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The Seventh Party System, also known as the New Progressive system, is the era of American national politics that began with in 2028 under President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The Ocasio-Cortes administration expanded the size and power of the federal government to an extent unprecedented in American history, and marked the beginning of political dominance by the Democratic Party that would remain largely unbroken until 2060. During this period, sometimes known as the One-Party-Three-Caucuses system, the Democrats governed as the dominant national party via an intercaucus coalition nominally led by the Progressive Caucus, with opposition parties largely incapable of forming significant or long lasting alternatives. This system entered a dealignment period during the 2060 elections which saw the Democratic caucuses split into distinct parties. While some scholars argue that the era after 2060 was a distinct party system, the post-Democratic parties typically entered into governing coalitions with eachother. It followed the Sixth Party System, usually called the Reagan Era. The Seventh Party system ended in 2080 with the rise of the Conservative Coalition under Oscar Lachman following the Second Depression.
The period featured a transformation from the issues of the Sixth Party System, which had focused on "Trickle-down economics", Free Trade, and the conflict over Traditional Values and Individual Liberty. The era began in the depths of the Labor Shortage and the extraordinarily intense election of 2028. It included the New Nationalist Era, World War III, the First Nations War and the start of the Second Depression.
The central domestic issues concerned government regulation of housing and large corporations, urbanization, the transition to a "cashless" economy, migrant labor, the need for a new financial system, corruption in primary politics, campaign financing, direct election of the President, Augment rights, efficiency in government, and immigration incentives. Foreign policy centered on the Flood, Space Colonialism, the Chinese Civil War, World War III, and the creation of the Pax Americana in space. Dominant personalities included presidents Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (P), Dylan J. Price (P), Evalyn Jacobi (P) and Carla Anderson (P), and three-time presidential candidate Andrew Markwalter (L).
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Beginnings[]
Many scholars place the beginning of the Seventh Party System at the election of 2016 where many of the political coalitions of the Sixth party system began to fall apart under two of the most unpopular candidates in American political history, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Trump ran on a platform of economic nationalism, while Clinton ran as a third-way Democrat/civil libertarian. In the 2016 Democratic Primary, Clinton handily beat another economic nationalist, Bernie Sanders, for her Party's nomination, while Donald Trump split the vote among more globalist/evangelical candidates for the Republican nomination. While Trump won via the electoral college, 51.3% of the popular vote went toward Hillary Clinton and Gary Johnson, both of whom were pro-free trade (Johnson was the Libertarian Party's candidate). Trump's lack of a mandate and increasing unpopularity following a scandal involving Russia, the failure to get much done in Congress, and the Late 2010s Recession, led to a resurgence of civil libertarian candidates from both the Republican and Democratic parties in the 2018 midterms and 2020 general election. The progressive/economic nationalist wings of both parties continued to grow, but were maligned until the election of 2024. By the election of 2028, the effects of the Labor Shortage and the Flood had largely destroyed public opinion of the libertarian wings of both parties, which became the Conservative and Labor Parties, respectively, leading to the Progressive Democrats forming the Progress Party and winning the contentious four-way election of 2028.
Economic Trends[]
Trump's promises and policies failed to take into account the retirement of the Baby Boomers. As time went on, more and more Baby Boomers retired. After Trump lost the 2020 election, Millennials entered the workforce en masse. However, it was not enough to prevent a labor shortage. All efforts to use supply-side economics to get more people to get jobs failed as there was not enough people. The labor shortage triggered another crash. This led to the election of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Ocasio-Cortez advocated immigration reform as a means of solving the problem. She also advocated automation.
Progressive Reforms[]
Under President Ocasio-Cortez, landmark reforms were made to American society. There were major fixes to the financial system and the immigration system. Immigration barriers were greatly reduced, flooding the population with Flood refugees from Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, Nigeria, China, India, and Bangladesh. This provided a long overdue infusion of new blood into the workforce, and boosted productivity to keep up with demand. Additional reforms were made to social services, as private sector healthcare and retirement services couldn't keep up with the retirement of the Baby Boom generation. Medicare was extended to every citizen, finally giving the US the healthcare system they had long sought. Social Security was reformed to adequately provide retirement services to the nation's elderly through a new progressive payroll tax and a phased raising of the retirement age.
