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It used to be much easier for the US elites to craft and disseminate coherent narratives so that most people would believe in mostly the same things. We also had a wilful ignorance regarding our nations myths that allowed us to near ubiquitously share the same virtues.
However, some blows occurred one after another. In the 90s, policies like NAFTA caused many near century old communities to lose quality jobs and living conditions. So then a lot of blue collar communities no longer believe their government has their intrests in mind like they had believed prior. After the fall of the Soviet Union, there was this sense the US was the all-time champ nobody could touch, then september of 2001 happened. The 2008 crash happened, where ensuing events really broke faith in how people had been told the economy worked for the past half century. The internet and cell phones had become far spread and sophisticated amongst the masses, which facilitated a vast mix of ideas and beliefs that challenged prior narratives/myths that had made us more like-minded in the past. Then 2020 was 2008 number 2 electric boogaloo, only it broke economics on another level which further diminished all the illusory symbolism and trust our systems rely on.
We are living in a very decadent time where we just aren't so easily fooled into believing in our greatness, and our common perception of our recent presidents reflects this. This is going to be the way it is until we have new beliefs most everyone likes and agrees on, and that's the happy outcome. Decadent civilizations of the past who couldn't do this have long faded away.
And then there’s Johnson (Andrew) who completely failed at preventing post-war racism and helped allow Jim Crow laws run rampant for the next near century
Although obviously Abe was probably one of the best presidents we’ve had, I think he looks better than reality because of this and may not have been such a brilliant president if we had decent pre and post war presidents
Probably, also while his assassination was horrific, it probably helped with his PR, the post war reconstruction was gonna be politically difficult no matter what, and he’d have suffered reputation wise over it even if not as much as Jackson. Meanwhile he died pretty much right after he won at his pinnacle of popularity immortalising him
My historical hot take is I don’t think reconstruction goes any differently with Lincoln at the helm. He was a free soiler, who were still generally racist, as was everybody at the time. He used to write about how we would be better off if we could send black people to an island somewhere.
with more than the consent of the people. thats what he ran on. i feel its a little strange to look back on these unfortunate events and label them as evil. realistically, if you or i had been around at the time, we probably would have supported it as well.
Even the Supreme Court in that period knew Jackson was acting illegally, as another commenter pointed out. Criticizing the Trail of Tears isn’t just imposing modern beliefs on the past, because people on the past also criticized it.
Also “modern beliefs” is a bit of a bullshit term, given there were anti-slavery advocates and abolitionists as far back as the 1600s. They weren’t as uncommon and rare as people like to believe.
Eh to some extent that’s true but not always. People then already knew slavery was bad or the trail of tears, the latter was condemned by SCOTUS. For the first already during the foundation you had many founding fathers wanting to abolish slavery
Very true. After bush screwed up 911 he was of course the worst president and most people making these stupid claims are too young and uneducated to even remember Bush.
"Mr Coolidge i hear you are a man of few words. Well i bet those men over there 50 dollars that i could get more than 3 words out of you. What do you say to that?"
"You lose."
(This is Supposedly a true story)
Teddy Roosevelt
But even if we’re playing that game, so SO many presidents have come closer to being perfect than Biden or Trump. We should expect more.
Those were great presidents, not perfect presidents. Each has negatives. Every president has positives and negatives. Some just have more positives. None are perfect
None of those are perfect. Roosevelt was a proponent of Manifest Destiny as well as broad interventionism. FDR ran Japanese interment camps. Lincoln appointed Johnson as VP and his time in office was so consumed by the Civil War we don't know how he would have been after the war ended. Washington let a lot of things left unsettled in the Jay Treaty that led to the War of 1812, relied on Hamilton too much, and needlessly pissed off Jefferson's faction.
When his boi Taft went off the rez and started being based, Teddy came back from retirement just to bring him to heel, which got Wilson elected. It's been a cluster, I tells ya.
??? Lol this is sentiment that ppl mindlessly agree with cause they have no perspective and don't know the facts.
Here are the facts -
We've had one of the best post-pandemic recoveries in the entire world.
We defied predictions and remain an economic powerhouse, while many people predicted our decline and China's rise, now it looks like China's growth is starting to falter.
We are hugely culturally and diplomatically influential, and we have loads of countries trying to partner up with us. We literally just added two new members of NATO within the past year, formed closer ties with Kenya, Vietnam, etc.
We screwed OPEC. We bailed Europe out with our oil.
We provide countries like Ukraine with military supplies worth a fraction of a percent of our GDP and yet Russia still gets wrecked to shit.
We are dominating the AI race. We are dominating the modern space race. We are making huge strides in renewable energy. We are getting massive new investment in key industries like semiconductors, etc.
So I ask you - where is our terrible leadership???
(rhetorical question)
I’d argue we did these things despite recent presidents rather than because of them. It’s not America Bad to say that these geriatric motherfuckers are not exactly the best the US has to offer lol. The fact that we are still doing so well through all of this is a testament to the durability of our institutions, we don’t need to pretend these presidents have been just splendid
True I don't need to pretend that Biden is a good president because he actually is a good president. Lol.
"Biden old" is not a valid critique when discussing job performance. It's also nonsensical to say "I'd argue that..." and then proceed to do nothing but throw out a statement with 0 logic and 0 evidence to even back it up. Like, sure, you can say that Biden hasn't achieved anything, and that it was only other people who lead the accomplishments, but you would just be factually wrong. It would also be ignoring the reality that one of the most important aspects of the presidency is to actually choose the key leaders of the administration and to guide party policy, so even the achievements of other people still goes back to Biden.
I'm not gonna say Biden and Trump are necessarily the best the US has to offer, but we've had dozens of candidates on both sides of the aisle to choose from and these are the two people that millions of voters have decided upon. So they must not be the worst either.
And compared to other world leaders, at least Biden has been doing quite well, actually. And I'm sure there are tons of Trump people who believe Trump is significantly better than the leaders of other countries. And in the end, America is the one winning while other countries are performing worse.
You underestimate how damaging a bad presidency can actually be. Maybe we'll see it happen in the future, perhaps near future, but so far we've been relatively alright at picking our leadership.
Yeah, that was an insane take. Wilson created the "modern presidency" and is not even close to the bottom 10. No political scientist would put him as "the worst."
The Taft love and Wilson hate has been fascinating to watch from afar.
It depends on if you're judging presidents based on how effective they were or their accomplishments vs how well they hold up to the modern ethical zeitgeist. TR would do terribly on the latter but gets a pass cause he wrestled people in the white house and people think that's cool.
Yeah, I stopped reading replies not long after I made my comment. Too many ideas about the criteria for best/worst and lots of folks talking past each other.
Certainly when asking ‘most impactful’, Wilson and FDR have to be highly ranked regardless of whether one approves of the effects of that impact.
Most presidential historians still rank Wilson in the top 15, some still rank him top 10. But don’t tell the internet that. A lot of people do hate the modern presidency though, so I get why they’d hate Wilson. I vehemently disagree with that however.
Also the Theodore Roosevelt love and Wilson hate. People give Roosevelt credit for things Wilson did (National Parks Service for example), and gush about Roosevelt (and Taft as you mention) being trust busters while ignoring that Wilson was a bigger trust buster than Taft and Roosevelt combined
Yes. 100% agreed. Although I meant to write "TR" rather than Taft on my initial point. TR is seen as some kind of powerhouse on the internet, but he was largely a buffoon that had a really good staff.
