obvious things would have been great if that happened. Really what gets to me is losing in '80 granted I wasn't even born yet but it still bothers me that I was born and raised in world that is run on Reagnomics bs. Historically the costliest presidential elections in my eyes for the Dems in recent history has been '68,'80,'00,'16. The winners of all 4 were evil men who put this country on negative trajectory. Nixon got us off the gold standard. Reagan got us hooked on Supply Side bs and destroyed Unions. Bush gave us endless wars, and the financial crisis, Trump is still a work in progress but his resume of destruction is looking pretty good.

Reagan took this country hard right. Judges, deregulation, the blind eye to the AIDS epidemic, trickle-down economics. Carter had us on track to work toward energy independence. And there is so much more.

Had Carter beat Reagan, things would have been much different. But Reagan showed what a big personality could do.

than it is now. There were still conservative Southern Democrats in the House in those days.

At least with the judges and Justices though, they were Senate-approval only.

Reagan didn't get everything he wanted and the Democratic Congress didn't get everything they wanted. But they worked out a deal for a little bit of both. Remember, when the deficit became an issue, Reagan had no qualms of reversing tax cuts. When Lebanon was falling into a nasty civil war and didn't look like it could be pacified, he pulled our troops out of harms way. He also gave amnesty to undocumented workers. He had some bad policies for sure, but he was pragmatic and a realist.

After the New Gingrich revolt, the party went hard right and refused to compromise on anything. Then started a mythology around Reagan as being some bad ass who never compromised, always got what he wanted by twisting the Democratic leadership arms, never reversed policies, etc. Hell, Gingrich even stopped members of the House from even working out together with Democrats in the Gym....let alone meet each other for drinks at a watering hole where they often figured out a compromise. This was the seed to create the current GOP.

Then the TEA Party happened and booted sanity out of the GOP. And just like that, any decorum went down the toilet.

It's why Obama read books about Reagan and compromising...he reached out to Boehner in the hopes of rekindling that spirit...but even he eventually couldn't bring the rest of the party around and gave up, then got out of politics. Today, the Republican are to conservative even for Reagan, hell, if he was still around, he would probably go back to being a Democrat.

the world would be an entirely different place. The PTB knew that, and that' s why he had to die.

Would like to have seen how that world played out (and with Dr. King still alive and having his summer of '68 Poor Peoples Campaign residence on the Washington Mall).

..and not trying to sound too “conspiracy theorist”, but here we go....

That the major figures who sincerely wanted to change the way things worked in this country were killed in VERY PUBLIC WAYS, as if to send the message “don’t fuck with us”, whoever that “us” might be.

Lincoln.

JFK

MLK

RFK

There hasn’t been a single, great, notable leader since RFK that has threatened the status quo, and as such, no further assassinations. (On edit to say: That we are aware of)

It’s as if their message got across.

Don’t fucking rock the boat too much, or you’ll be shot, right in front of your wife, if need be.

This scenario is completely plausible:

There’s a pretty good chance that he would have been a one term president, leaving a Republican in the White House to preside over the boom of the 90s until at least 2000. Who knows what politics would have looked like then? Counterfactuals are fun!

Remember, Bush had to deal with the exposure of the Reagan fraud of the 80's. Dukakis would have likely been stuck with it too.

I'm not exactly sure why you think Dukakis would have touched off an unprecedented domination of the White House. I'm still stunned Gore "lost".

Remember, Bill Clinton was very unknown when he announced his candidacy. He won because none of the big-name Dems like Cuomo ran; in 1991 they all incorrectly thought Bush was gonna cruise to re-election. In 1996 we would have gotten someone more well-known. Maybe Cuomo, maybe Ann Richards. She never would have lost to Bush, because he never would have ran if not for his father's name.

She’d have been a locomotive.

Bush Sr. was the VP of a popular President...hate all you want, but he was popular, get over it. It's not even worth fighting that battle anymore.

So Dukakis had an up hill battle right from the start. Add to that, his campaign made one mistake after another. They didn't go through his history and look at anything the Bush team might use against them. And he ducked and dodged if he was a conservative or liberal. The most embarrassing add, they didn't even test ahead of time how he looked like in a tank vs. just inspecting them, shaking hands with military, etc.

On the Bush side, they had a campaign manager that was absolutely ruthless...even scaring Bush at times. So ruthless that while on his death bed he called up Dukakis, apologized and asked for forgiveness.

Plus at the time, the country was right of center.

He didn't stand a chance.

...we would have had a decent--relatively--Republican in the White House, and the problems that affected Carter would have affected him, too. This probably would have meant that Reagan wouldn't have been elected in 1980, and Teddy probably would have been. Maybe there never would have been a "conservative ascendancy". This is a fun parlor game, one which I personally enjoy, as long as you don't take it too seriously...