Joe Biden doing some heavy lifting in this narrative as a VP and one term president. If anything, Joe Biden and Bill Clinton actually prove this point that anyone can become president, both come from very modest means.
The Bushes, however, are a dysfunctional political dynasty stretching back to senator and investment banker Prescott Bush, George HW’s father, and Samuel Prescott Bush, a steel executive and industrialist, who was HW’s grandfather.
Also, you left out that this is the 3rd election in a row with Trump on the ballot.
“I will have you know I’m a self made man, just like my father and his father before him”
“I will have you know I’m a self made man, just like my millionaire father and his millionaire father before him”
FTFY
That’s the joke, but worse.
You suck, McBain!
You don’t have to be a millionaire to be “self made”. Tons of average joes consider themselves to be. The distinction is relevant.
It is also just one man. No parents, siblings, children, spouses like the Bushs or Clintons. No one is getting all uppity about politicians like Glitch McConnell having decades in the senate.
I think a lot of us are actually uppity about that
Also who says “anyone can become president”? Liars and the gullible, I guess
Anyone can run for president, but corpo media will decide who can succeed :(
The whole thing is heavy lifting. Clinton and Bush havent been a thing for 20 years. Running and losing doesn’t count.
Honestly this is sort of ridiculous.
- Biden is a Washington insider now, but that’s because he had a lifetime to make something of himself. He grew up in the middle class
- I think we can all agree Obama was an outsider without any sort of elaboration
- Bill Clinton grew up dirt poor in a state that basically only makes the news when something stupid happens.
All three had to climb the ladder in a huge way, that simply wouldn’t have been possible in a lot of other countries.
I also feel like Trump embodies the whole “anyone can be president” in his own sort of fucked up way. Trump obviously was born into immense wealth and enjoyed tremendous status, but he was in no way ever considered leadership material by America’s political elite. His election was a complete “wtf” moment and wouldn’t have happened in most countries. In a more rigid system we’d probably have had something like a Hillary Clinton v Jeb Bush election, which strictly speaking would have been better than what we got but also let’s be real we would have all hated it.
I’m not saying America is some pure meritocracy. Bush was a third generation political dynasty member. His opponents were also pretty well connected. It’s just that he’s only one of several presidents to get elected in the past 30 years.
Something about him still winning despite losing the popular vote should’ve been an eye opening moment, but I guess they didn’t care when it happened with Al Gore either
I was in college when this happened. Absolutely nobody thought he could win until Florida was called. Trump himself seemed mildly surprised in his victory speech.
A couple thoughts…
It is talking about President, but counts years where those names appeared on the ballot as Vice President too.
It also ignores that a lot of other people have also been on the ballots over the years.
Also, some of this is natural. When a president has an 8 year run, the Vice President is a natural person to take a shot at the presidency, so it’s perfectly normal to have 12 years where the same person is on the ballot as VP then P. It’s natural for this to happen more than once in a row. Whether we’ve had this long of a streak or not, I don’t know, but I suspect we might have.
This showerthought covers 44 years. The Bushs and Clintons double dipping is 12 years worth of ballots, but the other 32 years were natural. Hilary lost when she tried to double dip so I would argue the 8 years of Dubya are really the only anomaly in actual presidencies as far as “dynasties” are concerned.
Also this “shower thought” is word for word one of the popular posts on lemmy from a few weeks ago.
OP is obviously very eco-concious… Instead of using an LLM to generate crap (and burn half the Amazon while doing it) they just recycled
And Hillary is a Clinton through marriage so technically it shouldn’t count.
This isn’t a shower thought, it’s half baked both sides propaganda. It only works if you include VP slots and completely ignore the fact that Obama/Biden was an outsider ticket.
It not a ‘both sides’ thing. It’s a ‘fuck the rich’ thing.
INB4 people try to tell me that their rich politicians are good actually.
So then you’d be interested in looking up the background of Biden, Obama, and the Clintons. They’re hardly from the elite. The stupid truth is we’ve destroyed social mobility so badly we can’t conceive of a USA with good schooling and cheap college so that making it on your merit really is a thing. But their entire generation benefited from heavily subsidized college and schools. I’m not going to say they were good politicians but this idea of a dynasty on the left really doesn’t track. Biden, and both Clintons worked in politics for decades before they got a shot at the highest office.
Bush on the other hand comes from a family of political elite that goes back to a World War 2 era pro fascist senator that tried (badly) to mount a coup against FDR. He spent Vietnam barely keeping his slot as a national guard pilot who never deployed because he was a bad pilot and a worse officer. Then he worked family jobs until he was airdropped in by the GOP to run for governor of Texas. And from there he ran for the Presidency.