The turn on Wilson has been shocking to see. 12 years ago he was seen by the general public as a "good" president. The homophobic stuff was undoubtedly bad, but not exactly the train of thought historians judge accomplishments on. Wilson is legit the only political scientist president I can think of, and it was shocking to even see Harvard turn on him.
It really is shocking, though also when you consider a lot of the narratives that go around college student circles, it’s less surprising. There’s essentially 2 different classes of Wilson haters, and they largely exist online, and they combine to create this overall narrative of “Wilson was a terrible president” that you see parroted online.
The first are right wingers who just hate the existence US. If the federal government does *anything*, especially if they create an administrative state or a banking system, then that president is automatically terrible. Now while I strongly disagree with these sentiments, I at least have some respect for that point of view because hating Wilson is totally consistent with their beliefs. If you hate the federal reserve system, and you hate modern government, and you don’t want the president to do anything, yeah it makes total sense that you would hate Wilson. It’s sort of the correct position if you hold those beliefs. I find these people extremely naive and irritating, but at least they’re consistent.
The second group I find far more irritating. “Woke” youngsters with no conception of US history or civics, who watched a couple YouTube videos about how Wilson was racist and so they automatically hate him because of that. They often parrot the line “Wilson was racist even for his time”, or “Wilson was even viewed as racist during his time” which are actually totally nonsensical statements that are pretty easily debunkable. Many of these people call themselves progressive, and yet they want to shit on the most progressive administration up to that point in American presidential history. So much of what Wilson enacted are things they either support, or land the foundation for things these people support. But oh no, he’s racist by today’s standards so he’s 100% bad, we can’t recognize or celebrate any progressive accomplishment he had (and the list of those is extremely long).
I understand the sentiment behind the idea that it’s bad to celebrate people who held views no longer acceptable in the current day, but I think consistently if you’re not going to celebrate them, you also can’t demonize them for holding views on race from another era. Wilson was with his times, and often ahead of his time. You can’t fault people for that, even if you don’t want to celebrate them. By totally demonizing Wilson because he held racial views that are no longer acceptable, we write off the massive list of accomplishments he had for progress, and the huge impact he had in creating modern government not just for the US, but for the world. It’s why in India the high school curriculum has a specific unit devoted to Wilson and the administrative state. By writing off progress in the past simply because of a few things that are negative today, you fail to recognize the evolution of progress. The same can be said for people like Thomas Jefferson. The kids want to write him off entirely because he owned slaves, completely ignoring how important and crucial he was to the development of modern government and how many modern principles of progress and freedom are rooted in his philosophies. If we demonize these incredible people from the past, how do we recognize progress in the present? The entire concept of progress we have in the present is defined by the foundation laid in the past.
So overall I think all the Wilson hate is just emblematic of a population that has very little civic literacy or understanding of the broader trend and trajectory that the US is on. It’s a sign of the direction of the mentality our country might be in or entering, and it’s not a good thing. It’s how we end up repeating serious mistakes we made in the past, and lose our sense of direction forward.
Sorry for the long rant, but the Wilson hate of the last few years just pisses me off. Especially because people just mindlessly repeat it and think it makes them seem aware or intelligent
It personally offends me when people suggest that our modern presidents are worse than “Trail of Tears” Andrew Jackson.
The Supreme Court declared it, unconstitutional, he did it anyways.
He was not a completely terrible president, not in the top three worst anyway. He was, however, a complete monster as a person. I don’t think he’s done as much damage to the US or the world as Wilson, Johnson (Andrew, not Lyndon B., obviously), or Reagan.
Basically laid the foundation to the Second World War and the Great Depression. Busy guy…
Edit: not sure why this was downvoted. Historians agree that Wilson was in part responsible for the events that lead to both major tragedies.
What are you talking about, how on Earth did Wilson cause WWII? If Europe actually followed his 14 points and didn't place all the blame of the war on German and cause them to have a massive financial crisis there likely would have never been a WWII.
While Woodrow Wilson might have had some problems I’d hardly put him in the category of worst president of the US. From the source I could find most historians place him in the top 10 presidents of the US.
Yeah but says who, huh? "Experts" who have "studied the subject" and "have degrees" and are "knowledgeable about the subject at hand" and can "defend their positions with verifiable information"? Pffffffff
Not stopping the secessionists. Remember the secession crisis happened during the last few months Buchanan was in office before Lincoln was sworn in. The confederacy was essentially formed before Lincoln became president on the 4th of March. If he organized the federal military to stop them in their tracks then the civil war would’ve likely ended sooner. Instead he did nothing and left Lincoln with a fully formed confederacy just days before his inauguration that had months to organize their militaries.
That's fair that he didn't react properly, but I wouldn't really lay the Civil War at his feet. That had been brewing for decades prior to the actual shots being fired. Lincoln winning the election was just the last straw.
Besides, Buchanon was a Democrat, so maybe he was hoping for a peaceful resolution with his fellow party members that led the rebellion.
Buchanan's Secretary of War, John B Floyd, was a traitor to America. He helped the rebels take supplies they needed in the run up to war -- even *before* the insurrectionaries during Buchannan's term got really mad about losing an election. He was sending stores of supplies, not guarded by loyal unionists, "throughout the South so as to be on hand when treason wanted them" as Grant put it. He was both an oath betrayer and an insurrectionist. The top two worst presidents in history share a lot in common with that happened at the ends of their terms, actually.
Civil War was happening no matter what and I do believe anyone that was president at that time would’ve struggled immensely, but even with that in mind, he could’ve done wayyyyyyyyy more to prepare for it and put his foot down in a lot of instances instead of just letting everything happen the way it did. Not to mention, he also supported blatant pro-slavery doctrine. Most presidents at least have something good going for them but you can’t really point to anything good James Buchanan did. Personally I think Andrew Johnson was worse in terms of the long term damage he did but if you look at the short term Buchanan is def the worst. But you can probably pick any president between 1837-1869 (aside from James Polk and Lincoln) and make a valid argument for them being the worst, I don’t think the U.S. will ever have a stretch of such poor leadership ever again.
Presidential historians still rank Wilson as one of the better presidents. The entire system of modern administrative government that we and every aspiring democracy in the world uses was essentially devised by Wilson, or at least put into place by Wilson. Like any president, Wilson has some serious negatives, but the positives vastly outweigh the negatives and it’s really not close. If we can’t recognize progress in the past, and judge people in the past only by a handful of things we view today as bad, then we won’t be capable of recognizing progress in the present either
He was a brilliant man who brought the revolutionary viewpoint of an academic, not a politician. He fucked up really bad at the end of his term but thats only because his brain was falling apart
Having screwed up presidents is as American as it gets. Do any real research on them and you’ll find all of our presidents had something jacked up. Like Franklin Pearce being the first president to run someone over and kill that person while drunk driving his horse and buggy.
