# Alternate History -- Clinton Without Obama **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 21, 2008, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-history-clinton-without-obama/438592 "2008-02-21T17:22:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Shayna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shayna/32/17976_2.png) [@Shayna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shayna)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2008, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-history-clinton-without-obama/438592/21 "2008-02-21T20:38:02Z")
I think you both missed my point. I think John Kerry was an excellent candidate for President in that he had all the right credentials. I think his career bears that out. He would’ve made an outstanding President. See the 7 part series that the Boston Globe ran about his background, to see what I’m talking about. [Part 1](http://boston.com/globe/nation/packages/kerry/061503.shtml). However, he was a shitty _campaigner_. He was un-inspirational, WAY too modest about his accomplishments (whoever advised him not to even _mention_ his involvement with Iran-Contra was an _idiot_) and didn’t bother to fight back against the outrageous Swift boater’s crap. I think we mostly agree. Perhaps we only part company in thinking he would’ve made a great President if he’d’ve run a better campaign. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2008, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-history-clinton-without-obama/438592/22 "2008-02-21T20:49:40Z")
[QUOTE=Shayna] I think we mostly agree. Perhaps we only part company in thinking he would’ve made a great President if he’d’ve run a better campaign. [/QUOTE] Ok, I did misunderstand as even though I voted for him, I only thought he could not be as bad as 4 more years of Bush/Cheney. I don’t find his record appealing in any way. Being a good motivational speaker and working across the aisle are two areas of strength that a “Great President” needs to have. He lacked in both these areas. He barely speaks better than Bush. I don’t recall much about BCCI, why it that such a big deal anyway? It was one corrupt bank that Kerry co-wrote a report on. Jim (Please note, I barely speak better than Bush, but then I don’t hold public office.) ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2008, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-history-clinton-without-obama/438592/23 "2008-02-21T20:55:27Z")
[QUOTE=Shayna] I think John Kerry was an excellent candidate for President in that he had all the right credentials. I think his career bears that out. [/QUOTE] As I think the 2008 primaries have borne out, credentials aren’t enough. He did look like a good candidate on paper, but people said that about Clark too. ---
**Author:** ![Shayna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shayna/32/17976_2.png) [@Shayna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shayna)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2008, 9:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-history-clinton-without-obama/438592/24 "2008-02-21T21:08:51Z")
[QUOTE=What Exit?] Being a good motivational speaker and working across the aisle are two areas of strength that a “Great President” needs to have. He lacked in both these areas. He barely speaks better than Bush. [/quote] I disagree on one of those points. I think he did reach across the aisle, and I think the work he did with McCain in normalizing relations with Viet Nam is a good example of that. > [@](#): > > I don’t recall much about BCCI, why it that such a big deal anyway? It was one corrupt bank that Kerry co-wrote a report on. He did more than write a report on it, he blew the whole scandal wide open. > [@](#): > > [Follow the Money](http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0409.sirota.html). > > Two decades ago, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was a highly respected financial titan. In 1987, when its subsidiary helped finance a deal involving Texas oilman George W. Bush, the bank appeared to be a reputable institution, with attractive branch offices, a traveler’s check business, and a solid reputation for financing international trade. It had high-powered allies in Washington and boasted relationships with respected figures around the world. > > All that changed in early 1988, when John Kerry, then a young senator from Massachusetts, decided to probe the finances of Latin American drug cartels. Over the next three years, Kerry fought against intense opposition from vested interests at home and abroad, from senior members of his own party; and from the Reagan and Bush administrations, none of whom were eager to see him succeed. > > By the end, Kerry had helped dismantle a massive criminal enterprise and exposed the infrastructure of BCCI and its affiliated institutions, a web that law enforcement officials today acknowledge would become a model for international terrorist financing. > > –More– ---
**Author:** ![Shayna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shayna/32/17976_2.png) [@Shayna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shayna)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2008, 9:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-history-clinton-without-obama/438592/25 "2008-02-21T21:10:31Z")
[QUOTE=Marley23] As I think the 2008 primaries have borne out, credentials aren’t enough. He did look like a good candidate on paper, but people said that about Clark too. [/QUOTE] Heh. I mailed my vote in early and voted for Clark, which turned out to be a waste, since he dropped out of the race before our actual primary. That’ll teach me! ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2008, 9:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-history-clinton-without-obama/438592/26 "2008-02-21T21:49:06Z")
[QUOTE=Shayna] I think you both missed my point. I think John Kerry was an excellent candidate for President in that he had all the right credentials. [/QUOTE] I think you’re confusing having the potential to be a good President (and I believe he’d have been a very good President), with being a good _candidate_ for President. [ETA: Never mind, you clarified that.] The everyday nomenclature whereby someone being a good candidate for a position is synonymous with the expectation that they’d be good in the position, doesn’t apply to political office due to the very different nature of what candidacy entails. And with respect to the OP, Edwards and others would have done better in the absence of Obama, but Hillary would have landed the knockout blow on Super Tuesday. [Al Giordano explained why last September](http://thephoenix.com/Article.aspx?id=48290&page=1): > [@](#): > > Some of us like John Edwards’s populist tongue and position papers, his wonderful family, his southern charm, and the brickbats he tosses at corporate power, while acknowledging that Edwards has a cubic centimeter of chance (unlike Kucinich, who has none) to crack through the first-in-the-nation caucus next January in Iowa (where in ’04 he placed a surprise second to John Kerry) and become a contendah. > > But we’ve seen that movie (and its formulaic sequels) before. It’s the quadrennial blockbuster where a big-money Democratic front-runner tramples the more attractive but under-funded alternative. When, in 1988, Jesse