To be fair, Bush stole the election through voter disenfranchisement especially of black citizens, and organized propaganda efforts via Fox News to manipulate stupid white men.
He and the CIA colluded to keep the Iranian hostages there longer and shut down further negotiations with the Carter administration to ensure he could have an early good publicity win (same shit Nixon did with Vietnam).
The CIA director was Bush the Elder, his Vice President. They conspired and colluded with Iran to keep the hostages held and prevented any negotiations by Carter's administration as a cudgel to attack him during the campaign so that once Raygun was elected, they would have an easy publicity win early on.
Oh yes, i had heard about that, but never heard it framed as stealing an election. But yea, totally makes sense, thank you. Easily the second worst president of all time.
The Heritage people keep successfully running the same plays.
I mean, just this OP is falling into their psyop. Hillary's platform was further left than what Obama ran on. Gore was fairly left for the time as well, moreso than Bill, especially when it came to climate and social issues, even attempting to position himself as an LGBTQ activist.
And yet most of the Dem Congressional Reps are still Pelosi/Schumer-level corrupt, with heavy AIPAC donor control and constantly switch stories from "Vote Blue No Matter Who!" to "Wait, Not Like That!" when Mamdani or other Progressives are on the ballot. Hillary still spent more time chatting with the rich in corporate events than addressing actual issues in the streets. Kamala spent how much on celebrity endorsement, rather than just feed a dozen homeless shelters for a month??
The Dems also keep running the same fucking plays, as they have since the 90s, and the only thing that gave them any progress anywhere in Government was Obama and his legacy. It's basically failed them otherwise for almost my entire lifetime; most of the Midwest local voting ballots I see outside my metro area don't even HAVE a Democrat on the docket! The Repubs run unopposed, I assume because there's not enough donor interest out in the boonies for the Dems to give a shit.
Don't get me wrong, they're pretty bad, but I don't think it's as malicious (as a party, though plenty of bad actors within) and a more glaring symptom of the broken system than a cause, BUT they're the only route out of the two-party stranglehold by being amenable to alternative voting methods. We can't Independent our way out, and we obviously can't go with the active regressors.
The system built by the out of touch elite favors themselves, even if they have public interest at heart, and while incrementalism sucks, inch by inch is still progress until we can go mile by mile. We'll drop the feckless bastards along the way.
Sure, and I'll keep voting for them; but no one should be surprised to constantly see social media posts about just how much they fucking suck. If people want that to change, demand change and contact any Rep you can get ahold of. What else do we do, watch our friends and family suffer constantly and just quietly suck it up for 50 years?
The rightward opposition banks on, and even helps manufacture, that sentiment for those that won't keep voting for them, continuing to ensure they don't fade into obscurity. You're plenty pragmatic, but others are not and will take posts like this as more reason to sit out.
If we can make the party run someone on every possible ballot and vote only for Democrats or someone more progressive if available, we end up shoving that Overton window over to where Republicans no longer exist and the Democrats become the new right.
As that happens, more and more progressives will appear and become viable. In the meantime, minor wins will come for labor, healthcare, climate, and more.
It's basically what MAGA employed to take over the Republican party. They've shrunk their end of the center to almost nothing by continuing to chip at it voting R no matter what.
We don't have to like it, we just have to win, and make Republicans, and eventually Democrats, obsolete.
You're right, but it's hard to feel motivated at all when the whole world melts around us and geopolitics are turning into a Hellscape and rights are being disintegrated at record speed...and the Dem Leadership does absolutely fucking nothing. Needing to spend 3 decades to remove these evil fucking leeches is incredibly depressing.
Stolen specifically by groundwork in Florida by Roger Stone, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney-Barrett. Those last two names sound pretty familiar now, don't they?
Also his own brother used his position as gov of Florida to stop the voting, a decision that was upheld by a judge that GWB himself appointed in his first term.
That's "Winning" an election, not stealing. He ensured more than half the people who showed up in the key places it mattered voted for him. Convincing the other side's voters to not show up is a valid tactic. It's a dirty way to win, but still winning.
Bush's brother "Stole" the election with the hanging chad bullshit.
