this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2025
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Gore?
Don't get me wrong, Obama spoke to my generation. The zeitgeist of the late 2000s. But uh, if you're asking me if I want "Guy in 2008 who tries not to step on toes but is obstructed throughout his entire administration by conservative intransigence and an inability to bypass it" or "Guy in 2000 who WON'T start an unjustified war which led to the deaths of thousands of Iraqis and Americans, crater the national budget, and inflame fascist and racist sentiment in the US", I, uh, I'm gonna go with the latter. Penny of preventing Bush is worth a pound of cure, and all that.
Further, I think while the GOP would have been follow up to Gore, there's a good chance we would have gotten McCain, which is pretty good as far as the GOP goes. Then decent chance you might have still had Obama for, say, 2016. We almost certainly wouldn't have seen Trump, since Obama's delay would avoid petty Donald from going nuts over a non white president roasting him. In a public event.
There's just so many specific things that went wrong that credibly wouldn't have followed a Gore victory.
As narrative and cinematic as the idea is, I don't actually think the mockery was core to the whole issue. He had run for president previously, and the only reason he got roasted to begin with was because he was performing public verbal defecation through his puckered asshole mouth with the whole "OBAMA'S BIRTH CERTIFICATE" thing.
As an idiotic narcissist who saw his inner racism increasingly reflected in the open rhetoric of the conservative party, he was always going to keep trying. And it's to the GOP's shame (insofar as they're capable of such a thing) that they nominated him; and America's shame that we elected him twice.
But yes, a Gore presidency may have averted all of... this.
Fair. I would assume Gore would have ended up a 1-term president is the thing, and he would have absolutely been pushed into war in Afghanistan. remember who was VP when the US entered the Balkan war. Sure, for good reasons, but the precedent was set. But certainly not Iraq, we can agree on that. And that's like $22 trillion of taxpayer money back.
Without the Iraq diversion Afghanistan could have ended very differently.