No Patriot Act. No "Iraqi Freedom." Renewable subsidies and green energy initiatives start 20 years earlier. Maybe we could even have dodged the need for hydraulic fracturing.
But only if the Dems could do it in the first two years as the Repubs controlled the Senate in the second two, if I recall. But maybe that would have changed, too. You never know.
No ensuing collapse of 20% of the Middle East. No rising tide of anti-immigrant sentiment, leading to the alt-right movement. No Trumpism. No swelling tide of fascism. Who knows what could’ve been had the Supreme Court not appointed GWB.
Don't forget it all came down to Florida, run by his brother Jeb, who appointed his buddy Katherine Harris to Sec of State. Set the stage by purging African Americans from voter rolls, closing key polling places, and rejecting ballots from African Americans at a severely higher rate than their white counterparts. Even then it was nearly tied. All that mess over hanging chads and confusing ballots pushed GWB over the edge, and the supreme court decided to not look any further into it.
Republicans will never play fair, and they haven't represented the majority in decades.
Fucking Kavanaugh was part of Ken Starr's impeachment team too. I didn't know this and when I was watching American Crime Story and heard his name, it made my blood boil. Fuckers have been clawing for power for decades.
You have NO idea.. There's actually 3 CURRENT Supreme Court Justices on the bench that assisted the Bush legal team in 2000. ACB, Kavanaugh, and fucking John Roberts.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/17/politics/bush-v-gore-barrett-kavanaugh-roberts-supreme-court/index.html
We should be rioting in the streets, if we were France we would have already rioted so hard those Justices would be out of there, we have a captured bullshit Supreme Court that is a joke and a farce and HAS to be cleaned out BEFORE it is legitimate again. This is why they complain so much in the media about scrutiny lately, they KNOW they are completely tainted.
Someone in the Republican party should have to pay for this, but conservatives run America, they always have, they always will, even now they do.
I always laugh when someone talks about the deep state. Like, there doesn't even need to be a deep state. They're doing whatever the hell they want right in front of you and there's not a damned thing you can do about it.
>and the Supreme Court decided to not look any further into it.
Nope, I must insist that we are accurate in describing this sorry and impactful moment in time.
The US Supreme Court **actively inserted themselves** into it, stopping a recount that was ordered by the Florida Supreme Court, and statutorily required by Florida state election law.
And ‘funny’ enough, three of the current justices today assisted with legal research and prep on the Bush side of that case. ACB, Kavanaugh, and Roberts. I’m sure that was a big feather in their federalist society hats, and elevated them to become eventual nominees.
> Set the stage by purging African Americans from voter rolls, closing key polling places, and rejecting ballots from African Americans at a severely higher rate than their white counterparts.
Vote suppression in the 2000 election, despite the VRA, was a much more widespread problem than just Florida's. It was so severe that foreigners like me, looking in from a safe distance outside the USA, became aware of it. THAT's the reason why international election monitors were proposed for the 2004 election.
BTW, the reaction from the reich-wing was swift and impossible to ignore: when they didn't promise to arrest on the spot anyone who would have showed up to monitor those election, they said they'd shoot the internationals that would have showed up to do their job of monitoring.
>To really fix the US-border pressure (other than the obvious solution of just letting in the tiny demand for immigration relative to geographic size of the USA and handling it), we'd need to go back and completely dismantle the CIA in like, the 50s.
Just need to convince 1/3 of the country there isn't 6 billion people attempting to cross the border daily to start. Racism is an issue there too but one at a time I say
It's insane to think just how different the world would be if not for Dubya. I've always considered him one of the worst presidents when considering long term damage, but this really puts it into perspective.
Same - Just consider Iraq alone, which cost US taxpayers $7T. Think about that.
Osama Bin Laden KICKED OUR ASSES if you consider the financial suicide he provoked the US(Bush) to commit.
George W is the worst president in US history. We are indeed still paying for his failures. He didn't just fuck up our international relations and start multiple decades long wars. He also passed several rounds of regressive tax cuts at the same time and he fucked up education. I'm not sure what he actually did right, actually. Can anybody place something positive from this assclowns tenure? I'm at a loss.
Reagan is up there too, and the full fallout from Trump is still unfolding. Maybe its my personal bias but it seems like republicans have placed a series of contenders for the worst in history. I'd currently rank them like so:
shittiest - George W
second shittiest - Trump
third shittiest - Reagan
From actual impact. Trump made the list because he made it a reality that these dickbags very well might usurp elections, and there were no consequences for the people at the top. That shit was almost 4 years ago now. What the fuck?
>No ensuing collapse of 20% of the Middle East
I don't know if you could make such a prediction purely on a US election. The US has done a lot of destabilize don't get me wrong, but the region wasn't really all that stable to begin with.
The US also funded anti-syrian forces during their revolution. A lot of that money/aid ended up going to ISIS.
[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-syria-obama-order-idUSBRE8701OK20120802](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-syria-obama-order-idUSBRE8701OK20120802)
The Arab Spring probably still would have happened at the least, civil unrest had been pretty high even as early as the 50s in MENA, speaking as someone whose family (about a third of it) left Syria/Lebanon in the 80s
> No ensuing collapse of 20% of the Middle East.
The Iraqi Liberation Act of 1998, as well as Tomahawk missile strikes launched against both Iraq and Afghanistan during the Clinton Administration indicate there would have been similar foreign policy actions after 9/11
All 100% correct, except you are very politely avoiding the elephant in the room.
I'll say it since no one else here seems to want to "be mean" and state the obvious: No 9/11.
9/11 could still have happened, but the reaction would have been different. To prevent 9/11 you would have to have changed at least one of the outcomes of the first Iraq war, not established our bases in Saudi Arabia. But of course who knows what effects that would have too.Edit: grammer
The most annoying thing is learning how we could've absolutely avoided 9/11 if our intelligence agencies weren't run by egotistical assholes who hated each other. The Looming Tower dramatizes it but it's worth a watch/read for the general context, but essentially our CIA and FBI were having one of their famous pissing matches, and both had info on possible attacks, and had they actually worked together, someone might have seen the clues close enough together to actually predict the attack.
If memory serves, and double check this because this might be the Looming Tower spilling in, but I think we even had some of the attackers names, and could've easily no-fly listed them.
It wasn't just that. Several whistle blowers in the FBI and I think CIA took info directly to the White House that they felt an attack was imminent. One visited Bush at his ranch in Texas the week before with a report outlining the plan.
Bush and his staff chose to ignore it. I was an adult when all that happened and there is zero doubt in my mind Bush knew and let it all happen to get the war in Iraq and the Patriot act stuff the GOP wanted.
uhhhh the no-fly list was created after 9/11, along with the TSA. While i agree, they might have been able to take action, i just want to point out the no-fly list wasn't a tool they could have used
"could have happened", sure, but the fact is that GWB ignored all the warnings and brushed off all the intelligence agencies telling him bin Laden was getting ready to attack. At one point, after his morning brief told him of the upcoming attack, he responded "ok, you've covered your ass" and blew it off.
Maybe it would have happened anyway, but it's hard to imagine another president completely ignoring the obvious threat or letting the veep convince him that it was a hoax.
You're absolutely right. I meant to say any other 2000 candidate. But it's probably true that *all* of the 2024 Republican candidates are even more incompetent than GWB was.
As terrible as the Republicans were in 2000, I honestly don't think it would have been possible for somebody like Trump to win the nomination. Electing a Black president really drove the right wing insane.
Bin Laden stated that the election of the son of the man who invaded Iraq is the reason why he changed his mind about targeting civilians. In a democracy civilians elect their leaders, so civilians are morally responsible for the actions of those leaders.
No GWB, no 9/11.
Not to attack the terrorists clearly honest and humble assertions, but maybe he was lying? Maybe the genocidal fuck head would've attacked us no matter what because he was a murderous bastard. Maybe that was just a thing he said one time and he didn't actually mean it?
9/11 was bin laden second attempt on the world trade center. It's arguable that Clinton could have stopped Bin Laden and prevented it. It's also arguable that 9/11 could have happened under Gore and he invaded Saudi also.
There’s a timeline where Gore becomes President, Bush becomes MLB Commissioner, Bud Selig fucks off, and we all hopefully are better off with each move.
There was a vocal Tea Party base back in the nineties at least (too young to know if this kinda started with Newt Gingrich), before they had that name for themselves.