But yeah tell me more about this attempt to conflate people who had to work their ass off with a trust fund party boy that got funded.
And Trump is the very definition of rich elite.
Yup
I think a huge misstep of the original argument is “career politician bad”. Biden is seen as a one man “dynasty” because he has ~50 years of experience. Obama and Clinton are only seen as dynasties because they had active First Ladies so there’s a “power couple” image.
I think it’s fair to say there are political dynasties- the Kennedy’s, the Bushes- and it makes sense that they will tend to happen naturally. If my dad was president of the United States, at the age of 12 I’d have a much better understanding of the Washington Political Machine than most people.
Usually when we think of “Outsider” candidates, we think of people who have 0 government experience who enter the arena. Notice that Trump isn’t mentioned in the post. Ofc Trump was as embedded in the Washington establishment as much as anyone else when he ran in 2016, having ran for president previously and using the ol’ “wine and dine” method generously to help him get a leg up in business.
I personally don’t think it’s a bad thing to have a ton of experience in getting a lot of people to do one thing together- oddly enough that’s an INCREDIBLY HARD THING TO DO. We need all sorts of people in politics in order to represent the people accurately. The Tim Walz’s and AOC’s in congress brought so much to the table- they know what it’s like to grow up as the everyday American. The Biden’s and the Pelosi’s have been removed from that world for so long it’s understandable they might not have the most accurate picture of modern American life, but they do have the deep understanding for how to get things done. In Biden’s single term, he has outpaced most presidents in getting legislation passed. I remember being optimistic in 2020 hoping Biden would be a modern LBJ, and by gum I think ol’ Joe did it.
Carter, Clinton, Obama, and Biden did not come from riches.
I don’t think it’s really fair to include “Biden” alongside “Bush” and “Clinton” and NOT include “Harris”, just to make a point. The point is the Bush and Clinton represent two people each, a dynasty as it were. Biden is just one person. You might as well add then Harris since she has served as VP just like Biden, or Trump but I get the feeling this is intended to somehow make the statement that Harris represents a new breed of politics, a break from the old. That may or may not be true, but it doesn’t hinge on this meaningless metric.
“since 1981 there has never been an election without a Bush, Clinton, Biden, Trump or Harris.”
I think the point of the post is merely to point out that in four decades, at least one of three families has been in each election. Statistically, if candidates were freely chosen at random from the top 0.01% of Americans, that would be insanely improbable. It’s pointing out that presidential elections aren’t the American people picking the best person in the country for the job. There are influential factors other than who-would-be-best at face value. In other words, the people aren’t given a list of American citizens with their characteristics and asked to chose the one they would prefer. The people are told to pick one from a very select few that have already been approved. Whether those candidates have climbed a ladder or been given a silver spoon is irrelevant to that point. The matter is that elections aren’t entirely free in spirit.
It also serves as an argument against social mobility and merit in the USA. Dynasties are government systems in which the ultimate power stays within a family. We’re told that it’s because of whatever bs reason with the family being divine or superior, but the reality is that when the ultimate power rests within the same family, the people that benefit from that also stay in power. It’s a system that maintains those on top on top. Having presidential dynasties shows that social mobility in the USA isn’t as fluid as commonly thought.
I know what the point was, but Biden is included as if he is part of some political dynasty. He was VP. A very normal situation, 19 out of 49 have run for president. It’s like being promoted through the ranks until you get to the top. Isn’t that kinda normal in most careers?
So why is it “insanely improbable” for Biden, someone who qualified for the job over decades, to be “chosen” as opposed to anyone else.
We aren’t talking here about how much cash it requires to become president which raises the bar above most people’s head.we are taking about political dynasties.
So I say again, including Biden as if it is some statistical anomaly or stranglehold on politics is disingenuous, especially if you exclude Harris.
Her situation of running for president after serving as vice president is EXACTLY the same as Biden unless you want to split hairs and say he served 2 terms and her only 1. So if you want to say Biden was given a silver spoon, so was she.
Biden is not a dynasty. But if you insist he is, so is Harris, and that makes the original premise flawed.
Not really.
The only reason there is one fewer name than expected is because of Bush, which had the father appear on the ballot four times and the son appear twice. The Bush family was a very old school political dynastic family.
The only outlier on the Democratic side is Hillary Clinton in 2016. She used her husband’s political career to help her, but they were a self made political family. You also have the case where Biden could have been on the 2016 ballot and there would be no change in the number of names.
