BTM 2.0: The Eighth Party System

[Kyle Rittenhouse is a Political Prisoner]

2068 Presidential Election: Final Map and Results

Governor Ariana Ward (R-WI)/Governor Wyatt Kelly (R-UT): 49.23%, 245 electoral votes
Senator Nayara Bustos (D-NV)/Governor Madison Barnes (D-KY): 48.51%, 305 electoral votes
Former State Senator Mila Thompson (CON-NY): 1.21%, 0 electoral votes
Businesswoman Zoey Kelly (S-MO): .88%, 0 electoral votes
Other: .17%


Senate Final Results

Senate Majority Leader Nick Gonzalez (R-TX): 61 (+4): 55.39%
Senate Minority Leader Sean Miller (D-WI) : 47 (-4): 42.78%


House elections (these aren’t the actual seats, but the figures and rough pattern are true)
Speaker Gabrielle Thomas (D-MI-5): 49.96%, 230 seats (+15)
House Minority Leader Anthony Bennett (R-NY-12): 49.04%, 212 seats (-15)

Not a resounding win, but a win nevertheless for Democrats.

[Edgeofnight]

Is it a typo or is this supposed to be a Republican win in the Popular vote? Ironic ain't it?

Also should be cool to see where this goes.

[Kyle Rittenhouse is a Political Prisoner]

It Begins

On a unnaturally warm Sunday morning, on the 20th of January, Senator Nayara Bustos stood at a podium. Half a million and more people were there before her, packed between her podium and the waves lapping at the Washington Monument. Her running mate, now Vice President, was standing by her side. And she was here, about to take the oath of office. She had never expected it, and yet it had happened anyway. Seven years ago, she was a perfectly ordinary office worker in Las Vegas, with no idea she would become president. Now, seven years and as many campaigns later, she was standing here, about to take the oath of office. Chief Justice Thomas Russell, a wizened old man, seem to say something. Nayara was shocked out of her thoughts.
   “Senator, do you have something you wish to take your oath on?”
   Nayara handed him the old, cracked bible, once ornate, a relic from her grandparents, and before, back in the old country. It wasn’t grand, or classy, but it made an impact. She wasn’t Alex Williams, she wasn’t Northeastern old money on his book of laws. She was Nayara Bustos, and she was here to change Washington, for the better.
   “Very well.” Russell said, vaguely grimacing. “Repeat after me. I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States”
   “ I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States.”
 “and will to the best of my Ability”
 “and will to the best of my Ability”
 “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
 “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
   “Very well. Congratulations, Madam President.”
There was a wave of applause, and she turned to the podium. “Thank you. Thank you to everyone who voted for me, all across America. I am incredibly grateful you have given me this opportunity, and I promise to do my absolute best. Now, onto business. We have become weak, and we have become corrupt. America has opened it’s borders to the world, and Africa has come flooding in. When my grandparents came to this country, they came here to work. They come here to take. America has become weak, and weakness leads to corruption. Dawson, Ward, and Williams all have shown what our weakness has wrought. No more! No more shall we be weak, no more shall we bow to the Chinese or the Africans. Now is the time for a renewed American greatness, a greatness like that of the Cordray era. As your President, I will Make America Great Again. I will root out the corruption in this country, root and branch. I will return us to an era of glory, not kowtowing before Chinese unbelievers. This is my solemn vow toyou."
   There was scattered applause, quickly growing into a roar. She had not spoken for long, but she had already made an impact.

[P. Clodius Pulcher did nothing wrong]

Oh sh!t wait what

[Cold War Liberal]

Oh sh!t wait what

[America Needs R'hllor]

Oh sh!t wait what

Also, waves lapping at the Washington Monument...

[Kyle Rittenhouse is a Political Prisoner]

Oh sh!t wait what

Also, waves lapping at the Washington Monument...

The IPCC vastly underestimated sea level rise.