Jackson emerged as the last candidate standing between Michael Dukakis and his doomed nomination, Jackson, among other disadvantages, didn’t have the millions of dollars it would have taken to ride an insurgent candidacy through to winning the Democratic National Convention. > > Even if Edwards does crack through in Iowa, he won’t have the resources to finish the race, and the coronation of Clinton as nominee will go according to script. I’m very sorry to say that, because the primacy of money is one of the main reasons why previous presidential campaigns made many of us want to ignore this one. > > \ > > On Tsunami Tuesday, there will be primaries in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Missouri, New Jersey, New York, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Utah, plus caucuses in Alaska, Colorado, New Mexico and North Dakota. > > At that point, 1242 of 4363 Democratic National Convention delegates will have been chosen, but a nominee will need 2182 delegates to win the nomination. And the front-runner Clinton, assuming she’s still standing, will likely face just one viable rival in the expensive media war to come in the states that follow. It was in this round when Dukakis bested Jackson in '88; it’s also when Walter Mondale dispatched Gary Hart in '84, Bill Clinton raced past Jerry Brown in '92, Al Gore beat Bill Bradley in '00, and Kerry stopped Edwards in '04. The last front-runner standing with the most money has always won in the recent Democratic nomination battles. (Bradley began with a slight money advantage over Gore, but by March, Gore had raced significantly ahead in terms of available campaign funds.) > > Following that pattern, Clinton, who, in the first half of 2007, raised $53 million and emptied her US Senate campaign chest to add another cool $10 million, would easily best Edwards (who raised $23 million during those same six months) in the second wave of primaries and caucuses. > > Today, Clinton has $45 million in the bank versus Edwards’s $13 million. That gap will likely increase significantly by January. All the major candidates have sufficient funds for parity on the airwaves and on the ground in early Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. But by the time Tsunami Tuesday comes along, on February 5, the wealthier campaign — presuming its candidate did not stumble badly in one or more of the first four states — will likely begin to pile up delegates and trampoline through the February and March contests toward the nomination. Game over. It took money for Obama to go toe-to-toe with Clinton on Super Tuesday, which is what Giordano goes on to say would make Clinton’s coronation less than inevitable. ---
**Author:** ![Shayna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/shayna/32/17976_2.png) [@Shayna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shayna)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2008, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-history-clinton-without-obama/438592/27 "2008-02-21T21:51:36Z")
[QUOTE=RTFirefly] I think you’re confusing having the potential to be a good President (and I believe he’d have been a very good President), with being a good _candidate_ for President. The everyday nomenclature whereby someone being a good candidate for a position is synonymous with the expectation that they’d be good in the position, doesn’t apply to political office due to the very different nature of what candidacy entails. [/QUOTE] I think I already explained the distinction above. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2008, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-history-clinton-without-obama/438592/28 "2008-02-22T05:01:14Z")
If Obama had not run, or had fizzled in Iowa, then HRC would’ve won. Her campaign was ready for that quick primary victory. And without this long primary and the awful campaign her team put up, she would’ve had enough support to become President. People like me who had a long standing dislike of her were very winnable. Heck, I disliked Edwards more. She would likely have been an adequate President too. Not great, but adequate. She will be a great Senator now that she can give up on positioning herself for her Presidential run. ---
**Author:** ![Mosier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/7ea924/32.png) [@Mosier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mosier)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2008, 9:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-history-clinton-without-obama/438592/29 "2008-02-22T09:06:22Z")
[QUOTE=Bricker] Most interesting to me, though, is this question: right now, many strong supporters of the Democratic party are saying how terrible Hillary Clinton is. That’s an amazing switch from a year ago, when that was a refrain only of the far-right. If this had happened as I’m picturing, would you all in this category be ardent Hillary fans, or would you still have discovered her true colors – if, in fact, this current perception of her can be fairly characterized as “true colors?” [/QUOTE] Before anyone knew about Obama, Hillary was considered terrible by much more than just the far right. This is not the “current” perception of her, but the one that polls revealed every step of the way in the primary campaign process, where she consistently led in polls of Democrat voters, but did worse in matchups versus Republicans than almost all of the other Democrat hopefulls. She was NEVER the front runner in matchups against Republicans. Her support comes from the far left. There absolutely would have been a vacuum filled by someone like Edwards (who consistently did better than her in polls vs. Republican candidates, even up until he withdrew). ---
**Author:** ![Sublight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Sublight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sublight)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2008, 9:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-history-clinton-without-obama/438592/30 "2008-02-22T09:50:09Z")
Does anyone think that an Obama-less primary and a Clinton-McCain final would have resulted in significantly stronger showing by any of the third parties? ---
**Author:** ![Eureka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/74df32/32.png) [@Eureka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eureka)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2008, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-history-clinton-without-obama/438592/31 "2008-02-22T14:36:33Z")
[QUOTE=Sublight] Does anyone think that an Obama-less primary and a Clinton-McCain final would have resulted in significantly stronger showing by any of the third parties? [/QUOTE] I think there is a strong possibility that a third party candidate could have had a good showing. It’s not inevitable. And I’m not sure that this candidate would have won any states. But I think that someone could have or would have run on the “When we say Change, we mean it” platform, and picked up a lot of votes from people who are unhappy with the status quo (and thus don’t want to vote Republican) and who don’t like Clinton (either because she’s female, because she’s a Clinton, or because she’s a Democrat). [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/alternate-history-clinton-without-obama/438592.md?page=1)