The Virtuous Man

[Boobs]

Public Domain

   The days after election day passed by, with states gradually flipping in their county: Wisconsin on Thursday, while Arizona and Indiana (following the drop of absentee votes from Marion County) were called for Biden; on Friday, Louisiana was finally called for Trump, while Biden took a lead in Iowa, Missouri, and Kansas and being declared the winner in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Minnesota.

   By Saturday evening, nearly every state completed its count; Biden unthinkably carried 446 electoral votes - the largest victory since Ronald Reagan’s 1984 landslide reelection - while the President carried just 76, an incumbent’s worst performance since Jimmy Carter in 1980. Only Georgia and its 16 electoral votes remained in doubt, as counting in the state was still halted to a crawl. More than 2.5 million votes remained uncounted, more than half of the electorate, on Saturday night. Democrats criticized the Trump campaign, Governor Kemp and the state Secretary of State for a “near-criminal attempt to cast the results of the election in doubt,” while conservative commentators blamed “liberal Democrats in Fulton and DeKalb counties for sleeping on the job and trying to steal yet another election.” The delay in results also meant that crucial Senate races - both the regularly-scheduled and the special - were uncertain, and cut into the runoff campaign period.

   A photograph posted to Twitter claimed to have captured President Trump, pallid and lacking his usual color, walking absent-mindedly in pajamas by the fifth hole at Mar-A-Lago’s golf course at 2 AM. The White House attempted to deny that Trump was even in Florida, instead claiming that he was busy with a “national security issue” in the White House situation room. Eventually, more and more reports of Trump sightings around the Palm Beach resort; the President was described to be “depressed to the point of nonverbalness” by one guest at the resort, while staff said that the early Sunday morning photograph of Trump was the first time he had left his suite at the resort since arriving on Tuesday night.

   By Monday, a state court instructed Georgia’s counties to speed up their vote count, which most counties with votes remaining complied with. But the rest of the country was fixated on Biden’s landslide victory - what was believed to be a popular vote victory on the scale of 56% to Trump’s 43%, although votes were still being counted in Georgia and California, which, especially the latter, were expected to pad the Democrats’ lead. Secondarily was a massive turnout surge; national turnout increased to an estimated 62%, the first time turnout peaked above 60% since 1968 and the highest since the 1960 election. Twenty-one million more people voted in 2020 than in 2016. Trump was expected to beat his 2016 raw vote performance, but Biden’s gains among nonvoters and third-party voters greatly exceeded Trump’s gains. Third-party votes dropped precipitously - among Jorgensen, Hawkins, and Kanye, only three million cast their votes for someone other than the two parties, compared to the nearly 8 million such voters in 2016. Put most succinctly by Nate Cohn, “Biden made inroads with voters that many deemed too far gone for Democrats - turning out and persuading voters in places as disparate as northern rural Michigan and Wisconsin, the Ohio River Valley and southern Illinois, southern Colorado, places like Volusia County, Florida, and Luzerne County, Pennsylvania - while continuing to oversee the transformation of longtime Republican suburbs over to the Democratic Party in places such as Texas, Arizona, and Kansas. Even if he didn’t win all of them over, he posted the best margins with these voters in over a decade. He captured the moment - that the American people wanted a semblance of stability, and that Trump was the candidate of not change, but chaos. As a whole, Biden had built the broadest Democratic coalition since LBJ’s landslide victory in 1964.”

   Once again, people cast doubt on polling and the media, that polling this time underestimated Democratic support and, more dramatically, turnout, and that the media’s obsession with a horse race led them to miss or ignore the obvious signs of a changing electorate. Many of Biden’s doubters and detractors - on both sides of the political aisle - were curiously silent. Even the accusations of a “stolen election” subsided, as the size of the Biden victory was too large and too confirmatory that even illegal actions could not reverse it.

   By the end of the week, all votes were said to be tabulated. Biden easily carried Georgia, helping pull Jon Ossoff into the Senate without a runoff, while Reverend Raphael Warnock and  incumbent Senator Kelly Loeffler were headed to a runoff in January. In California, Democratic unseated McClintock and Garcia, and defeated Issa in their House races, while Biden’s national popular vote lead was boosted further: in the end, the Biden-Harris ticket received 90,071,071 votes (57.09%) while Trump-Pence received 64,593,491 (40.94%). It was the largest number of votes ever recorded in an election, the largest number of votes a ticket has gotten in a single election, and the largest non-incumbent Democratic victory since FDR’s 1932 landslide election.

   In the meanwhile, owing to Trump’s absence (and silence), Vice President Mike Pence convinced the Cabinet to invoke Article 4 of the 25th Amendment, to which they complied - making Pence Acting President for the foreseeable future.

[Roll Roons]

A good picture of Trump:

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

Loving this timeline! Are you going to post a map of the presidential election results?

[Blackacre]

Utah/Missouri/Indiana going blue while Louisiana/Mississippi/Tennessee stay red probably hurts Schumer's soul a little. How'd the Senate races go for people like Al Gross in Alaska and Jamie Harrison in South Carolina?

This looks like it's probably the map BTW, though I could be wrong

https://www.270towin.com/maps/P7WLr

[Boobs]

United States Elections, 2020
November 3rd, 2020


Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Kamala D. Harris - 90,071,071 (57.09%) - 462 EV
Donald J. Trump and Michael R. Pence -  64,593,491 (40.94%) - 76 EV




Democratic Party - 57 Seats (+10)
Republican Party - 42 Seats (-11)
Runoff - 1



Democratic Party - 274 Seats (+39)
Republican Party - 161 Seats (-38)

EDIT: house map is missing Dem flips in NE-02 and AR-02. Sorry.

[S019]

Poor Collin Peterson, also Jones probably survives in this scenario


Anyways, great timeline and excited to see the Biden administration

[OBD]

Blue Linn = NUT

Also, Unbeatable Titan Jaime Herrera-Beutler .-.

[Boobs]

Public Domain

       The Acting Presidency of Mike Pence began officially on the evening of Friday, November 13th. By the start of the next week, the media reaction was decidedly mixed - Tucker Carlson said that Pence “is a Democrat puppet and a traitor to the millions of Americans who voted for Trump as President,” while Megyn Kelly applauded Pence’s “rightful actions to restore stability,” and Joy Ann Reid joked that “if Pence really cared about restoring the Presidency to someone qualified, he’d resign and let Nancy Pelosi take over.” Pence promised that the next two months would be “a time to ensure that Americans continue to recover from the COVID-19 epidemic,” and that he “would work with President-elect Joe Biden to make certain of a seamless transition to help Americans and their families.”

       The last assertion inspired rage in some commentators, particularly those of Fox and Friends - having long peddled the theory that Democrats were rigging the election or outright stealing, they were shocked to see Pence so casually concede defeat to Biden, especially as Trump had not yet conceded. A clip of Michigan Governor, and Democrat, Gretchen Whitmer from Election Day confidently stating that the Democratic ticket would carry the state was shared on the program and on Twitter as evidence that the Democrats stole victory in Michigan and elsewhere. Clearly, their comments were heard as Trump - who had been said to have recovered somewhat within the following week - tweeted that “Pence’s power grab is illegal! I am still President and will be returning to Washington shortly!” followed by “I should have told Pence ‘You’re Fired’ instead of listening to my campaign manager.”

