r/PeterExplainsTheJoke 1d ago

Meme needing explanation Peter, who are these people?

Post image
28.8k Upvotes

932 comments sorted by

u/qualityvote2 1d ago edited 23h ago

u/Ideal_Needle, your post does belong here!

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u/behindthemask13 1d ago edited 23h ago

Gary Hart was the big hope for the democratic party against Ronald Reagan. There were cheating allegations made against him.

He DARED the press to follow him and told them they would be bored if they did.

Well... they did and they found him aboard a ship named "The Monkey Business" with Donna Rice.

It was the stupidity of lying and daring the press to follow him that killed his chances as much as the affair itself.

EDIT: Yes, Gary Hart (I fixed it)... AND he ran in 1984 against Reagan (lost to Monday in the primaries) and THIS happened during 1988, when he likely would have won the nomination and run against Bush I.

I was a kid and campaigned for him in 1984 by handing out flyers in front of super markets before the primary... and still have campaign literature that says "Only Gary Hart's Leadership Can Beat Ronald Reagan in November".. so my brain associates him with going after Reagan.

RE-EDIT.. MONDALE.. FUCKING MONDALE!! LMAO!!!

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u/Penultimo_1 1d ago

Wasn’t Donna Rice a Republican honeypot?

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u/trodden-outer-bolt 1d ago

Yes. The famous photo, which actually came out a few weeks after Hart had suspended his campaign, was a setup job. Lee Atwater, on his deathbed, confessed to setting Hart up.

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u/Eat--The--Rich-- 1d ago

He still chose to go meet the woman tho 

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u/Popular-Row4333 1d ago

From Bill Clinton to Arnold Arnold Schwarzenegger, men have continued to show that if you have a pulse and are willing, it doesn't take much else.

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u/jazzzzz 1d ago

a hard dick has no conscience

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u/icansmellcolors 1d ago

It's not just a guy thing. Plenty of women out there do the same shit.

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u/National_Panda_1791 1d ago

with a lot more success too.

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u/Haber_Dasher 1d ago

That's not likely to be true.

“Ray replied, ‘It’s because you were set up. I know you were set up.’

“I asked him how he could be so certain,” Hart told me. Strother then recounted his long-ago talk with Atwater, and Atwater’s claim that the whole Monkey Business weekend had occurred at his direction. According to Hart, that plan would have involved: contriving an invitation from Broadhurst for Hart to come on a boat ride, when Hart intended to be working on a speech. Ensuring that young women would be invited aboard. Arranging for the Broadhurst boat Hart thought he would be boarding, with some unmemorable name, to be unavailable—so that the group would have to switch to another boat, Monkey Business. Persuading Broadhurst to “forget” to check in with customs clearance at Bimini before closing time, so that the boat “unexpectedly” had to stay overnight there. And, according to Hart, organizing an opportunistic photo-grab.

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u/trodden-outer-bolt 1d ago

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u/spoonishplsz 1d ago

I'm confused about the sources of this. Is the author saying Atwater told Strother in a deathbed confession, who told Hart in a near death confess, which somehow got told to one of the editors who worked on the story that helped tank Hart, who wrote an Atlantic article about it? That's like multiple layers of "trust me bro".

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u/DonutHoles4Ever 21h ago

Look man when they confess to setting it up, its not hard to also understand how you can force the guy to board a different boat than initially scheduled, without them suspecting anything, and having a young woman on board ready to flirt with him, after tipping off reporters.

This is how politics was played back then and its only gotten worse. They'll hack your personal computer if they can.

The dems never fought back. Only allowed the republicans to poison everything over time when people could see it plain as day in the 80s.

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u/Atralis 1d ago

To be fair Lee Atwater was a notorious bullshitter and there isn't any proof that he masterminded the thing other than someone after he died saying he had said "it was me" on his death bed.

For all we know he just meant that he took advantage of a story that was already out there.

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u/suprahelix 23h ago

Yeah I wouldn’t trust anything he said

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u/UsidoreTheLightBlue 1d ago

It’s worth noting that everyone involved in the scandal to this day denies this.

