2020 United States presidential election (Frozen War)

The 2020 U.S. presidential election was the 59th quadrennial American presidential election, held on a Tuesday, at midnight on November 3rd, 2020. The Democratic ticket of former-Vice President Joseph Biden and then-California Sen. and former-Attorney General Kamala Harris defeated the Republican ticket of businessman President Donald Trump and former-Indiana Governor Mike Pence, despite losing the popular vote. Biden took office as the 46th president, and Harris as the 49th vice president, on January 20, 2021.

Trump once again bested his primary opponents, although with greater difficulty after six states have primary contest cancellations overturned by the Supreme Court, while Biden and billionaire Mike Bloomberg emerge from a 20-candidate race as the frontrunners, with the former emerging victorious after three rounds of convention floor voting.

Background
The 2016 election was not only realigning, it was destabilizing. Resulting in the election of the first white nationalist president in 63 years as part of the racist backlash and extension of wider racism in American culture and other protests against President Obama, the Democrats would appoint former-First Lady and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton who worked with criminals and later oppose the impeachment of her 2016 opponent; Donald Trump. She would praise then-speaker Pelosi for her inevitable failure to impeach and remove the President due to moderate democrats marshaling a resistance prioritizing the defeat of the left on the eve of the 2018 congressional elections, resulting in Democrats performing approximately 5 percentage points better than they did in 2016 races, arguably more of a "blue ripple" as opposed to a wave. Had Democrats performed like they could have - had the progressive left and neoliberal right-of-center buried the hatchet - Trump could have been impeached and removed from office. Additionally, Clinton would herself continue to oppose the process, likely due to her own experience with her husband's impeachment in 1999. Clinton would continue to attack fellow democrats in a highly antagonistic way that questioned a candidate’s motives rather than the soundness of her views. While also peddling conspiracy theories about the Green Party as well. Even as prominent figures slam her ultranationalist extremism the former-secretary maintains a cult following who categorically reject the other candidates, a fervor Clinton actively feeds on into the 2020 primary. Polls showed Hillary Clinton running a distant second to the former VP, with Trumps attempt to 'Clintonize' Biden a failure, further amplified by Biden's successful blue-collar shadow primary against both Clinton and Sanders.

Overall, there were 29 major Democratic presidential candidates in the 2020 election, and for six weeks around July 2019, 25 of these had active campaigns simultaneously. The debate in Westerville, Ohio, on October 15, 2019, featured twelve candidates, setting a record for the highest number of candidates in one presidential debate. On June 2, 2020, former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg became the presumptive nominee after former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg endorsed Bloomberg and suspended his campaign - which nets him big victories in Maryland, New York and Pennsylvania - and all but made a delegate comeback impossible for Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Vice President Joe Biden (despite the polling lead of the latter). Bloomberg's momentum is blunted by selecting former-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to be his running-mate, as an ill-fated attempt to close the distance between himself and Obama, as well as appeal to women voters in light of accusations of sexism. This allows Biden a comeback victory just in time for the contested convention, after briefly losing the delegate lead to Bloomberg after Buttigieg's endorsement.

The rift in the democratic party was apparent from the start, with Wall Street donors responding negatively to the progressive campaigns of Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. Warren, who would become a heavyweight in the primary retaliates against elite frontman Mike Bloomberg, and the DNC in turn works in his favor while shutting out poorer candidates from debating and sabotaging the Iowa caucuses. Meanwhile the media would attempt to block news coverage of Independent Vermont Sen. Sanders and then become incensed whenever he attained a victory of some sort, while also using misleading polling metrics. All and much more would contribute to his defeat, but much more worrisome - highlighted a trend of the Democratic party, likely in response to the election of Trump, toward the right-wing, in evidence of their bias against socialist medicare, but seeming contention with socialist imperialism.

The political assassination of Senator Bernie Sanders would contribute to Republican power in the federal government, just as much as Sanders's own inability to fight back effectively, even calling Joe Biden his "friend", and not being as anti-war or even as worldly in general as his female counterpart progressive, who even took a swipe at Hillary Clinton's 2016 debate performance as Sanders urged for civility. Dr. Jill Stein, Andrew Yang, Gabbard and others slam Clinton's divisive antagonism in the Democratic party, while presidential candidate Kamala Harris teams up with progressive lawmakers targeting Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and climate change. As Warren and Sanders fade amid Biden's rise, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would come to represent a figure of change in their stead. Ocasio-Cortez's many confrontations with the Obama Democrats by and large overshadow those of Elizabeth Warren's and before even her first year in Congress became a high-value target of the Democratic establishment, in the league of veteran Senators Sanders and Warren, highlighting her rapid rise to Democratic leadership. ''"[Sanders, Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] are actually the ones most hostile to liberalism’s legacy [not Trump]." - Washington Post''

Vice President Joe Biden's controversial record on civil liberties coupled with this countless gaffes which would continue even after he needed momentum the most in upcoming contests in Maryland and New Jersey, would prove to be a toxic drag during the primary and even into the general election. His opponents slammed his immigration record, which faced intense scrutiny on all sides, along with issues such as executive unilateralism, student loans, and climate change, which bear some eerie similarities to Trump's tenure. A prominent topic during the primary was the 2020 Democratic candidates rejecting the Obama administration's immigration legacy, with retaliation from Attorney General Eric Holder who charges that the candidates are doing "long-term harm" by attacking Obama's immigration record. But the Democrats are not alone, joined by Independents such as Sanders and retired-General James Mattis, noted for his quarrels with Republicans, opposition to Obama's generals purge, as well as being socially liberal on the issues, resigning in protest of Trump's foreign policy drawing the President's wrath and challenging it in kind. Senator Warren would continue to be a prominent opponent of Obama by challenging his proxy in Biden, after emerging as one of his fiercest critics. Warren was noted for her insider tactics countering the Obama presidency from the left, on issues primarily concerning anti-trust and pro-bureaucracy measures. This would also mean the multi-front assault from the conservative and liberal media all throughout the campaign, even receiving assistance from 'Never-Trump' Republicans and Neoconservatives, even after the capitalist elite come out against Warren, being boosted by the Democratic establishment as well, with some even going so far as to outright praise Trump, while unwittingly amplifying the progressive wing of the party.

