I apologize for this.
Be Careful What You Wish For
Presidents of the United States of America
2017-2021:
Donald Trump (Republican)
2016 (with Mike Pence): def. Hillary Clinton / Tom Perez (Democratic)
2021-2026:
Bernie Sanders (Democratic)
2020 (with Amy Klobuchar): def. Donald Trump / Mike Pence (Republican)
2024 (with Amy Klobuchar): def. Rick Scott / Kristi Noem (Republican)
2026-2029:
Amy Klobuchar (Democratic)
2029-
0000:
Blake Masters (Republican)
2028 (with Derek Schmidt) def. Maura Healey [replacing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] / Mandela Barnes (Democratic), Andrew Yang / Bari Weiss (Vision '28)
Generally speaking, Bernie wasn't a very lucky president. David Perdue edging out Jon Ossoff in the hotly-contested senate runoff (and thus giving senate control to Mitch McTurtle for two years more) wasn't exactly a good start to his time in the White House. Neither was a series of economic downturns and foreign crises, from the collapse of the Afghan government to the Taiwan standoff, when the Seventh Fleet collided with the PLAN (in some cases literally) as Speaker Pelosi's plane glided about in the crosshairs of Chinese fighter jets. Still, things looked like they were going well. Democrats won the Senate in 2022 (despite losing the gavel to Kevin McCarthy), and Bernie was re-elected in a surprising slam-dunk as the economy picked up in the fall of 2024
(though to be fair, he was going up against Rick Fucking Scott) and people were generally unbothered about the status quo.
Things went to shit soon afterwards.
To this day, no one knows if it was the diagnosis of Stage 4 bowel cancer or too much expired rice wine, but Xi Jinping decided - entirely on a whim - that he was going to be the Great Reunifier or die trying. As the PLAN made quick work of Taiwan's concerningly weak naval forces, the American Seventh Fleet panickily sprang into action, managing to hold the Chinese fleet to just east of Penghu, with a handful of American cruisers and smaller ships being sank or scuttled and China losing 50% of their functioning aircraft carriers in the process. What followed was an uneasy stalemate - American ships blockaded the Strait of Malacca and the southern Chinese coast, while the mauled PLAN stared down the massed American fleet. It took three months, but eventually (read: after two palace coups, a minor rebellion in several cities, and the loss of several more ships) the PLAN withdrew, claiming that the attempted invasion had been an "anti-sedition police operation" and thus victory (because of course they did).
The economy was wrecked and US-China relations lay in smoldering ruins, but everything was still
fine.
Then Sanders had a heart attack.
Then another.
Then a hemorrhagic stroke.
Resigning from office on the 25th of October, the 46th President of the United States headed home to Burlington to
die retire, leaving the White House in the hands of Amy Klobuchar. While the sympathy bump from Sanders' untimely departure netted Democrats the Senate (propelling Bee Nguyen to a shock victory over the increasingly-doddering Perdue and Jeff Jackson to victory over Governor Mark Robinson), Klobuchar found herself increasingly out of sync with both the party and the nation. Ultimately, she went out not with a bang but with a whimper, as allegations of abuse from her days in Number One Observatory Circle proved to be the wooden stake through the chest that finished off her 2028 hopes. For a while, it seemed that New York Senator Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would be the American Left's light in the dark, finally reviving the promise of Sanders' movement.
Then a neo-Nazi shot her in Baltimore.
The DNC — even more chaotic than 1968, and ironically sinking into the ground rather than rising from the ashes like the namesake of its host city — cycled through several elections' worth of candidates (California's Senator Porter and ex-Governor Newsom, Pennsylvania's Senator Fetterman, Maryland's Governor Moore and Senator Raskin, home-state favorites Senator Feehan and The Klobberer, Virginia's Governor Foy, Michigan's Senator Benson, Secretary Kunce, ex-First Lady Michelle Obama, Oregon's Governor Read and Senator Fagan, Illinois' Senator Duckworth, Vermont's Governor Gray and Senator Donovan, Texas' Senator Castro, Washington's Governor Ferguson...) before settling on third-placer Maura Healey and Wisconsin progressive Mandela Barnes. Meanwhile, the Republican nomination fell to Arizona Senator Blake Masters (winning 2024 in an upset when Sinema decided to go out in a blaze of whatever-the-fuck-she-was-made-of when Gallego won the nomination by 23 points), campaigning on a far-right platform of neo-Trumpism, reactionary conservatism, and neo-isolationism. Despite all the flagrant sexuality-baiting and race-baiting, despite the GOP's approval of negative 17, despite it all - a divided Democratic Party and hyper-centrist splinter ticket proved to be sufficient for Peter Thiel's pet candidate to come through in the Electoral College.
It is 2030. Hu Haifeng's China is practically salivating over Taiwan, India and Brazil are in states of civil war between militant leftists and far-right reactionaries, much of Russia has become an Arctic-based remake of
Mad Max, and the U.S. is doing...whatever the crypto-fellating, social-media-manipulating, 4chan-wet-dreaming
fuck Blake Master considers to be 'truly American'.
The Free World looks to the leadership of Western Europe — Keir Starmer, Annalena Baerbock,
Rob Jetten Ahmed Aboutaleb — in these trying times.