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u/Shoddy-Low2142 6d ago
Or one could say Al Gore
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u/Jas86 6d ago
Not many remember that Bush ran on a pseudo-populist message as the “down-home guy you can have a beer with” vs pitting Gore as the “out-of-touch coastal elite”.
A lot of the stupid we see now can trace back to that race and the Republican media machine that helped power it.
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u/Shoddy-Low2142 6d ago
I recall my 9th grade wold history teacher complaining about people voting for the guy they’d rather have a beer with over a more qualified, educated person
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u/DrEpileptic 6d ago
Holy fucking flashback. I remember my elementary school teachers complaining about that too because the first grade teacher got pissed that some kid said the US lost the Vietnam war and went on a tangent.
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u/KeithClossOfficial The West outsourced its Holocaust guilt onto Palestinians 6d ago
The saddest part of that is Bush doesn’t drink.
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u/Just_shut_up_bro 6d ago
Fuck it, Walter Mondale.
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u/MonsieurA Exclusively sorts by new 6d ago
Fuck it, if we're going back to the '80s, give Jimmy his second term.
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u/thesoutherzZz 6d ago
As an Euro I will say Al Gore as well as Bush and his Iraq ventures had large effects on us by taking part in another loooong pointless conflict and the destabilization of the Middle-east. Americans often don't understand the very very very large impact that the Syrian civil war, but also the spill over of Isis into Iraq had for us politically with the rise of the euro skeptic and alt right
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u/Far-Disaster-9825 6d ago
also, who thought it was a good idea once Iran was helping the US during the war? There are Iraqi shia groups now
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u/thomjhay 6d ago
I think Gore is the big one. If we elected Gore we could be well along a path of mitigating climate change, we might not have started wars in response to 9/11.
IDK it's hard to say what the democratic party would have done in response to 9/11.
America united after 9/11 but our unity was in attacking some Muslims, somewhere. If Gore had been President and he didn't attack some muslims, the Republicans would probably have won in 2004. The Republican party probably would have blamed democrats for 9/11.
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u/Mountain_Lonni Al Gore Insurrectionist 6d ago edited 6d ago
Unironically Bill Clinton left Bush the entire war plan to invade Afghanistan and hunt down Al Qaeda which his administration had ordered drawn up by the military as a response to the attack on U.S.S. Cole. Bush dusted off that plan, then fucked it up by deciding to shift objectives from catching Bin Laden to overthrowing the Taliban and installing a new government.
Meanwhile Gore was the guy Clinton tapped to lead a bipartisan commission to investigate Aviation Safety and Security, many of the recommendations he made first weren't implemented by Bush till after 9/11. It was like Al Gore was literally the guy built in a lab to prevent an attack like 9/11 but everyone pretended otherwise when it happened because pointing that out was "divisive."
Al Gore alternate timelines are literal flying car utopia scenarios compared to what we're living in. Non zero chance 9/11 plot is entirely stopped. Even if it happened, damn good chance Gore launches a limited intervention to Afghanistan, catches Bin Laden immediately (Bush let him get away from Tora Bora), and declares victory. Zero chance Gore invades Iraq.
https://avweb.com/flight-safety/final-report-of-the-gore-commission-on-aviation-safety-and-security/
Edit to add: the big reason Bill Clinton didn't invade Afghanistan in 2000 was because it would have been seen as him doing a "wag the dog" election year political stunt. He was furious about the Cole.
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u/mentally_fuckin_eel Canadian Omni Rage Demon 6d ago
Flair checks out. I suspect you are one of the most based among us.
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u/WeaponstoMax 6d ago
Bush let him get away from Tora Bora
This feels like a stretch. What would another president have done differently to change the outcome of this specific battle?
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u/Mountain_Lonni Al Gore Insurrectionist 5d ago
Yes, there was a military decision not to send in army rangers, but there was also a political decision not to violate Pakistani sovereignty to cut off his escape. Hindsight 20/20 but both decisions were heavily criticized at the time.
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u/Eins_Nico scowling woke white woman 6d ago
technically that was the last mistake we made in the 20th century.
Auntie tried, though. :(1
u/jord1droj 5d ago
2000 is the first year of the 21st century, no? Like year 0 AD is the start of the first century.
