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Lists of Heads of Government and Heads of State

I think someone like Boone Pickens or especially Morry Taylor would make a better 90's Trump analogue.
A billionaire with an unimpressive record in the markets, a xenophobic streak that manifested as protectionism and paranoia, and a regionally-accented voice and distinctive face lending themselves to parody? Gotta be Ross the Boss.
 
Not nearly as racist, petty, misogynistic, bankrupt, amoral or plain nasty.

But what if Ross went on a diet exclusively consisting of Big Macs and uppers?

Anyways, my personal "Trump but earliers" are Clayton Williams (odious oilman and the first GOP nominee for governor against Ann Richards) or Jack Welch. I think Welch has potential as the 90s version of "skeevy businessman who appeals to a certain subset of the GOP base"- although rather than speaking to WWC types and right-wing nationalists, Welch is the consummate asset-stripping libertarian.
 
Here's an idea: (Year)-punk lists where we try to guess how commentators at the time might have predicted future elections from their own perspective. You can probably go maybe 20 years into the future from then before you start running out of plausible candidates.

One could do this for any era (e.g. it'd probably be fairly possible to look up speculation in the Gilded Age US for future candidates) but it's obviously easiest when it's an era one's lived through. For example, here's my forward-looking list from circa early 2006 when I first started hearing about US politics on forums.

List of Presidents and Vice-Presidents of the United States, 2001-2021
2001-2009: George W Bush / Dick Cheney (Republican)
2000 def: Al Gore / Joe Lieberman (Democratic)
2004 def: John Kerry / John Edwards (Democratic)

2009-2017: Hillary Clinton / Mark Warner (Democratic)
2008 def: Rudy Giuliani / Condoleezza Rice (Republican)
2012 def: Sam Brownback / Rick Santorum (Republican), Ron Paul / Matt Stone (Libertarian), Michael Moore / Ralph Nader (Green)

2017-????: George Pataki / Lynn Swann (Republican)
2016 def: Barack Obama / Tom Vilsack (Democratic), Tom DeLay / Ann Coulter (Constitution)
 
One could do this for any era (e.g. it'd probably be fairly possible to look up speculation in the Gilded Age US for future candidates) but it's obviously easiest when it's an era one's lived through. For example, here's my forward-looking list from circa early 2006 when I first started hearing about US politics on forums.
For me my real deep-dive into politics began shortly after 2016, so here goes.

Presidents of the United States of America
2017-2020: Donald Trump (Republican)
2016 (with Mike Pence): def. Hillary Clinton / Tim Kaine (Democratic)
2020-2021: Mike Pence (Republican)
2021-2029: Sherrod Brown (Democratic)
2020 (with John Hickenlooper) def. Incumbent / Ronna Romney McDaniel (Republican)
2024 (with John Hickenlooper) def. Nikki Haley / Adam Laxalt (Republican)

2029-2033: Krysten Sinema (Democratic)
2028 (with Jason Kander) def. John James / Jeanette Nuñez (Republican), Kelli Ward / Chris McDaniel (Independent)
2033-2037: Tom Cotton (Republican)
2032 (with Jane Timken) def. Incumbents
2037-2041: Beto O’Rourke (Democratic)
2036 (with Peggy Flanagan) def. Incumbents
2041-2046: Ben Shapiro (Republican)
2040 (with Madison Gesiotto) def. Incumbents
2044 (with Madison Gesiotto) def. Lee Carter / Erin Mendenhall (Democratic), Alex Ohanian / Ziad Ahmed (Independent)

2046-2049: John James (Republican)
2049-0000: Mandela Barnes (Democratic)
2048 (with Jessica Cisneros) def. Charlie Kirk / Nick Freitas (Republican)
 
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Here's an idea: (Year)-punk lists where we try to guess how commentators at the time might have predicted future elections from their own perspective. You can probably go maybe 20 years into the future from then before you start running out of plausible candidates.

One could do this for any era (e.g. it'd probably be fairly possible to look up speculation in the Gilded Age US for future candidates) but it's obviously easiest when it's an era one's lived through. For example, here's my forward-looking list from circa early 2006 when I first started hearing about US politics on forums.

List of Presidents and Vice-Presidents of the United States, 2001-2021
2001-2009: George W Bush / Dick Cheney (Republican)
2000 def: Al Gore / Joe Lieberman (Democratic)
2004 def: John Kerry / John Edwards (Democratic)

2009-2017: Hillary Clinton / Mark Warner (Democratic)
2008 def: Rudy Giuliani / Condoleezza Rice (Republican)
2012 def: Sam Brownback / Rick Santorum (Republican), Ron Paul / Matt Stone (Libertarian), Michael Moore / Ralph Nader (Green)

2017-????: George Pataki / Lynn Swann (Republican)
2016 def: Barack Obama / Tom Vilsack (Democratic), Tom DeLay / Ann Coulter (Constitution)
Ron Paul/One of the South Park Guys sucks as a ticket, in a truly, horrendously amazing way
 
Here's an idea: (Year)-punk lists where we try to guess how commentators at the time might have predicted future elections from their own perspective. You can probably go maybe 20 years into the future from then before you start running out of plausible candidates.

