to further co-operation with the Progressives, ending up with a merger just before Fitzgerald's sudden death in 1921.

Spoiler: Vol. 2: If There's No Struggle, There's No Progress

Vol. 2: If There's No Struggle, There's No Progress (published 2005) is about the Progressive Party, but it also tells the story of the split left-wing parties that merged into it, such as the Populist Party [agrarian radicals split off both parties], Liberal Freedom [the disgraced opium addict former president's "free-thinking" party] and Courage Party [the successor to the disgraced Democrats], with National Union being already covered in the first book. The Democratic-Republicans [as they were called at first] dominated the opposition to the Conservatives, but after their one and only president, Henry David McCullough, they fell behind the Conservatives and Republicans. In this period of crisis, there was two men who battled it out for influence, Waldus Beck of Wisconsin and Theodore Roosevelt of New York. Roosevelt was immensely popular with the Progressive base, but every time he ran, he managed to encounter misfortune that a lot increasingly placed blame on him, but some was on the party or in two cases, a splitter Progressive ticket as Roosevelt was not popular with other politicians in his party since he rubbed them the wrong way. After Roosevelt was shot, Waldus Beck assumed full control and started the process of moving it closer to co-operation with Albert Fitzgerald's Republican Party, up to the merger in 1921 which got some die-hard Progressives condemning it and splitting off to merge with United Left to form the SDP.

Spoiler: Vol. 3: New Ideas Without Rigid Reactions

Vol 3: New Ideas Without Rigid Reactions (published 2007) is about the Progressive-Republicans. The brainchild of Waldus Beck and Albert S. Fitzgerald, the two parties preceding it were increasingly close as the Conservatives despised the relatively moderate President Fitzgerald due to the fact he was a former Conservative who left the party in the 1890s. Fitzgerald tragically died a few months after the party was formed, handing power to his vice-president, Scipio Grocer, who was controversial because of his being the first African-American president. This led to the "Sweltering Summers" of the 1920s as a stagnant economy, a minority president, and rising far-right elements led to the shaky Reconstruction all but collapsing. The infant party barely survived the baptism of fire. In 1928, it shifted to the left, abandoning "ethical capitalism" in favour of strong progressivism and they lost, but in 1932 after the Great Depression wrecked the weak economy, they doubled down with J. Edgar Hoover who promised a "Equal Slice". The rise of Citizen's Choice, the increasing number of scandals in the Hoover Administration and the humiliating loss of the Second Great War proved lethal as the party fell to third in the election, missing out on the runoff. Hoover reacted badly, authorising the murder of Louis Orléans, but FBI Director Huey Long disagreed and had him "disposed of".

Without Hoover and with the scandals, the PRUSA was taken over by Arthur Urbonas in 1940 who desired a "broad-left" alliance with the SDP, but this proved to only hurt the party as moderates shifted even more to Orléans' centrist vehicle. A more left-wing base led to the nomination of Ness Roth, a charismatic left-wing populist, in 1944 and 1948, both times losing. In 1952, the centrists finally won back control with John Charest, but it came at the worst possible time as the Social Conservatives wiped everyone out and the SDP refused to endorse him for the runoff. In 1954, the PRUSA finally swallowed its pride and agreed to an Alliance with Citizen's Choice and the Social Democrats, starting a new era.

Spoiler: Vol. 4: No Socialism without Democracy

Vol 4.: No Socialism without Democracy (published 2010) is about the Social Democrats and predecessors. Starting with the split of Arthur Morgan and the hard-left from the National Union Party to form the People's Revolutionary Party in the late 1870s. Morgan authorised in 1884 the rising up by the party to form the "Manhattan Commune" in protest at the Conservatives taking control of the country in alliance with the hard-right Dixie Party, and the failure led to the party being all but dismantled, with the relatively-unknown Augustus Watson taking it over when the party leadership were all arrested. Morgan would rebrand the party twice in his long chairmanship, first as the Revolutionary Front to shed the associations with the failed Commune, and second as the Labor Party to move the party beyond revolutionary socialism and into labor union advocacy thanks to the lobbying of the moderate Robert L. Fischer, who rose up in the party ranks in the 1890s. Fischer would successfully exploit divisions within the Progressive ranks emerging from their "moderate" President and got defections in the 1900s to form the new United Left Federation, yet another rebranding which would inspire a cartoon about yet another change of name for the "socialist shop" with a customer going "Gee, why are you changing the name again, I liked the old one."

The United Left Federation experienced a huge surge due to Progressive discontent but it all fell apart in the late 1910s due to the war which a big chunk of the party opposed as a "bourgeois war" and the rise of the Nationalists as an alternate working-class party. The merger that formed the PRUSA was a lifeline for the party as they managed to get several die-hard Progressives to agree to a merger to form the SDP. One face that dominated the SDP in the 1920s was the incredibly-popular Rosa Luxemburg of Michigan who managed to rally the stagnant party to resurgence in her two runs for the Presidency in 1924 and 1932. After her, the party became increasingly divided between those that wanted to keep the party a firm socialist path and those that advocated a "New Direction", championed by the Wilson twins Darren and Audrey. The SDP experienced an almost-split but in the end patched things up in 1952 and won a very respectable result. In 1954, the SDP agreed to an Alliance with the other "not-Conservative" parties [apart from the centrist American Party] to unite the opposition to the hegemonic Social Conservatives.

Spoiler: Vol. 5: A Citizenry Assembled

Vol. 5: A Citizenry Assembled (published 2012) tells the story of the idiosyncratic centrist Louis Orléans and the similarly-idiosyncratic party he founded, Citizen's Choice. Starting with Orléans' announcement that he would run an independent campaign, it focuses on the man himself and his political rise up until he founds Citizen's Choice in 1934 which then turns to a more general party focus, especially with the Vox Populi coalition between Citizen's Choice, the SDP, the Nationalists and others just fed up of the dominance of the "Big Two" - represented in a cartoon as Orléans struggling to keep everyone singing from the same book as a conductor. Orléans' feud with President Hoover takes up many of the early chapters, and Citizen's Choice's incoherency - being an anti-establishment centrist party founded on a vague "hope and change" platform and hero-worship of its leader - is highlighted. Orléans leads the country into the "German War", what is considered today to be "World War Two, Round Two" and the party's shift leftwards following its leader as the war continues, leading to moderates becoming more disillusioned with their President.

Orléans' assassination in 1945 leads to the party becoming rudderless and shifting back to the centre, pushing disillusioned left-wing people back to the PRUSA [and some to the SDP] as Presidents F. Scott Fitzgerald and Cato Grocer oversees the economy's collapse, the start of Deconstruction as civil rights fall back hugely and the party heading towards oblivion. In 1952, the party splits between endorsing John Charest and endorsing Orléans' half-brother in his independent campaign. Both Henry Jones Jr. and John Charest wouldn't win as the green tide proved too much. CC, heavily battered and down to a record low, agreed to enter in an Alliance with the PRUSA and SDP.

Spoiler: Vol. 6: Fighting what Divided Us

Vol. 6: Fighting what Divided Us (published 2014) tells the story of the "establishment left" in the Conservative Ascendancy, an era dominated by the right-wing Social Conservatives. The Alliance struggled to get off the ground as latent distrust between the three parties hindered co-operation to stop Nixon's radical reactionary agenda including repealing universal healthcare, encouraging the collapse of civil rights and the new "Twilight Struggle" with the People's Communist Republic of Germany. In the end, the 1956 nominee of Admiral Jack McCain failed to prevent Nixon from winning an outright majority, bypassing the need for a runoff. The three parties came together and agreed to fully merge as the new Citizens' Alliance. Unfortunately for them, a section of the SDP would reject this and split off as the American Labor Party.

The Citizens' Alliance, nominating Henry Jones Jr., managed to win the 1960 election via the Electoral College while losing the popular vote, and then a torrent of obstructionism by the Social Conservatives of the relatively centrist platform the CA haggled out with the centrist American Party led to government being frozen at a moment when Nixon's implemented Social Credit saw its bubble burst. Jones was blamed for this by Social Conservatives while the Citizens' Alliance solidly blamed Nixon. The government failed to even appoint much cabinet positions and led to a divided country where the south and west stood with the Soc-Cons and the north and Pacific Coast stood with the embattled president, which of course led to him repeating his 1960 "feat" in 1964 leading to many cries on the right for abolishing the Electoral College once and for all.

Obstruction eased in his second term, but Deconstruction was already heating up and there was nothing he could do about it, not with his civil rights legislation being stonewalled by the Soc-Con Congress and the South collapsing in outright race war. In the end, Deconstruction claimed another victim as a radical civil rights campaigner decided that Jones was not doing what was needed for civil rights and assassinated him. Vice-President Bell fell to the same assassin, handing power to Maxie Short, the Secretary of State. Short's radical legislation broke through the wall of Social Conservatives due to political capital from the assassinations, but the economy collapsed yet again and he was wiped out.

After 1969, the Citizens' Alliance increasingly represented those who were "passed over" by the Conservative Ascendancy, which shifted the party to the left and allowed for the rise of Forward in Unity, the successor to the centrist American Party, and to the opposition to the Soc-Cons being divided yet again. With the 1976 election being narrower than expected thanks to the charm of Jackie Coppola, the Citizens' Alliance decided that just like in 1960, there should be another merger of the opposition to the Social Conservatives. In the end, Forward in Unity and the NLC agreed to merge with the Citizens' Alliance as the new Reform Party. But in 1980, President Dwight Potter temporarily split the party when he called for a National Unity ticket to stand against the PCRG in the coming Third World War, and this proved to cost the party a possible victory.

