Between Two Majorities | The Cordray Administration

[The_Doctor]

Notes: First, see the article above about Trump's scandals. Then read this.

 I am trying to be broad and concise. We're going to wrap up the Trump Presidency with this article and maybe 1-2 others reviewing the DJT era. Given the topics we're dealing with are so huge and vast - no less trying to project an entire decade worth's of information - I'm trying to stay broad and try to give you the lay of the land. I'm not going to even try to get into too many details of what a Trump impeachment showdown would look like, because this is kind of unprecedented territory. Especially with what we're hearing about Russia, the unexpected has become ... routine. Anyway.

The Trump Administration Ends; Pence Prepares to Become 46th President

July 2019 -- (New York, New York at Trump Tower). The mood at Trump Tower over the last few months have been grim, to say the least. The revelations about the self-dealing and the Russian backdoor channeling between the Trump campaign and the Putin Administration created a storm that many thought had been left behind in the tumult of the '16 campaign. It also brought down a President.

Donald John Trump, 45th President of the United States would resign 45 years after Richard M. Nixon - the nation's 37th President - did. The road from inauguration to resignation - from a high nobody imagined to a fall few suspected - the Trump era was marked by turbulent changes and far reaching choices that would change the course of the nation. Now huddled in Trump Tower, staring at a paper that simply announced his resignation, the 73 year old media magnate faced his fate. No Silvio Berlusconi was he, to reprise the great Italian drama. With a stroke of a pen - a Sharpie pen - he signed the resignation letter.

Impeachment talk had begun in March, as worried Republicans fled the President. The President had never been particularly popular among the Congressional Republicans. An interloper in 2016, he had never forged the deep connections with Congress that could have allowed him to escape impeachment. Success had been forged with Speaker Ryan (R-Wis.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in the first year, but by year two, the Trump Administration had gone off the rails, especially after the departure of Reince Priebus.  By year three, the White House had become embroiled in scandal and quagmire.

With the implosion and the swirling scandals around Donald Trump, the White House went into bunker mode. The President lashed out in increasingly vitriolic rallies and vicious Twitter asides against his enemies, real and imagined. The Trump White House would see demons in every corner and the infighting only grew more bitter. Bannon wanted the President to hang on, to defy the critics and win a second term "against the Washington establishment." Bannon wanted war; the children pleaded for peace.

The President chose war, at first, going on a rampage against Washington's establishment. He called out "disloyal Republicans" in increasingly angry and erratic terms, pursuing day long battles with members of the GOP conference. The Democrats, too, came under fire, but less so.

Secretly, President Trump pressured the Justice Department to investigate his critics and enemies. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, appalled and knowing that history would record his response, tried to resist as long as possible. Secretary of Defense James Matthis attempted to steer American foreign policy with Secretary of State Rudy Giuliani as long as possible, as the President became consumed with the scandal that threatened his impeachment.

The inner circle was bitterly divided between Trump's family and the alt right. The establishment Republicans had been sidelined with the departure of Priebus. The Bannon forces were fighting against the family, who wanted their father to be spared further pain. Bannon viewed the resignation as the ultimate betrayal of the establishment, vowing to fight holy war against the "traitors."

By July 2019, it appeared that Donald Trump would almost certainly be impeached in the House of Representatives. The President struggled to fight the impeachment, vowing to "go all the way to the Senate," and launched even more rallies. But days before the impeachment vote, Trump delivered a message to the Congressional leadership. He would resign in return for a pardon by President Pence. Same deal as Nixon and Ford did. The Congressional leadership agreed, in private. They had weathered two years of Trump's storms and did not want to suffer more.

On July 19, 2019, Donald John Trump announced his resignation to the nation. Fighting back tears, in the Oval Office, the President said he had "fought for the American people every step of the way." He had fought the "Washington establishment" and delivered results for "hard working families." He acknowledged that he had a combative streak but talked about how Washington needed to be reformed. After twenty minutes of passionate self-defense as was his style, Trump announced that Vice President Pence would become President at noon.

At noon, with Air Force One flying to Trump Tower for the last time, Michael Richard Pence was in the Oval Office, taking the oath of office. As he repeated the oath, before Chief Justice John Roberts, the call sign for Air Force One was changed to indicate the President was no longer Trump but Pence.

As Pence put his hand down on the Bible, becoming the 46th President of the United States, the Trump era ended and the curtain rose on the Pence era. As a sign of this new era, Bannon was packing his boxes and preparing to return to Breitbart News. For the rest of his life, he would harbor a sense of grievance against the establishment, who he believed had brought down Trump rather than take his lead.

Historians, looking back at the doomed Trump Presidency, would cast it as act one of a story that would culminate five years later. The populist revolt that Trump had led had turned to consume the President himself. It had been an unsteady hand that had guided the nation from 2017 to 2019, with an agenda that remained unfulfilled. Donald Trump had come to Washington the great reformer, but left Washington broken. The challenges had become too deep, too hard, and too difficult for him to reform. It had consumed the presidencies of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, and now it claimed his Presidency.

His election had hardened the rifts, and in many ways, he had been set up to fail long before he set foot in the White House. The people had elected outsiders in a desperate bid to shake up the system that they no longer believed was working for them. And they had turned to him, in an effort to tell Washington to clean up its act. Trump had believed he would be able to reform Washington and become a legendary figure in the mold of Andrew Jackson. Instead he exited as a failed Warren G. Harding figure. Washington's partisan wars had not been soothed by his election. The 46% he won had seen to that, and so had the fact he had lost the popular vote by close to three million votes. The division that had begun with Mitch McConnell's obstruction of Barack Obama's agenda would continue unabated into the Trump years, and the division in the country only hardened. And in the end the Washington system had eaten his Administration alive. It had been the reason he had appointed outsiders, to resist Washington. But as Reagan and W. Bush had learned, the system could not be resisted.

Only two Presidents in the last hundred years had dramatically overhauled the system and reformed it. Franklin D. Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan had done it, but they had been realigning Presidents who had broken the system and reassembled it. Trump had hoped to be the second great New Yorker who would change the system. But in the end, there would be only one New Yorker who would be able to do that.

The country had not been healed by the Trump era. The divisions were wide and gaping and the hardening battle lines between the Left and the Right only meant that things were about to get much worse, not better.
  

[The_Doctor]

How much interest is there to continuing this? I'm torn, because I don't know how many people are reading this and we're 3 years out into 2019.

[The_Doctor]

Notes: I think I'll finish this then. Thank you all for the kind wishes.

Vice President Michael R. Pence Becomes 46th President; Restores Stability to White House

July 2019 -- (Washington, D.C). As Donald Trump left the White House in disgrace, a new presence entered on the national stage. The quiet underappreciated Michael Richard Pence, now the 46th President of the United States, was sworn in at noon.