One could do this for any era (e.g. it'd probably be fairly possible to look up speculation in the Gilded Age US for future candidates) but it's obviously easiest when it's an era one's lived through. For example, here's my forward-looking list from circa early 2006 when I first started hearing about US politics on forums.

List of Presidents and Vice-Presidents of the United States, 2001-2021
2001-2009: George W Bush / Dick Cheney (Republican)
2000 def: Al Gore / Joe Lieberman (Democratic)
2004 def: John Kerry / John Edwards (Democratic)

2009-2017: Hillary Clinton / Mark Warner (Democratic)
2008 def: Rudy Giuliani / Condoleezza Rice (Republican)
2012 def: Sam Brownback / Rick Santorum (Republican), Ron Paul / Matt Stone (Libertarian), Michael Moore / Ralph Nader (Green)

2017-????: George Pataki / Lynn Swann (Republican)
2016 def: Barack Obama / Tom Vilsack (Democratic), Tom DeLay / Ann Coulter (Constitution)
I’ll have a go at a mid-2016 punk scenario, as that’s the first one that came to mind:

2009 - 2017: Barack Obama / Joe Biden (Democrat)
2008 def: John McCain / Sarah Palin (Republican)
2012 def: Mitt Romney / Paul Ryan (Republican)

2017 - 2025: Hillary Clinton / Tom Perez (Democrat)
2016 def: Donald Trump / Joni Ernst (Republican), Greg Bell / Bill Kristol (Independent), Gary Johnson / William Weld (Libertarian)
2020 def: Paul Ryan / Nikki Haley (Republican), Donald Trump / Michael Flynn (Make America Great Again!), Tulsi Gabbard / Chris Hedges (Green)

2025 - ????: Charlie Baker / Sean Duffy (Republican)
2024 def: Gavin Newsom / Cory Booker (Democrat), Kyle Kulinski / Kaniela Ling (Democratic Revolution)
 
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I’ll have a go at a mid-2016 punk scenario, as that’s the first one that came to mind:

2009 - 2017: Barack Obama / Joe Biden (Democrat)
2008 def: John McCain / Sarah Palin (Republican)
2012 def: Mitt Romney / Paul Ryan (Republican)

2017 - 2025: Hillary Clinton / Tom Perez (Democrat)
2016 def: Donald Trump / Joni Ernst (Republican), Greg Bell / Bill Kristol (Independent), Gary Johnson / William Weld (Libertarian)
2020 def: Paul Ryan / Nikki Haley (Republican), Donald Trump / Michael Flynn (Make America Great Again!), Tulsi Gabbard / Chris Hedges (Green)

2025 - ????: Charlie Baker / Sean Duffy (Republican)
2024 def: Gavin Newsom / Cory Booker (Democrat), Kyle Kulinski / Kaniela Ling (Democratic Revolution)
“quick question mr. nominee… who was houngry…”
 
Here's an idea: (Year)-punk lists where we try to guess how commentators at the time might have predicted future elections from their own perspective. You can probably go maybe 20 years into the future from then before you start running out of plausible candidates.

One could do this for any era (e.g. it'd probably be fairly possible to look up speculation in the Gilded Age US for future candidates) but it's obviously easiest when it's an era one's lived through. For example, here's my forward-looking list from circa early 2006 when I first started hearing about US politics on forums.

List of Presidents and Vice-Presidents of the United States, 2001-2021
2001-2009: George W Bush / Dick Cheney (Republican)
2000 def: Al Gore / Joe Lieberman (Democratic)
2004 def: John Kerry / John Edwards (Democratic)

2009-2017: Hillary Clinton / Mark Warner (Democratic)
2008 def: Rudy Giuliani / Condoleezza Rice (Republican)
2012 def: Sam Brownback / Rick Santorum (Republican), Ron Paul / Matt Stone (Libertarian), Michael Moore / Ralph Nader (Green)

2017-????: George Pataki / Lynn Swann (Republican)
2016 def: Barack Obama / Tom Vilsack (Democratic), Tom DeLay / Ann Coulter (Constitution)

The Looong 90s

1993-2001: Bill Clinton/Al Gore (Democratic)
2001-2005: Al Gore/Bill Bradley (Democratic)
2000: def. John McCain/Christine Todd Whitman (Republican)
2005-2013: George Allen/Susan Collins (Republican)
2004: def. Al Gore/Bill Bradley (Democratic), Paul Wellstone/Howard Dean (Progressive)
2008: def. John F. Kennedy Jr./Russ Feingold (Democratic)