By 1984, all those political realities wouldn't even exist any longer, destroyed by the blinding flash of nuclear bombs and the deaths of millions. The Reform Party held on as the left split off as the Radical Party, but after the Radicals won the 1984 election, Reform rapidly collapsed.

Spoiler: Vol. 7: Soldiers of Mother Earth

Vol. 7: Soldiers of Mother Earth (published 2015) is all about the "New Left" in the Conservative Ascendancy, especially the Nature and Left Coalition, a party made out of ecologists, hippies, libertarians, drug-taking people and sexual minorities. The NLC has its origins in the American Labor Party, a party set up by Social Democratic congresswoman Wendy Hamburger due to her opposition to the merger that formed the Citizens' Alliance. The ALP distinguished itself by its firm socially-liberal views and firm pacifism as contrasting to the Citizens' Alliance's "traditional left" stances, and so when it announced a merger with nascent libertarians to form the Nature and Left Coalition, it was clear that this was a "left-libertarian" party with a fascination for "alternative ideas" for the economy, such as "environmental economics".

The Nature and Left Coalition surged at the Citizens' Alliance's expense in the 1966 midterms, establishing itself as a major party and perhaps dooming the Citizens' Alliance's chances for victory in the future - if you ask some disgruntled people who were around back then. The NLC was defiant and refused any possible merger, but agreed to an electoral pact called the "Commonwealth Coalition" between the NLC, CA and the small Christian Party so to co-ordinate opposition strategies against the resurgent Soc-Cons. However, despite rising prominence in states such as California [where Governor Arya Moon was hastily making it known as a hippie "Technicolor State"], the NLC's resolve gave after the 1976 election returned a third Social Conservative victory and a seventh popular vote victory for the party, and they agreed to a merger to form Reform.

Spoiler: Vol. 8: The Modern Society

Vol. 8: The Modern Society (published 2018) is the last book in the series [despite calls to cover the left-wing nationalist tendency] and deals with Democratic Choice, the left-wing coalition between the Radical Party, the Green Party and the Reform Party (pre-1999), and ultimately an unitary party, with the merger just managed to get in the book before it was released for publishing.

The Exchange led to millions dying due to nuclear blasts, and thousands more to anthrax attacks in places like New England, and America was angry at the Social Conservatives. In this, many turned to radical solutions offered by the Radical Party, but also by the American Union of Fascists and the theocratic Salvation Party, along with the hardline national-populist America First Party. The Green Party was originally established by Artemis Fowl, former Social Conservative vice-president and overall ambitious so-and-so. Shaken by the exchange, he shifted left in beliefs and argued for a radical environmentalist agenda, but he was too "establishment" for angry Americans and he sensed it too. Hence he went cap-in-hand to the Radicals and negotiated an united ticket and an electoral pact, the very beginning of Democratic Choice.

The Radical Tadeo Murillo won a victory in 1984 based on popular anger and a desire for serious change from the Social Conservatives, and he, well, he didn't really deliver. The economy, already at Great Depression levels from the Exchange, failed to recover while the America First controlled Congress obstructed Murillo's more socialist bills, leading to frustration from his side. And then the right-wing went too far. Governor Jim Buckley of Louisiana decided that Murillo was a fundamental danger to America and must be removed at once and America put under the control of a "National Salvation Government" led by General Alexander Freeman-Smalls (the 1984 America First nominee). The coup attempt failed, and Buckley doubled down by declaring national rebellion against the "socialist government". He was allied with Salvation Party leader and incredibly paranoid pastor Jack Stevenson who declared a "Holy Union of America" in the Plains. America, already dealing with the effects of a nuclear exchange and one of the worst depressions ever, now was thrown in civil war. And then if things couldn't get any worse, Murillo was assassinated by a NSG agent in 1987.

Handing power to the Green Arya Moon, who was inaugurated in the worst situation possible. Surprisingly enough for someone known to have taken hard drugs barely a few years before, she deftly dealt with the NSG and before the next election Jim Buckley was dead and the NSG reduced to a bunch of disunited terrorist cabals. The economy recovered due to her reformist policies, and she won a landslide in 1988, which she decided would be a mandate for a radical left-wing reform of the country which she dubbed her "Modern Society". This included universal healthcare, social security, a national living wage, disability rights, and perhaps most consequential of all, a constitutional convention that reformed America into a semi-presidential system with a First Secretary as a Prime Minister.

Of course, all this success can't go by without two foreign policy controversies. The first was the trade deal with Qatar, now taken over by an ultra-libertarian hippie cult, that many now allege was the reason their party in America endorsed her in 1988 and 1992 and supported her party in congressional coalitions despite it making absolutely no ideological sense. The trade deal included a fair few "investments" in the Qatari economy that essentially and ironically made the libertarian "utopia" a state-funded experiment heavily reliant on United States dollars.

The second foreign policy controversy would be the most damaging to President Moon. Eastern Europe was heavily damaged by the Exchange and radical German supremacist organisations seeking to wipe out non-Germans were on the rise, so President Moon got Congress' authorisation for military intervention. Acutely aware that it could prove her downfall, she managed the intervention half-heartedly and allowed the radical supremacists to push away American troops and make the situation even worse than it ever was. With coffins returning, the American people decided to call time on Arya Moon and deny her a third term [which she was eligible for, technically] in 1992.

With the Democratic Choice coalition now out of power, they rallied behind non-interventionism and opposed Moon's successor who betrayed her promise of isolationism in favour of amping the war up and "winning it for good". In the end, former Reformist and now Green Patty Allen won the Presidency in 1996 and promptly withdrew troops from Eastern Europe, which Americans decided was too much of a hassle to deal with. Patty Allen was a firm social-liberal and without Moon's hang-ups about going too liberal when she thought she needed to be a national unifying figure, and so she implemented wide-spreading social reforms and oversaw the economy recover more and more.

Then the Canadians invaded.

The 2000 election proved a strong Democratic Choice victory thanks to the Canadian War turning into the Americans' favour just in time for Allen. She oversaw the economy weaken in her second term, which many attested to it being a boom for too long, but it wasn't a severe recession at least. The Democrats won 2004 with General Robert Cermak, a Green, who won in a landslide. Clearly, there was a permanent Democratic majority!

And then the Democrats fell into infighting, Cermak left the party to run independent and a Radical was nominated for the first time which led to DC losing 2008 to the moderate-conservative Rally for the Republic. In opposition for the first time in 12 years, the Democrats rallied the best they could and under the Radical John Malone, the Democrats adopted a new platform, that of firmly socially-liberal socialism, not the old Green socially-liberal economic-reformism nor the old Radical socially-conservative economic-socialism. And that led the two to increasingly consider a merger.

By the 2016 election, there was still a distinction between a Radical and a Green, but it was a difference of shade, not of kind. Najat Belkacem, their 2016 nominee, was a firm "Moonite", strongly believing in Moon's Modern Society. By 2018, the parties voted to merge as one to present a fully united alternative to President Bennett and Our Millennium.

 

[Turquoise Blue]

By 1916, the war was over, the economy was calm, the gold standard debate was seemingly over for good, and America was ready to move on. The 1916 election was to be about the future, about what could be done to make the stable economy into a booming economy and lead America into a new era. And a lot of people were eager to jump into the fray to be the one to lead.

The Republicans ended up re-nominating their 1912 nominee, Albert S. Fitzgerald, after an eventual convention in which the African-American Governor of North Carolina Scipio Grocer led the first balloting, before withdrawing out of fear that his nomination would lead to racial strife. Also helping him make the decision to withdraw was the shadow of a possible Fitzgerald independent campaign, like the man threatened to do if Grocer was nominated. The two were fairly ambitious men, but Grocer proved the morally better one and withdrew in exchange for the vice-presidency.

Looking at the chaos of the Republican convention, the Conservatives were encouraged, as otherwise they were seen as the party of the past in contrast to the dynamic Republican Party. Nominating a North Carolinian, Andrew Jackson Reade, who was seen as relatively moderate on the racial issue and got on well with Grocer when the two met, even though they ran in different political circles. Part of this was the worry that their gains with the African-American middle-class would be obliterated with Grocer on the Republican ticket. Running with Vice-President Elijah Coleman to both hold Conservative states in the north and to appease the more socially conservative element of the party, they left the convention optimistic.

The Progressives were in chaos. Their standard-bearer, Theodore Roosevelt, was dead and his rival, Senator Waldus Beck of Wisconsin, was in charge. Out with Roosevelt's urbane liberalism and flirtations with the United Left, back in with rural progressivism and the Social Gospel. This led to massive gains with disaffected farmers overall still disgruntled with the increasingly not-farming Conservatives which were moving away from the legacy of populist President Hickock, but it also led to the United Left and Republicans gaining with Progressive voters in cities. But overall, Beck's leadership was a firm one and his campaign would be run his way, and not by anyone else. Running with Warren Alexander of Nebraska to double-down on the rural appeal [and leading to some Progressives leaving the party in disgust, joining either the Republicans or United Left]

The United Left nominated Senator Eugene V. Debs of Indiana, someone had immense appeal with the urban working-class and his passionate speeches electrified a nation. Aiming to consume the Progressives' urban voteshare, Senator Debs aimed his campaign solidly at that camp, selling himself on the down-low as "the candidate Roosevelt would have voted for". To appease the "old guard" unsure about the Senator who willingly agreed to be the running-mate on a Progressive ticket back in 1912, he nominated the party founder, Augustus J. Watson, to be his running-mate, in what would turn out to be Watson's last ride before he passed away.

