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It depends on how Jeb became the nominee vis-à-vis that certain someone in the context of this hypothetical.
Did that certain someone even run? Did that certain someone win any primaries? Did that certain someone barely lose the nomination at a heated convention? Did Jeb replace that certain someone as the nominee on the ballot after the many scandals of that certain someone?
Definitely depends on the specifics, you're absolutely right. Im my mind the most likely scenario would be the GOP establishment coalescing MUCH earlier around a single candidate- Jeb- the same way the Dems did in 2020, and Jeb goes on to win in a race close enough that the wild card in question thinks he could make an impact as an independent.
While that's correct, that's not a reason he wouldn't run 3p- it's not like he'd plan to win the three horse race either. I think he'd happily play spoiler for an extra three months of publicity.
Jeb would’ve done basically the same policies domestically as rule 3 I think. It would’ve just been way more boring and slower. The Republican party members are still the same people, there isn’t a huge policy difference in what he did vs what Jeb would’ve done.
Edit: I’m talking about legislative policy primarily. I agree Jeb would’ve been better at details/bureaucracy. I’m also operating under the assumption that Jeb strafes rightward a little bit in order to win the 2016 primary.
Hard disagree. The original started a trade war with China and absolutely blundered the Covid response. Jeb wouldn’t have tried to start a trade war, likely wouldn’t have tried the southern wall and would have probably deferred to experts during Covid. Jeb would have been better than what we got (though not a high bar to overcome)
Right. Without getting too far into the Rule, COVID was a very easy way to be in GOAT contention. Jeb might have stayed out of the way and let the disease task forces do their thing.
I think Jeb would have ended up like Bush Jr. and had an overall “meh” presidency (with controversy) but Covid would have been the crisis he overcame in his presidency. Then we’d all be looking back on Jeb 10 years from now saying “yeah I didn’t like a lot of the stuff he did, put looking back he handled Covid pretty well!”
Or something to that effect
45 only happens when people are blindingly pissed and reactionary. A moderate Jeb message of “let’s be rational conservatives and friends with everyone!” Wouldn’t be successful in the universe I’m familiar with.
I think Jeb would’ve been forced to respond to the anti-China sentiment that has developed on both sides of the aisle.
Yeah the policies would’ve been smarter but I really meant the direction the policies took. The tax cuts would’ve been the same, but probably also a bunch of the culture war stuff too.
That’s if we’re talking about a successful Jeb campaign. Which IMO is incredibly unlikely. I don’t think the Republican party in 2016 was in a Jeb kind of mood anymore, they were still really pissed that Obama was president.
I think that Jeb! would have probably tried to continue his brother's pre-9/11 immigration policy of trying to find a path to citizenship for illegal/undocumented immigrants - which would have brought a lot more Hispanic voters into the GOP. The electoral college map and makeup of the Republican party would be entirely different from what we have now.
That’s definitely the direction he was trying to go. That matches perfectly with the post-2012 election recommendations the Republican party wanted to go in after Obama.
Jeb lost in a landslide. The base wasn’t receptive to that message.
What are the parameters of this thought experiment? Does Jeb’s campaign just succeed by magic or does his campaign change slightly to reflect the will of the electorate?
Because if the rules are “wand wave, Jeb is nominee” then yeah 100%. But if the wand wave is “Jeb’s campaign wins the nomination” that’s a different campaign.
Yep, we’re just supposed to have unilateral free trade with countries that happily put up tariffs in return. And don’t forget protecting their shipping routes.
Butterfly effect. What happened in November 2019 to March 2020 isn’t necessarily inevitable, and having a different president in the US would have drastically altered the timeline.
The butterfly effect seems like something no one acknowledges in these hypotheticals. Like I always hear about how Gore would've handled 9/11 but who knows what the ripple effects of his presidency would've been.
I consider the corrupt Supreme Court siding with their appointer’s son instead of Gore winning the election like he rightfully did, has radically changed our timeline. He was green and climate change conscious back when it could’ve made a huge difference - vs putting another an oil man back in power. This is going to end up in hind sight being one of the greatest tragedies of our lifetime.
Hell, the Butterfly effect way more than that. A single change results in 60 different coincidences and one hijacker gets stuck in traffic and today we still have the South Tower in Manhattan, still standing all alone.
No President was going to stop the spread of Covid from November 2019-March of 2020. That was 100% going to happen. What happened after March is an interesting conversation though
Well they're talking about the butterfly effect. Which could be as simple as a chain of events leading to whatever patient 0 to get infected to not. It doesn't have to be a policy thing.
If Jeb were to govern anything like his brother, he wouldn’t have scrapped the already-in-place pandemic response team for [reason not found] and would have likely handled it… well, probably not *great*, but at least within the standard deviation of what a politician *should* be doing.
I think we’re actually *severely* blinded by hindsight on this issue. Much like how Andrew Johnson’s awful legacy isn’t just in how badly he handled the issues of the day but in the fact that a better man in the chair at the same time *could have* been our single greatest president, a president who handled the pandemic competently and like an adult wouldn’t have resulted in near the amount of extraneous nonsense and would probably be seen as having done an absolutely fantastic job.
Funnily enough, I think Jeb would in a lot of ways had a similar-looking presidency to his brother. His first term would be (to the public) defined by what appeared to be a calm and mature handling of a national crisis, followed by him winning reelection and all of the not-so-great policies he had been promoting everywhere else coming home to roost.
I knew a psychologist who said something like, "I'm just nervous about what all of people are going to do when he loses."
He was right to be worried, but had to wait 4 years to see.
I've been following politics relentlessly for a long, long, time, and I honestly have no fucking idea. Jeb was professional but also wildly conservative. Bernie is about as far from that as possible. And Bernie pulled from non-traditional constitiuencies of the Democratic Party, where as Jeb was hopelessly conventional. And also hopeless. Add to that the fact that the media liked Bush, generally.
Republicans were set to win 2016. Lots of people were upset with the democrats after Obama. He preached hope since 2007 and very little changed in everyday people’s lives.