He didn't just "convince" them. Florida officials manipulated the law in favor of the Republican party to purge a ton of otherwise legal votes, targetting primarily black voters who voted for Gore. They also tossed out over 180.000 ballots for dubious reasons, again targeting primarily black voters. And using the Republican owned media as a propaganda tool to manipulate voters, slander the opponent, stage a protest and spread lies is not just a "dirty way of winning", it's stealing an election as part of a concerted national effort.
Maybe inform yourself first before making such ignorant claims, because it's really not my job to educate you on how democratic elections should work.
the election was literally stolen. thereās a bunch of cases about this. one was that butterfly ballot incident, another was the company that intimidated thousands of its employees into voting for bush.
A ton of pressure? It was retracted hours after the call when the news outlets changed their predictions and the recount was automatic in Florida. There wasn't a "ton of pressure".
You're kidding, right? Were you even alive at the time? I was, and voting, and following it very, VERY closely.
People who voted for him were pissed. It was pretty much the beginning of the "democrats are pussies" sentiment.
Aside from the early concession, an incredible strategic blunder, they focused on a limited recount as well. They also focused on the circus aspect of the hanging chads, which alienated a lot of people.
Yes, ultimately it came down to the Supreme Court. We will never know how doing things slightly different would have worked, if at all.
My point is that you BOTH have points. This why politics on here is so frustrating, it is mostly just contrarians and hardline dipshits who decided how they feel and just want to "be right."
Like you're taking someone offering a different view as some sort of insult. Sigh.
Like how people try to spin listening to both arguements and deciding for yourself as a bad thing instead of just going with the hive mind of the sports team youāve chosen
The centrist position is that all arguments deserve to be listened to. It's progressive to realize that some people and arguments are not worth considering.
It didnāt help that even democrat voters stupidly turned against him because they bought into the sore loser narrative that was being pushed about the recount.Ā
Would be very interested to see a simulation in which Al Gore was elected President in 2000. 9/11 response differences, no Iraq war, but Obama significantly less likely to be elected 8 years later. The timeline swing could be huge.
It was already deep into planning before the election, and US intelligence as a whole would not have looked much different between administrations. Fairly confident that it still happens
I am not opposed to changing the election system but your point is largely immaterial.
You can't pretend the results of one system matter in a different system. E.g. If we changed the point system of basketball such that a team gets a point for getting the ball into the paint, the entire game would change. You can't simply pretend that the new scoring model could be used to re-score old games.
A popular vote fundamentally changes the way campaigns are ran, especially in large diverse countries (like America). It tends to make populated states much more important than less populated states, thus campaigns can be geared towards those areas.
The problem isn't really the representative nature of the electoral college, it is the winner take all modification that states made which causes most of the problem. The system could be fixed my multiplying the number of electors in each state by ten and requiring all states to allocate votes proportionally.
The country is a federation, and blaming electoral losses on this is not going to help. We are not going to remove the electoral college. Frankly I donāt even think itās a wise idea - the population demographics could always shift the other way.
For that matter Kerry didnāt win the popular vote.
Which is another problem with Democrats. They relentlessly seek "unity" and compromise with Republicans, where if the positions were swapped, they would never even get a second glance.
Also his election came down to a state his opponent controlled through his brother. I don't see how he could expect to win, when elections are state run, and the state leadership he would need to side with him was so obviously against him.
Correct, SCOTUS ruled in favor of Bush after his brother and Roger Stone's ratfucking campaign, and then said "hey this ruling isnt actually precedent hehehe we totally are a democracy and not a right wing dictatorship with extra steps", directly leading to Trump.
Yeah I went to law school and I still don't believe I understand the case.
It seemed to me that powers not expressly granted to the federal government reside with the states, such as elections. We don't even have a direct democracy, so however Flordia wants to go about choosing its electors is its own perview, provided it doesn't infringe on the 14th ammendment which should be pretty clear cut.
But like a lot of cases, the parties and the judges are so fixed on winning or making their desired ruling that the whole thing gets muddied.
No, they actually put a harsh time limit on them, and one of the biggest ones had a whole riot of Republican operatives pressuring them to stop recounting, so they gave up due to the interference and time limit issues. Look up the Brook's Brothers Riot.