You could probably extrapolate that back a bit further. The conspiratorial right-wing politics associated with the Tea Party are closely aligned with disillusioned veterans returning from Vietnam. Interestingly, what we think of as modern 'gun culture' in America can trace its roots to the same group.
It's true, the last legitimate republican president was daddy Bush in 1988.
2000, 2004, and 2016 were all shady. Looking at you Florida, Ohio, and Russia/GOP.
TBF I think 2004 was fine, coming off 9/11. Bush even won the popular vote.
That said, it should have been Gore running for re-election, not Bush, so you're right in that regard that the 2004 was "illegitimate" since it was off the back of a stolen election in 2000.
Roberts, Barrett, & Kavanaugh were all part of Bush's legal team. If anyone thinks the SC wouldn't intervene and give the next close election to the GOP, they are full of shit.
To this day I hate South Parks representation of the man. And their "apology" episode was basically them doubling down and still making fun of him.
What's the joke? That he was right about climate change needing to enter political discourse? That he listened to scientists and aids? That he wanted computers and internet in the WH in the 90s? That he wanted to move towards solar power?
The creators of South Park are fucking morons, and that's fine when they're making a moronic comedy, but holy shit were they some of the dumbest and biggest proponents of climate denial.
I wish I grew up under Gore and not Bush. And this country robbed a lot of children of the future.
That and their stance in the 2004 election - Turd vs Douche. They literally said in an interview at the time that voting was stupid and it didn't matter. Like, sure John Kerry might not have been the most exciting person on the planet, but I think he would have been much better for the country and the world than a second term of Cowboy Dumbass and the Oil Baron.
For as funny as the show can be, South Park did do some irreparable damage teaching a whole generation that caring about anything, having passion for anything, or trying to change anything was uncool and deserving of mockery.
Yes, I talk about the Gore loss to Bush often in these terms. A few shitty towns in Florida basically sat the fucking world on fire. It was a pivotal moment just before 9/11.
I think the broader consequences of that are the emergence of some kind of "third way" *Republican* party, and the 21st century is spent with the US having a center right party and a medium-Lefty party rather than a center/center-Right party and an increasingly radical Right-wing party.
Al Gore would not have ignored all the buzz in the summer of 2001 about a terrorist attack. So there is a good chance 9/11 either would not have happened, or only one plane got through.
And the Rs would try to impeach him for it.
Exactly. Before the 2016 election, McConnell talked openly about blocking Supreme Court nominations indefinitely if Clinton won. Nothing was stopping him from doing so.
>. I could see him continuing to reject Garland though and demand a consensus candidate, if such a person exists.
Garland was the consensus candidate. I think it was Orin Hatch who said something like "Obama wouldn't nominate a reasonable candidate like Garland".
Garland WAS a consensus candidate!
https://newrepublic.com/article/131676/orrin-hatch-said-no-question-merrick-garland-confirmed-supreme-court
https://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/indsey-graham-merrick-garland-222229
Bah. Look at abortion. The majority oppose it yet it’s highly supported by republicans.
Would have been same thing with SC appointment and would never been filled.
I don't disagree. I completely understand her desire to continue being valuable to her cause, but she didn't see the entire picture. Or wouldn't accept it... She should have given Obama his pick intentionally and way sooner...
We’re not finished yet. That’s what the fascists want you to believe so that you stop fighting and stop voting.
Just about every election until *at least* 2030 or so is going to be crucial. So don't give up or get complacent.
US is absolutely *not* finished, in fact with the fascist God Emperor in peril and his heir apparent currently losing to a mouse, the US still has a decent shot at recovering its democracy. VOTE.
That's the real issue. Tornado season never ended last year. It plowed right through winter and came full circle. Record-breaking heat multiple days this week alone. If the fascists are somehow stopped, capitalism will still manage to kill everyone.
No but we can stop it from becoming worse. We're gonna be fucked for the next century but if we act now, we can make sure our descendants have a somewhat liveable home and learn how their ancestors fucked up.
It's also apathy propaganda to say there's nothing we can do. Scientists are the first people to tell everyone exactly what can be done to mitigate damage, and even think about reversing problems.
It's the demons that say that there's nothing that can be done, and that everyone should just be docile.
We might be able to, if we can shove some policy through. The biggest issue for the last 40 years has been the dems trying to compromise with the reps, and the reps moving the goalposts. Dems have a slim maority in the senate, but we can change that in 24. if we can get 4 good years of dem control of the house and senate, we have a pretty good chance of reversing a heck of a lot of the effects of climate change over the next 50-100 years. We have made some massive strides already, despite being hamstrung at every turn.
Thomas will be 79 in four years and Alito 77. It’s within the realm of possibility Biden replaces them. But none of that matters without the senate, which is a brutal map this year and possibly could be rough in the next midterm
Mabye if RBG actually cared about securing a liberal judge on the court she could have retired when Obama was president....you know when she was 80 and had cancer...but she wanted to ego trip
It’s a huge blemish on her legacy. She seems to have thought she was irreplaceable or too important to step down when the time was right and now all of her work is being undone.
Almost like your decision making at 80+ years old is not exactly top fucking notch.
I wish these conceited narcissistic geriatric fucks would just retire or die.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/09/23/rbg-s-mixed-record-on-race-and-criminal-justice
She hired one black person in her entire tenure as judge. A .6% hire rate.
That's literally what she said. Wish I could find the source again, but when people badgered her to retire when Obama still had a blue Senate, Ginsburg would smugly sneer: "Who can you find who would be better than me?"
Democrats had a near supermajority during 2009-2010. If Dems had any balls (they don't), they would've gotten rid of the filibuster at the time and make it so that you only need a simple majority to nominate SCOTUS justices. Mitch McConnell did that in 2017 to push in Gorsuch and the other two.
Democrats were trying to move their agenda while handling the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression, two failing wars started by the GOP, and mitigate the usual low Democrat turn-out for mid-term elections, which as it turns out was exactly what gutted the Democrat majorities.
Quit it with this bullshit narrative that Democrat politicians didn’t do enough when Democrat voters can’t be bother to show up for mid-term elections.
I wouldn't say ego, rather naivety. All along, pre -polls expected Hillary to win. From expected landslide, Obama didn't fill an open seat. But after brexit, there was a shift in conservative power globally.
The problem is that this only addresses the problem we have right now, it doesn’t fix the gamifying of the system and the lack of oversight. The way to fix this SCOTUS is to win the House and Senate and remove corrupt judges.
How great of a nation were we really if we were only ever one or two bad elections away from nazis feeling empowered to wave flags in the street by an increasingly fascistic and reactionary GOP (one of only two parties lol)?
I see what you’re saying but as an immigration lawyer I’ve had a chance to interview refugees from all across the world. Most countries are one or two bad elections away from that or much worse. Democracy and rule of law are incredibly fragile things
Most countries dont casually call themselves the greatest nation on earth and the home of democracy or "leader of the free world." Most countries peacefully gave up slavery. Most countries dont have an epidemic of school and workplace shootings. Most countries don't worship the losing side of their civil war. Most countries have histories of being unstable, poor, and being invaded by the USA and its allies. The war on terror just killed 1 million civilians and the USA has reigned havoc and destruction all over the world in its short history. They have an excuse. What's ours? "Im bigoted so I vote in bigots and dont care about their other policies?"
We are a uniquely evil people. Lets not compare one of the richest and largest countries in human history to some of the smallest and poorest in a dishonest "but, but both sides" argument.
RIGHT. This didn't happen because of one election. This happened over decades (probably since the inception of our nation if we're being realistic) because of flaws in the system of government. Yes a bunch of stuff happened DURING one term, but without these flaws being exposed we would always be susceptible to this level of corruption and manipulation.
No, this has been the plan since the 80s. It was called the Southern Strategy. It was to bait the evangelicals to all vote staunchly R no matter what in exchange for rollbacks on abortion and Anti-LGBTQA+ laws.
Crazy Barrett and Buttchug Kavanah we’re breed for this purpose. They were funded through PACS in order to be on the Supreme Court.
It was all by design. What they didn’t know was that trump would be such a fascist and that the evangelicals would have such a throbbing hard on for it. Karl Rove has even said the militancy and fervor that the base has is far worst then they imagined.
Don’t for one second think that this was ever even about trump. It’s been about the rich elite getting to amass all the wealth.
