Lore:

• Barack Obama Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez are both never born in the Dark Liberty timeline. They are replaced by Tuba Boz and Lloyd Winters respectively.
• Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, the GOP candidates for the 2012 US Presidential Election in the OTL, are also never born in the Dark Liberty Timeline.
• In the Dark Liberty Timeline, Joe Biden is a US Supreme Court Justice, rather than a Presidential candidate.

Presidential elections were held in the United States on November 6, 2012. The Democratic ticket of former Delaware Senator Tuba Boz and former California Senator Lloyd Winters defeated the GOP ticket of former US Army General Austin Shepherd, and his running mate, former US Army Special Forces commander turned Senator from Florida Scott Mitchell.

Tuba ran her campaign on a shocking and (arguably) controversial stance: the formal recognition of the state of Palestine, rather than the state of Israel. That being said, she also voiced her opposition towards Hamas, believing that the Palestinian people deserve better and that all Hamas ever did was "continue the oppression". She accused Hamas of being an "Israeli proxy" to keep Gaza under oppression and promised to make Palestine safe for all citizens, in addition to better safeguarding against the "incursion" of Israel.

Tuba promised that her administration would "permanently remove" Hamas from the Gaza Strip if she won and that Hamas would be replaced with a more "people-friendly" government in the Gaza Strip.

She also ran on several other controversial platforms:

• Abortion is a protected right, but not one that the federal government should decide. She expressed vehement opposition to Roe v. Wade, claiming that while it "had the right idea", it went too far by making the federal government the arbiter for one's right to abortion access, when it should have belonged to the states.
• LGBTQ+ rights should remain states' rights as well, and the government has no place to determine how marriage works.
• The abolition of nuclear weapons.
• The militarization of police; Tuba believed that militarizing the police force would make police work more effective at stopping crime, going so far as to make an alarming claim that the opposition to militarizing police "played a role in poor border security."

Tuba's campaign platform sparked a massive outcry amongst the Jewish population of the United States, calling her antisemitic. Many Democrats also saw her as a sellout due to her stance that Roe v. Wade was a mistake and that the federal government has no say in whether abortion should be legal or not.

By contrast, Shepherd and Mitchell ran on an aggressive stance in the opposite direction, believing that the state of Israel is not only legitimate, but has "every right" to defend itself. Shepherd and Mitchell both promised that if they won, Israel would become a "vassal" state of the United States.

Shepherd and Mitchell also made several other campaign promises that provoked heavy backlash against them:

• The criminalization of Porn as a form of "crime against children".
• The criminalization of abortion at conception and criminal penalties for all parties involved in the act of abortion.
• The designation of Planned Parenthood as a domestic terrorist organization.
• The designation of pro-life organizations that refuse to criminalize abortion and instead "regulate" it through incremental restrictions as hate groups.
• Increased military cooperation between the United States and Israel.

Mitchell and Shepherd ultimately lost the election due to their extreme stances against abortion, including their opposition to the pro-life movement and insisting on religious grounds that abortion must be punishable by death, while also designating those who disagreed with that stance "terrorists" or "hate organizations".