While Warren presses the assault on the wealthy elite and sustains a constant bombardment of hit pieces and negative coverage over her wealth tax - even compared to Trump in equal or worse light - with the Washington Post dragging her well into the winter season (the latter specimen demonstrates the type of logical fallacy-driven hit-pieces that inundated the American media at this time), Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, the latter one of the first two Muslim women (along with Rashida Tlaib) to serve in U.S. Congress, turn their guns on the Democratic establishment over its handling of Trump's impeachment, although they and the rest of the Sanders-Squad faction would fall out of favor with some of their former supporters against the Democratic party. The dramatization of the process coupled with the perception of the Democrats not taking the constitutional crisis seriously helps Warren and the progressives, further infuriating the Democratic party bosses who thereafter swear allegiance to Trump in the 2020 election. Later that year, Warren expands her base as her rival, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, nets endorsements, whom she later rips over his fealty towards elites and pushes to attack Biden on Iraq and Ukraine, largely playing Biden and Buttigieg off one another into the early weeks of 2020 as she increasingly hones an anti-war message and banks off of Trump's impeachment and hawkish foreign policy, even as the president pressed Chinese President Xi Jinping to investigate Biden and Warren and likely farmed trolls on twitter to foment infighting between Warren and Sanders supporters. In addition, Hillary Clinton would continue to meddle in the 2020 primary, sabotaging progressives such as Bernie Sanders (a campaign she would double down on at the expense of party unity), and Elizabeth Warren after favorable polls for them emerge earlier that fall, while also promoting TERF ideologies. She is joined by 2012 GOP nominee Sen. Mitt Romney, with the Democratic elite urging the marginalization of progressives while they compete with Republicans on fearmongering about "the left" and fumble the impeachment of Donald Trump.

In the final months of 2019, Buttigieg's militant foreign policy and right-wing views are exposed even as he surges ahead in Iowa and becomes a major target of other Democrats. Buttigieg's debate performance and race issues are criticized by liberals and progressives alike, the latter extending that critique to the Democrats as a whole, referring to the lack of color on the debate stage. Warren doubles-down on fighting Trump and white nationalism as Slate calls Democratic candidates 'delusional' while asserting the Supreme Court has 'gone rogue'. During the debate, progressive entrepreneur Andrew Yang refuses to appear on MSNBC and delivers a "mic drop" performance in which he accuses MSNBC and other corporate media of ignoring his campaign. The solidarity of the elite 1% and their candidates in Buttigieg, Bloomberg, Klobuchar and even Joe Biden in light of his polling and debate performances is exposed through Obama's hypocrisy on progressives and political awakening in his endorsement of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in the wake of a racism scandal (he would go on to win that election despite losing seats in parliament). "If you want solid proof that the big bad cancel culture theory is hokum, look no further than Obama’s recent endorsement of Justin Trudeau for re-election as Canada’s prime minister. Cancel culture is so dominant that the man couldn’t even remember the number of times he wore blackface gets rewarded with an endorsement by America’s first black president and eventual victory."

Billionaire former mayor of New York City Mike Bloomberg declares as Sen. Warren surges amid Biden's dip in the polls. In doing so, he ignites a vicious and until-now silent base of Anti-Trump neoconservatives for whom even Joe Biden was too progressive. Upon the eve of filing for his first primary, expected to weaponize his immense wealth against the other contenders, party elites begin relentlessly pushing the progressive-alienating billionaire as a contender against Trump. Bloomberg's advisers announce his intent to skip the first four contests and focus on Super Tuesday on 8 November 2019, with his almost-certain presence in the primary resulting in unease at Warren's growing influence Bloomberg's ties to the Republican party and his own terrible record with race relations.

Bloomberg officially enters the race on 24 November 2019 to scrutiny of his immense wealth, private conflicts of interest, insincerity about his record as mayor and a neoconservative foreign policy in light of his tenure during the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center. On top of it all, his arrogant temperament potentially helping the president and infuriating progressives such as Elizabeth Warren and the conservative National Review alike - as well as the black community due to his stop and frisk policy and racist comments about New Jersey Senator Cory Booker while commenting about his rivals that Trump would "eat them up" and gaining more endorsements from establishment Dems such as former-mayor of Chicago Rahm Emanuel as he continues his attacks on frontrunner Joe Biden. "When asked if that comment applied to Biden, who represented Delaware in the U.S. Senate for more than 35 years and served as vice president under Barack Obama, Bloomberg said: "He's never been the manager of an organization, he's never run a school system." "The presidency shouldn't be a training job," Bloomberg added. "You need somebody who comes in and knows how to run an organization.""

Within a few weeks of launching his campaign, Bloomberg was pulling moderate support away from Joe Biden, with close advisers to the former-vice president asserting that Bloomberg's presidential run "makes no sense" as Biden attacks the media while taking hits from the mayor along with the rest of the field. Not only would establishment Dems such as the former Chicago Mayor back Bloomberg, but conservatives as well, if only out of fear in the case of the latter. Bloomberg's elitist, anti-worker worldview is on display when, in response to Trump's assassination of an Iranian general, the mayor holds a campaign rally at the headquarters of the Army 82nd Airborne, where he pushes for a draft, criticizes Bernie Sanders and doubles down on imperialism in Europe and conceding to the Taliban, while his white house plan is eviscerated by neuroscientists and psychologists. Not even into his first month of campaigning, Bloomberg’s presidential campaign lands in hot water over a vendor's reported use of prison workers to place calls to would-be voters. This vendor is dropped and the mayor claims ignorance in response, even as Bloomberg announces his intent to keep staffers on into the general election season regardless of who the nominee was, all while making back-room deals with the DNC and being boosted by elites such as Michael Holland, a board member at Flagship Global Health Inc and weaponizing a tech firm he'd founded that same year. As all of this unfolds, Bloomberg is tied for third-place nationally by 3 January 2020.

Nominations


Although much of the media and political elite, and even some superdelegates, by and large pull for Bloomberg, poor debate performances and his divisive record on law enforcement prevent the former mayor from pulling into the lead. Yet although Biden had the support of a lot of rank-and-file Democratic lawmakers, he largely lacked it from cultural, media and financial elites, who were in the tank for Buttigieg at first. After Bloomberg pulls ahead briefly heading into the summer, his selection of Hillary Clinton as his running mate as an ill-fated attempt to temper allegations of a controversial relationship with the Obama White House, a former Bill Clinton adviser leaks details of a scheme by Bloomberg to steal the nomination shortly before a damning story of the former vice president allegedly criticizing Clinton's 2016 debate strategy resurfaces later in the primary. Biden counters with a Washington Post story involving a Clinton donor in donating to Trump's inauguration and, even more damning, involvement in human trafficking, while pointedly highlighting the fact that this donor attended a fundraiser protested by Bernie Sanders supporters in April of 2016, as tensions between Biden and Bloomberg boil over and eventually consume the narrative.