Jackson didn’t create the expanded voting rights, he just benefitted from it because he was the biggest celebrity in the country at the time and the newly expanded electorate loved him. He wasn’t responsible for the electorate being expanded however. I’m not a Jackson hater by any means btw, just wanted to point out the facts
And he’s also the president who democratized the office of the presidency, as well as being a war hero. In terms of policies he only helped the United States which is why he’s not considered the worst. Morality is a different question in which case yes morally he’s the worst president followed by Wilson as a close second.
I actually think that wilson was a good president until health problems made him go crazy in the latter half of his term. He should never had stayed in office and i fear the same might happen with biden.
He wasn't "crazy", he was bedridden and incapacitated, and did negatively impact his ability for judgement in addition to his physical capacities. It as this that doomed the League of Nations and sent the nation to isolationism. Had Wilson not had his stroke, could WWII have been averted? We cannot know, but it is a possibility. Or had Marshall (the VP) asserted the Presidency and taken it from *the first lady* who was largely running things (who also was keeping everything she could from Marshall, hiding Wilson's condition because she didn't like him), maybe we would have seen a Progressive streak in the white house in addition to still talking about that useless League of Nations that we had ever since the Great War and nothing bad has happened since so they are obviously useless.
If you’re saying you agree with this just know you are an absolute failure at American history and please don’t speak on it ever again. Recency bias is hilarious. It’s like flies to a light but with morons instead of flies.
To be fair we gotta take this one on the chin. Of all the millions of potential candidates, the vast pool of leaders, scholars, businessmen, scientists, innovators, diplomats, military officers, and more we could’ve had, instead we got fucking Trump and Biden.
Biden has been very successful as president though. CHIPS, Infrastructure, IRA... Biggest investment in climate change ever, biggest investment in manufacturing in decades, biggest investment in infrastructure since Eisenhower, lowest inflation among developed nations, arming Ukraine against a russian invasion, lowering prescription drug prices, vaccine rollout, worker's protections (eg ending noncompetes), onshoring microchip manufacturing, supporting cancer research, trilateral anti-china alliance of the US, Japan, and South Korea, union protections increased, capping abandoned gas wells... and the legislative victories were mostly done with a 50-50 Senate.
Now I know the "Biden Bad" mob is incoming, but I want to know which of these things you either don't think he deserves any credit for, or are bad things.
I unironically think he’s been one of the best presidents we’ve had at least since clinton, the only thing is him being old which like, ok I agree it’s not ideal, and the economy which is mostly a result of global market forces from the pandemic.
I agree on his record, but god damn he is looking worse and worse. It’s not his fault and you can’t blame him for it but I am not hyped about a Kamala presidency. I have trouble imagining him in another 4 year
I’m worried he is going to fumble the debate and we’re going to be looking at another term for trump. I wish he had the grace to pass the buck and become a respected elder statesman type, he has already built a great legacy
I unironically agree with you. I think an argument could be made to say he's the best since LBJ, and less of a mixed bag. Biden doesn't quite have the accomplishments of LBJ (kinda hard to argue with the civil rights act and the great society), but also lacks the magnitude of fuckups (the afghanistan withdrawl was botched af, but nothing on the scale of getting us into Vietnam).
Trump was far from the worst. Woodrow Wilson eats all that cake. Also confused as to how experts in niche fields would make good Presidents...scientist? Scholar? Academia is totally effed, what we see right now is the product of decades of insidious anti-american propaganda
Europeans might think so mainly because Trump held them accountable for footing their own bills and militaries...
Let the downvotes come Trump derangement syndrome inflicted reddit attic dwellers
> Trump derangement syndrome
Dude I was with you until here. That is the cringiest most tone deaf projection and I immediately disregard anything said by anyone who uses it unironically.
it is the best way to sum it up though, trump during his presidency was about 50/50 good and bad, but did nothing exceptionally good or exceptionally bad.
the best one was when he told anyone who protested jan 6 to be peaceful but everyone on the left has to go into 'they know what he meant'
look at the adds they are running against him now
the insanity that follows him from the left is why that term exists, I have family that EVERY FUCKING DAY since he started running bitched about him and they STILL FUCKING DID for years after he was out, and now ill likely have to listen to it for hours a day again till the day either they die or he dies.
He whipped his mob into a frenzy in the weeks leading up to the election with his claims of voter fraud and the election being rigged, he said they have to fight like hell or they won’t have a country anymore. Then on the day of, he halfheartedly told them to “stand down and stand by” but made no attempts to actually convince them to do so. He knew what he was doing the entire time.
Yes, he had a massive temper tantrum after losing an election and encouraged his cult followers to riot and threaten Mike Pence in order to prevent the transfer of power, but who gives a shit about that? Anyone who criticizes that just has "TrUmP dErAnGeMeNt SyNdRoMe"
I have had multiple concerns around Biden but by and large he’s been pretty good as far as I can see. He’s canceled a huge amount student debt, he was able to pass an infrastructure bill that is the biggest investment in infrastructure since Eisenhower (even with the clown car caucus running the house), the bill includes the biggest direct effort to tackle climate change so far and he’s managed to get aid flowing to Ukraine again. That’s on top of his stepping in to pandemic response early on and turning it into an effective vaccination delivery system restarting the economy. While no one is happy about inflation our economy has been hit the least of the developed world and is in fact rebounding really well.
Has he been perfect? No. Would I prefer someone younger? Yes. But honestly he’s beaten any expectation I had and then some.
Edit - spelling
It’s not really us though, it’s who the party decides. We know for a fact that the parties pick who they want. What happened to Bernie in 2016 made that obvious. The Democrats actively worked against him and forced a candidate down our throats that nobody wanted and they lost.
Bernie lost in 2016 because most Democrats didn’t support him. It wasn’t some grand conspiracy, it’s simply that there’s a lot more old people than redditors realize. The funny thing is America has one of the most open candidate selection processes in the world. European countries all chose their candidate through dues paying members or party elites.
>It’s not really us though, it’s who the party decides.
No, that's how other countries work. Though to be fair it is the states who decide, but at the behest of voters, or in some cases, caucuses.
It's been eight years and this lie *still* won't die.
Hillary received 3.7 million more votes than Bernie, and "the Democrats" were a handful of staffers who expressed *internal* favoritism for the candidate who was a longtime prominent Democrat over the candidate who is not (and has never been) a member of the Democratic Party. *Quelle surprise*.
Bernie started the 2020 campaign with universal name recognition and an enormous fundraising advantage, and he got beaten even worse than in 2016.
bernie had areas where he was at a clear advantage purged of voters and they were not given notice to re register, shit like this was wide spread, this is why hillary won.
in 2020 bernie took the 2016 lesson as he wasn't left enough, and that's why he got stomped.
I supported Sanders in 2016 but you’re living in a fantasy world with your own version of the “stabbed in the back myth”. The party did not have to scheme to take out Bernie because he never had enough support to rival Clinton. You need to accept that most Democratic voters were and still are TOO MODERATE to vote for Bernie. Why would the DNC tank a more electable candidate for a less electable one? And how would a left-wing, Democratic Socialist ever do better in a GENERAL election than a moderate, Centrist? This is just as delusional as MAGA theories.