The Pence Presidency - as it began - would be an implicit rebuke to the Trump Presidency in style. Much as Harding's rambunctious and controversial presidency was followed by the New England iciness of the Coolidge years, so did Trump's rollicking New York style give way to Pence's Midwestern understated charm. The new President was sworn in at noon as the nation sighed in relief, having borne the Trump antics and drama for too long.

The Pences graciously agreed to stay in the Naval Observatory as the Trumps departed the White House. The children left the White House, to repair back to Trump Tower in New York. Donald Trump himself was already in New York, watching the new President take office.

The White House was quickly reoriented; from outsider populism to establishment Republicanism.  The new President quickly appointed an establishment figure as Chief of Staff, Katie Walsh, as Steve Bannon left the White House. Congressional Republicans quickly rallied behind the new president, with Speaker Ryan and Majority Leader McConnell urging the nation to unite behind the new President. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Minority Leader Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) offered cautious notes of support.

The White House twitter feed - formerly Trump's - fell silent as the new President sought to calm the nation. Political strategists, looking to 2020, wondered how the new President would retain the Trump loyalists and expand the Republican coalition. "A lot of people are wondering if he can hold the Trumpists, who voted solely for Donald Trump," worried one top Hill GOP aide. Quiet rumblings under the transfer of power were heard inside the halls of power as Republicans wondered if the failed Trump presidency would presage a Democratic wave in 2020.

Michael R. Pence - long seen as an ideological conservative - had been in the State House, then U.S. House, before seeking successfully the governorship of Indiana. Now as the President of the United States, he had achieved a pinnacle of political power to which he had aspired since age 18.  

The next night, on the night of the 20th, President Pence announced to the nation that he would pardon former President Donald Trump and would clear the way for the nation to be healed. It was a striking parallel to another Midwesterner's pardon, that of Gerald R. Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon.

The new President also announced the Cabinet would stay in place until the duration of the term had expired, meaning the Pence Cabinet would not take place until 2021 (if he won a full term in his own right)  

[The_Doctor]

Note: See Pence taking power above. You'll want to read that. Then this.

Trump: Doomed from the Start?

The national wounds that had been ripped wide open by the Trump years had been decades in the making. Long before the Administration was even sworn in, the animal forces that circled American politics and culture had been closing in to create the Trump White House.

Start in 1980. Ronald Reagan's 10 point victory brought to a close the turbulent and tumultuous times of the 1960s. The cultural revolution and counter-culture both came to a close with the Reagan victory. An uneasy peace was forged; the gains of the 1960s and 1970s would be maintained but there would be no more dramatic changes. Reagan's presidency would seek to preserve the balance no matter what. The President did not want to relitigate the wars of the 1960s - 1970s that had killed John Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Bobby King and brought down Richard Nixon. These years had also brought stagflation, worries about the Cold War, and so on.

The election and Presidency of Ronald Reagan was a hugely consequential one. It would be a Presidency that would cement new status quo's, cementing a conservative economic orthodoxy and cultural center-right ideology (even if sometimes, they were never quite lived up to). The rapid changes of the 1960s gave way to the calm seas of the 1980s as the nation readjusted to a whole new world order. The Vietnam War faded into the distant mirror as Ronald Reagan carefully navigated American involvement overseas. As the Berlin Wall and Cold War both came down, the nation entered the 1990s generally prosperous and at peace, unchallenged around the world. Thus the genius, gift, and legacy of Ronald Reagan.

In 1992, the first signs of the coming new tumult came in a primary challenge to the incumbent Republican President, George H.W. Bush. Pat Buchanan blasted the President for the tax hikes of 1990 and various other heresies. While the stability built by Reagan did not allow Buchanan to win, he won 30% of Republicans in that nomination contest.

Ultimately, with the election of Democrat Bill Clinton as a confirmation of the Reagan era's dominance, the nation (after the hiccup of 1994) settled into the status quo that dominated the 1980s. Conservative economics, center-right social orthodoxy (outside abortion), and a general understanding the safety net would be protected. Reagan, albeit with some noises, had generally abided by this orthodoxy and it continued into the 1990s.

The Right became a little reactionary during this period (but nothing like what they became later). They challenged the Clinton presidency and launched investigation after investigation, ultimately impeaching the President. Their anger and vitriol, however, was a harbinger of what would come.

The election of 2000 did not change much. Despite George W. Bush's razor thin victory, Bush had been a second confirming President of the Reagan orthodoxy. W. had campaigned on No Child Left Behind, tax cuts, no nation building (ironic in light of his later reputation), and most importantly "restoring dignity to the Oval Office." These promises allowed him to regain the South and lower Midwestern states, along with several Sunbelt states, that had gone Clinton. The nation had collectively shrugged its shoulders after the recount and let W. take the Presidency. It would also be the first Republican - led government since the 1950s and the first sustained GOP government since the 1920s.

The tragedy came on 9/11. In more than one way, it ripped apart the Presidency George W. Bush had been trying to build - a moderate conservative Presidency focused on domestic accomplishments. He had been hoping to end up a more conservative re-run of George H.W. Bush and indeed, that's how he campaigned in 2000. 9/11 ripped apart that Presidency and began a war presidency - but also ugly divisions that would only widen.

After 9/11, the war hawks took charge, leading the invasion of Iraq. The war in Iraq was another tragedy, as it ripped open the fragile peace that Reagan had forged after the destructive Vietnam War. Now another generation protested a war fought in the name of some abstract ideal. And as the Bush Presidency came to an end, the worst came.

The economic crash of 2008 would presage the darker forces of American culture coming to light, a dark set of forces that the 40th to 43rd Presidents had kept under control. But the economic crisis reopened the fears of Americans and widened the gulf between the "two Americas."

The election of a black President only heightened the fears of the forgotten America. As the aging Baby Boomer Republican coalition glimpsed at the future, two coalitions came into conflict, engineered by the Great Recession.

The recession had propelled Barack Obama to the Presidency. Had there been no recession, had there been peace and prosperity, Hillary Clinton (or John McCain) would have become the 44th President. Instead, as the economic crisis gathered force in late 2007 and early 2008 (undetected by all except those suffering and the Federal Reserve), the Democrats embraced a young black senator from Illinois. The Republicans ran a moderate standard bearer in John McCain, but of course, he had no chance by October 2008.

By this time, the peace and stability that Ronald Reagan had forged was completely ripped apart. The election of a black President only inflamed the torn national consensus as angry middle and lower class whites worried about their cultural and economic future in a world that no longer seemed to respect them. They yearned for an America that never was.  

To his credit, like W., President Obama tried hard to unite the nation. He tried to reach out to these constituents but like W. after 9/11, forces overtook his presidency and remade them. The partisan gulf only widened as House Republicans triumphed in 2010.