Biden wins only one contest during the May primary season, with the biggest prizes of Indiana and Oregon going to Bloomberg by substantial margins, although Biden is competitive in Kentucky - the third-largest with 46 delegates - where Bloomberg squeaks out a feeble 2-point victory. Warren holds on with a substantial victory in Nebraska and a narrow win in Kansas, but only picks up one win in the 2 June contests. Biden wins the largest 151-delegate haul in New Jersey, but by only 1.5 percentage points, while Bloomberg mollywhops in the rest of the competitions (except D.C., which faces similar hurdles to the competition in Iowa at the beginning of the year). With Biden's poor showing in the 2 June contests, Bloomberg ahead in delegates (while still behind in the polls by about 4-percentage points) and Warren vowing to fight all the way to the convention, the media crown Bloomberg the presumptive nominee on this day. This reality persists for a grand total of 22 days, just over three weeks, until after catastrophe after catastrophe after catastrophe - from being caught on hot mic bragging about underage interns and staffers in sexist and racist language to trying to sieve the hemorrhage in endorsements and fundraisers (including that of the Pete Buttigieg campaign, which is unsuspended in early July, thus reclaiming his roughly 745 delegates and kneecapping Bloomberg in the run up to the convention) by selecting the record-breakingly unpopular Hillary Clinton as his running-mate.

Bloomberg's massively-lackluster political instincts are so egregious and alienating, that - after regaining the lead in delegates - Biden actively distances himself from Bloomberg and forms a task force with Sanders tackling progressive issues such as ending the war on drugs, among other issues which some see as pandering by some on the left, while more right-leaning liberals portray Biden as an insincere extremist, even though his policy parallels with Warren's and Sanders's campaigns are modest at best. As Biden's lead over both Trump and Bloomberg begins to build into the summer, Biden is pressured to pick a Black VP in light of worsening race relations over police brutality and white supremacism. Former-UN Ambassador Susan Rice is touted as the front-runner for the VP nomination by the establishment and corporate media despite baggage including oil lobby ties challenging her supporters' claims as Biden's best pick (should he not want to "rock the boat" before election day and maintain his lead over Trump) while Sens. Harris and Warren are the consistent favorite of young people while Wall Street fears the latter selection for the largely-autonomous Treasury Secretary, an incredibly powerful position in the government maintaining its coin purse and spending. Sanders joins the Biden-Warren task force soon after withdrawing from the race emphasizing his friendship with Biden in opposition to his rivalry with past Democrats, such as Hillary Clinton, with establishment news declaring him a 'team player' at long last (while erroneously downplaying his ardently concerted and hard-fought support for Hillary Clinton and opposition to Donald Trump in the 2016 general election).

Former-president Barack Obama endorsed Joe Biden on 14 April 2020, praising the other Democrats who ran for bringing new ideas into the conversation.

2020 Democratic Party presidential primaries
Candidates Withdrew before voting:
 * Vice President Joe Biden (D-DE)
 * Fmr-NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg (R-NY)
 * Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA)
 * Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D-IN)
 * Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
 * Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN)
 * Businessman Tom Steyer (D-CA)
 * Businessman Andrew Yang (L-NY)
 * Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI)
 * Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ)
 * Julian Castro, former-Housing Sec. (D-TX)
 * Marianne Williamson, author (D-TX)
 * Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH)
 * Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA)
 * Rep. Beto O'Rourke, former-Rep. (D-TX)
 * Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY)
 * Gov. Steve Bullock (D-MT)
 * Gov. Jay Inslee (D-WA)
 * NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio (D-NY)
 * Rep. John Delaney (D-MD)

Throughout 2019, the 2020 pre-election horse race among the candidates was primarily reading as an easy Joe Biden victory, with the former-Vice President polling way out ahead with 31, 32 or even sometimes as high as 38 or the mid-30's followed by Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg battling for a distant second place hovering around 15-20, followed by billionaire-former NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, New York businessman Andrew Yang and Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard.



After Trump's impeachment on 31 December, 2019 amid devastating revelations from the Mueller special counsel implicating then-Candidate Trump in witness tampering and abuse of power in the Russia investigation, as well as soliciting foreign intervention in the 2020 election, the GOP Republican Party suffers crushing unpopularity. President Trump presses on with his reelection campaign nevertheless, and - seeing opportunity - former-NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg, the 9th-wealthiest billionaire on earth, decides to run for President in 2020 against Democratic contenders including former-Vice President Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and several others. Biden consolidates his lead, but Bloomberg eventually gains on Warren and Buttigieg in the Super Tuesday states by January 2020 as a former-Republican neoconservative alternative to the centre-left general election candidate Biden, while Sanders and Warren focus their populist campaigns on taking on the billionaire class and Wall Street. Bloomberg explodes from a low-mid-tier candidate at the end of 2018 to neck-in-neck with the other presumed front-runners Sanders and Biden, running to the right of Presumptive Nominee Joe Biden's centre-left and far to the right of the Sanders-Warren wing's calls for a radical restructuring; while focusing on fighting against 'socialism' and pushing stringent gun control policies.

The 2020 primary begins with narrow wins for former-South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg in Iowa and New Hampshire on 3 and 11 February respectively. Buttigieg's early exit-polling gives him a clear lead in delegates and popular vote in the first three states, a Quixotic narrative which ends abruptly at Biden's firewall in South Carolina, with the former VP crushing the competition there wherein Warren is the only other candidate viable for delegates from the state. With the VP attaining a slight victory in the early voting period - attaining 56 of the 155 pre-Super Tuesday pledged delegates, Buttigieg wins New Hampshire with 10 of 24 delegates and 35.4% of the vote. Senator Warren, by comparison, does not win a state but finishes a mere 2.5% behind Buttigieg in Iowa, statistically tied for first with the former Mayor, one delegate ahead, and Biden she herself eclipses by approximately 2.5% and one delegate (delegate readjustment adds 1 delegate to Biden's total, 4 to Warren's and 5 to Buttigieg's, while Sanders's and Klobuchar's remain static).