In the end, Reade saw the African-American middle-class return to being solidly Republican, with donations from wealthy African-Americans flooding in to Fitzgerald's campaign and energising his campaign. However, missteps led to Beck gaining on to Fitzgerald and the fears that the runoff would be between Reade and Beck, with Fitzgerald in third place. Digging deep within his immense fortune, Fitzgerald authorised a scare campaign in the last two weeks, alleging that Beck would lose the runoff to Reade and only Fitzgerald can guarantee a change from the Conservatives, as well as reaching back to the old gold-silver debate, fearmongering in solidly gold states that Beck would force through a silver-backed currency and lead to economic disruption. Even though Beck spoke out and condemned this dirty campaigning, it worked. He narrowly came third.

Waldus Beck was now between a rock and a hard place. If he endorsed Fitzgerald, it would be a validation of Fitzgerald's dirty campaign, but if he refused to endorse anyone, he would help enable the Conservatives to a fourth term. In the end, Beck announced to the media that "after many days of thinking", he would reclutantly endorse Fitzgerald as "the better of two evils". It was the faintest of endorsements, but it was enough for Fitzgerald to absorb enough of the Progressive votes, along with his advantage in fundraising, to win a clear victory in the runoff.

His "ethical capitalism" would start a new era, the Reform Era.

 

[Turquoise Blue]

The "German War" [or Third World War as some called it, but this wouldn't last as it wasn't really global] was brewing, and President Orléans was determined to see it through. Hitler must be toppled for his crimes and Austria-Hungary dismantled! Also part of his motivation was his feud with long-dead President Hoover who lost a war with Hitler. Orléans maintained in his successful 1936 campaign that he would have won the war for America, and this was his opportunity to show that he was right all along and that Hoover lost a winnable war. At least that was Orléans' thinking.

Of course, to see the war through, he would have to run for an unprecedented third term. Previous presidents ran for a third term, including Henry McCullough in 1912, but none of them won. To win 1944 would be to make history and for the president who took a small independent campaign in 1928 to winning the presidency in 1936, this was appealing in its way - Louis Orléans was a man who loved making history.

Getting the Citizen's Choice's nomination was in no doubt, the centrist party was essentially his personality cult, built around the idea that he would save America from corruption, from "Hooverism", from unspecified evils, and it gladly followed his every whim and ideological shift. Also benefiting the party was the fact that it was increasingly the party that left-wing voters went to if they wanted to stop the rising green tide of the other party.

What other party? Social Credit, of course! Rising out of Western alienation to the "Eastern domination" of politics, this right-wing populist party quickly eclipsed the Conservatives in the late 1930s and managed to get the elder party to agree to endorse the SoCred nominee in 1940, Senator Jeremy "Jezza" O'Shea of Montana. O'Shea was a committed ideologue who successfully articulated how C. H. Douglas' Social Credit thinking would work for a right-wing populist party. His success in 1940 drove many to panic and fear what would happen if they got in. Social Credit was not a party for the North-East nor the diverse cities, but a party for the rural areas, for the West and South, and Jezza spoke to their concerns. His re-nomination in 1944 was relatively easy, especially this time as the SoCreds and Conservatives had an united convention. O'Shea agreed to put a Conservative on his ticket, the elder statesman Floyd Lynch, but it was clear the Conservatives were slowly fading away, along with their ideals.

But what if you don't want to vote for the biggest ego in history, or for a deranged economic policy that would ruin America? Well, you must be on the left, and luckily for you, there's two options for you! The Progressive-Republicans have seen better days but those days they're firmly committed to fighting Orléans and his centrist policies and whatever madness the SoCreds have came up with. They have drifted far away from the party of Albert S. Fitzgerald, to become a firm left-liberal party and their nominee this year spares no words in his speeches against Orléans and how under Ness Roth, America would be a land standing for social justice and economic fairness, all out of the old Progressive book. Meanwhile, the last of the centrist Prog-Reps decide that they would indeed be switching over to Citizen's Choice.

But what if you're in the West and are horrified by the green tide engulfing everything? The Prog-Reps aren't the party for you, you know that well. Neither would Citizen's Choice be the vote you would want to cast. Both looked down on the farmer and focused exclusively on the East. You felt Western alienation, but you knew deep down that Social Credit was just baloney and dangerous baloney at that. What party would you cast your vote for? Surprisingly enough, the Social Democrats have filled the niche the Prog-Reps have abandoned a decade ago, and have gained a more Western and rural audience open to their message of socialism. However, for the old ideologues, they saw the new Western Soc-Dems as insufficiently socialist, more just left-wing populist and not really understanding the message of Fourier. Nevertheless, they were outvoted and Governor Virgil Evans Icemore of Wyoming won the nomination, becoming the first native major-party nominee in the process. Icemore had considerable appeal in the West and many farmers said "If I couldn't vote for Jezza, I would vote for Virgil". It was clear that the West was not to be a SoCred bastion left alone by other parties, that the SDP would provide firm competition.

The Prog-Reps and SDP gave a firm fight against Orléans and O'Shea, but ultimately, too much farmers preferred Social Credit over socialism and too much urban voters were scared by the rising green tide into voting for the candidate they knew could defeat them. So for the second time, the runoff would be between the centrist President Orléans and the rural Senator O'Shea.

And with the war turning into America's favour, the voters knew just who to reward, and they gave Orléans his historic third term. Unfortunately, he wouldn't serve most of it out, instead being tragically shot down months after his inauguration.

 

[Oppo]

my boi jezza™

his son chezza did become president in the end

 

[Dom]

my boi jezza™

his son chezza did become president in the end

Chezza?

 

[Turquoise Blue]

Chezza?

Charlton "Chezza" O'Shea. I know, weird name, that family really likes the "-ezza" nickname thing

He ends up president after Dwight Potter, president from 1977 to 1984, is killed by one of his cabinet officials after he becomes the worst president and the most unpopular one due to leading America into a nuclear exchange that killed millions of its citizens

Chezza proves a fairly shit president, but not for want of trying, as he tried to salvage what he could. Unfortunately, his ambitious plan led to administrative confusion and in the end, he decides to not run for a second term, instead seeing America be overwhelmed by angry populist forces from the left and right like outright fascists, theocrats, hardline nationalists, and "just" radical-socialists. The last one wins the 1984 election

 

[I Saw A Red Sky]

Why is Dr. Sun in Wyoming

 

[Turquoise Blue]

Why is Dr. Sun in Wyoming

His picture is used for a fictional person, like a lot of others [I think a majority of the people here are fictional]

 

[Turquoise Blue]

The 1980 election is widely known as "the Negative Election". Negative campaigning, scare politics and the use of genocide as a political weapon was rife as President Potter sought a mandate to turn the cold war with communist Germany into a hot one due to reports of Germany genociding Eastern Europeans. But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Potter was earlier in the year a scandal-ridden president who oversaw a deeply controversial war, the Arabian War, but the economy is buzzing along nicely. Potter was set for a close re-election, or if the Reform Party was lucky, a close defeat.

But then Congressman Alexander Freeman-Smalls, a Social Conservative, accused Potter of violating the Constitution by wiretapping the Puerto Rican and Hawaiian separatists back in 1978, citing constitutional codes to back his argument. The Reform Party quickly jumped on Freeman-Smalls' cause, leading most Soc-Cons to rally behind their president and defeat impeachment in the House. Unfortunately for the ever-suffering left, the American people saw it as a witch-hunt against relatively popular President Potter and turned against them, harming them in the process.

But then reports of the German leader, Erich Mielke, ordering the ethnic cleansing of Eastern Europe to make way for German colonisation led to outrage in the White House as Potter ordered a more aggressive foreign policy, pressuring Mielke to back down which Mielke refused to do. It was increasingly clear that America was on the path to war with the other major nuclear power, and many Americans (especially moderates) were scared of that possibility. Others, however, cheered on their President and rallied behind the war cause, especially the left and right on different grounds - the left on humanitarian outrage to ethnic cleansing, the right on jingoism.

The Reform Party, already facing an uphill battle, had a long and dragged out convention with two hundred ballots, but in the end, it emerged with a nominee, moderate anti-war Governor of Massachusetts and Forward in Unity 1976 candidate Charles Henry Bonaparte, who was shackled to Christian Left politician Indigo Vivian Debs to keep the left happy with the ticket. His nomination led to the hardline anti-war faction leaving and running the Independent campaign of wealthy millionaire Benjamin Stillard, running with moderate Social Conservative Jimmy Carter.

Meanwhile, the pro-war Reformists met with Potter and agreed to form the National Unity Party, a party standing for war with Germany and for unity in that cause, uniting Social Conservatives and Reformists together. It managed to get the endorsement of a few small right-wing parties to bolster it, and Potter announced his running mate at the NUP convention, Senator Charlie Wilson of Texas. Charlie Wilson was a firm liberal, but he also was a strong hawk and believed 100% in the war's cause. He would convince Reformists to vote NUP while Potter would do for the Soc-Cons.

