I Am Obsessed With This Campaign Trail Game

Two websites I have been visiting frequently as of late are https://campaigntrailshowcase.com and https://www.newcampaigntrail.com, both of which allow you to play essentially the same game--you pick an election, pick a candidate, and run a campaign. Although the selections are limited — the base game only has fourteen of the fifty-nine Presidential elections in United States history — mods have created several campaigns ranging from unrealistic and humorous (one sees you running as FDR with running mate Joe Biden in 1932, your poll numbers plummet after people realize Biden won’t be born for another decade only for you to become a unanimous winner once you spend campaign money on Supreme products) to the surprisingly intense (a variation on the 1964 Presidential election sees you running a highly intense campaign as President Johnson).

The most interesting thing about the game — to me, at least — is how it teaches you about campaigning. Us in the political commentary sphere love to offer advice to candidates, promising them that if they only ran a certain way (usually whatever we want ideologically), they would be the next President. This game gives those of us who think we could run a campaign the ability to see how accurate our assumptions are — and most of us quickly understand we were rather naive, to say the very least.