Senators Warren and Sanders attain 20 and 12 delegates respectively, but fail to shake the former-VP - finishing an extremely close third in Nevada and steamrolling in South Carolina, wherein he doubles his next-closest competitor in the state - Elizabeth Warren, with 39 and 15 delegates respectively. Biden wins South Carolina and surges in Nevada with 52.8 and 28.8% of the vote respectively and a collective 48 delegates from those contests. With Buttigieg as the surprise runner-up, and Warren eclipsing Bernie Sanders in the shadow primary for the mantle of the progressive wing of the party (Sanders would drop out after Super Tuesday, but remains on the ballot throughout the primary), the relitigation of the 2016 Democratic primary begins in earnest - with Biden launching scathing attacks against both Sens. Sanders and Warren, but additionally, with his surging poll numbers in the Super Tuesday states, Mike Bloomberg - whom the Biden camp characterize as an "oligarchic threat to democracy as we know it". With the lines in the sand drawn, the 2020 primary appears set to be even nastier than its predecessor. Biden, Warren and Buttigieg head into the Democratic Super Tuesday nominating contests as the top 3 candidates (in that order) with Sanders and Klobuchar a distant fourth and fifth place (12 and 1 delegates respectively); Michael Bennet, Tulsi Gabbard and Deval Patrick dropping out after failing to place in the New Hampshire primary.

In addition to facing attacks from all angles on the eve of 3 March 2020, out of the first three races to be called on Super Tuesday, zero are Biden or Bloomberg victories, immediately hurling the Democratic establishment into vitriol and smear campaigns against Warren - who wins Maine and Massachusetts in blowouts. Senator Sanders wins in Vermont and Utah with Warren carrying Maine, yet Bloomberg and Biden win the next states to be called that night; with Oklahoma and Arkansas going to the former and Alabama to the latter by a wide margin. However, Biden begins to show weakness in North Carolina, only narrowly defeating Bloomberg who begins to show signs of cutting in on his support among African-Americans. This is further amplified when Buttigieg picks up Colorado, and Klobuchar picks up her home state of Minnesota - which appears to add another nail into the Biden campaign's unity coffin. Biden wins in the larger contests of North Carolina and Virginia, shoring up his centrist base on the hour of a victory that is almost immediately undercut by a poll showing Buttigieg leading in California, projected to win 200 delegates, and Bloomberg leading among establishment Dems and former-Republican voters. Although Buttigieg edges out Biden on ST by 26 pledged delegates, he is seen as a weak front-runner, with Bloomberg overperforming and winning Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas - and a contested convention was made all but certain, and a Biden victory all but otherwise.



Although Warren hurt Bloomberg in the previous debate, the final pre-Super Tuesday face-off and the debate immediately following see the former Mayor hold his own and make a comeback respectively turning Warren’s populist campaign against her, playing to fears about Trump’s reelection. A major difference between the former and the latter, however, is him turning his guns on Biden – claiming that Warren, and Sanders before him, had “gotten into his head,” about ‘socialism,’ and made him betray his morals, portraying Biden as an easy defeat for Donald Trump. This hurts Biden in the subsequent contests, wherein he is absolutely curbstomped by Bloomberg in Florida, and both Bloomberg ‘and’ Buttigieg in Ohio. Even in Illinois, Buttigieg manages to edge him out, and in Arizona he fails to even qualify for delegates. Biden points to the coronavirus affecting voters in Ohio, and lambasts the Republican leadership in the state as “voter suppression” intended to help Bloomberg, who Trump – rightly or wrongly – perceives as an easier general election opponent than the former Vice President. Biden manages to keep himself afloat in subsequent competitions, maintaining sizable victories in his home state of Delaware, Kentucky, Louisiana, Georgia and throughout the Deep South, as well as edging Bloomberg in New Jersey, and effectively tying the billionaire in Pennsylvania and Michigan. Buttigieg drops out after Biden loses in Connecticut to Mike Bloomberg by a little over a percent, campaigning to nominate him as the right choice to beat Donald Trump - a move seen as galvanizing the faction now led by Warren, who was hurtling through contests in the Northwest with a crushing momentum surpassing that of even her predecessor’s 2016 campaign. Other than Pennsylvania, however, Bloomberg’s $ billions-backed general election juggernaut steamrolls where it counts, running the tables in the large states of Florida, New York, Maryland, Wisconsin and even running neck-and-neck with Biden in New Jersey and even Pennsylvania.

By the end of spring and beginning of summer 2020, a contested convention was inevitable, with a mere 336 pledged delegates and 787 total remaining and Bloomberg’s Buttigieg-bounce outpacing Biden by only 704 delegates and Warren a strong third at over 800 pledged delegates. All three remaining candidates pivot to the general election and why they should be nominated at the convention (or, in Warren’s case, why Bloomberg shouldn't be the nominee). Warren drops out on the morning of the Nebraska and West Virginia primaries – which Warren herself and Biden win respectively. Biden wins in Kentucky, South Dakota and the District of Columbia, Warren (posthumously) in Montana, and the rest go to Bloomberg by various margins, further strengthening Bloomberg’s radical anti-Progressive, pro-security state base, which he solidifies by selected former-Nominee, FLOTUS, Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton as his running-mate. Instead of invoking memories of the Obama administration among Democrats, this strategy backfires; resuscitating the Clinton-Sanders schism and leaving Bloomberg with stalking horse-shaped egg on his face.

Going into the convention as quite possibly one of the weakest front-runners in American history, but also up against a diverse coalition spearheaded by his nearest competitors Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren resembling that of the Obama Coalition of 2008, but younger and even more ethnically diverse; Biden and Warren forming an unlikely alliance of convenience against a doubling, tripling and quadrupling-down horrifically-out of touch oligarchic establishment more clearly and transparently on the payroll of big banks, oilmen and arms dealers - but what truly delivered Warren the strong hand she played at the convention was her ability to forgo special interests and SuperPACs, entirely grassroots-funding her campaign and the kingmaker role played by her incredibly powerful third-place finish (Sanders would begin actively campaigning for Warren until she drops out herself a month before the Convention was scheduled to begin, primarily self-quarantining from CoViD-19).



