Discussion How would the US have been different?

[Amol S.]

It is true that if Al Gore had campaigned a bit harder in either Florida, New Hampshire, or Nevada (Reno), he would have won the presidency.

My question relates to what do the forumers at Anandtech forum think, in terms of how the US would have been different if Al Gore had been president? How would he have handled 9/11? What would our national debt have been? Would he have won a second term? If he did win the second term, how would he have handled the 2008 financial crisis, or would there even have been a financial crisis? Would Obama have won in 2008? I think that is more than enough questions, to ask. I was too young to even have a thinking of how most Americans felt around 2000.

 

[Ken g6]

I imagine in the first months of a Gore presidency he would have tried to pass environmental legislation. I don't think he would have gotten far.

Then, 9/11 happens (I assume). At that point war with Afghanistan was inevitable. (War with Iraq never would have happened, though.) Gore wouldn't connect with average folks like Bush did, so his popularity would be lower.

But I recall a lot of people wanted the President to ask the American people to do something to help fight Al Qaeda. Bush asked us to shop. I'd like to imagine Gore would have made the Saudi oil connection and asked people to get more efficient cars. Full EVs weren't very ready then - the EV1 could only go 100 miles at best - but the Prius was popular. We could all have hybrids now!

Most of the rest is hard to predict. I would hope Gore would have handled any blowback from the Saudis better than Carter, but it's hard to know. There would have been a financial crisis eventually because Clinton repealed Glass-Steagall. I know Obama wouldn't have been elected in 2008, but I would hope () he would have been elected sometime.

 

[Pohemi]

You seem to enjoy day-dreaming about what-ifs and hypotheticals.
Do you reside in reality?

I just don't see much point in a line of hypothetical questioning for something you can never show to be accurate or not.

Are you suddenly going full-tard to boost your post count? Or do you need to just put the meth pipe down?

 

[Brainonska511]

Could have actually used a carbon tax to start moving us towards more efficient technologies in a less drastic fashion. We likely wouldn't be in as much of a climate pickle, whereas now, we're going to be forced to make more dramatic changes.

 

[woolfe9998]

No one can answer those counter-factual hypotheticals with any degree of certainty. I will only say one thing. I seriously doubt we would have gone to war in Iraq. Afghanistan? Probably. But the decision to go to war in Iraq was unique to the Bush administration and the various personalities and views of those involved. It was actually quite a strange decision given that Iraq had no link to AQ. That decision would likely not have even occurred to Gore, or, for that matter, just about anyone else.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

One really needs to review Cold War history and the document declassifications made available to the public since 1978. Throw in a review of the mid-70s Senate "Church" Intelligence Committee, revelations about mass-murder in places like Chile, etc.

Then examine how concentrated industries, particularly Big Oil, have dominated one political party and its agenda. I'm speaking of the GOP. Look at who gets elected; look at their oil-industry associations, like Ray L. Hunt and Halliburton. Who was Romney's pick for White House Chief of Staff in event that Romney had beaten Obama? Answer: a CEO from American Petroleum Institute.

Colin Powell, if asked, will tell you that Big Oil played a major role -- through Cheney as well as Bush -- in prosecuting the Iraq War. Former Senator Mike Gravel predicted that we'd be stuck in Iraq because companies like Halliburton were stuck in Iraq. Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel economist, estimated the cost of the Iraq War ("The Three Trillion Dollar War"). Better business regulation by either party but especially under the anti-regulation GOP might have averted the real-estate bubble leading to the 2007/2008 crisis.

If we had only prosecuted the war in Afghanistan, we would've saved blood and treasure; whatever happened to world oil prices, there might have been early stop-gaps toward renewable energy. ISIS might not have taken hold in the middle east.

The Power-Elite behind the GOP used trout-fly issues like abortion, gay marriage, federal regulatory authority and other things to prosecute their disastrous mistakes with colossally ignorant chest-thumping voters.

It just seems that the GOP in their short-run-maximizing behavior, has been attempting to find every way under the Constitution to divide and destroy US -- us -- the USA.

I don't think anyone fully realizes the sink-hole in which America has fallen. As many as 74-million other "Americans" are totally clueless.

What are the odds that Obama's Pandemic Response Team, dissolved by Trump, would've stopped COVID in its tracks? If Trump could read or even do work at the required level, the intelligence was there and preparations might have been made.

Anybody who thinks that Trump did anything positive from creating jobs, to foreign policy decisions, to immigration policy or tax policy --- they need a round-house punch in the face.