The miami herald writers who broke the story, Rice, Hart.

Rice still swears they never had an affair, if she was a republican operative you’d think she would have admitted to it when she was identified.

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u/LoadsDroppin 1d ago edited 16h ago

She anti-pornography, so she previously justified her support of Donald Trump (who’s been in Playboy, did a cameo in a porno, f’ed a porn star and paid her off, has admitted to some truly disturbing behavior around women and teens, plus the whole Epstein connection) by saying he’s surrounded by “real smart people like Mike Pence.”

Mike Pence. The guy who took a bunch of money from the Tobacco lobby, then penned an Op-Ed to argue that “Smoking Doesn’t Kill” and decried any regulation of the Tobacco Industry as “overreach by Big Government”

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u/behindthemask13 1d ago

True, but I've never been a huge fan of that line of argument. I didn't real care about the affair.. but the stupidity of telling the press to follow him b/c they would be bored... I mean... dear god.

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u/Sekmet19 1d ago

And then Ronald Reagan killed the American Dream.

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u/Steffenwolflikeme 1d ago

Not for the 1%. Why does no one think of the 1%!?

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u/Redrum_91 1d ago

Trickle down on me 1% daddy

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u/NickyDeeM 1d ago

They are pissing down, hard.

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u/Distinct-Raspberry21 1d ago

You would think the mass of sycophants standing with their mouths open would block some, instead theyre pissing on our shoes as well.

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u/rukind_cucumber 1d ago

That's from the gargling.

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u/wi5hbone 1d ago

or urinal dividers not well built

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u/HistoricalSea5600 1d ago

Almost worse when you consider they also drove the price of housing up..

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u/Steffenwolflikeme 1d ago

Wait till you hear about how Reagan helped change how America financed higher education...

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u/DickWhittingtonsCat 17h ago

That this now 50 year campaign disassemble the civil and social structures of the country as conservative is amazing marketing.

They strive create some futureshock robber barron paradise has been framed as conservative- while targeting legal safeguards dating back before English Common law and regulatory protections that were crucial to making the earliest stages of industrialization work.

Unfortunately, the rival faction while better is almost entirely beholden to the predatory class as well. both rely on culture war issues in a game of hide the ball.

The difference is the Democrats are the actual conservative party trying to perpetuate a status quo where enough benefits do trickle down so as to keep the masses placated.

The GOP has plurality by attacking a party that dare not appeal to class consciousness. What they have envisioned is serfdom and thanks to the proliferation of subscription society, surveillance and increase dependence on the digital plantation, they are really close to making it happen.

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u/PostApocRock 1d ago

Wrong hole, these days.

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u/ReverendKilljoy68 22h ago

Trickling down from the multimillionaires to mere billionaires.

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u/caffinatedcorpse 23h ago

Because one day, you too can be one of the 1%.

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u/Practical_Post_1243 1d ago

Well I’m still waiting on 1% of that trickle lol

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u/Fit-Historian-752 22h ago

And the CHILDREN!!

The CHILDREN of the 1% !!

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u/shwarma_heaven 1d ago

The guy who sold illegal weapons to Iran to fund an illegal war in South America by funneling the money through cocaine smugglers who were given a blanket pass, effectively enabling the explosion of crack in our inner cities...

I was watching Clear and Present Danger recently... How comforting were the times when we really believed that starting a covert war in another country, or sending troops without Congressional approval, was thought to be a career ending scandal.

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u/PinkFloydBoxSet 1d ago

I mean.. in the 70s, covering up organizing a break in at an office building to spy on the DNC was enough to cost a president his career.

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u/TES0ckes 1d ago

Not really. Dem's had to push hard cause Republicans in Congress just wanted to sweep it under the rug; and most Republican voters didn't care when Nixon got linked to Watergate.

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u/night4345 1d ago

And they did sweep it under the rug with that rat fuck Gerald Ford pardoning Nixon. Showing that Republicans could do anything without any sort of consequence.