Exiting the conventions, Potter was projected at 61% in the first round and his re-election a certainty. But then one of his cabinet members, Balthazar "Bob" Lennon, announced that "he couldn't stand it anymore" and released information that Potter authorised the wiretapping of Reform Party congresspeople in the belief that they were using illegal drugs. This led to condemnation from the Reform Party and Potter denied that he specifically asked for Reform, instead blaming Lennon for misinterpreting his order to wiretap all congresspeople "likely to use drugs". It was ambiguous enough for National Unity to all but collapse with many Reformists begrudgingly walking back to their party, including Potter's running-mate Senator Wilson. Humiliated and losing six percent of his support from it, Potter announced that his new running-mate would be his incumbent vice-president Charlton "Chezza" O'Shea, all but abandoning National Unity apart from a label and some Reform politicians like Marcus Julian Watson [who would find his future campaigns for the presidency eternally dogged by his associations with Potter]

And then with Reform once more re-united and believing they could indeed win, they started talking of nuclear war and how Potter would sacrifice sensible pragmatism in favour of reckless jingoism, how Bonaparte would govern with a cool head and avoid war. Potter, incensed by this, fired back and started the most negative campaign in American history, up to fuelling a grassroots movement called "Americans Against Scary Political Advertisements" (AASPA) which would find millions of supporters but ultimately fail in its aim to stop the negativity.

Part of those negative campaigns were the imagery of millions dead. Bonaparte alleged that Potter's war would lead to millions of Americans and Eastern Europeans dead, while Potter fired back that Bonaparte was glad to hand over all of Europe to Mielke's murderous regime. The famous "Confessions of a Conservative" ad was broadcast this election, one where a man from Kansas by the name of Bob Dole talked of past Social Conservatives such as Dick Nixon and Mellie Gump, and confessed that he saw Dwight Potter as a madman who would destroy everything, and that was why he was voting Bonaparte. Potter's most famous ad was the "Daisy" ad, one where a young girl picked daisies and it was combined with still images of concentration camps and pictures of dead bodies. The "Confessions of a Conservative" and "Daisy" ads, along with others of similar intensity, regularly terrified voters and that was where Stillard came in.

Unlike Bonaparte and Potter, Benjamin Stillard ran an optimistic campaign, a campaign of "hopes and dreams", one where peace would lead America to prosperity. His honeyed words convinced millions that he was indeed the best candidate out of the three, but in the end, on election night scared voters ended up defaulting to their tribal party and Stillard fell from a projected 23% down to 13%.

Most shockingly of all, was Dwight Potter narrowly missing 50%. This was credited to Bonaparte successfully uniting the party and pushing the narrative of nuclear conflict leading to millions of dead Americans. There was to be a second round, one that President Potter appeared annoyed to be forced into. It wasn't part of his plan, not at all. This wouldn't be as much a mandate for his war as he originally thought. But Bonaparte got the majority of Stillard's voters and united the peace coalition against Potter's war coalition.

The negative campaigning racketed up, before finishing the last night before runoff day with two eerie advertisements, "The Final Choice" from Bonaparte and "Moral Compass" from Potter. "The Final Choice" heavily implied that if you voted Potter, you wouldn't get a chance to vote in 1984 because you would be dead from the nuclear exchange, while "Moral Compass" presented one man, a survivor of Mielke's genocide, and his tearful plea to stand up for basic human decency and vote Potter because "the whole world is watching".

In the end, after all that, the American people cast their ballot for Dwight Potter, but it was through gritted teeth. Surely Bonaparte's ads were a bit exaggerating? Surely Potter wouldn't fire the nukes? Surely?

The next four years would certainly be eventful.

 

[Turquoise Blue]

In 1900, the Republicans finally won an election for the first time (or first time in twenty years if you listen to their claims of being the true successor of the National Unionists) and it was with French-American young playboy Henry Napoléon Bonaparte, distant relative of that Napoleon. Unsurprisingly for such an inexperienced candidate who mainly got elected thanks to the Progressives begrudgingly casting their electoral votes for him instead of the Conservative, he proved to have a disastrous presidency in which the long economic boom came to a sharp end.

But in 1903, he would die from an anarchist's bullet in one of the several worldwide successful anarchist assassinations of heads of state. The economy was suffering and both unemployment and poverty was on the rise when new President Charles Humphrey Porter assumed charge of the nation. Porter was the long-suffering vice-president, having served in the post for 10 years by the time Bonaparte was shot. He is considered the reason why President Henry McCullough went moderate in his second term and implemented broadly-Republican economic policy [angering the Progressive left in the process]. Now Porter was finally president and he wouldn't waste the opportunity.

By 1904, President Porter has managed to turn things around, with the economy recovering and national unity strong with anarchism fully discredited by the vast majority of Americans. But people still remembered the "Bonaparte Bust" and so was distrustful of the idea of a second term for President Porter. Not helping matters was the fact that the Republicans were still the third party behind the Conservatives and Progressives, and that the Progressives could have easily eclipsed Porter's re-election campaign. However, events would turn otherwise.

The Republicans nominated President Porter easily and he announced that he would run with ex-Conservative Simon Fitzgerald Jr., the well-known inventor of moving pictures. Porter hoped that it would cut into Conservative votes and benefit the Republicans more.

The Conservatives, still sore over "the Betrayal of 1900", re-nominated their nominee that year, folksy populist Bill Cody Hickock of Nebraska. Hickock represented a more western, more populist, kind of Conservative that managed to help the party break out of the South once more, successfully recovering the party from their collapse in the 1890s. Hickock railed against the Republicans and Progressives for "denying the people's wish", which was that of a Conservative president and called upon America to reject their "corrupt bargain" in favour of the "real alternative". He ran with Ernest Sawyer of South Carolina, a much more pro-business Conservative who could assure them that Hickock wouldn't do anything seriously radical that would upset business, that he would have "more serious" Conservatives surrounding him.

The Progressives nominated Theodore Roosevelt, seen in 1904 as a moderate liberal carrying on McCullough's legacy. He chose to run with Western populist Warren Alexander, known rival of Bill Cody Hickock for the title of "Orator of the Platte". However, his nomination was hard-earned and closely fought with maverick Mayor of New York City Paddy O'Brien who had an open drug habit [specifically cocaine-mixed cigars] and reacted badly to Roosevelt's win, declaring that he "would stand for Progressive values, no matter if that bastard won the nomination" and started his Independent Progressive campaign that split the party terribly. O'Brien was on the left of the party and would gather the various "movements" that were closely associated with the Progressives, including Temperance and female suffrage [his running mate Catherine Scott Harrison was one of the most prominent Temperance and women's suffrage organisers, and was the first woman on a presidential ballot in American history]

The party most accustomed to being the most radical choice, the Labor Party, was in an unfamiliar situation. They spent the last decade reaching out to growing labour unions and this brought a chunk of more "practical" people less interested in debating ideology and more in organising for workers' rights. O'Brien's independent campaign was seen, after a fashion, as to Labor's left which bristled Augustus Watson, their founder and their nominee this election. O'Brien was nothing but an upstart who did not stand with the workers and thus was nothing but a capitalist, even if a capitalist who says nice things about labour! This he maintained strongly. The real alternative to the failed Republican-Conservative-Progressive capitalist tripoly was Labor, not an opportunist who would throw them under the bus if he had the chance!

In the end, the Progressive split managed to benefit Porter, who won second place and turned to Roosevelt, clearly expecting the old Republican-Progressive deal to continue, with Roosevelt telling his electors to cast their votes for Porter, which he did.

However, he massively underestimated the anger bubbling under the surface of the Progressive Party, that led to two million people voting for the drug-addled mayor of New York City. The electors exploded in fury and many decided that they would cast their vote for the ticket the people voted for them to do so, Roosevelt/Alexander. Others thought that the Corrupt Bargain was not worth it and cast their vote for Hickock/Sawyer instead. A good chunk chose to vote for another Progressive, that of Paddy O'Brien. And then some saw it all and decided that since Roosevelt discredited himself, that the only choice was Augustus Watson.

But the electors didn't stop there. Some chose to vote for the 1900 Progressive nominee, Abraham Siegel, in a protest against Roosevelt's moderation while Western electors decided that their voters actually wanted Alexander instead of Roosevelt and cast their votes appropriately, while the Alabaman electors, surprised by how they somehow won [how they did is still debated to this day] split their votes between Roosevelt, Hickock, Porter and two completely different people. Alabama's Progressives tended to be starkly divided between white and black workers, and to keep the peace in a party that would obviously never win the state, the electoral slate were divided between 6 white electors and 5 black ones. One white elector chose to cast his vote for long-dead president George Washington [and was declared void as a result] while two black electors cast their votes for W. E. B. Du Bois, African-American scholar who was making waves for his books and for his civil rights activism. This would elevate the scholar's prominence further, when he intervened on behalf of one of the electors' family in the trial of the lyncher of the elector after a tide of murderous reaction engulfed the state.

And after all that splintering, Roosevelt saw two things: first, that he failed in making Porter president, and second, that he was now fourth in electoral votes due to Paddy O'Brien getting one electoral vote more. Roosevelt re-stated his endorsement of Porter while Watson and Labor quickly jumped on O'Brien's train and told their Representatives to vote for O'Brien. In the end, after several votes, Hickock won a majority of the states in the House, while Sawyer easily won the Senate thanks to the Conservatives' dominance of the South.

 

[Turquoise Blue]

Basically every House election after the nukes flew and wrecked everything including political assumptions.

Democratic Choice, you know them, the Green/Radical alliance (sometimes with Reform), hegemonic left-wing faction up until they weren't. I've merged the two together because frankly they worked together way too much to be labelled separately

And now their rivals...