Although most historians agree that the second American Civil War was officially underway when the fascist Blue Lives Matter pro-Police movement founded in reactionary response to the Black Lives Matter activist movement, widespread violence erupted in Milwaukee, Wisconsin - a state won by Sen. Sanders 2016 and narrowly lost by Sen. Warren in 2020, after doctored images are circulated showing Sens. Booker, Brown, Gillibrand, Harris, Hirono, Markey, Merkley, Sanders and Warren - the most progressive leaders in Washington at the time - meeting the shooter of the police officers in Ferguson in 2014. BLM originated from the African-American community in protest of the corruption by the Sanford Police Department in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. After police officers were shot in the 2014 Ferguson riots over two years after the shooting of Martin, and in the first widespread civil unrest of its scale seen since the 1992 LA unrest in which the National Guard was called in, the crisis would escalate with the police murder of Freddie Gray, resulting in the widespread 2015 Baltimore protests. Attempting to capitalize on the unrest unfolding between police and Sanders/Warren activists in states across the country, Bloomberg-Clinton rolls out an old Iowa strategy initially used by Biden against Sanders to attack Sanders (and thus the Biden-Warren coalition) on gun control and attempts to connect Biden to the NRA and portray the Bloomberg-Clinton ticket as the "true law and order" candidate to prosecute Trump through the power of the national security state, and protect the country from the "Russian threat", charging that Bernie and Warren are the reverse - susceptible to Russian-backed efforts.

Not even halfway through the Convention, a fight had broken out on the second morning of the DNC in Milwaukee's Fiserv Forum - something until then only seen in second and third-world countries infested with corruption. Over the next 48 hours, exacerbated by the current President, an American political nightmare unfolds. Biden blankets the country with Anti-Bloomberg ads, bombarding the Democratic establishment with evidence of their connections to Big Oil, the Bush administration, and Brazil's Bolsonaro, all Democratic senators, delegates and representatives happening to hail almost exclusively from U.S. states where Bloomberg performed strongly or won (particularly Florida, Donald Trump’s home state). Warren pools her impressive campaign chest to join in on the battering of the Bloomberg-Clinton campaign, running ads featuring liberal activist Michael Moore's past and recent criticisms of then-President Obama's handling of the then-ongoing Flint water crisis, which she connects to Hillary Clinton (and thus Bloomberg) who was Secretary of State when Gov. Snyder won the 2010 Michigan Gubernatorial election. This hurts Warren's standing among DNC insiders and the Biden team, drawing a rebuke from Biden himself in an interview broadside against all of his opponents, in an infamous gaffe-filled MSNBC interview (which would have hurt him in any other instance had it not been for the crushing unpopularity of the presumptive nominee). The establishment media-industrial complex embedded in the Democratic Party digs in its heels, viciously lambasting and pillorying Elizabeth Warren, Michael Moore, Bernie Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard, Jimmy Dore, Kyle Kulinski, Cenk Uygur and The Young Turks of being a "Vast Russian electioneering operation" with no evidence, despite the glaring mountains of evidence of Kremlin-Trump connections.



With Bloomberg and Biden in a statistical tie for pledged delegates apart by only about 700 delegates (a mere 12% of the total delegates pledged and otherwise), and Warren behind Biden by not even 300 with 833 pledged delegates - more than enough to put one or the other over the top - the establishment begins devolving into hysterics, resorting to cheap hit-pieces and bankrolling opposition movements across the country funded by the C.A.P. and notoriously pro-Wall Street, pro-Corporation Third Way think-tank. Biden, Warren and Sanders coordinate their campaigns in the lead up to the convention in Milwaukee, zeroing in on the flaw in the Bloomberg campaign's weaponizing of Russiagate: chiefly that the Kremlin would have no reason to back an insurgent Vice-Presidential candidate (Warren a leading favorite alongside former-UN Ambassador Susan Rice and Sen. Harris) when they already have one in the White House at the Chief Executive reigns of power, turning the argument back on them that they are inadvertently aiding Russia and Trump themselves by focusing and distorting the facts over a single event in a wider time-frame. The utter failure to capitalize and maintain grips on the facts unlike in 2016 expose the true "Blue Trump" counterpart extremists to the incumbent President - the Democratic establishment. Furthermore; as Biden came closer to locking up the nomination, former-President Obama himself would take fire from a unique conservative-liberal alliance of media corporation operatives, the latter an extreme neoliberal corporate centrist who enthusiastically endorsed Amy Klobuchar in a New York Times op-ed and fiercely defended the content of Clinton's emails in 2016. As Biden and Obama pivot left, at least on the domestic front, the old fissures of the 2008 Obama-Clinton primary begin to resurface, with Hillary Clinton herself going so far as to accuse Trump and the Left of being part of a "toolkit" used by the Chinese and Russians, and that Biden wasn't "one of them at the time [2008]" but stopping short of Bloomberg's full charge.

Bloomberg’s operatives and rogue pledged delegates in the DNC manage to purge and/or hide voter rolls in and steal the states of Ohio and Arizona from Biden in the first round of voting, but this is off-set by Warren's delegates defecting to former-Vice President Biden, who follows behind Bloomberg with roughly 1,100 pledged delegates and argues that Bloomberg’s own record of misogyny and racism weakens him in the general election. The attacks levied against Biden and others are suspiciously absent in the face of Bloomberg's defiance, with ties between Hillary Clinton and the former Mayor revealed in a deal to try to get her at the top of the ticket and Bloomberg as Vice President. In the second round of voting on the third day the superdelegates refuse to budge, continuing to discuss behind the scenes with Bloomberg. This inversely effects the third round of voting... in which Biden finishes ahead of Bloomberg with 1,862 delegates to the former Mayor’s 1,573. Sen. Warren had released her delegates, which put Biden in the lead, while all other support had gone for Biden as well. And still it wasn't enough. Still, the superdelegates do not relent - drawing the ire of the Democratic Party writ-large. The DNC choose to go ahead and nominate a Biden for president, despite lacking the 1,990 delegates needed. Joe Biden pledges to pick a woman of color, choosing Sen. Harris over Clinton-favorite, former-Ambassador Rice. The response from Third Way and Clintonworld to the one-two punch is swift and relentless. Bloomberg-Clinton declare an Independent third-party run, with backing from Third Way and the CAP, in addition to suspicious wire transfers traced back to Brazil and Argentina. Needless to say, the Bloomberg machine whirs to life - going back on his pledge to spend $1 billion to defeat Trump to instead relentlessly campaign for his reelection by ruthlessly attacking the Democratic Party as a whole and "join the resistance" with himself and Hillary Clinton. Despite the funding and inundation of media with their advertising, the Bloomberg-Clinton independent campaign fails to collect more than 2% in the national polling average, a distant third-place tie with the Green Party. A few weeks after the Bloomberg-Clinton polling collapse, the Libertarian Party endorse Joe Biden as their nominee for President of the United States, effectively ending any and all potential for a third-party spoiler campaign against Donald Trump.