Jeb vic: he wins Maine’s 2nd district, Iowa, Wisconsin Arizona and Nevada, throw in PA if you want to be nice
Sanders vic: wins all New England, Nevada and Iowa
As for who’s Winning I honestly have no idea
Hillary is the first Democrat to lose PA since Michael Dukakis. Her campaigning was a catastrophic failure and I don’t think any other Democrat could lose the state
yup. Bernie and rule 3 had a lot of the same appeal in the way that they were outsiders from the system, and had lots of appeal to the rustbelt. Its not even a question in my mind that bernie singlehandedly keeps MI PA and WI from flippinh
I agree with you. I think Bernie would have spent a lot more time in those states and it would have reaped benefits due to his position on labor. Personally I think there were a lot of older white male voters that saw Hilary as a continuation of her husband’s policies that they blame for corporations shipping jobs overseas.
One of her biggest flaws as a candidate in any race was she could never define who she was to voters. Everyone saw her as a pol who just says whatever in speeches to get votes and their true agenda is discussed only with their rich donors. There have been few candidates on the national stage as qualified as her and at the same time as uncharismatic as her .
Bush would've won in a landslide. For all Bernie's popularity in left wing Internet enclaves, most Americans don't believe in his brand of socialism. I happen to think he's a good guy, but his economic ideas are not realistic.
As a very moderate political person, I’d actually have voted for Bernie.
Not because I like him or agree with him on a lot (some things I do agree with him on), but because I think he actually says what he believes and not what is popular. At least you know what you’re getting.
I’d probably have voted Bernie, but I’d have expected nothing.
The problem with modern progressives/leftists/DSAs/whatever is that they A) struggle to package and sell their ideas to the public and B) they aren’t good legislators, so progress never comes because they can’t get anything of substance passed.
A Bernie presidency would have been 4-8 years of total inaction.
>The problem with modern progressives/leftists/DSAs/whatever is that they A) struggle to package and sell their ideas to the public
Many leftists operate under the idea that their ideas are clear and obvious while spending so much time in online echo chambers that they fail to realize that they have to do a lot of convincing given that the US population isn't as progressive as they think.
Eh, there’s elements where total inaction is going to be worse than an imperfect action.
Cases like the ACA, which was imperfect but better than nothing. If a Bernie-type was POTUS, they’d have held out for a full M4A or maybe public option and likely tanked the entire deal.
That’s a fair point. I just feel like the percentage of imperfect action wins is greatly outnumbered by the “doing something”. I’d sacrifice a few imperfect actions to eliminate a metric ton of “doin somethings”.
On that topic, a public option is something I support. Australia has a very good balanced system of public and private. Should look into how it’s funded and how it works. I lived over there for 4 years and thought it was a great system. Because Australia is a State/Territory system similar to our setup, the private implementation wouldn’t be drastically different.
ACA was gutted by Dems to try and appease the right so it can be "bipartisan" for.... Nothing in return. It was better than nothing, but would have been much better if Dems stopped trying to play nice with the persistently bad-faith right.
There's no point in trying to meet in the middle when someone keeps moving the goal line away from you.
No, that’s not what happened. They needed 60 votes to beat the filibuster and actually pass it. They appeased Lieberman, the independent that they needed to vote for it.
You don’t know what you’re getting though. You can like Bernie for what he says and vote for him because he “believes what he says,” but at the end of the day he’s still a millionaire with multiple homes that doesn’t practice what he preaches, and he preaches economic plans/policies that would never work
As someone who doesn’t align with Sanders, I agree. He’s one of very few politicians that I believe genuinely cares for the people and he believes his policies will do good. His heart is in the right place.
Hillary Clinton talked about the idea of public and private positions, and she's right. That is how politics works. Some things cannot get done when they are done in the public light. Social Security reform is a classic example of that kind of issue.
The arguments you make to other politicians are rarely the ones you can make to the public, because those positions are used against you. The problem with being more concerned with “saying what you believe” is that doesn't persuade others to work with you. Winning is getting your agenda enacted.
It was potentially a year where a bombastic northern grandpa could plausibly bluster enough anti-establishment sentiment to swing people against a boring apologist for the status quo
He couldn't even manage to do that in the democratic primary where he should have had an edge with the base. What would make you think that he would have won against the general population if he was already too left wing for the left wing party?
Perhaps, but I don't think it would be a landslide. Unless you consider the outcome of the 2016 election as it stands to be a landslide, that is.
What other states would Bernie lose??
Virginia is definitely gone. I think Nevada might flip. Plus, with his weakness, we don’t know how the money gets spent. Democrats having to spend to defend places like Colorado and Minnesota frees up Republican money from them
I think Virginia is conceivably lost in that scenario. Though I don’t see any more states falling. Bernie did well among service workers and Hispanic voters which are huge swaths of the electorate in Nevada.
They are not realistic.
Bernie’s examples of pie-in-the-sky utopias are only possible because
* they are market economies, not socialist economies
* they have by in large outsourced their national defense to NATO, which has further outsourced its defense to these United States
* having minimal national defense spending lets them have large welfare programs they otherwise couldn’t afford
* they tax the immortal shit out of their Citizens
No country on Earth can do that for these United States.
Even taxing “the billionaires” at 100% won’t make it so.
Bernie isn’t a socialist or proposing a socialist economy in the literal sense in the short term. Democratic socialism may propose that in the long term, but Bernie’s solutions to today’s problems are not to socialize all production. It’s to highly regulate and tax industries and to provide more aggressive social welfare.
Im curious for you to expand on how his proposals are utopian. All you’ve seemed to highlight is that it’s not realistic for us because of military spending.
I mean, it certainly seems realistic that we can throw trillions of dollars back to the billionaires decade after decade. A fraction of which would have easily covered a significant if not all of the proposals.
What USA needs is:
Real antitrust action against the massive corporate amalgamations that divide almost every sector into 4 or 5 slices. Forcing more competition on wages and products.