       Legal scholars debated whether Trump’s tweet constituted a written transmission of his capacity to be President, and thus triggering a second meeting of the Cabinet to determine his eligibility. Ultimately, the Clerk of the Supreme Court, Scott S. Harris, issued a declaration that a Tweet was not legally binding for the purpose of declaring capacity to be President, and that Trump would have to send a signed letter to the Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate in order to trigger the four-day period.

       Trump did so upon his arrival in Washington D.C. on Tuesday, November 17th. The next four days were filled with furious lobbying of Cabinet members by both Trump and Pence; ultimately, in the early morning of Saturday the 21st, the principal officers of the Cabinet voted 12-2 that Trump was not capable of executing the office, with only Attorney General Bill Barr and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson dissenting in favor of the President. [DHS Secretary Chad Wolf excused himself from voting in recognition of his capacity as an Acting Secretary.] Leaked staff dialogues revealed that Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, wife of outgoing-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, spearheaded the Cabinet’s support of Pence. The Cabinet sent its decision to the Congress, where the two houses had three weeks to schedule a vote on the retention of Pence as Acting President, requiring a two-thirds vote in both the House and the Senate in order to maintain him - otherwise Trump would be restored as President.

       Trump, who had been barred from entering the White House by Pence, invited Republican Senators and Representatives to his suite at the Trump International Hotel in Washington, DC, where he was staying, in order to lobby for their support. However, he found it much more difficult to work with the Congress with only his most loyal advisors - Ivanka and Jared Kushner - assisting him, rather than the bureaucratic arm of the West Wing. Nancy Pelosi scheduled a vote for December 5th, with McConnell issuing a statement saying that the Senate would vote a week later, December 12th, the last possible constitutionally-mandated day.

       Trump and Pence both whipped votes for their sides, trying to convince both Republicans and Democrats. Implicitly, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy implied that he would be supporting Pence’s retention as Acting President. Eventually, after trying to work over the Thanksgiving holiday, Trump saw that his attempt to return to the Presidency would be too difficult of a task for what would effectively be little over a month of a lame duck period. Trump issued a statement that he would resign as President, effective December 1st at midnight. Mike Pence was officially sworn in as the 46th President of the United States.

[Boobs]

CC Kjetil Ree 2007

   Whilst Trump and Pence battled for control of the Presidency, the Biden team prepared for a transition, with first and foremost building a cabinet. Senator Harris tendered her resignation from the Senate on Wednesday, November 25th, and California Governor Gavin Newsom appointed former Oakland Mayor Jean Quan to serve the rest of the term, having promised to serve only as a placeholder and not run for a full term. Newsom’s move was criticized by some who had hoped he would select a Latino candidate, but this criticism was tempered by Quan’s promise to serve a single term. Others said that Quan’s proprietorship of a marijuana dispensary may be a legal issue. Kamala Harris, however, praised Newsom’s selection, saying she is “proud that my hometown of Oakland continues to be a source of inspiration for young women everywhere.”

   The first initial reveal of Biden’s White House was that Ron Klain, Biden former Vice Presidential Chief of Staff, would assume the position of Chief of Staff. Similarly, early rumours were confirmed that Biden would nominate Susan Rice, a former National Security Advisor and possible running mate for Biden, to be his Secretary of State. Other choices revealed in late November: former Biden primary opponent Pete Buttigeg would serve as Ambassador to the United Nations, defeated Senator Doug Jones of Alabama would be the administration’s Attorney General, and that former Indiana state Superintendent of Education Glenda Ritz would be nominated to head the Department of Education, a move applauded by most teachers’ unions. Alejandro Mayorkas, a former Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, was selected to lead the department he had once deputized.

   On December 2nd, Oregon Senator Jeff Merkeley, joined by Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, declared that State nominee Susan Rice was an unacceptable choice due to her longstanding investments in oil and gas, as he claimed that “climate change is an international issue, and the Secretary of State needs to be someone we can trust to fight for our environment. Susan Rice is not that person.” Commentators implied that this speaking out was an attempt by the progressive wing of the Democratic Party to flex its power. But it was reported that private conversations between Biden and Democratic incoming Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that ultimately pushed Biden toward picking a different candidate, as Schumer urged Biden to not try to get bogged down in any unnecessary fights as the Congress will want to maximize time to pass legislation. Ultimately, Biden acquiesced, and Rice withdrew her name from the nomination on December 10th.

   Aside from the dissent against Rice, the progressive wing found several allies in Biden’s prospective cabinet. One such example being Biden’s nominee to head the Office of Management and Budget, Vermont state Treasurer and Sanders ally and endorser Beth Pearce, which signalled to many that Biden was “willing and planning to be a transformational President,” as described by Vox’s Ezra Klein, while Joy Ann Reid hailed him as “the 21st century’s FDR.” This sentiment was further confirmed when Biden announced Sarah Bloom Raskin would be nominated to the position of Secretary of the Treasury. Firebrand Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez called Bloom Raskin’s nomination “a victory for fighters against income inequality and economic injustice everywhere.”

   Biden further announced his intentions to nominate former Kentucky Governor Steve Beshear to head the Department of Health and Human Services, calling his performance on expanding Medicaid in Kentucky “nothing short of superb” and that he is “sure that Governor Beshear will be an invaluable ally in healthcare reform.” To head the Department of Energy, Biden tapped New York Representative Paul Tonko, the former head of the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority and chair of the House Energy Subcommittee on Environment and Climate Change. And for Defense, Biden selected Tonko’s fellow Upstate New Yorker, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, to serve as his Secretary of Defense, a position she lobbied with Biden’s team for many months. Biden called Gillibrand “razor sharp and tough as nails,” and “someone who will be a key figure on being tough on China.” Joining Gillibrand in the sphere of foreign policy is William Joseph Burns, Biden’s second proposed nominee for Secretary of State. Burns’s nomination roused high praise from almost everyone, and he was nearly universally described as “one of the most competent, qualified diplomats to head the State Department.”

   As promised on the campaign trail, Biden nominated a Republican to serve in his cabinet, tapping former Pennsylvania congressman Charlie Dent, who endorsed Biden in 2020, to lead as the Secretary of Commerce. Additionally, Biden nominated another former Pennsylvania Republican, Brian Fitzpatrick, to be his Ambassador to Russia.

   Finally, Biden revealed his intention to transform the Environmental Protection Agency into a formal Department, in what will be called the Department of the Ecology, which will absorb the EPA as well as several agencies and sub-departments from the Departments of Commerce, Interior and Energy, in a bill that will be passed at the start of the next Congress. Biden said he will nominate Washington Governor and prominent environmental policy buff Jay Inslee to serve as the first Secretary of the Ecology. Biden also nominated Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow to head the Department of Agriculture, Columbia Law School Dean Gillian Lester to be the Secretary of Labor, Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority General Manager Leslie Richards to lead Transportation, former Fish and Wildlife Service Director Jamie Rappaport Clark as Secretary of the Interior, Executive Director of the National Association of Minority Contractors - Oregon Chapter and Portland Housing Bureau commissioner Nate McCoy at HUD, and former Congresswoman and veteran Tulsi Gabbard as Veterans’ Affairs Secretary.