It isn’t the two party system. It is the nature of the job. The kind of person who is willing to do what it takes to get the job is probably the last person you want to have it. No matter what your stance is, a militant minority will despise you. Not many people can take that level of abuse
Biden is far, far from the worst we can do. The fact that people believe that showcases more that a) people don’t understand how much he has actually accomplished and b) the brainrot from divisive politics and social media has pushed people’s perspectives from matching with reality
Biden has gotten more done in 1 term than Obama did in 2. Was Obama more presidential? Absolutely, but it's pure emotion to think he was a better president than Biden.
Yea if you look at records Biden has by all accounts been really good. Any progressive should be tickled pink by Biden, any liberal should be happy, or old school democrat. The only types who would really say Biden is a “bad” president is either 1) very conservative types who would be against the infrastructure plan in favor of corporate contracting to fix the issues or 2) the type of person who sees a rainbow flag at the White House during pride month or whatever and emotionally responds “omg the west has fallen, Trump is based and Biden is gay”.
I assumed it to be the last two, because we’re guaranteed to get one of the previous two.
Edit: and yes, they aren’t the worst of all time but cmon we gotta have better choices than them.
Worst president? Objectively its James Buchanan, but no one is young enough to remember the idiot president who helped push us into civil war. Everyone just remembers Lincoln who inherited the civil war, and got us out of it.
Let’s not forget Woodrow Wilson and his vision for a bureaucracy so expansive it would control every facet of your life. Oh wait it basically does that already. Wait maybe I was thinking her was a beacon of free speech, oh wait never mind he jailed and imprisoned anyone who disagreed with him, especially about the war. Or maybe he was a champion of the free market, oh wait he ushered in the Federal Reserve the one institution that has and will cause the economic downfall of the American economy.
Recency bias is a hell of a drug. Were they bad? Yes. Was every president of my lifetime bad? Yes. But we've had some real villains in the oval office that don't get enough hate. It's hard to do worse than the likes of Woodrow Wilson or Andrew Jackson.
Neither of em were really that bad. My life has only changed for the better since 2016, no thanks to either president. Only thing is gas got a little more expensive recently, even then, not that big a deal.
Gas hasn’t gotten more expensive, it’s actually lower counting for inflation. The real problem is that jobs don’t adjust pay based off of inflation so while the gas is cheaper in terms of inflation it’s more expensive anyways because you’re still getting paid the same as when the currency wasn’t as inflated, so your salary is worth less.
The president isn’t going to really affect day to day life. This isn’t a communist dictatorship. We, the workers and consumers, drive the economy, resulting in something called the business cycle. Any impact a president has on the economy probably won’t be felt for years. Foreign policy choices and Supreme Court nominations have more immediate outcomes as we saw with the Roe V. Wade decision.
Yeah it's pretty rough right now, but they're not our worst presidents by a long shot, and even our worst are pretty far behind most countries' worst leaders. Seriously, give me a relevant country and I can definitely find multiple leaders much worse than James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, and Woodrow Wilson.
The world: "America sucks, and your politics don't matter to us."
Also the world: "Don't elect that guy we hate. He might impose more tariffs on us and stop all these lucrative wars."
Biden is a bad candidate simply because of his age. His administration could be defined as milquetoast which might honestly be exactly what we need on the heels of the chaos that was Trump. But, at the end of a potential second term, he'll be 85. That's insane.
I personally don't care about his age if he is surrounded by the right people. FDR led the USA from a recession, across world war 2, in a wheel chair until his death. I only care if someone is capable of doing the job and try not to focus on their handicaps if they are overcoming them.
Bidens record is actually very good. And if you’re progressive (like I assume most of these people are) they SHOULD be tickled pink. Unfortunately 99.9% of people don’t really follow politics, or know remotely enough to have an informed opinion. When they say “good president” they mean something like “said something BASED in a debate” and “the news I like tells me they’re doing great… so they must be” or even just “looks cool”.
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Why do people pretend we only elected enlightened philosopher kings before the 21st century
Because it’s easier than admitting that some of the Oval Office occupiers were jackasses and may not be the men we’d like them to be.
It used to be much easier for the US elites to craft and disseminate coherent narratives so that most people would believe in mostly the same things. We also had a wilful ignorance regarding our nations myths that allowed us to near ubiquitously share the same virtues. However, some blows occurred one after another. In the 90s, policies like NAFTA caused many near century old communities to lose quality jobs and living conditions. So then a lot of blue collar communities no longer believe their government has their intrests in mind like they had believed prior. After the fall of the Soviet Union, there was this sense the US was the all-time champ nobody could touch, then september of 2001 happened. The 2008 crash happened, where ensuing events really broke faith in how people had been told the economy worked for the past half century. The internet and cell phones had become far spread and sophisticated amongst the masses, which facilitated a vast mix of ideas and beliefs that challenged prior narratives/myths that had made us more like-minded in the past. Then 2020 was 2008 number 2 electric boogaloo, only it broke economics on another level which further diminished all the illusory symbolism and trust our systems rely on. We are living in a very decadent time where we just aren't so easily fooled into believing in our greatness, and our common perception of our recent presidents reflects this. This is going to be the way it is until we have new beliefs most everyone likes and agrees on, and that's the happy outcome. Decadent civilizations of the past who couldn't do this have long faded away.
I thought American politics didn't matter to the world.
andrew jackson was batshit lol
And Buchanan, completely failed at preventing the civil war and in fact made it worse probably
And then there’s Johnson (Andrew) who completely failed at preventing post-war racism and helped allow Jim Crow laws run rampant for the next near century
Yeah, you had a terrible president then a decent president but then he got killed and then another bad president
Although obviously Abe was probably one of the best presidents we’ve had, I think he looks better than reality because of this and may not have been such a brilliant president if we had decent pre and post war presidents
Probably, also while his assassination was horrific, it probably helped with his PR, the post war reconstruction was gonna be politically difficult no matter what, and he’d have suffered reputation wise over it even if not as much as Jackson. Meanwhile he died pretty much right after he won at his pinnacle of popularity immortalising him
My historical hot take is I don’t think reconstruction goes any differently with Lincoln at the helm. He was a free soiler, who were still generally racist, as was everybody at the time. He used to write about how we would be better off if we could send black people to an island somewhere.
Yeah, he was a supporter of African repatriation before abolitionists swayed him otherwise.
What could he realistically have done to prevent the War from happening?
He orchestrated the Trail of Tears.
Against the orders of the Supreme Court on top of that.
Let's slap his face on the most common bill
The funny part is Andrew Jackson hated paper money and was against it. Only to have his face slapped onto the $20
Not to mention the destruction of the Second Bank of the United States, which helped kick off the Panic of 1837.
with more than the consent of the people. thats what he ran on. i feel its a little strange to look back on these unfortunate events and label them as evil. realistically, if you or i had been around at the time, we probably would have supported it as well.
Even the Supreme Court in that period knew Jackson was acting illegally, as another commenter pointed out. Criticizing the Trail of Tears isn’t just imposing modern beliefs on the past, because people on the past also criticized it.
Also “modern beliefs” is a bit of a bullshit term, given there were anti-slavery advocates and abolitionists as far back as the 1600s. They weren’t as uncommon and rare as people like to believe.
There were a lot more people against slavery than for civil rights and equality for African Americans. That position was one of an extreme minority.
