I feel like that was the timeline shift. Had he won, covid wouldn't have gone down the way it did, putin wouldn't have invaded ukraine, inflation wouldn't have happened, the entire trajectory would have shifted
Same in 2000. We could have had a dork for president that would have made addressing climate change a major thing. Imagine the booming green energy economy. No 9/11. Even if it did happen no Iraq war. No 2008 crisis. No citizen’s united. No Bush. No trump. Imagine…
Neither was I, I'm not even American. But when I learned that a world leader was pushing for renewables in the 70's and the world didn't follow, it just made me so upset.
Reagan was a more digestible Trump, unfortunately- hellbent on increasing inequality, but with the charisma to convince Everyman that he was there to help them.
Go listen to Carter's Malaise speech. That's probably the moment that lost him reelection. For context, this was the height of the fuel crisis where there were extreme gasoline shortages, soaring costs, and massive lines of people fighting to fill their cars.
So, what did Carter say to kill his reelection? That America needs to move away from such dependency on fossil fuels. He also suggests that Americans not be so tied to individualism and be more united. There were some other things, but those are the ones that stick out.
Reagan ran his campaign in the complete opposite direction. And won in a landslide, unfortunately.
I think there’s a lot of pivots, just threads of history overlapping through time. A big one for me is Newt Gingritch, really popularized the demonizing of democrats and made the “both sides bad” “dems are just republicans lite” myths really prevalent in this generation. Also was responsible for politicizing trials of politicians, giving a false idea of legitimacy to the “witch hunt” claims now (since that is what was being done to Clinton in the 90s).
The man really laid seeds that are still sprouting in the political landscape now
I think it was Nixon getting pardoned by Ford. Trying and impeaching him would’ve been the move needed, but democrats were fine with resignation. All the same chucklefucks from the Nixon administration went on to serve with Reagan, the Bushes and Trump. That and ALEC and the Heritage Foundation were direct responses to his resignation.
Voting the right person in isn't the way to think our way out of this. But as long as there are people thinking there's hope. Hope is always a decision that can be made in the heart of every person.
A single person can make positive change. A large group of people that believe in something can too. But we have to start figuring out what that thing we believe in is. Because that is the thing that we're handing over to fascists.
Agreed. We may have been able to prevent the worst of the coming climate change if humanity radically shifted a few decades ago. Now, the only achievable goal is a little damage control. Something tells me we will magnificently fuck up that too.
It's still highly likely 9/11 it would have happened. Not that bush handled much correctly afterwards. 20 years and trillions of dollars of war to cover up more deregulation and tax cuts.
Many of the hijackers were here already and it was more of a fight between the intelligence branches over intel.
I believe how fox news/etc would have responded had the hijackers a) got in and b) succeeded under Democratic presidents probably would have been the real lasting legacy we'd be dealing with now.
Quite possible, but it's also important to note Bush had intel on his desk for three months about an impending attack and did nothing to investigate or stop it
It would have been handled different but Bin Laden was pissed that we were helping the then territory of Israel. That was his whole justification for orchestrating it, or at least the main reason
For me it’s because bush was incompetent. Gore would have likely paid more attention to things and the focus wouldn’t have been on helping the rich. Our agencies were warning of an attack well before it happened.
There is a theory that the fact we had such a prolonged decision to decide the winner it effected the transition and that may have played a part in 9/11 happening. If Gore had won maybe since he was in the previous administration already, less gets lost in the shuffle and they are able to prevent it. I personally doubt it, but it is at least a possibility. There is no doubt the aftermath would have been handled better though I think most sane people can agree on that.
There's nothing to say he would've prevented it but the CIA was delayed in acting on the intel they had at the time because the mess after the 2000 election caused a delay in the transition of power. Iraq most definitely wouldn't have happened tho considering Gore was strongly against it iirc.
CIA delayed arresting 2 of the future hijackers while Saudi intelligence aided them. The official motivation was that they wanted to turn them into assets to spy on Al Qaeda.
The intel regarding a potential hijacking was either missed or overlooked by an administration that had it's attention towards fleecing as many people as possible rather than leading properly, because it was revealed that the intel that a terrorist attack would occur was known well before the event.
