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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHow would the world be a different place today if Barack Obama had gotten busted for drugs?
That's my Point Of Divergence as they say in alternate history, Barack Obama gets busted for drugs back in the day when he was young and dumb..
But wait, we've read his letter to his girlfriend that was recently posted, he sure wasn't dumb, brilliant in fact.
One of the tenets of alternate history is you cannot do just one thing, change one thing and everything after it is different, go back and bribe or convince the art school to take Hitler and history is vastly different. Barack Obama getting a record for drugs would echo through history, by now I suspect the echo would be near volcanic in our political world.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/For_Want_of_a_Nail_(proverb)
zbdent
(35,392 posts)(at least, according to the "liberally-biased media", which helped him get into office with the constant reminders of Hillary Clinton's "feminine cowardice" in not lopping off the genitals of Bill, and the constant rehashing of the idea that she killed Vince Foster)
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)All from one anonymous young man getting busted with drugs, something that happens day in and day out and has for decades.
How many other Barack Obamas have been kept from doing great things for the world thanks to just a random twist of fate, they got busted where Obama didn't?
pa28
(6,145 posts)The state of our economy as well as our tax and trade laws are roughly the same. We're still offshoring good jobs, wealth is still being accumulated at the top while the middle class is strangled to death. Life in America looks pretty much as it does in our "real" reality.
The most interesting part is the big dog having a great time living in the White House as the first "first husband".
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)Or just in this particular case?
dkf
(37,305 posts)Things would be much different.
In terms of the Presidency, Yes it would have been Hillary. And she may have decided to put health care reform first which would put us in the same situation. But I do think Bill Clinton would have strategized Hillary into a better position politically. Sometimes I wonder about the Obama people.
Lasher
(27,636 posts)He got busted for DUI and lied about it. It was too late to matter by the time the liberal media got around to sort of mentioning it. Didn't matter that Lord Vader got busted twice for DUI. It probably wouldn't have mattered if either or both of them had been busted for drugs. It would matter a great deal, however, if Obama had a criminal record like both of these assholes do.
Other things matter. John Kerry was a villain because he was wounded 3 times in Vietnam while serving his country honorably. Junior used money and connections back then to get into the TANG to avoid being drafted. That didn't matter. It did matter when Dan Rather dared to mention that the 'War President' went AWOL.
Sometimes when you're looking at things that seem to matter, you're really just seeing attempts to justify hidden agendas that really do matter to people behind the curtain.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)How would we know for sure?
Yeah, I remember the ...
But you know Obama is POTUS now and I think it's fairly sure that he wouldn't be if the war on drugs had worked the way it's supposed to..
krispos42
(49,445 posts)They have forgiveness for their errors.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)I think that would set craniums a poppin' on both sides of the political fence..
Obama as a Republican POTUS, what a sick idea.. and I mean that in a good way.
krispos42
(49,445 posts)And get a huge fuckin' American Flag pin.
joshcryer
(62,276 posts)Nothing else would be different.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)I find that not particularly likely.
Bear in mind that Hillary was pro-private mandate during the campaign while Obama was not..
joshcryer
(62,276 posts)She would not have conceded the public option as easily as post-partisan Obama. She would've probably even pushed the Senate to end the filibuster rules, etc, etc.
And you know what I meant, no need to be pedantic. If Obama was incarcerated, nothing else would've changed for America policy wise. Clinton is the SoS, his foreign policy decisions are influenced by her positions (see: Libya, which he probably would not have done were it not for Clinton). The drone war is probably Clinton inspired, though Obama did promise to escalate against "terrorists" I don't know if he knew at the time that he'd be escalating the drone wars.
We got the mandates with Obama.
We just didn't get the public option because he found that mandates were necessary to keep costs down and the Republicans made him sacrifice it.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)Deservedly or not Hillary had a veritable freight train of baggage that would have been thrown in our faces 24/7, everything from Whitewater to the Travel Office to Vince Foster to the Mena airport nutjobbery, the M$M had a preexisting supply of damaging memes on Hillary.
Obama had nothing like baggage on that scale, the VRWC was forced to fling some distinctly second string poop on Obama, they would have had a mountain of carefully nurtured toxic poop for Hillary.
Hillary also had her pro Iraq war record to contend with, in 2008 that was a distinct disadvantage in attracting liberal voters even if not very many give a damn now.
joshcryer
(62,276 posts)2008 was a Democratic shoe-in. I don't think any of the other candidates could've won (people wanted "revolution" and at the time either a colored person or a woman was the "revolution" they saw, without Obama it would've been between a "woman" and a "man" thus securing her the nomination; remember, Hillary got more votes than Obama in 2008, if he was not a candidate I can't see how she wouldn't have won). Obama said he would've voted for the Iraq war, a point played out so much during the primaries that it's a joke.
I do think, actually, now that I think about it, Hillary would still be in Iraq. She would've forced renegotiation, ala McCain, to keep troops there, particularly during the 2009 Iraq bombings. Obama should get credit for still leaving and not forcing a renegotiation in that time frame.
So we'd have a public option and still be in Iraq, imo.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)The VRWC had been honing it's attacks on the Clintons for eight years and I really don't think Low Friction William in the White House as first lecher would have gone over in an overall positive manner.
Every syllable Hillary ever uttered would have been endlessly parsed and reparsed all meaning was lost and nothing left but spin.
In short, we shall have to agree to disagree on the likelihood of a second Clinton presidency although I do agree Hillary would still be in Iraq should she have become POTUS.
The public option? I doubt it, it was never meant to be in the first place.
joshcryer
(62,276 posts)We will have to agree to disagree, but a Hillary Presidency would not have been "post-partisan." She would've been the most Partisan democrat we've seen in a really longtime.
Just my humble opinion.
There was no way America would've elected a Republican for the third time in a row.
Zalatix
(8,994 posts)Bonobo
(29,257 posts)the point this seems to underscore is the tragedy that lies behind the War on Drugs.
When a person in imprisoned for a petty drug offense, just how much damage do we do to that person's life, to their future and even to the life and future of their spouse, children and grandchildren?
How many lives do we ruin for it? And isn't THAT the saddest and most bitter of betrayals of trust by Obama --having been forgiven and having survived his own past indiscretions, he is willing to condemn people who do the same thing to a ruined life.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)Interesting how few "pro Obama" posters managed to give us their thoughts on this subject..
We ruin millions of lives, I know several personally and my own child came horrifyingly close to having it happen to them when they hadn't even been involved with any drugs at all.
Given the state of our justice system, with convicted murderers being released thanks to DNA evidence, do you ever wonder how many people have their lives ruined by the drug war who never even were involved with drugs in the first place?
Zorra
(27,670 posts)The 1% would still be calling all the shots in much the same way as they are now under President Hillary Clinton.
It is a certainty that no republican candidate could have won a presidential election immediately after 8 years of G. W. Bush.
A republican being elected POTUS immediately after 8 years of Bush would be a 100% non-possibility.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)She could have mobilized women I think but she had a ton of baggage, deserved or not, and I don't think she would have galvanized young people the way Obama did, Hillary is an older boomer.
I don't think a second president Clinton is as sure a thing as you evidently do.
Honeycombe8
(37,648 posts)No recession. No tax cuts for millionaires. No Iraq War.
Fumesucker
(45,851 posts)The Dubya operatives took out Dan Rather when he got inconveniently close to a damaging truth..