Tulsi Takes The White House 2024!!
"Aloha" President brings new era to America as first female, first third party POTUS
January 20, 2025 12:01PM EST
Tulsi Gabbard has officially achieved the impossible—or what most of America thought was impossible less than two short years ago. The number of firsts she accomplished by assuming the highest office in the land today at 12:01 PM are nearly too many to count, but most notable among them are: First female President, first third party President, first American Samoan President, first female combat veteran President, first yogini President, and the first openly “spiritual” (as opposed to religious) President.
The former Democratic Congresswoman from Hawaii rose to prominence as an upstart third party candidate starting in the Spring of 2022, at a time when polarity in politics had reached a fever pitch in our country. Hot-button issues like vaccine mandates, mask mandates and Big Tech censorship had created deep, bitter, new divisions not just across the aisle in Washington, but across the dinner table in America, and among friends, co-workers and communities.
These divisions ultimately fueled the meteoric rise in popularity of Gabbard—whose self-proclaimed values include “Service Above Self” and “People Over Party”—as her penchant for speaking truth to power and seemingly relentless will to champion the bare truth over social tribalism resonated profoundly with at least half of America, left, right and center.
By early 2022, Gabbard privately foresaw a potential pathway to Pennsylvania Avenue by way of what she called, early on in her campaign, the 25-25-50 highway. The opening rested on her belief that 25% of Americans had veered far to the Left, while 25% had veered equally far to the Right, leaving 50% of the country in what she termed “The Reasonable Middle.” Pundits on both sides of the spectrum discounted her 25-25-50/TRM strategy as politically naive, with the DNC going the furthest to malign and laugh off the former Democratic Congresswoman’s effort by publicly labeling it, “the Kumbaya Campaign.” By 12:01 PM EST today, the laughter had died down substantially.
Although few previously acknowledged the potential for a viable third party, 2020 data, as reported by Pew Research Center, revealed a potential sleeping dragon in American politics, showing that 34% of registered voters in the U.S. identified themselves as independent, followed by 33% as Democrats and 29% as Republicans. With the last few national elections showing something closer to a 50-50 split between the two (previously) major party candidates, one might reasonably extrapolate that the 34% block of independents had tended to break slightly for the Republican candidate, by a rough margin of 19-15.
What few, if any, pollsters foresaw, was that the sleeping dragon would come fully awake in 2024, and with a breath of fire all but extinguish the Republican and Democratic top-ticket campaigns, while simultaneously adding lift to Gabbard’s dark-horse third party effort. According to exit polls, as many as 31% (of the 34%) of voters who previously identified as independent supported the giant socio-political rogue wave that President Gabbard rode so skillfully all the way to the Oval Office today.
Some argue that the independent vote alone may have been sufficient to land Gabbard the win, but throw in the 18% or so of the voting population that boldly defected from their Democratic or Republican tribe to support the “Aloha” President, and you have the trouncing heard ‘round the world we witnessed last November. In the end, the popular vote broke 23-28-49 for Gabbard, elevating her 25-25-50 strategy, in the eyes of many, from prediction to prescience, and leading her to a record-breaking electoral college victory.
Pollsters, predictions and spreadsheets aside, the discussion around every water cooler and keyboard today centers around the how. How did a former one term Congresswoman who, less than two years ago was little known, largely spurned by her own party, and mostly relying on alternative media platforms and conservative media outlets to get her message (and image) out, rise so quickly to the most powerful office in the world?
Back in the Winter of 2022, she appeared to many to be a “woman without a party” as she brazenly and continually condemned her own party’s President over everything from his stance on vaccine mandates and social media censorship to his insistence on filling a supreme court seat based on gender and race rather than qualifications. And while she was most assuredly irking and further distancing herself from the Democratic party establishment and far Leftists (effectively those in her party who so much as rode her out of Washington on rails years earlier) she was simultaneously gaining trust, traction, and endearing herself to “the reasonable middle” from both the Left and the Right. Add to that, almost under the table and out of view of most, she was giving a firm elbow to the sleeping dragon of independent voters, on whose back she would ultimately ride victoriously to Washington.
At that time, her increased appearance on Fox News, and interviews with the likes of Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson led many to speculate that Gabbard might flip Republican. But while Gabbard believed, and still believes, in political bridge-building by appearing on media of all stripes, joining the ranks of the GOP was, for the meditating yogini and self-proclaimed “spiritual” seeker, a bridge too far.