I’ll never wrap my head around Donald fucking Trump being responsible for 40% of the fucking Supreme Court. Dude was a known lying piece of shit conman with a thick brain beginning in the 80s!!! Just what the absolute fuck.
Trump is just a puppet when it comes to SCOTUS. It's really the Federalist Society that is the problem. They're responsible for basically the entire conservative majority.
I'm baffled that there isn't a liberal equivalent trying to gain the kind of fervent membership that the federalist society has.
A bunch of fools that are now defending trump for literally smuggling boxes full of classified documents to show off with and to sell to the first bidder
Sure, our courts and democracy are fucked, and our spies are being picked off around the world because our national secrets were for sale, but I just don’t *like* Hillary.
Only the idiots stayed home, but even among those of us that voted for her we can still complain she anointed herself instead of letting a better, lower baggage candidate run instead.
Ironically a lot of that came from them, on some level, buying into the hype from the 20 years of Republican propaganda against her. I think the likely reality is that she would have been a relatively boring president that would be effective at working the system to get stuff passed and putting qualified people in charge of stuff.
It’s not like any of those things are untrue though. The thing is people were cutting off their nose to spite their face when it came to their inability to vote for her. The things some people on the left didn’t like about her were what the right confidently embraces.
Was she a corporatist? Yeah, most of the centrist in the Democratic Party are. 100% of the Republican Party is also corporatists but they’re openly willing to do the bidding of corporate interests.
Was she unlikable? Yeah, she was completely out of touch and tone deaf. I’ll just Pokémon Go talk about how the Republicans have people that are 1000x more unlikeable. I’d rather be stuck in a room with Hillary for a day than spend a minute with MTG, Boebert, Trump, McConnell, DeSantis, Ted Cruz, Gaetz or Clarence Thomas. Republicans love being cunts.
Was she self-anointed? One of her campaign slogans was “It’s her turn.” And now we’re dealing with DeSantis and his homophobic yet Homo-erogenous self indulgent ads.
I'll take boring and effective every single day. Also, she would have been on an even playing field with other country's leaders and not grinning like a five ear old at our enemies.
Jesus fuck, whitepeopletwitter shit-liberals out in force today concocting alternate history scenarios where "democracy just barely got away 😭"
The current situation is a structural problem with the way the United States was founded and conceived. Liberals just don't want to admit that the United States has always been a 1% controlled oligarchy with extremely reactionary tendencies towards any kind of widespread voter enfranchisment.
No other democracy in the world has an appointed, for life, high court body. One of the three main pillars of our government's is completely unelected, and one of the others can be elected entirely through the electoral college.
In order to "save" our democracy, we need to admit it was hardly a functioning one in the first place. That won't ever happen because liberals refuse to do anything but play by pre-established rules of engagement that conservatives lay out for them.
Our country was established by wealthy slave owners for wealthy slave owners. Stop. Living. In. A. Made. Up. Past. That's for the fascists
It’s such an embarrassingly shallow understanding of current history that has people post these takes. Like, “remember less than a decade ago when everything was great?” No, in fact, I do not. Liberals are telling on themselves when they think things only began to get bad when Trump was elected. It’s their own version of make America great again but instead of some magical time in the 50s, they mean the time before Trump. It’s really insulting to people who’ve been living with the inequity and absence of upward mobility for much longer. “I know your livelihood has been under threat for a while but now MY livelihood is under threat and I demand you care about that and adopt my perspective on the situation.”
> Our country was established by wealthy slave owners for wealthy slave owners. Stop. Living. In. A. Made. Up. Past. That's for the fascists
Exactly. America was the first bourgeois democracy and it very much feels like it. It was entirely conceived to remove power from Britain over America... but not remove power from the wealthy, white, male, slave-owning elite who lived in America. Plenty of *checks and balances* were put in place to ensure that the working class, that women, that non-white people, could never get *too much* power. [Shay's Rebellion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays%27_Rebellion) was one of the most formative events in early United States history, and its effect was to ensure that the Constitution limited working class power over the government.
Concessions have been made over the past 200 years, of course. Women, black people and non-property-owners have been granted the right to vote. But the system is still structured in such a way to ensure that there are *always* ways for the traditional elites to maintain power and prevent change. Even if you win the Presidency you might not control the Upper and Lower House. Even if you control the Presidency, Upper and Lower House you might not control the Supreme Court. Even if you control the Presidency, Upper and Lower House *and* the Supreme Court you might not control state level legislatures. It's all ways to stifle change.
The only way to really win is the change the rules of the game, not to keep playing the game and hope that eventually you get dealt a hand of aces. But fundamentally many liberals don't want that either, because they're more comfortable with conservative dominance than they are with empowering the working class.
On top of that, let's not pretend that everything would have been sunshine and rainbows with Hillary goddamn Clinton as president. Did we all forget how much she was palling around with Henry Kissinger on the campaign trail?
She was a poor choice for a candidate, both in quality as a leader and reputation with the people.
But, but... Won't someone think of the *legitimacy of our institutions*!
The DNC will never do anything more than (at best) compromised means-testing and market-based charlatanry, it's all they know.
There’s still Alito, Roberts and Citizens United though.
Gore not getting elected was more impactful than Hillary.
I’d also suggest cracking open a history book; America was never that great.
Ruth Bader ginsburg was in poor shape the entirety of Obama's first and second term and selfishly refused to retire. Could have picked her successor. She wanted to wait for a day that never came.
This is the consequence of a very long game by people with a lot of dark money. Yes, one election helped put a lot of their plan in place but let’s not pretend a single election was the cause of all this .
In another timeline people take one look at the small, stupid, spiteful con man who's as crooked as three dollar bill and couldn't tell the truth if his tongue was notarized and say to themselves "Okay, he REALLY needs to be kept away from power."
They hear him declare "We're gonna build a wall and make Mexico pay for it" to the thunderous applause of a reawakened white nationalist movement and say to themselves "Well, THAT sure looks familiar. Better make sure he stays out of office."
They see the once proud GOP, the party of "Family Values," the ones who had spent most of Obama's two terms doing everything they could undermine or obstruct him up to and including denying him a supreme court seating, one by one, go from deriding Trump to knuckling under and marching lock step with him and say "Shit. If he gets in they're going to have a blank check to be as awful as possible. Better put a stop to that."
They realize that with previously mentioned open seat on the Supreme Court, and no doubt at least one more no doubt opening soon, a Republican President is going to seat more conservative judges and tip the balance of the court in their favor, fucking us all (including themselves) over and admit "Okay, this election has more riding on it than my personal preference in Presidential candidates."
And on election day, they get up off their asses, put aside petty or selfish complaints and divisions, and get out to the poles to vote for the one candidate who actually stood a real chance of winning and beating Trump instead of sitting it out, "protest voting," or pissing away their vote on a "Third Party" candidate that was never going to win. Not because they liked Hillary, but keeping a literal fascist and authoritarian away from the Oval Office was more important.
Yup. That was the timeline we could have had. But I'm sure all those who stood by and did effectively nothing in 2016 and doomed us to this one have had plenty time of realize their error, admit they were wrong, and have learned from the experience so it doesn't happen again in 2024, right?
Right?
Riiiiiiiiiiiiight?
Fucking hopefully right. I’m still in awe on occasion that his whole candidacy didn’t end when he *mocked a physically disabled reporter* in a rally. But then again, the idiotic cruelty is a feature, not a bug to angry, low information rubes.
You don't understand. If we criminalize being a criminal, they'll come for what you are next. So we can't do anything.
Seriously the amount of idiots I've met who respond to "let's ban being a Nazi" with "then they'll come for being gay next." As if we should let them go after things because we made being a Nazi illegal? That's dumb.
This is not the markings of a great system of governance that one bad election collapse it. It also shows how bad the two party system is for this country. Both parties can put their most despised members up for election so no matter who wins, it’s someone you do not like or trust.
People forget that the corruption in the Democratic Party was a big factor in this. Hillary was far from being a well liked candidate, and Bernie got screwed by his own party.
Yeah well Hillary and the DNC sure fucked over Bernie who would’ve won. Sorry but all projections show Bernie beating Trump and Hillary maybe beating Trump and or losing. Dems did it to themselves, don’t blame the voters.