2013-2021: Hillary Rodham Clinton/Bill Richardson (Democratic)
2012: def. Susan Collins/Chuck Hagel (Republican)
2016: def. Tim Hutchinson/Mark A. Green (Republican)

2021-prsnt: Gordon H. Smith/Bob Franks (Republican)
2020: def. Bill Richardson/Harold Ford (Democratic), Joe Scarborough/Dan Boren (Patriotic Alliance)

This is my vision of the future. The Clinton Consensus will probably maintain dominance of the two parties and in order to beat Gore, Republicans will need to nominate a young fresh face like George Allen. He will restore the party to be more moderate than the Newt Gingrich Republican party. Then Hillary will become the first female president and do two terms of extreme liberalism. Finally Americans will get tired of her and nominate a true unifying moderate like Gordon Smith. Of course conservatives won't like that so there is a rebellion from Florida Governor Joe Scarborough and Oklahoma Senator Dan Boren representing the conservative wing of both parties fighting back against the superliberal Democrats and moderate Republicans.
 
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The Looong 90s

1993-2001: Bill Clinton/Al Gore (Democratic)
2001-2005: Al Gore/Bill Bradley (Democratic)
2000: def. John McCain/Christine Todd Whitman (Republican)
2005-2013: George Allen/Susan Collins (Republican)
2004: def. Al Gore/Bill Bradley (Democratic), Paul Wellstone/Howard Dean (Progressive)
2008: def. John F. Kennedy, Jr./Russ Feingold (Democratic)

2013-2021: Hillary Rodham Clinton/Bill Richardson (Democratic)
2012: def. Susan Collins/Chuck Hagel (Republican)
2016: def. Tim Hutchinson/Mark A. Green (Republican)

2021-prsnt: Gordon H. Smith/Bob Franks (Republican)
2020: def. Bill Richardson/Harold Ford (Democratic), Joe Scarborough/Dan Boren (Patriotic Alliance)

This is my vision of the future. The Clinton Consensus will probably maintain dominance of the two parties and in order to beat Gore, Republicans will need to nominate a young fresh face like George Allen. He will restore the party to be more moderate than the Newt Gingrich Republican party. Then Hillary will become the first female president and do two terms of extreme liberalism. Finally Americans will get tired of her and nominate a true unifying moderate like Gordon Smith. Of course conservatives won't like that so there is a rebellion from Florida Governor Joe Scarborough and Oklahoma Senator Dan Boren representing the conservative wing of both parties fighting back against the superliberal Democrats and moderate Republicans.
this list is obnoxiously clintonite and i hate it

"Gordon Smith", he sounds like he's the third-best dentist in austin, minnesota, not the fucking president
 
Continuing the current trend (EDIT: that Excelsior just broke, nvm), here's my attempt at a c. 2014/5 list:

-2017: Barack Obama (Democratic)
2017-2021: Hillary Clinton (Democratic)
'16 (with Julián Castro) def. Chris Christie (Republican)
2021-2025: Lindsey Graham (Republican)
'20 (with Adam Laxalt) def. Hillary Clinton (Democratic), Rand Paul (Libertarian)
2025-2033: Kyrsten Sinema (Democratic)
'24 (with Amanda Renteria) def. Lindsey Graham (Republican)
'28 (with Amanda Renteria) def. Dan Patrick (Republican)
2033-: Amanda Renteria (Democratic)
'32 (with Coleman Young II) def. George P. Bush (Republican)

The Clinton administration was defined by its crises. Though the MERS outbreak technically began before her inauguration, it occupied much of her first year in office as she tried to backstop the insurance industry and establish a federal standard for infection control measures, the latter despite the opposition of a not insignificant wing of the Republican party. [1] Next there was the Second Korean War, won at great cost by NATO and the Republic of Korea, and the Baltic Crisis. The Republicans nominated Lindsey Graham, on the line that when the Third World War happened Hillary could not be trusted to manage it competently; anti-war members of both parties, meanwhile, flocked to the Libertarians, who nominated Rand Paul as their standard-bearer. Paul won Colorado and split the vote with Clinton everywhere else.

But when the war ended up being a damp squib, particularly after the 'Russian Spring' put billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky in office, the Graham administration seemed to founder. On domestic politics it was, certainly, not the Tea Party - the American people would never tolerate that. But it was all a bit square - slow to adapt to the new multiculturalism, while at the same time deeply dissatisfying to the shrinking but still massive evangelical contingent. Former Virginia Governor Dave Brat won only two states in the 2024 Republican primaries, but it was enough to prove that the right wing was growing dissatisfied with the Graham presidency.