Later, much later, the Republican strategy of complete and utter obstruction would be remembered as destructive and misguided. But at the time, it launched a House majority and brought the GOP back to relevance. Rooted in the Clinton wars of the 1990s, the GOP thought it was a winning strategy. It was. But it was also a strategy that ripped apart the national political fabric. The Clinton era could take these political wars since the economy was relatively stable and the boom just beginning. But in these hard times, the national consensus collapsed.

Obama had been the foreshadowing Presidency, a president who desperately tried to rechart the course of the nation, as it hurtled towards the rocky shores. He had promulgated a new liberalism, a new technocratic liberalism that would restore prosperity and respect the old conservative traditions but forge new ones. But he had no real political coalition that would listen to him and back up his pleas.

The election of 2012 held everything in place. It was only in 2016 that everything began to come apart. "Turning and turning in the widening gyre / The falcon cannot hear the falconer / Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold" was the lines of the famous poem. And 2016 was the year that things began to fall apart, indescribably so.

Donald Trump had never intended to win the Presidency, in a sense. He expected to lose and return to private business, his reputation enhanced. But instead, he won. A nation propelled by desperate times, anxiety, and anger at the political system - fermented by the Great Recession - upset the political applecart and seated him in the center of power.

But President Trump was a victim as much as anyone else. Like the two Presidents before him, he came into office intending to unite the country behind a common agenda. Like these presidents, he valued himself as a deal maker who could bridge the divide. But Trump had campaigned viciously and widened the divide, and his (relatively) large popular vote loss doomed him to gridlock in the Capital. The forces that had brought him to power were - not to be graphic - ravenous and not satisfied. Yes, the Republicans relied on him. But the Democrats did not and they would fight him.

Trump would try, in the beginning, and be successful for a time. But these forces would not be denied. The ripped apart consensus would demand a new consensus. A consensus that Donald Trump could not really forge, had no political power to forge, and really, no capability or experience to build. The forces that Trump encountered had been a generation in building and the fragile peace had been shattered by his own campaign.

The country was moving past reconciliation. The cultural consensus of the 1980s, the political peace of the 1990s, and the national security consensus of the 2000 had split apart. The nation was bleeding, and suffered profound damage. Trump himself had contributed to the bleeding, instead of the healing. And his aggressive, warlike Presidency, without a popular vote victory or the kind of resounding mandate to lead - had brutally widened the gap.

The Trump Administration had hoped to spur on an economic boom that would heal the divide. But it was too late. The divides were too great, the economic pain too deep, and the polarizing forces too intense now. There would be no turning back after the election of Donald Trump. The country had been committed to a "rendezvous with destiny."

The Trump presidency itself had been chaotic, but in a sense, it was preordained. The nation needed the political elite to hear the pain and to see the ripped fabric that held it together. The Trump Presidency was an ongoing demonstration of that. The time for putting back things together the way they used to be was long gone.

The nation was committed, as much as it had been in 1854, after the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, as much as it had been committed in 1929, after the Great Depression, and after stagflation in 1974, to a turning point, where everything would come to a point of reckoning.  

And much worse was coming.
 

[The_Doctor]

Note: Next is a recap on the economy and the world in 2018-2019

President Pence And the New Age of Stability

(November 2019) -- (Indianapolis, Indiana) Months after the Pence Presidency began, Americans are getting an idea of what their 46th President is about. Substantially, the Pence Presidency is not that different from the Trump Presidency. Stylistically, New York bombast gave way to Midwestern genteel charm - but the same ideology underneath reigned.

President Pence did however signal change on a major issue: Russia. After the Trump years, it was President Pence who signaled that the hawks in the GOP had regained the upper hand in the battle to define the relationship with Moscow. Beginning in September, the President had signaled through the media and elsewhere that the United States intended to begin challenging Russia anew on Ukraine and other territories.

The President also picked UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, a former Governor of South Carolina, as his Vice President. A minority and a female, analysts believed it was a foreshadowing of Pence's intention to bolster his numbers among minorities and female voters. "A gentler face on the same ideology, trying to win back the #NeverTrump voters," said Pat McChristopher, noted analyst.

The President's approval rating - and calm demeanor - scored well with a public weary of the infighting. 54% approved of President Pence and only 32% disapproved. This was in studied contrast to President Trump, who's approval rating stood at 14% to 81%. (And who had chosen to lay low since his resignation).

Pence, following Coolidge's lead a century earlier, refused to replace the Cabinet at this late juncture, choosing to wait until the election results. That meant Trump Cabinet members remained on hand - but many were, at this point, capable enough to carry out their jobs. General Flynn was replaced as NSA, of course, and Secretary Ben Carson stepped down but the rest of the Trump Cabinet stayed in place.

Senate and House Republicans were hopeful about the Pence Presidency, and hopeful that the economic upswing would salvage the 2020 elections. The economy, which had been sluggish in 2018 and the first half of 2019, now promised robust growth (although nowhere near 4%).

Trump's exile served as a cathartic moment for liberals who had wanted his removal from the White House. While many were unhappy with Pence, the end to the antics and the drama was welcomed by many. Among moderates and conservatives, they chose to give the new President a chance.

Democrats, recalibrating from planning a race against the Donald, are now split on how to take on Mike Pence for 2020. The Clinton v. Sanders wing is poised to take another run at each other, for the upcoming 2020 primaries.

[The_Doctor]

Note: Yes, I harp on this theme a lot. It's instrumental. This is one of the major themes of this timeline - the breaking down of the old order, presidents trying and failing to unite the country, and the political breakdown of this country.

Obama and Donald Trump: Political Twins as Outsiders

(December 2019) -- Chicago, Illinois. Historians writing about the Obama and Trump Presidencies noted striking similarities in both men - and noted how they had destabilized the established system through their candidacies and Presidencies.

Both men had come to power upsetting the established candidates in their primaries and then defeated opposing party candidates that had established a presence in the nation's capital. (They also shared the dubious honor of having defeated the establishmentarian Hillary Clinton and styming her Presidential hopes) Both men had won on vague promises of reform and made central to their campaigns the need to reform the nation's capital and to throw out the insiders.

The most striking thing about both men was the "cargo cults" that accompanied them. The much derided Obama fans had been replaced by the equally derided Trump legions or "centipedes." Each group had powered their candidate to the White House in the firm belief that their man was the spear tip of a political revolution that would shake up Washington. They would brook no dissent about their man's revolutionary appeal and how they would be the one to finally fix Washington.

Their opposition was even more venomous. The Republicans had seen Obama as an existential threat to the Reagan era (which he was). The Democrats saw Trump as an existential threat to the consensus driven political norms and system that had prevailed since 1945 (which he was). Therefore, from the Right came howls of questions about Obama's birthplace, his faith, and his loyalty to the United States. The Left, even angrier after 2016, raised questions about Trump and Russia, his preparation for the office, and everything in between.

