An article about the msnbc political show with Chris Hayes is titled :
Let's pretend we had a functional Congress.
The way I read this title is that it says that we are to pretend that we have a functional Congress now, as opposed in the past. Hypothetical past tense is used with "suppose" and I guess that "Let's suppose we had a functional Congress" would be as acceptable if not preferred to "Let's suppose we have a functional Congress", but what about the use of "pretend" and "imagine" with the past verb form the same way?
In this sentence I'd understand that either pretend, suppose or imagine would imply that we don't have a functional Congress, but for the sake of argument we are imagining a situation in which we have. By using any of these verbs in this sentence the inference would be that the fact of the matter is different, and the situation we are imagining, supposing or pretending to exist is counterfactual. "Had" in this sentence thus refers to current state of affairs and not to the Congress in the past, that is, "had" is used to convey a hypothetical idea and not to place the situation in the past.
I understand that unlike suppose, verbs pretend and imagine are not normally followed by hypothetical past tense verb, but I find examples such as the example I cited or with "imagine":
Imagine if we had the McCarthy era right now.
Imagine we had a studio right now.
where the meanings of the three verbs seem to overlap, and I understand that the past tense verb following them can be rephrased as "we are imagining a situation in which something is true or is happening now" as opposed to imagining a situation that occurred in the past.
Best Answer
You are right that there can be some overlap in how these verbs can be used.
imagine means per google's handy definition:
It's best to think of those two definitions as somewhat continuous. In other words, you are forming a counterfactual image.
suppose per google means
For suppose, the emphasis is to take this as a counterfactual assumption in your argument.
pretend per google means
While these two senses are not identical, both involve a false counterfactual, e.g. he's pretending to be the king can refer either to child's play or to a usurper. Thus to pretend differs in that pretending always involves a counterfactual assumption one believes to false.
So the article's title is stating not only let us think as if this were so but also that this is farcical to imagine. That it would only be a child's delusion to believe this could become the case in any short manner of time. (Probably for Chris Hayes, that would be early January 2015 after the next election were it to go the way he would prefer).