The Biden Express is an Alternate History work by Whanztastic
, published on AlternateHistory.com.
In short, Joe Biden beats incumbent Vice-President George H. W. Bush in the 1988 election. We oversee the beginnings of The Yugoslav Wars, Biden's bad health, and other things of note.
It is followed up by the sequel The Biden Express: Derailed, following Biden's retirement, the Presidency of Dick Thornburgh and, eventually, Biden seeking a second term.
This work provides examples of:
- Berserk Button: Don't ever use Biden's family to score political points. Vice-President Bush found that out the hard way.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Biden is usually congenial, but if you use his family to score political points, the gloves come off.
- Celebrity Casualty:
- Al Franken is assassinated in Sarajevo.
- Dick Cheney suffers a fatal heart attack after an ugly argument with Newt Gingrich.
- Cigarette of Anxiety: In the section following President Biden suffering a brain aneurysm; House Minority Whip Dick Cheney; following a heated conversation with Newt Gingrich in which Cheney angrily blasts Gingrich for talking him into stalling the hearings on the nomination of Claiborne Pell to the Vice-Presidency after Vice-President Rudy Perpich and his party were assassinated, attempts to light one up when he suffers a fatal heart attack.
- Cool Train: Biden and Tommy Thompson team up to build a high speed rail system to link America together.
- Everyone Has Standards: Hearing Newt Gingrich talking only about trying to make hay of William Gray - an African-American - being Acting President via President Biden suffering a brain aneurysm and the Vice-Presidency vacant due to Gingrich having earlier convinced the Republicans to slow walk the nomination of Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell to the Vice-Presidency after Rudy Perpich was assassinated proves too much for even House Minority Whip Dick Cheney to stomach, and he blasts Gingrich for this stunt.
- Everything Is Big in Texas: We get the survival of the Superconducting Super Collider, partially out the work of the Secretary of Energy George W. Bush who spoke out for it before any budget cuts were made. In this timeline, it's where the Higgs Boson is discovered.
- Fake-Out Opening: The sequel The Biden Express: Derailed has a particularly mean one: We have Joe and his wife Jill watching TV at home on September 11, witnessing in shock and awe that the Russians have landed on the moon.
- Fictionalized Death Account:
- Rudy Perpich is assassinated in Sarajevo.
- Inverted with Lee Atwater, whose brain tumor is discovered before it becomes inoperable, and who therefore survives.
- Also inverted with Phil Hartman, who lives to at least 2002 rather than being murdered by his wife in 1998.
- For Want Of A Nail: Quite obvious.
- Fired from the Bush campaign for a bad move, Lee Atwater has time to get himself checked out to catch his brain tumor before it becomes inoperable and is alive to help the Republicans in the 1990s.
- To fill a seat left open by a Cabinet position, the California Democrats turn to a former NFL star turned actor who makes up with charisma what he lacks in political experience. The result: Congressman O.J. Simpson.
- With a Democrat in office, Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall retires two years earlier and is joined by Byron White, paving the way for the first African-American female and Puerto Rico Justices.
- A IRA bombing takes out Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet in 1990.
- Seeing the United States stronger, Saddam Hussein does not invade Kuwait but rather wages a disastrous war with Iran. This leaves him barely clinging to power and a Paper Tiger until he dies of cancer in the 2000s.
- Handicapped Badass: Biden's precarious health arguably turns him into one.
- In Spite of a Nail:
- The Exxon Valdez still sinks although in this world, it prompts Biden to appoint Al Gore as a special environmental czar.
- The invasion of Panama happens almost exactly as it does in our world, the only major difference being Biden getting special Congressional approval first.
- At first, it appears George W. Bush simply becomes MLB Commissioner but does indeed later become Governor of Texas.
- Despite various different Justices appointed, Ruth Bader Ginsburg still joins the Supreme Court in 1993.
- Speaker of the House Jim Wright is still implicated in an ethics scandal resulting in his resignation.
- Richard Nixon, the Used Car Salesman: George W. Bush, Secretary of Energy to the Richard Thornburgh administration.
- Shown Their Work: Biden's poor health is a plot point through the story. In real life, Biden did felt poorly physically during parts of his actual campaign, suffering repeated headaches, and in February 1988 (five months after dropping out of the race) he suffered the first of two brain aneurysms that required life-saving surgery and seven months away from the Senate in order to convalesce. Many people (including Biden himself) would later speculate that had his campaign not ended early, the strain of campaigning might've caused the aneurysms to be more severe or they would've been detected later and that he might not have lived out the year. Interestingly enough, what happened to Biden in real life is given in the story to Lee Atwater; here he gets fired from the Bush campaign, which gives him time to get himself checked out to catch his brain tumor before it becomes inoperable and is alive to help the Republicans in the 1990s.
- Wham Line: The very first chapter demonstrates just how wide-reaching the changes to history will be with a Variety article revealing that Phil Hartman is still alive in 2002 and starring in a film inspired by the Biden presidency.
- Wham Episode: Two of them, Vice-President Rudy Perpich dies in Sarajevo, and Biden has an aneurysm before Congress votes to instate Pell.
- What Could Have Been: A meta example, we get the occasional in-universe AlternateHistory.com members asking "what if?" questions.