Meanwhile, the Democrats were preparing to nominate another woman President - and, for that matter, their first President from anywhere west of Texas. The two candidates of the Clinton wing of the party, Governor Amanda Rentería and Senator Tulsi Gabbard, split the vote, allowing the more radical Senator Kyrsten Sinema to win the eventual victory; Sinema duly picked Rentería as her running mate, and proceeded to finish the job of adapting the Democrats to the new world order. Her dovish, cosmopolitan sensibilities and thoroughgoing liberalism helped the party appeal to the newly dominant Generation X and Millennial contingent within the party, and to a country that for the first time was majority-minority. As in 2016, demographics really were destiny...

[1] Convergent? Maybe, but consider that the Ebola crisis was one of the biggest stories of 2014, and that the far-right had established their willingness to flout regulations as early as the Bundy standoff. I don't know that one would have been able to predict the sheer scale of the political divides over a pandemic, but I do think it would have been very easy to predict that a) a pandemic was going to happen b) states would get into pissing matches with the feds about it.
 
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Continuing the current trend (EDIT: that Excelsior just broke, nvm), here's my attempt at a c. 2014/5 list:

-2017: Barack Obama (Democratic)
2017-2021: Hillary Clinton (Democratic)
'16 (with Julián Castro) def. Chris Christie (Republican)
2021-2025: Lindsey Graham (Republican)
'20 (with Adam Laxalt) def. Hillary Clinton (Democratic), Rand Paul (Libertarian)
2025-2033: Kyrsten Sinema (Democratic)
'24 (with Amanda Renteria) def. Lindsey Graham (Republican)
'28 (with Amanda Renteria) def. Dan Patrick (Republican)
2033-: Amanda Renteria (Democratic)
'32 (with Coleman Young II) def. George P. Bush (Republican)

The Clinton administration was defined by its crises. Though the MERS outbreak technically began before her inauguration, it occupied much of her first year in office as she tried to backstop the insurance industry and establish a federal standard for infection control measures, the latter despite the opposition of a not insignificant wing of the Republican party. [1] Next there was the Second Korean War, won at great cost by NATO and the Republic of Korea, and the Baltic Crisis. The Republicans nominated Lindsey Graham, on the line that when the Third World War happened Hillary could not be trusted to manage it competently; anti-war members of both parties, meanwhile, flocked to the Libertarians, who nominated Rand Paul as their standard-bearer. Paul won Colorado and split the vote with Clinton everywhere else.

But when the war ended up being a damp squib, particularly after the 'Russian Spring' put billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky in office, the Graham administration seemed to founder. On domestic politics it was, certainly, not the Tea Party - the American people would never tolerate that. But it was all a bit square - slow to adapt to the new multiculturalism, while at the same time deeply dissatisfying to the shrinking but still massive evangelical contingent. Former Virginia Governor Dave Brat won only two states in the 2024 Republican primaries, but it was enough to prove that the right wing was growing dissatisfied with the Graham presidency.

Meanwhile, the Democrats were preparing to nominate their first woman President - and, for that matter, their first President from anywhere west of Texas. The two candidates of the Clinton wing of the party, Governor Amanda Rentería and Senator Tulsi Gabbard, split the vote, allowing the more radical Senator Kyrsten Sinema to win the eventual victory; Sinema duly picked Rentería as her running mate, and proceeded to finish the job of adapting the Democrats to the new world order. Her dovish, cosmopolitan sensibilities and thoroughgoing liberalism helped the party appeal to the newly dominant Generation X and Millennial contingent within the party, and to a country that for the first time was majority-minority. As in 2016, demographics really were destiny...

[1] Convergent? Maybe, but consider that the Ebola crisis was one of the biggest stories of 2014, and that the far-right had established their willingness to flout regulations as early as the Bundy standoff. I don't know that one would have been able to predict the sheer scale of the political divides over a pandemic, but I do think it would have been very easy to predict that a) a pandemic was going to happen b) states would get into pissing matches with the feds about it.
Coleman Young II is a wonderful shout.
 
Coleman Young II is a wonderful shout.
Thanks! I was deliberately trying to go for people who either had wildly different reputations back then ('Store-Brand McCain' Lindsey Graham, 'Normal Bisexual Democrat' Kyrsten Sinema, 'Mainstream Liberal Interventionist' Tulsi Gabbard though I deliberately didn't foreground that because I don't know how much one could have found out about her whole deal back in '15) or who just got forgotten (Renteria, Young, Bush is on his way there). The other inspiration is an article I read on FiveThirtyEight in like December 2015 about how Lindsey Graham had only gotten into the race to stop Rand Paul, and didn't know what to do with himself once it became clear that Paul wasn't going anywhere.

I can't take full credit for Young, though - I actually was pretty active on the FH forum in The Old Place back in the day, and I'm pretty sure he was in one of them though I deliberately have not gone back to look. [EDIT: I couldn't keep myself away - I'm pretty sure it was this TL, but he was in multiple different TLs and I honestly can't tell them apart at this point.]
 
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