America First was the first, a "national-populist" alternative open to radical solutions economically, but quite socially conservative. A chunk of them said fuck it and got in the whole coup attempt that tainted the whole party and merely empowered the Democrats. The bit left over was kinda opportunistic conservatives with a militaristic look and that kinda carried through when they decided to merge the right-wing parties together to form the National Alliance, which became the next rival to Democratic Choice.

National Alliance was a weird mixture of establishment conservatives, national-populists, social conservatives and after the whole 2000 debacle, the party fell apart as both the right and "left" of the party left for greener pastures. They got one president, and she turned out to implement more socially-liberal stuff than the bisexual hippie President did, so they basically just accepted the consensus and got nothing out of it.

Rally for the Republic was a splitter once the whole "Liberty" thing [basically an attempt to unite the right] led to the right-wing taking over. This party ended up striking big and establishing itself as a major centre-right party. Basically think patrician conservatives, basically very, very establishment. Their only president to win an election was the scion of a ridiculously-successful dynasty after all.

Christian Heritage was once a minor religious right party that first got success when President Barclay [the NA's only president] turned out way more moderate for people's tastes, and then they resurged when the NA collapsed and the right defected to their party. They ended up taking over the attempt at a right-wing united party, and reforged that into a new party, the Conservative Alternative.

Conservative Alternative, I've talked of them, they're basically a more populist, more angry, form of conservatism. More religious, more nationalistic, more free-market, basically they're the OTL Republican Party more or less compared to Rally's more "European" conservatism

Technocracy Inc., ooh boy, this is basically original Technocracy, government by the experts, all that. Truth to say, its electoral success didn't come from people turning to the idea of government by experts, but the weird "populist technocracy" that emerged, namely one that argued that government waste was because of the current system, that Technocrats would streamline government, that Technocrats would ensure no money to foreign countries like Qatar [it's a long story] and instead "American dollars for American people!". Unsurprisingly, the "populist technocrats" ended up deciding that Technocracy was just holding them back and split off, along with basically all their votes.

Nonpartisan League is that splitter. founded on the idea of a less strong party whip and fighting bloated government corruption and the dominance of dynasties. Unfortunately, just a few years after they were elected, the chaotic party system produced something that would do what they did, but better. The reason for this is that as populist as the NPL liked to be, they were still at heart technocrats, just ones not as bound to the original conception of technocracy as the founding members. They ended up folding into the new party after they collapsed.

Our Millennium is basically the American Five Star Movement. Rising out of major protests against government corruption and the dominance of a dynastic elite in American politics, it is a rather ideologically incoherent party at present, with people on the left railing against the corrupt capitalist system that produced an American nobility, people on the centre calling for drastic but pragmatic reform [this is where the ex-NPL people went] and people on the right talking about the "globalist conspiracy" like the Nationalists of old. Their current president is on the left, thankfully.

Oh, and there's other parties as well.

Social Conservatives were the dominant party in the era before the Exchange, and they fell badly in the aftermath as people targeted them in their anger. They ended up merging into the National Alliance in an attempt to unite the right.

Salvation was the theocrats I mentioned a while ago. They were kind of an apocalyptic cult, but most of their votes came from socially conservative religious people yearning for a more "moral" America, and their representatives reflected that. They basically died after they decided that Murillo was the Anti-Christ and that a Holy Union of America must be established by force.

Reform is represented here before they were absorbed into DC. They were basically the broad-tent left-wing party that quickly found out that the voters kind of didn't need that after the Exchange as the left was ascendant and all.

Democratic Movement was basically a Beautiful Centrist Party that turned out to be not that Centrist after all, as they decided to merge with the centre-right parties to form the National Alliance.

National Front was a nationalist and "left-wing" party that had associations with the far-right. Yeah, this is the sort of thing that pops up every now and then, the weird isolationist, vaguely anti-Semitic, "not-fascist" left-wing party.

Free Market Alliance, well, to understand them, you have to understand the two halves of the party. One half is a group of stuffy business people who disliked the somewhat authoritarian nature of politics before the Exchange and wanted to have low taxes, pro-business government and all that. The other half is a hippie New Age cult fetishing libertarianism that somehow managed to take over Qatar in the 1980s and controlled it for decades. The party started off as primarily the former as the successor to the "League of Concerned Businessmen", and ended its life as primarily the latter as a party unrepentantly shilling for the Qatar Commune in a way similar to how hardline Communist Parties did for the Soviet Union.

Patriotic Independents were basically the equivalent to George Wallace's AIP here, except more racist and at times tied to terrorist organisations. They ended up merging into National Unity and was refounded by David Duke. Thankfully, he didn't get much support.

American Union of Fascists are basically fascists, unsurprisingly enough. They didn't get in the whole coup attempt because their leader saw it as inevitably going to fail. They still got punished because people associated them with the coup anyway.

National Left was basically a social conservative, economically left-wing and extremely isolationist party, calling anything to do with foreign nations "internationalist schemes". Dominated by one man, George Larson-Smith, for basically most of its existence, it kind of fizzled out after he retired.

Alternative for America was basically En Marche! only a failure. In a time when isolationism was generally the consensus and internationalism was done with hesistance, AfA was there to be unrepentant internationalists, calling for global co-operation and whatnot. Ended up merging into another party that failed to win seats and entered the history books.

Victory for America was basically the party of Robert Cermak and survived as long as he was politically relevant, which wasn't that long after he lost 2008. Ended up merging into the NPL or something, I'm not sure, actually. Might have just folded up.

Americans Elect is basically the hardline OM, the ones that see Our Millennium as having sold out by agreeing to work with President Husain. Apart from that, there's nothing really unique about them.

 

[Turquoise Blue]

The "ninth book" [but published in 2017 as Volume Zero, to show it is not in the typical series] of A History of the American Left, by Professor Maite Etxeberria, is called America First, America Always, and deals with a controversial subject that they deal with careful analysis, that of the role of the Nationalists and the so-called "nationalist left" in American politics, and where to classify them

Unlike other books which deal with a specific party, this is more like the SDP book in how it looks at a specific strain and how it evolved over time, the "nationalist left". The first chapter of this deals with, surprisingly enough, the Democratic Party of Grover Blaine's day. It analyses how Blaine's conservative-populism and isolationism affected a lot of Americans and led to the rise of a group of people who Etxeberria dubs "national-populists". In 1919, the Democratic Party was long since dead, but the Progressives, led by Waldus Beck, carried the national-populists in their party. Beck's coalition was originally the rural farmers and Social Gospel voters and so tended to carry a lot of national-populists, but his increasing co-operation with the strongly internationalist President Fitzgerald alienated a lot of them and led to former Representative Rupert Larson and Representative Richard Blaine splitting off to form the Nationalist Party, the first of many "nationalist-left" parties.

The Nationalist Party's zenith was when they successfully got President Jay Gatling to push through a referendum on the global Council of Nations and if America should remain a part of it. Before that, they carved out an odd path where they solidly supported civil rights for blacks while drawing in many antisemites attracted by Larson's railing against the "globalists". Larson himself always declared himself to be not bigoted against any race, and famously declared that "this party is the party every Jew should support". Larson himself opposed antisemitism firmly and expelled many who expressed overtly antisemitic views and firmly condemned the pogroms committed during the Sweltering Summers, but those pogroms were done by Nationalists and Larson found himself having to regularly expel party members for their actions, which gave the Nationalists a bad name as the "antisemitic party".

After the CoN referendum led to a landslide defeat for the Nationalists, they entered a period of decline and eventually disbanded in the 1940s as isolationism was increasingly unpopular with an America much more confident in the global scene. Rupert Larson ended up bemoaning the party being taken over by open antisemites and called for the paramilitary wing to disband and leave the party.

The nationalist left would return in the late 20th century, first with the National Front set up by ex-Patriotic Independent Anthony Harris. Harris was directly inspired by Larson and the Nationalist Party. Harris was someone who was once a firm segregationist and ally of Vice-President Harry Wright, but unlike many, the chaos of the 1960s led him to be more liberal on civil rights and come out in favour of the NAACP and of civil rights reform, even though he stayed in the Dixie Party and then the Patriotic Independent Party. He believed he could turn the PIP away from segregationism and towards national-populism, but the nomination of the libertarian Calvin Trexler in 1972 led him to bolt and form the National Front. Harris is well remembered today as the Secretary of State during the worst period of American foreign policy, that of fighting the Germans in the war that turned nuclear. Harris, for all his claiming to be the heir of Larson, turned out to be quite the war hawk and thus got condemnation from Larson's descendant, the next person to set up a nationalist-left party. The National Front, of course, didn't survive the 1980s.

In the turbulent 1980s, the rise of radicals led to the rise of the nationalist-left led by George Larson-Smith. Larson-Smith was Rupert Larson's grandson, and looked up to his grandfather as a hero unjustly treated by America. GLS [as he was commonly referred to as] was first a member of the Radical Party, but once that became a member of the future Democratic Choice and signed up to Arya Moon's committed internationalism, GLS bolted and declared that the National Left Party would be set up, with him and William Blaine [Richard's great-grandson] as its leaders. GLS was very much a firm "Larsonite", but if he expected Blaine to be like his great-grandfather, he was to be sorely disappointed as Blaine's war experiences led him to be more firmly progressive, leading to the split that would bring the party down from success.