After the Republican capitulation in 2021 in all states holding gubernatorial and legislative elections to Democrats, Senator Cruz and Donald Trump declare the 2020 Republican primaries and 2021 local elections illegitimate, rigged and that he himself is the rightful President, and Trump refuses to leave office. Trump – in an effort to “preserve the absolutely important law and order of the United States of America” – initiates a section of George W. Bush’s Presidential Directive 51 through “executive order”, declaring a No-Fly Zone over Manhattan and Texas, and the Republican Party and the President initiate the most widely-sweeping accumulation of power in the history of the Office of the President. Seen as the underdog, a "pragmatic progressive", and a challenger to the corporate oligarchy powered by the terrifyingly-One-Party Administration of President Trump; the California Senator and former-Vice President – between the two of them – attract the largest voting bloc in American History, surpassing that of even the world-renown campaigns of Sanders in 2016 and Obama in 2008, at a time in the country’s history where the government was becoming dangerously close to becoming a One-Party Dictatorship.



To add the final capstone on their Independence Front, Biden and Harris unite their ticket, and form a new political party and movement, unlike anything before seen in history, proceeding forth easily under record-high disapproval with the withering and horrifically-corrupt Presidency of Trump.

The Second American Civil War is declared – from 2022 to 2024 – with Texas (whose votes delivered a popular vote victory to President Trump similar to Clinton’s California popular vote victory in 2016, despite losing the Electoral College to Biden in November 2020) declaring independence from the United States and declaring Donald Trump the rightful President-elect of the United States, and New York attempting to do the same but supporting the legitimacy of Clinton instead, claiming she was the rightful President on 11/8/16. This eventually results in a heightened period of civil unrest in New England, Manhattan and the surrounding New York Metropolitan Area due to the high concentration of both pro-Trump and anti-Trump demographics. The Governor of New York – Hillary Clinton – spearheads a union of local Democratic government officials along with the Pentagon and the FBI to preserve the unity and economy of the region, even if it meant secession. Upon the horizon of the 2024 presidential election – fearing escalation and doom in a period of heightened emotions – American Civil War II quickly transforms into an American Cold War, with the battle lines drawn between the U.S. and the emerging separatist factions in Texas, New England and the Manhattan-NYC Region. After Biden’s collapse in early 2022 and Harris ascending to the presidency and selecting Joe Kennedy III's 2020 rival Ed Markey as VP, corporate media and New York City come down hard on the first Black female President of the United States, whom they accuse of sabotaging and hijacking the Biden presidency after accepting the VP nomination and acting as a "Trojan horse" for then-Senator Markey's selection as Vice President, which seen as a 'slight' against Clinton, Pelosi and the establishment and a gesture of preference for the "Bernie Bros" and "Trumpism" over her and the corporate Democrats like Biden, and simultaneously the Republicans jump in - accusing the President of a 'Chinese-Communist coup' - and are raucously supported by the former-Rebel Southern states across the former-Confederacy. With both the Trump-led Republicans, and Clinton-led Democrats, attacking viciously Acting-President Harris and Vice President Markey - they find themselves strangely allied on the eve of the 2024 elections and the increasingly polarized narrative between the partially-recognized autonomous regions.

New York City, California and Long Island officially become autonomous State Republics supporting an unrecognized President (Clinton) and as they become the unrecognized states of the Republic of Texas, California and the Atlantic State - which begins in Long Island and spreads to Maryland, Mexico is offered a chance via cross-borders referendum to unite with these new countries - which refuses. With each secessionist movement across the world, including in the Americas, rallying in support of Gov. Clinton and the emerging Atlantic American 'rebellion' against Trump and the Democrats, this publicly-broadcast tension at fever-pitch across all walks of life further exacerbates the unrest unfolding in New York City and surrounding populations centers (across New England and the Western United States). NATO and UN peacekeepers supported by France, the United Kingdom, European Union, CIA, and other rogue elements of the U.S. Government rising up against the rogue state, attempt to start a countermovement to the effort to erect the AS-proposed Union between California and Mexico. The Mexican Government, incredibly opposed to the movement to create a union between itself, California and surrounding states in opposition to Texas (and by extension with Texas and the South against California) - mainly in the countries of China, the Arab League, Saudi Arabia, and the Pacific Commonwealth Nations - vehemently and exuberantly full-throatedly supports the counter-effort by the US intelligence community and UN to stop Clinton, Cruz and the Separatists in their tracks.

2020 Republican Party presidential primaries
Candidates
 * President Donald Trump (R-NY)
 * Senator Liz Cheney (R-WY)
 * FMR-Gov. Nikki Haley (R-SC)
 * Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX)
 * Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL)
 * Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI)

Although the so-called "competition" was Trump's to lose from the start, the President faced a surprisingly-prolific challenge from GOP insiders. The first to gin up was that of former-Governor and UN ambassador Nikki Haley



President Trump and Senator Cheney essentially steal the election on the GOP side, and at the last second Trump exposes Cheney's association with the Clinton Foundation, and Cheney's poll numbers plummet as Trump goes on to win the remaining contests by landslide margins. Cheney drops out before California’s primary.

General election campaign & concurrent crises


At the inception of the COVID-19 pandemic in April and May 2020, Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden brought back the front porch campaign to presidential politics for the first time in a century, which he mainly relied and profited off of in the primary as a counter to Mike Bloomberg's more boisterous and "Trumpian" pomp and bluster. Joe Biden's strategy heading into the fall after locking up the nomination was to focus on the economy and pandemic recovery while painting President Donald Trump as inciting widespread civil unrest across the U.S., in particular regard to the nationwide USPS crisis. The Biden-Harris campaign increases outreach efforts with a union-focused blue-collar brand, building on a multiracial working-class base first established by Biden in the primary of which the white-working class formed the core of initially, ironically similar to Sen. Bernie Sanders's 2016 voter base. As Biden began to shift left, the Democratic nominee faced increased backlash from the establishment, while the Biden-Harris campaign shifted focus to a younger target audience in late summer. In August, the Biden-Harris campaign breaks fundraising records for both parties with over $360 million raised, with most of it from small dollar donors.