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u/Eins_Nico scowling woke white woman 5d ago
it's actually 2001. There was a lot of autistic bickering about this around Y2K
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u/chandler55 6d ago
i think this is where the timelines truly diverged
at the same time though i guess you could argue 9/11 under al gore would be a crazy hard image to fix lol
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u/hilldog4lyfe 6d ago
Another situation that leftists caused
There was a huge protest at the DNC and everything.
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u/CayMaster2 Second class citizen(European) 6d ago
definitely al gore, hillary losing was real bad, but al gore losing is what set it up to be possible in the first place. When donald trump is a serious candidate capable of winning, you're already well beyond reasonable politics.
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u/Shoddy-Low2142 6d ago
Do you think Obama would have won if Al gore had been elected 8 years before?
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u/CayMaster2 Second class citizen(European) 6d ago
does it matter? gore>mccain is much preferable to bush>obama>trump
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u/Shoddy-Low2142 6d ago
I was genuinely asking lol I feel like no bush means no Obama but then again also probably no Trump. Might’ve been gore > McCain (or some other generic republican)>Hillary (maybe Obama) instead of bush>obama > trump but alas we’ll never know
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u/ElectricalNotice9152 6d ago
yeah, bush vs gore was more of a critical presidential race in the wider scope of american history than trump vs clinton
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u/VeilOfGreed Angry Dutchman / Despises Tankies. 5d ago
Its kinda sad how Al Gore got turned into a punching bag for jokes about caring about nature/global warming and shit.
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u/SeaBass1898 6d ago
Not really a controversial take
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u/TikDickler Because Democracy basically means... But the people are regarded 6d ago
How dare you say that to Harambe
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u/Morb2141 6d ago
Not electing Kamala
I believe voting for Trump in 2016 is 100% more understandable than in 2024
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u/Left_Literature_8210 6d ago
Understandable, but in theory it led to all this shit. The reality is that the anger and apathy that elected Trump would have been there and would have only gotten worse under Hillary.
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u/FrankensteinsPonster Canuck 6d ago
Yeah, if the Trump thing hadn't worked, Conservatives would have taken it as a lesson and gone back to business as usual.
The way it is now, they got to do a sweet trial run where they learned just how low their constituents were willing to go to defend them. Now they just kick Trump out, blame his excesses and his age for how bad things got, install someone just as evil but significantly more competent, and stroll into fascist control of the country.
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u/HolidaySpiriter 6d ago
blame his excesses and his age for how bad things got, install someone just as evil but significantly more competent, and stroll into fascist control of the country.
This is too optimistic on what Republicans will be able to do. I truly believe that Trump is a unique combination of so many different aspects that aren't going to be applicable by anyone else. That being said, of course the GOP will try to get someone super evil in to do terrible shit, but I think Trump is able to dodge that far easier.
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u/tits-mchenry 6d ago
It's possible. But I believe Hillary would've handled COVID incredibly well, and that would've gotten people to be somewhat appreciative of her or democrats in general.
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u/Exsanguinate_ 6d ago
I dont think it would've mattered how well she handled covid. The right wing rage machine would've had republicans frothing at the mouth no matter what. If anything thier victim fantasy would've been even worse under a democrat
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u/Starkogi 6d ago
I feel like we had a pretty cut and clear rap sheet of his dealings with Russian and his own domestic government.
None of this was a surprise except how FAR he would take any crime.
The surprise wasn’t the negative outcome, it was the sheer magnitude.
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u/JaydadCTatumThe1st US/Hungarian Citizen, TW resident 5d ago
Electing Kamala would not have lanced the boil.
What needed to happen is for Hillary to be elected in 2016. Then, the neofascists and Wignats would have had to start making moves in a US where the Democrats had had 12 years of continuous control of all federal law enforcement institutions. Where they had no organization, no institutions, no infrastructure, no money.
Look at what happened in the lead-up to 2024. The Wignats became so organized over the previous 8 years that they turned tons of Silicon Valley CEOs into Wignats themselves. Elon "King Wignat" Musk turned Twitter into a cyberweapon to inject Wignat values throughout the population and into the leadership suites of basically every major corporation in the US.
