Part 2: The backstory
Imagine LBJ. Imagine Donald Trump. Add in the moral compass of an opportunist infection, and you had our opponent in 2017- DFW.
A relentless, obsessive, morally bankrupt Texan who had seduced the Labor Party. I say that with a great deal of respect; DFW remains the single most effective opposition player I've seen in the game. But all the actions that followed came from who Labor were facing.
I've tended to be quite good at not letting people in this place annoy me; but I became rather obsessed with stopping DFW from becoming President. After his weird 4D chess with his independent run (which he claimed then I torpedoed- if I actually did, I take the praise now) he now had the federalist nomination- President Yankee, like me, was battered by a eunuch of a presidency and didn't run.
I'd stepped down from the Presidency in January- under the
Potomac agreement.
I was now simply Labor Chair, and boy was I pissed off. Firstly with myself. I had decided not to run in February 2017- because I didn't want to face another election epic against Yankee, and because I feared losing. God knows how much time I spend running in October 2016, and I simply lacked the mental energy to run properly- so I bowed out.
Now someone with better memory, or who is less lazy will know what happened before the Feb 2017 election but Labors 2017 nominee was Speaker Never Again. I'll give a quick background for newbies below
Speaker Never-Again
One of my close allies in the game, who had endorsed my suicide run in 2016
see more and who was one of the best legislators in the game.
As Speaker of the House he'd overhauled the tax code completely; and led a session of Congress which wiped out about 6 months worth of backlogged bills. He was one of the more talented figures within Labor, and I supported him running for President in February.
I thought he was going to win...
February 2017 Election
IIRC Labor had an advantage in the rolls in 2017; I'd brought in large chunk of new players, we were at historic strength in both the House and Senate, and had a large core of active players. Then came across DFW.
I think DFW was Governor (?) of the South; but had served as Secretary of the Interior. Newer players will find it funny but he was a shameless right wing hack who would put the federalists first, except when he could put his ego first.
Like most old feuds I can't actually remember what DFW did, or said, or didn't do- I just remember believing that if he became President it would be a colossal disaster (and who can forget as a federalist he resigned to let his VP start WW3, and then get Fghtan to become President without ever getting a single vote)
But our plan was simple- we contact Labor, and undecided voters. We run an active campaign. Our internal polls, ran by Clyde (the best internal pollster in the game) had us at 50%. We had Southern Gothic, a character in himself (one of the many people who inspired the title of my memoir) as VP; and we seemed pretty steady.
Then the campaign stopped; we didn't get responses from PMs. Never-Again didn't do any speeches, or any PMs- despite us giving him the mastersheet I created ( a huge excel document with every Atlasia voter, and their history, which I used in 2016)
On top of that DFW, whilst no doubt sweating in a basement in Texas, was sending about 1000 PMs a day to every single voter, in most cases talking about absolutely nothing, charming- working the rope line. We saw normally loyal people endorse him- people on the left where endorsing a Trump voting federalist hack.
And our nominee did nothing.
I told Nev how concerned we were. How things needed to change, and what a good campaign looked like... but I could see it falling before my eyes.
