look, I've heard people claim that Al Gore would have invaded Iraq and that Hilary Clinton would have put anti-abortion justices on the Supreme Court. 'the imaginary version of the Democrats in my head' is always going to win for some people really committed to the 'both parties are the same' crap.

March 03, 2026 - 04:19 UTC

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The most galaxy-brained take I remember is Boots Riley dismissing the idea of voting for Biden because KBJ is a sure vote against abortion rights (??)
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...he said WHAT :-|
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I feel like we get Afghanistan either way if 9/11 still happened. But Iraq was a vendetta by Bush II and the Cabinet he inherited from his dad
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You can reasonably argue Afghanistan for President Gore, assuming something like 9/11 was allowed to happen under his watch. We really were attacked and the Taliban really were sheltering OBL. (Whether there'd have been the same rally-round-the-flag effect for a Dirty Lib tho?)

Iraq? No shot
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We can't ignore the way the Bush administration ignored the intelligence warnings prior to 911 or the Republican decision to remove Air Marshals ti "save money".
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Problem is that even small differences can have disproportionately large effects (especially in the absence of strong societal control systems, of which the US has very few). Also, people didn't notice that the republican party is eroded by Trump and no longer overlaps with the democratic as much.
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In my blue state, how do you get people to vote GOP? You don't get them to like Republicans or their policies, you get them to hate the Democrats even more!
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It's not Trump bombing Iran. It's the USA.

theintercept.com/2024/08/27/kamala-harris-dnc-military-lethal/
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Nader said there was no difference between Gore and W, refused to endorse Gore; Bernie called her unfit and hammered her Iraq vote (which was NOT a vote for war, but she explicitly regretted nonetheless). Rs are the problem, but progs keep getting them elected. WW3 is on Bernie, full stop.
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The cretins are only effective when they're out of power and attacking whoever is in, as we have seen.
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“Kamala Harris promoting Liz Cheney’s foreign policy” is another good one.
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This isnt even a counterfactual. It actually happened
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“She didn’t earn my vote” they say as they’re loaded into the box car
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Maybe she shouldn't have been loading people into box cars
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The infallible pope got it wrong with lesserevilism!
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Yep, this was not inevitable.

Education and mental health should be big areas of investment once we dig our way out of the rubble.
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They’re trolls trying to turn people against the Dems. It worked with Hillary and Kamala, but not when Trump is POTUS.

The change has to come at the primary.

Good work! Keep calling it out.
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Moral stakes that I still cannot believe some people pooh-poohed with "both parties are just as bad"
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I have issues with Dems but they're nowhere close to republicans in very important aspects. Harris didn't say she was going to cut all of our social services and USAID. She didn't say she was going to prosecute trans people. She said she would be tougher on the border not ice raiding cities
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USAID would be intact. She’d let states prosecute trans people. And the immigration system under a Harris administration would become deadlier than it was, but not as deadly as it is now - and very importantly, the victims wouldn’t include white U.S. citizens.
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So often their engagement model is based around being contrarian. The algorithms even here reward engagement, not exchanges, so posters get the dopamine hit for sticking to outrageous claims. And some get money for it too.
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I suspect Saddam's days were numbered whoever was in the White House, but I can see Al Gore plausibly trying a Gulf War approach that leads to Saddam's overthrow. Not like Bush's rushed, quixotic, understaffed unilateralism.
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The Al Gore we know today was created by the experience of defeat in 2000. If he'd won, he would have been the same interventionist he was as a senator
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This isn't 2008. We have had decades of Democrats supporting and expanding the war on terror.
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There is no universe where Harris or even Haley or Rubio launch this kind of war against Iran without them striking first.
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You know it’s true because his full name is Artificial Intelligence Gore.
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Tbf Herschel Walker would have voted to outlaw abortion except for former football players and anyone who handed him a plastic badge.
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Al Gore would have tried to capture OBL alive to put him on trial. The capture attempt would have been botched out of concern for minimizing civilian casualties. Liberman would have switched parties in disgust, leading to Gulliani-Liberman winning 45 states in 2004 to Gore-Feinstein's 5.
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Hillary would have nominated Merrick Garland. Republicans wouldn't have voted for him then either.
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you just have to recognize that some people are invincibly ignorant and stick to the ones who are at least *trying* to reason their way through the world.
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I love the term “invincibly ignorant” and I’ll be stealing from this point forward.
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It takes a certain amount of psychological strength to own up to your mistakes, and if you cannot, your psyche will protect you by not understanding
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I'm often reminded of the "Don't blame me, I voted for the other guy" bumper sticker.
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I remember thinking at the time that Gore would very likely have felt pressured to retaliate in Afghanistan. I didn't realize people were trying to claim that about Iraq!
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It’s especially odd because Gore was against the war despite having someone who pushed for it with lies being President! If he himself is the President, he has less reason to doubt his anti war position, not more!

And Afghanistan likely goes better without the distraction of Iraq.
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Al is a flower child at heart. He would have tried to capture OBL alive and minimize civilian casualties in Afghanistan. Rudy would have then won in 2004.
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Non zero chance 9/11 doesn't happen under Gore because there's less turnover and a more focused attention on obl.

What ifs, so fun, so frustrating.
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Though of course, since 9/11 wouldn’t have happened, there’d be no retaliation to be pressured
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“cope” and “crap”
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At first I read that as “A.I. Gore” and I was only marginally more confused than I was by the imaginary Democrats.
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That would probably be trained on South Park's version of him knowing SV.
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Didn't that guy run as VP in the 11996 election?
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I'm so glad it's not just me! Every time I see the name Al written down, I read it as A.I.
My poor brain.
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reminded of this
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