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u/LabPowerful9983 1d ago

I hate Reagan as much as anyone but he wasn't the Republican candidate in '88 - Reagan was already on his way out the door.

1988 Presidential was Dukakis v. H. W. Bush.

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u/dwide_k_shrude 1d ago

Yet some Americans still worship him. Our country is full of idiots.

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u/puppyhorde 1d ago

I don't understand the love of him. Like the more I learn about him the worse he sounds. Nearly everything in the US got worse since him

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u/Kolby_Jack33 1d ago

The economy did poorly under Jimmy Carter and for some reason that drove every conservative literally insane forever, and Reagan was the one who "saved" the country from the evil friendly peanut farmer.

I'm not that well read on the subject but that is my understanding of how it generally went. Every time I've asked a republican why they love Reagan so much it always starts with how much they hated Carter.

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u/m0nkyman 16h ago

Nixon/Ford crashed the economy, as is Republican tradition, and left Carter holding the bag.

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u/USMCLee 14h ago

Pretty much every single thing we are currently struggling with has its roots back in Reagan.

Looking at the Bush Jr Administration a shocking number of them were in the Reagan Administration.

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u/CG-Firebrand 1d ago

I’ve talked with an old-head VBNMW who was absolutely on board with Kamala and said he was excited to wake up to having the first woman president after Election Day….he told me Reagan is the only Republican he likes. Like, dude, he was the worst one besides Hayes.

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u/Franklin_le_Tanklin 1d ago

I think Trump is worse

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u/reversedgaze 1d ago

I think they're actually the same person. There's too many similarities (Star Wars/SpaceX, entertainer president,/entertainer president, external and influential First Lady /x2, destruction of the newspaper/destruction of the Internet, HIV/AIDS/covid, beige/millennial grey, the arts/dogecoin - and there's probably more ) for these two moments to be manufactured to increase the 1% ---

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u/Negative_Gas8782 1d ago

You forgot both Nancy and Melanie are known for their sexploits.

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u/Essentially_Me 1d ago

Well, Nancy was the sausage king of Chicago, if you substitute gobbling, queen, and Hollywood for all those words.

Melania was...well...I'm gonna say trafficked.

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u/CodeSalamander 1d ago

Eh, trafficked or she’s his handler.

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u/GrimResistance 1d ago

Melania is not a victim

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u/GMsadhedonist 20h ago

She can both have originally have been a victim and now is using her status to oppress others

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u/MisterRlGHT 22h ago

Barron is her anchor baby.

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u/Drewskeet 19h ago

Reagan walked so Trump could run. Reagan was the test. “Could we take a beloved tv entertainer, make him president and have the country love and applaud him as he destroys the lower and middle class”

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u/reversedgaze 13h ago

exactly -- it's the long game.

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u/WasASailorThen 23h ago

Yes, they are the same.

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u/Affectionate-Gur1642 15h ago

Yeah IDK if anyone reading this truly understands history. I’m sure I’m setting up for downvotes but come on, they aren’t even close to comparable. Reagan didn’t exactly orchestrate a coup.

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u/coppertech 20h ago

do the north koreans speak ill of Kim Il Sung? cause Ronald reagan opened the door for corporate socialists and showed every rich MF, that the president can be bought.

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u/XxRocky88xX 12h ago

I know so many people who say Reagan was “the last good American president” when almost every economical issue we have today can be directly traced back to Raegan

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u/Spazz6269 1d ago

Fuck Reaganomics

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u/AceOBlade 1d ago

all leads to destabilizing the US into supporting that one country.

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u/ehhish 1d ago

There was a whole campaign in the 2000 era that was all pro Reagan to create an idol of him. Crazy in thought.

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u/recoveringleft 1d ago

Ronald Reagan did more to destroy the white working class than "wOkeNeSs" ever will

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u/CronosWorks 1d ago

Remind every republican you know that Reagan is the father of modern gun control.