The most consequential reforms of this period were to the institution of government itself. The overall focus was on changing the way the federal government manages public services and interacts in the economy, as well as restructuring the system of checks on its own power. What existed prior to this was a cumbersome semi-professional bureaucracy made up of mid-level managers. High centralized, hierarchical in structure, technocratic, and very poorly coordinated. Ocasio-Cortez’s reforms saw the government adapt to the principals of agile management, implementing new machine learning systems across the government and severely downsizing many of the government's departments.
Sprawl Reform[]
Suburban communities experienced their own progressive reforms in the 2020s, typically with the explicit goal of improving the quality of life outside beyond the urban cores of major cities. In the mid 2010s the first residential malls began to appear in exurban communities, but the growth of these living centers exploded after the Late 2010s Recession as millions of first time home-owners were priced out of traditional suburban communities.
The most urgent need was better infrastructure to connect communities to job centers in urban areas. The 2020s saw the first hyper loop systems completed in select routs in California and the Northeast, however the leaving the burden of building and maintaining these systems to wealthy entrepreneurs was increasingly inadequate. California took the lead in 2023 to establish a state-wide hyper loop system, and by 2027 the Federal Government had approved pilot programs for select routs between Carson City and San Francisco, and from New York to Washington DC.
Demands grew for local and state government to take charge. With the emergence of driverless and electric vehicles, urgent efforts were made to upgrade and modernize roads and interstates designed for internal combustion vehicles and human controlled traffic. The Compact for Infrastructure Improvement was organized in 2020. Funding came from driverless car registration, and taxes on electricity usage, as well as state aid. In 2026, federal-aid was first made available to improve city roads, and promote autonomous vehicle commerce. The rapidly increasing adoption of self driving and electric cars, and especially trucks, made maintenance and repair of new infrastructure a high priority. Wireless charging panels were first used in 2019, and expanded until it became a dominant feature of road construction in the 2030s. The Heartland had fewer personal electric vehicles and much less money, but federal dollars encouraged the creation of dedicated projects for truck lanes on major interstates in the 2020s.
Criminal Justice[]
Cannabis laws in the United States prior to National Legalization
Jurisdiction with legalized cannabis. Jurisdiction with both medical and decriminalization laws. Jurisdiction with legal psychoactive medical cannabis. Jurisdiction with legal non-psychoactive medical cannabis.
One of the most lasting changes made by early progressives were reforms to law enforcement and criminal justice. During the Reagan Era, American criminal justice placed more emphasis on enforcement and incraceration, leading to the US having the largest prison population in the world by turn of the 21st century. This policy originated during the rise of reactionary conservatism in the late 1960s and 70s, and began as national policy under the Nixon administration with the "War on Drugs," which was designed to discredit leftist activists and reduce the growing political power of minority communities. By the Trump administration, this policy began to impact white drug users more so than before as federal and state governments attempted to crack down on opioid abuse which was ravaging the country. Many political scholars believe it was the Drug War's impact on the majority white population of the United States that ultimately led to progressive movements to seek genuine reform to the criminal justice system.
Early reforms came during the second term of the Obama administration as marijuana legalization saw the rate of incarceration steadily decline, while other states had adopted community policing policies that encouraged a greater level of professionalism in the police force. This paralleled reforms to the US military as soldiers were increasingly required to receive formal education beyond basic training. Reforms to the penal code were also made to reduce racial biases, while correctional facilities were reformed to treat criminality via therapy and job training. Combined with the full employment levels resulting from the labor shortage, the United States saw incarceration rates fall to their lowest levels in history, and an overall drop in violent crime.
