President Hillary Rodham Clinton

After defeating Senator Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic primaries, Hillary Rodham Clinton was elected the 44th President of the United States on November 4th, 2008, narrowly defeating Republican nominee John McCain and his running mate, Mitt Romney. Immediately upon being inaugurated, Clinton got to work on some of the nation's most pressing issues, passing an economic stimulus bill with the cooperation of both parties in Congress and overhauling the national healthcare system. The trillion dollar stimulus resulted in a dramatic recovery of the American economy, while newly instilled single payer healthcare was widely popular among the public despite a sharp partisan divide in Washington. As a result, Clinton was re-elected in 2012 by a wide margin, defeating Republican nominee Rick Santorum. In 2016, Clinton's vice president Barack Obama was elected the nation's first African American president, defeating Republican nominee Jeb Bush.

2008 Democratic Primaries
Hillary Clinton, who was then serving as a Senator representing New York, faced a fierce challenge in the Democratic primaries from Illinois Senator Barack Obama. Obama narrowly defeated Clinton in Iowa, 37% to 35%, before Clinton won New Hampshire with 44% of the vote compared to Obama's 35%. As the primaries continued, Clinton maintained a steady lead in the popular vote despite the pledged delegate lead flipping back and forth between the two candidates. Eventually, Obama won a narrow majority of pledged delegates despite losing the popular vote to Clinton, 49.1% to 47.2%. But Clinton refused to concede, arguing to superdelegates that she was the stronger candidate against presumptive Republican nominee John McCain. Fearing a contested convention, the Clinton and Obama campaigns negotiated a compromise: Obama would concede to Clinton, who would then pick him as her running mate. Clinton was officially nominated in Denver, Colorado on August 28th, 2008, marking the first time in American history a woman was the presidential nominee of a major political party, as well as the first time an African American was the vice presidential nominee of a major political party.

2008 General Election
Hillary Clinton began her race against Republican nominee John McCain with a slight lead in the polls. This lead disappeared after her first debate against McCain, a debate that most pundits agreed McCain won. The debate's focus on foreign policy proved especially advantageous to McCain, who portrayed Clinton as a hypocrite for attacking the Iraq War after voting for it several years earlier: "Senator Clinton, with all due respect, how are you going to stand on this stage and criticize the president for invading Iraq when you yourself voted in favor of it? The American people need a leader who is strong in their convictions, and you, ma'am, have none." The polls further shifted in McCain's favor after the vice presidential debate, where former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney (the Republican nominee for vice president) successfully painted Senator Barack Obama as inexperienced and not ready to assume the Oval Office should something happen to Clinton. But as the economic collapse in October made the economy the main issue of the campaign, Clinton's standing in the polls improved dramatically. She promised voters a "Newer Deal," investing public spending into new infrastructure and energy projects to create millions of jobs and get the economy back on track. On election day, polls showed Clinton and McCain in a virtual dead heat. Clinton's popularity among Hispanic voters proved to be decisive, however, as she won Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada to win the electoral college with just 271 electoral votes to McCain's 267, along with a half percentage point popular vote win. In his concession speech, McCain acknowledged the "historic accomplishment of electing a woman to the highest office in the nation," and promised to "work with President Clinton to establish a brighter future for all Americans."

First Term
Hillary Clinton was sworn in as President of the United States on January 20th, 2009. Within her first 100 days in office, she passed nearly all components of her proposed "Newer Deal" economic plan thanks to an unusually high amount of Republican support. Unemployment peaked at 9 percent in April of 2009 but then began steadily falling, and by the end of 2010, the American economy was back on track, with unemployment under five percent and jobs growing at over 100,000 a month. Bolstered by the strong performance of Democrats in the 2010 midterms, Clinton began to tackle the bold task of replacing the nation's health care system with a single payer system. Although this was met with fierce Republican opposition, the Democratic midterm victories ensured that the party would have the votes needed to pass it, and the Single Payer Healthcare Act passed on a party line vote in February of 2011. On foreign policy, she disappointed many progressives by breaking her campaign promise to end the Iraq War, citing a need for regional stability which "only American troops could provide." However, her overall approval rating held in the low to mid fifties, and she announced in August of 2011 that she would be seeking a second term.

2012 Campaign
As is the case with most incumbents, President Clinton did not face a primary challenge, although some anti war advocates urged Vice President Obama to challenge her. The Republican Party, meanwhile, had a vigorous primary battle between former vice presidential nominee and Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum. Santorum, whose platform appealed to the religious right by focusing on social issues such as abortion and same sex marriage, upset Romney to win the nomination. He painted Romney as a "liberal in disguise" by highlighting his recent approval for same sex civil unions and previous support for abortion rights, arguing that "if we nominate him, we might as well just vote for Hillary Clinton." Santorum chose former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich as his running mate, stating that "he knows how to fight Clintons better than anyone." Unfortunately for Republicans, the focus on same sex marriage (which Clinton officially endorsed for the first time in her announcement that she would be running again) and abortion proved costly in November. Clinton won all the states she won in 2008 plus Arizona, Iowa, Ohio, Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida to capture 358 electoral votes compared to Santorum's 180, easily winning a second term.

Second Term
President Clinton's second term in office began on January 20th, 2013. Having won the electoral college in a landslide, she decided to turn her attention to gun control, pleading with Congress to act in honor of the victims of the recent Sandy Hook massacre. However, her proposal to impose a twenty year ban on the purchase of assault weapons was viewed as too extreme by the majority of the American public and a good chunk of Democrats, and her approval rating began to decline. This reignited the seemingly dead Republican Party, which took back the House and Senate in the 2014 midterm elections. Clinton also faced serious challenges abroad, with Russia's invasion of Ukraine presenting a diplomatic headache as growing resentment over the Iraq War at home continued to linger. Clinton finally withdrew from Iraq in the spring of 2015, believing the region to finally be stable enough to no longer need American troops present. Her approval rating bottomed out at forty percent before climbing again, thanks to the economy continuing to gain strength.

2016 Campaign
Although President Clinton was ineligible to run for a third term in 2016, she was heavily involved in the campaign of her vice president, Barack Obama, whom she urged to run. Obama faced a challenge early from Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, but his momentum dissipated after his surprising win in New Hampshire and he dropped out after Super Tuesday, leaving Obama as the de facto nominee. Republicans, meanwhile, saw former Florida Governor Jeb Bush as the most realistic candidate that could finally win them back the White House and nominated him despite strong challenges from Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Florida Senator Marco Rubio. (Businessman Donald J. Trump pondered a run at the presidency but ultimately decided against it after internal polling done by his exploratory committee revealed that a change candidate would't fare very well in the current political landscape.) Obama tapped Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren as his running mate, joking in his convention speech that "eight years ago we thought we couldn't get any more historic than a woman and a black man, but now we're nominating a black man and a woman." Jeb Bush, meanwhile, attempted to appeal to the African American community and peel off some votes from Obama by nominating former neurosurgeon Ben Carson as his running mate. Although polls showed a close race, Obama maintained a slight edge over Bush from mid September through election day, and on November 8th, 2016, he was elected the 45th President of the United States by a 332-206 electoral margin, losing only Arizona and North Carolina from Clinton's total. In his acceptance speech, Obama told an excited crowd that "we have finally made history. Now, let's get to work, for there is plenty of it to do."