A Preamble
A lot of diaries focus on the problematic state we find ourselves in. The Republicans are radical, obstructionist and will do ANYTHING to keep power. And yet more and more Americans are swinging against their policies, a change we do not see reflected much in the corridors of power. We and our institutions are stuck and have been for some time. Recognizing that is commonplace on Kos (but it’s an important realization!).
But how do we get out of this? One thing is for sure, the current state of corruption and stasis will be broken. But by who? And how? This will happen while many of us on this site are still around to witness it. But what will it look like?
This is the first in a series of 4 diaries that explore different futures, each with a different president following the 2020 election (Biden, Sanders, Warren and Trump). You could write scores of these. Each focuses on a different president following the 2020 election and associated outcomes. The exact future will be none of these, but it’s important to understand what the future might entail and what we stand for as Democrats and what we are willing to fight for.
Enjoy!
PS As this first iteration focuses on Biden and to avoid thrown pies...please note he is not my preferred candidate! My scenarios should not be confused with what I personally want to happen. :)
Excerpt from Guide to the Late First American Republic, 2nd Edition, Kindle Press, 2078.
The elections of 2016 and 2020 are seen as the biggest change elections in U.S. domestic and foreign policy in the first half of the 21st century. Certainly they produced the biggest differences in back-to-back elections since at least 1976 and 1980. Heading into 2020 the policies of Donald Trump had sent the U.S. down a path of isolationism peppered with confrontational foreign policy. That came close to igniting war with Iran in 2020 and a distancing from traditional NATO allies.
On the Democratic side the emergence of Joe Biden was something of a surprise. Many of the other candidates were younger and the progressive wing of the Democratic party detested Biden and the “moderation” he represented. What was worse, Biden ran openly as a moderate on themes of bringing Americans, Republicans and Democrats, together. That attitude seemed to fly in the face of reality as McConnell torpedoed Trump’s impeachment in the Senate with questionable rules and biased treatment.
And yet the left’s split between Warren and Sanders essentially gifted the nomination to Biden. Warren, Sanders and their supporters heatedly denied this, but the primary results were unmistakable. Adding up Sanders and Warren’s vote totals would have either vaulted one of them into the top spot ahead of Biden in several early primary states, or at least grabbed the second spot. Despite that split, Sanders still won Iowa and New Hampshire (although the latter by less of a margin than he had in 2016). But once states like South Carolina and Nevada came around Biden began to roll. There were still surprises (such as Sanders winning the most votes in California, despite Kamala Harris endorsing and campaigning for Biden), but little slowed Biden’s momentum. Following Buttigieg and Bloomberg’s exit from the race Biden picked up still more support while both Sanders and Warren stayed in. By summer Biden clearly had enough delegates to proceed to an uncontested nomination.
Biden Vs. Trump
The 2020 general campaign was less exciting than expected. That is not to say that the Trump campaign did not engage in questionable activities. The Trump administration had earlier released negative information on several candidates, including Biden, Sanders and Warren. That continued into the fall with charges of corruption and the alleged involvement by Biden and family members. And yet these charges moved the needle little outside of Trump’s rabid support and FOX news. Biden dismissed these attacks and observed that this is exactly the “drama” and “tweets” that America needed to move on from. Indeed, the impeachment provided something of an inoculation from Trump’s attack for Biden who had been at the heart of Trump’s illegally withholding aid to Ukraine. After that the charges lost their punch.
At the same time Biden stoked an image of the reliable, elder statesman ready to right the ship of an America that had lost its moorings. He promised to return respect to the White House and institutions of Congress. This approach did well in the suburbs and with independents even if it elicited eye rolls from many progressives. However, most Warren and Sanders supporters voted for Biden in November, their dislike of him tempered by risking a second term of Trump. Biden selected Kamala Harris as his running mate in an attempt to balance the ticket beyond “another white guy”. After the nominating conventions Trump’s campaign refused to debate Biden, calling the moderation (even on FOX) “rigged”. Trump was also extensively occupied with ongoing scandals erupting in the news cycle on average once per week. Biden was rarely sharp in the campaign, but made several public comments calling Trump in effect a coward for not debating him. “What are you afraid of Donald?” being a common rejoinder.
