What If Gore Had Won?

[amadeus]

If Gore had been elected, we'd be in Afghanistan and Iraq just as we are today.

 

[yesboii]

If Gore had been elected, we'd be in Afghanistan and Iraq just as we are today.

If he was elected, we wouldn't have that crapatacular documentary known as An Inconvenient Truth.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I'm not so sure we'd be in Iraq. We might very well be losing wars in Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen though, if not elsewhere too. I'd expect a lot of nation building operations.

 

[Cutlass]

Let's see. If Gore had won:

• American pilots would probably still be imprisoned by the ChiComs
• We'd be paying $10/gallon of gas. Not because of supply, but because Gore wishes it so.
• After the attacks on September 11th, 2001, Gore would almost assuredly tried some appeasement approach that would have led to more attacks
• Georgia would probably once again simply be the Georgian SSR of the newly reconstituted USSR.
• I'm sure there is more, but you get the gist of it.

Th gist being that you'd rather make up pure nonsensical partisan hackery than take a serious look at what the difference would be.

 

[bhsup]

Well there is no way to know what the differences would be. Not even an educated guess, so might as well go with my partisan hackery because it is as good as anyone else's shots in the dark.

 

[Cutlass]

You could try a bit of logic. No way to know with any certainty of course. Just as a couple of examples, Gore wouldn't have simply dismissed Clinton's warnings about terrorism like Bush did. That wouldn't have any guarantees of stopping 9/11, because that was substantially a bureaucratic failure at least as much, if not more, than a political one. However, there's not reason for Gore to have invaded Iraq, because there really wasn't a reason for Bush to have done so. So we wouldn't have had that. And we wouldn't have had the huge federal deficits, because Gore was not irresponsible and stupid the way Bush was. Granted the economy was not as pretty in the 00s as it was in the 90s, but the big deficits were because of Bush and Republican irresponsibility, not economic factors. And Gore certainly wouldn't have gutted regulations the way Bush did, for the same reasons that he wouldn't have run the same deficits or invades Iraq: Which is to say that he was never as stupid or irresponsible as Bush. So the bursting of the housing bubble probably wouldn't have done as much collateral damage. And even if it had, at least the nation would be in far better fiscal and economic shape otherwise.

 

[GenMarshall]

If Gore had been elected, we'd be in Afghanistan and Iraq just as we are today.

Afghanistan perhaps, but I highly doubt we'd be in the Iraqi mess.

 

[amadeus]

However, there's not reason for Gore to have invaded Iraq, because there really wasn't a reason for Bush to have done so.

The same intelligence the Bush administration had, presumably... unless you're operating under the assumption all of our intelligence concerning WMDs, etc. was collected and sifted through only after Bush had been inaugurated, and that the people that did so were all appointed by Bush, and that similar people would not have been appointed had Gore been elected president. If Gore had been elected president, Bush would've probably been against the invasion like Gore was.

 

[RedRalph]

Let's see. If Gore had won:

• American pilots would probably still be imprisoned by the ChiComs
• We'd be paying $10/gallon of gas. Not because of supply, but because Gore wishes it so.
• After the attacks on September 11th, 2001, Gore would almost assuredly tried some appeasement approach that would have led to more attacks
• Georgia would probably once again simply be the Georgian SSR of the newly reconstituted USSR.
• I'm sure there is more, but you get the gist of it.

I'm sorry, but what exactly did Bush do regarding the Russian Georgian war?

 

[Dachs]

Why 1925 specifically?

Too close to the Second World War, and I hate the Second World War.

 

[ParkCungHee]

I'm not interested in alternate history after 1925. There are too many variables; it's even more masturbatory than alternate history before that, if it's possible. The most it will amount to is wishful thinking.

Awwww but "What if the Mussolini Government fell during the Matteoti Crisis" is a personal favorite!

 

[Ayatollah So]

If the Supreme Court 5-4 vote had gone against Bush ...
Bush possibly would still have been elected. At least, according to a consortium of newspapers, which did a very in-depth study of the issue after the election.

Here's the complexity. If only those counties that Gore requested a recount in, had been recounted, and if the categories of votes to be recounted had stayed the same as it was just before the 5-4 vote, then Bush would still have won. But, if ALL Florida votes had been recounted, Gore would have won. Or even, if "overvotes" as well as "undervotes" had been recounted, as the supervising Florida judge had been considering before the US Supreme Court ended all that, then Gore would have won.

Morals of the story:
(A) Life is complex.
(B) Do the right thing - it's easier to remember, and just might work out in your favor anyway.
(C) Our democratic system failed, but nobody wants to talk about it.

 

[ParkCungHee]

However, there's not reason for Gore to have invaded Iraq, because there really wasn't a reason for Bush to have done so. So we wouldn't have had that.

Um...you do remember Gore's Vice-President was Joe Liebermen, and it's not like Clinton was above going to places we didn't have a reason to be there.

 

[Karalysia]

Invading Iraq was a long-standing compnent of the neo-con agenda for the creation of a new Middle East. See the memo's sent to Clinton about the New American Century by big neo-con names like John Bolton. A lot of people from the Reagan admin went and turned up in the Bush admin. These guys were the architects of the Iraq war.

It's therefore reasonable to assume that Gore not being a neo-con, nor having many neo-cons in his admin, would not have invaded Iraq nor fabricated the evidence to do so.

 

[Patroklos]

That's 21 years of straight Democratic presidents.

Surely you are not oblivous to the two unique reasons this happened. It is not useful to point to that period to try to establish a normal trend.

 

[Dachs]

Newsweek is trying to troll me?

They don't have anything better to do.

 

[Karalysia]

Did you not read the rest of my post?

If one party screws up badly enough as the Reps have the other party could be in power for a long time.

I personally believe the GOP has screwed up pretty bad, enough to ensure Obama will be re-elected at the very least, and the Dems will almost certainly retain control of the Senate.

 

[ParkCungHee]

It's therefore reasonable to assume that Gore not being a neo-con, nor having many neo-cons in his admin,.

Except, you know, his Vice-President.

 

[Patroklos]

personally believe the GOP has screwed up pretty bad, enough to ensure Obama will be re-elected at the very least, and the Dems will almost certainly retain control of the Senate.

Whether that is true or that transpires, it has nothing to do with the parallel you were attempting to create.

Without WWII or the ability of FDR to run four times in a row, your pointed to trend would not exist. It would be like me pointint to the Civil War/Reconstruction period to justify such a trend, it is useless.

 

[amadeus]

Except, you know, his Vice-President.

Don't forget taking advice from his predecessor, the man that signed a bill calling for the overthrow of the country's government and gave official assistance to organizations in armed struggle with the Iraqi government.

"Iraq's search for weapons of mass destruction has proven impossible to deter and we should assume that it will continue for as long as Saddam is in power." - Albert Gore, Jr.