We reworked the lore on the changeover. It should be in the OP still in one of the lore summaries. The US is still pretty battered all things considered, and it kept a bit of socialism in its government. But that - even "Americanized Socialism" - got elected out and some other shit happened. Vilage was mostly in charge of that.

He and I tried to iron it out when it was initially a big issue but even then Vilage ended up taking more charge of the nation when he ran his single-character senator.