George Larson-Smith firmly condemned anything to do with foreign countries as "internationalist schemes", hence the more hardline antisemites flocked to the party, something that deeply concerned William Blaine and led to the expelling of several members for antisemitic attacks. GLS entered in negotiation with the conservative National Alliance to stop the left-wing administration of Arya Moon, uniting solely on the basis of their isolationism. Their ticket was firmly a foreign policy one, and it led to the split between GLS and Blaine as the later opposed the idea, first declaring his independent campaign, then an invitation from President Moon came.

Moon's first pick for running-mate after deciding to drop Edward Dewey was General John Wickham, 1988 National Alliance presidential nominee, but Wickham ended up declining due to a health scare. Blaine was her next choice as a running mate who would weaken the isolationist ticket by reeling in disaffected National Left voters who voted for the isolationist left, not the isolationist left. Blaine, motivated by his burning hatred of Larson-Smith and Moon's firm promise that all foreign wars would be over by the end of her third term, agreed. But then he got cancer and had to withdraw, Moon ended up picking Reformist Governor Regina Icemore, and the ticket lost 1992. GLS was not oblivious to Blaine's support in the party, and successfully purged the "Blaineites" from the party, committing it to being a purely "Larsonite" party, one of isolationism above socialism. GLS would serve as Vice-President from 1993 to 1997, but split from the Barclay Administration over Barclay's betrayal of the agreement and committing America further to war in Eastern Europe. The National Left ended up fading and as GLS announced his retirement, the party ended up being taken over by a relatively left-wing leader that merged the party into the Radicals in the end [and that merged into DC].

George Larson-Smith and William Blaine insisted up to the end of their lives that the National Left did not have an issue with antisemitism, only that "some" antisemites decided to join the party. The story would end there if it was written barely seven years before. But Etxeberria decided to include two more parties, and their inclusion is rather controversial as it was Our Millennium and Americans Elect. Our Millennium started as the grassroots "March on K Street" movement railing against dynasties, corporations, the elite controlling politics, and that led to a problem with antisemitism. President Bennett was acutely aware of this problem, often found in the party's "right", so to speak, as they talked of the New World Order, of dynasties being secretly Jews or allied with Jews, and ultimately a big chunk of them [but not all] left to join DeBrossard to form Americans Elect, a more conspirational party where DeBrossard and the party leadership talked of betrayal of principles, but a chunk of the membership talked of Bennett as the NWO "plant" designed to undermine the movement and continue the Jewish dynastical regime.

Antisemitism has a long and unpleasant presence in the American left, and even the best and brightest of the left worked with parties associated with antisemitism, such as Louis Orléans incorporating the Nationalists into Vox Populi, and Arya Moon promising to limit further "internationalist schemes" in order to get William Blaine on board as her running mate. But there were people on the left who consistently opposed antisemitism, including many Jews such as Samuel Franklin and Rosa Luxemburg. Presidents Orléans and Moon had limits on how far they would deal with the nationalist-left of their day, with Orléans never appointing a Nationalist to his cabinet despite several requests and Moon only dealing with William Blaine who represented the more genuine left of the party and never with GLS who represented the mainstream conspirational part.

But even today, antisemitism remains a presence in the left that sorely needs to be cleaned out.

 

[Turquoise Blue]

My shitty attempt at converging America with India

Dwight D. Eisenhower (Democratic) 1953-1961*
1952: def. Earl Browder (Communist) and A. Philip Randolph (Social Freedom)
1956: def. Earl Browder (Communist) and Strom Thurmond (American Values)
1960: def. Earl Browder (Communist), Darlington Hoopes (People's Socialist) and Harry F. Byrd (American Values)
The disastrous Second American Civil War ended with a Democratic victory. In both senses of the word. American democracy was maintained, but the Democratic Party's hegemony was also assured, as people rallied towards "the Party of the New Republic", led by General Eisenhower.

Eisenhower himself was a much changed man. Once he considered himself a moderate conservative, but seeing the war tear America apart led to a shift to the left. The influence of the much senior General Smedley Butler and his socialist friends also helped as well, of course. But Eisenhower was never a doctrinaire socialist, always a practical one who saw matters in terms of Problems and Solutions, not in terms of ideology.

And the American people loved that. While the Communists enjoyed some popularity in the Steel Belt due to being on the right side of the Civil War [after a narrow and bitter vote that led to a failed revolutionary splitter], they were doomed to lose every election to the Democratic Party. No matter if some hardline Dixiecrats split off, or that the centre-left socialists merged, one thing was eternal - the Democratic Party. Right?

Lyndon B. Johnson (Democratic) 1961-1965
President Johnson, known as a close friend of General Eisenhower during the Civil War, was seen as Eisenhower's heir and was made his vice-president in 1960 thanks to Eisenhower's awareness of his failing health. LBJ would oversee the Canadian Missile Crisis, where Canada under their military regime piled up nuclear missiles (provided by the Syndicate Union, of course) aimed at American cities and sent troops into the disputed Cascadian territory. In the end, the UN intervened and prevented any further fighting with a highly unsatisfactory peace. LBJ knew right there that he wouldn't be renominated at the 1964 DNC, and spent the rest of his term in a general malaise.

John S. D. Eisenhower (Democratic, then National Democratic, then Democratic) 1965-1973
1964: def. Harry F. Byrd (American Values), Barry Goldwater (Freedom) and Earl Browder (Communist)
1968: def. Hubert Humphrey (Democratic), Orval Faubus (American Values) and Gus Hall (Communist)
Just like three times before, the Democrats won a thumping landslide with an Eisenhower. John was in more radical circles than his father, circles that called for firm authoritarianism and for a firm "people's state". Those weren't remarked on at first, but as he settled down as president, it got more obvious. His brand of "Democratic Centralism" would lead to a more authoritarian time for America as a whole. Eisenhower saw himself as the "people's champion" against weak and divided bourgeois opposition, including within his party.

Hubert Humphrey himself had somewhat authoritarian tendencies, including calling for the Communists to be banned, but Eisenhower's politics reeked of communism like what was done in the Syndicate Union and HHH hated that. Announcing his campaign for the Presidency in 1968, he managed to narrowly seize the nomination despite a wave of pressure, threats and blackmail. Eisenhower that same day announced the formation of the National Democratic Party which led to half of the delegates walking out in the middle of Humphrey's acceptance speech.

And Eisenhower would have the people on his side as he won a firm victory, defeating Humphrey and the extremes in a strong victory. Democratic Centralism won the day. But if any communists believed that Eisenhower was on their side, they were to be mistaken. Shortly after Eisenhower's win, the National Democratic Party successfully won a court case deeming them to be the legal successor to the old Democratic Party.

In 1970, Eisenhower announced that the FBI, led by J. Edgar Hoover, has discovered that there was communist plans to topple the American government, and thus that is why martial law would be declared. Elections would be cancelled, the states would be suspended, everything would be governed by the President and by the NDP for as long as necessary. Eisenhower miscalculated.

The backlash led to the resurrection of the Republican Party. An old brand thought died off due to the Great Depression, it quickly adopted a clear "support the system, but against the Democratic Party" sentiment that allowed it to return from the dead. There was to be a need for change, and the Republicans would provide that. The Supreme Court struck down parts of the Emergency in 1971, allowing for fresh elections to be held in 1972.

Linwood Holton (Republican) 1973-1977
1972: def. John S. D. Eisenhower (Democratic)
Unlike the past times the Republicans won, this time their base would be in the South. The South was always hostile in some way or another to the Democratic Party's heavily liberal socialism, and when the Republicans nominated Virginia Governor Linwood Holton, they rallied to his banner. Holton knew the value of alliances, as did Eisenhower, and the 1972 election would be the first one since 1932 to be primarily two-party. The Communist Party split between the Marxist half that nevertheless supported Holton to stop the Emergency, and a more purely left party that endorsed Eisenhower as the main left-wing nominee. The American people had enough of the Democrats and cast a vote for Holton.

Holton's presidency was mainly known for the turning back of the Emergency and the disbanding of the Federal Bureau of Investigation by then widely seen as Eisenhower's secret service. The main weakness of Holton's presidency was his incredibly disunited cabinet that included everyone from communists to theocrats, all only united by their loathing of the Democratic Party and of the Emergency. It fell apart in 1976 as the convention resulted in many leaving due to disagreement on the united platform. On the fifth day, after the CPUSA (M) left, Holton declined re-nomination and the Republicans were left without a clear leader.

John S. D. Eisenhower (Democratic) 1977-1980*
1976: def. James Carter (Republican), John B. Anderson (Secular Republican), Gus Hall (Communist (Marxist)) and Ted Kennedy (Independent Democratic)
The victory was inevitable. The sixth day of the RNC saw Christian pastor James Carter be nominated and the "secularists" bolt out, announcing that the Republicans were abandoning Holton's principles and that they would establish their own party, the Secular Republicans. With the Communists and Ted Kennedy also running, the landslide for the Democrats was not unexpected. Eisenhower was back.

By the 1976 election, Eisenhower was more and more someone who kept to his family and distrusted everyone else. Only the Eisenhower-Nixon clan could be trusted, everyone else was suspect. His planned running mate for 1976, his daughter Barbara, was killed in a plane crash, leading him to turn to his son David as his running mate, judging his other children as unready. The FBI was unofficially re-instated as the Bureau of State Investigations, and used to promote hardline right-wing people in the South to further disunite the Republican opposition.

His assassination just before the 1980 election led to his son becoming President and a new landslide confirmed.