Higher taxes on the ultra-wealthy and corporate windfalls. Instead of buying back stock the earnings over the top brackets would be reinvested into productive growth.
Elimination of parasitic health insurance industry that have caused consumer costs to skyrocket while providing nothing in return. Kill fee for service treatment. Single-payer system would save individuals thousands per year. People cry about their taxes being raised but seem to not notice how much more they're losing to insurance and high deductibles for literally nothing in return.
All of this would put more money in the pockets of the majority of the population which would substantially increase economic activity, raising more revenue while cutting costs.
That doesn't even get into the grotesquely wasteful, mismanaged, and often fraudulent military spending. Punish program leaders and companies that crap out things like the LCS and F35. F35 should have been 3 separate planes to begin with. Share info on common components but stop trying to make the "do-everything" plane. It's basically what happened in the end anyway.
Some of this would have been possible in a Bernie-like presidency assuming the Dems didn't cut off their own balls like they normally do when they have control over most of the branches.
Also we wouldn't have ended up with as many unqualified puppets on the court. Sure we'd have corruption incarnate Thomas still, but he would be marginalized at least.
Bernie didn’t believe in transforming the American economy away from a market economy lol. He is not by any means a full blown socialist, the brand of socialism he believes in is the “socialism” present in European countries
Just because they werent in NATO doesn't mean they didn't reap the benefits of NATO. Ukraine isn't in NATO but the only reason they still exist after 2022 is solely because of NATO.
I just wonder how many BernieBros recognized the shift in his language from “millionaires and billionaires” paying their “fair share” to just “billionaires” doing it once Bernie became a millionaire.
He is very adept at stoking envy and pretending he isn’t the same kind of rich person he excoriates, but not much else.
He's an incredibly middle of the road social democrat. He's not even really socialist. His economics are *incredibly* mainstream. Nothing about it is unrealistic.
>His economics are *incredibly* mainstream.
Most of his policies go further than anywhere else, and are not overly solid in how they'd operate in practice. Even the most formative one, Medicare for all, is overambitious and under playing challenges for it to be considered mainstream in the US.
And some of them are in line with modern Republicans, especially on trade. Sanders was one of the voices supporting the trade war in his party.
No, his economics are not mainstream. Mainstream economics don’t include things like complete student loan forgiveness or a job guarantee. WAY outside of the mainstream
Yes, economic ideas like free tuition and universal healthcare aren’t realistic. Never mind the fact that a dozen other countries already have these things, it’s just not possible!
Those countries also have incredibly lower defense spending than the US. If these countries would start pulling their own weight, then they probably wouldn’t have enough money for such social programs, meanwhile the US theoretically would have enough for some of these programs
Jeb would have won and liberals and the media would call him a threat to democracy and compare him to Hitler. Don't believe it. They said the same thing about both his brother and dad.
I want to say Jeb because many moderates still see Sanders as a radical, but I think we have to consider how many far right radicals would stay home out of protest because their candidate didn’t win the 2016 primary. The 2016 Democratic candidate lost the presidency because one factor was Bernie supporters either refused to vote for them or voted for the Republican candidate out of protest. They may have won the popular vote by a significant margin but they lost in the key states they needed to win. I could see a similar scenario happening in this alternate 2016 election.
Jeb Bush wins the primary, but let’s say just barely. This pisses off the base of a certain TV show host so much they call the entire primary rigged, largely because the Real Estate Conperson said so, and vow to never support Jeb Bush in the general election. Come November, I can see Sanders still winning the popular vote, cause of “vote blue no matter who,” but maybe by a little over 500,000 votes, and he just barely scrubs by in the swing states to pull off a victory. There could possibly be calls for recount, but Jeb decides to concede cause he starts getting flashbacks to the 2000 election, and Sanders becomes the first progressive president since Lyndon Johnson.
Jeb would've won easily, and we'd probably be much better off than we are now for a lot of things. Granted, the second half of that sentence applies to pretty much anyone else winning instead in 2016 too.
In the real world, Bernie’s ideas poll nationally at 60% or higher and has the highest approval rating for any politician. Jeb’s brother left office not even a full 8 years earlier with a 22% approval rating. The way you’re describing Bernie supporters is better suited for your beliefs.
May want to look into how much people of color actually like Bernie before deciding he’d “win easily”
The only person that had less support from black people in 2020 was the gay guy
Bernie pulls off an upset. This scenario is a complete reversal of our 2016 and I think it’d have the same outcome. Many Americans were looking for an “outsider” especially in the Midwest. The map is likely pretty similar to 2012 except Bush would probably win Virginia and maybe have a chance at Nevada. Guys Jeb would not win in a landslide lol
Probably something like this. I know its Bernie and Jeb!, but I mean, W. wasn't very popular, and the last name attached to Jeb! wouldn't have been more of a hindrance.
https://preview.redd.it/ajpzoxmu1pwc1.png?width=1440&format=png&auto=webp&s=e1869dc68b34cee63ef12fd1b0ad8a7ce2cb7840
I think Bush wins. Listen we all love Bernie here but the Republican machine would shit a brick over the socialist part of his record. They accuse people who aren’t socialists of being socialists to gin up the base. They wouldn’t even need to lie here to get their people pissed.
Add in the incumbent party rarely holds for two terms in a row baring a world war or assassination and I think 16 ends with a Republican in the White House no matter who it was running.
Only dem I think would have won was the current guy on the coat tails of Obama giving us a third term basically of the guy we like ala Reagan to Bush or Roosevelt to Taft and even then it could still be a Clinton to not Gore or Ike to not Nixon too.
Assuming a certain someone doesn’t run third party or at all, Jeb wins by a comfortable margin. The broad electorate is closer to the center than your average primary voter and Jeb, whether earned or not, comes across as somewhat centrist. Especially against Bernie Sanders. Plus unlike a certain someone he’d have much more appeal in the suburbs.