Biden would double-down on his populist-lite, blue-collar message into the fall, earning endorsements from populist-leaning unions, with Trump failing at that strategy and instead leaning into his "dishonest" and "deceitful" brand - such as using doctored and/or misleading videos online, collaborating with anti-progressive democrats, corrupting the "entire federal government" and attacking political rivals personally, such as launching racist and sexist attacks on then-Sen. Harris throughout the election. While Biden and the progressive wing of the party agreed on the fundamentals, they disagreed on the centrist economic strategy, Biden's pledge to increase the military budget even as he criticizes the foreign policy of presidents Trump, Obama and George W. Bush as well as his Republican-lite "law and order" ad strategy as the vice presidential nominee campaigns for marijuana legalization and Biden runs to the left of Trump on climate change two weeks later.

An identity conflict between the Progressive and Wall Street Democrats erupts into the open, even as the latter express concerns over a Biden-Harris win and Biden threads the needle of unity between progressives and Wall Street. Other issues the left have with Biden's foreign policy include his commitment to continue and even accelerate Trump's policy against China, Biden statements that he would maintain Middle-East presence while contradicting himself in praise of Trump's Israel-UAE deal and defending the Iran agreement and attacking Trump on Israel from the right. The establishment's mask falls further, with corporate neoliberals smearing Joe Biden as an authoritarian, for adopting progressive positions on eliminating student debt and taxing the 1% even as Wall Street flees President Trump's catastrophic immolation and implosion into secessionist ethno-nationalism and syndicalist kleptocracy, as well as being accused by CNN of ignoring the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg as the media corporation attacked his running mate from the right. Media would continue to collude with Trump, his running-mate, Big Oil and Republicans in general to push Democrats to the right on green policies and alienate independents and most of their base as media go on the attack over his outreach to the majority of Americans who support climate change activism. Trump runs ads accusing the Biden campaign of supporting fracking as CBS' '60 minutes' Norah O'Donnell attacks Kamala Harris from the same direction, again pushing the Democrats to the right - a program President Obama defends as he coordinates his Anti-Socialist and Anti-Progressive message with that of the Trump dynasty, propelling their conspiratorial extremism just as former-Bush White House Communications Director and MSNBC arch-anchorwoman Nicolle Wallace did when she maliciously and obscenely mischaracterizes Trump's narrative as an "attempt to paint [Biden as a hostage of the liberal elite"] within hours of the Trump campaign running anti-Semitic ads accusing Biden (even as he erroneously conflates socialism and dictatorship in a gaffe-filled attempt to distance himself from the "left") of being "a hapless tool of the extreme left" and Sen. Sanders, who was raised Jewish.

Meanwhile, pretend maverick Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, with her "history of taking money from war profiteers like Raytheon, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman" and ties to the U.S. national security establishment through elite think tanks such as the Council on Foreign Relations, would return with an ardent fervor, after being boosted in the polls by Hillary Clinton to sabotage Bernie Sanders's 2020 presidential campaign. After failing to place ahead of Sanders and Warren, and stop the ascent of other liberal democrats, such as Markey-Sanders Democrat Senator Harris (who Bernie preferred Biden pick for VP, even over Elizabeth Warren), Gabbard, a long-time DNC insider who returned the favor in voting for the House Speaker that would pass Trump's defense bill (among other capitulations to the most racist presidency in decades) would return months after dropping out of the 2020 primary to promote a right-wing smear against both Ilhan Omar and the integrity of American democracy as a whole. With the ostensible failure of the Bloomberg-Clinton ticket, the latest attempt by the Clintons and Third Way conservatives to maintain power vicariously through their asset, Rep. Gabbard, is met with just as much a fury it in and of itself displayed, with Reps. Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar retaliating furiously against both her and Trump respectively over their exploiting of the crises to sow doubt, fear and conspiracy theories among the American public.

In the final weeks of the campaign, the Trump campaign's downward trajectory accelerates with new revelations in the president's long-running corruption involving a Turkish state-run bank, and how deep the Turkish dictatorship's influence over the president ran. This story would go [https://talkingpointsmemo.com/fivepoints/5-points-on-the-huge-story-about-trump-and-a-turkish-bank-thats-flying-under-the-radar largely underreported n t

COVID-19 pandemic response ballot access subterfuge
Additionally, the COVID-19 pandemic forced a surge in votes by mail, leading to the Trump administration's partisan siege on the United States Postal Service. For the 2020 election, a state-by-state analysis concluded that 76% of Americans are eligible to vote by mail in 2020, a record number. The analysis predicted that 80 million ballots could be cast by mail in 2020—more than double the number in 2016. The Postal Service sent a letter to multiple states in July 2020, warning that the service would not be able to meet the state's deadlines for requesting and casting last-minute absentee ballots. In addition to the anticipated high volume of mailed ballots, the prediction was due in part to numerous measures taken by the Louis DeJoy, the newly installed Postmaster General of the United States, including banning overtime and extra trips to deliver mail, which caused delays in delivering mail, and dismantling and removing hundreds of high-speed mail sorting machines from postal centers.

Accusations of Russian and Chinese election interference
U.S. officials have accused China, Russia and Iran of trying to influence the 2020 United States elections. On October 4, 2019, Microsoft announced that "Phosphorus", a group of hackers linked to the Iranian government, had attempted to compromise e-mail accounts belonging to journalists, U.S. government officials and the campaign of a U.S. presidential candidate, later revealed to be former-Mayor Bloomberg. The Voice of America reported in April 2020 that "Internet security researchers say there have already been signs that China-allied hackers have engaged in so-called 'spear-phishing' attacks on American political targets ahead of the 2020 vote."

On March 13, 2020, American intelligence officials advised members of the House Intelligence Committee that Russia was interfering in the 2020 election in an effort to get Trump re-elected. The briefing was delivered by Shelby Pierson, the intelligence community's top election security official and an aide to acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire. On May 21, The Washington Post reported that, according to unnamed U.S. officials, Russia was interfering in the Democratic primary in an effort to stop the nomination of Michael Bloomberg and Hillary Clinton as president and vice president, respectively.