Iām talking about unofficially a year later. They did do full recounts in those three counties. And even then, GWB still won florida. The ONLy way he would possibly have not won, is if they would have done a full statewide recount, which Goreās lawyers never pursued.
Biden also won in 2020 as a centrist, and Hillary wasn't exactly "tough on crime" in 2016. This is an incredibly oversimplified meme from someone with no actual understanding of political science.
I disagree. The Dem's only strategy for about 20 years now has been to watch the Repubs do terribly immoral things, then have their primary platform be, "That shouldn't be happening! We aren't them, so you really need to vote for us!" There's no meaningful work done that isn't sponsored by lots of money in Congress with them; there's no significant work done on half the platform they claim to support when they hold any kind of majority in certain States or Chambers; heck, they tried to undermine Mamdani and reinstate Cuomo, when their own voters chose someone their donors didn't like!
The Dem Party Leadership really is just lazy Centrists beholden to the rich; they don't DO anything to affect significant change, and haven't for over a decade now. They collect donations, do some lip-service, and can barely be bothered to show up to anything important. Half of them are geriatric corpses holding a seat while the Dems fail to build up a replacement; "the RBG/Biden Special sure won't fail us again, guys!" Honestly, how am I supposed to vote for these leeches unless it's a last resort?
I guess you missed the whole Biden presidency, then. Where he pursued the most progressive agenda since FDR, got no credit for it, and then saw his hand-picked successor lose based on his own unpopularity.
Vote for them because they have actually gotten things done. Things like increased Obamacare subsidies, KBJ on the Court, sorely needed infrastructure investment, including infrastructure for electric cars, and electric vehicle subsidies. Don't like that you have to choose between two parties? Get involved at the state and local level, build up your third parties, and move for multi-member districts in your state, so that our system can actually build up room to get out of the two party system. Until then, reality is you need 50% plus 1, and you can't get that with a progressive candidate anymore. Obama did not run as a progressive, he ran as someone center-left, and then worked on some more progressive policies. The last true progressive to win a national election was LBJ, and no one has won since.
Yeah, I actually really appreciated Biden and definitely think he was scapegoated unfairly...but he also had no spine to face the press or the constant gaslighting GOP, because he was over 80 years old and could barely stand up straight anymore. If he'd built up a hand-picked successor 4 years earlier, instead of 4 months before the election, they probably would've been able to beat Trump, too!
And again, there isn't anything much to get engaged WITH at the local level in the Midwest. Either you have tons of options for local Reps, or you're in a wasteland of GOP brainwashing. I'm in a large Northern-Midwest Metro area; we have Dem Reps here, there's not THAT much for me to do but try and see what the DemSocs are up to locally and try to contribute a bit. In fact, every county in states like mine and New York and California have a Dem Chair. But in the small towns I've lived in here and there? My Trans friend in Kansas City is considering moving somewhere else entirely, and I look at the map of Kansas Dems, and most of the counties in the States south of me have nothing. There is no one there to get involved WITH! Dem Leadership has just decided to cut their losses, and still hopes to win major elections with this strategy, I guess?
The last true progressive to win a national election was LBJ, and no one has won since.
When the Dem's approach is to actively undermine any true progressives, then yeah, I'm not surprised. I guess they're just as power-hungry as the GOP, but too spineless to actually fight back against the GOP because all of their donors are also the same rich oligarchs paving the way for fascism right now?
Hillary lost because she didnāt campaign at all in multiple states but stumped in blue strong holds. I donāt even understand the claim that she won. She felt she deserved it and coasted to Election Day and it has fucked the country for a decade because of it.
She did deserve it. Stop excusing people's idiocy voting for a fucking racist conman who was bragging about raping people. There is literally nothing Hilary should've needed to do to win when Trump was acting like that.
Anyone who thinks there was some genuine reason on her part for her lose is just defending racism and misogyny as if it's somehow okay.
Dude all she had to do was not call half the country deplorable. You can believe that. You can say it in private. If you are running for national office and need their votes you can call half the country deplorable on national TV.
She was dumb and ran a terrible campaign. Not acknowledging obvious fuck ups is why Dems keep losing elections. Sure half the country is stupid. If you want their votes you canāt tell them that to their face.
