Only 17 out of 50 states use open primaries.
I’m sure the republicans will say all kinds things about her, and it will all just wash over the peoples’ heads.
We’ve been hearing how evil Hillary is for longer than a lot of people have been alive, there’s no way to make an impact.
She’s Nixonian in that way as well as her personal ambition.
Even in the majority of states that don’t have open primaries it’s ludicrous that the public is deciding who the candidate will be. The party leaders & bosses should be deciding the candidate and presenting him/her to the public. The primary system is the reason the Republicans have had such milquetoast POTUS candidates over the last 21 years.
Personally, that’s the way I like it. I’d actually rather see us have a jungle primary, even though that probably would have meant a Clinton vs. Obama election in 2008. but that’s a feature, not a bug, since Clinton probably would have beaten Obama in a general election.
How? You don’t seriously think that Republican groups like PUMA would have continued their support of her if she had a chance of winning, do you?
I don’t think those groups would be particularly relevant in a general election between two Democrats. Plus I think Clinton would have enjoyed the support of most Republicans in such a matchup, as the lesser evil.
The other thing I like about a jungle primary is that it would provoke more intra-party challenges. John McCain was probably at the height of his popularity in 2004 and the Democratic party was confused and divided, except that they hated GWB. A jungle primary in 2004 could very well have meant McCain vs. Bush, and in a general election he would have wiped the floor with Bush.
Just out of curiosity which of the non-Romney republican candidates in 2012 do you think would have been able to beat Obama?
I think two of them would have beaten him: Pawlenty and Huntsman. Pawlenty got kneecapped by Bachmann in Ames and Huntsman couldn’t figure out Republican primary politics. But both were strong general election candidates who Obama’s well rehearsed negative campaign wouldn’t have been easy to demonize. Obama either needed rich dude or crazy dude(or lady). Pawlenty came from a modest background and Huntsman couldn’t very well be demonized given that Obama hired the guy.
adaher, can you explain why your team puts up with people like Bachmann? That people like her can become serious candidates detracts from the credibility of the whole GOP.
If Huntsman was drawing 1% of the primary vote I highly doubt he would have drawn more election votes than Romney. I found both him and Pawlenty very likable after they dropped out of the race, but no.
The person that didn’t run always runs a perfect campaign, with no gaffes, errors, weaknesses, or exploitable moments. Therefore they can always win.
But I think that both of those would fall into pkbites’ milquetoast category.
That is why I pay no attention to any polls that involve generic Republican or generic Democrat. Each responder will assume that the candidate for their party will correspond exactly to what they believe, even though these are different for different respondents.
Sure, but his even better-rehearsed positive campaign, which is after all what he mostly relied upon anyway, would have worked just as well.
No way Pawlenty beats Obama. Absolutely zero chance. He had a good story and a great message - I still think that his “Walmart Americans” message plays, and plays well, and I’m as liberal as they come - but he’s boring as anything. Zero charisma. And he wouldn’t even have been able to deliver his own state. He didn’t raise taxes, I’ll give him that, but he did propose new “fees” that were patently transparent even to those who weren’t paying attention. As well as a highly suspect “accounting shift” that our schools are still paying for today. This in a state that highly values education!
He didn’t do all that great in Minnesota. He’d do even worse in the rest of the country.
And therein lies the problem. Rather than sticking to core beliefs primary voters are trying to pick who can beat the other guy rather than sticking to their principles on issues. This is how we end up with such lousy candidates.
A President McCain or a President Romney would be little better than President Obama.
Was she really a serious candidate? Bachmann and her ilk are a sideshow, akin to Al Sharpton and Dennis Kucinich on your side.
Positive campaign? The reality of his 1st term mean that the 2008 script was dead, dead, dead.
For those who doubt Huntsman, he had sky high approval ratings among those who knew who he was. If he’d somehow won the nomination despite his rather odd messaging for a Republican primary, he would have won easily, because he would have won without having to shift to the right. Which would have been remarkable, because Huntsman was actually the most conservative candidate in the race. His tax plan was extremely radical in a right-wing way. But his lack of partisanship made people think he was more moderate than he was.
And a President Bachmann?
The election would be in Nov. 2016…she wouldn’t be in the White House until the 2017 inauguration. At any rate, she still leads the polls of potential voters.
That’s name recognition and is utterly meaningless today.