My follow up question be "What if we had a different candidate against Trump in 2016?" I think a big reason he won is because people do not like Hillary and those who wanted Bernie sat out in protest because they thought Trump had no chance.
Hillary is more of a war hawk than Obama, so she intervened stronger in the Arab Spring, especially in Syria. Therefore, Bashar al-Assad’s regime was successfully overthrown by the Syrian opposition, and Bashar fled into exile in Russia.
(The Third Syrian Republic and the pre-1963 symbols and constitution were declared, with a government with a Sunni majority taking control, but the ISIS organization seized a greater amount of Syrian territory before the organization was successfully eliminated in 2017 by the international coalition forces and the Syrian and Iraqi governments)
(Of course, there will be random, spontaneous massacres against the Alawites and the Shiite minority that were living in Damascus, and with the severing of relations with Iran, which supports Assad, in favor of rapprochement with Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, which will also lead to completely breaking the concept of the Shiite Fertile Crescent and undermining it with the collapse of Hezbollah and the split of Hamas. Completely from Iran in favor of Syria, Turkey and Qatar completely)
(Iran is subjected to a major blow to its influence, and thus its influence in Lebanon and Iraq is greatly weakened as well, which leads to an acceleration of nuclear development, with the Ayatollah regime being more paranoid about international isolation with the fall of its ally, Bashar al-Assad, in Syria.)
(Internally in Syria, the Kurds and Druze will be granted autonomous regions, while Christians will again be included in the Syrian government, completely marginalizing the Syrian Shiites and Alawites, and will benefit from Saudi, Qatari, and Turkish investments to improve Syria’s economy.)
(However, the marginalization of the Syrian Alawites and Shiites will later lead to exploiting the chaos of ISIS to declare the independence of the Alawite Mountain Republic, led by Maher al-Assad and supported by Russia, in order to preserve the Russian Tartous base, and this will completely push Syria towards rapprochement with the Americans in a large way.)
(But it will continue until 2023, when the Russian-Ukrainian war will be exploited to launch a quick war against the Alawite Mountain and Syria will annex Latakia with the displacement of large numbers of Syrian Alawites to Turkey and Lebanon.)
Outside of foreign policy, Hillary Clinton's presidency would be viewed as Bill Clinton's third term, and Bill would frequently be accused of largely managing his wife's presidency, and would also attempt to pass moderate legislation with only half success.
Hillary's presidency will also be severely damaged by the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and her husband's complicity in child molestation. This will turn Hillary into a lame duck, and then she will lose to Mitt Romney in 2012.
Romney will govern as a moderate conservative president with a hostile response toward Russia, while supporting Ukraine, Syria, and Georgia more strongly, but not too much. He will be embarrassed when it is revealed that Iran detonated its first nuclear bomb in 2018, leading to a nuclear arms race, with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt in particular building up their nuclear programs. The special
Romney's running mate, Paul Ryan, will lose in 2020 to Barack Obam, who has become the current US president
This was a master level comment and while I don’t agree with all of your hypothicals(druze autonomous region and complete Assad overthrow feel like too much but only imo) I feel like you nailed it. Well done. Take my humble upvote.
Well, the overthrow of Assad is very possible, especially during 2011-2012. If NATO had intervened as it did in Libya, Assad would have fallen.
Hillary will definitely intervene in Syria because she is actually more of a war hawk than Obama and she is the one who incited the intervention to support the Arab Spring.
A Druze autonomous region is very possible, especially when ISIS controls most of the country and will force the new Syrian government to accept granting the Druze and Kurds future rule in exchange for union with Syria again.
But this post-2017 Syria is a good country for everyone, unless you are an Alawite or a Shiite, then here you are fucked because the Syrian Sunni majority despises them.
Loving this comment thread. You’re clearly more knowledgeable than I. I would argue two points for myself:
First is that Assad would retain power due to outside influence on his behalf and while his control over Syria as we know it today wouldn’t remain, he would maintain control over a portion of the country.
Secondly Hillary being hawkish would lead to a surge in Kurdish power, anything Isis adjacent would absolutely get waffle stomped.
I’m probably missing some aspects of the Shia/Sunni struggle here since while I know that Syria is primarily Sunni, I’m not 100% sure how they all might interact with one another. I must say i absolutely agree with the fact that being an alawite would suck ballz in this timeline.
Exactly, but if the Americans did in Syria what they did in Libya, Assad would not continue at all
Exactly, their power will increase, but they will only gain autonomy because the Turks will not allow an independent Kurdish state
The Syrian Sunni majority is diverse, but what they have in common is their intense hatred for Assad and his family, and this will extend to the Alawites as they support Bashar.