Overall, Biden's Cabinet-level positions were perfectly gender balanced, with the largest number of women in Cabinet positions in history so far.



The Proposed Biden Cabinet:

State: William Joseph Burns
Defense: Kirsten Gillibrand
Treasury: Sarah Bloom Raskin
Justice: Doug Jones
Agriculture: Debbie Stabenow
HHS: Steve Beshear
Ecology: Jay Inslee
Commerce: Charlie Dent
Energy: Paul Tonko
Transportation: Leslie Richards
HUD: Nate McCoy
Labor: Gillian Lester
Education: Glenda Ritz
Homeland Security: Alejandro Mayorkas
Interior: Jamie Rappaport Clark
VA: Tulsi Gabbard

Chief of Staff: Ron Klain
UN Amb: Pete Buttigieg
Office of Management and Budget : Beth Pearce
Trade Representative: Ursula Burns
CIA Director: Stephanie O’Sullivan
Director of National Intelligence: William McRaven
SBA Administrator: Andrew Yang

Ambassador to China: Ron Kirk
Ambassador to Russia: Brian Fitzpatrick
Ambassador to Israel: Elliot Engel
Ambassador to NATO: Ann Rondeau
Ambassador to Japan: Niki Tsongas
Ambassador to New Zealand: Marianne Williamson

[KaiserDave]

Good job Bernard and Elizabeth!!!

Gabbard blegh

[America Needs R'hllor]

Good job Bernard and Elizabeth!!!

Gabbard blegh

Seems like mostly Jeffrey and Charles

Great cabinet!

[John King wannabe]

I imagine a Kamala-Tulsi staredown in all of the cabinet meetings tbh

[Boobs]

CC Department of the Interior 2009

   Late December proved to be high time for the incoming Senate class, as the previously-hypothetical debate on filibuster repeal now substantiated itself. Chuck Schumer, the leader of the Senate Democrats, and incoming Majority Leader, announced that he would be supporting a repeal on filibuster rules, calling them “antiquated, harming the legislative process and hurting American families,” and that he would be whipping votes in favor of repeal. The balance of the Senate stood at 54 Democrats, 42 Republicans, 3 Independents who caucused with Democrats, and the Class III seat in Georgia, which would be determined in the January 5th runoff between Raphael Warnock and Kelly Loeffler. Schumer’s goal was 51 Senators in favor of repeal, which would mean he could afford 6 of his caucus to defect and defy the party line. Almost immediately, West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, the most moderate Democrat in the Senate, announced he would be voting to keep the filibuster. Political commentators said that there were ten other moderate Democrats to watch for possible defections: Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, Colorado’s John Hickenlooper and Michael Bennet, Delaware’s Tom Carper and Chris Coons, Texas’s MJ Hegar, Kansas’s Barbara Bollier, California’s Dianne Feinstein, Alaska’s Al Gross, and Maine’s Angus King. As long as Schumer is able to keep half of those from voting to keep the filibuster, his reform should pass without major issue.

   As the Senate filibuster debate was being waged, both parties’ operatives looked to Georgia and its Senate runoff election. The Republicans were hoping to save the furniture after a monumental defeat in November, and Kelly Loeffler promised to spend $100 million of her own money over the two month span in order to win. Democrats sought to expand their Senate majority, and smelled blood in the water when Loeffler edged out fellow Republican, Representative Doug Collins, for the second place in the runoff. In fact, the relationship between Loeffler and Collins had not recovered, and Collins refused to endorse Loeffler in the runoff, calling her a “phoney and a fraud” who “doesn’t represent real Georgia.” Particularly difficult for Collins to accept was the slim margin between himself and Loeffler - he received approximately 24% of the vote in November to Loeffler’s 27% (Warnock received 35%).

   Curiously, the Great America PAC, which supported Collins, continued to run attack ads against Loeffler. The incumbent Senator had Governor Brian Kemp campaign for her, while she particularly lacked national Republican figures to visit Georgia - with none of the obvious candidates - Donald Trump, Mike Pence, Mitch McConnell - being especially popular or disposed to campaign. Only Ivanka Trump, former President Trump’s daughter, appeared on the campaign trail with Loeffler, with some commentators speculating that this was a dry run for a potential Ivanka presidential run in 2024.

   Democratic politicians flooded Georgia in the two months following the general elections - obviously Joe Biden and Kamala Harris visited, but so did South Carolina’s Senator-elect Jaime Harrison. Prominent Georgia politicians, like Senator-elect Jon Ossoff and Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, campaigned for Warnock, as did Stacey Abrams. Democrats were desperate to avoid the vote dropoff in the runoff that had previously plagued their attempts at winning statewide office.

   In weeks leading up to the new year, Democrats’ fortunes in the quest to repeal the filibuster oscillated; Kamala Harris’s tête-a-tête with DIanne Feinstein convinced the Senator to support repeal, and she joined Barbara Bollier, Michael Bennet, and Chris Coons to announce their support. However, maverick Senator Sinema bucked the party line and announced she will not be supporting the motion. Independents Gross and King also issued statements saying that they will not vote to repeal the filibuster. On CNN on December 30th, Texas Senator-elect MJ Hegar said that she “doesn’t believe the first action of the new Congress should be to destroy political norms,” and that she is “gonna hold Washington accountable, gonna hold Schumer accountable, and gonna fight for the people of Texas.”

   It all boiled down to John Hickenlooper, who had previously commented he would support changing Senate rules for special circumstances. But he said he is “grappling with current discourse, lots of people saying that you can’t unring that bell. It’s a serious thing and it’s worth taking time to decide what’s the best course of action.”

   Schumer’s first act at the opening of the new Congress on January 3rd was to bring Senate rules debate to a vote, convinced that he had adequately persuaded Hickenlooper to vote for repeal. However, his instincts were proven wrong when Hickenlooper, who voted fairly on, voted against repeal, prompting Washington Senator and Majority Whip Patty Murray to call for a motion to table the vote, which passed.

   The Georgia Senate runoff election was reported to have broken records for a runoff in Georgia, with some of the highest early voting turnout coming from Atlanta’s suburban counties. However, the vote dropoff in northern Georgia proved to be significant. Ultimately, Warnock defeated Loeffler by a margin of three and a half percent, fueled by a strong performance in the Atlanta metro and high African-American turnout.

   Schumer got Warnock seated as soon as the election was verified by Saturday, and Warnock’s vote was the 51st vote in favor of eliminating the Senate filibuster.

