I may be a bit light on the details. Would ties have needed to be reestablished if they hadn’t been broken in the first place?
I specified that I was assuming that Henry VIII still would have divorced Catherine of Aragon and married wives 2-6. If he’d been so pleased that she produced a son that he was content to merely have affairs then you would be correct.
But ties were first broken when Henry VIII divorced and then re-established under (Catholic) Catherine of Aragon’s (Catholic) daughter Mary’s reign, then re-broken under (Protestant) Anne Boleyn’s (Protestant) daughter Elizabeth, who was the founder of the modern Church of England.
If not for the son-less thing I doubt he would have even tried for the divorce. There wouldn’t have been a justification, and even a king needs something as an excuse.
Fair enough.
I’m assuming the hatred between Catholics & Protestants wasn’t so severe when Henry VIII was married to Catherine of Aragon (given that Catholic Catherine had Protestant Anne as her maid of honor), but I honestly don’t know for sure.
But he had fallen in love with Anne Boleyn… and she was refusing to be his mistress. His desire to boink her may have been so strong that he would’ve pursued divorce anyway. Unclear.
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Change: Constantine loses the Battle of the Milvian Bridge
Maybe if Maxentius had taken swimming lessons.
I’m not all that concerned with how he lost.
I’m curious about ideas of how history would have been different if he had lost (including changes to the modern world, if anything significant).
For example, does Christianity crawl out of the gutter and still take over the western world?
New topic! (@soyleche I think anyone can propose a new topic, right?)
Change: Republican primary has superdelegates in 2016.
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IMO: The early split would be between Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio making the two of them the front-runners in the Republican primary. Rubio most likely wins the primary and carries Florida and Ohio, but does NOT carry PA, MI or WI and Hillary Clinton wins.
Merrick Garland gets a seat on the SCOTUS. Clinton gets blamed for Covid and loses re-election to… ???
Also, who would he have chosen for a running mate? Fiorina? A woman would be a good pick against Hillary at any rate.
If he picked a woman then maybe that woman wins the 2020 nomination and we have back-to-back women Presidents.
Why didn’t trump have a female running mate?
couldn’t find one bangable enough for his liking?
Nah, either Dems get the Senate and Hillary nominates someone else like Sri^2 after Obama withdraws Garland post-election or Reps keep the Senate and leave the seat vacant as Mitch said he would (or until a conservative is nominated).
I think if Clinton won the election the Republicans could have quickly confirmed Garland during Obama’s lame duck period and would have on the assumption that Garland was better than whomever Clinton would nominate.
I mean, yeah maybe Obama withdraws Garland but if the Republicans confirm him before the withdrawal then it’s done. They could have called an emergency session on election night, I believe. And if the polls showed Clinton ahead they might have dispensed with the shenanigans and confirmed him before the election.
And if you don’t think they would have… look no further than Bill Clinton’s impeachment. They kept hemming & hawing about waiting until after the election… because they expected to make big gains. When they actually lost seats, the impeachment suddenly proceeded with incredible swiftness.
His campaign focused on a demographic where that would not have been viewed as a plus… at best a neutral. Rubio or Bush would have run a more traditional campaign.
- Many senators aren’t in DC on election night
- They aren’t confirming someone to SCOTUS without a hearing
- Even if they did, they would need Dem senators voting to invoke cloture
- The alternative is killing the SCOTUS filibuster, which they aren’t doing for an opposite party
- As ridiculous as those are, it completely ignores that Obama could withdraw the minute he hears of a vote being called
I’m not saying they would have not wanted to, I’m saying they would not have had the opportunity.