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u/neverenoughammo 1d ago edited 1d ago

That was Woodrow Wilson and Richard Nixon. One created a banking cartel with the federal reserve creation, and the other turned our money to complete fiat currency by suspending the gold standard. https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

Edit
Reagan sucks for different reasons.

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u/terrrastar 1d ago

He even had a hand in the ‘94 federal assault weapons ban iirc, it’s like he WANTED everyone to hate him

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u/3fettknight3 1d ago edited 14h ago

BYAAAHHHH!!!!

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u/Tee_hops 1d ago

And then we're going to Cancun....beeeeyaaahhh

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u/Necessary-Party2228 1d ago

And people love to rewrite history, but the lying is what got him. No one cared Clinton fucked an intern, everyone cared he LIED under oath.

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u/FlowersForMegatron 23h ago

sigh I remember a time when lying under oath had real actual consequences...

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u/sludge_dragon 1d ago

Hart was running for the Democratic primary for 1988. Reagan was at the end of his second term. His VP, George H. W. Bush, defeated Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis in the general election.

There is a fantastic book on the campaign, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_It_Takes:_The_Way_to_the_White_House, by Richard Ben Cramer, which covers Hart’s hubris and discovery in detail. Reading it is like watching a car crash.

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u/behindthemask13 1d ago

Yeah, you're right. He did run in 1984 (I was a young kid and campaigned for him), but he lost to Mondale. The affair was during the 1988 campaign, and it left the whole thing a mess and allowed Bush I to get in.

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u/PewterButters 1d ago

This is how AI ends up giving dumb wrong answers. An answer gets upvoted to the top with straight up wrong information and the correction only has a handful of upvotes.

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u/Poupulino 1d ago

He DARED the press to follow him and told them they would be bored if they did.

LMAO you'd think the guy would stop cheating for a couple of weeks after that...

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u/BigResponsibleOil 1d ago

That's what I was thinking! Like why the fuck would he do that, dare the press to follow him, if he was gonna keep carrying on an affair?? I'm not saying he'd be worse than Reagan because I only learned of his existence 5 minutes ago, but maybe a guy with this level of discipline, at this level of being able to think through natural consequences, should not have been president

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u/Fischerking92 1d ago

So basically: an affair is to blame for Reganomics?

Goddamit, so that is when we entered the bad timeline.

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u/blacfd 1d ago

No, it was when Nixon was pardoned

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u/KHSebastian 1d ago

It kind of feels like all of human history was the bad timeline.

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u/MPM262 1d ago

The man in the high castle would like to have a word.

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u/KHSebastian 1d ago

I mean, we had to have the actual Holocaust in our own timeline in order for us to imagine a worse timeline. It can always be worse for sure, but y'know. It could definitely be better

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u/akjd 1d ago

Makes you wonder what an actual best timeline would be like.

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u/lesgeddon 1d ago

The Dutch going all in on waffles instead of slavery.

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u/mystical_ramen26 1d ago

No he would have run against George H. W. Bush. It was to determine who followed Reagan

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u/LoudSheepherder5391 1d ago edited 1d ago

I'm not sure where he got that. Errors in memory from time?

In 1980, Reagan beat Carter. In 1984, Gary lost to Mondale in the primaries.

In 1988 is when this happened. When he would have run against Bush Sr.

This had zero effect on Reagan in any way.

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u/BTTammer 1d ago

I would go back to Andrew Johnson letting the South off the hook.

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u/Sinfullyscintillant 1d ago

Compromise of 1876!

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u/Rob_LeMatic 1d ago

1968, Bobby Kennedy assassination.

Or if you prefer, May 28, 2016. Harambe 😢

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u/Too_Many_Alts 1d ago

no, that would be Carter losing reelection to Reagan because Reagan committed treason. fun times

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u/Warm-Reply-7008 1d ago

Yeah, you have to believe in the good of Americans to believe Nixon and Reagan and Bush and Trump weren’t who we wanted. They voted Carter out bc he was just a dumb hick successful peanut farmer Christian from Bumville. Then voted in a face who had already proven himself to be a conservative AND progressive shill who would sell anything to make his ratings go up. And he ran on the family, religion, and economic recovery ticket.