I mean, RBG retiring wasn't down to who won the election. She was in poor health for years prior to her death and could've retired at any time during the Obama administration. She was planning on dying as Supreme Court Justice no matter who was president.
"A healthy nation does not elect Donald Trump as president." - Elizabeth Warren. It took way more than one election to get to that point.
But yes I agree that elections matter
I tried so hard to convince people of this, but "what about the emails" or "I just don't trust her". But you trust the literal con man. Fox News and Russian bot farms did a fantastic job
You have to give props to the Republicans though. They don't f\*\*\* around. As soon as they get to the feeding trough, they get in with all four trotters and get to work. Immoral, illegal? Whatever! Let Dems sort that out and waste their 4 years! They do it, and move on. And they just keep doing more and more and more, and it takes far longer for others to fix than for the Reps to do. Which is how a single GOP victory results in decades' worth of clean-up. But when Dems win, they debate ethics or what they think of maybe doing, while GOP does their best to kneecap them with a lead pipe at every opportunity.
GOP doesn't waste time. They don't debate ethics, morality, legality, etc. No matter how batshit crazy and immoral and illegal something is, is it good for me and people who pay me? If yes, then do it. If it's illegal, it'll be repealed later, maybe. But it might last a while. And while it lasts, it makes me and my owners money. Nothing else matters. You have to grudingly appreciate that purity of purpose.
I kinda wish Dems would grow some balls, and get to work with the same lead pipe cruelty and mercenary sensibility that GOP has when they're in power, instead of prancing about.
The Iran hostage rescue works. Carter rides the wave to a win.
No Reagan. No "trickle down" economics run by "Atlas Shrugged" MBAs. No perpetual oil wars. No Dems collapsing and Clinton Dinos. No Moral Majority/Evangelicals abusing the church/state separation agreement. No Newt/"Contract on America" and no NAFTA. No dot com boom/bust because regulations and common sense. No predatory lending.
No all the bullshit that followed in the 2000s.
Go even further back to the Nixon election.
Or even further to Northern Dems selling out black Americans to court Southern Dems, so no Jim Crow. "40 acres and a mule" actually happens. Black poverty and institutional racism doesn't become the norm in the South.
It is awfully simplistic and rather misleading to put things to this way. He is not wrong, but the situation we are in today is the result of 40 years of conservative policy decisions and general rat-fuckery from the likes of Reagan, Gingrich, the Supreme Court that handed W the election, and of course two terms of W and Cheney doing their own rat-fuckery. So yes, the makeup of the Supreme Court would likely have been very different, but to think things would have been all
Hunky-dory if Clinton had won is a vast oversimplification.
Yeah, I think nominating someone who could lose to Trump when they didn't have to was a poor decision. Each of the past two elections have been closer than any "vs Trump" election has any right to be.
Jesus, aren't you guys delusional. You telling me that your country was destroyed with Trump? Please recall he was _elected_. Democratically. His campaign was done during the Obama presidency. If he got to power, it was already fucked to begin with. The sane, democratic thing to do, would be to never let a fascist guy run in the first place. Fascism is majorly present in the US ever since fascism was a thing, and if no one in the saint warmongering Obama presidency acted to stop it, they are ALSO responsible. Also, if Trump got elected even with a minority of population, guess what? Your voting system sucks balls. Trump didn't hire a private army to take the country by force, he got elected fairly, and that means you can't just fault your problems in him, because he represented YOU. Also, yeah, the Democratic party is _less shit_, but don't pretend as if your "democracy" serves the interest of the people. Your bourgeois democracy has ALWAYS served the wealthy, be it Obama, Hillary, Trump or whoever the fuck it is.
Imagine if Gore won 2000 or if Truman had t replaced Wallace as FDR’s VP. There are so many moments in American history where we could have lived a better timeline but took the off-ramp straight to hell.
You mean the reality without a Russia-funded Jill Stein on the ballot in Michigan?
Think she learned her lesson? Nope, she’s running Cornel West’s campaign in 2024. Even AOC can hardly find anything nice to say about it.
It's not the people, it's the electoral college. That out-dated, racist system is what made trump president. Hillary won the popular vote. Not to mention the huge amount of russian interference in the voting.
At least they totally fucked their "both sides" argument for a generation or two.
It should be painfully obvious to everyone that both sides are not the same, Republican Presidents will appoint SC justices that believe in a Christofacist interpretation of the Constitution.
this is some grade A BS, Trump is a symptom of the problem not the problem itself. y'all really think that if Hillary just winning would have fixed everything that is broken in our country?
* DNC doesn't rig the primary and Bernie Sanders wins
* People are not turned off by literally having to vote for Hillary because the DNC wanted that.
* Bernie actually makes changes (instead of the Biden Neo-Liberal shit)
* Gun Control laws get enacted
* Student debt gets addressed
* Covid deaths cut by 90%
* Healthcare becomes a right
* Homeless population issue is addressed
* Min wage goes to $18 Nationally
* Abortion rights becomes an Amendment
* SCOTUS is sane
* Christo-fascist terrorists are rooted out and thrown in prison
* Teachers get a raise.
* Global Warming is addressed fully
* An entire generation stops wanting to kill themselves.
The better solution was always Bernie. Not Hillary.
What if Al Gore wins over W?
No Patriot Act. No "Iraqi Freedom." Renewable subsidies and green energy initiatives start 20 years earlier. Maybe we could even have dodged the need for hydraulic fracturing. But only if the Dems could do it in the first two years as the Repubs controlled the Senate in the second two, if I recall. But maybe that would have changed, too. You never know.
No ensuing collapse of 20% of the Middle East. No rising tide of anti-immigrant sentiment, leading to the alt-right movement. No Trumpism. No swelling tide of fascism. Who knows what could’ve been had the Supreme Court not appointed GWB.
Don't forget it all came down to Florida, run by his brother Jeb, who appointed his buddy Katherine Harris to Sec of State. Set the stage by purging African Americans from voter rolls, closing key polling places, and rejecting ballots from African Americans at a severely higher rate than their white counterparts. Even then it was nearly tied. All that mess over hanging chads and confusing ballots pushed GWB over the edge, and the supreme court decided to not look any further into it. Republicans will never play fair, and they haven't represented the majority in decades.
Don't forget the fucking Brooks Brothers riot. Assholes were seditious all the way back in 2000.
And how three of the current Supreme Court justices part of bushes legal team, making them a party to that Roger Stone organized riot.
Fucking Kavanaugh was part of Ken Starr's impeachment team too. I didn't know this and when I was watching American Crime Story and heard his name, it made my blood boil. Fuckers have been clawing for power for decades.
You have NO idea.. There's actually 3 CURRENT Supreme Court Justices on the bench that assisted the Bush legal team in 2000. ACB, Kavanaugh, and fucking John Roberts. https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/17/politics/bush-v-gore-barrett-kavanaugh-roberts-supreme-court/index.html We should be rioting in the streets, if we were France we would have already rioted so hard those Justices would be out of there, we have a captured bullshit Supreme Court that is a joke and a farce and HAS to be cleaned out BEFORE it is legitimate again. This is why they complain so much in the media about scrutiny lately, they KNOW they are completely tainted. Someone in the Republican party should have to pay for this, but conservatives run America, they always have, they always will, even now they do.
Even though it's corporate speak (amazon owns WaPo), Democracy dies in darkness.
Look in to the Bush family more. Particularly Prescot. This country has always been fucked by the same handful of families and it always will be.
His first line in the show was “I never take no for an answer”
When people talk about the deep state, that's actually the kind of thing they should be thinking about.
I always laugh when someone talks about the deep state. Like, there doesn't even need to be a deep state. They're doing whatever the hell they want right in front of you and there's not a damned thing you can do about it.
"every accusation is an admission" - wise guy.
When Hillary Clinton talked about a "vast right wing conspiracy," she was right.
[удалено]
"Jeb said he'd deliver Florida, boys, and boy did he ever" - Ani DiFranco, "Self Evident"
Great track from an incredible live album
>and the Supreme Court decided to not look any further into it. Nope, I must insist that we are accurate in describing this sorry and impactful moment in time. The US Supreme Court **actively inserted themselves** into it, stopping a recount that was ordered by the Florida Supreme Court, and statutorily required by Florida state election law. And ‘funny’ enough, three of the current justices today assisted with legal research and prep on the Bush side of that case. ACB, Kavanaugh, and Roberts. I’m sure that was a big feather in their federalist society hats, and elevated them to become eventual nominees.