Gun Control[]
The Progressive movement was far more divided about gun control than any single issue, however it was only through the movement that a group like "Parents Against School Shootings" could come about. PASS had a simple goal to reduce the risk of mass shootings by adopting common gun control measures that were available in every state, and gained support from cops, former military members, and teachers groups.
PASS pushed for laws that were expressly designed to conform to legal precedent around the 2nd Amendment, specifically how the interpretation of a "Well Regulated Militia" permitted the banning of gun ownership to criminals and the mentally disturbed under current law.
Family[]
Progressives saw a distinct split in their approach to family. Rural progressives believed that the family was the foundation stone of American society, and the government, especially municipal government, must work to enhance the family. Paid leave programs were established to keep families together and reduce the burden of child rearing, while more traditionally liberal progressives pushed for a universal application of these laws to non-hetero normative families.
Education[]
Progressive reforms to education saw a number of failed attempts during the Biden and Harris administrations, but the first successful reform came under Ocasio-Cortez, in which public colleges and universities were made tuition-free.
Healthcare[]
Many historians believe the new progressive movement began with the healthcare reform debates of the 2010s. Following the Obama administration's passage of the Affordable Care Act, the country saw right-wing factions within the Republican Party advocate for its abolishment while progressive groups fought for the adoption of single-payer healthcare. This accumulated with the establishment of Medicare For All during the Ocasio-Cortez administration.
Feminism[]
TBA
Constitutional change[]
The Progressives fixed some of their reforms into law by adding amendments 28, 29, 30, 31, and 32 to the US Constitution. These amendments, intended to remove much of the corruption for the federal government, established direct election of the President by popular vote, replaced first past the post with a ranked choice voting system, established term limits for members of Congress and the Senate, reformed campaign financing, and eliminated gerrymandering by mandating that redistricting be conducted under a modified Shortest-Splitline Algorithm.
Economic policy[]
Immigration[]
The Flood highlighted a growing problem in the Americas; the labor shortage. Reconstruction of the East Coast simply wasn't feasible with the aging population, and with the exception of the cities where the displaced resettled, all across the country a demand for labor was outstripping supply. New immigration reforms in America and Canada provided perhaps the relief the world so desperately needed as millions of climate refugees came pouring into the US seeking jobs and new homes. These reforms included automatic citizenship for green-card holders in the US, full transition to the metric system and the Celsius temperature system to ease the burden of immigrants and to help attract new ones, and others.
Finance and Banking[]
Progressives ardently supported state-owned banking systems and community banking as opposed to the large financial conglomerates that had come to dominate global finance over the last half century. They saw victories during the Price and Toldson administrations which declared moratoriums on debt and established public-banking systems through the US Post Office.
Tax Reform[]
Corporate and personal income taxes changed radically in the New Progressive Era. By 2020, most large businesses paid an effective tax rate of 2%, thanks in part to an extensive series of loopholes designed to encourage private investment. Progressives argued for and achieved reforms that closed all tax loopholes, but also created a hyper progressive tax code that made it possible to lower the overall corporate tax from 35% to 15%, while the effective rate grew from 2% to 12% by 2035.
Colonialism[]
The Third World War precipitated the end of the Japanese as a player in Cislunar space, with the 2054 Treaty of Geneva giving the US control over the former Japanese colonies and by extension all of space. Permanent territory status for the American colonies was a major issue in the 2056 presidential election. Markwalter, although strongly supportive of the war, denounced the permanent territorial status of Luna, which was strongly defended by Progressives, especially the Vice-Presidential nominee Owen Wood.
Augment Rights[]
Augment Rights played a relatively small roll in the Progressive era, and did not truly come to the forefront of American politics until the rise of Postnaturalism.
Rules of the Game[]
New rule changes came in the form of the reforms during the Trump and Biden years, as voters could now vote multiple times and candidates spent their energies campaigning in major centers of regions with common economic/cultural interests and building political coalitions with similar parties. The internet saw reforms to its structure that made it a much more effective tool for reaching an effective coalition of voters, overshadowing television and radio as a campaign tool.