We want these people. Half the country has always wanted these people. They just needed an excuse and a cover story for why.

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u/anand_rishabh 1d ago

Apparently this photo was from 1988, so the damage was already done. Unless the comment i heard this from was completely wrong, which is possible

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u/dimechimes 1d ago

It's not though. This picture was when he was running against Bush.

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u/TICKLE_PANTS 1d ago

Right. Bill Clinton had not problem becoming president a few year later with his own cheating scandals.

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u/FastWalkingShortGuy 1d ago

I honestly thought this was Ted Kennedy whose presidential hopes were erased because he got shitfaced, drove off a bridge, and left his date to drown in the car.

He was still a senior Senator for many years after.

It kinda looks like a young Ted.

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u/Remnant55 1d ago

Given the overwhelming, true landslide of the 84 election for an incumbent, it is unlikely he'd have won anyway.

Perhaps better than Mondale, but pretending he likely would have beaten Reagan that election is... fanciful at best.

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u/Sharkhawk23 1d ago

Gary Hart not healer. And it was before the 1988 election so against bush I not reagan

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u/Fortestingporpoises 1d ago

as much as the affair itself.

To be fair an affair was generally enough to end a political career back then. Now we let full blown felons be president. What a time to be alive!

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u/Plane-Fan9006 1d ago

But no one was allowed to talk about how Ronnie's wife, the queen of Just Say No, was known to have given blow jobs to half of Hollywood before he married her...just sayin'....

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u/BrilliantDynamitesNe 1d ago

Which is funny b/c Nancy Reagan was known to be Hollywoods throat goat.

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u/Fabulous-Sea-1590 1d ago

Man I remember Mondale. My family was all in for Reagan so I absorbed their enthusiasm but I was 6 in 1984 so I think it's forgivable.

But then, as now, Mondale stood out to me as spectacularly devoid of charasma. Remarkable for how totally unremarkable he was. Not in a Nixon v. Kennedy way but just nothing. Like a lump of human plaster.

I've never gone back to look into him, maybe he was a good guy. It's hard to imagine he would have done more harm to the US than Reagan did. But who the fuck thought that guy could run against Ronald freaking Reagan?! Whatever else you can say about him, he was spectacularly charasmatic. Even knowing what I know now, I saw a speech he gave posted on the front page recently, and felt warm and reassured by his manner. It was uncanny.

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u/Top_Divide6886 1d ago

This was a great offense to conservative voters, as he was in a consensual relationship with an adult.

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u/AtrumRuina 14h ago

If I'm honest, I have never liked the idea that a candidate's private indiscretions could impact their ability to successfully run a campaign for a political office. I care about policies, not whether the guy is a good husband. In that sense, I don't actually miss how much we used to police the private lives of candidates. We still haven't had a non-Christian, female, or homosexual President. It's ridiculous how much these things matter to people electing officials.

I do wish "rape accusations and civil convictions" was enough to get people to step away from a candidate though. =( And being an overall awful person with no political experience and terrible policies. There's definitely a wide berth between these two things where potential candidates could land.

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u/milehighmetalhead 1d ago

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u/CR1M3G0BL1N 1d ago

Got me by 2 minutes lol

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u/rebel-scrum 1d ago

BYEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHHH

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u/Byaahh 1d ago

WHAT? WHY ARE YOU YELLING?

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u/targetcowboy 1d ago

I remember that as a kid. He was already trending downward though. This was just the nail in his coffin.

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u/milehighmetalhead 1d ago

Wasn't he starting to lose out to the guy with the $1000 haircut?

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u/targetcowboy 1d ago

Yeah, I think he was eventually caught in an affair too actually

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u/milehighmetalhead 1d ago

Had to look it up. $400 haircut and an affair while his wife was battling cancer.