[Kyle Rittenhouse is a Political Prisoner]

Daedalus Delenda Est

   Daedalus. Perdix. Hipparchus. Ships half a mile long, enormous shells of helium around a tiny core. Ships powered by engines the size of destroyers, with power enough to burn cities to the ground in minutes. Ships traveling between the stars at tens of millions of miles per hour, Ships with robot wardens to repair them in flight, probes half machine and half something else, telescopes and spectroscopes and everything else. These three had been sent already, to the three nearest solar systems. They would not arrive for decades to come. A fourth, Hyperbius, was under construction, a framework of metal and machines inside the orbit of Mimas, circling far distant Saturn. Thousands of people worked on the project there alone, many more providing the materials, fuel, and much else needed to make these immense ships. An international consortium, American and Chinese led, but with with involvement from nearly every nation on Earth, was building them, out there in the endless black. And if Bustos had her way, it would all grind to a shuddering halt.
   It was obvious, really, three birds with one stone. Contracts for it had been the object of corruption in the Williams administration, ending them would end that at a stroke. Daedalus, too, the product of an international consortium, was a potent symbol of the emerging global world order, something Bustos stood defiantly opposed to. Finally, it was expensive. Talk of dollars and cents may seem crude among the stars, but, well, “a trillion here, a trillion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.” Eliminating the program would solve the deficit at a stroke. In Nayara Busto’s imagination, it was an easy, obvious, solution to the problems ailing the United States. Reality didn’t oblige.
   It passed the House easily enough, given the majority Speaker Thomas commanded. The Senate was the real sticking point.
   To call Senate Majority Leader Nick Gonzalez angry would far understate the issue. Indascent, furious, enraged. The towering Texan was currently yelling at Senator Kayla Young.
   “What the hell are you doing? Do you want me to pull your funding for re-election? Do you want to get kicked off every single committee? Because you will if you vote for this.”
   “I am not your lapdog, Nick. I will not vote to keep this debacle.”
   “Debacle!? Debacle? Really? This is one of the greatest achievements ever, and you’re going to end it just because Bustos twisted your arm a little?"
   “She won my state.”
   “She won my f-ing state too. No one f-ing cares that Nayara f-ing Bustos won your state. Hell, Alabama gets forty billion dollars from the government for this.”
   “And it costs us forty-five. Not worth it, Nick. Ending this will close the deficit. Plus, we won’t have to kowtow to the Chinks and the Kafirs anymore. Don’t you want that?
   “Great, now you’re an f-ing bigot too. Any more unpleasant surprises, Ms. Young?”
   “It isn’t bigotry to support America.”
   “And you plan to support it by ending the greatest achievement we have ever made.”
   “Greatest achievement? Nick, it’s a giant lump of gas.”
   “You ignorant little-“
   C-SPAN cuts out.

   The vote was incredibly close. 4 Democrats, one each from New York, Washington, California, and Luna, voted against. Republicans from Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana, Arizona, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, Georgia, and 1 each from the Carolinas voted for it, 11 in total. In the end, it was 54-54, dead even when Vice President Madison Barnes cast her vote.
   It passed.
   The Daedalus project, the grand achievement of humanity, the work of a lifetime for millions, would no longer be funded by the United States. Within a month of that fateful September day, the project had collapsed, the launch of the UNS Hyperbius to Sirius delayed indefinitely. Nayara Bustos had won.

[Edgeofnight]

I wagering that this is the end, or the beginning of the end, of the Cordray Era and the start of another Republican alignment.

[America Needs R'hllor]

DOWN WITH THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY!

[P. Clodius Pulcher did nothing wrong]

DOWN WITH THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY!

I can't imagine being alive at a time like this. Even just reading news on this thread managed to infuriate me lol

[America Needs R'hllor]

DOWN WITH THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY!

I can't imagine being alive at a time like this. Even just reading news on this thread managed to infuriate me lol

Yeah, I'd become R-IL in protest

[_]

I think I'd become a globalist in this.  Especially if it meant going to the stars.  Bustos seems like a maniac who will destroy the US's stature Globally, almost like someone else......

(For anyone guessing, this is foreshadowing a realignment, a la Carter or Trump.)

[Cold War Liberal]

DOWN WITH THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY!

I can't imagine being alive at a time like this. Even just reading news on this thread managed to infuriate me lol

Yeah me too. I'm not even sure why but my blood pressure went up reading that Bustos ended the Daedalus project, which is weird because it doesn't actually exist.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

What is this project?