 

[senseamp]

There probably wouldn't have been a 9/11. That was Bush ignoring warning signs.

 

[Amol S.]

You seem to enjoy day-dreaming about what-ifs and hypotheticals.
Do you reside in reality?

I just don't see much point in a line of hypothetical questioning for something you can never show to be accurate or not.

Are you suddenly going full-tard to boost your post count? Or do you need to just put the meth pipe down?

To be honest. I did not ever take illicit drugs, nor am I right now, nor will I ever. I had an intuition that the forum website had account deletion mechanism due to inactivity policy, thats why I came here all nuts. The last time I came here (before the start of February), was like 6 months ago when I was trying to get a job in a pandemic, which I am still doing At that time I came here to see if anyone could help, at least one nice user here was nice enough to give me some tips. They even gave me a link to their LinkedIn, which I am not going to share as they gave it to me, and I respect their privacy. I started college as a BS in Computer Science in 2014. Graduated in May 2018 and directly went to do a MS in Cyber/Information Security, which I graduated from in June 2020. I have little to no work experience. Currently doing a Udacity C++ course. I already know Java.

 

[Muse]

Could have actually used a carbon tax to start moving us towards more efficient technologies in a less drastic fashion. We likely wouldn't be in as much of a climate pickle, whereas now, we're going to be forced to make more dramatic changes.

Yeah, that's the first thing I think of. Gore would have made facing the global warming crisis a top priority. Instead, we've had 3 GOP administrations since 2000 that say it's a hoax. They want our head in the sand. Responsibility is not something they believe in.

 

[sportage]

I wonder the same about Hillary if she had won in 2016. I know one thing for sure, she would have been re-elected easily in 2020. People are funny about Hillary, they think the worst of her yet in all reality they approve of the stuff she does. Take New York, Hillary barely won as senator the first time, but the second time she easily won re-election. And I wondered, why were people so leery of Hillary in the first place? If Hillary had been elected in 2016 people would probably have still hated her as a person but liked very much her ideas and leadership. After all, when one demonizes another their demonization usually in based on falsities, misconceptions, and exaggeration. Hillary can be a mean SOB but that's a good thing when going up against other world leaders, and Hillary would have been admired for that.

 

[ivwshane]

If gore had won I think 9/11 would have will happened. What everyone seems to agree with, its that there would have been no war with Iraq. There also wouldn't have been a war with Afghanistan. What would have happened is that we would have supported the CIA when they had alqueda trapped in Afghanistan. It would have been over before it began. At that point I think we would have had a military coalition that went to the middle east to go after Muslim extremists.

However the 2008 hosting crisis would have still happened seeing that Alan Greenspan was a Clinton appointment and its unlikely that policy would have changed.

Which means that in 2008 instead of an Obama presidency we would be looking at either a McCain presidency or a trump one. I don't see any of Obama's positives happening (ACA, lily Ledbetter, the longest economic growth in modern history, investment in alternative energy, etc).

 

[Muse]

I wonder the same about Hillary if she had won in 2016. I know one thing for sure, she would have been re-elected easily in 2020. People are funny about Hillary, they think the worst of her yet in all reality they approve of the stuff she does. Take New York, Hillary barely won as senator the first time, but the second time she easily won re-election. And I wondered, why were people so leery of Hillary in the first place? If Hillary had been elected in 2016 people would probably have still hated her as a person but liked very much her ideas and leadership. After all, when one demonizes another their demonization usually in based on falsities, misconceptions, and exaggeration. Hillary can be a mean SOB but that's a good thing when going up against other world leaders, and Hillary would have been admired for that.

Funny thing, and I don't know what it portends/means, I never disliked Hillary Clinton. I voted for her every time I could (2016 presidential election). TBH, the hate on her was something I never comprehended. Here, I heard (probably elsewhere to) that the Republicans went to great lengths in efforts to get people to hate her. Propaganda campaigns, AFAIK, and with little to no substance. Somehow the public fell for that. Who said it? Joseph Goebbels? The Nazi minister of propaganda? Tell a lie enough times and people will believe it. A responsible person in this world needs a filter for misinformation. Those who have it are to be admired, beloved, cherished. Those who don't, well, we can pray for them. What else can we do? Extoll education. Yes, there are educated fools everywhere, but let's just admit it, "they never got the memo."

How liars create the ‘illusion of truth’

Repetition makes a fact seem more true, regardless of whether it is or not. Understanding the "illusion of truth" effect can help you avoid falling victim to this trick.

www.bbc.com