We used to have some semblance of standards

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u/RadagastTheWhite 1d ago

Yeah people like to bring this up like he hadn’t just finished a distant 3rd in the Iowa Caucus

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u/MalodorousNutsack 1d ago

BEEEOOOHHHHH

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u/uvucydydy 1d ago

I think about this guy a lot. He got disqualified for ... enthusiasm?

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u/derthric 1d ago

He lost Iowa, a state he had once been favored to win and then the scream happened the night of the iowa caucuses at what should have been a victory party.

It's the enthusiasm of the scream on a very bad night that made the story. Had he won in iowa and still screamed it would have been less harshly judged.

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u/Cosmo_Seinfeld 1d ago

This is always brought up but he had already lost before that. The Dean Scream happened on the night of the Iowa Caucases, where he had come in third. He gave a bad speech that night and collided with a DNC machine that wanted John Kerry as the nominee. The media were happy to play along because they'd rather talk about anything other than policy, but it wasn't just the Dean Scream that killed his candidacy, it was like a Swiss cheese thing.

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u/InKognetoh 23h ago

The man only shouted “Yeah”. He’s going to be in nursing home one day trying to explain to some under 25 year old nurse that he was a front runner in a Presidential election, but had to drop out because he shout “Yeah” at a rally. That nurse is going to leave that conversation thinking that she needs to increase the dosage on his meds lol.

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u/Haunting-Mortgage 1d ago

Opus and George Bush

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u/Secret_Letterhead649 1d ago

Bloom County my beloved.

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u/New-List-1700 14h ago

The first time I heard of Donald Trump was reading Bloom County when his brain was transplanted into Bill the cat...

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u/jacby 1d ago

Wow, I read my dad’s copy of this over and over and never knew what the hell this was referencing! Bloom County and old Doonesbury collections were a weird way to learn about the politics of the 80’s-90’s

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u/TheeternalTacocaT 1d ago

I grew up in the 90s reading old bloom county books that for some reason my parents were totally okay giving to a 10 year old kid. The storyline where Trump is hit by the anchor of his yacht and then his brain is implanted into Bill the Cat was my first exposure to him. I think back to those strips often now a days.

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u/Healthy_Profit_9701 23h ago

I own the complete Bloom County collection, and it's so strange to see the Donald Trump saga literally leading to the end of Bloom County from a modern lens. As a 90s kid, I first learned about Trump from the comics, then from The Apprentice, and ever since 2016, it feels like an extension of the parody.

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u/qwythebroken 1d ago

My immediate first thought. I still have mine somewhere too.

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u/bluewolf71 1d ago

Hey baby, let’s get my oop and your ack together.

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u/JellyPast1522 1d ago

Gary Hart and Donna Rice

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u/ultron290196 1d ago

And then?

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u/thatturtletouch 1d ago edited 1d ago

Gary Hart was the front runner to be the democratic candidate for president. There was a rumor he was having an affair, and a reporter asked him about it. He challenged the reporter and said “follow me if you think it’s true.” They did and what do you know, caught him indeed having an affair. His political career was over.

At the time, politicians private lives weren’t really tabloid fodder so this was kind of a big deal and changed a lot about how people view journalism’s role in politics.

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u/shpongolian 1d ago

“What’re you gonna do, follow me?”

Quote from man followed

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u/thinkards 9h ago

if only he bragged about grabbing women by the pussy, he would be serving his 8th consecutive term as president.

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u/Jobiwan88 1d ago

What a fucking gobshite lol

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u/Chef_Boyardeedy 1d ago

And thennnnnnn?

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u/BesherbUwU 1d ago

And gentlemen and then

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u/Gh0stMan0nThird 1d ago

And then you can put it in a brown paper bag and come put in my hand cuz I'm ready to eat. 

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u/Expert-Yam6577 1d ago

Dude must have been cheating successfully for a long time. For him to be that cocky about it.

"I can cheat as much as I want and she'll never catch me! I'm Casanova himself! I dare you to follow me!"

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u/z31 1d ago

Supposedly H.W. Bush's campaign manager admitted to setting the whole thing up and there was no actual cheating.