Both Trump and Obama had come to power without real experience in the nation's capital. Obama had been a Senator for all of four years (and a state legislator in Illinois). Trump came to power with even less connections and experience in Washington. Both Presidents needed more experienced and able vice presidents - the 30 year Senator in Biden, the longtime Congressman in Pence - to navigate the capital.

Most strikingly, the elections of Obama and Trump had signaled a deep dissatisfaction with the political system in the nation's capital. The voters had turned away from established politicians in the hopes that outsiders would reform the system - a sclerotic and dysfunctional system. Both Obama and Trump were deal makers at heart (though neither would admit that they were like each other in this regard) who represented their Americas. They personally were nowhere as ideological as their most fervent supporters were and were of the school of transactionalism. Witness Obama's openness to charter schools or Trump's desire for a $1 trillion infrastructure initiative. In private, had Obama and Trump been allowed to strike a deal, and see it become law, they would have probably been happy about doing that.

The era from 2009 to 2019 could have been easily called the "Failed Outsider Age." The political system ground to a halt in this decade and political gridlock hardened. Outsider presidents were sent to Washington (along with outsider senators and Congressmen) to fix the system - and found themselves mired in an ever escalating political war.

The best way to understand Obama and Trump was to locate them as deal makers who came to Washington with the bold hope of breaking through the partisan gridlock.

They left Washington unsatisfied because the gridlock required so much more than an outsider. They left Washington politically broken and dismayed at the lack of unity in a gridlocked town.

Washington, after their Presidencies, had not changed. Indeed, with each passing Presidency, the gridlock and the political polarization only became worse. The slow economic growth only persisted. A sense of a broken political system was in the air. And the nation grew more frustrated with each passing year.

Neither man was able to break through the noise and the gridlock to unite the country. Neither man had fashioned an answer to the political sclerosis. They left their own supporters disappointed and the opposition firmly convinced that their presidency was an unmitigated disaster for the country.

It required an insider with an outsider's perspective and an experienced political communicator who was trusted by voters on both sides of the political divide. FDR and Reagan had been these people, and now the political system asked once more for someone to enter the breach to unite the country anew.

The question, now, of course: was Pence up to that task?

[The_Doctor]

I really enjoy the stylistic touch of writing from the perspective of a future history book.
I've recently been toying with the idea of doing a timeline but from having it open from the vantage point of just average people discussing politics fifty years or so in the future. I could very well see a generation or so in the future this current era being looked back on as the "failed outsider age" in the same way we look back on the early twentieth century as the progressive era and comparisons between Obama, Trump and they're respective movements being made and seen as similar since oftentimes the further away you get from an era the more the nuances of that era are missed. Like how people now would see TR and Wilson as both emblematic of the progressive era despite significant differences in there worldviews. But yeah, keep up the good work!

Exactly. Woodrow Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt were similar people in terms of the ideology (although with important differences). As it would turn out the Populist era presaged the New Deal two decades later.

You should absolutely give your timeline a shot. I have a couple of notebooks here filled with notes, sketches of stories, ideas, and plain out writing my thoughts.

The timeline helps me articulate where we're going as a society and what that means for our future. For me I feel the next decade is going to be extremely consequential and will be a turning point. So I write and as you can tell I try to follow the trends of history.

I try to write in three voices. 1) Newspapers 2) History 3) TIME Magazine pieces. And occasionally I do meta to guide the reader.

Anyway, just some thoughts. I look forward to your timeline.

[The_Doctor]

Economy Slowly Recovers

January 2020 -- (New York, New York) As President Pence entered his first full year in the White House, the U.S. economy has been slowly pulling out of the mild recession and may be entering a sustained boom. GDP growth is up, while unemployment is ticking down.

Unemployment had reached 6.1% in the depths of 2018 and with the economic upswing, it has ticked down to 5.1%. GDP growth - anemic in 2017 and 2018 (1.4% and -0.5% in 2017 and 2018) - was back up to 2.8% in 2019. As the economy warmed up, the Republicans were preparing for the election of 2020.

Growth was broadly in the service sectors, with manufacturing continuing its long and steady slide that it had in the last 30 years. Manufacturers, in response to the Trump years, had slowed down the offshoring a bit - but they had also expedited automation, which was a bigger cause of the loss of manufacturing jobs. Union membership in the manufacturing sector had slipped to an all time low of 8.6%.

As the economy shifted to the retail and hospitality sectors, the President lauded the growth as the result of "the tax cuts" and infrastructure spending of 2017. The Republicans took credit for the growth and said that the deregulation of '17 had enabled the recovery to be much faster than it had been. The DOW Jones soared to 21,000 as Wall Street celebrated the recovery.

Time would tell how strong the recovery would be.

[The_Doctor]

Global Nationalist Storms Abound

January 2020 -- (Washington, D.C.) As President Pence took power, the world remained in a definitively nationalist mood. The Islamic State remained a threat, but China and Russia began to grapple with internal tensions that threatened to draw their attention inwards.

The United States, from 2017 to late 2019, chose to try to unite with Russia to defeat ISIS and left the Crimean question unanswered (which suited all parties). However, with the re-ascent of the anti-Russian hawks in the Republican Party, the White House recalibrated and is now focusing attention on Eastern Europe, as a way of forcing pressure on Russia. To that end, the United States demanded a peaceful settlement for Ukraine that "recognized democratic rights and international norms." Russia was not happy about this and the sanctions, never fully lifted, were under discussion of being tightened.

Obviously, even as America turned the screws on Russia, they worked together in the Middle East for their shared interest. Inadvertently, the Great Russian Reset of 2017 had ended up in the exact same place as 2009: gone, and the two countries worked together when it suited their interests and acted in an adversarial posture when it didn't.

China - a favorite punching bag of President Trump - remained on uneasy footing with the United States. With an internal state capitalistic economy that was undergoing serious damage, China's leadership was in no mood to deal with the aggressive Americans. President Trump had bullied them into renegotiating their currency but beyond that, the Trump Administration had settled for saber rattling.

China outwardly seemed fine but internal tensions were beginning to rip it apart, and Xi Jinping spent most of 2018 and 2019 trying to reform the bloated power and economic structure of China while contending with an aggressive American posture in the Pacific Ocean and South Sea. Oddly, this was one area where President Trump had the most success in negotiations - limited as it was. China could not afford an aggressive America pushing its advantage while it struggled with domestic tensions.  Internally, people were warning of China's economy possibly collapsing and thus leading to Beijing's collapse. Official Beijing refused to give credence to these rumors but they were persisting.

Turkey rose as a regional power, with Recciyp Erdogan becoming a power player in the Middle East. Turkey was forced to confront the Islamic State to its eastern borders, as Syria recovered from a brutal civil war. To that end, Erdogan - allied with the Russians and the Americans - began aggressively pushing back ISIS from Turkey's borders and took a strong hand in confronting the ever-expanding Islamic State. Assad was basically Putin's client vassal, so Syria joined the Turks in fighting ISIS. An uneasy alliance was forged between Assad and Erdogan, brokered by Putin. The Kurds, of course, were ignored in all this, even as they protested and resisted Erdogan.