[Boobs]

CC Anthony Quintano 2013

   As the week leading up to Inauguration Day opened up, the Biden team announced it would be a smaller but still public ceremony, with the front steps of the Capitol being reserved only for Biden’s family, Harris’s family, the President and First Lady, and Chief Justice John Roberts. On the National Mall, chairs will be placed socially distanced up to the Washington monument, with clusters of seats for groups or families, as well as projector screens set up. Masks will be required, and only a limited number of people will be allowed to attend on a first-come-first-serve basis.

   Meanwhile, in the House of Representatives, Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy announced he would be stepping down from his position, citing that “the Republican Party needs to take a new direction, and thus it needs a new leader,” with many pundits citing the caucus’s disastrous performance in November, being reduced to its smallest size since the 1978 midterm election. House Minority Whip Steve Scalise was widely expected to succeed McCarthy, however, he announced he would not contest the race for Leader, instead choosing to stay on as the party whip. Politico reported that Scalise staffers expressed that the Congressman was not optimistic on the party’s chances in the 2022 midterms, and that he would not want to lead through a Republican party loss, lest he be tossed out before he ever has a chance to become Speaker.

   Instead, the open field prompted a wide range of Congressmen to take a chance on the leadership. Ohio’s Jim Jordan was the first to announce his intention to run, followed quickly by Wyoming’s Liz Cheney. The field grew to include Louisiana’s Mike Johnson, Illinois’s Adam Kinzinger, and Washington’s Cathy McMorris Rodgers. Bookies heavily favored Cheney to become the new leader, although the mechanics of inner party politics meant the process was rather obscured from public view. After a few days of deliberation, the final two candidates, neither of whom have yet received a majority of Representatives’ votes, were Kinzinger and Johnson, much to the shock of beltway pundits. Kinzinger was purported to run on a “softer conservatism”, claiming that “the path to a House majority runs through Biden-won districts, like [his] own,” whereas Johnson was reaffirming commitment to a “truly conservative populism”. McCarthy refused to comment on the state of the caucus, saying both men were “outstanding candidates,” while former Speaker Paul Ryan took a more open position, outwardly supporting Kinzinger, whom he called an “American hero.” Ultimately, Johnson came out victorious, and many credited his skill at so-called backroom politics, such as his election as the chair of the Republican Study Committee and popularity among the House Freedom Caucus.

   But even the dramatic power struggles within the Republican caucus could not distract from the upcoming inauguration of Joe Biden as the 47th President of the United States of America. On that frosty Wednesday morning, after swearing in on the Bible, Biden began his speech, which would talk about American hope and possibilities, and the process of rebuilding a country and a nation.

   “Vice President Harris, Mr. Chief Justice, and the people of these United States:

   This inauguration, this transition of power, is not a catalyst of change but a result of it. Our country is in one of its darkest and most precipitous chapters, and we are still not on the other side of tragedy. But we do now see that there is light at the end of this darkness, the solemnly joyous rays of the breakthrough of dawn.

   The remarkable quality of the American people is that they have never needed a Moses to guide them out of their Egypt. They themselves are the guides of their destiny, as they are believers in the idea of America, the most powerful idea in the world. To know and believe in that idea - the ideas of democracy, equality, equity, righteousness - to believe is to speak directly to G-d. [...]”

[Boobs]

CC Gage Skidmore 2020

   Joe Biden’s ambitious governing agenda hinged on the President’s success in the first 100 days of his administration. Coming into office with an approval rating of 60% - low in the broad history of presidential “honeymoon” periods, but incredibly high considering the evolution of the political climate - the proposed hustle and bustle of the Biden agenda stood in contrast to the remarkable calmness that had settled over Washington, D.C. The nation’s capitol had still not fully recovered from the flooding resulting from Hurricane Rene, but, blanketed under a clean snow, it appeared to be far too serene.

   While President Biden was determined to have his Cabinet nominees confirmed as soon as possible - “so they can start working for the American people” - Senate norms were degraded to the point where the experience of Barack Obama, six of whose Cabinet nominations were unanimously confirmed by a voice vote on Inauguration Day, was more of a fantasy than a way forward. However, as a courtesy out of respect for their colleagues, the Republican caucus announced they would be open to supporting a unanimous voice vote for Senator Debbie Stabenow (for the position of Agriculture Secretary) and former Senator Doug Jones (for the position of Attorney General), while specifically not extending that privilege to Senator Kirsten Gillibrand (for the position of Defense Secretary). Stabenow announced her resignation immediately before the vote for her confirmation on January 21st, and swore in to her new position. The Senate also voted near-unanimously to confirm William Burns for State and Charlie Dent for Commerce. Gillibrand, Raskin (for Treasury), and Beshear (for Health and Human Services) were confirmed on party-line votes by the end of the week, and the rest of the Cabinet (save for Inslee, whose Department was yet to be created) would be confirmed by March in a variety of majority votes.

   In the Oval Office, Biden set to work on a non-legislative relief plan, first signing Executive Order #13791, which cancelled $10,000 in federal student loans for anyone who had attended a public or historically Black college or university or 100% of federal student loans for those with family incomes less than $125,000 in the most recent reporting year, and #13792, which reverses Trump’s controversial “Muslim ban” order and ceased and cancelled any construction plan for a border wall, in his first evening in office. Biden intended his first executive order to come into effect in conjunction with an updated HEROES Act, now extending unemployment benefits once again and giving a universal basic stimulus of $1,800 per person. Additionally, Biden announced the formation of the President’s Economic Recovery Strategy Board, taking a page from the early days of the Obama Administration, which will be a council of political, business, and economic thought leaders on developing policies and strategies for the economic recovery from the COVID pandemic. The PERSB is to be chaired by Vice President Kamala Harris, and included leaders such as Janet Yellen, Christina Romer, Joseph Stigliz, Anthony Fauci, Cecilia Rouse, Mary Barra, Ai-jen Poo, Charles Moorman, among others.

   The successful nominations of Senators Stabenow and Gillibrand caused vacancies in the Senate; Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer appointed her state Federal Affairs Director, Patty Readinger, to serve as Senator until a special election will be held in 2022, while New York Governor Andrew Cuomo appointed Representative for the 18th Congressional District Sean Patrick Maloney to the Senate. Additionally, Cuomo scheduled the special elections for the 18th and 20th Congressional districts to occur on May 11th, with parties to select candidates through their own nominating processes.

   Congress set about to pass the HEROES Act on January 30th, sending it to Biden’s desk for approval, becoming the first major bill of Biden’s administration. It was followed soon by the bill creating the Department of the Ecology, which passed the House easily and the Senate on a party-line vote, except with Manchin, Sinema, and Hegar voting against; later on, Manchin would also cast the sole Democratic vote against Inslee’s confirmation as the first Secretary of the Ecology.

