Chapter 492 - 230: Split
"What? President? Me?"
Murphy repeated, a sense of absurdity in his voice.
"Leo, are you still drunk from last night? Or has the coal dust from Pittsburgh clogged your brain?"
"I’ve been a Senator for less than half a year! The seat in my office isn’t even warm yet."
"And now you want me to run for President? To compete against the big shots who control hundreds of millions of USD in campaign funds? How am I supposed to win the party nomination? With what? A photo of me eating a sandwich in the Senate cafeteria?"
"Don’t be ridiculous, Leo. You might as well ask me to build a colony on Mars. That sounds more plausible than me becoming President!"
Leo said, "John, calm down."
"Who said we need to win the party nomination?"
"We don’t need to suck up to the Democratic National Committee, and we don’t need to beg for votes from superdelegates."
"We’re going to do this ourselves."
"We’re going to form a new political party."
The other end of the line fell dead silent.
After a full five seconds, Murphy finally spoke. "Leo... are you serious?"
"Of course, I am."
"We don’t need you to actually get elected. I know you can’t win."
"I just need you to run."
"Is there a difference?!" Murphy yelled into the phone. "The moment I announce, the Democratic National Committee will expel me from the party! I’ll become a laughingstock across the entire United States!"
"I’ve thought this through carefully."
Leo said, enunciating every word.
"The party we’re forming will be called the Workers and Justice Party."
"We’ll only register it in three key Rust Belt states: Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan."
"Our campaign platform will have only one core principle: survival."
"We’ll only talk about industrial revival, trade protectionism, and universal healthcare."
"We’re going to snatch the workers’ votes from both the Democratic Party and the Republican Party."
"This is..."
Murphy was stunned on the other end of the line.
"This is just playing spoiler, isn’t it?"
"Exactly. We’re playing spoiler."
Roosevelt’s voice echoed in Leo’s mind. ’Leo, tell him the story of 1912.’
Leo repeated Roosevelt’s words.
"John, do you remember the 1912 election?"
"Back then, Theodore Roosevelt was dissatisfied with the conservative policies of the incumbent Republican President, Taft. He angrily left the party and formed the Progressive Party, also known as the famous Bull Party."
"He ran for President himself."
"And the result?"
Leo continued, "The result was that he and Taft both went down in flames."
"They split the Republican vote, allowing the Democrat, Woodrow Wilson, who originally had no chance of winning, to slip into the White House."
"This is the strategy we’re going to use."
"The current occupant of the White House—what does he fear most?"
"He’s not afraid of a strong challenge from the Republican Party. That’s a visible enemy. He has preparations and contingency plans for that."
"What he fears most is a third party emerging in the swing states he absolutely has to win, one that can siphon off his key votes."
"Recent polls show that because of the moves we’ve been making in Pittsburgh and the Rust Belt, the blue-collar vote in swing states like Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Michigan has been trending back toward the Democratic Party."
Leo’s fingers tapped on the tabletop.
"This has given the White House the wrong impression."
"They think those votes are rightfully theirs. They see it as a natural return to the fold."
"But they’ve forgotten that we clawed those votes back from the Republican Party, one by one. We earned them with the sweat of the workers and the courage to stand up to the oligarchs."
"Now, it’s time to give them a wake-up call."
"We’re going to show them that nothing in this world should be taken for granted."
"If we take just five percent of the vote in the Rust Belt."
"If those blue-collar workers who were supposed to vote for the Democratic Party vote for us instead."
"Then Pennsylvania will flip red. Ohio will flip red. Michigan will flip red."
"In that case, the Republican Party will win."
"And the Democratic Party will lose the election, lose the White House, and lose everything."
Leo’s voice carried a chilling resolve, a willingness to burn everything to the ground.
"We’ll go to the White House and tell him: If you dare sign that bill protecting the insurance companies, if you dare label Luigi a terrorist..."
"...then we will utterly shatter your dream of reelection in the Rust Belt."
A long silence fell over the phone line.
Murphy didn’t panic at the sheer madness of the plan.
On the contrary, a strange sense of calm took over his mind.
Over the past year, his nerves had been forged into incredible resilience by Leo Wallace’s repeated high-stakes gambles.
Every time, Leo had pushed him to the edge of a cliff, only to make him grow wings a second before he fell.
He was used to it.
He had even grown to depend on this madness.
He might be sitting in a spacious Senator’s office in Washington, bearing that impressive title, but deep down, he knew exactly who was really calling the shots.
Leo was the one behind the wheel.
And he, John Murphy, was just the passenger in the front seat, responsible for waving their credentials at checkpoints and playing his part.
He didn’t need to think about the route; he just had to make sure the car didn’t get stopped.
Faced with this plan that would turn the world upside down, Murphy’s first reaction was no longer to question its feasibility or weigh the pros and cons.
He was thinking about how to cooperate; he had already surrendered himself completely.
’If Leo said they were going to blow up the gates of the White House, then his job was to buy the dynamite, not ask why.’