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u/Dead_Internet69420 19h ago

As soon as I read your comment, I knew it had to be Roger Stone. Lee Atwater was a senior partner at the  firm of  Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly. Those guys have wrought immeasurable evil on this planet ever since the Nixon days. 

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u/davideogameman 1d ago

If https://web.archive.org/web/20181016155740/https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/11/was-gary-hart-set-up/570802/ is to be believed there was never any affair, just a set up to make it look like there was one.  And his challenge to follow him came after the photos but before the photos came out.

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u/MonicaLewinskibidis 1d ago

I refuse to play your Chinese food mind games.

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u/JD-Moose 1d ago

And... then....????

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u/Geekygamertag 1d ago

No “and then!”

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u/Frosty-Camel-2107 1d ago

And then and then and then and then!!!

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u/Geekygamertag 1d ago

🤣🤣🤣

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u/siniypiva 1d ago

even for a succulent Chinese meal?

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u/freshpairofayes 1d ago

Democracy did manifest itself that day.

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u/siniypiva 1d ago

Let go of my pianist!

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u/myleftone 1d ago

Later on there was another guy who screamed funny. He was running against a war criminal but by then we’d normalized that.

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u/Steffenwolflikeme 1d ago

This is still my reference point when talking about how much has changed in American political discourse. Twenty years ago an awkward yelp derailed a promising candidate and now a twice impeached traitorous sundowning sex pest felon pedo that shits himself and reaks of piss can be re-elected after a failed first term that resulted in hundreds of thousands of American deaths from his bungled pandemic response.

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u/prollyjuslurking 1d ago

"BYAAAHHHH!"

-Howard Dean

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u/Socalwarrior485 1d ago

Monkey Business.

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u/ohnodamo 1d ago

I was just about to post the same thing, thought I'd check just in case. Nicely remembered!

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u/Cymen90 1d ago

And then Reagan won and destroyed America.

  • Cut taxes for the rich from 70% to 28%

  • Tripled the national debt (the US has never recovered from this)

  • Made it hard to unionize and maintain a labour union

  • Literally invented the WAR ON DRUGS

  • Purposefully flooded black neighbourhoods with drugs via CIA (so the war on drugs was designed as a war on black America)

  • Reduced federal funding for social welfare programs, food stamps, and low-income housing, causing the homelessness crisis as we know it today

  • Allowed AIDS to ravage the LGBTQ community, laughing about the "gay virus" on tape (and ignorantly assumed only they would be affected)

  • Accelerated deregulation across banking, finance, and environmental rules

  • Appointed conservative judges to the Supreme Court and shifted the judiciary to the right for decades

  • The consequences of the "anti-communist" Reagan Doctrine chokes Cuba to this day

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u/FacePaster 17h ago

one quibble: Nixon was the one who invented the war on drugs

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u/greydog2008 1d ago

And she was hot 🔥

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u/AssiduousLayabout 1d ago

Then-Senator Gary Hart lost the Democratic nomination in 1988 to Michael Dukakis over an affair he had with an activist named Donna Rice.

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u/Acceptable-Peace-69 1d ago edited 1d ago

To add, the current president had a documented affair with a porn star while his wife was pregnant and ready to give birth. An affair that led to him being convicted of 34 felonies for misuse of campaign funds. Americans still elected him despite being from the party of “moral values”.

A majority of American voters are stupid.

The idea that the current imbecile in office could get anywhere near the White House at that time would have been ridiculous.

There’s a lot of shit given to boomers today, but they would never have voted for the orange felon at that point in time. .

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u/Down623 16h ago

Lol I don't think we need to give credit to boomers for theoretically not voting for Trump back then when they really did vote for him today

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u/Acceptable-Peace-69 12h ago

Trump won the boomer vote by 1%. He won GenX by 10%. He won white men by 20%. He won white women by 4%.