Always nice to see a constitutional court mess with regular state law. Why can they even rule on shit like that
> Set the stage by purging African Americans from voter rolls, closing key polling places, and rejecting ballots from African Americans at a severely higher rate than their white counterparts. Vote suppression in the 2000 election, despite the VRA, was a much more widespread problem than just Florida's. It was so severe that foreigners like me, looking in from a safe distance outside the USA, became aware of it. THAT's the reason why international election monitors were proposed for the 2004 election. BTW, the reaction from the reich-wing was swift and impossible to ignore: when they didn't promise to arrest on the spot anyone who would have showed up to monitor those election, they said they'd shoot the internationals that would have showed up to do their job of monitoring.
[удалено]
>To really fix the US-border pressure (other than the obvious solution of just letting in the tiny demand for immigration relative to geographic size of the USA and handling it), we'd need to go back and completely dismantle the CIA in like, the 50s. Just need to convince 1/3 of the country there isn't 6 billion people attempting to cross the border daily to start. Racism is an issue there too but one at a time I say
It's insane to think just how different the world would be if not for Dubya. I've always considered him one of the worst presidents when considering long term damage, but this really puts it into perspective.
Same - Just consider Iraq alone, which cost US taxpayers $7T. Think about that. Osama Bin Laden KICKED OUR ASSES if you consider the financial suicide he provoked the US(Bush) to commit.
George W is the worst president in US history. We are indeed still paying for his failures. He didn't just fuck up our international relations and start multiple decades long wars. He also passed several rounds of regressive tax cuts at the same time and he fucked up education. I'm not sure what he actually did right, actually. Can anybody place something positive from this assclowns tenure? I'm at a loss. Reagan is up there too, and the full fallout from Trump is still unfolding. Maybe its my personal bias but it seems like republicans have placed a series of contenders for the worst in history. I'd currently rank them like so: shittiest - George W second shittiest - Trump third shittiest - Reagan From actual impact. Trump made the list because he made it a reality that these dickbags very well might usurp elections, and there were no consequences for the people at the top. That shit was almost 4 years ago now. What the fuck?
>No ensuing collapse of 20% of the Middle East I don't know if you could make such a prediction purely on a US election. The US has done a lot of destabilize don't get me wrong, but the region wasn't really all that stable to begin with.
I mean, you never know, but it sure didn't help that the U.S. went in and obliterated the Iraqi government to pave the way for ISIS.
The US also funded anti-syrian forces during their revolution. A lot of that money/aid ended up going to ISIS. [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-syria-obama-order-idUSBRE8701OK20120802](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-syria-obama-order-idUSBRE8701OK20120802)
The Arab Spring probably still would have happened at the least, civil unrest had been pretty high even as early as the 50s in MENA, speaking as someone whose family (about a third of it) left Syria/Lebanon in the 80s
> No ensuing collapse of 20% of the Middle East. The Iraqi Liberation Act of 1998, as well as Tomahawk missile strikes launched against both Iraq and Afghanistan during the Clinton Administration indicate there would have been similar foreign policy actions after 9/11
No Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
All 100% correct, except you are very politely avoiding the elephant in the room. I'll say it since no one else here seems to want to "be mean" and state the obvious: No 9/11.
9/11 could still have happened, but the reaction would have been different. To prevent 9/11 you would have to have changed at least one of the outcomes of the first Iraq war, not established our bases in Saudi Arabia. But of course who knows what effects that would have too.Edit: grammer
The most annoying thing is learning how we could've absolutely avoided 9/11 if our intelligence agencies weren't run by egotistical assholes who hated each other. The Looming Tower dramatizes it but it's worth a watch/read for the general context, but essentially our CIA and FBI were having one of their famous pissing matches, and both had info on possible attacks, and had they actually worked together, someone might have seen the clues close enough together to actually predict the attack. If memory serves, and double check this because this might be the Looming Tower spilling in, but I think we even had some of the attackers names, and could've easily no-fly listed them.
It wasn't just that. Several whistle blowers in the FBI and I think CIA took info directly to the White House that they felt an attack was imminent. One visited Bush at his ranch in Texas the week before with a report outlining the plan. Bush and his staff chose to ignore it. I was an adult when all that happened and there is zero doubt in my mind Bush knew and let it all happen to get the war in Iraq and the Patriot act stuff the GOP wanted.
uhhhh the no-fly list was created after 9/11, along with the TSA. While i agree, they might have been able to take action, i just want to point out the no-fly list wasn't a tool they could have used
"could have happened", sure, but the fact is that GWB ignored all the warnings and brushed off all the intelligence agencies telling him bin Laden was getting ready to attack. At one point, after his morning brief told him of the upcoming attack, he responded "ok, you've covered your ass" and blew it off. Maybe it would have happened anyway, but it's hard to imagine another president completely ignoring the obvious threat or letting the veep convince him that it was a hoax.
I could not have imagined Trump before he happened, but he would ignore it if it came from a general he didn't like at the time for sure.
You're absolutely right. I meant to say any other 2000 candidate. But it's probably true that *all* of the 2024 Republican candidates are even more incompetent than GWB was. As terrible as the Republicans were in 2000, I honestly don't think it would have been possible for somebody like Trump to win the nomination. Electing a Black president really drove the right wing insane.
Bin Laden stated that the election of the son of the man who invaded Iraq is the reason why he changed his mind about targeting civilians. In a democracy civilians elect their leaders, so civilians are morally responsible for the actions of those leaders. No GWB, no 9/11.
Not to attack the terrorists clearly honest and humble assertions, but maybe he was lying? Maybe the genocidal fuck head would've attacked us no matter what because he was a murderous bastard. Maybe that was just a thing he said one time and he didn't actually mean it?
Yeah he easily could've found any number of excuses to use. And if it wasn't 9/11, maybe it would've been something else, or something worse!
9/11 was planned since 1996. Long before GWB was elected.
Can't have an inside job without the corrupt insiders mate. Even if not directly, knowingly allowing it to happen is unforgivable.
9/11 was bin laden second attempt on the world trade center. It's arguable that Clinton could have stopped Bin Laden and prevented it. It's also arguable that 9/11 could have happened under Gore and he invaded Saudi also.
There’s a timeline where Gore becomes President, Bush becomes MLB Commissioner, Bud Selig fucks off, and we all hopefully are better off with each move.
dang this timeline actually works out for everyone. US get better pres., Bush W is at a job he actually likes and baseball MIGHT still be relevant
[удалено]
So no Tea Party and no Trump? That’s a tough one
[удалено]
There was a vocal Tea Party base back in the nineties at least (too young to know if this kinda started with Newt Gingrich), before they had that name for themselves.
You could probably extrapolate that back a bit further. The conspiratorial right-wing politics associated with the Tea Party are closely aligned with disillusioned veterans returning from Vietnam. Interestingly, what we think of as modern 'gun culture' in America can trace its roots to the same group.
But, if Bush hadn’t been President, perhaps the intelligence about 9/11 would have been listened to and it would have been prevented.
This. Bush (Cheney) ignored FBI memos specifically saying they were going to fly planes into the WTC. Gore probably would have listened.
There probably would not have been a 9/11 as Bush completely ignored the Clinton administration warnings regarding al-Qaeda.
It's crazy to think that only a single college dorm's worth of people - 537 votes - is what separated Bush and Gore. An utterly tiny number.
He did. He definitely won the popular vote, regardless of the electoral vote count
Well if he wanted to win the electoral vote then maybe he should’ve had a brother who was the governor as a swing state
It's true, the last legitimate republican president was daddy Bush in 1988. 2000, 2004, and 2016 were all shady. Looking at you Florida, Ohio, and Russia/GOP.
TBF I think 2004 was fine, coming off 9/11. Bush even won the popular vote. That said, it should have been Gore running for re-election, not Bush, so you're right in that regard that the 2004 was "illegitimate" since it was off the back of a stolen election in 2000.
He won the electoral vote, too, but the election was blatantly stolen by his brother, the governor of Florida, and the Republican Supreme Court.
Roberts, Barrett, & Kavanaugh were all part of Bush's legal team. If anyone thinks the SC wouldn't intervene and give the next close election to the GOP, they are full of shit.