Election night 2020 was not a nail biter. The first bad sign for Trump was being down in Florida, although he came back to barely win it. Pennsylvania was called within 1 hour of polls closing with Biden eventually crushing Trump by 7 points. North Carolina took longer to call, but was also in Biden’s column. Georgia and Ohio were too close to call as Michigan returned to the Democrats. All of Maine’s electoral votes went to Biden. Wisconsin was also too close to call as polls closed east to west. Indeed, the Wisconsin outcome was still being determined (Biden ended up eventually taking the state by 9,000 votes) when Arizona was called for Biden. The night held a few other surprises. Iowa went blue, as did one elector in Nebraska. Most shockingly, Alaska went blue (and the independent won the Senate race against the GOP incumbent).
Trump screamed foul on the election, citing irregularities in Pennsylvania and Arizona. Despite that, Mitch McConnell announced that the Republican Party recognized the election outcome, attempting to preempt further controversy. Indeed, some GOP power players were already distancing themselves from Trump and his more heinous policies. The political control (and its associated protections) will soon evaporate and Trump found himself more isolated with each passing day. Administration resignations were extensive the first few weeks after the 2020 election. State legal action continued to ramp up, eager for Trump to become a private citizen. During the rest of November and December, Trump issued more pardons than the previous 5 presidents combined, although the extent of protection that these pardons provided proved limited.
In other results, Democrats kept the House, improbably adding to their margin by 6 seats. The Democrats also retook the Senate with a 52-seat majority. Democratic success in 2020 was driven by two factors, neither of which had much to do with Biden (or the Democratic candidate in general). Namely, women voted in the highest proportion against the GOP nationally ever recorded. Abortion was a key issue with Alabama’s controversial law winding its way to the Supreme Court. Women were credited with Doug Jones winning his long shot reelection bid in Alabama. Secondly, general turnout was the highest in over 50 years. That included voters under 35, although in general the “youth vote’s” impact was exaggerated. Millennials and Gen Z voted, but did not show up in large numbers to impact many races. The one exception to that was in Arizona where voters under 35 broke heavily for Biden and Senate candidate Kelly, showing up in bigger numbers than usual.
A few days before Inauguration Day Donald Trump quietly fled the country, traveling to Belarus on a state visit and then never returning. Biden cast a positive outlook and talked about charting a new course for the country at his inauguration, which was attended by every former living president except Trump. Liberals criticized this as more “moderate language” and letting Trump get away with the terrible and illegal things he had done. Little was likely to change, even with Democratic government. This of course was completely and shockingly incorrect.
The Shrewd Presidency of Joe Biden
The first indication that something different was coming with the new administration and Congress comes from soon-to-be Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer. On a media circuit Chuck Schumer brought up the need to support the new President and to pass his agenda, which certainly included revisiting Senate rules to respect the voters’ choice. Republicans preemptively went on FOX and accused the Democrats of plotting to get rid of the filibuster, a hallmark of our representative form of government.
In this case, the Republicans were right to be worried. Democrats changed the new Senate’s rules, gutting the filibuster. It now only took a simple majority to move most bills through the Senate, which rewound the Senate to how it had operated up until the 1970s. The details of this change were lost on most (Senate rules were and are hardly a common topic in media coverage). After the new Congress convened in January 2021 what followed was what later became known as The Second 100 Days. The Democratic caucus had already prepped its legislation and in the first three months several major bills make their way through Congress. A New Voting Rights Act was one of the first and was tailored to address Chief Justice Roberts’ main points on how Congress could legislatively address matters if voting rights became a concern. Ex-felons (with rare exception) were given the vote back nationally and national ballot standards were introduced. Based on this new lawsuits were initiated in several states, including Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Texas. Lobbying reform also passed, ending the revolving door between D.C. and industries they were set to regulate, as well as daylighting political contributions, especially foreign ones. Other legislation passed, including LGBTQ protections, the first Immigration Reform Plan since 1986, and citizenship for Dreamers. The other big news was Justice Ginsburg stepping down in April and a new liberal justice replacing her on the Supreme Court that summer.
