2024: The CHAOS Timeline

[Another Middling Leftist]

Hi everyone! With the middle east conflict spiraling towards the multi-front war I outlined in this timeline, I have lost my appetite for continuing this project. Instead, I would like to outline in bare bones form my sketch for 2024 (with maximum chaos, as befit the timeline's name).

• Trump cruises to the Republican nomination after a brief scare from Nikki Haley, who drops out after a dismal Super Tuesday performance. In the spring, Trump appears in a commanding position to win the White House over floundering Harris.
• The middle east conflict continues to widen, toppling heads of state in Jordan and Egypt. Threat of military intervention by Egypt's new dictator, Maj. General Emad Al-Ghazali, forces Israel to come to the negotiating table and prevents an all-out war in the middle east.
• No Labels declines to run a candidate, citing earlier statements that they would only participate in a Biden vs. Trump contest. Thus ends speculation that Joe Manchin would launch a third party bid, letting Democratic operatives breathe a massive sigh of relief.
• The first massively lethal wet bulb events devastates India. In May, in the midst of India's general elections, a heatwave of unprecedented magnitude suffocates a densely populated segment of the Ganges river valley. The strain of a million AC units crashes the power grid locally, killing hundreds of thousands of people in the unlivable mid-day heat.
• Rumors immediately circulate through Indian social media that devious Muslims and/or agents of Pakistan were responsible for the failure of the power grid. So begins a series of escalations between India and Pakistan that leads to war in June, a war that quickly becomes a massive nuclear exchange.
• President Harris stumbles to the nomination, despite unreasonably strong challenges from gadflies Williamson and Phillips and the horrors of nuclear war on the subcontinent. Efforts by elements of the party to airlift in alternatives like California Governor Newsom or Hillary Clinton are obviated by Harris's slim first ballot majority.
• President Harris is assassinated. The assassins are linked to Pakistani intelligence, who evidently blame the United States (and America's first Indian president) for failing to reign in Modhi's government. With Congress still not having approved her pick for Vice President, Speaker of the House Mark Green ascends to the White House, becoming the 48th President of the United States. Republicans now have a mere 1-vote majority in the House (until his successor arrives in Washington).
• The DNC selects Harris's running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, to lead the top of the ticket after her assassination. For his running mate, they pick former UN Ambassador Susan Rice.
• Donald Trump is found guilty on all charges in the DC 2020 election case. The Supreme Court takes until October to rule on all appeals, upholding the decision and affirming that per its ruling in Anderson v. Griswold, Trump is now ineligible to run for office due to having been found in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.
• The Trump-controlled RNC reacts to the ruling in the most baffling, yet simultaneously most on-brand way possible. Arguing that the ruling only effects his name appearing on ballots that voters will use and that electors can still vote for Trump if they choose, the party declines to pick a new nominee with only a few weeks left and instead goes all in on a "electors" strategy, working to convince Republican-controlled legislatures to appoint Trump-voting elector slates, whatever the outcome of the popular vote. This is, of course, in clear opposition to the recent SCOTUS ruling.
• There are no debates held between Trump, Walz, or high-polling RFK Jr. during the fall. Polling is extremely useless, but signs in the week before the election point to pending massive over-performances by every third party candidate with ballot access.
• The 2024 election produces a paradoxical result. Democratic candidate Tim Walz wins in an electoral landslide, despite receiving less than 50% of the popular vote. RFK Jr. is next best, easily clearing 33% nationally. And yet, the remaining 20% of the votes is split a million different ways, with Libertarian, Green, Constitution, and regional/state parties massively over-performing all historical records. Also, Donald Trump became the highest vote-getting write-in Presidential candidate in history. However, due to varying ballot access rules, the distribution of these third parties vote shares, and thus of the margin of Walz's victories, varied massively by state. 2024 is the strangest looking map since, perhaps, 1824.
• Despite Walz's crushing electoral victory, outside the Presidential ticket, Democrats massively underperformed. Harris was generally blamed for allowing a horrific nuclear exchange in Asia, one which killed millions, plunged the climate in crisis, the global food supply into famine, and the economy into shambles. Her getting assassinated hadn't done much to repair her image among voters. And so the Democratic Party was punished, badly. It probably did not help that most people thought Trump's strategy was a non-starter, and thus that there was no harm in splitting tickets between a Democratic president and Republican congress people. So the Democrats got washed, and the Republicans gained majorities in both chambers.
• The Republican strategy after the popular vote in November is simple. Get enough republican-controlled states to certify bogus/patriotic electors. Have the House recognize those electors. Then, with Walz's majority lost, have the House vote by state, in accordance with the 12th amendment, between Walz, RFK Jr, and Trump
• Did it work? Honestly, I hadn't decided yet. I was going to go really in-depth in all the results and then decide, based on who was elected, how Fraudulent Electors II: Electric Boogaloo was going to play out. What do you guys think would happen??

That really looked like a crazy timeline for 2024. Sad to see that you lost your appetite for this though I respect it.