   The Democrats set their eyes on healthcare reform, which some pundits lamented as a poisoned chalice for the party, having squandered much of their political capital in 2009 on it. However, others stated that the fight for expanding government healthcare coverage in 2021 was an easier beast to tackle, with Democrats having killed the filibuster and now having a few votes to spare. Biden’s legislative team worked closely with Representatives Lisa Blunt Rochester (DE-AL) and Matt Cartwright (PA-08), who authored the Protect and Expand Affordable Care Act (PEACA), which set out an ambitious plan. First and foremost, the bill sought to create a public option for Medicaid, removing the income cap for ACA premium tax credits, lowering the maximum cost of coverage to 7.5% of income, automatically enrolling everyone earning at 150% or less of the federal poverty line with premium-free coverage, ending surprise billing, and implementing price ceilings and automatic triggering of the Defense Production Act for prescription drugs. PEACA was mostly a slightly more ambitious plan that the one Biden campaigned on - dubbed a “partial but major win for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party” in Vox’s analysis of the bill - but it seemed to not be enough for the Squad of progressive Democratic representatives in the House. In the days following the introduction of PEACA (or “Bidencare”), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, Mondaire Jones, Jamaal Bowman, Ilhan Omar, and Cori Bush coauthored and introduced the Medicare for All bill, dubbed “AOCare”, meant to be a “competing plan for real universal healthcare, rather than just a facade”, as described by Representative Ocasio-Cortez.

   In mid-February, the House adopted the Speier-Seikaly Amendment, which sought to reconcile some of the progressive concerns about the PEACA, such as replacing premium tax credits with automatic subsidies, increasing automatic enrollment to 200% of the federal poverty income line, and further lowering the maximum cost of coverage to 5% of income. The House further adopted the DeFazio Amendment on February 27th, which created a single-payer prescription drug insurance program named MediPay. With the Medicare for All bill dead in committee, Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that the House will schedule a final vote on PEACA on March 15th, with most of the media expecting the bill to pass easily based on the size of the Democratic majority in that chamber.

   Republican Minority Leader Mike Johnson took to Fox News lamenting that “the socialist strain of the Democrat Party has taken full hold, and Nancy Pelosi is going to ram through a bill that will destroy healthcare in this country.” Both President Biden and Vice President Harris applauded the bill as well as its amendments, calling them “bold, common-sense solutions that will put more money back in the pockets of Americans while ensuring they’re healthier by the day.”

   Ultimately, the amended Protect and Expand Affordable Care Act passed the House  easily, with every member of the Democratic caucus showing up to vote for the monumental bill: it passed on a vote of 267-164 - gaining the support of Reps. Pressley, Jones and Bowman but also losing the vote of Representative Henry Cuellar (TX-28) - hilariously dubbed an “honorary member of the Squad” of Ocasio-Cortez, Bush, Omar, and Tlaib due to his similar votes in opposition to the Democrats’ signature bill. The bill was now headed to the Senate, where it was expected its passage would be more difficult than through the House, although Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that “the bill will pass - [he] will make sure of it even if it's the last vote of [his] career.”

[Boobs]

Senate Democrats 2020

   In mid-March, the President and the Congress came to a crossroads when their priorities seemed to be unaligned. Biden believed that the COVID-19 economic recovery was not yet complete nor fully funded, while the House sought to pass the For the People Act, a bill introduced in the previous session with the intent of reforming campaign finance laws, implementing a more stringent code of government ethics, ensuring voting rights and limiting partisan gerrymandering, as well as bills intended on turning the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico into states. The New York Times ran a piece asking if Biden’s administration had already been derailed within its first fifty days.

   Biden’s legislative agenda included a “Buy American” provision for federal contractors, a future tariff on foreign state-owned industries aimed at curbing Chinese imports, a Post Office reform, banking, and funding bill, a paid sick and maternity/paternity leave bill, the creation of a Public Health Service Corps, and a green energy, manufacturing, and transportation stimulus bill.

   Secretary of Education Glenda Ritz announced that, in conjunction with the President’s Economic Recovery Strategy Board, the Department of Education has an official strategy for national public school reopening and offered an education “moonshot” in the vein of what happened under board member and New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham’s administration: a massive investment for public school teacher salary increases, school building refurbishments, guaranteed free lunch and breakfast programs, funding for vocational and professional training classes, and incentives for lengthened school days. Ecology Secretary Jay Inslee announced the administration’s plans for reversing Trump’s executive orders and decisions regarding public lands, drilling, and other such environmental decisions. Instead, Inslee announced that the administration would support stronger regulations on environmental runoff and industrial pollution. And Attorney General Doug Jones announced the intended prosecution of former Trump-era Acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf for abuses of power as well as allowing undocumented immigrants detained in family separation facilities to file civil suits for damages.

   In the Senate, capitol hill gossip reported that Majority Leader Schumer wanted a “united front” by Democrats on the vote on the Protect and Expand Affordable Care Act, and intended to get every Senator to vote in favor of it. Unsurprisingly, there was no chance of any Republicans to vote in favor, even though Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski went through the motions of being undecided, but she declared her opposition in late March. Schumer’s presumably toughest challenge - convincing Senator Manchin - when he said he saw “no problem at all” with the bill in a TV interview with Anderson Cooper on April 2nd. Slowly but surely, Schumer and Majority Whip Dick Durbin had gotten many of the freshmen senators to support the groundbreaking healthcare bill, which guaranteed the bill’s passage, but still one obstacle was in the way of Schumer’s goal: maverick Senator Kyrsten Sinema.

   Sinema remained aloof for weeks, keeping her vote close to her chest in an attempt to coax out a potential sweetheart deal for Arizona, which never came. Ultimately, when push came to shove, Sinema cast the 58th vote in favor of the Democratic healthcare bill, and on April 26th the bill was signed into law by President Biden.

   In the meanwhile, state governments similarly worked furiously in the first few months of 2021 - particularly those with new Democratic trifectas in Minnesota, North Carolina, and Wisconsin, while those with newly divided governments, like Texas, Florida, and Arizona became battlegrounds between Republican governors and Democratic legislators, who saw many of their bills die or get vetoed. In Wisconsin, Governor Tony Evers signed into law the repeal of the 2015 Wisconsin Act 1, which established “right to work” laws in the state, as well as expanding Medicaid early in the term - something that was repeated in North Carolina and Kansas. In Texas, the State Senate voted down the House’s Medicaid expansion bill, while Governor Greg Abbott said he’d be “skeptical” of any bill that passes the Democratic-controlled chamber.

   At the end of April, and Biden’s first 100 days, the President’s job approval sat at a solid 57%. Tucker Carlson skewered Biden for his “academic liberal” agenda, but also set his sights on the “aimless” Republicans, who, without a unified voice, have given Biden “free rule over the political discourse.” Other conservatives journalists also criticized Minority Leader Mike Johnson’s “anonymous and weak leadership”, although Johnson pointed to Pelosi’s “unconstitutional railroading of the minority party” but also said he was “optimistic” Republican candidates in the upcoming special elections in New York would “show that the party is far from dead”, travelling to Newburgh to campaign for Rob Astorino, the Republican candidate in the Eighteenth district.

   As the month of May approached, the Oxford vaccine, having been proposed to be released in the summer of 2021, was officially ready for public release. Earlier in the year, the Biden administration’s vaccine stockpile plan was put into action, and the President, along with Dr. Anthony Fauci, announced the distribution plan of the vaccine, and stated that they expected that an overwhelming majority of Americans should be vaccinated by mid-June.