Some of these changes were controversial and Biden was credited with masterfully helping to herd reluctant Senators (Manchin and Jones chief among them). While Biden was mostly compared to various past presidents, he actually had more in common with LBJ. He knew that LBJ only passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 with convincing mingled with threats. Later records revealed multiple meetings between unofficial proxies for the Biden administration and various senators and Representatives. Most of these members of Congress were Republican, but some were Democrats. These conversations included damning information the administration had on these senators. Mostly inappropriate enrichment, but also politically-destroying personal foibles and choices. Of course dangling that information for votes was illegal. In this regard, the Biden administration was only somewhat higher-minded than Trump’s, just better at keeping such behavior out of the news. This attitude was captured by one administration official (off the record) saying “We’re not going to let one ass backwards senator from West Virginia slow down Biden like Baucus did Obama.”
These reforms created a media firestorm on the right. The NRA had pulled itself out of financial trouble, largely on the back of new donations and fears of gun regulation. The Tea Party was reinvigorated, as was a small, but rising radical cadre of Millennial Republicans who were much more closely aligned with authoritarian and racist organizations. Republicans set 2022 as a referendum on Biden’s liberal overreach, that this was outright SOCIALISM.
In the mean time Democrats were not idle. In late 2021 to early 2022 four statehood referendums start. Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, D.C. and the Pacific Territories (Pacifica) hold referendums on statehood (in the case of D.C. this is in two parts, the first shrinking the District to the Capitol and White House grounds and the second converting the rest to a territory). Biden visited and held rallies in the territories to support statehood and full representation. In Puerto Rico, Biden had already visited several times since signing a massive aid package during his first months in office. “Three thousand people died and where was the federal government?” he asked crowds in San Juan. “In D.C. you have no voice and we saw that worked out. Well, when you have 2 senators and more representatives in D.C., they will hear you loud and clear!” Controversies aside (those opposed to Puerto Rico statehood again sat out the vote, knowing they are going to lose), all 4 of these regions voted for statehood. Congress passed and the President signed into law the admittance of 4 new states, meaning 8 new Senators will join Congress in 2022 (reelections were staggered similar to other Senators thereafter).
But the Democrats were not done. Congress soon passed the 21st Century Reapportionment Act, increasing the House of Representatives from 435 to roughly 761. The average Representative now represented around 400,000 citizens instead of over 700,000. It was the first reapportionment in over 100 years and the legislation reinstated reapportionment for every 10 years going forward. This also included roughly 7 new Representatives from the 4 new states. The House Chamber will have to be reconfigured, but using a combination of in-person and virtual technology votes were still able to be held after the 2022 election.
The Republican response to reapportionment was extreme. Typically a step ahead of their liberal peers in reaching the end result of political calculations, conservatives immediately saw the severe disadvantage this change put them at. This made gerrymandering much harder and some estimated that it would keep the House permanently in Democratic hands for the foreseeable future. The only response was to try and use this to gain immediate support and perhaps stop it in time. Indeed, media coverage in general was scathing. More direct representation was ignored in favor of focusing on cost and asking why this was necessary to change the House and Senate after they had been the same for so long. FOX news had 24-hour coverage with various voters shouting the “last thing we need is any more #$%$#ing politicians!”. Crime rates and a potential “invasion from the Pacific” were nightly topics on FOX, as was the cost of remodeling and wiring the Capitol Building to fit in more politicians. GOP strategists were interviewed on how all of this was undoubtedly unconstitutional. The media asked: “Is this really what the American people wanted when they voted for Biden and the Democrats?” Even in liberal circles there was criticism and general fear over changing the number of representatives, most of which was based on fear of “what will the GOP do?” rather than taking issue with the benefits of such a change.