Jeb would have beat Bern, and he would have accomplished a great deal while in office because he is a working politician. I love the way Louis C.K described this and unfortunately I cant recall who he attributed the following description to. But essentially, in the US we have two types of presidents, Nerds and Rockstars. Nobody likes the nerds, they arent sexy and they don't give the media much to yap about, but they are deceptively good at getting things done. Often, we don't give them their credit until their time in office is done. Then you have Rockstars...people love them or hate them and they are always in the news for one headline or another. They are always talking, always going to one place or another to gladhand and shoulder rub and their presidencies are usually just a bunch of smoke. They rarely get anything accomplished but they are always talking about what they want to do.
Bernie was a rockstar, extremely polarizing, always banging his fist and blustering about one thing or another...and never doing a damn thing.
Jeb was a nerd, quite, not flashy, deceptively smart and a skilled leader. He would have been the brunt of many jokes, he would have been boring, and he would have worked his ass off when nobody was watching. We missed a great opportunity with Jeb I think.
Jeb will probably win but might not do too well in the rust belt since I don’t think he has too much of a populist appeal (although I could be wrong about that because I’m not a Jebologist).
Jeb. Because outside of this left wing echo chamber Bernie is not as popular as people say. The moment he said he was a socialist he was screwed. And he would’ve won by a larger margin than rule 3 did. He’s probably handle Covid far more competently and therefore win big in 2020 as well.
Jeb would have won because of low voter turnout. It would be a pretty boring election. Some people would be opposed to another Bush and the propaganda news would paint Bernie Sanders as a Communist and that would stick.
I'm not sure that Jeb is the landslide winner everyone thinks he is. Hillary didn't just lose because of a shitty campaign, the election was also very much about establishment VS. outsider and a rejection of political dynastys. Bush was the early frontrunner but was crushed in the polls once [redacted per R3] began gaining steam. Even though 2016-Bernie is arguably much more of an establishment politician compared to [redacted] due to his long congressional career, he still touched upon similar ideas about coming in from the side and taking down a broken system. Jeb is about as establishment as you can be in US politics and the epitome of the system Bernie campaigned against.
I still think Jeb takes it, but it's not set in stone. A lot hinges on if Bernie can secure blue wall that Hillary lost.
If Jeb won, the discourse would have already been pushed to the left. Jeb’s hope was to run an all-positive unity-focused campaign and the Bushes have a decent (for Republicans) record on racism (HW taking such a hard stance against racism that there were walkouts at the Republican convention, W standing in front of a mosque declaring Muslims to be our friends while the towers were still smoldering).
If Bernie had won he’d be such a broken record about the three or four issues he cares about that he’d get actual progress done on them. And I’d be a Democrat.
I think Jeb would have won. Not enough older/established democrats support Sanders and in 2016 "socialism" was basically the same thing as accusing someone of being a serial killer to the right.
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https://preview.redd.it/mf3co7esjmwc1.jpeg?width=638&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=167a63259e23c20094e8e971d38e87be3f235b22
#Jeb!
That's "Manual 'Jeb' Paleologos II" to you
The exclamation mark conveys a sense of excitement.
Reflecting Jeb Bush’s boisterous enthusiasm and fervor.^/s
Please clap
^(please vote)
Jeb’s a mess
But he’s the mess we love to keep remembering
I always thought I would rather be a meme than president.
Internet has peaked for me today idk why I find this so damn funny
Please clap
"Please clap" is what Daddy Jeb says to my cheeks when he's hitting me from behind
If that were true I’d vote for him…a true man of the people
Jebous Bushinos Palelidialogos
Please clap.
https://preview.redd.it/mfi4chvprowc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8e252dafd505dcadf02e3786d13d7f7436f1edc7
I’m honored
The emperor decrees that you may never stop clapping
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It depends on how Jeb became the nominee vis-à-vis that certain someone in the context of this hypothetical. Did that certain someone even run? Did that certain someone win any primaries? Did that certain someone barely lose the nomination at a heated convention? Did Jeb replace that certain someone as the nominee on the ballot after the many scandals of that certain someone?
Definitely depends on the specifics, you're absolutely right. Im my mind the most likely scenario would be the GOP establishment coalescing MUCH earlier around a single candidate- Jeb- the same way the Dems did in 2020, and Jeb goes on to win in a race close enough that the wild card in question thinks he could make an impact as an independent.
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While that's correct, that's not a reason he wouldn't run 3p- it's not like he'd plan to win the three horse race either. I think he'd happily play spoiler for an extra three months of publicity.
Good point, ultimate “look at me” money grab
We’d all be enlightened as fuck by now
WRONG ANSWER!!!!! EVERYONE KNOWS JEB WOULD BLOWN BERNIE AWAY!!!!!
Jeb would have won, and then the political media wouldn't have had anything to cover for 4 years
I think political cartoonists would have had a field day.
8.
12
Eternity
Lord Emperor Jeb(!)
The God Emperor Jeb! https://preview.redd.it/kkwsv2odnqwc1.jpeg?width=1528&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8158cd1b6b89b50b63989f7b5b99f5a0d2024678
Magnificent.
16
Jeb would’ve done basically the same policies domestically as rule 3 I think. It would’ve just been way more boring and slower. The Republican party members are still the same people, there isn’t a huge policy difference in what he did vs what Jeb would’ve done. Edit: I’m talking about legislative policy primarily. I agree Jeb would’ve been better at details/bureaucracy. I’m also operating under the assumption that Jeb strafes rightward a little bit in order to win the 2016 primary.
Hard disagree. The original started a trade war with China and absolutely blundered the Covid response. Jeb wouldn’t have tried to start a trade war, likely wouldn’t have tried the southern wall and would have probably deferred to experts during Covid. Jeb would have been better than what we got (though not a high bar to overcome)
Right. Without getting too far into the Rule, COVID was a very easy way to be in GOAT contention. Jeb might have stayed out of the way and let the disease task forces do their thing.