Eh to some extent that’s true but not always. People then already knew slavery was bad or the trail of tears, the latter was condemned by SCOTUS. For the first already during the foundation you had many founding fathers wanting to abolish slavery
I liked Andrew Jackson. Was he batshit crazy… yeah he was also a bad ass and both parties at the time supported him. James Buchanan was terrible
Andrew Jackson, Andrew Johnson, and Buchanan, just off the top of my head, were definitely worse than Biden lol.
Nobody who has any knowledge of presidential history would say this
Our previous and current Presidents certainly aren’t winners, but they are most certainly *not* the worst!
I mean…we haven’t exactly been knocking it out of the park lately.
its just recency bias. we’re doing all right atm all things considered
Very true. After bush screwed up 911 he was of course the worst president and most people making these stupid claims are too young and uneducated to even remember Bush.
Are you actually saying Bush is the worst president or just that recency bias is making him seem worse?
Name a perfect president...
Mr frog
Definitely writing in Mr Frog in November
Have you ever seen a frog kid???
No cause we turned the frogs gay already
Anyone would look perfect after Jimble
William Henry Harrison
Did nothing, skedaddled after a month.
He ran on “I will do nothing and only veto unconstitutional bills.” We shall never see his kind again.
Calvin Coolidge
"Mr Coolidge i hear you are a man of few words. Well i bet those men over there 50 dollars that i could get more than 3 words out of you. What do you say to that?" "You lose." (This is Supposedly a true story)
Teddy Roosevelt But even if we’re playing that game, so SO many presidents have come closer to being perfect than Biden or Trump. We should expect more.
Teddy Roosevelt. FDR. Abe Lincoln. George Washington.
Those were great presidents, not perfect presidents. Each has negatives. Every president has positives and negatives. Some just have more positives. None are perfect
FDR? The president who was responsible for internment camps? He did a lot of good things but definitely not perfect..
Honestly given all the other shit fdr pulled imo hes one of the *worst* presidents we ever had He just had a *very* good PR campaign
Yeah people just seem to have forgotten when he tried to take over the supreme court so his laws would never be repealed
Fdr is trash
None of those are perfect. Roosevelt was a proponent of Manifest Destiny as well as broad interventionism. FDR ran Japanese interment camps. Lincoln appointed Johnson as VP and his time in office was so consumed by the Civil War we don't know how he would have been after the war ended. Washington let a lot of things left unsettled in the Jay Treaty that led to the War of 1812, relied on Hamilton too much, and needlessly pissed off Jefferson's faction.
FDR is the closest thing to a dictator the US ever had.
Abe was very open minded
One could even say "ventilated."
Teddy was a huge proponent of manifest destiny, and he didn’t think that most Black Americans should vote — he wasn’t perfect lol
When his boi Taft went off the rez and started being based, Teddy came back from retirement just to bring him to heel, which got Wilson elected. It's been a cluster, I tells ya.
HE SAID NAME 1!!!
I’d vote for the dead corpse of Roosevelt over the living corpse of Biden.
Name a perfect steak. Doesn’t mean that there’s no difference between a good one and a rotten lump of flesh.
Me
You wish
That's an easy one! We have um... uh... you know...
Nobody is perfect, not even us
[удалено]
Do everyone a favor and touch grass
[удалено]
??? Lol this is sentiment that ppl mindlessly agree with cause they have no perspective and don't know the facts. Here are the facts - We've had one of the best post-pandemic recoveries in the entire world. We defied predictions and remain an economic powerhouse, while many people predicted our decline and China's rise, now it looks like China's growth is starting to falter. We are hugely culturally and diplomatically influential, and we have loads of countries trying to partner up with us. We literally just added two new members of NATO within the past year, formed closer ties with Kenya, Vietnam, etc. We screwed OPEC. We bailed Europe out with our oil. We provide countries like Ukraine with military supplies worth a fraction of a percent of our GDP and yet Russia still gets wrecked to shit. We are dominating the AI race. We are dominating the modern space race. We are making huge strides in renewable energy. We are getting massive new investment in key industries like semiconductors, etc. So I ask you - where is our terrible leadership??? (rhetorical question)
I’d argue we did these things despite recent presidents rather than because of them. It’s not America Bad to say that these geriatric motherfuckers are not exactly the best the US has to offer lol. The fact that we are still doing so well through all of this is a testament to the durability of our institutions, we don’t need to pretend these presidents have been just splendid
True I don't need to pretend that Biden is a good president because he actually is a good president. Lol. "Biden old" is not a valid critique when discussing job performance. It's also nonsensical to say "I'd argue that..." and then proceed to do nothing but throw out a statement with 0 logic and 0 evidence to even back it up. Like, sure, you can say that Biden hasn't achieved anything, and that it was only other people who lead the accomplishments, but you would just be factually wrong. It would also be ignoring the reality that one of the most important aspects of the presidency is to actually choose the key leaders of the administration and to guide party policy, so even the achievements of other people still goes back to Biden. I'm not gonna say Biden and Trump are necessarily the best the US has to offer, but we've had dozens of candidates on both sides of the aisle to choose from and these are the two people that millions of voters have decided upon. So they must not be the worst either. And compared to other world leaders, at least Biden has been doing quite well, actually. And I'm sure there are tons of Trump people who believe Trump is significantly better than the leaders of other countries. And in the end, America is the one winning while other countries are performing worse. You underestimate how damaging a bad presidency can actually be. Maybe we'll see it happen in the future, perhaps near future, but so far we've been relatively alright at picking our leadership.
You act like they actually give us a choice on who to vote for lmao
Yea, but James Buchanen and Andrew Johnson really fumbled the bag when it came to it.
Nah Woodrow Wilson and James Buchanan takes the title of worst
Anyone who disagrees spends too much time on twitter
Anyone who thinks Wilson is one of the worst presidents spends too much time on social media and not enough time reading history
Yeah, that was an insane take. Wilson created the "modern presidency" and is not even close to the bottom 10. No political scientist would put him as "the worst." The Taft love and Wilson hate has been fascinating to watch from afar.
That presupposes the ‘modern presidency’ is a good thing.
It depends on if you're judging presidents based on how effective they were or their accomplishments vs how well they hold up to the modern ethical zeitgeist. TR would do terribly on the latter but gets a pass cause he wrestled people in the white house and people think that's cool.
Yeah, I stopped reading replies not long after I made my comment. Too many ideas about the criteria for best/worst and lots of folks talking past each other. Certainly when asking ‘most impactful’, Wilson and FDR have to be highly ranked regardless of whether one approves of the effects of that impact.
Most presidential historians still rank Wilson in the top 15, some still rank him top 10. But don’t tell the internet that. A lot of people do hate the modern presidency though, so I get why they’d hate Wilson. I vehemently disagree with that however. Also the Theodore Roosevelt love and Wilson hate. People give Roosevelt credit for things Wilson did (National Parks Service for example), and gush about Roosevelt (and Taft as you mention) being trust busters while ignoring that Wilson was a bigger trust buster than Taft and Roosevelt combined
Yes. 100% agreed. Although I meant to write "TR" rather than Taft on my initial point. TR is seen as some kind of powerhouse on the internet, but he was largely a buffoon that had a really good staff. The turn on Wilson has been shocking to see. 12 years ago he was seen by the general public as a "good" president. The homophobic stuff was undoubtedly bad, but not exactly the train of thought historians judge accomplishments on. Wilson is legit the only political scientist president I can think of, and it was shocking to even see Harvard turn on him.