[Boobs]

CC Bublegun 2010

   On May 6th, President Biden, Vice President Harris, the First Lady and the Second Gentleman were publicly vaccinated for COVID-19 by Dr. Fauci in an event that was described as a “cringey but cute stunt” by Twitter pundits. In a speech following the vaccination, Biden announced that “the end of the pandemic is near, but the road to recovery is still ahead of us,” and implied that the next few weeks will be “full of opportunities for the American people.”

   However, the next morning, Friday, May 7th, was scheduled for the President’s first international trip, which was to visit Canada. Biden and Secretary of State William Burns headed to New York City’s Grand Central Terminal and boarded an Amtrak train headed for Canada aboard what was dubbed by the media as “Rail Force One”, a modified train car for the President and his staff, although Biden spent a decent part of the 11-hour train journey along the Amtrak Adirondack line speaking with passengers. Biden, Burns and their staff arrived in Montreal to meet with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, and other members of the cabinet. Biden and Trudeau spoke on the “importance of rebuilding the friendship between the United States and Canada,” and Biden was described as gaffing when he said that “America and Canada are sister republics,” despite Canada still being a constitutional monarchy.

   While Biden was spending the weekend in Canada, Vice President Harris worked closely with Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Schumer in order to work through the President’s education initiative, with reports revealing that Harris “stressed she wanted to make sure it passes quickly so that the new school year goes off without a hitch,” while Pelosi explained that members of the House caucus were worried about funding and a potential tax hike. Hill gossip reported that the Vice President was rather unhappy about that, and claimed that “the House majority is large enough to move beyond these concerns.”

   On Biden’s return trip from Montreal on Monday, May 10th, he stopped in Albany and Poughkeepsie to campaign for Democratic candidates in the special congressional elections - former U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York Richard Hatunian in NY-20 and State Senator Pete Harckham in NY-18. A Trafalgar poll published earlier in the month had Republican nominee Rob Astorino leading Harckham 41-40, strengthening Republicans’ hopes to recover in this Trump-Biden district, although this narrative was contradicted by Monmouth polls showing Harckham up 8, 51-43, and Hatunian leading Republican Rensselaer County legislator Kenneth Herrington  57-39 in the Albany-based district.

   Upon Biden’s arrival back to Grand Central Station, he announced his plan for rebuilding American infrastructure, particularly on railroad. Biden said “it’s time for making our country more connected. It’s time for a high speed rail system between the nation’s great cities. It’s time for increasing the density of the rail network, to reduce our reliance on cars and to turn to green transportation. It’s time to bring back American jobs, using American steel, to get Americans moving again!”

   Democrats won both special elections - with NY-20 going for Hatunian by a 59-41 margin, and NY-18 by a smaller 53-47 margin for Harckham. The media’s post-mortem stated that it was “going to be tough seeing a Republican path to a House majority if they can’t win seats that were won by Donald Trump fiver years before,” and Politico reported that many Republican donors were unhappy with the performance of Minority Leader Mike Johnson, and that they hope he “could try to restore confidence in the Republican Party as a political force,” although they “weren’t optimistic.”

   Over the next few months, a slow but steady stream of significant bills reached the President’s desk, many of them among his priorities; the Public Education Reinvestment Act on May 28th, the Small Business Relief and Buy American Act on June 11th, the Bring Back Unions Act (which, in addition to other actions, repealed the Taft-Hartley Act) on June 18th, and a green energy subsidy on June 20th.

   The Centers for Disease Control reported on July 1st that 90.3% of Americans had been vaccinated for COVID-19, something which Dr. Fauci called a “remarkable success” and “one of the greatest examples of pandemic containment.” Biden’s job approval rocketed up to a staggering 72% as Americans returned to normal life, and a record-number of Americans shared they had attended parties with friends or family on the Fourth of July, according to a Yougov poll, signalling the public’s new-found confidence in the post-pandemic era.

   In mid-July, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg announced her intention to step down from the Supreme Court after twenty-eight years on the nation’s highest court and forty-one years on the federal bench. Biden thanked Ginsburg for her “years of service as the living embodiment of the conscience of justice in the country,” and that he would nominate someone who would be in the mold of Ginsburg to succeed her. Biden upheld a promise he made on the campaign trail - to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court - and announced he would be promoting D.C. District Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, a move that was met with praise by fellow Democrats and, surprisingly, by former Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan, who is related to Brown Jackson by marriage.

   Brown Jackson was confirmed after a relatively uneventful Senate questioning period, aside from when Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) attempted to accuse the nominee of being involved with “Marxist and Black Supremacist organizations during her time at Harvard”, which fellow Senators called a “ludicrous line of questioning” (by Washingtoin Senator Patty Murray) and “completely, ridiculously out of line” (by Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy), and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren called Cotton “petulant, puerile, and utterly pathetic.” Brown Jackson was confirmed on a vote of 65-35, the Democrats joined by Murkowski, Romney, Capito, Young, Portman, Tim Scott, and Burr. Ginsburg officially stepped down on the anniversary of her ascension to the court on August 10th, and Brown Jackson was sworn in the next day.

   Though Biden’s job approval ratings came back down from the astronomical 70s, he generally remained popular. Early polls for the 2024 election had a hypothetical Biden-Pence matchup, with the incumbent polling at 55% and the former president receiving only 38%. Other candidates, such as Senators Cotton and Cruz, as well as Governor Kristi Noem, polled even worse than Pence. Even in a hypothetical where the President retires after a single term, Vice President Kamala Harris still lead Pence by 12%, 52-40, and even better against other candidates.

   On the twentieth anniversary of September 11th, Biden announced the completion of the troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, leaving behind only a highly specialized anti-terrorism task force. Biden also announced a reconfiguration of America’s foreign troop involvement, in an effort to “modernize America’s global involvement for a new era of foreign policy.”

   In mid-September, Congress reached a deal on Biden’s transportation infrastructure investment bill, and Biden signed the bill on September 20th. In accordance with provisions in the bill, the governors of the six New England states as well as Governor Cuomo of New York, announced a interstate joint plan for a modernized rail network linking the areas east of the Hudson. The idea behind the joint plan was to mimic the system found in Switzerland: a highly-dense, albeit not ultra-high-speed, system of rails - with the byline “a stop in every town”. The federal government promised to triple-match state rail expansion funds, and the New England plan intended to make use of that. Conservatives particularly found this program egregious, and Fox and Friends pointed fingers at Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker as having “surrendered to the socialists.”

   In October, Biden travelled overseas to India on a foreign trip, with the intention of forging a closer bond and possibly work against increased Chinese economic aggression. Biden, Indian Prime Minister Modi, and the U.S. Ambassador to India John Kerry worked together on a comprehensive plan to counter Chinese influence in Southeast Asia and other regions of interest.