The remaining 18 months until the 2022 election were calmer in regards to policy changes. The Biden administration was mostly busy in getting government back in shape after the atrophy of the Trump years. What was not calm were a series of ongoing House and Senate hearings and federal investigations. These hearings centered on corruption and illegal operations of the Trump White House. Former administration officials were subpoenaed. The first of these ignored the summons only to be arrested for noncompliance. These hearings shocked the American people. The Biden administration declassified and made public various documents, breaking from past presidencies that had hesitated outing previous wrongdoing. These releases highlighted the callous, corrupt and racist actions of the Trump administration. Phone call recordings were also released with Trump and administrative officials like Stephen Miller using unsavory language for dubious ends. Many of the worst suspicions of the Trump years were confirmed. That Trump was in debt to Russian organized crime was the least of these. Much more concerning was Trump’s release of state secrets and weapon deployments and technologies to Saudi Arabia. High-level communications with Putin were also discovered, essentially promising U.S. neutrality in the event that Russia moved against the Baltic states or western Ukraine. Domestically, some of the worst revelations involved DHS staff and administrators. Several officials cited “just following orders” in allowing conditions ripe for illness and rape in the refugee camps. Biden had already toured and closed the refugee camps and his administration worked to reunite families throughout his time in office. The photos and administration memos were damning. One representatives said: “To be fair, Trump was not willing to sell his own mother to Russia, but only because she is no longer living.” Democrats naturally were aggressive in going after Republicans for being complicit. That was both the right thing to do and also a needed change in topic from new states and reapportionment. Ultimately, dozens of Trump administration officials served jail time with 4 representatives and 1 senator being forced to resign.
During this time the Republicans’ central strategy was to ignore that Trump was ever president. The most common refrain was that he was always a Democrat and a mole meant to tear down the GOP from the inside. This did not play well with the base, which still loved Trump. Still, Republican leaders were constantly harassed over the released information, especially when certain Senators and representatives were directly implicated and then had to resign.
Even out of the White House the figure of Donald Trump tore at the nation’s fabric. His defenders would still not admit he had done wrong and his detractors wanted everything and everyone associated with him destroyed in defense of the Republic. This sad chapter came to something of an end when Donald Trump was found dead in an international hotel room on May 5, 2022. The official cause of death was “heart attack”, but family members suspected foul play. Indeed, Trump’s death came to rival JFK’s in the conspiracy theories it generated. That included how Trump was found (fully clothed and lying on his stomach on a couch) with the bed was perfectly made, the TV off and the window slightly open. All of these were seen as signs of some conspiracy. Once dead Trump became a rallying cry against the “deep state” and Democrats. In fact, political strategists coldly pointed out that Trump was more helpful to the Republicans dead than alive. “Kick out the Democrats for Donald” was a slogan used by many a Tea Party 2.0 campaigner. Alex Jones and Rush Limbaugh peddled theories that the U.S. government had Trump killed (In the 2050s it was revealed that U.S. intelligence implicated Russia, which feared that Trump would further confirm the findings of ongoing investigations in a deal to return to the U.S.). Talks between Moscow and Washington on the matter were nonexistent with relations chilly after Biden had enacted the stiffest sanctions to date on Russia in the first month after entering office.
The 2022 Election
The 2022 election shaped up to be the worst for the Democrats since 2010. The Republicans enjoyed a 5-point generic lead going into the polls. Democrats were no longer energized with Trump out of office. Some were unhappy that healthcare was little changed beyond active federal support for the ACA. Income inequality was still rising too. The pundits had written the Democrats’ death notice. The economy was good, yes, but the Republicans employed an excellent campaign of “Radicals in Washington” and that they must be stopped at any cost. Democrats were exhausted after so many fights in recent years and cleaning up Trump’s mess. The lesson of voting in every midterm seemed already lost to the Left. Donors opened their wallets to strangle Biden’s presidency after just 2 years, as they had done with both Clinton and Obama.
The day after the election of 2022 the Democrats were...still in power. The central surprise and problem for the GOP and their donors was that they ran the campaign like it was 2010 all over again. Reapportionment and the admission of new states changed the calculation and the GOP had not adapted. In addition, turnout among Democratic constituencies was down, but not terrible. Democrats lost 6 of the existing Senate Seats, but won 7 of the 8 new Senate Seats (there is 1 Independent from Pacifica who caucused with the Democrats), meaning they gained 2 Senate seats. Few organizations had even bothered to poll the races in the new states. In the House Democrats suffer steep losses in the Midwest and Deep South. These losses are easily made up for by the enlarged California and New York delegations. Other Blue states such as Washington and Virginia send more Democrats too. Texas also sends multiple new Dem representatives to Washington due to its new districts, which make gerrymandering much more difficult. For the first time since 1978 the Democrats have retained a comfortable majority for the first time past a midterm election.