Meanwhile, Iraq was in a state of collapse. Years of civil war and a rising Islamic State, allies in turmoil, and a broiling region (geopolitically) had enabled the Islamic State to become a major presence in Iraq. Iraq's weakened government could only watch as city by city fell, much to the dismay of all involved. America's hesitance to be involved had limited the American involvement there, creating a power vacuum. Russia tried but it couldn't contain the Islamic state's rise.

Over in India, the BJP won a second term as Narendra Modi gained a second term as Prime Minister. The BJP had finally wrested a majority in the Raj Sabha and gained the power to usher in sweeping reforms.  

In France, President LePen followed Trump's lead in cracking down on Muslims, banning the niqab, and railing against the (ever weakening) European Union. Germany's Angela Merkel, heavily weakened and reliant on a grand coalition after the ADP won second place in 2017, could not do much but feebly protest. Italy's bank crisis had deepened, and the government dissolved in 2017, with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi returning to power in a surprise bid in the 2018 Italian elections.

Merkel's hand as "Queen of Europe" has vastly weakened, to put it politely. After highly contentious elections in 2017 that put the ADP (a right wing Neo-Nazi party) in second place forced Merkel to strike a bargain for a grand coalition, Germany's position in Europe has been steadily weakening. Holding together a dying European Union as the continent fragmented, Germany's internal and external pressures are worsening, not lightening.

The European Union, was for all intents and purposes, slowly collapsing. Nation after nation was starting to buck it, with Greece in the lead. The Greek debt crisis continued, with negotiations continually collapsing. The reforms proposed by the European Union fell flat with Athens as collective bargaining and budget targets remained a contentious source of dispute. Greece wanted to return to the bonds market in 2018, but squabbling left the two sides unable to even agree. With Brexit on the books, Greece followed through and declared independence from the European Union.  Increasingly, Germany and the European Union looked fragile and weak.

The United States did little to stop this. President Pence, backed by a coalition of American skeptics headquartered in the South and the Midwest, who looked askance at the European Union, could not muster the political capital to back up Chancellor Merkel as President Obama (whose own more internationalist coalition empowered him and gave him a freer hand).

Great Britain saw some of the most wrenching changes, however. Scotland petitioned for independence, in late 2018, and First Minister Nicole Sturgeon vigorously campaigned. The May Government tried, as Cameron had, to hold Scotland in the United Kingdom, but it was all for naught. By a 52-48% margin, Scotland declared independence in 2019 and talks were underway on granting Scotland it's independence. Nationalism had taken a toll and Scotland had doubled down on the nationalist fever sweeping Europe. Scotland's independence fittingly coincided with the death of Queen Elizabeth II and the coronation of King George VII (Charles). England's longest reigning monarch would leave behind her a Golden Age of British post-World War unity - a unity that ended upon her death.

Everywhere, the nationalist mood was deepening, hardening, as old supra-nationalist institutions began to collapse. With the hardening isolationist tone in the United States, in the face of a fragmenting world, the American role was receding, and in its place, a growing series of power vacuums were emerging.

[The_Doctor]

First Minister Alex Salmond

What happened to Nicola Sturgeon?

Whoops. I mean her. I thought Salmond was still First Minister. I'll change it.

[The_Doctor]

Sorry if you've covered this already, but how are LGBT rights looking at this point?

Mike Pence has begun conversion therapy for the gays. At this point gay marriage remains legal as no Republican wants to relitigate that. Adoption rights vary state to state.  Given the blowback in Indiana when he was governor, President Pence isn't that interested in a national RTFR law.

Some federal gay benefits were cut but by and large the movement won.  Transgender rights are however stalled because Americans arent quite sure how to tackle that (although North Carolina's “bathroom law“ backfiring is deterring the Republicans from trying more).

Basically a limbo for transgender people, while the rest solidify what they've won.

[The_Doctor]

Note: I am going to learn from my lessons in 2015. I'm not going to spend a ton of time on the Democratic primaries in 2020. I picked people I think that will run and represent the wings of the Party that will be struggling for control in 2020 and how the Democrats will be changing. The Republicans, to save us all a lot of time, re-nominated Pence-Haley easily.

We're also down to our final 14 articles. (74 written so far. Ugh)

Democrats Look Ahead to 2020: Brown and Cuomo Square Off

March 2020 -- (Chicago, Illinois) The Democratic nomination to date has been rocky and tumultuous. The two wings of the party - the Sanders liberal wing versus the more moderate Clinton wing - have been at war as Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Sen. Sherrod Brown battle for the Democratic nomination.

Governor Andrew Cuomo (D-N.Y.) announced his bid for the Presidency after a successful re-election victory in Albany, where he won 61-36%. Styling himself as a pragmatic liberal who was a successful deal maker, the Governor campaigned on the kind of transactional liberalism that Barack Obama trafficked in. While clearly liberal, he was far more transactional than his main Democratic rival, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). The Governor fundraised off Wall Street and the financial sector, relying on a major donor network amassed from his days in Albany. Ideologically, he was more Clinton than Sanders, but he was pretty close to both 2016 candidates ideologically. He was the Democratic Party's wine track candidate, cautiously a free trader and in favor of reforms like universal college education. Backed by the Clintonite supporters of 2016 (like Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Gov. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) (who endorsed him after his failed bid), former Gov. Jerry Brown (D-Calif.), and others in the Democratic establishment. Cuomo was widely understood to have the backing of the Clinton campaign machine, as well.

Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who had convincingly trounced Treasurer Josh Mandel (again) by a sound 56-41% margin in 2018, now campaigned for the Presidency as Bernie Sanders' heir and talked about the need to combat income inequality and unfair trade deals that had cost Ohioans and Midwesterners their jobs. He was backed by Sens. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and other radicals (including Gov. Richard Cordray (D-Ohio). He railed against free trade deals and talked about single payer, An unabashed liberal, he argued the Democratic coalition needed to beat President Pence with a rallying cry that would win coastal and heartland populists alike. Sen. Brown relied on a grassroots base and small donations, much as Sen. Bernie Sanders had.