   And in November, the Democrats sought to cement their gains from the previous year in the gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia. In the former, incumbent Phil Murphy cruised to reelection against Jack Ciattarelli, while in the latter former Governor Terry McAuliffe won his way back to the Governor’s mansion by defeating State Senator Amanda Chase in a 20-point landslide. In late November, Governor Baker of Massachusetts announced his intention to leave the Republican Party and serve out the rest of his term as an independent. Massachusetts’s Lieutenant Governor, Karyn Polito, followed Baker's path and left the GOP.

   Finally, in early December, Biden signed into law the Democrats’ signature bill, the For the People Act, along with a secondary bill to encourage a binding Puerto Rican statehood referendum. However, journalists criticized the Democrats for holding off passing the bill until late in the year, after several states had already adopted new redistricted maps for the decade, preventing the independent commission clause from coming into play. The District of Columbia statehood measure came into delayed effect, with the new state’s first Senators and Representative to be elected in November 2022 (the Senate seats being special elections, as the state’s Senators were to be part of Class 1 and 2). Puerto Rico’s legislature passed a bill for a binding referendum in November as well, and the federal government promised to uphold the decision of that referendum.

   As the end of 2021 came into view, pundits and journalists called the year “one of the most effective calendar years on record - a worthy response to the chaos and upheaval of the previous year.”

[KaiserDave]

Love the timeline! Good stuff! I just wanted to note a few things a thought. Firstly that I think the President will be vaccinated far before the general public is, as soon as they have a sample they believe is safe and effective I think that whoever is the sitting President in January, or even Trump in December may be vaccinated. Secondly that I'm skeptical Baker would leave the GOP.

Love the railroad action! Phil Scott!

[America Needs R'hllor]

Love it. We can only dream

[P. Clodius Pulcher did nothing wrong]

Good

[P. Clodius Pulcher did nothing wrong]

Hey

[Boobs]

Public Domain 2004

   2022 signalled the opening of the 2024 race for both parties, albeit only in its “shadow primary” stage, with candidates expected to officially and openly announce their intentions in the first half of 2023.
   
   In the Biden White House, the President made it clear to members of the administration, close staffers, and higher-up strategists that he intended to retire in 2024 and not run for reelection, and that he expected everyone to be “on board” with Vice President Kamala Harris running for President in 2024. Harris’s golden ticket to a 2024 coronation came with a price: Biden expected her to work closely with his advisors, and memoirs published after the end of the Biden administration revealed that Anita Dunn, Biden’s senior advisor in both his campaign and administration, worked hand-in-hand with Harris, explicitly telling the Vice President that “we’re going to Bidenify you.” The process to “Bidenify” implied that the shadow campaign team would work to improve Harris’s image with swingy Midwestern voters, being a scrappy fighter for the working and middle class against big corporations and their Republican allies. While most supported the Vice President’s inevitable 2024 campaign, some grumbled that shadows of 2016 may arise from the top-down coronation of a party’s nominee.

   The shadow Republican primary was much more in flux, as early polls failed to show a consistent picture - in some polls, former President Trump garnered 35% of the vote to former President Pence’s 22%, with other candidates like Ted Cruz (9%) Nikki Haley (8%), Tom Cotton (6%), and Josh Hawley (2%) further behind. In other polls, without Trump as an option, had Pence leading with 19% followed closely by Donald Trump Jr. at 15% and Nikki Haley at 12%, and Ted Cruz not far behind at 10%. The earliest candidate to settle on his intentions to run was Ted Cruz - who many believe had made up his mind on running in 2024 after Trump’s 2016 win, regardless of the result of the 2020 election - as he had signalled to his former campaign staff in January of 2022 that he will be reassembling his campaign.

   Ahead of the midterm elections, pundits described a “grey wave” of elderly congresspeople announcing their retirements, mostly from the Democratic Party ranks; 46 retirements were announced that were not seeking another office, with 40 of those being Democrats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Majority Leader Steny Hoyer. The wave of retirements led many pundits to speculate that, combined with the traditional midterm anti-incumbent party attitude, the Democratic majority was in serious jeopardy headed into November. However, generic ballot polling average at around a 4% lead for the Democratic Party.

   The progressive wing of the Democratic Party sought to expand its influence within the caucus by capitalizing on the plethora of open, safe district seats. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the unofficial figurehead of “the Squad”, in particular endorsed dozens of candidates across the country. One of the most dramatic primaries was Speaker Pelosi’s open seat in San Francisco, where State Senator Scott Weiner and former San Francisco Supervisor Jane Kim emerged as the top two finishers in the primary. But many seats saw candidates declaring themselves as “strong supporters of the President and his agenda” rather than a more aggressively progressive image; in fact, many pundits believed that the Squad’s “healthcare stunt” left a poor taste in many voters’ mouths, which, combined with cooler waters caused by the exit of Trump from the political stage, made it more difficult for fire-breathing progressives to win primaries. But still, Ocasio-Cortez and her allies did make a few gains - in Massachusetts's 1st, ex-mayor of Holyoke Alex Morse, who ran against incumbent Richard Neal in 2020, won the open primary, in New York’s 12th, a new Manhattan-based seat, was won by former New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson after both Jerry Nadler and Carolyn Maloney retired, and in Florida’s 25th, progressive State Representative Dotie Joseph easily won a primary to succeed retiring Frederica Wilson.
   
   And in the Senate, several retirements were announced: Richard Shelby (R-AL), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Chuck Grassley (R-IA), John Kennedy (R-LA), Richard Burr (R-NC), Pat Toomey (R-PA), and Ron Johnson (R-WI) - in addition to the expected retirements of placeholder Senators Jean Quan (D-CA) and Patty Readinger (D-MI). Pundits commented that, due to the Senate map, there was little chance of Republicans gaining a majority in the chamber, which likely prompted several Senators to retire from a chamber now-dominated by Democrats, with a dead filibuster to boot. In fact, Larry Sabato, famed psephologist, wrote that “there’s a good chance Democrats actually make gains in the Senate - which, combined with the ascension of the District of Columbia into a state and its two near-guaranteed Democratic senators, could potentially put Democrats at a 62-seat supermajority.”