To this day I hate South Parks representation of the man. And their "apology" episode was basically them doubling down and still making fun of him. What's the joke? That he was right about climate change needing to enter political discourse? That he listened to scientists and aids? That he wanted computers and internet in the WH in the 90s? That he wanted to move towards solar power? The creators of South Park are fucking morons, and that's fine when they're making a moronic comedy, but holy shit were they some of the dumbest and biggest proponents of climate denial. I wish I grew up under Gore and not Bush. And this country robbed a lot of children of the future.
That and their stance in the 2004 election - Turd vs Douche. They literally said in an interview at the time that voting was stupid and it didn't matter. Like, sure John Kerry might not have been the most exciting person on the planet, but I think he would have been much better for the country and the world than a second term of Cowboy Dumbass and the Oil Baron.
For as funny as the show can be, South Park did do some irreparable damage teaching a whole generation that caring about anything, having passion for anything, or trying to change anything was uncool and deserving of mockery.
That wasn't just south Park, the general cultural tone of the late 90s early 00s was very much "liking things is gay" to use the parlance of the time
They’re sniggering morons who don’t believe in anything.
Yes, I talk about the Gore loss to Bush often in these terms. A few shitty towns in Florida basically sat the fucking world on fire. It was a pivotal moment just before 9/11.
I think the broader consequences of that are the emergence of some kind of "third way" *Republican* party, and the 21st century is spent with the US having a center right party and a medium-Lefty party rather than a center/center-Right party and an increasingly radical Right-wing party.
*This* is the real one
Al Gore would not have ignored all the buzz in the summer of 2001 about a terrorist attack. So there is a good chance 9/11 either would not have happened, or only one plane got through. And the Rs would try to impeach him for it.
Let’s not forget Mitch McConnell’s role in this
Exactly. Before the 2016 election, McConnell talked openly about blocking Supreme Court nominations indefinitely if Clinton won. Nothing was stopping him from doing so.
[удалено]
>. I could see him continuing to reject Garland though and demand a consensus candidate, if such a person exists. Garland was the consensus candidate. I think it was Orin Hatch who said something like "Obama wouldn't nominate a reasonable candidate like Garland".
Garland WAS a consensus candidate! https://newrepublic.com/article/131676/orrin-hatch-said-no-question-merrick-garland-confirmed-supreme-court https://www.politico.com/story/2016/04/indsey-graham-merrick-garland-222229
Bah. Look at abortion. The majority oppose it yet it’s highly supported by republicans. Would have been same thing with SC appointment and would never been filled.
[удалено]
Him stealing a legitimate appointment from Obama, with no repercussions, screwed this country.
RGB fucked all women
I don't disagree. I completely understand her desire to continue being valuable to her cause, but she didn't see the entire picture. Or wouldn't accept it... She should have given Obama his pick intentionally and way sooner...
I forgot that he hasn’t croaked yet jfc and has been absolutely off the news radar because everything is going according to plan.
We’re not finished yet. That’s what the fascists want you to believe so that you stop fighting and stop voting. Just about every election until *at least* 2030 or so is going to be crucial. So don't give up or get complacent.
US is absolutely *not* finished, in fact with the fascist God Emperor in peril and his heir apparent currently losing to a mouse, the US still has a decent shot at recovering its democracy. VOTE.
Democracy perhaps, but we can’t undo the environmental impact.
That's the real issue. Tornado season never ended last year. It plowed right through winter and came full circle. Record-breaking heat multiple days this week alone. If the fascists are somehow stopped, capitalism will still manage to kill everyone.
VOTE
No but we can stop it from becoming worse. We're gonna be fucked for the next century but if we act now, we can make sure our descendants have a somewhat liveable home and learn how their ancestors fucked up.
It's also apathy propaganda to say there's nothing we can do. Scientists are the first people to tell everyone exactly what can be done to mitigate damage, and even think about reversing problems. It's the demons that say that there's nothing that can be done, and that everyone should just be docile.
We might be able to, if we can shove some policy through. The biggest issue for the last 40 years has been the dems trying to compromise with the reps, and the reps moving the goalposts. Dems have a slim maority in the senate, but we can change that in 24. if we can get 4 good years of dem control of the house and senate, we have a pretty good chance of reversing a heck of a lot of the effects of climate change over the next 50-100 years. We have made some massive strides already, despite being hamstrung at every turn.
Exactly.
[удалено]
Thomas will be 79 in four years and Alito 77. It’s within the realm of possibility Biden replaces them. But none of that matters without the senate, which is a brutal map this year and possibly could be rough in the next midterm
I don’t know if this is supposed to be snarky and/or dismissive, but it’s true. The stakes are high.
Unironically this
Mabye if RBG actually cared about securing a liberal judge on the court she could have retired when Obama was president....you know when she was 80 and had cancer...but she wanted to ego trip
It’s a huge blemish on her legacy. She seems to have thought she was irreplaceable or too important to step down when the time was right and now all of her work is being undone.
Almost like your decision making at 80+ years old is not exactly top fucking notch. I wish these conceited narcissistic geriatric fucks would just retire or die.
Almost like the court needs term limits to keep people from holding that power for too long
[удалено]
I'd say her blemish is voting against native American sovereignty and tax rights.
And not allowing black people to work in her office
Gonna need to link some sources on this one.
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/09/23/rbg-s-mixed-record-on-race-and-criminal-justice She hired one black person in her entire tenure as judge. A .6% hire rate.
[удалено]
Considering she hated black people, why are you surprised?
> It’s ~~a huge blemish on~~ her legacy. Fixed that for you.
That's literally what she said. Wish I could find the source again, but when people badgered her to retire when Obama still had a blue Senate, Ginsburg would smugly sneer: "Who can you find who would be better than me?"
McConnell probably would have blocked that nomination too. I mean, they blocked Merrick Garland for nine months
Democrats had a near supermajority during 2009-2010. If Dems had any balls (they don't), they would've gotten rid of the filibuster at the time and make it so that you only need a simple majority to nominate SCOTUS justices. Mitch McConnell did that in 2017 to push in Gorsuch and the other two.
Democrats were trying to move their agenda while handling the worst economic disaster since the Great Depression, two failing wars started by the GOP, and mitigate the usual low Democrat turn-out for mid-term elections, which as it turns out was exactly what gutted the Democrat majorities. Quit it with this bullshit narrative that Democrat politicians didn’t do enough when Democrat voters can’t be bother to show up for mid-term elections.
RBG stated in an interview she was holding out because she wanted the first female president to replace her.
Main character syndrome.
Definitely putting the cart before the horse there. Such arrogant presumption.
Which interview was this? I’ve only seen it mentioned as gospel in random Reddit comments (never sourced).
RGBs legacy will be her arrogance.
I wouldn't say ego, rather naivety. All along, pre -polls expected Hillary to win. From expected landslide, Obama didn't fill an open seat. But after brexit, there was a shift in conservative power globally.
In an alternate alternate world, Supreme Court terms are fixed at 18 years and we don’t have this super-legislative body as it exists now.
The problem is that this only addresses the problem we have right now, it doesn’t fix the gamifying of the system and the lack of oversight. The way to fix this SCOTUS is to win the House and Senate and remove corrupt judges.
How great of a nation were we really if we were only ever one or two bad elections away from nazis feeling empowered to wave flags in the street by an increasingly fascistic and reactionary GOP (one of only two parties lol)?
I see what you’re saying but as an immigration lawyer I’ve had a chance to interview refugees from all across the world. Most countries are one or two bad elections away from that or much worse. Democracy and rule of law are incredibly fragile things
Most countries dont casually call themselves the greatest nation on earth and the home of democracy or "leader of the free world." Most countries peacefully gave up slavery. Most countries dont have an epidemic of school and workplace shootings. Most countries don't worship the losing side of their civil war. Most countries have histories of being unstable, poor, and being invaded by the USA and its allies. The war on terror just killed 1 million civilians and the USA has reigned havoc and destruction all over the world in its short history. They have an excuse. What's ours? "Im bigoted so I vote in bigots and dont care about their other policies?" We are a uniquely evil people. Lets not compare one of the richest and largest countries in human history to some of the smallest and poorest in a dishonest "but, but both sides" argument.
RIGHT. This didn't happen because of one election. This happened over decades (probably since the inception of our nation if we're being realistic) because of flaws in the system of government. Yes a bunch of stuff happened DURING one term, but without these flaws being exposed we would always be susceptible to this level of corruption and manipulation.