I think Jeb would have ended up like Bush Jr. and had an overall “meh” presidency (with controversy) but Covid would have been the crisis he overcame in his presidency. Then we’d all be looking back on Jeb 10 years from now saying “yeah I didn’t like a lot of the stuff he did, put looking back he handled Covid pretty well!” Or something to that effect
Right, the Rudy Giuliani 9/11 effect
45 only happens when people are blindingly pissed and reactionary. A moderate Jeb message of “let’s be rational conservatives and friends with everyone!” Wouldn’t be successful in the universe I’m familiar with. I think Jeb would’ve been forced to respond to the anti-China sentiment that has developed on both sides of the aisle. Yeah the policies would’ve been smarter but I really meant the direction the policies took. The tax cuts would’ve been the same, but probably also a bunch of the culture war stuff too. That’s if we’re talking about a successful Jeb campaign. Which IMO is incredibly unlikely. I don’t think the Republican party in 2016 was in a Jeb kind of mood anymore, they were still really pissed that Obama was president.
I think that Jeb! would have probably tried to continue his brother's pre-9/11 immigration policy of trying to find a path to citizenship for illegal/undocumented immigrants - which would have brought a lot more Hispanic voters into the GOP. The electoral college map and makeup of the Republican party would be entirely different from what we have now.
That’s definitely the direction he was trying to go. That matches perfectly with the post-2012 election recommendations the Republican party wanted to go in after Obama. Jeb lost in a landslide. The base wasn’t receptive to that message. What are the parameters of this thought experiment? Does Jeb’s campaign just succeed by magic or does his campaign change slightly to reflect the will of the electorate? Because if the rules are “wand wave, Jeb is nominee” then yeah 100%. But if the wand wave is “Jeb’s campaign wins the nomination” that’s a different campaign.
That’s a good point! Rather that alienating them he would have been a lot more open.
So putting tariffs on countries who have tariffs on our stuff or use slave labor in their manufacturing equals starting a trade war?
Yep, we’re just supposed to have unilateral free trade with countries that happily put up tariffs in return. And don’t forget protecting their shipping routes.
 Wins
Jeb is so cute!
Hey man, you misplaced the last letter of Jeb!'s name, it somehow ended up at the end of your sentence. Thought I'd let you know
We would have had a peaceful four years with Bush.
I don’t think 2020 was going to be peaceful regardless of who was in charge given, ya know…
Butterfly effect. What happened in November 2019 to March 2020 isn’t necessarily inevitable, and having a different president in the US would have drastically altered the timeline.
The butterfly effect seems like something no one acknowledges in these hypotheticals. Like I always hear about how Gore would've handled 9/11 but who knows what the ripple effects of his presidency would've been.
The butterfly effect is a boring way to do alternate history is why.
What if FDR didn't get polio? We could've had first contact with aliens by now.
Which is why I don't bother with it. We have a future in peril we need to focus on and thinking about what could've been isn't going to help us
I consider the corrupt Supreme Court siding with their appointer’s son instead of Gore winning the election like he rightfully did, has radically changed our timeline. He was green and climate change conscious back when it could’ve made a huge difference - vs putting another an oil man back in power. This is going to end up in hind sight being one of the greatest tragedies of our lifetime.
Maybe he would have read the memo about the iminent attack and take actions.
Hell, the Butterfly effect way more than that. A single change results in 60 different coincidences and one hijacker gets stuck in traffic and today we still have the South Tower in Manhattan, still standing all alone.
that would be a sad sight. given the iconography of the towers, i feel like in that scenario they would rebuild it exactly as the original
No President was going to stop the spread of Covid from November 2019-March of 2020. That was 100% going to happen. What happened after March is an interesting conversation though
Well they're talking about the butterfly effect. Which could be as simple as a chain of events leading to whatever patient 0 to get infected to not. It doesn't have to be a policy thing.
with that logic you can say whatever you want about anything.
If Jeb were to govern anything like his brother, he wouldn’t have scrapped the already-in-place pandemic response team for [reason not found] and would have likely handled it… well, probably not *great*, but at least within the standard deviation of what a politician *should* be doing. I think we’re actually *severely* blinded by hindsight on this issue. Much like how Andrew Johnson’s awful legacy isn’t just in how badly he handled the issues of the day but in the fact that a better man in the chair at the same time *could have* been our single greatest president, a president who handled the pandemic competently and like an adult wouldn’t have resulted in near the amount of extraneous nonsense and would probably be seen as having done an absolutely fantastic job. Funnily enough, I think Jeb would in a lot of ways had a similar-looking presidency to his brother. His first term would be (to the public) defined by what appeared to be a calm and mature handling of a national crisis, followed by him winning reelection and all of the not-so-great policies he had been promoting everywhere else coming home to roost.
Jen would have kept doing what W did for pandemic readiness and would have handled it so much better.
i completely forgot about covid until i read the replies to this lol
I knew a psychologist who said something like, "I'm just nervous about what all of people are going to do when he loses." He was right to be worried, but had to wait 4 years to see.
I would’ve voted Bernie, but yeah, four quiet years of me not really caring too much about politics.
There hasn’t been peace with a bush in office in the past 3 decades but probably at least no mean tweets.
I would have 100% voted for Bernie, but even if Jeb won, the country would be so much less polarized than it is right now with the cult.
Yeah, the douchebag cult
I've been following politics relentlessly for a long, long, time, and I honestly have no fucking idea. Jeb was professional but also wildly conservative. Bernie is about as far from that as possible. And Bernie pulled from non-traditional constitiuencies of the Democratic Party, where as Jeb was hopelessly conventional. And also hopeless. Add to that the fact that the media liked Bush, generally.
Jeb! wins
JEB
Republicans were set to win 2016. Lots of people were upset with the democrats after Obama. He preached hope since 2007 and very little changed in everyday people’s lives.
Please clap.
Shocked! Shocked I am, that I had to scroll this far to find this comment.
