Is it really a case of The only person Clinton could beat is Trump and the only person Trump could beat is Clinton?
The heir-presumptive Hillary had no one running against her except a left-wing pseudo Democrat that actually picked up quite a few delegates. She seems to have already been coronated by the Dem establishment before the primaries even started and AFAIK no mainstream Dem even thought about running against her. Why is that? And the current corruption allegations*? Unless she actually wrote an email showing favors for donations the prevailing reaction will be “But she’s better than Trump”. Actually even if she admits it people will say she’s the better choice.
And as for the clusterfuck that was the Pub side, I don’t think we could have gotten a worse slate of candidates. No moderates like Susan Collins or Brian Sandoval and out of that group, Trump?! OK he’s a better choice than Cruz but the more successful he was the more extreme he became which made him MORE successful. And Cruz as the runner up? The worst part is that just about any Pub other than Trump or Cruz would have easily beat Clinton. Hell I probably could beat her running as Not-Clinton.
So my question is what does all of this tell us about the Parties and their electorate? Is this a battle of Ultimate Establishment vs. Non-Establishment or is it something else?
*FTR, she didn’t do anything that other politicians don’t do. She should just stop using email.
I can’t agree, or really even disagree with this, unless you are specific about which “Pubs” you are referring to, and what “easily” means. But I for instance have my doubts that Christie, Carson, Fiorina, or even Bush would have beaten her, and certainly not easily, given the partisan split across the nation right now.
Clinton is soundly beating Trump at the polls. Trump soundly beat all of his Republican rivals. So why assume Clinton wouldn’t have beaten any of those other Republicans as well?
The Republicans had George Pataki as a moderate. He didn’t gain any traction. John Huntsman failed to gain any traction as a moderate 4 years ago as well. I think the Republican primary electorate isn’t interested in a moderate. I doubt that Collins or Sandoval would have done any better than those two, even if Trump hadn’t run. With Trump not running I think Cruz would have likely won.
As far as the Democrats, I think that Clinton rapidly consolidated the mainstream Democrats before the primary even got started. That’s why only an outsider like Sanders was able to be competitive with her, since he was going after a different segment of the electorate. If Clinton hadn’t run, I think it’s likely Biden would be the current Democratic nominee. In that scenario Biden would probably be even further ahead of Trump than Clinton currently is.
Clinton has historically high unfavorable ratings, but she happens to be running against the one major party candidate ever with even worse numbers. This wouldn’t necessarily apply to a John Kasich or Jeb Bush. Put another way, the kind of candidate who does well in the Republican (or Democratic) primary is often not the same kind that would do well in the general; they’re very different electorates.
That’s not to say that Hillary just sucks, however. The rest of the party didn’t clear the field for her out of some sense of loyalty: they cleared the field because no one thought they stood a chance of beating her. Also she’s raised a ton of money and, so far, is beating Trump rather easily.
I think the best case scenario for the Republicans this year would have been a Kasich victory. Unfortunately for mainstream Republicans, the party has moved so far to the right that they are no longer in the majority of their own party. That’s not something that can be fixed by imagining a better, more moderate, or more mainstream candidate. IMHO the only way a moderate can now win a Republucan primary is to forcefully repudiate the alt right / far right wing of the party while appealing to more moderate Democrats and independents. So far nobody in the Republican Party has had the guts to do that. Even Republicans like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell have essentially let the far right take over the party.
A big reason Trump was successful early on was that he had name recognition and noise, when his competition were splitting votes. He was winning primaries by plurality. The entire field was dreadfully boring. The GOP has also made damn sure that no centrist candidate would ever win their party nomination process, even if they tried.
Hillary Clinton, as shocking as it may seem to some, is a skilled, experienced, passionate and popular politician.
Because there are three groups of people:
Republicans who also vote in the Republican primaries/caucuses
Democrats who also vote in the Democratic primaries/caucuses
Independents who usual don’t vote in either primaries/caucuses
The Independents would probably vote significantly for a moderate Republican.
Hillary may not have lead the other Republicans so much, but she would have had a good chance to win. Obama in 2012 shows that good turnout among Democrats is enough to win an election, and Hillary is quite popular among Democrats.
Maybe not – but IIRC Obama would have still won in 2012 with 2004 level college-age turnout (by a closer margin). He won by a pretty large margin in the electoral college – he could have lost both FL and OH and still won.
Outsiders routinely got 60% of the vote during GOP2016. Outsiders include Trump, Cruz, Carson, Huckabee and Fiorina. Establishment candidates hovered around 20% combined. So if Trump fell from grace, it would have been some other dingbat taking his place.
To the so-called moderate Republicans, I say look in the mirror. You never renounced the hateful bilge coming out of Breitbart. You embraced an anti-science agenda, or kept quiet about it. You played chicken with the nation’s good credit. You embraced obstructionism and looked the other way at birthism. Eventually the chickens would come in to roost and this year they did.
Martin O’Malley. She crushed him. Had another mainstream Dem run, including Biden, she would have crushed that individual as well.
It seems like you start a thread every couple of weeks with the premise that Clinton isn’t popular with Democrats. This is simply incorrect. She is quite popular with Democrats.
On the contrary, I know she’s very popular with Democrats even though I don’t understand why. My question is more about with this being a year without running an incumbent why Dems like Feinstein or Cuomo or McAuliffe didn’t take the opportunity to run.