[_]

Request to Jalawest.  Can we get a map of Current Control in the 2070 Senate?  Before the Midterms.  Gubernatorial control would be cool as well.

[Kyle Rittenhouse is a Political Prisoner]

Request to Jalawest.  Can we get a map of Current Control in the 2070 Senate?  Before the Midterms.  Gubernatorial control would be cool as well.

This is the map of the 141th Senate

And this is party affiliation and % of the Governor from 2065-2068.

Mars has a republican governor and two republican senators, Luna a republican governor and a senator of each party. Puerto Rico is solidly democratic everywhere.

[Kyle Rittenhouse is a Political Prisoner]

   To describe the economic situation around Saturn in late 2069 as dire would be to far understate the gravity of it. There were, in total, 60,000 people living and working around it, supported by millions of robots. Then, with one stroke of a pen, a third of them were laid off. Prices collapsed across the solar system. Thousands of jobs were lost, tens of thousands retreated back to Earth. The Helium industry in the outer solar system dried up like a puddle in the sun. Demand for mining vanished, the Martian economy collapsed and state support for terraforming died. A deep malaise grew everywhere from solar power stations around Earth to aerostats in Neptune. The economy of the American space territories declined by double digits per year, in a seemingly endless death spiral. And all the Bustos administration did was laugh.
   Who cared if millionaires on Ceres were temporarily out of work? Who cared if overpaid scientists on Titan faced pay cuts? Certainly not them. Hell, the collapse of resource prices helped them. Things were cheap, and the economy was still growing here, where it really mattered.
   The Administration pushed through a bill to impose a tariff on things made or mined off Earth, to help “protect real American industry and American workers.” They cut government support for any off earth activities, and used the money to raise the UBI again. Bustos delighted in her measures, dead confident she’d produce an economic boom on Earth, and be remembered among the likes of Reagan, Cordray, or Robinson.

[Cold War Liberal]

Make Earth Great Again?

(This is interesting, extremely horrifying, and, to my surprise, a tad stressful/depressing. I certainly hope we'll advance this far as a species by 2070, especially since I'll hopefully still be alive then, but seeing it rolled back would be very sad for me personally since I've always loved space and sci-fi/futurism)

[wxtransit]

This probably won't be good for Democrats.

[P. Clodius Pulcher did nothing wrong]

[King Lear 2069 voice]It's clear that the collapse of the Off-Earth economies can only serve to help President Bustos and the Democrats. The workers on Earth are going to see pay raises, and that's where the vast majority of electoral votes come from. The short-sightedness of the middle class will reward the Democrats. I wouldn't be surprised if we see a huge rebound in Earthside manufacturing as a result of Bustos's reforms.[/King Lear]

[Kyle Rittenhouse is a Political Prisoner]

Chaos in the wake of Eva

The superstorm is gone but not yet forgotten.
Arina Roscoe | Sep 22, 2070 | Politics

