OK, ok… I grant that the contingency is a remote one.
But it’s not like Clinton has an *amazing *record at beating charismatic underdog candidates. So please, humour me: if it’s Sanders v Trump, and Clinton steps in to run on the slogan, “Come on America, a joke’s a joke but let’s be serious for a minute”, what happens?
Trump wins.
Putting aside the plausibility of her wanting to do this, it’d be pretty tough from a more practical standpoint as well. Several states have sore loser laws that keep someone from appearing on the Prez ballot if they also ran for a different parties nomination in the primary. And I believe several other states have deadlines in late March to get on the ballot as an independent candidate.
Since its pretty clear the Dem primary is going to be fairly close for a while at least, by the time Hillary would know about a hypothetical loss, I think it would be too late for her to get on enough states general election ballots to make an independent run viable.
If Hillary can’t beat Bernie in the Democratic primary, then how the fuck can she expect to beat him in the general election?
Or to put it another way, if you’re so unpopular you lose the Democratic primary to a guy like Bernie Sanders, then stick a fork in your political career, because it’s over.
By getting the many, many votes of the many, many centrist Dems, and Independents, and centrist Republicans who don’t want Sanders or Trump?
But the people motivated to vote in the Democratic primary aren’t necessarily a cross-section of even the general Democratic vote, let alone the American voting population, are they?
If Sanders narrowly wins the Dem primary, how many of 2012’s Dem voters will be enthusiastic about voting for him? You’ve got all the frustrated Clinton supporters plus a lot of soft voters who might well be scared of “socialism”. That seems like it might be a start.
Kate McKinnon, Morgenstern, and Mike Bloomberg vote for her?
I think it’s a lot like the scenario with Mike Bloomberg or Jim Webb running as independent. Democrats are terrified to split the party after 2000; Sanders would be the majority choice of the party. Republicans & swing voters might defect to Hillary away from Trump in small numbers. Sanders would have a decent shot at an Electoral College majority, while Hillary would be lucky to get a single state.
Her entire support system is “establishment Democrats”
They will not break from the party.
She would limp into third place doing worse than perot in 1992 and end her political career.
But what if you have a situation where the right wing vote is already split? Say, Rubio wins the nomination, but Trump is pissy so runs as an independent. Then perhaps Clinton thinks that out of those four, she can win the most votes, and since most states award all their votes on simple pluralities, she might conclude that the math favors her in a four-way race.
If Clinton loses the nomination her political career is basically over anyways istm. So the possibility of losing as an independent ending her career wouldn’t be a factor. However she and Bill probably want to remain chummy with the party post-career so the question would be: does the party establishment want her to run as independent?
No… If she loses the nomination, it will be the second time she started with a big advantage and then lost. I still think she’ll probably win, but if Bernie wins, then the party will mostly embrace him, and move on to the general election.
The party’s base doesn’t particularly like the Clintons anyway beyond, “Yay, they kept a Republican out of the White House for eight years and gave us a record to run on that we didn’t support then and don’t support now.”