Accusations of ANTIFA and BLM election interference
After posts circulated, some by intelligence officials, on social media accusing the 2020 West Coast megafires of being an intentional and politically motivated campaign of arson, the FBI debunks what it calls in an official release "Misinformation" and "Conspiracy theories". Nevertheless, with the president's assault on the USPS and "mail-in voting" and refusing to commit to a peaceful transition of power on countless occasions and continuing to do so vociferously deep into the election, the damage was done. On 7 October 2020, the FBI foil a far-right extremist plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and start civil war, leading to analysts to conclude Michigan is a 'hotbed' for armed extremists, which in turn feeds right-wing militant paranoia into left-wing extremists at polling places in Minnesota and other swing states.

After a nail-biter election, CNN, right-wing Democrats and "Biden Republicans" - some of which were candidates for cabinet (even as they contribute nothing to Democratic victories in 2020) - blaming police reform initiatives and Black Lives Matter for Biden's underperformance, drew calls for unity from progressive Congresswoman Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez along with other progressives who push back on Republicans and the Democrats aligning with them. Conservative democrats and their supporters launch sexist attacks against Ocasio-Cortez and against progressivism in general engaging in a back-and-forth with left-leaning Americans while siding with Republicans and literal fascists over progressives in opposition to the alleged "far-left", while history-making Democratic women candidates go largely unnoticed amid the Democratic intra-party "civil war".

Donald Trump would also attack Joe Biden from the right on foreign-policy, using an oft-cited criticism Hillary Clinton herself levied against the then-Vice President, a position he staunchly defended even after Clinton won the 2016 Democratic primary. Right-wing democrats would double-down on siding with Republicans over the progressive insurgency, with even former-Clinton aides criticizing Biden's pro-science lockdown policy, and blamed sexism for Biden's overperformance in areas Clinton lost in the previous primary contests and even President Obama himself advocating the use of Republican and conservative-leaning strategies in direct opposition to progressives and liberals.

Electoral college stalemate crisis


A wafer-thin victory on top of Bloomberg project 'Hawkfish' withholding opposition research allowing President Trump to craft a betrayal narrative and radicalize his followers following the election, would result in widespread civil unrest leading to the inevitable American Cold War.

With already the presence of Bloomberg's independent ticket still on the ballot in some states despite him dropping out in early August, the divide in the Democratic Party would linger on top of the fever pitch unrest over police brutality and actions of President Trump against Black Lives Matter, Anti-Fascists, NBPP, and PSJBGC during the 2020 unrest. During the election, multiple articles have been published suggesting that Trump may not, or will not, accept the election results, owing primarily to his tweets baselessly suggesting that the election will be rigged against him and his own suggestions that he will not accept electoral defeat. The White House has dismissed these suggestions, and Trump told Fox News' Harris Faulkner on June 5, 2020, "Certainly if I don't win, I don't win." On July 19, he declined to answer whether he would accept the results, telling Fox News anchor Chris Wallace, "I have to see. No, I'm not going to just say yes. I'm not going to say no." At a campaign event in Oshkosh, Wisconsin on August 17, Trump said that "the only way we're going to lose this election is if this election is rigged". He repeated this sentiment during an appearance at the 2020 Republican National Convention.

Results
The election was between Republican nominee, incumbent President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee, former-Vice President Joe Biden; with Democratic Vice Presidential-nominee Kamala Harris, former-President Barack Obama, former-First Lady Michelle Obama and Sen. Warren as Biden's top surrogates, with a simmering and growing divide between Biden-Harris and neoconservative-neoliberal establishment as early as 2013 (and even Secretary Clinton herself and the 44th President, particularly over Libya and during and after the 2016 presidential election).

As tensions increase between the Biden-Harris campaign and the Bloomberg-Clinton Independent presidential run, Presidents Obama and Clinton would call for an "Independence Front" against President Trump, a plea that would only serve to quiet the rhetoric and symbolically bury the hatchet at best. With the "red mirage" disparity between Republican in-person voting and Democratic mail-in voting creating unavoidable civil unrest on election day due to Bloomberg's "Hawkfish" data company withholding oppo research on Trump's disorder-sowing election strategy, only partial results showing a clear lead for Trump on 3-10 November begin to spark clashes between ANTIFA and right-wing militia in Omaha, Nebraska, New England and the Mid-Atlantic.

The unrest eventually serves to drive an unexpected wedge between the Biden-led liberals and Clinton-led "Never Trump" Republicans and neoconservatives such as The Lincoln Project, who committed to primary a "moderate" or neoliberal against Biden, should he run again, or Harris in 2024 if they moved too far left. Biden would campaign as "Scranton vs. Wall Street", even as his running-mate had Wall Street ties of her own and Biden's falling out with the former president and Secretary Clinton over this populist bent, corporate media and the Bloomberg campaign comparing him (and his running-mate) to Trump on multiple occasions. Despite this infighting, the Anti-Trump movement largely maintains cohesion throughout the electoral process, even as the country and society unraveled around them, and the Democratic Party was shattered irreparably for the foreseeable future, with no Democratic presidential mandate in sight for decades to come.

Election night


News media and election experts were surprised at Trump leading in the initial election night results. While more centrist sources such as Reuters, The Hill, AP and CNN, the news organization with the largest audience of over 268 million viewers; along with more liberal sources such as Huffpost, Vice and The Intercept hold off or project an eventual Biden victory, conservative and centre-right outlets such as Fox News, the BBC, New York Times and WaPo call the election for President Trump with 342 electoral votes, the BBC and New York Times representing a viewing audience of over 189 million and 162 million respectively. Other even more extremist outlets follow suit, with The Blaze, Breitbart, OAN and the Daily Mail declaring Trump the victor the day after election night, and even some liberal hyper-partisans such as The Daily Beast and MSNBC TV (despite their more centrist and reliable partner parent-companies, CNBC and NBC, projecting a narrow Biden victory 10 days from then).

The ongoing "stalemate crisis" generated by these conflicting narratives, atop the unrest and right-wing conspiracy theories encouraged by and likely originating from the president himself, leads to an escalating cascade of centrist, liberal and conservative-aligned news organizations alike, along with the FBI, Amnesty International, Black Lives Matter, the United Nations, NATO and other international organizations condemning the collection of right-wing, centrist and extreme left news, as well as Bloomberg (over his independent campaign, not news organization) calling the election for Trump on and the day after election night accusing them of "enabling fascism," while Bloomberg and the Democratic Party - for the most part - condemn Trump and the Republicans for voter suppression and sowing doubt about the election, but remain silent on the media role in the unrest.