In a shocking upset, Rhonda Santis was elected the 46th President of The United States on November 5th, defying most of the polling data.
On the surface, it was a blow to the establishment Beltway politicians of D.C like Madame President Rodham, although the internal polling data of the Robinette and Santis campaigns apparently were far more accurate than the public polls, and those had been indicating a toss up ever since June.
Establishment pundits behaved shocked for days, CNN host Andrea Vanderbilt's sad face as Robinette lost her own state of Pennsylvania becoming a meme on social media.
Secretly, the White House basement's fun room that Rodham had installed was quietly removed.
**
Before The Great Change, back when Robbie had been her husband, it had been Robert's job to cook the Thanksgiving turkey while Elizabeth took care of most of the other foodstuffs. The man just knew how to roast and baste and give the food a special kick that made it melt in Lizzie's mouth.
Now, as the, for lack of a better phrase, "woman of the house", Elizabeth was pulling turkey duty. She wasn't bad at all, and maybe it was just her insecurities talking, but she thought her cooking sucked compared to her former hubby now ex wife.
If that's how she felt inside, it didn't come across that way to Elizabeth's family.
Her wife Maria, her kids, Robbie, and Robbie's um...friend with benefits(?)(Lizzie wasn't sure what they were) all seemed to appreciate her culinary skills.
She smiled as they all sat down as a family, being funny, telling jokes, getting to know Teresa better, the Mexican woman all smiles, reciprocating the kindness, the two laughing about how they could immediately tell that they were both Born Women, the two gossiping about the subtle tells between Born Women and New Women(Elizabeth being her natural age notwithstanding).
Elizabeth was trying to ignore the elephant in the room. Billie was on the cusp of that period of time where she's starting to become her own person, and she and her new mother Maria were having trouble seeing eye to eye on certain things.
For one, Billie just simply wasn't that religious, while Maria's faith was one of the pillars of her world. They had agreed to disagree, but it was obvious that it hurt Maria for her daughter to not attend church with her.
Two, The Great Change had not significantly changed the delicate political situation over in Israel, and the Hamas attack on October 7th from last year had made this delicate situation infinitely worse.
While Maria had it in her heart to pray for all of the dead Palestinian women and girls and the living ones who were now living in a warzone, and donate to charity whenever she could, she couldn't bring herself to call Israel an apartheid state.
"Israel has a right to defend itself" she said.
Billie meanwhile, believed that anyone supporting Israel was a part of the problem, that the Israeli government were warmongers, and America no better.
The stepmother and stepdaughter had several polite but tense arguments about it over the past year, usually broken up by Elizabeth before things got too heated.
Three, and this was the real elephant in the room, but it just had to be said...Billie was starting to look a *lot* like Robbie.
Maria joked that they may as well be twins as Robbie and Billie sat next to each other.
Maria never wanted to be the wicked stepmother. She knew how much their mom meant to Billie and Megan(Elizabeth was either "Mom Mom" or Mommy, and Maria just Mom), but Maria often worried that the buxom blonde was a bad influence.