   The rains have finally stopped down in the aptly named Hurricane neighborhood of Mobile, Alabama, says Layla Lewis, but the water is still high on the shores. For four days the eye of the Category 7 Hurricane parked in the middle of the Gulf, and it rained. Ten feet, altogether, at her home. In parts of what was once Louisiana, the average was even higher. Rainfall records dating back, in some cases, all the way to Hurricane Harvey, have been shattered. Mobile has been hard hit, and the running feud between Republican Governor Bell and Bustos has not helped the recovery. Compared to New Orleans, however, it has gotten off easy.
   This is not the first time the levees have been breached and the city flooded, but it is very likely the last. Back when Hurricanes Katrina, Aubrey, and Aiden hit, the city recovered relatively quickly, and the water was drained back. Those days are over. Since the dawn of the 21st century, the seas have risen nearly five feet, and are still rising. Draining the city of 65,000 would be an immense project, and political opposition to a 5th New Orleans appears overwhelming. Eliza Castile, former chair of the Republican Governor’s Association, echoed the party line when she stated “The time for rebuilding in flood lands has passed. New Orleans is no longer tenable as a city, and the quicker we realize that, the less time and money we’ll waste rebuilding it after every superstorm.”
   President Nayara Bustos has already proposed a eight trillion dollar rebuilding project to help those in the South, but sticker shock seems to be afflicting congress. House Minority Leader Anthony Bennett and Senate Majority Leader Nick Gonzalez released a joint statement condemning her bill as a “profligate waste of government resources we can ill afford, especially in this time of recession.” Gabrielle Thomas too appears opposed to desperately needed aid for the South, reportedly attempting to bargain Bustos down in a meeting.
   Many in the Republican party appear to be coalescing around a two trillion dollar rebuilding plan, a plan that would fall far short. There are fifty three million people and nearly twenty trillion dollars worth of property down there, almost all of it wrecked by Eva.
   CEO Angel Phillips says that the losses his facilities have suffered will take years, maybe longer, to rebuild. He owns and operates a hypersonic plane launch facility in Miami, worth, pre-Eva, nearly a billion dollars. Or perhaps it would be better to say he owned and operated. For half of it is under flood water now, and the rest was underwater as recently as this weekend. The Bennett/Gonzalez plan would allocate him four million dollars. The rest of the fortune he has lost would have to come out of his pocket.
   Eva has hit hard elsewhere, too. Logan and Mia Barnes run the Barnes Fish market in Natchez Mississippi, providing a easily available cheap food source to their local community. Or, well, they did. The market is now wrecked, surrounded by floodwaters, their inventory all lost and home on the top floor destroyed. The livelihood they have worked for their careers is wrecked. Logan Barnes said in an interview “I don’t what I can do. We’ve lost everything. My home, my store, everything. Zheng Insurance won’t cover s**t and the government doesn’t want to help. I’ve spent my life working my way into the middle class, and that all vanished in an instant.” The Bennett/Gonzalez plan would not give them a dime.
   Though Eva is at long last gone, the South is still bleeding, and it remains to be seen whether the richest, best nation in the world will rise to the occasion.
   UPDATE: As the floodwaters finally subside, the Mississippi seems to be changing course, an event that has been coming for a long time. The Mississippi may no longer run through New Orleans by the end of this year, reports the US Army Corps of Engineers. The RNC has refused to respond to the crisis.

Arina Roscoe is a former representative from California’s 21st Congressional District, and a current staff writer for The Atlantic.

[Cold War Liberal]

Bustos is Dubya but worse (but not, like, Trump level bad, at least not yet)

Arina Roscoe is a former representative from California’s 21st Congressional District, and a current staff writer for The Atlantic.

Is Ta-Nehisi Coates still alive and writing for The Atlantic?

[America Needs R'hllor]

Bustos is Dubya but worse (but not, like, Trump level bad, at least not yet)

Arina Roscoe is a former representative from California’s 21st Congressional District, and a current staff writer for The Atlantic.

Is Ta-Nehisi Coates still alive and writing for The Atlantic?

I think that Bustos is far worse than Trump. Whatever Trump has done, he hasn't caused even close to that much damage.

[Kyle Rittenhouse is a Political Prisoner]

The 2070 Elections

   As the long hot fall of 2070 drew to an end, as all of America began to vote, the Democratic party prepared for disaster. The economy was in recession, the party in chaos, fractured and depressed against a resurgent, angry Republican party. Special elections and polling both foretold a disaster for the Bustos Administration. Political prognosticators predicted a 31 seat gain in the house and 5 seats in the Senate. The Democratic party was bracing themselves for another wave.

What they got was not a wave.

   

Vermont. Washington. Oregon. Both seats in Nevada. Iowa, Missouri, Ohio, Connecticut, and Luna. 10 Senate seats picked up by the republicans, a massive, sweeping victory. Only 16,000 votes in South Carolina separated Gonzalez from holding a veto proof majority. 

Senate Majority Leader Nick Gonzalez (R-TX): 71 (+10), 51.90%
Senator Matt Lee (D-MS): 37 (-10), 46.69%

In the house, too, it was bloody for Thomas’s thin majority.
House Minority Leader Anthony Bennett (R-NY-12): 274 (+62), 54.21%
Speaker Gabrielle Thomas (D-MI-5): 168 (-62), 45.04%




As the temperature began for the first time to dip below freezing, the Republican party was back in power. Gonzalez and Bennett had an ambitious agenda on the plate, and Bustos could go to hell for all they cared. In the end, it wouldn’t be that simple.