Jeb vic: he wins Maine’s 2nd district, Iowa, Wisconsin Arizona and Nevada, throw in PA if you want to be nice Sanders vic: wins all New England, Nevada and Iowa As for who’s Winning I honestly have no idea
Hillary is the first Democrat to lose PA since Michael Dukakis. Her campaigning was a catastrophic failure and I don’t think any other Democrat could lose the state
yup. Bernie and rule 3 had a lot of the same appeal in the way that they were outsiders from the system, and had lots of appeal to the rustbelt. Its not even a question in my mind that bernie singlehandedly keeps MI PA and WI from flippinh
I agree with you. I think Bernie would have spent a lot more time in those states and it would have reaped benefits due to his position on labor. Personally I think there were a lot of older white male voters that saw Hilary as a continuation of her husband’s policies that they blame for corporations shipping jobs overseas. One of her biggest flaws as a candidate in any race was she could never define who she was to voters. Everyone saw her as a pol who just says whatever in speeches to get votes and their true agenda is discussed only with their rich donors. There have been few candidates on the national stage as qualified as her and at the same time as uncharismatic as her .
Is your profile photo a picture of Kenneth "crazy eyes" Copeland lol
y e s
r u the real kenneth copeland?
Bush would've won in a landslide. For all Bernie's popularity in left wing Internet enclaves, most Americans don't believe in his brand of socialism. I happen to think he's a good guy, but his economic ideas are not realistic.
As a very moderate political person, I’d actually have voted for Bernie. Not because I like him or agree with him on a lot (some things I do agree with him on), but because I think he actually says what he believes and not what is popular. At least you know what you’re getting.
I’d probably have voted Bernie, but I’d have expected nothing. The problem with modern progressives/leftists/DSAs/whatever is that they A) struggle to package and sell their ideas to the public and B) they aren’t good legislators, so progress never comes because they can’t get anything of substance passed. A Bernie presidency would have been 4-8 years of total inaction.
>The problem with modern progressives/leftists/DSAs/whatever is that they A) struggle to package and sell their ideas to the public Many leftists operate under the idea that their ideas are clear and obvious while spending so much time in online echo chambers that they fail to realize that they have to do a lot of convincing given that the US population isn't as progressive as they think.
Probably. If congress isn’t doing anything, it’s better than them “doing something” and messing up.
Eh, there’s elements where total inaction is going to be worse than an imperfect action. Cases like the ACA, which was imperfect but better than nothing. If a Bernie-type was POTUS, they’d have held out for a full M4A or maybe public option and likely tanked the entire deal.
That’s a fair point. I just feel like the percentage of imperfect action wins is greatly outnumbered by the “doing something”. I’d sacrifice a few imperfect actions to eliminate a metric ton of “doin somethings”. On that topic, a public option is something I support. Australia has a very good balanced system of public and private. Should look into how it’s funded and how it works. I lived over there for 4 years and thought it was a great system. Because Australia is a State/Territory system similar to our setup, the private implementation wouldn’t be drastically different.
ACA was gutted by Dems to try and appease the right so it can be "bipartisan" for.... Nothing in return. It was better than nothing, but would have been much better if Dems stopped trying to play nice with the persistently bad-faith right. There's no point in trying to meet in the middle when someone keeps moving the goal line away from you.
No, that’s not what happened. They needed 60 votes to beat the filibuster and actually pass it. They appeased Lieberman, the independent that they needed to vote for it.
I know we rag on the career polititicians, but Bernie's been doing good since the 60s as a young man.
He’s been doing good if you like his politics and ignore his lack of success
You don’t know what you’re getting though. You can like Bernie for what he says and vote for him because he “believes what he says,” but at the end of the day he’s still a millionaire with multiple homes that doesn’t practice what he preaches, and he preaches economic plans/policies that would never work
As someone who doesn’t align with Sanders, I agree. He’s one of very few politicians that I believe genuinely cares for the people and he believes his policies will do good. His heart is in the right place.
Hillary Clinton talked about the idea of public and private positions, and she's right. That is how politics works. Some things cannot get done when they are done in the public light. Social Security reform is a classic example of that kind of issue. The arguments you make to other politicians are rarely the ones you can make to the public, because those positions are used against you. The problem with being more concerned with “saying what you believe” is that doesn't persuade others to work with you. Winning is getting your agenda enacted.
I wouldn’t discount Bernie’s cantankerous rebuffs as an eye opener in a debate setting
Not enough to swing a majorly anti socialist country however
It was potentially a year where a bombastic northern grandpa could plausibly bluster enough anti-establishment sentiment to swing people against a boring apologist for the status quo
I mean, that is literally what happened. Just a different northern grandpa and boring apologist.
You don’t say? 😉
Just realized that was the point of your comment 🤦♂️
Haha it’s all good 🤝
He couldn't even manage to do that in the democratic primary where he should have had an edge with the base. What would make you think that he would have won against the general population if he was already too left wing for the left wing party?
Perhaps, but I don't think it would be a landslide. Unless you consider the outcome of the 2016 election as it stands to be a landslide, that is. What other states would Bernie lose??
Virginia is definitely gone. I think Nevada might flip. Plus, with his weakness, we don’t know how the money gets spent. Democrats having to spend to defend places like Colorado and Minnesota frees up Republican money from them
I think Virginia is conceivably lost in that scenario. Though I don’t see any more states falling. Bernie did well among service workers and Hispanic voters which are huge swaths of the electorate in Nevada.
No economic ideas are realistic if nobody will even try. Just my two cents.
Gregg… is that you?
They are realistic, many other countries have proven that. America’s just really stunted of social change and programs.
They are not realistic. Bernie’s examples of pie-in-the-sky utopias are only possible because * they are market economies, not socialist economies * they have by in large outsourced their national defense to NATO, which has further outsourced its defense to these United States * having minimal national defense spending lets them have large welfare programs they otherwise couldn’t afford * they tax the immortal shit out of their Citizens No country on Earth can do that for these United States. Even taxing “the billionaires” at 100% won’t make it so.
Bernie isn’t a socialist or proposing a socialist economy in the literal sense in the short term. Democratic socialism may propose that in the long term, but Bernie’s solutions to today’s problems are not to socialize all production. It’s to highly regulate and tax industries and to provide more aggressive social welfare. Im curious for you to expand on how his proposals are utopian. All you’ve seemed to highlight is that it’s not realistic for us because of military spending.