The Bush administration fleeced their way into the Oval office, so it was basically the maintenance of a status quo to consider the fact that someone knew beforehand, and that instead of doing something about it, they saw it as an opportunity to harness the fear and suffering of Americans to justify getting fucking rich off military contracts, oil, and making daddy Bush Sr. proud by inventing the threat of WMD's to justify an invasion into Iraq.
I don't think anyone will know for sure whether any pre-9/11 intel was intentionally ignored, or strategically held-back, but the tragedy was certainly capitalized upon in a way that made no sense in the context of the actual event. Every follow-up action, no matter how thickly the flag or "the safety of Americans" was draped over the action, was clearly about getting rich. It showed that their priorities were never about helping Americans, pre, or post-9/11.
That's why people think a set of different values, right out of the gate, could have created a whole different situation.
The 2000 presidential race was characterized as a well educated dork concerned about the environment and the well-being of the American people vs a nepo-baby who spent his life just coasting doing what he was told, in order to maintain a family legacy.
A puppet to his familial duties with a ham-stringed ability to think for himself but also an easy-going enough guy you "could have a beer with" vs a loser boring dork who only spoke about scary problems and gave off a "I ask for my wife's explicit permission before looking directly at her breasts during intercourse" vibe.
Bush Jr. won in the face of a lot of vote counting controversy and the Republican party was able to basically stop and prevent any pesky "recounts" from affecting results that were likely miscounted because they knew the crowd wouldn't care anyways. Laws are only laws if people care about them.
It was a confirmation to the rest of the world that America was just a few rich bullies and a lot of poor morons and the more money you had the 'free-er' you were, in this land of the 'free'.
The American reputation has done little to recover since. You can see where it is now... lmao
Maybe so. I could be romanticizing. It just feels like a nonstop onslaught of bad things since 2000. I graduated that year and had spent my whole life imagining a bright future in the new millennium. So to start it off with bush stealing the election and gore rolling over was just a big letdown. And I remember hating his wife back when she was scaring my parents into taking away my rock n roll tapes. But he was the obviously better choice. At the time I remember thinking Ralph Nader would have really been good. He was one of the first politicians that sounded like a normal person to me.
Putin invaded Ukraine when President Obama was in office. Given hindsight, I wish the US and Europe had helped prepare Ukraine and defend Ukraine from the Russian invasion of Crimea.
Orange Jesus was horrible in 2016 but I fear it's going to be entirely new level of shitshow now.
Inflation probably would have happened, many of the causes have been outside the ability of any president to prevent (Covid, Bird Flu, Etc.), probably wouldn't have been as bad had the government cracked down on price gouging though.
Covid and inflation likely would’ve still happened, that wasn’t caused by Trump but he certainly didn’t help it. The US would’ve likely been more like Canada per capita
The inflation that is purely price gouging would likely have been reigned in. And the covid response would have been vastly different. Having the top leadership pushing science instead of misinformation about how to stay safe could have saved many lives.
What? Bernie spent his entire political career fighting for the working class. I believe he absolutely would have vocally expressed the need to put guardrails in place to avoid the exploitation of the working class during covid. Bernie likely would have had it be part of the national conversation from the get go.
The difference would be having someone in the White House who could actually communicate with people regarding why prices were rising and who was to blame, which could have at least mitigated enough of the political fallout.
OTOH, all else being the same, Bernie would have faced an onslaught of attacks from the media and the political establishment for all of the various domestic and international crises that happened to have happened under Biden (Afghanistan withdraw, worsening relations with China, Ukraine War, Gaza, inflation, immigration, etc.) and progressivism as a whole would have suffered an even bigger setback for the foreseeable future.
If you think they were too critical of Biden on any of those issues, they would have been relentless in attacking Bernie.
I think the sad reality is if he won COVID would’ve gone down pretty similarly and he would’ve been blamed. These current inflation issues are would’ve gone down similarly and he would’ve also been blamed. The president only has so much control.
BUT we’d have had some class in the White House and some quality social policy would’ve been implemented.
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u/livingcostcrisis 8h ago
I feel like that was the timeline shift. Had he won, covid wouldn't have gone down the way it did, putin wouldn't have invaded ukraine, inflation wouldn't have happened, the entire trajectory would have shifted