Both men campaigned on the idea of true immigration reform, stopping RyanCare, and on campaign finance reform. Surprisingly, both Democrats endorsed a more hawkish line on Russia and urged the United States to take a stronger line in international affairs (although Cuomo favored intervening in Syria-like conflicts while Brown opposed them). And of course, former President Trump came in for a solid round of being the Democratic bete noir. Essentially, both men agreed more than disagreed and their disagreements were peripheral, much as it had been in 2016. The style was what mattered; whether to take Gov. Andrew Cuomo's more nuanced pragmatic dealmaker style or Sen. Sherrod Brown's fiery grassroots oriented style.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J) had been an early contender, but bowed out after a disappointing finish in Iowa. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) had contemplated running as did Sen. Warren, but both backed out, as did Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.). John Hickenlooper had decided to run for President, but a disappointing finish in New Hampshire doomed him. Former Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) had made noises but ultimately took a pass. Most of the first term Democratic Governors were unwilling to take on the race so early in their terms as they rebuilt the state party and President Pence was in decent shape (at 51% approval, 44% disapproval).

Brown won Iowa's caucuses, but Cuomo took New Hampshire. In South Carolina, Brown took the state 53-44% and won Nevada 51-46%, and now Super Tuesday looms to decide the Democratic nomination.

Polling shows that President Pence is locked in a tight battle for re-election with either man.  

[The_Doctor]

I'm surprised the fields so small.

Short answer: I wanted to get to the matchups as soon as possible and given my primary forecasting was horrible last time (to be fair? Trump wasn't even a candidate when I wrote the '16 election timeline)  I chose to kind of go to the final two showdown on the Dem side. I wanted to show the clash between the party's wings and then go to the General election.

[The_Doctor]

Notes: I might do a Pence article of some kind today on how the GOP is approaching 2020. Also there's a GOP Congress & Gubernatorial article. Also, now that I think of it, we need to check in on the old coot from Vermont. Around 13-15 more articles to go ... maybe I can get this done by Inauguration Day!

I need a ghost writer. This will all equal 85 - 90 articles when done.

Also, leave comments if you want me to do Election Night like I did in the old thread, where I called it state by state and re-simulated the actual election night. (NB: Once again, I nailed the winning state: Pennsylvania.)

Democratic Nomination Settled: Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio)

(April 2020) -- (Columbus, Ohio). Ohio U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D) emerged as the Democratic Presidential nominee after defeating Gov. Andrew Cuomo convincingly in the Super Tuesday primaries. Former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden announced their endorsement of Senator Brown as he cemented his leadership over the Democratic Party as the Party's nominee. Governor Cuomo graciously conceded to the nominee-in-waiting.

Brown's victory sets up the stage for a faceoff against President Mike (R-Ind.). Brown, representing the more populist liberal wing of the Democratic Party, is poised to take the battle to the incumbent Republicans in the White House. The nominee also represents a victory for the Sanders forces, which has spent four years to cement their presence in the Democratic Party. The Clinton forces and the more moderate Democratic establishment found themselves on the receiving end of a successful minor insurgency.

The Brown campaign had focused on replicating Bernie Sanders' strength among the grassroots and mobilized them. They had relied on small donations and a liberal message to fire up the masses, expertly using social media and apps to connect and energize Democrats in the primaries. They had castigated Cuomo as a tool of the powerful forces that had held the party captive and led to Trump's victory in 2016. Brown himself was most at home delivering a fiery spiel, focused on trade, manufacturing, and restoring economic prosperity for the forgotten 50%.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo had tried to win heavyweight endorsements, corner the major Democratic donors, and the major social liberal groups (NARAL, NOW, NAACP, etc). He also had campaigned extensively as a synthesis of Bill Clinton and Barack Obama's Democratic ideology: a pragmatic liberal New York reformer who had worked with the GOP State Senate to enact progressive measures. Where Cuomo had failed was like in New York, where he had failed to win much excitement from the party's base and core voters. Many saw him as Prince Andrew, the well heel dynastic son of Mario Cuomo who thought his pride of place was to lead the Democratic Party back to glory.

Brown had lost New York, California, New England, and the Pacific Coasts for the nomination - but performed well enough in the South, Midwest, caucus interior states, and split the Sunbelt to win the nomination. A blue collar Democrat, wine track Democrats were willing to endorse him but Cuomo had been their first choice to lead the Party. He had won the backing of unions and powerful blue collar Democratic groups across the country.

The Democratic Party had realigned - in a way. They had embraced their Rust Belt brethren and their more populist side while slowly jettisoning the corporate wing. The Senator was a clear indicator that Bernie Sanders' war to remake the Democratic Party in his image was bearing some fruit. Brown had vehemently campaigned against Wall Street and Goldman Sachs, bearing in mind Hillary's bitter loss in 2016 over the Rust Belt.

Meanwhile, the Democratic vice presidential search centered on Gov. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), former HUD Secretary Julian Castro (D-Tex.), and surprisingly, Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.). The Ohio Senator wanted to unite the entire party behind his campaign.

Polling averages indicate a narrow Pence lead of 46-44% and an electoral college map of 200 electoral votes for the Democratic nominee, and 164 for the GOP nominee. Messr. Brown has wide polling leads in every state Madam Secretary won by at least 5 points (including Virginia). Meanwhile, the President holds leads in every state former President Trump won by 5 points. That leaves Maine, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Colorado, Arizona, and Nevada as tossups.

The President leads by narrow margins in Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, and Iowa; while the Senator leads by a hair in Colorado, Nevada, and New Hampshire. The rest are close to pure tossup. Ohio has a lean Brown polling of 3-4 points.

The Conventions would be of interest. The GOP was holding their convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, while the Democrats held their convention in New York (no word if a former ex-president had decided to attend or not. Or two of them, really!).

[The_Doctor]

Meta Programming Notes.

The next few articles taking us to November 2020. I need to jump back a year and solve a few lingering issues before we go to the fall election. I'd like to...reasonably wrap this up by next week, and do a sprint to 2024 by Inauguration Day. But that may be difficult because the 2021-2025 term is very meaty.

The timeline will end with an epilogue in around 2025.

01. ObamaCare under the GOP: 2019 Face Off (2019)
02. The Opiod Crisis: the Republican Response (2019)
03. The Conventions: Brown v. Pence.
04. The Brutal Fall Campaign
05. Election Night 2020.
06. Inauguration Day 2021 and the New Term's Promise

[The_Doctor]

Schumer, McConnell negotiate ObamaCare Deal

(October 2019) -- (Washington DC).  In a tense standoff over the fate of the ObamaCare law, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) negotiated a resolution to the healthcare law. Schumer won many concessions from the GOP leadership, who were unwilling to risk a voter backlash in the aftermath of the Trump resignation.

The simple reality was that the law had covered many people and ripping away their insurance risked a major backlash that could have propelled the Democrats to victory. The Democrats held all the cards here and the GOP knew it. McConnell knew it, which is why the GOP had delayed the law's reforms to 2019. The drug companies also knew it, which is why they pressured the GOP to keep much of the law.

It was a stunning victory for the Democrats that a divided GOP chose to uphold much of the law with minor reforms. Analysts noted that the law's core came from the Heritage Foundation, in the 1980s and 1990s. But still, it was amazing, given the GOP's decade long furious opposition.