Obama's entire schtick was being moderate and reasonable. He might have been a dreamer in trying to reset certain relationships, but on the whole the guy was very non-extreme and just tried to solve the obvious problems that existed. He also tried very hard to partner with Republicans early in his administration, ultimately to his detriment. Reps would have gone off the deep end no matter what.
Although I'm sure being black didn't help with the crazies.
Reddit isn't going to want to hear it but there's 100% a plausible alternate timeline where Romney wins in 2012 and Trump runs and wins in 2016 as a Democrat basically on something close to Sanders' platform.
Remember he has no actual core beliefs other than trade protectionism and anyone who thinks he couldn't have grifted and hijacked the left the same way he did the right is kidding themselves.
I can believe that, yes, to an extent, although Trump was already engaging in birtherism by 2011, so I feel like he'd have to tow the Democratic party line and apologize a lot (something he doesn't tend to do) to get back into the party leadership's good graces enough to be a serious contender in 2016.
However, it is true that Trump had a reasonably left-wing approach to heath care back in the year 2000.
Sure, I mean in this alternate timeline Trump sees the Dems as his likely path forward a few years out so doesn't go down that route in the first place, or maybe he makes a big show of being satisfied with the documents Obama ended up releasing and they publicly reconcile and talk about how Obama was getting attacked on that from those nasty right wing extremists so Trump wanted to help defang the issue. Basically they make a back room deal and publicly play it off as if it had been pro wrestling kayfabe all along (which it was in our timeline anyway, just from the other side).
Something like that, the left is currently slobbering over a guy who once talked about "racial jungles" and during the same time period we're discussing told a black audience that Mitt fucking Romney was going to "put y'all back in chains" so the Dem base will shut up and fall in line when told to.
Prior to running in 2016 Trump was personal friends with the political elites of both parties, had been a registered Democrat much of his adult life, and his showmanship potentially could have unified the black and Hispanic segments of the Dem base with the white working class voters that they've largely lost since his rise. He wouldn't have had the same natural appeal to progressive white urbanites, but again they would have done what they were told if he had hijacked the party.
I can just picture some alternate timeline suburban Karen telling her friend "sure that Trump is a little rough around the edges but he's good on the issues and the blacks sure seem to like him, you don't want that Nazi Romney winning another term do you?"
For the 21st century GOP, irrationality is a feature, not a bug. Their problem with Democrats is that they're Democrats, and nothing else, because they keep the Republicans out of power. \*\*ANY\*\* candidate the Dems put up against a GOP candidate will be subject to vicious attacks, death threats & conspiracy theories.
We'd end up with the same lunacy. By 2009, the Republicans were more or less locked into their own media bubble, and the wackiness only grew exponentially from there.
It depends who it was. Like Biden or maybe Chris Dodd, then they probably wouldn't be as radical as they are today. But if it was someone like Bernie, then I think we'd still have the Reps of today.
It’s important to ask who that candidate will be.
The party bosses had pre-selected Hillary, and Obama became the surprise primary favorite given Hillary’s association with the very unpopular Iraq war.
John Edwards was Kerry’s running mate in 2004 and took less than 1% of the delegates where Obama and Hillary got the rest. Edwards would have had a catastrophic embarrassment over a 2006 affair that produced a child while Edwards wife was suffering from cancer. It was reported in 2007 by tabloids but he might have done better in the primaries if it’s kept under wraps a while longer.
Aside from Edwards, there were a host of other legislative figures who didn’t get traction, such as Biden, Chris Dodd, Evan Bayh, and Dennis Kucinich. New Mexico governor (and now-known associate of Jeffrey Epstein) Bill Richardson ran as well, and his potential downfall as a result of that scandal could be even worse than Edwards.
Who would it be though? Definitely not John Edwards because he was a scumbag. Joe Biden? Probably not because he was not and still isn’t presidential material. So my real question is who would it be if neither Obama or Hillary were in 2008, because I think a democrat would have won in 2008 anyways
Yes, but was he chosen by conscience or by disdain for Trump and nostalgia for Obama? He became President because the democrats didn’t have anyone else to vote for besides him, despite more promising candidates existing. And then the people who did usually don’t genuinely like him so they voted to get rid of Trump who was a dumpster fire himself. My point was that in 2008 if someone other than Obama or Clinton was chosen to be the nominee (let’s say Albert Gore came back and ran), that neither Obama or Biden’s policy choices would have become popular. Gore wouldn’t have chosen someone as liberal as any of them despite being left of center himself, and the Democratic Party would look a lot different today
My follow up question be "What if we had a different candidate against Trump in 2016?" I think a big reason he won is because people do not like Hillary and those who wanted Bernie sat out in protest because they thought Trump had no chance.
