And then the PEW poll says 54% of Republicans think the party needs to be MORE Conservative :smack:.
Sadly thinking we’re not going to get that Moderate Republican candidate anytime soon. 
I think she can win the nomination, but I think people seriously underestimate bigotry. You got Backwoods Bubba who doesn’t ever vote because it don’t matter and his little wifey follows suit. Well, he then gets galvanized because he don’t want no “colored” in office. Of course, that obviously didn’t help because Obama won two terms.
But he’ll be damned if it happens again, especially with someone even more inferior, like a woman. Certainly a tree hugging liberal bitch who wears the pants in her household. So with the backing of his pastor and like minded community, he’ll vote this time to preserve his “way of life” and stave off communism. That means wifey will too. Not just because of him, but because God says women shouldn’t lead and it just ain’t right. She’ll finally vote too, as will all their buddies.
Same thing will happen all over the country in areas like that, with it being strongest in the south. Add in dems that don’t want her for whatever reason and therefore she has no chance. Sad but true.
ETA: Don’t forget the preachers. They’ll go nuts. Most couldn’t show their racism because that would be obvious and wrong, but they’ll have no problem going off on how much of an abomination this will be unto the Lord. That’s a huge percentage of the religious “right” right there.
Kirsten Gillibrand? I like her. I’ve voted for her. But she seems WAY too lightweight to ever be a serious presidential candidate.
The Republican Party of today sort of reminds me of the Democrats in the William Jennings Bryan era. At least the Republicans don’t keep nominating the same loser over and over (although that might not be a bad thing).
I generally stay out of political threads, but initially I’m liking Cuomo for 2016. I’ll vote for Hillary if she’s nominated though.
Seriously? In this day and age? I’ve never heard of them objecting to a woman running for any other public office. It would look strange to start now. Anyway, where were they when Sarah Palin was on the ticket?
If you’re looking for logical consistency you won’t find it.
These are people who shout for “small government” when they speak about corporate oversight but have no problem whatsoever with the government telling people what they can or cannot do in their bedrooms, who they can marry, what a woman’s reproductive rights are, what citizens can vote, who gets denied basic healthcare, or even who has the fundamental right to let a tragically ill family member die with some small last dignity.
She’s not going to run. She’s retired now, and is going to stay retired. Yeah, I’m sure she would have liked to have been President, but even she realizes that’s not going to happen, and she’s had a very good career by any standard.
Likewise for Biden. The two of them are only getting so much press at this point, three years before the election, because they both have a lot of name recognition. It doesn’t mean anything, though.
If I had to pin down one name as most likely, I’d say Cuomo. But even there I’d give him a less than 50% chance. The field’s pretty big.
But those people:
- Weren’t going to vote for ANY Democrat.
- Are fairly well clustered in solidly red states. It might cost her the popular vote, but probably wouldn’t have a large impact on the EC.
- If the GOP nominates a Ryan or Santorum and Obama gifts his campaign org to Hillary (which I think he will), then the “stay-at-home” Democrats can be minimized.
Don’t know how I missed this, but on preview:
With all that said, I agree with Exapno and Chronos, she ain’t running so it’s a moot point.
I got to agree with this. Mostly because I’ve already said this myself. 
Cuomo is seriously positioning himself for a run. Pushing through a gun control bill and a gay marriage bill even in supposedly liberal New York was good hard work. Obviously he’ll be demonized for this by the right, but no more so than anyone else who has a chance at the nomination and that’ll go down smooth in left-wing circles. What will work with the middle is that he’s gotten three budgets passed by deadline in a state where that hadn’t been done in decades, with a totally corrupt and insane legislature which has been named the most dysfunctional in the country. Think about that. Think about a legislature even in contention for that. And he gets major stuff done anyway. That will be honey in the primaries, and a big factor toward success along with his famous name (Mario Cuomo’s son) and his New York donor base. And he’ll run, precisely because he’s trying to position himself against his father’s legendary hesitation.
We don’t have any good idea who the candidates will be yet. Any predictions would be foolish. We have a much, much better idea of who the candidates won’t be. And that bunch includes Clinton and Biden.