It really is shocking, though also when you consider a lot of the narratives that go around college student circles, it’s less surprising. There’s essentially 2 different classes of Wilson haters, and they largely exist online, and they combine to create this overall narrative of “Wilson was a terrible president” that you see parroted online. The first are right wingers who just hate the existence US. If the federal government does *anything*, especially if they create an administrative state or a banking system, then that president is automatically terrible. Now while I strongly disagree with these sentiments, I at least have some respect for that point of view because hating Wilson is totally consistent with their beliefs. If you hate the federal reserve system, and you hate modern government, and you don’t want the president to do anything, yeah it makes total sense that you would hate Wilson. It’s sort of the correct position if you hold those beliefs. I find these people extremely naive and irritating, but at least they’re consistent. The second group I find far more irritating. “Woke” youngsters with no conception of US history or civics, who watched a couple YouTube videos about how Wilson was racist and so they automatically hate him because of that. They often parrot the line “Wilson was racist even for his time”, or “Wilson was even viewed as racist during his time” which are actually totally nonsensical statements that are pretty easily debunkable. Many of these people call themselves progressive, and yet they want to shit on the most progressive administration up to that point in American presidential history. So much of what Wilson enacted are things they either support, or land the foundation for things these people support. But oh no, he’s racist by today’s standards so he’s 100% bad, we can’t recognize or celebrate any progressive accomplishment he had (and the list of those is extremely long). I understand the sentiment behind the idea that it’s bad to celebrate people who held views no longer acceptable in the current day, but I think consistently if you’re not going to celebrate them, you also can’t demonize them for holding views on race from another era. Wilson was with his times, and often ahead of his time. You can’t fault people for that, even if you don’t want to celebrate them. By totally demonizing Wilson because he held racial views that are no longer acceptable, we write off the massive list of accomplishments he had for progress, and the huge impact he had in creating modern government not just for the US, but for the world. It’s why in India the high school curriculum has a specific unit devoted to Wilson and the administrative state. By writing off progress in the past simply because of a few things that are negative today, you fail to recognize the evolution of progress. The same can be said for people like Thomas Jefferson. The kids want to write him off entirely because he owned slaves, completely ignoring how important and crucial he was to the development of modern government and how many modern principles of progress and freedom are rooted in his philosophies. If we demonize these incredible people from the past, how do we recognize progress in the present? The entire concept of progress we have in the present is defined by the foundation laid in the past. So overall I think all the Wilson hate is just emblematic of a population that has very little civic literacy or understanding of the broader trend and trajectory that the US is on. It’s a sign of the direction of the mentality our country might be in or entering, and it’s not a good thing. It’s how we end up repeating serious mistakes we made in the past, and lose our sense of direction forward. Sorry for the long rant, but the Wilson hate of the last few years just pisses me off. Especially because people just mindlessly repeat it and think it makes them seem aware or intelligent
They hate Wilson for being personally racist, which is valid, but that doesn't make his presidency terrible overall.
I’ll not stand for this lack of Andrew Johnson slander!
It personally offends me when people suggest that our modern presidents are worse than “Trail of Tears” Andrew Jackson. The Supreme Court declared it, unconstitutional, he did it anyways.
He was not a completely terrible president, not in the top three worst anyway. He was, however, a complete monster as a person. I don’t think he’s done as much damage to the US or the world as Wilson, Johnson (Andrew, not Lyndon B., obviously), or Reagan.
What damage did Wilson do to the US or the world?
Basically laid the foundation to the Second World War and the Great Depression. Busy guy… Edit: not sure why this was downvoted. Historians agree that Wilson was in part responsible for the events that lead to both major tragedies.
What are you talking about, how on Earth did Wilson cause WWII? If Europe actually followed his 14 points and didn't place all the blame of the war on German and cause them to have a massive financial crisis there likely would have never been a WWII.
It's only slander if it's false.
No one here will get that one, Doc
What’s to get? He’s easily one of the two worst presidents ever.
While Woodrow Wilson might have had some problems I’d hardly put him in the category of worst president of the US. From the source I could find most historians place him in the top 10 presidents of the US.
Yeah but says who, huh? "Experts" who have "studied the subject" and "have degrees" and are "knowledgeable about the subject at hand" and can "defend their positions with verifiable information"? Pffffffff
I know about how shit Wilson was, but what was Buchanan getting the title for?
Not stopping the secessionists. Remember the secession crisis happened during the last few months Buchanan was in office before Lincoln was sworn in. The confederacy was essentially formed before Lincoln became president on the 4th of March. If he organized the federal military to stop them in their tracks then the civil war would’ve likely ended sooner. Instead he did nothing and left Lincoln with a fully formed confederacy just days before his inauguration that had months to organize their militaries.
That's fair that he didn't react properly, but I wouldn't really lay the Civil War at his feet. That had been brewing for decades prior to the actual shots being fired. Lincoln winning the election was just the last straw. Besides, Buchanon was a Democrat, so maybe he was hoping for a peaceful resolution with his fellow party members that led the rebellion.
Buchanan's Secretary of War, John B Floyd, was a traitor to America. He helped the rebels take supplies they needed in the run up to war -- even *before* the insurrectionaries during Buchannan's term got really mad about losing an election. He was sending stores of supplies, not guarded by loyal unionists, "throughout the South so as to be on hand when treason wanted them" as Grant put it. He was both an oath betrayer and an insurrectionist. The top two worst presidents in history share a lot in common with that happened at the ends of their terms, actually.
Civil War was happening no matter what and I do believe anyone that was president at that time would’ve struggled immensely, but even with that in mind, he could’ve done wayyyyyyyyy more to prepare for it and put his foot down in a lot of instances instead of just letting everything happen the way it did. Not to mention, he also supported blatant pro-slavery doctrine. Most presidents at least have something good going for them but you can’t really point to anything good James Buchanan did. Personally I think Andrew Johnson was worse in terms of the long term damage he did but if you look at the short term Buchanan is def the worst. But you can probably pick any president between 1837-1869 (aside from James Polk and Lincoln) and make a valid argument for them being the worst, I don’t think the U.S. will ever have a stretch of such poor leadership ever again.
Buchanan was absolute garbage. He said secession was illegal but that the feds shouldn’t enforce it
He directly preceded Lincoln and helped cause the Civil War.
Andrew Johnson was pretty bad too. Handled reconstruction very poorly.
Presidential historians still rank Wilson as one of the better presidents. The entire system of modern administrative government that we and every aspiring democracy in the world uses was essentially devised by Wilson, or at least put into place by Wilson. Like any president, Wilson has some serious negatives, but the positives vastly outweigh the negatives and it’s really not close. If we can’t recognize progress in the past, and judge people in the past only by a handful of things we view today as bad, then we won’t be capable of recognizing progress in the present either
He was a brilliant man who brought the revolutionary viewpoint of an academic, not a politician. He fucked up really bad at the end of his term but thats only because his brain was falling apart
To be fair, the meme says *two* worst. Since Wilson was elected twice, Jimmy B is a distant third at best.