   Several candidates rose to the occasion. In Pennsylvania, Democratic representative and rising star Conor Lamb easily cleared the primary field after President Biden endorsed his candidacy, calling Lamb “just like my own son,” while Republicans recruited fellow Western Pennsylvania Representative Guy Reschenthaler in what was called by pundits “a matchup of the decade.” In the Michigan special election, Republicans trotted out two-time loser John James for the seat, while Representative Elissa Slotkin, who had been drawn out of her congressional district, leveraged her large campaign war chest to scare out most of her potential primary opponents, leaving only a nominal leftist candidate in between her and the nomination. In the Wisconsin open seat, Democrats smelled potential when freshman Representative - whose 2020 victory was deemed a complete shock - Amanda Stuck threw her hat in the ring while crowded Republican primaries waged for both the Senate and gubernatorial elections. In the so-called “once in a lifetime” open seat in California, Secretary of State Alex Padilla consolidated Democratic institutional support, while Representative Ro Khanna waged a more progressive, populist and anti-establishment insurgent campaign, hoping to pick up Republican votes in the top-two election. Meanwhile former State Senator Janet Nguyen intended to run a softer, Biden-curious Republican campaign, only to be matched by a “burn-it-down” campaign by State Assemblyman Kevin Kiley. In the end, Padilla finished far ahead in the primary, breaking 40% thanks to strong margins in SoCal and suburban areas in northern California, while Kiley barely edged out Khanna by a 0.3% margin, 18.1%-17.8% with with Nguyen further behind, to secure the second spot in the runoff. In the sunbelt, Florida Democrats recruited Representative Val Demings to take on incumbent Marco Rubio, while Gwen Graham gave it another go at defeating Governor DeSantis. In Georgia, Stacey Abrams announced her rematch campaign against Brian Kemp and raised nearly $12 million in the week following it; another rematch occurred at the Senate level when Doug Collins entered the race against Senator Warnock. In Arizona, Governor Doug Ducey, who was widely expected to run against Senator Mark Kelly, declared his intention to retire instead - with many saying that Kelly’s sky-high approvals (70% by latest OH-PI poll, which also showed Ducey trailing the Senator by 11%) implied a Senate run would be a suicide mission. Ultimately, as one by one the AZGOP’s potential candidates passed on the race, party chairwoman Kelli Ward entered the race herself. In North Carolina, President Biden personally called to encourage State Senator Jeff Jackson to enter the race and face former Representative Mark Walker. Only in swingy New Hampshire did Republicans sense optimistic potential for a pickup when popular Governor Chris Sununu announced his intentions to challenge Senator Maggie Hassan.

   President Biden looked toward 2022 as being a year for climate action; after the earlier reinstatement of the Paris Accords in the first month of his administration. In a flurry of bills between February and June 2022, the Congress passed bills to limit methane emissions, increase fuel efficiency standards, a $2000 tax rebate for households to purchase an American electric vehicle, a massive $60 billion charging station infrastructure investment, requirements for government contractors to use either green energy or purchase carbon offsets, a comprehensive government plan on modernizing the energy grid, subsidies for commercial and residential decarbonization efforts, and a minor carbon-added tax to pay in part for these programs. Biden signed these bills, which, in their aggregate, came to be known as the Green New Deal - with the similar-named bill that was introduced earlier in 2019 by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ed Markey falling into near-irrelevancy. And on July 4th, 2022, Biden, flanked by Senator Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto, signed a bill to incorporate 97% of federal lands in Nevada into the Great Basin National Park - turning it into the largest such park in the United States - which he implied “is only the first step in protecting America’s greatest treasure.”

   While Biden’s domestic agenda proved to be a success in passage - earning fairly high marks from the public in polls - foreign policy proved to be a field of landmines. In early May, Chinese fighter jets flew over Taiwanese airspace in an effort potentially to intimidate the leadership and assert PRC control over the region. Biden, hoping to avoid a shooting war with the Chinese government, weighed his options. Secretary of State Burns urged Biden to avoid a “Cuban Missile Crisis-style episode” by acting too aggressively in supporting the Taiwanese. Ultimately, Biden publicly commanded the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Ronald Reagan to move from Yokosuka Naval Base in Japan to a location 200 miles west of Taiwan, approximately halfway between the island and the American bases in Okinawa, while covertly inviting Wang Yi - the Foreign Minister of the PRC - to meet with Secretary of Defense Kirsten Gillibrand - who speaks Mandarin - aboard the Ronald Reagan, an offer later revealed Wang had taken up on. The secret Wang-Gillibrand summit proved to be a groundbreaking one in getting the Chinese to back off, for now, from Taiwan. Details of the meeting have yet to be declassified.

   A second major foreign event occurred on June 17th, when President-dictator of Venezuela, Nicolas Maduro, died in transportation to Havana following a cardiac event and, blowing open a succession crisis within the Chavist party - as well as emboldening the opposition self-declared President Juan Guaido - into what many onlookers called “tinder for a civil war.” A three-sided civil war would prove to arise and throw the country into even greater chaos. Biden stayed mum on Venezuela - urging “caution” and “alignment with the international community” - which led Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) to invect “Biden’s cowardice in the face of communism” and that “our ally Guaido needs military assistance to bring peace and stability to the people of Venezuela.” Republicans fell in line behind Rubio - some even declaring him the man to win back the White House in 2024. Fellow Senator Tom Cotton introduced a bill to the Senate to encourage Biden to send troops and assistance to Venezuela, while former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley wrote an op-ed for the New York Times saying “it is America’s time to enforce the Monroe Doctrine,” and to “not let Chinese Communists expand their foothold in the Western Hemisphere.”

   A leak from within the White House was acquired by the Washington Post, revealing that Vice President Harris encouraged Biden to commit troops, or at least air support, to Guaido’s forces because “otherwise we’re gonna keep looking weak - that snivelling s**thead Rubio is gonna be all over our ass if we don’t do anything.” The obscene recording soured public approval of Harris, and many anti-war figures within the party also disapproved of her gung-ho militarism; the White House refused to comment on the recording, only pointing to the lack of intervention taken and that they are “monitoring the situation” in Venezuela. Harris’s approval, while never as high as the President’s, tumbled below 50% in the weeks following the leak - which led some in the administration to question her potential as a candidate in 2024, particularly by UN Ambassador Pete Buttigieg, who sent out feelers on contesting the primary by initiating a run against the Vice President. Eventually, however, news of this reached the President, who called Buttigieg into the Oval Office - while neither man revealed what was said, staffers say they overheard Biden saying that the Ambassador is “full of sh**t if [he] thinks [he] can go against [Biden’s] word,” and that relationship between Buttigieg and the President and Vice President was “icy” for the rest of the term.

   In early July, Supreme Court Justice Steven Breyer announced his intention to retire - implanting shades of Justice Kennedy’s retirement in 2018, as described by FiveThirtyEight’s Nate Silver, as a “potential boon” to Republican enthusiasm ahead of the midterms. Biden thanked Breyer for his more than fifty years of service on the judicial bench, and announced that he would be nominating Vanita Gupta, a former Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights during the Obama Administration and former counsel for  the ACLU and the NAACP, to succeed Breyer. Gupta’s nomination was fairly controversial - she did not have any experience as a judge - although she had received bipartisan praise for her legal work. Particularly high praise for Gupta was given by supporters of police reform and Black Lives Matter, as Gupta had been one of the forefront actors in indicting unconstitutional police practices during her time as Assistant Attorney General. Fox’s Tucker Carlson called Gupta the “antifa Justice”, and made comparisons to the social upheaval in American during the second half of 2020, saying that Gupta on the bench would be “letting the rioters, looters and Marxists win.” This divisiveness would lead to a near-party-line vote on Gupta’s confirmation, with West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin voting against Gupta while Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski, who had been primaried successfully by former Senator Dan Sullivan and now running as a write-in once again, voting in favor, possibly to shore up support among Democrats in her state. Gupta was sworn in on August 19th, maintaining the 5-4 conservative lean on the nation's highest court.

[John King wannabe]

Hope to see this timeline continue! I really enjoyed it.