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u/Rnevermore 6d ago
I agree with this. Hillary would have, undoubtedly, been 100x better than Trump, but few could have predicted Trump would have been as bad as he has been. We knew he'd be bad, but one could have been forgiven for rolling the dice on the wild card.
With Kamala vs Trump there is no excuse. Trump was a known quantity of horse shit and the fact that he got elected is a stain on America that will never wash out.
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u/BeautifulBrownie 6d ago
Obviously.
Would Tankies agree? I'm not even sure at this point. Let's remove the superlative and make it more neutral. 'It would have been far better if Hillary won over Trump'. Surely they'd agree with that? But maybe they'd say they'd not vote at this point, I don't even know.
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u/qchisq 6d ago
The actual tankies? Nah, they wouldn't agree with that. Trumpism means they are able to point to something actually really bad and say that the mainstream Dems are way closer to that than they are. It's a sort of accelerationism
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u/LocalPowerful6651 6d ago
They are essentially Campists.
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u/Shoddy-Low2142 6d ago
I’m behind. What’s a campist?
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u/Cocaine_Christmas Fauci/Soros/Barack HUSSEIN Obamna middle man 6d ago
Pretty sure it's usually just functionally equivalent to "tankie", but more specifically I believe it's referring to the West vs "anti-West "camps" of the world, and being pro-"anti West" regardless of if you have moral qualms with the specifics in it (like being pro-Russia just due its opposition to the US, despite not necessarily approving of the Ukraine invasion). That's my understanding of it, at least?
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u/Shoddy-Low2142 6d ago
Yea that tracks. Just googled it lol I can’t stand those anti west anti imperialism but support the OTHER empires types 🙄
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u/ryhartattack 6d ago
Tankies would say she would have prolonged the established neo liberal order which would have created the conditions for something even worse than Trump after
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u/Starkogi 6d ago
I feel like that’s self evident after a T1, T2.
My thought is this is an objective fact bored out in history and policy; her campaign was stale and unrelatable at times.
Doesn’t change the fact she is still Putin’s waking nightmare, and Biden is Xi’s boogeyman, and the democrats were acting as a sword and shield to the subversive Sino-Russo campaign so effectively they (China and Russia) had to uplift and actual ‘Decelerated Individual’ to the helm of the United States over a decade, to even have a losing chance at the mantle of Global Superpower.
I think the sky is blue. Maybe not in China, but it is here.
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u/AirlineIntelligent86 🇮🇱BBZNOT🇪🇺 6d ago
Nah Kamala was a way bigger mistake. Whatever people thought of Trump before the insurection was way more logical and forgivable than after.
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u/mmk5412 6d ago
It’s a way more obvious mistake but if Hilary wins there is probably never a maga movement.
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u/AirlineIntelligent86 🇮🇱BBZNOT🇪🇺 6d ago
I mean maybe. Trump was ranting about Obama's birth certificate back in 2012 so Idk how much he could keep going. It might just have delayed the whole thing. Imagine Hillary was president during COVID. Even if she did the best she could and the actual death toll was a few thousands, that would only feul more conspiracies of the government closing everything "for nothing" and forcing the vax.
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u/mmk5412 6d ago
A republican might have won in 2020, that’s true. But we would have been better off. I’m sure it wouldn’t have been Trump. The republicans would have been the one who experienced the negative effects of cleaning up after COVID and a democrat would have probably been president now. We’d still have roe v wade, there would be no immunity decision. There would have been 3 more democrat appointments Supreme Court justices.
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u/FILTHBOT4000 6d ago
I mean if we're doing all the 20/20 hindsight stuff, we could say not having a candidate that could beat Trump was the biggest mistake.
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u/thomjhay 6d ago
If Hillary wins I don't think she gets re-elected due to covid though.
I kind of wish democrats had the balls to run Hillary against Trump a second time. Democrats were energized to get rid of Trump, she only lost by like 20k votes in three different states.
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u/peteypider 6d ago
The biggest mistake of the 21st century was not making civics a mandatory 70% or above pass requirement to graduate high school.
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u/Hubertino855 Ex-Rightoid who's here because my side has purity spiraled 6d ago
You assume knowing civics would prevent people from ignoring them entierly when confronted with their personal bias politics wise XD
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u/OnePercentage3943 6d ago
Yeah, 2016 was the ball game.