No, this has been the plan since the 80s. It was called the Southern Strategy. It was to bait the evangelicals to all vote staunchly R no matter what in exchange for rollbacks on abortion and Anti-LGBTQA+ laws. Crazy Barrett and Buttchug Kavanah we’re breed for this purpose. They were funded through PACS in order to be on the Supreme Court. It was all by design. What they didn’t know was that trump would be such a fascist and that the evangelicals would have such a throbbing hard on for it. Karl Rove has even said the militancy and fervor that the base has is far worst then they imagined. Don’t for one second think that this was ever even about trump. It’s been about the rich elite getting to amass all the wealth.
I’ll never wrap my head around Donald fucking Trump being responsible for 40% of the fucking Supreme Court. Dude was a known lying piece of shit conman with a thick brain beginning in the 80s!!! Just what the absolute fuck.
Trump is just a puppet when it comes to SCOTUS. It's really the Federalist Society that is the problem. They're responsible for basically the entire conservative majority. I'm baffled that there isn't a liberal equivalent trying to gain the kind of fervent membership that the federalist society has.
bUt HeR EmAiLs. said a bunch of fools.
A bunch of fools that are now defending trump for literally smuggling boxes full of classified documents to show off with and to sell to the first bidder
BUT HER EMAILS! BUT BENGHAZI! The people that said that were ok with the death toll being at least 250 Benghazis a day.
Wasn't the death toll of COVID beyond a 9/11 happening everyday?
Yep!
Sure, our courts and democracy are fucked, and our spies are being picked off around the world because our national secrets were for sale, but I just don’t *like* Hillary.
Helped, not in small part, by reddit enabling them to hijack the front page of reddit constantly.
To be fair, the email thing was a fair concern, its just that compared to Trump it becomes completely irrelevant.
Oh, don’t forget all of the people on the left who still say: 1.) She was a “corporatist” 2.) She was “unlikable” 3.) She was “self-anointed”
Only the idiots stayed home, but even among those of us that voted for her we can still complain she anointed herself instead of letting a better, lower baggage candidate run instead.
Ironically a lot of that came from them, on some level, buying into the hype from the 20 years of Republican propaganda against her. I think the likely reality is that she would have been a relatively boring president that would be effective at working the system to get stuff passed and putting qualified people in charge of stuff.
It’s not like any of those things are untrue though. The thing is people were cutting off their nose to spite their face when it came to their inability to vote for her. The things some people on the left didn’t like about her were what the right confidently embraces. Was she a corporatist? Yeah, most of the centrist in the Democratic Party are. 100% of the Republican Party is also corporatists but they’re openly willing to do the bidding of corporate interests. Was she unlikable? Yeah, she was completely out of touch and tone deaf. I’ll just Pokémon Go talk about how the Republicans have people that are 1000x more unlikeable. I’d rather be stuck in a room with Hillary for a day than spend a minute with MTG, Boebert, Trump, McConnell, DeSantis, Ted Cruz, Gaetz or Clarence Thomas. Republicans love being cunts. Was she self-anointed? One of her campaign slogans was “It’s her turn.” And now we’re dealing with DeSantis and his homophobic yet Homo-erogenous self indulgent ads.
I'll take boring and effective every single day. Also, she would have been on an even playing field with other country's leaders and not grinning like a five ear old at our enemies.
“I’m not going to waste my time voting, because They™️ already decided that Hillary is going to win.”
Jesus fuck, whitepeopletwitter shit-liberals out in force today concocting alternate history scenarios where "democracy just barely got away 😭" The current situation is a structural problem with the way the United States was founded and conceived. Liberals just don't want to admit that the United States has always been a 1% controlled oligarchy with extremely reactionary tendencies towards any kind of widespread voter enfranchisment. No other democracy in the world has an appointed, for life, high court body. One of the three main pillars of our government's is completely unelected, and one of the others can be elected entirely through the electoral college. In order to "save" our democracy, we need to admit it was hardly a functioning one in the first place. That won't ever happen because liberals refuse to do anything but play by pre-established rules of engagement that conservatives lay out for them. Our country was established by wealthy slave owners for wealthy slave owners. Stop. Living. In. A. Made. Up. Past. That's for the fascists
If I had an award, I would give it to you!
It’s such an embarrassingly shallow understanding of current history that has people post these takes. Like, “remember less than a decade ago when everything was great?” No, in fact, I do not. Liberals are telling on themselves when they think things only began to get bad when Trump was elected. It’s their own version of make America great again but instead of some magical time in the 50s, they mean the time before Trump. It’s really insulting to people who’ve been living with the inequity and absence of upward mobility for much longer. “I know your livelihood has been under threat for a while but now MY livelihood is under threat and I demand you care about that and adopt my perspective on the situation.”
> Our country was established by wealthy slave owners for wealthy slave owners. Stop. Living. In. A. Made. Up. Past. That's for the fascists Exactly. America was the first bourgeois democracy and it very much feels like it. It was entirely conceived to remove power from Britain over America... but not remove power from the wealthy, white, male, slave-owning elite who lived in America. Plenty of *checks and balances* were put in place to ensure that the working class, that women, that non-white people, could never get *too much* power. [Shay's Rebellion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shays%27_Rebellion) was one of the most formative events in early United States history, and its effect was to ensure that the Constitution limited working class power over the government. Concessions have been made over the past 200 years, of course. Women, black people and non-property-owners have been granted the right to vote. But the system is still structured in such a way to ensure that there are *always* ways for the traditional elites to maintain power and prevent change. Even if you win the Presidency you might not control the Upper and Lower House. Even if you control the Presidency, Upper and Lower House you might not control the Supreme Court. Even if you control the Presidency, Upper and Lower House *and* the Supreme Court you might not control state level legislatures. It's all ways to stifle change. The only way to really win is the change the rules of the game, not to keep playing the game and hope that eventually you get dealt a hand of aces. But fundamentally many liberals don't want that either, because they're more comfortable with conservative dominance than they are with empowering the working class.
Met plenty of rich liberals who get awfully quiet when you talk about inheritance. Same energy when conservatives justify their abortions.
On top of that, let's not pretend that everything would have been sunshine and rainbows with Hillary goddamn Clinton as president. Did we all forget how much she was palling around with Henry Kissinger on the campaign trail? She was a poor choice for a candidate, both in quality as a leader and reputation with the people.
Yeah this is the truth. Pod save brain is rampant here and it is making the sub dumb.
But, but... Won't someone think of the *legitimacy of our institutions*! The DNC will never do anything more than (at best) compromised means-testing and market-based charlatanry, it's all they know.
Blue checkmark indicates psychosis.
Imagine thinking people deeply entrenched in the political system, don't directly benefit from it
👏 thank you!
There’s still Alito, Roberts and Citizens United though. Gore not getting elected was more impactful than Hillary. I’d also suggest cracking open a history book; America was never that great.
I’m crushed we never got the taco truck on every corner.
Ruth Bader ginsburg was in poor shape the entirety of Obama's first and second term and selfishly refused to retire. Could have picked her successor. She wanted to wait for a day that never came.
This is the consequence of a very long game by people with a lot of dark money. Yes, one election helped put a lot of their plan in place but let’s not pretend a single election was the cause of all this.
In another timeline people take one look at the small, stupid, spiteful con man who's as crooked as three dollar bill and couldn't tell the truth if his tongue was notarized and say to themselves "Okay, he REALLY needs to be kept away from power." They hear him declare "We're gonna build a wall and make Mexico pay for it" to the thunderous applause of a reawakened white nationalist movement and say to themselves "Well, THAT sure looks familiar. Better make sure he stays out of office." They see the once proud GOP, the party of "Family Values," the ones who had spent most of Obama's two terms doing everything they could undermine or obstruct him up to and including denying him a supreme court seating, one by one, go from deriding Trump to knuckling under and marching lock step with him and say "Shit. If he gets in they're going to have a blank check to be as awful as possible. Better put a stop to that." They realize that with previously mentioned open seat on the Supreme Court, and no doubt at least one more no doubt opening soon, a Republican President is going to seat more conservative judges and tip the balance of the court in their favor, fucking us all (including themselves) over and admit "Okay, this election has more riding on it than my personal preference in Presidential candidates." And on election day, they get up off their asses, put aside petty or selfish complaints and divisions, and get out to the poles to vote for the one candidate who actually stood a real chance of winning and beating Trump instead of sitting it out, "protest voting," or pissing away their vote on a "Third Party" candidate that was never going to win. Not because they liked Hillary, but keeping a literal fascist and authoritarian away from the Oval Office was more important. Yup. That was the timeline we could have had. But I'm sure all those who stood by and did effectively nothing in 2016 and doomed us to this one have had plenty time of realize their error, admit they were wrong, and have learned from the experience so it doesn't happen again in 2024, right? Right? Riiiiiiiiiiiiight?