One thing pundits across the spectrum agree on is that Gabbard enjoyed the support of a giant swath of Americans who have felt increasingly disenfranchised, if not disgusted, by the deep polarization and partisan gridlock in D.C. politics. “As much as Bernie [Sanders] and Trump were diametrically opposed politically and philosophically,” mused an unnamed Senior source, “What they had in common was that their campaigns were fueled by the energy of a wide swath of Americans who feel betrayed by and suspicious of mainstream politicians, and the ‘system’ as a whole. With Tulsi, you had that same Washington ‘outsider’ vibe, but coming from this almost—extreme Centrist—who also had the gall to talk about human values like love, and aloha, and God as part of her platform… and that just played phenomenally well across the board.”
For her part, President Gabbard effectively agrees with this assessment, and sees herself not as some sword-wielding revolutionary, but rather a spiritually centered, humble public servant who happened to show up at a caustic crossroads in history, and offer a resonate tune that a somewhat silent majority was eager to sing along with.
“A lot of it had to do with just being at the right place at the right time in history,” shared Gabbard*, when we caught up with her, settling in on Pennsylvania Avenue. “It wasn’t exactly rocket science, it was there for anyone with the right kind of eyes to see. For example, I didn’t leave the Left, I stood still and the Left left me. And there were a LOT of liberals and progressives (more than the Democratic establish knew, or wanted to admit, at the time) who, while quiet—because they had mostly been publicly shamed into silence—were also standing still, right there beside me. They still believed in what are, arguably, fundamental liberal ideas. Ideas like no one should be silenced in the public square just because we don’t like or agree with what they’re saying. Ideas like if a Government uses its power and influence to try to silence ‘anti-authority’ voices in our culture, that it is no longer a Government for the people. Ideas like supporting the once liberal stance of ‘My body, my choice,’ and believing that philosophy naturally extends to include medical freedom, in the face of calls for vaccine and mask mandates. Mandates called for by their Democratic President and Democratic establishment. At that time, the media tried to cast anyone that expressed resistance to the popular narrative as a far right Trumper. And some were. But many many of them were progressive folks, like me, who had been Democrats their whole life, and who stood there, shell-shocked, while their party turned into a pro-censorship, forced vaccination, cancel-culture mob, in effect.”
“When that contingent heard what I was saying,” continued the President, “I believe they were relieved that at least someone on the Left was standing up for the simple truths they felt in their gut, and I think a lot of those people heard a loud, internal ‘YES’ in response to my message. And support came flooding in fast and furious and that’s when we began to build momentum.”
“The next wave of support came from independents,” Gabbard went on, as she rearranged her desk drawers in the Oval Office, “Who, while skewing a little more conservative in general, I find to be a very pragmatic, practical and intentional group of voters. It was a no-brainer for them. They had been watching the Cancel-Culture Club get progressively louder and meaner on the Left, and the Trump-loving wing of the Republicans become more menacing and scary on the Right, and they were hanging out in what I call The Reasonable Middle** going, ‘Everyone’s gone crazy! It’s like… pick your flavor of authoritarianism! Where is the Party of simple sanity?!’ And they found that sanity in our movement, and jumped on in force.”
“Of course we had tremendous support from a certain contingent of Republicans as well,” she said, while throwing away some left-over pencils that apparently had no lead in them. “Very similar story to that of the independent voters, I believe. Just good, reasonable people that believe in the same American values a lot of us believe in, when we throw away the politics of division, and put truth and integrity ahead of party. They could see I would always tell them the truth, whether they liked it or not, and they said okay, okay… we’ll take a chance on you.”
Hearing President Tulsi Gabbard, sitting in the Oval Office, refer back so matter-of-factly to the last twenty three months (albeit with the benefit of 2020 hindsight) it all sounds so simple, so straightforward, and, well… so obvious. A thing that seemed near impossible to many of us just two years ago, to hear her tell it, now seems to have been not impossible at all, but perhaps even… inevitable. We just didn’t know it. Then.
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*Note. Tulsi Gabbard did not say anything, as “quoted” in this post, nor did anyone else. As revealed by the future date of the post—January 20, 2025—and seeing as it is now February of 2022, the entire piece is written as fiction/conjecture/satire, whatever you want to call it. It’s not real. Yet.
**The Left has left the building. The Right ain't all right. It’s up to The Reasonable Center to reclaim sanity.
It's Party Time in America... THIRD Party Time.
#25-25-50TRM #TulsiTime2024 #ThirdPartyTime #ThirdPartyTime2024
She is a reasonable voice in a sea of political madness. Well written. I am the 50%.
I think she has a shot at it. She communicates, is young and positive.