I think Clinton has a great chance to be President, and has to be regarded as the favorite if she chooses to run. The problem is the same as in 2008, though. She plays it too safe and she’s running in the wrong party for that. The GOP is the party that nominates the “next” candidate. All it would take for Hillary to lose again would be for another candidate to be exciting and be a contrast with her “never take a chance” campaign.
Of course, this could be her moment. The Democratic field does not look like it’s going to have any excitement. And the GOP field is going to produce a flawed candidate again. Finally, Republicans just do not hate her anymore. We know that if she’s elected, we can do business with her.
It’s up to the Republicans not to lose to whoever the Dems run, and it might be Hillary.
At this point, all the negatives are known, there’s not a bad word anybody can say about her that’s news.
I still don’t really understand it. It wasn’t just the right, either. Dems went into full-on visceral frothing at the mouth apoplexy over her too, when it was Hillary vs. Obama for the nomination.
I was pretty shocked and disgusted with Dems and not a very big fan of Obama for awhile because of it. I know I’m not supposed to judge him by his followers, but man!
No, they weren’t going to vote at all. Which is a problem, in my opinion.
You’d think so, but you might be surprised at these rural pockets that pop up in otherwise progressive states. Have enough of them and shed lose the popular vote.
I simply disagree.
Probably true.
This may surprise a few people, but if the Dems can come up with someone who isn’t Hillary and isn’t a gun grabber, I might at least consider voting for him or her, depending on who the GoP nominates. The current GoP governor of my state is strong on guns, but otherwise seems to be going out of his way to piss me the fuck off.
I wouldn’t say she has no chance but her chances are less than they seem. People who think she has a lock on the Dem nomination are wrong.
Hillary is competent and hard-working but she is not a great campaigner as shown in 2008. In particular she was terrible at managing her campaign staff. There is no particular reason to believe she has improved in this regard.
Compared to 2008 she has gained in stature from her four years as Sec State but stature was not really her problem in 2008 anyway. In 2016 age and health will be issues which they weren’t earlier, not deal-breakers but definitely a drag on her campaign. Clinton fatigue will remain an issue: there are a lot of people in the media and Democratic party who simply don’t want another Clinton in the White House.
I could easily see someone like Elizabeth Warren beat her in 2016:
a) Warren has a major issue: curbing the power of Wall Street, where she has credibility and which excites the Democratic base. Hillary doesn’t have anything comparable. She may not have Iraq as a millstone any more but she doesn’t have any positive issue to fire the base either.
b) Just about the only exciting thing about Hillary is becoming the first female president and Warren takes that off the table.
c) While Warren is only two years younger than Hillary she is a much fresher political personality.
d) Obama showed in 2008 how to create and fund an outsider campaign using modern technology among other things. That playbook is available to Warren and I would bet a lot of his campaign would love to work with her to stop Hillary. At the same time Obama benefited from insiders who wanted to stop the Clintons and many of those people are still around.
Oh, don’t be so coy. You and every other thoughtful conservative knows that in 2016 a solidly respectable conservative will be running against a frothing-at-the-mouth idiot supported by an army of morons with bizarre plans to implement absurdly radically incoherent policies, again. You’ll have to seriously consider voting for the conservative candidate even if it is Hillary, or drop the ‘thoughtful’ and ‘conservative’ aspects of your politics.
Warren could definitely beat Clinton. It would be interesting to see how a McGovern 2.0 campaign would do in 2016.
Can I go off on a minor hijack (although the answers may prove tangentially relevant in this and the “will the GOP learn” thread)? What state and what actions?
FWIW, I really thought the reaction to Sandy Hook demonstrated many of the problems with the Democrats now decades-old gun platform. I realize they can’t (and probably shouldn’t) ever take it completely off the table, but they do need to rethink the specifics of what they’re trying to accomplish and then initiate an organization solely dedicated to marketing that position to the American people. Ideally one that doesn’t have “Democrat” anywhere in the name. Let that org take the heat and float the trial balloons. Sort of a counter-NRA.
Wait, what Democrats are gun-grabbers? Most Democrats want to stay as far away from guns as possible, not grab them. The folks whose first response to anything is to grab their guns are overwhelmingly Republicans (remember “cold dead hands”?).