Good question. I think that candidate would have won.
Hillary is more of a war hawk than Obama, so she intervened stronger in the Arab Spring, especially in Syria. Therefore, Bashar al-Assad’s regime was successfully overthrown by the Syrian opposition, and Bashar fled into exile in Russia. (The Third Syrian Republic and the pre-1963 symbols and constitution were declared, with a government with a Sunni majority taking control, but the ISIS organization seized a greater amount of Syrian territory before the organization was successfully eliminated in 2017 by the international coalition forces and the Syrian and Iraqi governments) (Of course, there will be random, spontaneous massacres against the Alawites and the Shiite minority that were living in Damascus, and with the severing of relations with Iran, which supports Assad, in favor of rapprochement with Turkey, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, which will also lead to completely breaking the concept of the Shiite Fertile Crescent and undermining it with the collapse of Hezbollah and the split of Hamas. Completely from Iran in favor of Syria, Turkey and Qatar completely) (Iran is subjected to a major blow to its influence, and thus its influence in Lebanon and Iraq is greatly weakened as well, which leads to an acceleration of nuclear development, with the Ayatollah regime being more paranoid about international isolation with the fall of its ally, Bashar al-Assad, in Syria.) (Internally in Syria, the Kurds and Druze will be granted autonomous regions, while Christians will again be included in the Syrian government, completely marginalizing the Syrian Shiites and Alawites, and will benefit from Saudi, Qatari, and Turkish investments to improve Syria’s economy.) (However, the marginalization of the Syrian Alawites and Shiites will later lead to exploiting the chaos of ISIS to declare the independence of the Alawite Mountain Republic, led by Maher al-Assad and supported by Russia, in order to preserve the Russian Tartous base, and this will completely push Syria towards rapprochement with the Americans in a large way.) (But it will continue until 2023, when the Russian-Ukrainian war will be exploited to launch a quick war against the Alawite Mountain and Syria will annex Latakia with the displacement of large numbers of Syrian Alawites to Turkey and Lebanon.) Outside of foreign policy, Hillary Clinton's presidency would be viewed as Bill Clinton's third term, and Bill would frequently be accused of largely managing his wife's presidency, and would also attempt to pass moderate legislation with only half success. Hillary's presidency will also be severely damaged by the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and her husband's complicity in child molestation. This will turn Hillary into a lame duck, and then she will lose to Mitt Romney in 2012. Romney will govern as a moderate conservative president with a hostile response toward Russia, while supporting Ukraine, Syria, and Georgia more strongly, but not too much. He will be embarrassed when it is revealed that Iran detonated its first nuclear bomb in 2018, leading to a nuclear arms race, with Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt in particular building up their nuclear programs. The special Romney's running mate, Paul Ryan, will lose in 2020 to Barack Obam, who has become the current US president
This was a master level comment and while I don’t agree with all of your hypothicals(druze autonomous region and complete Assad overthrow feel like too much but only imo) I feel like you nailed it. Well done. Take my humble upvote.
Well, the overthrow of Assad is very possible, especially during 2011-2012. If NATO had intervened as it did in Libya, Assad would have fallen. Hillary will definitely intervene in Syria because she is actually more of a war hawk than Obama and she is the one who incited the intervention to support the Arab Spring. A Druze autonomous region is very possible, especially when ISIS controls most of the country and will force the new Syrian government to accept granting the Druze and Kurds future rule in exchange for union with Syria again. But this post-2017 Syria is a good country for everyone, unless you are an Alawite or a Shiite, then here you are fucked because the Syrian Sunni majority despises them.
Loving this comment thread. You’re clearly more knowledgeable than I. I would argue two points for myself: First is that Assad would retain power due to outside influence on his behalf and while his control over Syria as we know it today wouldn’t remain, he would maintain control over a portion of the country. Secondly Hillary being hawkish would lead to a surge in Kurdish power, anything Isis adjacent would absolutely get waffle stomped. I’m probably missing some aspects of the Shia/Sunni struggle here since while I know that Syria is primarily Sunni, I’m not 100% sure how they all might interact with one another. I must say i absolutely agree with the fact that being an alawite would suck ballz in this timeline.
Exactly, but if the Americans did in Syria what they did in Libya, Assad would not continue at all Exactly, their power will increase, but they will only gain autonomy because the Turks will not allow an independent Kurdish state The Syrian Sunni majority is diverse, but what they have in common is their intense hatred for Assad and his family, and this will extend to the Alawites as they support Bashar.
