Chapter 732: I Am the Future You Want

Chapter 732: Chapter 341: I Am the Future You Want

“Have you passed any useful bills in Congress? Have you changed the lives of blue-collar workers?”

“You can’t even get a minimum wage bill passed.”

“You occupy the moral high ground, basking in the adoration of the youth, but you lack the ability to execute in the real world.”

Sanders pointed at the door.

“We held the line! We refused to surrender to the plutocrats! We represent the last conscience of this nation!”

“Principles don’t put bread on the table for workers, and a clear conscience can’t pay next month’s rent.”

Leo didn’t back down an inch, his tone harsh.

“Look at the world out there. The Rust Belt is being reignited.”

“Because of my plan, hundreds of thousands of workers have gotten high-paying jobs. They can afford their rent and send their kids to college.”

“This is all my doing. I’m the one who gave them food and dignity.”

Leo’s gaze was locked firmly on Sanders.

“Right now, I have the funds, I have the Unions, and I have the absolute loyalty of more than a dozen Representatives.”

“They’ve seen reality for what it is. They no longer listen to that illusory environmental dogma.”

“I’ve guaranteed their re-election, so they have to choose me.”

Leo took a document from his briefcase and slid it across the table to Sanders.

The bottom of the document was densely packed with signatures.

Gary, Thomas, Matthew…

Nearly all the pragmatist members of the Progressive caucus had signed.

“Daniel, look at these signatures.” Leo’s tone was flat. “It only took me forty-eight hours to get them.”

“Do you know what this means?”

“It means they’ve had enough. They’ve been suffering under you, Sanders, suffering under your unrealistic dogmatism for a long, long time.”

“But political inertia made it difficult for them to make a move and betray you.”

“They needed a reason, an out.”

Leo pointed to the document.

“I gave them a brand new narrative. It’s still progressive, but more pragmatic, and it delivers tangible benefits.”

“I told them that nuclear power isn’t pollution. It’s the bridge to a zero-carbon future, a source of high-paying jobs for the working class.”

“So, they came over to my side.”

“I didn’t turn them against you. They chose the future for themselves.”

Leo looked at Sanders’s face, which was twisted with shock and rage.

“Daniel, you’re old.”

“Your methods can’t save the United States. The loose alliance you built on protests and slogans is no longer fit for this cruel era.”

“From this day forward, the Progressive caucus is no longer some ‘green club.’ It’s a blue-collar industrial machine.”

Sanders looked down at the document.

The signatures on the paper stung his eyes.

These politicians, men he had handpicked and promoted, had ultimately defected to the other side—to capital and power.

They had abandoned him.

Leo pulled a fountain pen from his suit pocket and placed it next to the document.

“The nuclear power bill will be submitted tomorrow in the name of the Progressive caucus.” Leo announced the next item on the agenda. “We will be co-sponsoring it with the Republican Party.”

“I came here today to give you one last chance to choose.”

Leo’s gaze was exceptionally sharp.

“You can either sign this statement of support for nuclear power.”

Leo presented the first option.

“Continue on as our spiritual leader in name only, and I’ll let you keep your last shred of dignity.”

“We’ll announce to the public that this is a great transformation for the Progressives. You can go on the media and talk about how we’re protecting workers’ interests through nuclear power. Everything will be fine.”

Leo tapped his fingers on the desk.

“Or, you can refuse to sign.”

Leo presented the second option.

“By tomorrow morning, you’ll find you’ve become a general with no army. I will take the absolute majority of the caucus and walk right over you. Your voice of opposition will be completely drowned out by our propaganda machine.”

“You will lose your funding, your allies, and your voice on Capitol Hill.”

“You will be utterly abandoned by the times.”

The office fell silent.

Leo was displaying all the characteristics of a young, ambitious powerhouse.

He was cold, decisive, and went straight for the jugular.

He had used the most brutal methods to complete his takeover of an entire political faction.

Sanders looked at the paper filled with signatures, then at Leo’s completely emotionless face.