The GOP made the same calculations that their forebears in the 1920s and the 1950s had made. After Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt's reforms the GOP had calculated that the political damage of repeal would be too high and chose to tweak around the edges. The conservative base was outraged each time but over time, came to accept these new laws as woven into the fabric of society. The time to really stop the law had been in 2012, but Governor Romney had lost the election and the law went into high gear.
 
President Pence had expanded Medicare in Indiana in cooperation with the Obama Administration, which signaled he knew very well the danger of ripping out the expansion. He also understood well the exchanges were popular.

The whole thing had started with kabuki theater. Schumer vowed that it was all or nothing. McConnell threatened to gut the entire law and blame the Democrats for being obstructionist. The White House doubled down on "holding the line." All Washington drew to the deadline like moths to a flame.

As the deadline neared, McConnell and Schumer engaged in feverish backchannel talking, which became a form of kabuki theater enmeshed in negotiation in itself. Both sides tried to one up each other and to get as many concessions as possible. As the final days bore down on them, McConnell and Schumer cut a deal and informed the rest of Washington what it was (the Majority Leader briefed the White House continuously throughout)

The mandate stayed in place. It was explained - in brute terms - to the GOP leadership and the White House that the mandate held the law together and forced everyone to pay into the pool and put "skin in the game." The law would have a death spiral if the mandate was eliminated.

Tax credits were expanded to buy healthcare and the "risk corridors" were shored up (in a dramatic reversal after the '14 Rubio amendment gutted the funding for them). Some parts of the law were curtailed - Medicare's expansion was allowed to stay, but with more stringent requirements for future beneficiaries and a work requirement attached (as well as vastly more leeway for the states). A pilot program for block grants to the states for Medicare was also worked in. But since RyanCare had failed in '17, the GOP didn't go too far on this front.

Obscure parts like mammography requirements and the like were gutted from the law (something the GOP crowed about). But in the end, the GOP spun it as a major conservative victory - but it was anything but. The Daily Kos crowed howled in outrage and Schumer came under heavy fire from the left - but it was kind of like the '11 budget deal that Obama had negotiated - the one where he got a budget deal that allegedly cut billions but really cut hundreds of millions of dollars. The Right roared in fury and threatened primary challenges all around. (Frankly, a paper tiger of a threat: most rank and file Republicans looked to the White House for guidance on nomination contests).

In the final vote, furious Republicans threatened to filibuster the law in the Senate and a significant segment of House Republicans voted no. So did some House Democrats, but nowhere as near as many. The law cleared the lower chamber 357-75 and 84-16, with both the Democratic leadership and the White House furiously lobbying.

Schumer walked away with most of the law intact, the GOP walked away with some reforms, and Obama saw a critical component of his legacy upheld.

EDIT 3/15/2017: Read this article for more interesting details.

[The_Doctor]

The opioid epidemic has hit my family like millions of others, so I'm excited to see what Trump/Pence does to stop it. Rubio is apparently pretending to be a Senator again and is making waves.

Yes - there is a major subtext here that will be addressed, regarding the opioid epidemic and how it has hit communities that largely voted Trump/Pence. I almost forgot about it but it will be a key subtext of 2020 or one of these under the radar issues.

Rubio features somewhat in the story I have in mind.

[The_Doctor]

Feedback welcome - have we covered immigration and the Wall in sufficient detail? (Yes there was a wall. Yes there was a restriction on legal immigration. Yes, there were deportations. No. It didn't cause as major a wave of outrage as you thought).

[The_Doctor]

Note: The next story will deal with the drug epidemic and why it matters for 2020. Then we do the 2020 showdown and then that puts 2020 into the history books (at least, in our timeline).  

The Dog That Didn't Bark: Immigration and the Wall

(May 2019) -- (Washington, D.C.) Liberals expected President Trump to receive heavy blowback on the wall and immigration restrictions upon becoming President. It never materialized to the level expected. The simple reason was that it was the dog that didn't bark. Donald Trump had campaigned explicitly on the wall all campaign long and won 46% of the vote based on it. Trump, at his convention speech, had called for restrictions on legal immigration, as a matter of fact. In short, the public knew that Trump had a definite position on this, knew that he would execute it, and knew he would honor logistical limits on immigration restrictions.

Start with what Trump did do. He built the wall or at least, significantly expanded on George W. Bush's wall that had been built during the 2000s. This was not a controversial move as fencing and walls were alongside the Mexico-U.S. border since the 1990s and earlier. The public may have disapproved of Trump doing it because of the connotations but the key blocs of Trump's support didn't oppose the idea.

Deportations began in Spring 2017 and continued into 2018 and 2019. President Obama had initiated the deportations and they just became more aggressive under President Trump. Most Americans were used to this by now and the Latino community, powerful as it was, was not yet electorally strong enough to prevent the deportations.

Second, the law that was enacted in 2017 that restricted legal immigration and limited HB-1 visas (to the outrage of Silicon Valley) was designed to deliver on the essential promise of restricting access to the pool of labor that native Americans were in and competed for jobs with. Of course, the whole move was freighted with the undertones of "others" coming to dominate America, which is why so many of Trump's supporters backed the law. Sharing that base of supporters included most of the Republican Congress. As a result, Congress limited legal immigration and funded the wall. (Mexico did not pay for it. We did). It was a law that Donald Trump signed with some apparent glee.

The Latino community was furious and outraged. The Republicans were impervious to it beyond those already reliant on them (or looking to secure their support in the future). The Trump Administration promised supporters that immigration reform would be on the docket in 2018, enabling Senators like Marco A. Rubio (R-Fla.) to support the President. Trump himself had won 29% of the Latino vote (or 26%, depending on who you asked), and his political base was in the very white Midwest, the I-4 corridor of Florida, and the rural and white suburbs of North Carolina. In short, the GOP pushed the law through with very little fear that their voting blocs would penalize them. The GOP also calculated (accurately) that their base would punish them if they didn't take punitive measures on immigration against the newcomers, so in a sense, fear became the great driver. The Republican Party had become a party that had gone from viewing the electorate in 10-20 year spans to fighting the 2018 and 2020 elections, and letting future generations of Republican leaders to litigate 2024 and 2028.

The Democrats, taking a strategic view, opposed the law. They understood well that this had the potential to lock in Latinos into the Democratic Party permanently (at least, for the next 20-30 years) and limit the GOP victories to 50-51% of the vote. The Democratic math was simple. Hold 35% to 40% of the white vote, swamp 90% of the black vote, take 65-70% of the Latino-Asian vote. But in the immediate future, where whites were projected to still be around 68% of the vote in 2020, the strategy merely limited the GOP vote rather than delivering majorities to the Democratic Party.

