2016: Political thriller come true

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Spurred by a “Bragging Rights” thread in Elections, I wanted to give my own scenario for the next 20 months. I thought of posting in Marketplace



 Plot outline for bestseller political fiction.
          Million-dollar bestseller.
       Movie rights $5,000,000.00 or more.
   The plot outline is yours for only $199.99

but I wasn’t allowed. So feel free to steal the idea; just donate $199 to your favorite charity when you get the $Million.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Chapter One
As the 2016 primary season advanced, things went about as expected. Hillary’s dominance grows. Cruz takes Iowa but Trump does OK. Trump takes N.H. but Cruz does OK. Rubio hobbles along, the default hope of mainstream GOP. Kasich drops out when exiled to the Kiddie’s Matinee; he supports Bush but his few supporters jump onto one of the three leaders. Running out of alternatives, rich donors invite Bush and Rubio to a Florida slug-off, but the results are inconclusive.

Scandals surface about all the candidates:
[ul][li] Clinton appears to be guilty of felony perjury, as well as at least three other felonies, misdemeanors, frauds and possibly treasons;[/li][li] Cruz commits various hypocrisies;[/li][li] Rubio, it appears, diverted campaign dollars to a love-nest and associated blackmail; and[/li][li] Trump is accused of insulting two manicurists and a waitress in Louisville, Kentucky 1995. Reports include allegations of extramarital sex between Trump and at least one of the manicurists, though accounts differ as to whether this was before or after the insulting.[/ul][/li]But the charges all rinse off as if on Teflon. Until evidence surfaces that the Rubio love-nest was with a teenage boy. Rubio’s standings plummet. In desperation Sheldon Adelson texts Donald Trump: “Up 4 a game of golf?” The rest is history
As the campaign enters its final phase, Hillary and the GOP nominee duke it out in a series of great debates. In the background there are 4½ gun massacres during the 2016 summer – one by Islamists, one by anti-Islamists, one by white supremacists, one by gun-loving anti-abortionists, and a ½-massacre hard to classify. (Jerry Peters estranged from his Asian-American fiancée, shoots up his fiancée’s Chinese restaurant, but only 6 Caucasians, including Peters himself, die. But on 9th September 2016 [sorry – you must pay for episode 2 to get this spoiler :rolleyes: ] Panic sets in. Pollsters show both Presidential and Congressional races as very close.

Many lawsuits are filed soon after Election Day. The Congressional majority is uunclear, but it does soon become clear that the electoral vote is tied 269-269 between the two nominees,

Among the nine swing states, no less than nine combinations of GOP victories produce a 269-269 tie:
FL OH IA NV NH
FL OH IA WI
FL OH NV WI
FL VA CO IA NV
PA OH CO IA NV NH
PA OH CO IA WI
PA OH CO NV WI
PA OH VA IA NV
PA FL NH WI
 but the Congress that will break the tie is in doubt. Recounts, suits and countersuits are in progress. SCOTUS rushes out rulings on disputed elections, always by a 5-4 vote, but they cannot clear the dockets by Inauguration Day.

Supporters of Trump take to the streets, armed with guns, demanding their man be sworn in as President.

Suddenly Second Amendment rights, long viewed as a tangential joke by many Americans, take center stage. The division is no longer between Right and Left, nor between GOP and Democrats, but between Armed and Unarmed.

I’ll post Chapter Two if there’s interest…

2

You need a beautiful and talented Senator’s daughter who knows some key facts that could swing thngs back to sanity. But someone wants to prevents her telling all, so she has to go on the run. She’s aided by a tough and cynical, but ultra-honest CIA agent. Or maybe he’s FBI or Secret Service. Whatever, she’s managed to convince him she’s right.

In other words, I’d love to hear more.

3

“The police are not there to create disorder, the police are there to preserve disorder.”

In any match between Armed and Unarmed, the only Armed group that matters is society’s armed group, sensu latu, which includes the National Guard and the police. In anything approaching reality, there would be riots, which would be put down quickly, leading to a few stand-offs, and, well, you can ask Randy Weaver and David Koresh what happens next.

The recent riots were only allowed to run as long as they were because they weren’t explicitly full of armed people trying to overthrow the legitimate government. You’re positing an armed insurrection, and by fewer people than a single state was able to field during the Civil War. (You didn’t say all gun owners would try to overthrow the government. You said all Trump-supporting gun owners would. By the numbers, that’s not a majority even within the GOP, let alone nationally.)

Good fiction is plausible, or at least sensical within the rules of its universe. Your fiction takes place in a universe which is recognizably our own with a few differences. Therefore, it has to obey normal rules or else people will be hurling it at the wall, literally and figuratively.

That isn’t to say your premise lacks promise. If episode two involves the revolt being put down (and I mean in the first few hours, story-time) and the political fallout from that, this could still have legs, and not be an insult to anyone’s intelligence.

4

I don’t know if I can continue. Mine was intended as a dark tragicomedy, with riots breaking out all over the world. The only romantic interest was going to be the talented but evil Balinese mistress of Kim Jong Un, as she goads her lover towards nuclear war.

But readers are calling for peace, and a sexy blond debutante to restore normalcy. ?? :dubious:

Maybe I should ask the Mods to move this to Thread Games, and each Doper can add his/her own chapter, in turn.

5

Ugh. Thanks for imagining a campaign season so exciting the real one will surely pale in comparison. My humble two cents: in any dark drama, you need some lightness for contrast. Bernie as comic relief?

6

And Also Starring Bernie Sanders as “Mr Yunioshi”!