If you could change the outcome of any election in US history what would you change?

36 comments

  2. Rutherford B Hayes wins reelection easily, reconstruction continues with the radical Republicans and Jim Crow doesn’t happen.

  3. I’d change 2000 to the guy who actually won the popular vote and the electoral college

  4. These are both pretty cliché, but:

    Teddy steps out of the race and Taft beats Wilson

    or

    Taft steps out of the race and Teddy beats Wilson

  6. 2000 election. We could have started tackling the problem of climate change 20 years ago and likely would have avoided 20 years of draining Middle Eastern wars. The world would be a better place if Bush never won

  8. 2000 easily. I’m not even that liberal or anything but man Bush really fucked things in the Middle East and ruined our international reputation

  11. 1964 election results are reversed, President Barry Goldwater wins in a landslide ushering in a new era of respect for constitutional limits and individual rights. The Vietnam war is averted due to him threatening to simply nuke it preventing the hippie progressive subculture from coalescing and all the events which followed.

  13. 2016.

    The Supreme Court would probably be a liberal majority right now had Hillary won.

  14. 2016.

    Hillary Clinton would not have made for a good president overall, but at least under her A) our international reputation wouldn’t have been in freefall and B) we’d have had a decent COVID response from the get-go.

  17. The last one, life was better under Trump, at least I could afford gas…..turns out him being an asshole isn’t as bad as me now needing to pay over $100 just to fill up to go to work.

  18. The last one. I’m sure the US will survive the current administration, but there’s no telling how much damage it will cause in the next few years.

  19. 2000 Gore vs Bush. At least Gore had some climate change agenda and more of a pro science view.

    Also, based on what intelligence the US had about 9/11, I think there is a chance it would have been avoided with different leadership. And maybe the war response could have been different…

  21. The 2016 Democratic primary. If Bernie would’ve beat Hillary, he’d be in his second term now.

  22. 2000 was bad, but didn’t affect my family or I as much as 2016 did. I don’t remember much of 2000’s election, but I definitely remember racists coming out of the woodwork and telling my parents and I to “go back to where we belong” and that “my kind isn’t welcome” shortly after Trump got elected.

  23. Not an election, but a VP choice. Lincoln still would have won re-election without Andrew Johnson, who was picked to send a sense of “national unity.” Replace him with a Republican and we actually get a President after Lincoln’s death who doesn’t fucking allow the Black Codes and other tremendously racist policies. Johnson giving southern states an easy path back into the Union is why we still have some troubles in the south today.

  25. The current one. I’d much rather see a mean tweet than a dementia patient in office although if people were that offended by tweets they could get off Twitter. But then again that just means the first ammendment is working.

  27. Can we change assassinations? If so, I’d pick Lincoln to survive and lead America through reconstruction instead of Johnson.

  28. Can’t decide between 2000 or 2016

    But it depends, would there even be a 9/11 with another president in 2001? (I know there would be the date, you know what I mean, the same event)

    Because pretty much everything changed after that, and not necessarily for the better.

    …but

    Would Trump in his current form exist without Bush Republicans since he is like a further evolution?

    You could also make the point that an Obama wouldn’t exist without a Bush.

    🤔

    I’d say 2000 for now because he got 2 terms

  29. 1948.

    If Dewey became president, he would most likely go and help Chiang Kai-shek destroy the CCP, then I and over a billion Chinese people will at least not have to worry about being arrested for surfing Google or Reddit.

  30. Theodore Roosevelt runs for a consecutive second term and wins easily instead of abstaining due to some performative adherence to Washington’s “presidential precedent” of refusing to run for a third term. This would have given us four more years of a consequential and progressive Roosevelt administration and likely would have prevented him from spoiling the election of 1912 and giving Woodrow Wilson the presidency. It also very well could have lead to a Robert La Follette presidency and effectively prevented the Harding and Coolidge presidencies which in effect would have altered the economic policies of the Reagan administration which could potentially have prevented his devotion to “trickle down economics” which would have fundamentally altered the direction the GOP took and very well could have prohibited our country from having such rapid and untenable wealth inequality which is part of the reason why Trump was able to become president.

  31. 2020 election. Trump is a foul-mouth president and sometimes did some thing dumb but Joe Biden has been a disaster from the start til now

  32. We’re all focusing on chestnuts like Rutherford B. Hayes because we’ve got 140 years of perspective to judge their badness. Applying the standard of “greatest harm” to the U.S., Donald J. Trump’s election in 2016 is the one to change, because Trump himself is an existential threat to the nation, and his followers are the tools of his corrosive anger.

  33. This is going to sound weird, but 2012.

    Elect Romney and don’t re-elect Obama.

    I LOVE Barack and he did a good job. Voted for him twice. However, Romney had a strong vision and I believe if you elect him in 2012, you don’t get Trump.

  34. Hamlin stays on as VP to Lincoln instead of having Johnson on the ticket. A lot of Reconstruction issues might have been avoided but who knows; what I do know is that Johnson was absolutely not the man who should have Presidency after Lincoln.

  35. RFK survives the assassination attempt, wins easily, and Nixon never happens.

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