One part of the law had real world economic ramifications that had potential consequences. The HB-1 visa that allowed skilled foreigners to apply for technology visas to work in Silicon Valley was heavily restricted, in a bit of nativist nationalism. The result was that the technology sector was poised to take a hit around 2021-2022 as the brain pool shrunk.

The Republican strategists, after Trump's resignation, chose to shelve immigration reform for 2021. The waters were too troubled and the base highly restless after the implosion of the Trump Administration to risk another 2006 style showdown over immigration reform.

[The_Doctor]

Note: This is the last issue - oriented post before the 2020 elections coverage. After this, we'll be covering the 2020 presidential and congressional elections.

The GOP takes on the Opioid Epidemic

(February 2020) -- (Washington, D.C.) -- President Pence and the Republican Congressional majority took on the pressing issue of the opioid epidemic in February 2020. The political calculus was simple. The communities hit hardest by the epidemic had voted for Trump/Pence in 2016. The GOP signaled a willingness to take on the issue in 2016 when all the Republican presidential candidates talked about the drug epidemic.

It was a reflection of the time that there was no talk of jailing the drug users, as might have been the case during Reagan. Even as late as the second President Bush, the Republicans had been loath to embrace treatment as an option for drug addiction, rather than prison time. With a bevy of (largely) blue states legalizing marijuana and marijuana legalization support passing 55% in most polls, the GOP was loathe to return to the policies of the ‘80s. They could ill afford to alienate millennial voters who viewed the war on drugs as a failure and even less could they afford to alienate these small town voters who had swung GOP.

Sen. Marco A. Rubio (R-Fla.) took the lead on this issue, having made it a major centerpiece of his re-election victory. He proposed expanding funding to make naloxone available to communities, rehabilitation centers in rural areas, and to increase the number of treatment facilities as well as creating facilities to dispose of drugs. The GOP Senate also approved sentencing reform to divert those convicted of opioid abuse from prison and into treatment facilities. The GOP - led Senate, however, killed a proposal to decriminalize opioids, a remnant of their hostile opinion on drugs.

What the measure did not live up to be was a measure that amounted to criminal justice reform, either. The GOP hardliners and the reformers were split too deeply and the Majority Leader, McConnell, did not want to risk a disunited GOP front. With the elections of 2020 coming up, the GOP was intent to project a united front solving this critical issue.

Senate Democrats went along, since the drug epidemic was also a major issue in their communities. In the House, the measure cleared easily, as it had in the Senate. The President touted the measure and signed the legislation in spring 2020.

Voters largely credited the Republicans, who were in charge of Washington, for taking the lead on the measure (although many polls showed bipartisan credit being given). But the measure helped boost the President as he headed into a tight re-election fight.

[The_Doctor]

Any updates?

Sorry been busy. See above, there's a new article.   Tomorrow or Wednesday will be the Convention, Thursday the Fall 2020 article, Friday Election Night.

[The_Doctor]

I need a ghost writer. This will all equal 85 - 90 articles when done.

Can I be your ghost? Looking to get back into the game on here.

Sure, PM me. We can collaborate.

[The_Doctor]

How would the Sanders wing take control in 2024 when (presumably) Pence defeats Brown, a noted progressive, in 2020?

Can't comment as this would give away a lot of details.

[The_Doctor]

One last FoPo article, then the 2020 Convention. Then a fall article then Election Night 2020 tomorrow. I'll try to squeeze them all in by tomorrow night and we can begin the 2021-2025 term in short order.

[The_Doctor]

Note: A bit of a throwback but essential reading. Last throwback article and then we’ll move on to the GOP and Democratic Conventions in 2020. It’s a minor (relatively) story about how Trump disabled the North Korean nuclear regime and marks one of the few successes in the Trump era. It will be referenced by the 2020 GOP Convention so we should talk about it.  Yes, we’re retconning Giuliani and putting in Tillerson. Normally I wouldn't do that but Tillerson's unique background makes it hard to put in a politico like Giuliani.

Trump strikes at North Korea Regime; Disables Nuke Program

(October 2017) -- (Washington, D.C.) -- President Donald Trump struck at the North Korean regime in a surprise attack at dawn (Pyonyang time) and disabled the nuclear program that the regime had built. After months of warning and negotiations between the United States and China, the Americans had decided to unilaterally disarm Kim Jong-Un’s nuclear capabilities.

President Obama had advised his successor that the North Korean nuclear program would need to be seriously curtailed or else the region faced imminent danger. Soon after President Trump was inaugurated, the United States held high level secret talks with the People’s Republic of China. They put pressure on Beijing to rein in Pyonyang and to force Kim Jong-Un to dismantle his program. The Chinese stalled, angry at the United States’ economic retaliatory measures and for months, talks dragged out without resolution.

In early September, the National Security Council convened to draw up plans to take out the Korean nuclear missile program unilaterally. In a series of limited strikes, the United States would attack and take out North Korea’s missile program - the first time any military power had taken action against another military power for the express purpose of destroying its nuclear program. The President, not usually a man prone to military action despite all his bravado, approved the limited strikes and advised his Council that the Chinese would need to be onboard with the program.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson shuttled between Washington and Beijing, brokering a high level deal where the Chinese agreed to turn over intelligence regarding the program and to refuse to come to North Korea’s aid in the aftermath. In response, the United States would give in on key concessions regarding China’s dominance in the South Pacific. Japan’s Abe Shinzo was also appraised and signed off on the mission as did the South Korean government.  

In early October, the aircraft carrier USS Ronald Reagan was sent to the naval base in Yokosuka, Japan and prepared for the mission. In final secret negotiations, Kim Jong-Un refused to give up his nuclear warheads and Washington walked away. Believing that the talks would continue on the North Koreans were in the dark.

On the morning of October 12, 2017, U.S. bomber planes flew over the secret facilities and struck them, decisively and with precision. Before a single nuclear warhead could be fired, U.S. warplanes had taken out the facilities, rendering North Korea without the capabilities to take out South Korea or Japan. Shortly after the 8:00 bombing runs, the Chinese Ambassador to North Korea notified the government that China would not help in any retaliation against the United States - and indeed, were action to be taken to that end, China would respond with military action against the regime.

Furious, Kim Jong-Un tried to rally the military for an armed invasion of South Korea. But without the nuclear warheads and with the USS Reagan sitting offshore,  the regime’s leader was not in much of a position to argue. He reluctantly agreed, within 48 hours, to allow the United Nations to investigate freely any nuclear facility within the country, and to allow international inspectors free rein. The regime was seriously destabilized by the attack and Kim Jong-Un’s power was under siege. Within a few years, the North Korean regime would fall and Kim Jong-Un would be forced to flee overseas for his personal safety.

At home, the Trump Administration was applauded for its decisive action on the North Korean nuclear program. China, Russia, Japan, and South Korea all lauded the White House for decisively ending a threat to regional stability and for a time, the President would be praised as a decisive leader.