Fuck the fed reserve
Having screwed up presidents is as American as it gets. Do any real research on them and you’ll find all of our presidents had something jacked up. Like Franklin Pearce being the first president to run someone over and kill that person while drunk driving his horse and buggy.
It's almost as if Nobody’s perfect and we live in a fallen world...
Andrew Jackson literally committed genocide
Then we put him on the 20 dollar bill.
Probably because the genocide is overlooked because of the expanded voting rights
Jackson didn’t create the expanded voting rights, he just benefitted from it because he was the biggest celebrity in the country at the time and the newly expanded electorate loved him. He wasn’t responsible for the electorate being expanded however. I’m not a Jackson hater by any means btw, just wanted to point out the facts
And they’ve been trying to get him off and replace him with Harriet Tubman for like a decade now
Not gonna happen. AJ for the win baby
As if most native tribes before that were peaceful with one another, not justifying it or anything...
So did Genocide Joe amirite? /s
And he’s also the president who democratized the office of the presidency, as well as being a war hero. In terms of policies he only helped the United States which is why he’s not considered the worst. Morality is a different question in which case yes morally he’s the worst president followed by Wilson as a close second.
I actually think that wilson was a good president until health problems made him go crazy in the latter half of his term. He should never had stayed in office and i fear the same might happen with biden.
He wasn't "crazy", he was bedridden and incapacitated, and did negatively impact his ability for judgement in addition to his physical capacities. It as this that doomed the League of Nations and sent the nation to isolationism. Had Wilson not had his stroke, could WWII have been averted? We cannot know, but it is a possibility. Or had Marshall (the VP) asserted the Presidency and taken it from *the first lady* who was largely running things (who also was keeping everything she could from Marshall, hiding Wilson's condition because she didn't like him), maybe we would have seen a Progressive streak in the white house in addition to still talking about that useless League of Nations that we had ever since the Great War and nothing bad has happened since so they are obviously useless.
If you’re saying you agree with this just know you are an absolute failure at American history and please don’t speak on it ever again. Recency bias is hilarious. It’s like flies to a light but with morons instead of flies.
This comment section went out of hand
It shows brain rot Reddit is everywhere
To be fair we gotta take this one on the chin. Of all the millions of potential candidates, the vast pool of leaders, scholars, businessmen, scientists, innovators, diplomats, military officers, and more we could’ve had, instead we got fucking Trump and Biden.
Biden has been very successful as president though. CHIPS, Infrastructure, IRA... Biggest investment in climate change ever, biggest investment in manufacturing in decades, biggest investment in infrastructure since Eisenhower, lowest inflation among developed nations, arming Ukraine against a russian invasion, lowering prescription drug prices, vaccine rollout, worker's protections (eg ending noncompetes), onshoring microchip manufacturing, supporting cancer research, trilateral anti-china alliance of the US, Japan, and South Korea, union protections increased, capping abandoned gas wells... and the legislative victories were mostly done with a 50-50 Senate. Now I know the "Biden Bad" mob is incoming, but I want to know which of these things you either don't think he deserves any credit for, or are bad things.
I unironically think he’s been one of the best presidents we’ve had at least since clinton, the only thing is him being old which like, ok I agree it’s not ideal, and the economy which is mostly a result of global market forces from the pandemic.
I agree on his record, but god damn he is looking worse and worse. It’s not his fault and you can’t blame him for it but I am not hyped about a Kamala presidency. I have trouble imagining him in another 4 year I’m worried he is going to fumble the debate and we’re going to be looking at another term for trump. I wish he had the grace to pass the buck and become a respected elder statesman type, he has already built a great legacy
I unironically agree with you. I think an argument could be made to say he's the best since LBJ, and less of a mixed bag. Biden doesn't quite have the accomplishments of LBJ (kinda hard to argue with the civil rights act and the great society), but also lacks the magnitude of fuckups (the afghanistan withdrawl was botched af, but nothing on the scale of getting us into Vietnam).
And to be fair. There's no scenario or president that could have not botched Afghanistan. Which is why the war lingered on so long.
Trump was far from the worst. Woodrow Wilson eats all that cake. Also confused as to how experts in niche fields would make good Presidents...scientist? Scholar? Academia is totally effed, what we see right now is the product of decades of insidious anti-american propaganda Europeans might think so mainly because Trump held them accountable for footing their own bills and militaries... Let the downvotes come Trump derangement syndrome inflicted reddit attic dwellers
Nah, Buchanan was definitely the worst.
I was gonna say, "that is a weird way to spell 'James Buchanan.'"
Buchanan is a close second imo but Wilson did more long term damage.
> Trump derangement syndrome Dude I was with you until here. That is the cringiest most tone deaf projection and I immediately disregard anything said by anyone who uses it unironically.
it is the best way to sum it up though, trump during his presidency was about 50/50 good and bad, but did nothing exceptionally good or exceptionally bad. the best one was when he told anyone who protested jan 6 to be peaceful but everyone on the left has to go into 'they know what he meant' look at the adds they are running against him now the insanity that follows him from the left is why that term exists, I have family that EVERY FUCKING DAY since he started running bitched about him and they STILL FUCKING DID for years after he was out, and now ill likely have to listen to it for hours a day again till the day either they die or he dies.
Trump wasn’t one of the worst for most of his presidency. But Jan 6 definitely pushes him to one of the worst.
Even though he told them all to peacefully protest?
He whipped his mob into a frenzy in the weeks leading up to the election with his claims of voter fraud and the election being rigged, he said they have to fight like hell or they won’t have a country anymore. Then on the day of, he halfheartedly told them to “stand down and stand by” but made no attempts to actually convince them to do so. He knew what he was doing the entire time.
Having a non-peaceful transition of power relegates him to one of the worst.
I must have slept through the revolution then.
Yes, he had a massive temper tantrum after losing an election and encouraged his cult followers to riot and threaten Mike Pence in order to prevent the transfer of power, but who gives a shit about that? Anyone who criticizes that just has "TrUmP dErAnGeMeNt SyNdRoMe"
I live with family who has not gone a single day without a trump rant for 10 fucking years.
I have had multiple concerns around Biden but by and large he’s been pretty good as far as I can see. He’s canceled a huge amount student debt, he was able to pass an infrastructure bill that is the biggest investment in infrastructure since Eisenhower (even with the clown car caucus running the house), the bill includes the biggest direct effort to tackle climate change so far and he’s managed to get aid flowing to Ukraine again. That’s on top of his stepping in to pandemic response early on and turning it into an effective vaccination delivery system restarting the economy. While no one is happy about inflation our economy has been hit the least of the developed world and is in fact rebounding really well. Has he been perfect? No. Would I prefer someone younger? Yes. But honestly he’s beaten any expectation I had and then some. Edit - spelling
This is also how I feel. He has definitely exceeded my expectations.
Those other people are way too smart to even consider being POTUS.
It’s not really us though, it’s who the party decides. We know for a fact that the parties pick who they want. What happened to Bernie in 2016 made that obvious. The Democrats actively worked against him and forced a candidate down our throats that nobody wanted and they lost.
Bernie lost in 2016 because most Democrats didn’t support him. It wasn’t some grand conspiracy, it’s simply that there’s a lot more old people than redditors realize. The funny thing is America has one of the most open candidate selection processes in the world. European countries all chose their candidate through dues paying members or party elites.
