United States presidential election, 2028

The **2028 United States Presidential Election** was the 61st quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 6, 2028. The election took place among the backdrop of the Labor Crisis under the Harris administration that had ruined the promises of the President, seeking re-election to a second term, to bring about a new era of prosperity. The Progressive nomination went to the well-known governor of New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who had been elected in a landslide in 2026. Ocasio-Cortez marshalled her new party and brought in another leading Progressive figure as her running mate, Governor Dylan J. Price of California.

Ocasio-Cortez repeatedly blamed Harris and the Democrats for the economic crisis and their mishandling of the refugee crisis. With employment above 120% in 2028 alone, President Harris was remiss to defend her party's record, and Ocasio-Cortez promised recovery with a series of radical immigration reforms and new social services to ease the burden of elderly care in the country. Ocasio-Cortez won by 36% of voter's first choices, and well over 66% of voter's second choices, receiving the highest percentage of the popular vote for a Progressive nominee.

Many factions in the GOP splintered off to form their own parties, which saw themselves as more representing of the populace in certain local regions rather than national. Because of this mindset, many of the former GOP parties did not participate in the national election. Due to poor results in local and state elections, the GOP themselves ceased to exist as a force shortly after. The election marked the effective end of the Sixth Party System, dominated by Republicans. Subsequent landslides in the 2030 mid-term elections and following presidential election two and four years later respectively, signified the commencement of the Seventh Party System, dominated by Ocasio-Cortez's Progressive Coalition.

## Nominations

### Democratic Party nomination

#### Democratic candidates

* Kamala Harris, President of the United States
* Jack McCain, Senator from Texas

As the year 2028 began, the Democratic Party believed that continuing Harris' protectionism and aggressive fiscal policies would solve the recession. Whether they were successful or not, President Harris had little trouble securing the nomination despite a primary challenge from Senator Jack McCain, who was largely ignored by the Democratic establishment.

### Progress Party nomination

#### Progressive candidates

* Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Governor of New York
* Dylan J. Price, Governor of California
* Ira Blum, former Governor of Arizona

The Progress Party, unlike the Democrats, operated on a single caucus at the Progressive National Convention where party leaders would gather and choose a nominee, however prior to the open primary, party leaders of each delegation would first observe the results of a series of simulated elections pitting various candidates against likely opponents under a variety of conditions. The process involved very little input from the public, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez easily secured the nomination after 81% of all simulations showed her winning the Presidency with a strong mandate from the electorate. Ocasio-Cortez secured 69% of the caucus and Governor of California Dylan J. Price was nominated as VP.

### Republican Party nomination

#### Republican candidates

* Madison Cawthorn, Representative from North Carolina
* Nikki Haley, former Ambassador to the United Nations

### Labor Party nomination

#### Labor candidates

* Ivory Toldson, Congressman from Virginia
* Carry Anderson, Governor of Iowa

When the primaries began, Toldson was little-known at the national level, and most pundits had agreed that popular Iowa Governor Carry Anderson would be the likely nominee. However, as the Ocasio-Cortez campaign began to gain national attention, moderate members of the Labor party began to throw their support for Toldson, who was generally seen as more moderate than Anderson and could appeal to a broader voting bloc.

### Green Party nomination

#### Green candidates

* Eric Haden, Senator from North Carolina
* Lisa Shot, Congresswoman from Delaware

## General Election

### **Campaign**

The 2028 election is considered by some to be a realigning election, reaching a climate of confrontation practically not seen since 1980. Ocasio-Cortez's supporters praised him for running a campaign of frank stoicism, where Harris was largely criticized for appearing out of touch to the point of oblivious. Immediately after the conclusion of the primaries, a FiveThirtyEight poll held that Ocasio-Cortez was ahead, with 61% of voters upset by Harris' handling of the labor shortage, the refugee crisis, and the Flood.

The election of 2028 was a key turning point in American politics. It signaled the resurgent electoral power of cities and the Pacific Northwest. Ocasio-Cortez's success as a progressive would initiate a realigning of the parties, as liberal Democrats broke off to join or form new parties that could not effecitvely campaign and be represented in American politics following the electoral amendments. While during Bernie Sanders campaign, many voters saw his warnings about a too-powerful corporations as hyperbolic and 60% of the electorate agreed that the government was too powerful. By 2028, a majority of Americans believed that government held too little power.

### **Issues**

#### **Labor shortage**

Since 2019, the US had a near full employment economy, with only a handful of citizens unable or unwilling to work. The subsequent labor shortage and retirement of the Baby Boom Generation resulted in the working population sharing a much higher tax burden than previous generations and high inflation due to competitive salaries and benefits by companies to attract workers. The Harris administration supported a series of tax cuts to stimulate the economy in 2026 and 2027, however with no labor pool any injection of capital into markets had no effect because there were no surplus workers to carry out any new entrepreneurial activity.

Governor Ocasio-Cortez argued for eliminating barriers of entry for immigrants and easy the transition of resident aliens to fill the labor shortage. This policy gained wide support among retirees who were seeing their social security benefits dry up with limited tax revenue, and educated professionals who were hurt by high inflation and wanted effective tax relief. Toldson and the Labor party argued that while a path to citizenship was necessary, Ocasio-Cortez's policies were too radical and would hurt the income of the domestic workforce. Harris opposed the policy outright, arguing that lower taxes would free up the domestic labor pool and opening the borders would lead to a spike in crime and put a burden on the welfare state.

#### **Refugee crisis**

After the loss of the South Greenland Ice Sheet, hundreds of millions of people world-wide were displaced from their homes. The US had initially managed the crisis effectively by preemptively relocating its own citizens further inland, however even with government intervention into the housing market under the Booker administration, affordable housing was still not being provided under the free market. Harris argued for reforming the tax code and encouraging local government to restructure zoning laws to build cheaper homes, and cited the company communities being created by Google and Apple as a model for the future of the workforce. Toldson called this, "Neo-Feudalism," and a giveaway to corporations, while Haden called for the elimination of the private housing market entirely. Ocasio-Cortez argued that the problem rested in the fact that homes were over-valued, and proposed a two-fold solution: restructuring the financial system to make it easier to save money without buying a home, and building the largest residential housing projects in American history based off of the Residential Mall model. As for foreign refugees, Ocasio-Cortez argued that they should be seen as a solution to the labor shortage and the housing market should be the way to attract them to America.