The next 2 years the economy continued its slow, stable growth. Democrats enacted good governance and reform. The largest of these was a series of economic and tax reforms based on Secretary of Commerce Elizabeth Warren’s policy proposals. An Infrastructure Bank was created. Entitlement reform passed, stabilizing Social Security. The Republicans opposed all of these changes, but were more muted now. The money behind the GOP was doing the math. Barring a new Depression, it was now nearly impossible to take back the House following reapportionment. That meant no new legislation. The Senate might be possible, except that Trump had burned bridges with many of the new states, which hate the national GOP, even if they voted for Republicans locally. The political situation led the Republican Party to consider radical changes of its own. A few feelers were made to Texas on if it would be willing to break itself up to help regain the GOP’s Senate advantage. The Republican governor told the GOP to “go to hell” in any attempt to reduce Texas’ power. Texas was also fast becoming purple and there was no guarantee that the new states would send Republicans to Washington. Shrinking the House or kicking out states also proved impossible. While money still had a strong influence, the larger number of House members made it harder to control (buy up), not to mention that so many of them were from urban, blue areas.
Reelection in 2024
The 2024 election saw President Biden comfortably reelected in a campaign against Nikki Haley. Millennials when combined with Gen X and Y were clearly voting more than Boomers now. Gen Z’s hatred of the GOP was to be every bit as consistent as the Silent Generation’s disdain for Democrats, creating a stable and reliable Democratic voting block for decades to come. Against that Haley’s smarter message of an inclusive America (for which she was evidence) fell on deaf ears. She was still a Republican after all. What came to be known as the AOC wing of the Democratic party grew stronger, pushing the party further left and being as much friend as needler to the Biden administration. Haley did improve upon 2020 in a few areas, noticeably peeling off roughly 2% of women who had voted for Biden in 2020, but that was not nearly enough to create an electoral win. Both candidates were relatively gracious when compared to the elections of 2016 and 2020.
More economic and tax reform continued by default as Trump’s tax cuts were set to expire. 2026 was the next critical year and not only because the Democrats retained control of Congress again in the midterm elections that fall, an unlikely feat given the 2nd term of a presidency (their Senate majority was reduced to 2 seats). That year there were 3 high-profile deaths that happen within 6 months of each other. In January, Clarence Thomas passed away on the bench after being in and out of the hospital over much of the previous year. Within 2 months he is replaced by a liberal justice. More shocking was Samuel Alito’s passing in May of that same year. The justices were ages 78 and 77 respectively and both were trying to hang on until a Republican was back in office. This tilted the Supreme Court back to a strong liberal majority, which it was to keep until the 2060s. Over the next 10 years this court undid many of the conservative excesses of the previous 40 odd years. That included limiting corporate power, upholding the legality of abortion and removing limits, as well as expanding upon voting rights.
The third and most disruptive death in 2026 was President Joe Biden. While age was a common attack during his presidency all of the way back to him running in 2020, he had seemed generally the same, albeit slower than when he had served as Obama’s VP. On June 6 Biden spoke at a state dinner. One reporter noted that he seemed somewhat unsteady on his feet and a few of his words sounded slurred. Admin officials passed it off as light dehydration and international travel earlier that week. Later that night Biden passed away in his sleep following a massive aneurysm.
The state funeral was an emotional affair. This was the first time a president had naturally died in office since William Harding. Unlike Harding, Biden did not have a cloud of corruption around him. Various eulogies were given by Kamala Harris, Barack Obama and Dr. Jill Biden. The National Mall was packed with mourners and all federal offices are closed as Joe Biden lies in state for the last time. New president Harris gave a powerful speech where she pledged to continue and finish the work of Uncle Joe as we march into a bright dawn.