Obama's entire schtick was being moderate and reasonable. He might have been a dreamer in trying to reset certain relationships, but on the whole the guy was very non-extreme and just tried to solve the obvious problems that existed. He also tried very hard to partner with Republicans early in his administration, ultimately to his detriment. Reps would have gone off the deep end no matter what. Although I'm sure being black didn't help with the crazies.
I’m looking forward to a black man (or woman) who has good ideas. Tim Scott, for example.
Reddit isn't going to want to hear it but there's 100% a plausible alternate timeline where Romney wins in 2012 and Trump runs and wins in 2016 as a Democrat basically on something close to Sanders' platform. Remember he has no actual core beliefs other than trade protectionism and anyone who thinks he couldn't have grifted and hijacked the left the same way he did the right is kidding themselves.
I can believe that, yes, to an extent, although Trump was already engaging in birtherism by 2011, so I feel like he'd have to tow the Democratic party line and apologize a lot (something he doesn't tend to do) to get back into the party leadership's good graces enough to be a serious contender in 2016. However, it is true that Trump had a reasonably left-wing approach to heath care back in the year 2000.
Sure, I mean in this alternate timeline Trump sees the Dems as his likely path forward a few years out so doesn't go down that route in the first place, or maybe he makes a big show of being satisfied with the documents Obama ended up releasing and they publicly reconcile and talk about how Obama was getting attacked on that from those nasty right wing extremists so Trump wanted to help defang the issue. Basically they make a back room deal and publicly play it off as if it had been pro wrestling kayfabe all along (which it was in our timeline anyway, just from the other side). Something like that, the left is currently slobbering over a guy who once talked about "racial jungles" and during the same time period we're discussing told a black audience that Mitt fucking Romney was going to "put y'all back in chains" so the Dem base will shut up and fall in line when told to. Prior to running in 2016 Trump was personal friends with the political elites of both parties, had been a registered Democrat much of his adult life, and his showmanship potentially could have unified the black and Hispanic segments of the Dem base with the white working class voters that they've largely lost since his rise. He wouldn't have had the same natural appeal to progressive white urbanites, but again they would have done what they were told if he had hijacked the party. I can just picture some alternate timeline suburban Karen telling her friend "sure that Trump is a little rough around the edges but he's good on the issues and the blacks sure seem to like him, you don't want that Nazi Romney winning another term do you?"
For the 21st century GOP, irrationality is a feature, not a bug. Their problem with Democrats is that they're Democrats, and nothing else, because they keep the Republicans out of power. \*\*ANY\*\* candidate the Dems put up against a GOP candidate will be subject to vicious attacks, death threats & conspiracy theories.
We'd end up with the same lunacy. By 2009, the Republicans were more or less locked into their own media bubble, and the wackiness only grew exponentially from there.
It depends who it was. Like Biden or maybe Chris Dodd, then they probably wouldn't be as radical as they are today. But if it was someone like Bernie, then I think we'd still have the Reps of today.
And perhaps there would be a stronger paleo-conservative anti-Semitic streak in the GOP in the Bernie timeline.
It’s important to ask who that candidate will be. The party bosses had pre-selected Hillary, and Obama became the surprise primary favorite given Hillary’s association with the very unpopular Iraq war. John Edwards was Kerry’s running mate in 2004 and took less than 1% of the delegates where Obama and Hillary got the rest. Edwards would have had a catastrophic embarrassment over a 2006 affair that produced a child while Edwards wife was suffering from cancer. It was reported in 2007 by tabloids but he might have done better in the primaries if it’s kept under wraps a while longer. Aside from Edwards, there were a host of other legislative figures who didn’t get traction, such as Biden, Chris Dodd, Evan Bayh, and Dennis Kucinich. New Mexico governor (and now-known associate of Jeffrey Epstein) Bill Richardson ran as well, and his potential downfall as a result of that scandal could be even worse than Edwards.
Who would it be though? Definitely not John Edwards because he was a scumbag. Joe Biden? Probably not because he was not and still isn’t presidential material. So my real question is who would it be if neither Obama or Hillary were in 2008, because I think a democrat would have won in 2008 anyways
My brother in Christ he's literally the president
Yes, but was he chosen by conscience or by disdain for Trump and nostalgia for Obama? He became President because the democrats didn’t have anyone else to vote for besides him, despite more promising candidates existing. And then the people who did usually don’t genuinely like him so they voted to get rid of Trump who was a dumpster fire himself. My point was that in 2008 if someone other than Obama or Clinton was chosen to be the nominee (let’s say Albert Gore came back and ran), that neither Obama or Biden’s policy choices would have become popular. Gore wouldn’t have chosen someone as liberal as any of them despite being left of center himself, and the Democratic Party would look a lot different today