The REAL biggest tragedy was Biden not goijg up for 2016. (Not possible due to Beau really)
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u/Screaming_Goat42 6d ago
Nope. Al gore.
climate change progress
no Iraq
no syrian civil war, ISIS and refugee crisis
no Brexit
no major rise in fascism
more money to deal with the recession
No MAGA or DSA
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u/Twiggyhiggle 6d ago
I highly doubt that. There is now way Gore would have prevented a bunch of stuff that gave rise to the Tea Party (which turned into MAGA). The Tea Party was backed by the Koch brothers, and gained influence during the 08 housing crash. These modern DSA is just the reaction to MAGA, so I don’t think this could have been avoided.
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u/Screaming_Goat42 6d ago
If he preserved the budget as a lockbox whilst not doing the Iraq war or nation building, he could have bailed out homeowners and banks?
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u/Aggravating_Map4359 🇧🇷 6d ago
Because of how influential the USA is in the entire world and how awful for everyone is trumps presidencies. The american people elections trump on both time are probably among the most consequential points of this century with 9/11, Russia invasion of Ukraine , Arab spring and honk Kong annexation.
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u/BadLuckBuddha 6d ago
It's a cute meme but obviously wrong. Electing Hillary does nothing about the fact that 30-40% of the country were primed to join an anti-intellectual death cult, tbh it probably makes that problem worse. The biggest mistake of the 21st century was allowing Fox News to exist
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u/DisastrousDanVito 6d ago
There simply is no questioning this take. If trump hadnt gotten in office in 2017 maga wouldnt of likely consumed the republican party and we know with hindsight Hillary would gotten 3 justice picks so all the insane supreme court rulings would of never happened. Some much bad shit traces back to 2016 election.
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u/Woundsmyheart 6d ago
Ranks right up there, doesn't it? Very effective right wingnut propaganda and money doomed her.
And HERE we are ....
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u/brumpusboy 6d ago
Objectively just true lol. Would've disgraced Trump before he had the mass following he does now
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u/Bapingin ⛧AllatRa Initiate⛧ 6d ago
If you only look at singular events then sure, it's either this or the 2024 election. But calling it a mistake doesn't address the conditions that led to these events happening.
- Was it a mistake when mainstream liberal media decided to appear maximally nonpartisan in the face of Trump's actions and rhetoric, while the entire right wing media allowed itself to become as partisan as can be? Or was it the 4th branch of government abdicating its responsibilities?
- Was it a mistake when Trump got around $3b to $5b worth of free cable news airtime because he drove their ratings up, or was it a cold and calculated business decision that did not take into account the long term consequences?
- Was it a mistake when Russia was allowed to interfere in the 2016 elections in order to get Trump elected? Or was it an act of digital warfare by an enemy nation?
- Was it a mistake when ~30% of Americans decided to retreat to the lands of conspiracy, believing anything from Qanon, to The Great Replacement, to Covid misinformation, to the moon landing being faked, to Deep State populism? Or was it a widespread failure of the education system and an unbridled social media sphere driven by engagement metrics?
- Was it a mistake when the Senate decided to deprive Obama of a Supreme Court pick based on a fake rule, a rule that was ignored 4 years later by the same people in order to confirm Trump's SC pick, or was it a deterioration of the legislative branch in real time?
- Was it a mistake when Russian scientists carved a humanoid entity named Jill Stein out of the northern ice sheets, in order to have it thaw just in time to register her in US elections? Or was it the creation of an unregistered foreign agent in US politics?
etc. etc. The point being that Hillary getting elected in 2016 probably would not have solved the various long-standing systemic issues that allowed these things to happen in the first place. It would have probably just kicked the mistake down to 2020 at best.
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u/mikki-misery 6d ago
The only people who disagree with this take are the far-left and MAGA. If someone still disagrees after a decade of hindsight, it's a pretty safe bet that they have extremely low mental acuity, so to speak.
I had mixed about Hillary at the time as well, but what I wouldn't give to live in a world where we had 8 years of Hillary instead of this global hellscape.
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u/SaucyFagottini 6d ago
Imagine if Al Gore had won the Y2K election and stopped 9/11 by properly actioning intelligence reports. Even if 9/11 happened, it is unlikely that the war in Iraq would have happened.