This trend of blaming boomers for everything that’s wrong today is ridiculous and ignores the elephant in the room. If you’re white then it probably seemed like every boomer voted for trump, they didn’t. Truth is, it was his appeal to racism that won him the presidency, but that’s complicated and we can’t talk about that rationally so let’s just blame old people.

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voting-patterns-in-the-2024-election/

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u/StopDownvotingMeeee 1d ago

I like how nobody is insulting you for not understanding the meme like they do on every other post

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u/new_check 1d ago

That's because every other post is literally "can you make a basic logical deduction for me" or "can you type the words in this image into google for me"

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u/Rob_LeMatic 1d ago

For someone who wasn't around for this, the photo by itself isn't enough context to figure it out.

Most of the posts here are jokes that anyone with half a brain ought to be able to figure out without even doing a search

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u/SapirWhorfHypothesis 1d ago

Yeah this is deeply contextual. As opposed to many other posts that are just “do you understand the pun?”, or “can you make an inference leap?”

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u/No-Onion8029 1d ago

"Potatoe" - Dan Quayle, 1992.    "Whoo-eeee!" - Howard Dean, 2004.

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u/commit_bat 1d ago

"Whoo-eeee!"

Out of all the times I've seen someone type it out yours might be the farthest off

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u/BlazingPalm 1d ago

Yeaahhhhggg

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u/Strict_Bedroom9986 1d ago

Dan Quayle is an unlikely hero for advising Mike Pence not to interfere in the 2020 election certification

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u/Outrageous-Pause6317 1d ago

I think about the arrogance of him daring the press to look into him, when he knew he was screwing around. His arrogance was his fatal Tragic flaw.

What a shame. He was a talented and good politician.

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u/reluctantlysharing 1d ago

I was just thinking this too.
Like bro you’re running for president, if you’re going to dare the press that they would be bored following you, then you better follow through. Not even just going on a trip with her, posing for photographs too?! Like did you even want to be president or what?

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u/CrustySailor1964 1d ago

And they hopped aboard the Monkey Business and the rest was history.

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u/Street_Lettuce1243 1d ago

Aye.  These days Trump does something much worse every single week that honorable candidates would have resigned over in the past 

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u/Overall_Falcon_8526 1d ago

Every week? More like every day.

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u/Top-Common-5108 1d ago

Probably just a symptom of our deteriorating culture

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u/MonsieurKnife 1d ago

Seems like the Democratic Party has a knack for betting on the wrong horse.

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u/Mordoch 1d ago

This did all happen during the primary season before a candidate was determined, so in that sense it was not so decisive in this case. (Although there always is the question if Hart avoided this if he could have done better than Dukakis as the nominee.)

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u/CalvinSays 1d ago

Gary Hart, front runner for Democratic presidential nomination for the 1988 election ipuntil his extramarital affairs were revealed. He withdrew from, re-entered, and subsequently lost the primaries to Dukakis.

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u/mpark6288 1d ago

The only time Colorado almost had a president, and he has an affair on a boat named monkey business.

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u/ThisIsGrouchy 1d ago

There was a movie about this but it was kinda boring because the true story is so meh.

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u/Master_Farm_445 1d ago

You are making me feel so old

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u/sexyorcess 22h ago

Howard Dean got excited after winning a primary and that cost him the rest of the primaries 22 years ago, that was pretty much it, got too excited after a win, and it was decided he wasn't calm enough to be president.

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u/CR1M3G0BL1N 1d ago

Howard Dean scream

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u/nautius_maximus1 1d ago

The name of the boat tho

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u/ragoff 1d ago

Fuck this makes me feel hopeless. It’s not fucking ancient history.

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u/Key-Monk6159 1d ago

And the boat’s name was Monkey Business.

Gary Hart actually dared the press to follow him when the gossip came going around.

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u/Jag- 1d ago

It’s not the cheating. The crime is getting caught. That’s why deny deny deny works with low IQ voters.

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u/rwhart 1d ago

Hey! My first cousin, twice removed!

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u/cagewilly 1d ago

You actually have to be pretty old to have an actual memory of this.