That 11x election cycles with at least one of three last names on the ballot is only a record tie.
We had John Adams x4, George Clinton x2, DeWitt Clinton x1, James Monroe x2, John Quincy Adams x2 also a total of 11x.
Roosevelts were on the ballot 8x election cycles but the gap years screwed them. And they were close to uniting with the Nixon 5x streak also with some gaps. And then after one cycle right into the Bush Sr streak. If things shook out just a bit different there was a 19x streak in the cards.
No George Clinton was in parliament.
It pays to have an electorate that can’t think their way past a brand name.
Anyone that can be funded endlessly by a corporate and capitalist elite can become president.
If billionaires and corporate leaders decided tomorrow that you should be president, they could dump millions of dollars and a few years worth of hired professional help and they’d make you president.
It’s not the will of an individual person or a personality that makes a president … it’s whichever group of wealthy backers who decide to fund the campaign … after that it is j just a matter of how much money they are willing to spend to make it happen.
That’s what Michael Bloomberg thought and he was wrong, too.
Overall kind of a lot of turnover actually…only one Clinton became president, and he was never VP. The other Clinton got beat out by the first black president for the nomination in 08, and then she lost to some guy who had zero political experience.
If anything, we learned that being black doesn’t exclude you from being president, being female doesn’t exclude you from being a major party nominee, and you can still become president even running for office for the first time at age 70. The promise of the statement is more true than ever.
“Anyone can become President.”
Me, thinking about Abraham Lincoln or Bill Clinton: “Yeah!”
“Anyone can become President.”
Me, aware of Donald Trump, with Tucker Carlson waiting in the wings: “Oh no!”
Not a shower thought, we all saw the headline last month. And the Biden thing doesn’t make any sense anyway, he’s one person.
Didn’t say anyone could be the president of the US. There’s a whole world out there
And soon, I shall be President of the World
I don’t think you’re correct.
- Richard Nixon (1969–1974)
- Gerald Ford (1974–1977)
- Jimmy Carter (1977–1981)
- Ronald Reagan (1981–1989)
- George H. W. Bush (1989–1993)
- Bill Clinton (1993–2001)
- George W. Bush (2001–2009)
- Barack Obama (2009–2017)
- Donald Trump (2017–2021)
- Joe Biden (2021–present)
On the ballot, not elected.
True, although them not being on the ballot would in turn also violate the “anyone can become president”-thing, no?
Obama’s running mate was Joe Biden, putting him on the ballot. 2016 had a Clinton on the ballot. Reagan’s VP was HW Bush.
The more accurate way to phrase this would be “This is the first election since 1980 to not have a Biden, Bush. or Clinton on the ballot.”
Assuming VPs are are included you do have to go back to the 1976 election to find a Bush, Clinton, and Biden free ballot
- Jimmy Carter (1977–1981)
- Ronald Reagan (1981–1989) (George HW was VP )
- George H. W. Bush (1989–1993)
- Bill Clinton (1993–2001)
- George W. Bush (2001–2009)
- Barack Obama (2009–2017) (Joe was VP)
- Donald Trump (2017–2021) (Hillary was on the ballot)
- Joe Biden (2021–present)
Nominees:
- 2024 Kamala Harris Donald Trump
- 2020 Joe Biden Donald Trump
- 2016 Donald Trump Hillary Clinton
- 2012 Barack Obama Mitt Romney
- 2008 Barack Obama John McCain
- 2004 George W. Bush John Kerry
- 2000 George W. Bush Al Gore
- 1996 Bill Clinton Bob Dole Ross Perot
- 1992 Bill Clinton George H. W. Bush Ross Perot
- 1988 George H. W. Bush Michael Dukakis
- 1984 Ronald Reagan Walter Mondale
- 1980 Ronald Reagan Jimmy Carter John B. Anderson
- 1976 Jimmy Carter Gerald Ford
- 1972 Richard Nixon George McGovern
I think he’s including primaries and VP candidates.
Nixon, Ford, Carter were 70’s, not after the 70’s. Reagan’s VP was a Bush, wasn’t it? Maybe they’re also including the primary ballots to count Clinton in 2008? But I don’t think she ran in 2012…
Biden was Obama’s VP.
Oh yeah… no clue how I forgot about that. Guess I was specifically thinking about Clinton/Bush because they’re the ones who’ve had multiple in the family on the ballot.
That’s just depressing.
They say “anyone can become president”,
Anyone that believes that probably also believes that a glass slipper can magically turn you into royalty.
Yeah cuz Barry came from.such political royalty