In truth, he had long been prepared to hand the entire Progressive movement over to Leo Wallace.

The dinner he’d arranged with his core members and Leo had been his signal, the ramp he was building for the young man.

But in his script, completely handing the Progressives over to Leo was supposed to happen ten years from now.

It was supposed to happen after Leo came to Washington, after he had matured through experience in the Senate or the cabinet.

At that point, the entire faction would have made a gentle pivot, and everyone would have accepted the new leadership with dignity.

Sanders even thought that he might not live to see that day.

But Leo was too fast.

So fast that Sanders’s mind, accustomed to the slow rhythm of Capitol Hill, couldn’t quite keep up.

In a daze, Sanders’s vision seemed to pierce through time and space.

He recalled seeing the young man in the Congress Building, standing in the shadow of Alexander Hamilton’s statue.

The madman who, to push for the ratification of the Constitution, had single-handedly written fifty-one of the eighty-five essays in *The Federalist Papers* in just a few short months.

Those essays weren’t just random scribblings or filler to meet a word count; they were the cornerstone of this nation’s legislation, a political Bible for future generations.

Hamilton had been just as urgent back then, as if he foresaw that his life would come to an abrupt end at the age of forty-seven. He had frantically overdrawn his energy, trying to carve all his thoughts onto paper before Death came knocking.

This current Leo radiated the same aura.

It was a pathological sense of urgency.

He wanted to forcibly accomplish in one year what would take others a hundred years to do.

Sanders looked into Leo’s eyes and saw nothing but anxiety about time.

Leo seemed utterly convinced that if he didn’t act now, if he didn’t run this machine at maximum power, it would be too late.

He had to complete his grand design, to reshape the very skeleton of this country, and the time he had was slipping away, second by second.

For this purpose, Leo had abandoned all procedural justice.

‘Why use such a brutal approach?’

In Sanders’s eyes, this wasn’t politics at all.

Sanders still believed in the traditional narrative, the kind that originated in the British Parliament.

You sat around a table, reaching consensus through debate, compromise, and persuasion.

Politics was supposed to be dignified, rule-based, and gradual.

But Leo had just flipped the table.

He bribed with money, intimidated with votes, and strong-armed them into compliance.

He had turned politics into a war with no buffer, no room for maneuver.

A country couldn’t be run this way.

Such intense, uncompromising methods would sooner or later break the machine’s bearings.

Sanders wanted to tell Leo this.

But he looked at the paper filled with signatures and swallowed his words.

‘It’s meaningless to say any of this now.’

‘The Representatives have already betrayed me.’

‘I alone can’t stop this rumbling industrial war machine.’

If he signed, he could still contribute on other, less important bills. He could continue to play the part of a respected elder statesman for the cameras.

But if he refused, he would lose all his political influence.

He would be isolated from the center of power.

Sanders picked up the fountain pen.

He uncapped it, the metal nib hovering over the paper.

Leo watched him quietly.

Sanders’s hand stopped. He recapped the pen and pushed it back to Leo.

“I refuse.”

Leo seemed completely unsurprised, watching Sanders with a blank expression.

Sanders’s tone was perfectly calm.

“You can take my caucus, you can take those Representatives’ votes, you can even buy all of Capitol Hill with your money.”

“But you can’t buy my betrayal.”

Sanders stood up, maintaining the last stand of an old politician.

He would rather die a political death than destroy the bedrock of faith he had built over a lifetime.

Sanders stared into Leo’s eyes and spoke slowly.

“They have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.”

Leo took back the pen and the document, placed the document in his briefcase, and latched it shut.

Leo met Sanders’s gaze.

“Curse me, Daniel. You can pray to your God with all your might, ask him to strike me down with a thunderbolt.”

Leo buttoned his suit jacket.

“If curses actually worked, Germany would have surrendered to Poland on September 2nd, 1939.”

“The world runs on steel and energy. Gods never meddle in the affairs of mortals.”

Leo turned and walked toward the office door.

He pushed the door open and strode out.