I remember that I thought Hillary would hold out and win the Democratic nomination. She was polling 12-15 points over Obama with Gore and Edwards still hitting noticeable numbers. I thought she would be the establishment candidate but when the primaries started I began to realize she wasn’t. It’s making me wonder again now, what has Hillary ever done for the Democratic Party?
I’m not sure who I thought would take the Republican race, but I didn’t think it would be McCain. Giuliani was around 30% with Thompson and Romney also in double digits. I knew Giuliani couldn’t hold up, I probably thought Romney was most likely to pull it off. When the primaries started McCain pulled ahead. The conventional wisdom was that it was McCain’s turn. But I think they felt bad about not supporting him against Bush, especially after the way Bush turned out.
I thought right from the start that Obama was more likely than Clinton. I wasn’t sure he’d win, since there’s always the possibility of a dark horse (and Obama’s horse was pretty dark to begin with), but Clinton never seemed inevitable to me.
On the republican side, I expected Giuliani to do a lot better than he actually did. A campaign of “noun, verb, 9-11” wasn’t actually unreasonable, given that he really did do a good job of keeping his head on 9-11. I think what sunk him wasn’t his harping on 9-11, but on his forgetting that it ever happened.
Given my 2007, I wasn’t paying much attention beyond my side of the aisle. ISTR thinking McCain would get it but he’s who I supported so it may have just been wishful thinking.
I wasn’t paying enough attention to the other side to come close to making a prediction. I honestly couldn’t have told you anything about Obama beyond relatively junior congress critter seeking the Democratic nomination through most of the year.
I don’t really remember. Yeah, so just ignore this post.
I guess that’s after Giuliani was out? Because I think I was imagining him as the nominee a year before that.
But by that time, um, I was probably rooting for Obama or one of the other Anyone But Clinton candidates, so, yeah, I was probably half-expecting him to take it on the Dem side.
[del]And if not Rudy, I don’t know. At some point I probably expected Rmoney to have a better than usual chance, as he eventually was the Hillary Clinton in that race (the one everyone was trying to be the alternative to) but maybe not that far out.[/del] No, wait, that was 2011.
No, McCain was clearly the best choice for the Pubs, and the best liked, but they had no chance in 2008 anyway.
Like most people, I thought it would be Hillary v the 9/11 ghoul. I was so impressed by Obama’s 2004 keynote that I said here’s the first black president but I didn’t think he’d be ready in 2008. Giuliani thought he could coast in by the magic of 9/11 and ran possibly the worst primary campaign in history.
I wouldn’t call it the worst, since there were no major gaffes or scandals. The worst strategy ever, to be sure, but he didn’t stumble the way Rick Perry or Ed Muskie did. I always felt Rudy should have run again in 2012. His only real mistake was to skip the first four states. All it takes to rectify that is to not skip the first four states next time.
That 9/11 and 9/11 gain 9/11 the 9/11 ability 9/11 to 9/11 make 9/11 a 9/11 speech 9/11 without 9/11 patting 9/11 himself 9/11 on 9/11 the 9/11 back 9/11 for 9/11 happening 9/11 to 9/11 be 9/11 the 9/11 mayor 9/11 during 9/11 a 9/11 terrorist 9/11 attack.
My gf had been following Obama for some time and felt it was important for the country that he receive the nomination. She put her money where her mouth was and made a donation that made me question her sanity. Right up to election night I was afraid she’d end up dissapointed.
I didn’t pay much attention to the Democratic side, but I did tend to assume Hillary would take it on the assumption that voters were less biased against white women than black men. (Though, admittedly, I don’t think such biases are as big a deal as many people around these boards assume. I wasn’t shocked that Obama took it from her.)
On my Republican side… in August of 2007, there really was no doubt for me that it was going to be McCain. I think around that time I still preferred Huckabee, but I didn’t really think he’d get it.
I never saw Giuliani as a serious candidate. It was a subtle marketing campaign for Giuliani Partners security consulting services. I simply can’t see it in any other light. From a less subjective point of view: he’d already lost one campaign to Hillary Clinton (for NY Senator), why play that out again on a national stage?
I didn’t predict a Republican candidate, but I didn’t think it would be McCain. This is what I said about him:
And you know, that still seems like a reasonable analysis. So I’m not sure what the hell happened. He won by default as the other candidates blundered or flamed out? The establishment poured all of its effort into him as the least-bad option?
I’m really having trouble remembering much about the 2008 Republican nomination contest. It looks like Romney was the only actual credible contender, but I can’t remember how strong his campaign was or what I even thought about him at the time. Seems similar to Bush’s position now: he’s not a great candidate, but no one else is really in a position to take it either, so… default.
On the Democratic side, I clearly remember believing it was going to be Hillary’s, and this Obama fellow would make a great 2016 candidate.
Consider me shocked that you thought McCain would beat Obama.
I thought Clinton and McCain, with McCain having a decent shot, right up until the moment he picked Palin as a running mate. I knew he was toast at that moment, regardless of who got the Dem nod.
I knew right away when he declared, that Obama was going to win the nomination and the election. Now I may well have backtracked on that certainty by August 2007, but I’m too lazy to dig up my posts from that time.
McCain, though - I thought McCain was dead in the water by August 2007. I’m sure I thought someone else would get the nomination, but I wasn’t sure who.
I remember being sure that Huckabee would have stood a better chance if he’d simply skipped NH after winning Iowa, and spent that week in a state he might’ve been able to win.
Those of you saying McCain–are you sure? Summer of '07 was a very difficult time for the senator. He ran out of money and had to “restructure” his campaign, laying people off and cutting expenses to the bone. His poll numbers were very low…I don’t recall all of the details, but there were plenty of articles pretty much writing him off at that point.
I don’t remember who I thought would be the Republican nominee at that moment, but it would not have been McCain. On the Dem side, I thought for a long while it would be Edwards…the one I liked least of the three, but I believed at the time that he was eminently electable in. Other primaries and general election and would be the likely nominee. Ha! Shows how much I knew.