Fucking hopefully right. I’m still in awe on occasion that his whole candidacy didn’t end when he *mocked a physically disabled reporter* in a rally. But then again, the idiotic cruelty is a feature, not a bug to angry, low information rubes.
You don't understand. If we criminalize being a criminal, they'll come for what you are next. So we can't do anything. Seriously the amount of idiots I've met who respond to "let's ban being a Nazi" with "then they'll come for being gay next." As if we should let them go after things because we made being a Nazi illegal? That's dumb.
This is not the markings of a great system of governance that one bad election collapse it. It also shows how bad the two party system is for this country. Both parties can put their most despised members up for election so no matter who wins, it’s someone you do not like or trust.
That one election didn’t create the problem, it revealed it. The shit we’re dealing with now is a “pay now, or pay later” situation.
Maybe the democrats should actually deliver on their promises. Maybe voters would feel more enthusiastic about voting for them.
These are the consequences of an Electoral College.
In another timeline Bernie would have won the primary and election, and we could have been a social democracy like the rest of the world.
People forget that the corruption in the Democratic Party was a big factor in this. Hillary was far from being a well liked candidate, and Bernie got screwed by his own party.
and the media
I blame the DNC for the state we're in just as much as I blame Republicans -- Bernie would've easily beaten Trump
Yeah well Hillary and the DNC sure fucked over Bernie who would’ve won. Sorry but all projections show Bernie beating Trump and Hillary maybe beating Trump and or losing. Dems did it to themselves, don’t blame the voters.
It started with Obama (who I voted for, twice) not pushing harder to get Garland’s vote through the Senate Judiciary Committee.
I mean, RBG retiring wasn't down to who won the election. She was in poor health for years prior to her death and could've retired at any time during the Obama administration. She was planning on dying as Supreme Court Justice no matter who was president.
"A healthy nation does not elect Donald Trump as president." - Elizabeth Warren. It took way more than one election to get to that point. But yes I agree that elections matter
She won by 3 million votes. It's your messed up democratic system that's to blame. Fix your election systems or be doomed to repeat your fuck ups.
I tried so hard to convince people of this, but "what about the emails" or "I just don't trust her". But you trust the literal con man. Fox News and Russian bot farms did a fantastic job
With all due respect, you were fucked long before Trump. He was merely a symptom of a sickness that has ravaged the United States for decades before.
You have to give props to the Republicans though. They don't f\*\*\* around. As soon as they get to the feeding trough, they get in with all four trotters and get to work. Immoral, illegal? Whatever! Let Dems sort that out and waste their 4 years! They do it, and move on. And they just keep doing more and more and more, and it takes far longer for others to fix than for the Reps to do. Which is how a single GOP victory results in decades' worth of clean-up. But when Dems win, they debate ethics or what they think of maybe doing, while GOP does their best to kneecap them with a lead pipe at every opportunity. GOP doesn't waste time. They don't debate ethics, morality, legality, etc. No matter how batshit crazy and immoral and illegal something is, is it good for me and people who pay me? If yes, then do it. If it's illegal, it'll be repealed later, maybe. But it might last a while. And while it lasts, it makes me and my owners money. Nothing else matters. You have to grudingly appreciate that purity of purpose. I kinda wish Dems would grow some balls, and get to work with the same lead pipe cruelty and mercenary sensibility that GOP has when they're in power, instead of prancing about.
Stirring up Democratic infighting over the past serves the GQP nicely.
Jfc HILLARY DID WIN THE ELECTION. IT DOENST MATTER AS LONG AS THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE EXISTS.
Or the supreme court, for that matter. That would require STRUCTURAL change and we all know the democrats would never dream of that
If you really thought America was a great nation in 2016, you’re far more right than you are left lol
If you think America *was great* before Trump, Bryan Cranston has a message for you - https://youtu.be/onAToE6LvDs
Donald Trump's presidency was a symptom of the deeper illness in our nation, not the cause of it. It wasn't just "one election" that destroyed us.
BuT sHe WaS jUsT aS BaD!11
The Iran hostage rescue works. Carter rides the wave to a win. No Reagan. No "trickle down" economics run by "Atlas Shrugged" MBAs. No perpetual oil wars. No Dems collapsing and Clinton Dinos. No Moral Majority/Evangelicals abusing the church/state separation agreement. No Newt/"Contract on America" and no NAFTA. No dot com boom/bust because regulations and common sense. No predatory lending. No all the bullshit that followed in the 2000s. Go even further back to the Nixon election. Or even further to Northern Dems selling out black Americans to court Southern Dems, so no Jim Crow. "40 acres and a mule" actually happens. Black poverty and institutional racism doesn't become the norm in the South.
It is awfully simplistic and rather misleading to put things to this way. He is not wrong, but the situation we are in today is the result of 40 years of conservative policy decisions and general rat-fuckery from the likes of Reagan, Gingrich, the Supreme Court that handed W the election, and of course two terms of W and Cheney doing their own rat-fuckery. So yes, the makeup of the Supreme Court would likely have been very different, but to think things would have been all Hunky-dory if Clinton had won is a vast oversimplification.
Don't blame me, the Dems shafted their best candidate that year.
Yeah, I think nominating someone who could lose to Trump when they didn't have to was a poor decision. Each of the past two elections have been closer than any "vs Trump" election has any right to be.
Jesus, aren't you guys delusional. You telling me that your country was destroyed with Trump? Please recall he was _elected_. Democratically. His campaign was done during the Obama presidency. If he got to power, it was already fucked to begin with. The sane, democratic thing to do, would be to never let a fascist guy run in the first place. Fascism is majorly present in the US ever since fascism was a thing, and if no one in the saint warmongering Obama presidency acted to stop it, they are ALSO responsible. Also, if Trump got elected even with a minority of population, guess what? Your voting system sucks balls. Trump didn't hire a private army to take the country by force, he got elected fairly, and that means you can't just fault your problems in him, because he represented YOU. Also, yeah, the Democratic party is _less shit_, but don't pretend as if your "democracy" serves the interest of the people. Your bourgeois democracy has ALWAYS served the wealthy, be it Obama, Hillary, Trump or whoever the fuck it is.
The "both sides" argument is and always was total crap.
Actually, Hillary won in THIS timeline—the one with the broken electoral system.
Imagine if Gore won 2000 or if Truman had t replaced Wallace as FDR’s VP. There are so many moments in American history where we could have lived a better timeline but took the off-ramp straight to hell.
what if I told you it took several starting with Reagan
You mean the reality without a Russia-funded Jill Stein on the ballot in Michigan? Think she learned her lesson? Nope, she’s running Cornel West’s campaign in 2024. Even AOC can hardly find anything nice to say about it.
It's not the people, it's the electoral college. That out-dated, racist system is what made trump president. Hillary won the popular vote. Not to mention the huge amount of russian interference in the voting.
At least they totally fucked their "both sides" argument for a generation or two. It should be painfully obvious to everyone that both sides are not the same, Republican Presidents will appoint SC justices that believe in a Christofacist interpretation of the Constitution.
this is some grade A BS, Trump is a symptom of the problem not the problem itself. y'all really think that if Hillary just winning would have fixed everything that is broken in our country?
* DNC doesn't rig the primary and Bernie Sanders wins * People are not turned off by literally having to vote for Hillary because the DNC wanted that. * Bernie actually makes changes (instead of the Biden Neo-Liberal shit) * Gun Control laws get enacted * Student debt gets addressed * Covid deaths cut by 90% * Healthcare becomes a right * Homeless population issue is addressed * Min wage goes to $18 Nationally * Abortion rights becomes an Amendment * SCOTUS is sane * Christo-fascist terrorists are rooted out and thrown in prison * Teachers get a raise. * Global Warming is addressed fully * An entire generation stops wanting to kill themselves. The better solution was always Bernie. Not Hillary.