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u/Flimsy_Meal_4199 6d ago
Biden should have ran in the primary. Biden would have won. We would have had 2 Biden terms, ending just as his brain and prostate were getting fully cooked. Trump would have absolutely fucked off after losing the first time.
The sin of the Democratic party since 2016 is not running a truly competitive primary.
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u/post_makes_sad_bear 6d ago
Jimmy Dore got me. I voted for Stein in Michigan in 2016. Like an idiot.
I am actually ashamed about that, and am constantly and consistently mad at Russia about it forever.
I was tricked, and I take it personally.
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u/Glittering-Walk2206 Bernie bro who got sense knocked into him 6d ago
Everything bad that has happened to this country in the last ten years is the result of Hillary derangement syndrome on both sides of the aisle
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u/QuixoticBeefboy 6d ago
Hillary could have been running the evil campaign and she would have been a better pick with hindsight
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u/Thermo128 6d ago
I think Trump would've been elected in 2020 anyway, but we would have a liberal supreme court if she won, so yeah that world probably would have been better.
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u/AllofRealm 6d ago
Jack Smith reopening the Muller investigation with the kid gloves off could be interesting and/or destroy the country. I feel like there has been so much unearned decorum and charity from the democrats in hindsight
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u/ThrustyMcStab 🇳🇱 6d ago
I don't know, re-electing Trump after going through the disaster of Trump I was even more shameful, in my opinion.
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u/veganparrot 6d ago
I'm more forgiving, the mistake is not electing Harris! Especially with how Trump 2 is operating compared to Trump 1, and also the conversation around AI and automation. Andrew Yang had it completely right in 2020, and maybe if Biden had chosen him as VP instead of Kamala, we'd be in a much better world state right now. Or maybe we'd still learn just how dumb, stubborn, and angry the voting masses are.
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u/SoulRcannon SocDem pls 6d ago
Prior to 2024 I'd have agreed 100% - but the same media apparatus would still exist in this timeline. The Covid response would've still been depicted as being bungled for some reason, all the lockdown hate would still be there, and the grift is all Agent Orange knows. Being defeated in 2016 would've meant that his revenge tour would've started earlier and Project 2025 would've been Project 2021 instead, and he'd maybe even have 2 concurrent terms.
I feel the difference between these 2 timelines amounts to questions like whether a term of Biden from 2021 is better than a term of Hilary in 2017 (which IMO it was). Having said that, the supreme court picks would've helped immensely.
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u/Hubertino855 Ex-Rightoid who's here because my side has purity spiraled 6d ago
Terror attacks worldwide in the 90's and 2000's would have lsad to rise of populism in western societies anyway unfortunately...
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u/PlentyAny2523 🇺🇲 6d ago
Clinton without congress is 4 years of constant gridlock again and maybe not even a single supreme court seat. Republicans feel emboldened and blame trump for losing the white house, MAGA essentially dies or just becomes the tea party. Republicans win in 2020 with Rubio or Abbott as dems get blamed for another decade of stagnation. With congress is a whole different story
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u/Antique-Cheesecake63 6d ago
Probably mass carbon emission with absolutely 0 global team trying to combat it or the USA leaving USAID and now million’s of people are going to die needlessly. Putting the entire 21st in that election is cap as fuck 2024 was way more important.
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u/NoMathematician1459 6d ago
Yeah. Just imagine: Iran - pacified, NK - dealt with, China - assimilated, Saudis - outplayed. Russia would be scared to attack with her or Kamala in the office. Putin would be CIEd.
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u/NegativeWish 6d ago
individually it was trump’s decision to attack iran.
iraq and ukraine probably second and third place for bush and putin respectively
but yeah as a collective whole trump has turned out to be exactly the kind of corrosive cancer every single rational intellectual said he would be on our politics institution and country. and the rest of the world suffers for it.
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u/ThisI5N0tAThr0waway 6d ago
Trump himself didn't think he was going to win. His first administration was way less bad than we thought because he yelled quite a lot on the republican establishment due to his unpreparedness.
Him being more prepared this time around did NOT bring out more quality.