David Eisenhower (Democratic) 1980-1985
1980: def. George Wallace (American Independent), Lee Iacocca (Republican), James Carter (People's), Gus Hall (Communist (Marxist)) and Ronald Reagan (California)
The 1980 election would be a huge landslide for the Democrats as their opposition fractured. The American Independent Party's rise in the South reflected the rise of "Americanism", an ideology that blended the three Cs - Church, Country, Creed - into a nationalist far-right ideology, in the South and elsewhere profiting off the profound disillusionment many felt with politics as a whole. The charismatic right-wing populist George Wallace managed to carry Alabama even as the fracturing led the Democrats to win elsewhere.

Also notable here is the rise of the California Party, a centre-right regionalist party that ran popular actor and film-maker Ronald Reagan who managed to win his state narrowly, putting him and a minor party on the map.

With the biggest landslide in American history and a huge mandate, David had the opportunity to reshape America to his desires. His foreign policy was incoherent, leading to hostility with the Cuban National Freedom Front and overall global unsureness with the new President. On economic matters, he was not a firm socialist like his father or grandfather, but rather someone who preferred more liberal economics. However, his attempts to do so would face firm opposition from his own party which perceived it as a betrayal of old Democratic principles. And of course those on the right criticised it as not true liberalisation, instead just a "state-ran market" with the increasing of tariffs and the use of government subsidies.

Oh, and then there was the scandal where his own Secretary of the Treasury discovered compromising information regarding financial transitions between the Eisenhower family and a major Indian company that resulted in months of feverish press coverage, the Democrats becoming unpopular and John Chafee becoming a household name.

John Chafee (Liberal Republican) 1985-1988
1984: def. David Eisenhower (Democratic), Jerry Falwell (American Independent) and Gus Hall (Communist (Marxist)) [decided by House]
The 1984 election was indeterminate. Eisenhower won a clear plurality of the electoral vote, but he was bitterly opposed by the Liberal Republicans set up by his ex-Treasury Secretary and the rising far-right AIP under fiery "Americanist Christian" preacher Jerry Falwell. In the end, Falwell judged Chafee to be less of a "heathen" than Eisenhower and the AIP House delegation broke for him.

Chafee was a liberal, as befitting his party's name, and he was determined to help America's minorities that he saw as ignored by the hegemonic Democratic Party and hated by the American Independents [also those minorities voted for him]. Thus he pushed clear affirmative action policies that a chunk of Democrats voted for but it led to a riot in the South and to riots and lynchings of African-Americans, as well as the rise of the "Minutemen" in the south-west attacking Hispanic Americans. On economic matters, Chafee was quite moderate and supported liberalising matters [which is why Eisenhower picked him for the Treasury] which led to his own running-mate condemning him and once the situation in the South deteroriated, Chafee announced his resignation putting blame on himself for causing it to get this bad.

John B. Anderson (Liberal Republican, then Social Republican) 1988-1989
Anderson was firmly on the left, but despised the Democrats and their authoritarianism and that's why he ended up in Republican circles. Known nation-wide for his Secular Republican campaign in 1976 that broke the unity of the opposition to the Democrats, he ended up parlaying his influence to getting the running mate in Chafee's ticket in exchange for the remnant of the Republicans rallying around Chafee. Now that Anderson was president after Chafee resigned, he rolled back Chafee's attempt at liberalisation, declaring "the national experiment is over". This led to the party splitting as the Liberal Republicans voting to expel Anderson and he left with a chunk to set up the centre-left Social Republicans.

All this disorder was good news to the Democrats of course.

L. Douglas Wilder (Democratic) 1989-1993
1988: def. Jerry Falwell (American Independent), John Chafee (Liberal Republican) and Gus Hall (Communist (Marxist)) [decided by House]
Wilder was the first Democratic nominee who wasn't an Eisenhower, and that endeared him to people who was just tired of the whole dynasty. Wilder ran on a law and order platform, promising to re-assert peace in the wartorn South "with fairness for all". The fact he was African-American helped rally disillusioned Northern minorities to his candidacy, depriving Chafee of his biracial coalition. Nevertheless, the AIP also rose rapidly due to the racial polarisation in the South and elsewhere, with "Americanism" becoming more popular as well. In the end, Chafee managed to deny both a majority yet faced the truth that he preferred Wilder to Falwell and endorsed the latter in the House election.

Wilder was more of a "free-wheeling liberal" than his predecessors were and pushed economic reforms that disbanded the complicated byzantine system of tariffs and subsidies that hobbled the country's economic potential (according to him) in favour of a much more open economy.

William Clinton (Liberal Republican) 1993-1995
1992: def. Newt Gingrich (American Independent) and L. Douglas Wilder (Democratic) [decided by House]
The Liberal Republicans came third in the election, but after a long time of haggling between the diverse factions making up the three parties, their nominee William Clinton unexpectedly got the presidency. Many cried foul at this "corrupt bargain" and Gingrich decried it but it was done.

The Clinton presidency would see the continuation of Wilder's neoliberal reforms and the rise of the "Christian Republicans". The Republicans, even as back as the 1970s, had a major right-wing faction that more and more gained influence due to the rising threat of the AIP. Clinton himself was opposed to the AIP's radical right-wing agenda for he saw its effect in his native Arkansas, and threatened to resign if the LRNC voted to enter a coalition with the AIP in the House. They did so, and he resigned, eventually setting up the second Secular Republican party after his presidency.

Al Gore (Liberal Republican) 1995-1997
Gore was more to the left than Clinton, and firmly opposed the House coalition of the Lib Reps and AIP. He did not defect to Clinton's Secular Republicans like many feared, but he rebuffed Lib Reps' calls for the appointment of AIP cabinet members, and instead worked way more with the Democrats. With the Liberal Republicans collapsing in popularity, he forced his nomination as presidential candidate on to the party.

Newt Gingrich (American Independent) 1997-2005
1996: def. Joe Lieberman (Democratic), John Parker (Communist (Marxist)) and Jesse Jackson (Rainbow/PUSH)
2000: def. Julie Nixon Eisenhower (Democratic) and John Parker (Communist (Marxist))
With the Liberal Republicans collapsing utterly, the AIP won a clear majority with "Americanist Christian" politician Newt Gingrich. Gingrich was a deeply canny and calculating man who knew how to make alliances with non-nationalist right-wing parties [which there was a lot due to decades of party splitting] to form the "National Defence Alliance". Gingrich was considered a moderate within the AIP and the NDA got criticism from the right-wing for "selling out" Americanism and the three C's to to become a broad-tent conservative alliance. Nevertheless, Gingrich continued.

His presidency was mainly known for a few things - the rapid build-up of nuclear missiles as a national defence against foreign foes and as a show of strength on the global stage, the Ottawa Summit which brought around a commitment to diplomacy between Canada and America. However, that would be dealt a big set back by the Idaho War in the disputed Cascadia Territory between the American Army and the Canadian ones [helped by pro-Canadian militants]. In the end, the war was finished by October 2000 with a clear American victory, giving a feather in Gingrich's hat.

The 2000 election would be a decisive landslide for the AIP and allied parties as the people rewarded them for a strong economy and for a victory in the Idaho War. The main story of Gingrich's second term would be the thwarted terrorist attack on the World Trade Towers by hardline Quebecois nationals and of course, the Alabama riots. There was an African-American terrorist group that performed attacks on Americanists, declaring their religious denomination to be "that of the Ku Klux Klan and of the noose". They attacked a group of white Alabamans vacationing in Memphis, Tennessee, and that led to white Alabama rioting and lynching many African-Americans. And all with the silent support of Jeff Sessions, Governor of Alabama. Gingrich was reportedly incited by the news and wanted to push the Alabama AIP to impeach Sessions, but he was convinced that it was impossible and would cause a split in the party if he did so. The AIP overall came away from the second term unhappy and divided.

Robert Reich (Democratic) 2005-2013
2004: def. Newt Gingrich (American Independent), John Parker (Communist (Marxist)) and Jesse Jackson (Rainbow/PUSH)
2008: def. Jerry Falwell Jr. (American Independent), Gloria LaRiva (Communist (Marxist)) and Bernie Sanders (Socialist)
The Democrats expected to nominate Governor Julie Nixon Eisenhower once again at the 2004 DNC, but she surprisingly declined and instead recommended family friend, economist and Wilder's Treasury Secretary, Robert Reich to be the nominee, which the DNC complied at doing. The 2004 election, despite it all, was expected to be close and the Democrats pulled off the win due to a strong campaign.

Reich's presidency was seen as continuing the tide of liberalisation that seemingly became a national consensus. However, his presidency was also very focused on infrastructure and rural healthcare which got him accolades from the left, while his firming up of anti-terror laws and the strengthening of the state's wide-sweeping abilities after several terror attacks got him support from the "silent majority" of Americans.

Re-elected with a strong majority and his United Progressive Alliance winning a majority of the House, his second term would prove fairly smooth apart from a controversy rooted in when he was Energy Minister in Wilder's cabinet regarding the acquirement of coal. He would decline to seek a third term, something unexpected and led the DNC to go through a few ballots for their convention.