It was never a good idea to write off an election 2 years before it happens. That is a lifetime in politics. There are perhaps 2 exceptions to this in the past 150 years: 1964 and 2028. In both of those elections a vice president unexpectedly took over and in both cases crushed their opponent in the next presidential election to win a term in their own right. Harris continued Biden’s various policies while carrying out her own. Some commentators joked that Biden was still on the ticket in 2028 as Harris mentioned him frequently. Marc Rubio was the GOP nominee in 2028, but his message of protectionism and attacks on California and blue states did not resonate, especially in contrast to Harris who praised the state of Florida in the second presidential debate. Harris easily won reelection in 2028, becoming the first female president and bringing the Democrats the first 3rd term since FDR.
In contrast, the Republican Party entered a political wilderness with their coalition in shambles and having turned off new generations of voters. The challenge was that the Republican Party had become a collection of interest groups that had little in common. This was not new, but brought into focus by the series of electoral defeats. The Libertarian had little use for organized religion and was in fact opposed to limits on abortion and recreational drugs. They also abhorred the authoritarian streak that Trump and younger Republicans demonstrated. The Evangelical cared about outlawing abortion and resisting “deviance”, but their following and influence was dropping precipitously. The affluent of course used the other groups, peddling social issues to maximize control, minimize taxes and create a sort of oligarchy like Russia had (Note: This was before the 3rd Russian Revolution of 2029, which crashed that system in a further dissolution). Republicans could fight for mutual gain, but disagreed on a host of policy issues. In contrast to evangelicals, white nationalism had grown in strength, increasingly controlling facets of the GOP, especially at the local and state level. Confusing the matter, not all of these would-be fascists were white, although over 85% identified as such.
Elder Republican moderates like Mitt Romney warned that the party must change its approach if it was to get power back, starting by expelling overt racists and bigots. This echoed the 2012 autopsy on the GOP, but Romney was ignored throughout the 2020’s. It was only in 2030 after repeated electoral defeats that enough moderates in the Republican party began to take back power from the radicals. This Republican reform movement kicked out the Proud Boys and other racists, beginning immediate overtures to “growth demographics”. Targets primarily included Latino and Asian American constituencies, which were seen to be more socially conservative. Pro-choice Republicans were also welcomed back into the fold as abortion’s stock fell with the decline of the evangelicals. With the white vote dropping this outreach took years to gain traction. Further, this change initially hurt the GOP as several Southern and Midwestern states saw conservative turnout plummet. Diminishing GOP chances further was that several previously purple states had gone blue by 2030, including Georgia and Arizona. Texas and Utah were also now a swing states, requiring more resources to defend where previous Republican victories had been a given. These changes were not all bad news for the GOP. Ohio and Wisconsin grew older and lacked diversity, shifting them to reliably red. Minnesota had become a swing state. Still, the Democrats were picking up more states and electoral clout than what they had lost.
The 2020 U Turn
In retrospect, 2016 and the election of Donald Trump can be seen as a last gasp for what had become of a conservative movement that started in the mid 20th century and first fully took power in 1980. Like other political dead ends it had become a caricature of itself, weak in principle and stopping at nothing to retain power. That inevitably led to a level of corruption and distortion that destroyed the Republican Party when it was arguably at its strongest. The 2016 election resulted in unified Republican government, yet they could agree on little and the only meaningful legislation passed were tax cuts. Nor does that belittle the damage and corruption that Trump did to the United States both domestically and on the international stage. Trump’s administration slowed or reversed U.S. policy on a number of fronts, including immigration and battling climate change. The presidency of Joe Biden brought about an end to the stasis that had gripped the United States since the presidency of Bill Clinton. That it was Joe Biden, whose career was built on moderation and compromise, that destroyed this version of the Republican Party was especially ironic. And yet it can be argued that it was not so much Joe Biden, but rather the situation that his presidency found itself in. The current GOP was incapable of compromise and was now pushing anti-democratic means to keep control. That worked so long as turnout was not high. After winning, Biden just enhanced and increased that democracy, which then locked the Republicans out, rightly seeing them as enemies of that same democracy.