Ignoring Constitutional term limits, is there any politician (D, R or I) in America whom Barack Obama could *not *have beaten in a presidential primary or general election from 2008 through 2020?
(Doesn’t necessarily have to be “can’t” beat; “would be an underdog against” counts too.)
What about from 2004 through 2024, looking into the past and future?
Hillary was already primaried in 2008. Bernie vs. Obama in 2016? Still think Obama wins that one. Trump vs. Obama? Obama wins. Cruz, Rubio, Kasich, Paul vs. Obama? Still Obama.
Feel free to go celebrity-absurd-hypothetical too. Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Robert Downey, etc.?
I think that Johnson’s complete lack of visibility tells us how necessary it is to be backed by one of the two parties (he was a successful, popular Republican Governor after all). So I’m assuming that the opponent would have to be running as Republican
Warren Buffet would probably do pretty well. His financial acumen would be a draw to Republicans and yet (I believe) he’s a bit of a lefty. If the Republican party actually ran him, he’d have the advantage of pulling from the whole voting pool, not just the left. I don’t know that Obama would lose to him, but it would be a hell of a race.
I don’t think that Obama could have won against Bill Clinton.
I consider Bill to be the best politician of his generation, and one of the best orators. After Trump won, it came out that Bill practically begged Hillary’s people to pay more attention to the Rust Belt–advice that they blithely ignored.
Obama’s popular vote margin of victory in 2012 was larger than Bush’s margins in 2000 or 2004 or Trump’s in 2016. The only candidate he failed to beat post Bill Clinton was his 2008 self.
Bush 2004 was interesting. He won fairly easily in the popular vote, over 3 million and an outright majority, but barely eeked out a victory in the Electoral College. He barely won Ohio; if he had lost he would have lost the EC vote.
In 2008, Clinton could have beaten him if she’d just been herself. Clinton’s obsession with privacy and putting a mask on publicly destroyed her. I know why she did it, but she basically let her enemies win by reacting that way. From all accounts, the “real” Hillary inspires great loyalty from her friends and admiration from her enemies, at least the ones who know her well. Put that Clinton up against Obama and he looks like a callow, overly amibitious new Senator, vs. a likeable and knowledgable and experienced woman.
But that’s a fantasy Clinton, she became who she became publicly and she’ll never change. That’s just 40 years of conditioning in response to attacks from her enemies going all the way back to Arkansas. You wanted someone who could actually beat Obama.
There’s only one I can think of: John Huntsman in 2012. Obama obviously saw the potential threat, making sure to compliment him for serving Obama so well, which was clever since it killed his candidacy dead. But I do think that if he’d navigated the process without selling his soul to the rabid base, he would have beaten Obama quite easily.
The question, however, is not was there *anyone who could *beat Obama, there were a number who could have (but failed to execute); as modified in the OP text it asks was there anyone against whom Obama would have been at an “underdog” disadvantage.
IMO, counting only the people who would have been likely candidates during Obama’s meteoric career in national politics (2004-2016), once he put away Hillary after the primaries he would be an underdog to no one.