Jeff Sessions (American Independent) 2013-present
2012: def. Jennie Eisenhower (Democratic), Barack Obama (Rainbow/PUSH), Andrew Cuomo (Yankee Grassroots), Bernie Sanders (Socialist), Alex Sink (Florida First!), Gloria LaRiva (Communist (Marxist)), Michael Madigan (Industrial Labor) and John Cox (Jefferson Caucus)
In the end, the Democratic Party was rotting from the inside out for decades, and the unfavourable winds of 2012 was just enough to make it explode as regionalists gained in once-firm Democratic states. All of this benefited the National Defence Alliance and new nominee Jeff Sessions, a firm Americanist and heavily tied to sectarian violence in his home state of Alabama. Running on his motto "Make America Great Again", he won a landslide victory and the NDA won a landslide in the Congress too.

With the Democratic Party done with as an effective force for a while, President Sessions had plans to radically transform America. On economics, he implemented policies that weakened unions and made it easier for employers to fire workers. This resulted in a general strike by several major unions [including one white union in the South that was allied with the AIP]. However, Sessions was acutely aware of America's rising homelessness and authorised a national housing policy that would build houses for every American. Provided they were of the right type of American, of course.

On healthcare, Sessions privatised the huge "American Health Organization" and split it into regional organizations, declaring that "the state has no say over people's lives any longer", which received criticism from the Democratic Party and from the left-regionalists. Despite Sessions' past and despite him being a firm adherence of American folk Christianity, he was acutely aware that "Americanism" did not sell well in many states that could vote for the AIP otherwise, and so allowed more moderate voices to be heard during the campaign. As president, he has avoided directly supporting "Americanist" policies, but is known to be heavily associated with rising organizations that do indeed push those policies and AIP state governments have been much more confident in implementing those policies after he was elected, so some left-regionalists denounce his presidency as "Americanism by stealth".

On foreign policy, his more national-conservative side comes out as he has cracked down on illegal immigrants [with many being sent to detention camps] and past attempts at peace with Canada has gone up in smoke as he has consistently labelled Canada a land of terrorists.

With the 2016 election coming, the AIP has decreased in support and the re-election of President Sessions is somewhat in doubt, but still likely.
==========
I apologise to any Indian who reads this because I know it's probably a shit take on the idea

 

[Turquoise Blue]

Okay, back to more recognisable grounds, aka Where the World Will Lead


The Reform Party started when Labour under new leader David Blunkett decided to abandon the first National Government with the Tories and the Liberals and instead enter negotiation with the United Socialists to form a "Red-Red Coalition". The centrists led by Vince Cable strongly objected to the idea of working with the radical left, and instead left with a chunk of their MPs to form the Reform Party, a party of social-liberalism, social democracy and generic progressivism while being very much a middle-class party.

This forced Blunkett to revise his plans and go ahead with a Red-Red-Green coalition instead, but Cable's split didn't prevent the left from taking over government and sticking to it for quite a while. In 2015, the Reform Party took a major hit and Vince Cable announced his resignation as leader, letting Mary Honeyball take over after the second leadership election and the first uncontested one.

Mary Honeyball saw Labour increasingly get in conflict with the USP and turn back to Reform and the centre, up to including them in the cabinet after the USP left and an election was near. After the election, the second National Government was decided on, the left of Labour left the party to join the USP while Reform gladly voted to rejoin the Labour Party under new leader Stephen Kinnock.

Reform distinguished itself from the Liberals, another similarly middle-class centrist party, in quite a few ways, but primarily in how they viewed the ideal state of government. Reform was mainly a centralist liberal party, with the national, region [and eventually European] governments taking the lead, while the Liberals [even the Beveridge faction of centre-left Liberals] preferred localism and local politics over grander scales.

 

[Turquoise Blue]

The four tickets running in the 2020 US presidential election in Where the World Will Lead

On the far-left, you have President King's personal friend Senator Pat LaMarche who is running with Sal Rosselli, someone picked to cut into Democratic disunity. On the left, you have bombastic populist New Yorker Anthony Scaramucci who made news headlines all the time for his controversial statements. He has picked much more cool-headed Governor Kim Coco Iwamoto [his main rival in the primaries] to keep the left happy and to unite the party. Kim Coco Iwamoto is the first woman, the first LGBT person and the first Asian-American to be on a Democratic ticket.

On the right, you have "hard-core libertarian" actor Kurt Russell who quietly won the primaries by a landslide, confounding those who thought he would win due to people paying attention to his superstar run [but seems Scaramucci dominated the media] but his victory is certainly a turn up for the books as he proves an "outsider". He runs with much more "standard" conservative Senator John Thune of South Dakota to unite the party. But this wasn't enough for the far-right as they split off and ran televangelist Wiley Drake and attorney Darrell Castle.

 

[Bolt451]

Gosh @Turquoise Blue , the thought of President Mooch,

 

[Turquoise Blue]

Gosh @Turquoise Blue , the thought of President Mooch,

He's more his original neoliberal self rather than the Trumpite self he became

But don't worry, he lost to Russell

 

[Turquoise Blue]

Okay, a much more familiar place in Where the World Will Lead

Wales is a peculiar place indeed. Firmly middle-class those days and generally with a somewhat suburban kind of politics, it has still persisted with an attraction to the left and especially to some kind of radicalism that it once expressed as a working-class dominated place.

Wales is seen as a bastion of social progressivism and of social democracy with the Welsh Tories regularly struggling to enter the Assembly, but their much more unpleasant cousins the far-right National Front enjoy support from disgruntled Welsh people who either think the Assembly is dominated by liberals [interpret that how you may] or think that the Assembly itself should be abolished, or just want to do away with mandatory bilingualism, or just want to kick all the immigrants out. Well, apart from the English. Basically the National Front's voter-base is those who hate the current status quo. But as a whole, they have been put under a cordon sanitaire since they first won seats.

Welsh politics since the 1990s has been between the centre-left Labour Party and the centre-to-centre-left Plaid Cymru, which has made some observers think that it's just a choice between unionists and nationalists. While that is part of the element, another is the constant debate over local government. Welsh Labour tends to be a centralist party, a legacy of Prime Minister Aneurin Bevan who thought vital services should be dealt with from Westminster and that Welsh devolution was suspect. They obviously moved on from the latter one, but the general attitude persists. Meanwhile, Plaid due to doing well in local elections for decades and their general campaign for devolution means that they are firmly a localist party, arguing for stronger local government.

This they share with the Liberals which has also similarly done well in local elections. Labour was in government from 2010 forth, after solidly defeating First Minister Jill Evans and Plaid Cymru, but its coalitions have bounced back and forth from the centrist "Social-Liberal" coalition of Labour, Liberals and Reform in 2010 to 2014 to the very left-wing "Triple Red" coalition of Labour, United Socialists and Communists from 2014 to 2017 and back to the Social-Liberal coalition in 2017 announced in the same speech as Huw Lewis' announcement of a new leadership election and him stepping down. The centrist Chris Evans won in a narrow victory over left-wing Huw Irranca-Davies, showing that Labour was now firmly leaving "Triple Red" behind. With Reform voting to merge into Labour at a national level, the Welsh branch duly did so [apart from one AM declaring that she was now a Liberal instead] and like at a national level, some Labour AMs walked out to join the United Socialists.

And all just months before the election. The parties scrambled to sell themselves to the voters. Labour was now intensely pushing their "Labour: Progress to the Future" slogan which everyone else agreed was pants, and a new centrist manifesto that many noticed had entire sentences lifted out of the old Reform manifesto of 2014. Plaid Cymru was aiming firmly at the confused middle-class who felt disenchanted by Labour's going from the centre to the radical-left and back, like they had no principles at all apart from sheer power. The United Socialists, led by long-time leader Mark Drakeford, instead sold themselves to working-class areas as the "true Labour Party", the principled working-class party of the Valleys, not the totally unprincipled party Labour became. The National Front condemned everyone as leading Wales to the slaughter and promised firm economic liberalism, leaving social "experimentation" behind and of course, the Immigration Problem. Bufton doubled down on this and although it firmed up his base, it lost him centre-right voters who only voted for them because they were the only conservative option.

The Liberals could have been in a bit of a problem, but they managed to sell themselves well as a local government focused party open to working with anyone, and touting defections from the old Reform, pushed the vision of them as a growing party. The Welsh Tories, led by Kay Swinburne, had a clear balancing problem. They needed to appeal to centre-right voters and take some from the National Front, but without alienating moderates that might vote for them and not Plaid or the Liberals. In the end, they managed to re-enter the Assembly.

And of course, the newest party, the Women's Party. Emerging out of Prime Minister Hain's "woman problem", the presidential election of 2015 having only men for the first time in quite a while and growing sentiment that there needed to be a feminist party to push women's rights, the Women's Party enjoyed some growth in polls and under Sharon Lovell, managed to narrowly enter the Assembly.

Chris Evans was a humiliated man, having led Labour from a clear first place dominance in 2014 to coming third in the popular vote in 2018. But he was not a defeated man, and taking cues from Prime Minister Kinnock, he managed to form a National Government in Wales that he called "the United Centre coalition", of Labour, the Liberals and the Tories. It was a fragile minority only propped up by Plaid Cymru because they couldn't form a coalition of their own and the economic policies Evans pushed was broadly within Plaid's manifesto. And the Liberals did get more investment in local government, so it wasn't like there was particularly any deal-breaker.

Mark Drakeford, the USP leader, condemned all this as an "establishment stitch-up" and called for a new election [which did not happen] which would "show the four parties that Wales wants socialism and it wants it now". Polls circa 2021 are not looking so hot for Labour, with the Tories and Liberals primarily benefiting, but the USP and Plaid Cymru are fighting each other for top spot. Meanwhile the National Front is gaining as well...