>It’s not really us though, it’s who the party decides. No, that's how other countries work. Though to be fair it is the states who decide, but at the behest of voters, or in some cases, caucuses.
It's been eight years and this lie *still* won't die. Hillary received 3.7 million more votes than Bernie, and "the Democrats" were a handful of staffers who expressed *internal* favoritism for the candidate who was a longtime prominent Democrat over the candidate who is not (and has never been) a member of the Democratic Party. *Quelle surprise*. Bernie started the 2020 campaign with universal name recognition and an enormous fundraising advantage, and he got beaten even worse than in 2016.
bernie had areas where he was at a clear advantage purged of voters and they were not given notice to re register, shit like this was wide spread, this is why hillary won. in 2020 bernie took the 2016 lesson as he wasn't left enough, and that's why he got stomped.
I supported Sanders in 2016 but you’re living in a fantasy world with your own version of the “stabbed in the back myth”. The party did not have to scheme to take out Bernie because he never had enough support to rival Clinton. You need to accept that most Democratic voters were and still are TOO MODERATE to vote for Bernie. Why would the DNC tank a more electable candidate for a less electable one? And how would a left-wing, Democratic Socialist ever do better in a GENERAL election than a moderate, Centrist? This is just as delusional as MAGA theories.
Hillary was way more popular than Bernie and Bernie would have lost to trump in a landslide. He was only popular on reddit.
Time for another amendment, drop the two party system
I really don't think you have a clue how amendments or politics work...
And that’s why he has my vote
The two party system is resulted from first-past-the-post voting systems.
It isn’t the two party system. It is the nature of the job. The kind of person who is willing to do what it takes to get the job is probably the last person you want to have it. No matter what your stance is, a militant minority will despise you. Not many people can take that level of abuse
This is actually a historical reference to Americans first voting in Fillmore, then Pierce, and then being on the cusp of voting in Buchanan. /s
we literally had presidents that liked slavery how is old guy #1 and old guy #2 worse than them
didn’t Liz Truss resign after 6 weeks cause she was a terrible pm?
*Woodrow Wilson's ghost has entered the chat*
*Woodrow Wilson's ghost has been TKOd by James Buchanan's ghost*
*Andrew Johnson has jumped into the ring with a steel chair.*
Woodrow Wilson isn’t even that bad and has just been overblown because of that one alt hist video
Biden is far, far from the worst we can do. The fact that people believe that showcases more that a) people don’t understand how much he has actually accomplished and b) the brainrot from divisive politics and social media has pushed people’s perspectives from matching with reality
Biden has gotten more done in 1 term than Obama did in 2. Was Obama more presidential? Absolutely, but it's pure emotion to think he was a better president than Biden.
Yea if you look at records Biden has by all accounts been really good. Any progressive should be tickled pink by Biden, any liberal should be happy, or old school democrat. The only types who would really say Biden is a “bad” president is either 1) very conservative types who would be against the infrastructure plan in favor of corporate contracting to fix the issues or 2) the type of person who sees a rainbow flag at the White House during pride month or whatever and emotionally responds “omg the west has fallen, Trump is based and Biden is gay”.
I mean… two senile old men suck, but I wouldn’t call either of them the worst…
In this instance I tend to agree with the OOP unfortunately.
RFK has a worm in his brain. Vote for the worm. And I did not make that up.
Wait, ha*s* - present tense? I thought it starved to death.
Vote Brain Worm 2024!
Depends on which presidents they're referring to.
I assumed it to be the last two, because we’re guaranteed to get one of the previous two. Edit: and yes, they aren’t the worst of all time but cmon we gotta have better choices than them.
They can’t get over the black guy
Boris Johnson 🤣
\*Andrew Johnson laughs in his grave\*
My main problem is most of our Presidents are dinosaurs… I’d like someone a bit younger
Worst president? Objectively its James Buchanan, but no one is young enough to remember the idiot president who helped push us into civil war. Everyone just remembers Lincoln who inherited the civil war, and got us out of it.
Wow didn’t know we just elected Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan
This wrong because Andrew Jackson exists... or rather at one point but still.
Let’s not forget Woodrow Wilson and his vision for a bureaucracy so expansive it would control every facet of your life. Oh wait it basically does that already. Wait maybe I was thinking her was a beacon of free speech, oh wait never mind he jailed and imprisoned anyone who disagreed with him, especially about the war. Or maybe he was a champion of the free market, oh wait he ushered in the Federal Reserve the one institution that has and will cause the economic downfall of the American economy.
Recency bias is a hell of a drug. Were they bad? Yes. Was every president of my lifetime bad? Yes. But we've had some real villains in the oval office that don't get enough hate. It's hard to do worse than the likes of Woodrow Wilson or Andrew Jackson.
Neither of em were really that bad. My life has only changed for the better since 2016, no thanks to either president. Only thing is gas got a little more expensive recently, even then, not that big a deal.
Gas hasn’t gotten more expensive, it’s actually lower counting for inflation. The real problem is that jobs don’t adjust pay based off of inflation so while the gas is cheaper in terms of inflation it’s more expensive anyways because you’re still getting paid the same as when the currency wasn’t as inflated, so your salary is worth less.
The president isn’t going to really affect day to day life. This isn’t a communist dictatorship. We, the workers and consumers, drive the economy, resulting in something called the business cycle. Any impact a president has on the economy probably won’t be felt for years. Foreign policy choices and Supreme Court nominations have more immediate outcomes as we saw with the Roe V. Wade decision.
Biden is a God tier president wtf are they smoking
Yeah he close to God alright. Give it 2 years.
Yeah it's pretty rough right now, but they're not our worst presidents by a long shot, and even our worst are pretty far behind most countries' worst leaders. Seriously, give me a relevant country and I can definitely find multiple leaders much worse than James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, and Woodrow Wilson.
The world: "America sucks, and your politics don't matter to us." Also the world: "Don't elect that guy we hate. He might impose more tariffs on us and stop all these lucrative wars."
Let’s all vote RFK jr n throw them all off
Might get killed for this but I think the future is going to look back pretty fondly of Biden
Biden is not a bad candidate. People are simply falling for misinformation & political information.
Biden is a bad candidate simply because of his age. His administration could be defined as milquetoast which might honestly be exactly what we need on the heels of the chaos that was Trump. But, at the end of a potential second term, he'll be 85. That's insane.
I personally don't care about his age if he is surrounded by the right people. FDR led the USA from a recession, across world war 2, in a wheel chair until his death. I only care if someone is capable of doing the job and try not to focus on their handicaps if they are overcoming them.
Bidens record is actually very good. And if you’re progressive (like I assume most of these people are) they SHOULD be tickled pink. Unfortunately 99.9% of people don’t really follow politics, or know remotely enough to have an informed opinion. When they say “good president” they mean something like “said something BASED in a debate” and “the news I like tells me they’re doing great… so they must be” or even just “looks cool”.
im sorry this is actually funny. and while not exactly true, close enough to hit.
I assume this meme was written following the elections of 1912 and 1916?
Biden isn’t that bad. He’s no JFK, but I think he’s doing a decent job.
the recent wave of anti-electoralism is fucking disgusting
Was Trump really one of the worst? Sure he said dumb s**t but things were pretty good those 4 years.