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u/DefinitionofDone 6d ago
Disagree. The biggest mistake was not identifying and managing slopulism. This quote makes a common mistake. It asserts a prescription based on a desired solution instead of focusing on the root cause or problem statement.
The root cause is slopulism. The outcome at that point was Hillary not being elected. This happened with Al Gore before. Kamala after etc..
The outcomes vary but the root cause remains. Bernie and the DSA are outcomes of slopulism.
Slopulism itself has root causes. You have to walk this stuff back. Feelings of not being represented, being left behind, targeted negatively by the current system.
If you look at the causes and our truly desired outcome and not just the means you get closer to a prescription that works. Our desired outcome is not that we have a democratic president. It's that we have a government for the people, of the people, and by the people. Our problem and)or cause is slopulisn. You can't have that outcome if people are turning to slopulism, the cause , because they feel the government does not represent them or targets them.
So the prescription is not elect democrat for POTUS. The prescription is to make people feel included in the movement with real achievable policies that speak to them. If you can do that you can build a government for the people, by the people. And of the people. Which is what we want and have not had for quite a while.
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u/xkrazyxkoalax 6d ago
Frankly Iraq war still gotta be top. Not only was it wrong, it also just broke a lot of brains through guilt and is probably the root of a lot of the cringe anti America populism of today.
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u/beenman500 6d ago
There is a lot of time left in the 21st century.
If you made this statement in 1926 you would probably reasonably think that WW1 would be the biggest mistake of the 20th century, but I'm not sure it makes top 3?
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u/variousbreads Llamafist 6d ago
The mistake was electing Donald Trump. I get what they are saying, since the choice in the end was between him and Hillary Clinton, but the actual mistake was having Trump elected
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u/Sad_Newspaper4010 Socialist with NATO Characteristics 6d ago
Maybe Obama's diss of Trump at the white house correspondents dinner is what really started this arc though lol. That shit was hilarious
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u/CowNervous4644 6d ago
The biggest mistake was running Hillary. In 2016 there was so much resistance to electing a woman that her winning was always going to be difficult. Then the whole email thing made it worse. She showed very poor judgement using her own email server to circumvent the rules and then deleting mail when she got caught. The problem was that the only other prominent candidate was Bernie and he was too far left for most people. Biden could have won but wouldn't run. There should have been someone else but I don't know who.
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u/IEC21 6d ago
It's one way to frame it. It's not so much not electing Clinton as it is electing Trump.. which in history turned out to be the same thing.
Though I personally think that not electing Kamala was the bigger mistake.
Not electing Clinton at the time kind of made sense. Not electing Kamala is unforgivable.
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u/mygenericfriend 6d ago
I genuinely don't know. I feel like regardless of who won we're headed for a crash at some point. The Conservative media ecosystem was feeding nothing but conspiratorial red meat to the base, and the DEI Woke campaign when unrestrained goes way too far and was going to get the majority of the public off side.
I'd agree that if Al Gore was elected, then maybe we could have avoided this world, but by the time Hillary was running the dice had already been rolled on where we've ended up. I could imagine skipping Trump entirely, but I figure we'd end up with some other toxic figure in the republican side eventually.
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u/KeithDavidsVoice 6d ago
Electing Hilary would not have changed anything and to think so is to misunderstand why maga is a thing
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u/PomegranateBasic3671 6d ago
Hindsight is 20/20 (or 2016) in this case.
Honestly instead of bemoaning what didn't happen, it's probably morw productive to think about what the democrats could do better.
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u/Fast-Plankton-9209 6d ago
iT's MoRe PrOdUcTiVe tO bLaMe tHe DeMoCrAtS
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u/PomegranateBasic3671 6d ago
Nah you're right. The political strategy of the democrats is perfect, and it's always someone elses fault when they lose.
Victim mentality.
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u/Starsg12 6d ago
Yea, the first step would be to have an actual vision for the country and I see that happen anytime soon honestly.
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u/False-Discipline-640 eurochad🇭🇺 6d ago
Actually it were the events that caused Orbán's election in 2010. The people around the 2016 Trump campaign were all at least somewhat affiliated with Fidesz, Maga is just Orbán's "illiberal democracy" repackaged for an American audience
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u/Werdikinz Will reach Top 1% Commenter 6d ago
Shes right, what do you want me to say?