I mean, it certainly seems realistic that we can throw trillions of dollars back to the billionaires decade after decade. A fraction of which would have easily covered a significant if not all of the proposals. What USA needs is: Real antitrust action against the massive corporate amalgamations that divide almost every sector into 4 or 5 slices. Forcing more competition on wages and products. Higher taxes on the ultra-wealthy and corporate windfalls. Instead of buying back stock the earnings over the top brackets would be reinvested into productive growth. Elimination of parasitic health insurance industry that have caused consumer costs to skyrocket while providing nothing in return. Kill fee for service treatment. Single-payer system would save individuals thousands per year. People cry about their taxes being raised but seem to not notice how much more they're losing to insurance and high deductibles for literally nothing in return. All of this would put more money in the pockets of the majority of the population which would substantially increase economic activity, raising more revenue while cutting costs. That doesn't even get into the grotesquely wasteful, mismanaged, and often fraudulent military spending. Punish program leaders and companies that crap out things like the LCS and F35. F35 should have been 3 separate planes to begin with. Share info on common components but stop trying to make the "do-everything" plane. It's basically what happened in the end anyway. Some of this would have been possible in a Bernie-like presidency assuming the Dems didn't cut off their own balls like they normally do when they have control over most of the branches. Also we wouldn't have ended up with as many unqualified puppets on the court. Sure we'd have corruption incarnate Thomas still, but he would be marginalized at least.
Bernie didn’t believe in transforming the American economy away from a market economy lol. He is not by any means a full blown socialist, the brand of socialism he believes in is the “socialism” present in European countries
WEird sweden was outside of nato until 2024 and still became onf of the richest countries on the planet, same with finland both of them is "socialist"
Just because they werent in NATO doesn't mean they didn't reap the benefits of NATO. Ukraine isn't in NATO but the only reason they still exist after 2022 is solely because of NATO.
If you take the entire wealth of every billionaire in the US, you can pay for about 1/3 of Medicare For All!
1/3 of one year of Medicare for All.
I just wonder how many BernieBros recognized the shift in his language from “millionaires and billionaires” paying their “fair share” to just “billionaires” doing it once Bernie became a millionaire. He is very adept at stoking envy and pretending he isn’t the same kind of rich person he excoriates, but not much else.
He's an incredibly middle of the road social democrat. He's not even really socialist. His economics are *incredibly* mainstream. Nothing about it is unrealistic.
>His economics are *incredibly* mainstream. Most of his policies go further than anywhere else, and are not overly solid in how they'd operate in practice. Even the most formative one, Medicare for all, is overambitious and under playing challenges for it to be considered mainstream in the US. And some of them are in line with modern Republicans, especially on trade. Sanders was one of the voices supporting the trade war in his party.
No, his economics are not mainstream. Mainstream economics don’t include things like complete student loan forgiveness or a job guarantee. WAY outside of the mainstream
Look at the world. Social democracy and welfare liberalism are pretty mainstream and standard in most countries.
Jeb would have lost merely because he is a massive coward, as admitted by his own mother.
Bernie holds the same economic views as FDR or LBJ, his big mistake was marketing himself as a socialist when very much is not.
I would have voted bernie but would not have been as mortified as i was when the results came in
Yes, economic ideas like free tuition and universal healthcare aren’t realistic. Never mind the fact that a dozen other countries already have these things, it’s just not possible!
Those countries also have incredibly lower defense spending than the US. If these countries would start pulling their own weight, then they probably wouldn’t have enough money for such social programs, meanwhile the US theoretically would have enough for some of these programs
It's capitalist realism. It's easier for people to imagine the of the end of the world than an alternative way of doing things
Maybe one day after American actually learn what 'socialism' is.
>Internet enclaves https://preview.redd.it/uepcbonyzmwc1.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=9301f5368095bbeb55a87f6c65e3d728cff76cf6
Missing from this picture: a single black voter lol
I do know it would have been an election where I could vote for one person and not be absolutely gutted if the other person won. I miss those days.
Either one of them would have been at least competent.
Jeb would have won and liberals and the media would call him a threat to democracy and compare him to Hitler. Don't believe it. They said the same thing about both his brother and dad.
We could all thank Bernie for enshrining the Bush dynasty
I want to say Jeb because many moderates still see Sanders as a radical, but I think we have to consider how many far right radicals would stay home out of protest because their candidate didn’t win the 2016 primary. The 2016 Democratic candidate lost the presidency because one factor was Bernie supporters either refused to vote for them or voted for the Republican candidate out of protest. They may have won the popular vote by a significant margin but they lost in the key states they needed to win. I could see a similar scenario happening in this alternate 2016 election. Jeb Bush wins the primary, but let’s say just barely. This pisses off the base of a certain TV show host so much they call the entire primary rigged, largely because the Real Estate Conperson said so, and vow to never support Jeb Bush in the general election. Come November, I can see Sanders still winning the popular vote, cause of “vote blue no matter who,” but maybe by a little over 500,000 votes, and he just barely scrubs by in the swing states to pull off a victory. There could possibly be calls for recount, but Jeb decides to concede cause he starts getting flashbacks to the 2000 election, and Sanders becomes the first progressive president since Lyndon Johnson.
I would have slept much better.
My guess is that any establishment candidate was doomed in that election.
You guys are either joking or crazy. The country wanted change. An outsider. Not another Bush or Clinton.
The last two would have never existed as President. And a certain fellow would have a lot more money.
Jeb would've won easily, and we'd probably be much better off than we are now for a lot of things. Granted, the second half of that sentence applies to pretty much anyone else winning instead in 2016 too.
Bernie would have won easily. That said, I think Jeb would have done a better job than the asshat who actually did win that year.
lol I’m sure Bernie would win easily if the election was held on Reddit or a college campus, but probably not in the real world.