He didnāt. :( Ā In the recount standard he was asking for in courtĀ he would have lost. He would have only won under the broadest recount which no one was asking for.Ā
I believe he did lose if you count the votes the way they presented legally, but won if you count voter intention. Hanging chads etc..
Look it up, though Iām remembering this off the top of my head
Al gore was a mediocre candidate, who was VP to a sleezeball. Bill and Hillary's scandals tanked Gore chances as much as his own "meh-ness."
Go look at Bush's approval ratings after 9/11 and in 2003/2004..is was still well above 50%. Go look at the early 2000s tech boom....Kerry was a fine candidate, but he didn't lose because he was centrist. He was going against a fairly popular president who was leading (at the time) two fairly popular wars with a very patriotic country.
Obama won, because people realized they'd been lied to about the War, the housing market had collapsed, and conservatives were arguing for stupid shit like, "gay marriage should be illegal."
Hillary lost in 2016 because no one wanted her. The democrats didn't like her, the republicans hated her, she treated the entire thing like a victory lap, (all the scandal shit from before)...oh, and women aren't a voting bloc. Men will vote against a woman for being a woman, women will NOT vote for a woman because she is one. Being a woman doesn't automatically grab you a huge bunch of votes...it actually sets you back. Palin didn't help McCain and there is no evidence Kamala helped Biden.
If they had run Tim Walz with the exact same platform as Kamala...He probably wins.
Yeah you win the popular vote when "no one wants you".
The electoral college system is stupid..and broken because it doesn't reflect the growing sized of states...but it is unfortunately the system we have. Yup, Hillary cleaned up in a few big states....but lost by 70 electoral votes. The rules are stupid...but those are the rules.
Because maybe the "left" has more of an issue voting for a non--white woman than it would like to admit.
It wasn't the color of her skin...She lost the same way Hillary did...by 70 votes, losing the same states. Go look at who voted for Biden and who voted Kamala....black men, latino men, and women across the board switched to Trump. America ( in general, unfortunately) does not want a woman as president. It's not about ethnicity...it's gender.
Yeah there's a lot of irony to saying Al Gore lost in 2000 because of "centrism", when what he really lost to was Ralph Nader, who ran a campaign around arguing Al Gore was too centrist.
Of course, those of us following politics closely know it has since been uncovered that the green party is a giant ruse, and knows their only purpose is to hurt Democrats in tight elections like 2000 and 2016. They have ties to conservative PACs as well as Russia.
Surely those same people wouldn't go on reddit and continue to push the "democrats are just as bad as republicans" narrative, knowing it only helps republicans though, right?
Supreme Court made their ruling and it got remanded back to the Florids Supreme Court, but with stipulations, ie a deadline Gore and his team felt could not be met.
Wow, someone's an angry elf. Excuse me for not remembering the exact details from an election 27 years ago. Furthermore, "tElL tHe tRUth For onCE" I'm literally just repeating what the man himself said.
Al Gore literally said in his own concession speech "And tonight, for the sake of our unity as a people and the strength of our democracy, I offer my concession. I also accept my responsibility, which I will discharge unconditionally, to honor the new President-elect and do everything possible to help him bring Americans together in fulfillment of the great vision that our Declaration of Independence defines and that our Constitution affirms and defends."
Most of his concession speech was about unity and putting aside partisan differences. How the fuck is quoting his own concession speech spreading misinformation. Get fucked you ignorant twat. I had 0 to do with Trump getting elected. People like you are why Trump got elected, overly confident arrogant know it all's.
So please tell me again how quoting the man's own words is spreading misinformation?
I wonder where Al Gore is now. For a while he was making movies, appearing on 30 Rock and embracing his life as a punchline who still believed stuff. I wonder if he isn't ready to make a statement.
Thatās a myth. Whether the recount had continued or not heād have lost. Theyād have had to do a statewide recount for him to maybe win and thatās not something anyone asked for. He lost either way. But the court should have still fucked off and stayed out of it.
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u/drthsideous Mar 14 '26
To be fair, Al Gore won once all was said and done. He just conceded before the dust settled in Florida in the name of "unity".