The reduction in black turnout combined with lower black votes (I think Obama got 95% of the black vote vs 89% for Hillary), combined with the education gap among whites was a big part of why Hillary lost the midwest.
There are lots of blacks as well as lots of whites w/o a college education in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Minnesota, Wisconsin, etc.
I do not know how the next candidate can rectify this. Another black president probably won’t see increased black participation (IMO) because there is a world of difference between the first black president and the second.
And I’m not sure how to stem the losses among whites w/o a college education.
But the dems need to figure these two problems out to avoid losing the midwest again in 2020.
I’m glad you omitted Biden from your losers — he’s the only one of the Four that would have a chance. But he’d be running at age 77. Ronald Reagan was only 73 when he ran for re-election.
I’m not eager to bet on Trump’s re-election: even if he doesn’t have a thrombosis in brain or heart, he’s likely to have a Captain Queeg moment severe enough to disturb even some of the 38% !
Structure the bet so that I win if any Republican wins the 2020 Presidency or Democrat Bill McRaven and you’ll probably get me to gamble. Two bottles of Regency Brandy?
Captain Queeg was a character played by Humphrey Bogart in The Caine Mutiny. Queeg had become somewhat deranged, and in a climactic scene the derangment becomes clearly visible.
Before someone else beats me to it, I admit that Trump has already gone far beyond the Queeg derangement in the film’s climax. I was speaking metaphorically, imagining (or rather hoping not to imagine) a level of derangement far beyond that portrayed by Bogart, with a televised Trump blatantly insane enough to dismay even the 38% !
Look, I like and respect Michelle O a lot and in the unlikely event she ended up in the role she’d do a much better job than the current incumbent but…no.
“Scold”. There’s that word again.
What - like the Bush family? No, wait, they went the other way.
Compared to the experienced politician currently in the role?
Perhaps the Democrats should take a page from the Republicans - instead of alienating opposition voters, actively disenfranchise them or at least place every obstacle possible to voting in their way. It’s much easier than, you know, having policies people want to vote for.
As for Warren - if she runs and is nominated I will vote for her, but I think her particular skill set is better suited to the Senate.
WADR I disagree. Any black Democrat will get 95+% of the black vote in the general election. I think that’s almost a given. The idea that the second black President would get less support comes IMO from non-blacks. To get general support, a black Presidential nominee has to be charismatic, to attract non-black votes. A non-black Presidential nominee won’t get the automatic black vote.
Which was Hillary’s problem, and is Warren’s. People don’t like to be scolded - they need a better reason to vote than that people will call them names if they don’t.
Obama, for all his flaws, realized that. “Hope and change” worked - “deplorables” didn’t.
My feelings exactly. I love her to death and would vote for her if nominated, gladly … but the Democrats needs to turn to a new generation. I just cringe when I hear about her, or Biden, or Bernie, considering 2020.
Sorry to go back so far in the thread (I was offline all weekend), but I think what was so special about Bill Clinton was that he didn’t have an entire political party, national news network and army of internet trolls telling millions of uneducated voters that his party was nothing but a conspiracy to take away their guns and make the US a communist workers’ paradise for brown people.
Whomever the Dems nominate will have to fight back against this current of ignorance (that gained enormous strength even from 2012-2016) to swing a few Midwestern states a few percentage points blue. It can be done, but not IMHO by a 71-year-old Massachusetts woman who’s already been Hillaried.
Thing about 1992 was that Clinton could’ve won the election without many Southern states. He won many states that wound up being blue from 1992-now that Dukakis lost, like Illinois, California, New Jersey, Connecticut, and states that Trump barely won in 2016, like Pennsylvania. “Tough on crime” was something Democrats were itching to change their bad image on back then; now its the opposite.
Of course there were people who would vote based on actual or perceived friendliness to gun rights, and of course we’ve always had racists. But we didn’t have one party demonizing the other as actively, subversively un-American, and we didn’t have the insane tribalism that makes it so easy to ignore facts, decency and common sense. And, as I’ve said, we didn’t have a major news network (with all the credibility that status entails) whose mission has nothing to do with news and everything to do with fanning the flames of that tribalism.
In other words, Bill Clinton had the advantage of a relatively level playing field – along with abundant charisma and relatability. The next Democratic candidate will be fighting uphill, so he or she had better have at least as much charisma and relatability. I’m not sure Warren has either.
Any Democrat, of any race, is going to get 90+% of the share of the black vote. The problem isn’t what percentage of the voters you win, it’s what percentage of the eligible voters turn out. A lot of people turned out for Obama’s historic win who haven’t before or since, and that’s definitely one of the many factors that led to Clinton doing worse than Obama.
Though by far the most important factor is how few people like or trusted Hillary. She was a terrible choice. I mean good lord, she lost to freaking Trump. The Dems must find a more likable candidate this time. Warren doesn’t play well except to the die-hard Dems. She could and probably will lose to Trump.
And all other Democratic presidential nominees from 1980 through 2016 did?
This is not a compare and contrast just of the two Clintons. No other Democratic presidential nominee in those 46 years did as well with non-college educated whites as he did, twice. Not even close to it. Does your explanation explain that?
If your point is that he also had the advantage of being something of a good ol’ boy, I’ll concede that. It’s easy to write off every other Dem candidate with a quick explanation of why they did less well with non-college-educated whites:
[ul]
[li]Carter: failed first term[/li][li]Mondale: trounced by Reagan juggernaut[/li][li]Dukakis: Northeast intellectual[/li][li]Gore: Clinton fatigue, stuffy[/li][li]Kerry: Northeast intellectual[/li][li]Obama: black[/li][li]Hillary: Where do you start?[/li][/ul]
But my point was that, whetever intangibles he had going for him, the 2020 candidate is going to need by the truckload, due to the headwinds of willful ignorance that Bill didn’t have to face.
If the Democrats put up a beltway careerist, they may as well save themselves the money. At this point in US politics, Stormy would have a better chance.