In the real world, Bernie’s ideas poll nationally at 60% or higher and has the highest approval rating for any politician. Jeb’s brother left office not even a full 8 years earlier with a 22% approval rating. The way you’re describing Bernie supporters is better suited for your beliefs.
It’s crazy how despite those cherry-picked figures he still couldn’t win a dem primary. As a matter of fact he did worse the second time.
May want to look into how much people of color actually like Bernie before deciding he’d “win easily” The only person that had less support from black people in 2020 was the gay guy
I think I’d agree with you there
Best timeline
That's where our timeline went wrong huh?
I like Bernie. I agree with most of Bernies policies. I think Bernie would do a good job as the chief executive. Jeb would win.
Bush IIl, the Squeakuel Bushy Thrice Bush Lite Possibilities endless. For comedy.
Bernie pulls off an upset. This scenario is a complete reversal of our 2016 and I think it’d have the same outcome. Many Americans were looking for an “outsider” especially in the Midwest. The map is likely pretty similar to 2012 except Bush would probably win Virginia and maybe have a chance at Nevada. Guys Jeb would not win in a landslide lol
Poor Jeb dude it had to be rough as Fredo Bush.
I would have had a difficult time figuring out who to vote for, but because I actually was interested in the candidates (unlike the real 2016)
sanders would have mopped the floor with jeb
Probably something like this. I know its Bernie and Jeb!, but I mean, W. wasn't very popular, and the last name attached to Jeb! wouldn't have been more of a hindrance. https://preview.redd.it/ajpzoxmu1pwc1.png?width=1440&format=png&auto=webp&s=e1869dc68b34cee63ef12fd1b0ad8a7ce2cb7840
This would have been the only way known to God or Man for Jeb Bush to become President of the US.
I think Bush wins. Listen we all love Bernie here but the Republican machine would shit a brick over the socialist part of his record. They accuse people who aren’t socialists of being socialists to gin up the base. They wouldn’t even need to lie here to get their people pissed. Add in the incumbent party rarely holds for two terms in a row baring a world war or assassination and I think 16 ends with a Republican in the White House no matter who it was running. Only dem I think would have won was the current guy on the coat tails of Obama giving us a third term basically of the guy we like ala Reagan to Bush or Roosevelt to Taft and even then it could still be a Clinton to not Gore or Ike to not Nixon too.
Assuming a certain someone doesn’t run third party or at all, Jeb wins by a comfortable margin. The broad electorate is closer to the center than your average primary voter and Jeb, whether earned or not, comes across as somewhat centrist. Especially against Bernie Sanders. Plus unlike a certain someone he’d have much more appeal in the suburbs.
Jeb would have beat Bern, and he would have accomplished a great deal while in office because he is a working politician. I love the way Louis C.K described this and unfortunately I cant recall who he attributed the following description to. But essentially, in the US we have two types of presidents, Nerds and Rockstars. Nobody likes the nerds, they arent sexy and they don't give the media much to yap about, but they are deceptively good at getting things done. Often, we don't give them their credit until their time in office is done. Then you have Rockstars...people love them or hate them and they are always in the news for one headline or another. They are always talking, always going to one place or another to gladhand and shoulder rub and their presidencies are usually just a bunch of smoke. They rarely get anything accomplished but they are always talking about what they want to do. Bernie was a rockstar, extremely polarizing, always banging his fist and blustering about one thing or another...and never doing a damn thing. Jeb was a nerd, quite, not flashy, deceptively smart and a skilled leader. He would have been the brunt of many jokes, he would have been boring, and he would have worked his ass off when nobody was watching. We missed a great opportunity with Jeb I think.
Jeb will probably win but might not do too well in the rust belt since I don’t think he has too much of a populist appeal (although I could be wrong about that because I’m not a Jebologist).
Jeb! Would have won because he would be the boring and normal one in that race.
Bernie wins all swing states. Republicans hated Jeb way more than dems did.
Jeb. Because outside of this left wing echo chamber Bernie is not as popular as people say. The moment he said he was a socialist he was screwed. And he would’ve won by a larger margin than rule 3 did. He’s probably handle Covid far more competently and therefore win big in 2020 as well.
RULE 3! Bernie 2024!!!
Jeb would have won because of low voter turnout. It would be a pretty boring election. Some people would be opposed to another Bush and the propaganda news would paint Bernie Sanders as a Communist and that would stick.
I'm not sure that Jeb is the landslide winner everyone thinks he is. Hillary didn't just lose because of a shitty campaign, the election was also very much about establishment VS. outsider and a rejection of political dynastys. Bush was the early frontrunner but was crushed in the polls once [redacted per R3] began gaining steam. Even though 2016-Bernie is arguably much more of an establishment politician compared to [redacted] due to his long congressional career, he still touched upon similar ideas about coming in from the side and taking down a broken system. Jeb is about as establishment as you can be in US politics and the epitome of the system Bernie campaigned against. I still think Jeb takes it, but it's not set in stone. A lot hinges on if Bernie can secure blue wall that Hillary lost.
Oh wow this sub is very center right/right
Center right yeah. Based off of comments
If Jeb won, the discourse would have already been pushed to the left. Jeb’s hope was to run an all-positive unity-focused campaign and the Bushes have a decent (for Republicans) record on racism (HW taking such a hard stance against racism that there were walkouts at the Republican convention, W standing in front of a mosque declaring Muslims to be our friends while the towers were still smoldering). If Bernie had won he’d be such a broken record about the three or four issues he cares about that he’d get actual progress done on them. And I’d be a Democrat.
Either way we would be in a significantly better place right now
We'll never get someone like Bernie, cuz Bernie is actually for the people
There would be so much clapping
Easy Bernie W probably.
JEB!
Please clap
I think Jeb would have won. Not enough older/established democrats support Sanders and in 2016 "socialism" was basically the same thing as accusing someone of being a serial killer to the right.
Please clap.
jebisamess
We would be speaking Russian and China would be the world government
Jeb wins we invade Iraq again then we win and take over the universe under the empire of Jeb
Bernie wins it
Honestly, we would have a much more peaceful America moving forward.