When the six election outcomes that you list equal the instances where voters *weren’t *“dumb shits” (1976, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2008, 2012), it’s more than just “sometimes,” and maybe it’s the “non-dumb-shit” side that needs to reconsider its electoral strategy.
McGovern and Mondale were running against incumbent presidents, usually a tall political task. Hillary was running against someone who had never held public or military office.
Except that’s not the OP’s question. He didn’t ask, “Who was the worst candidate in those three elections?” He said, “George McGovern, Walter Mondale or Hillary Clinton -
***Of the three, ***which was the worst candidate?”
They don’t care because she has a vagina, so they’ll eagerly eat up anything anyone comes up with to discredit her, whether it’s based in reality or not.
I’d say the worst candidate was Mondale, actually. Reagan was popular, but Mondale was not so far left or Reagan so popular that he couldn’t have done as well as Bob Dole did in 1996. Mondale should have won 10 states or so.
Clinton is the most DISAPPOINTING candidate, certainly, although her 2008 run should have been warning enough that she was not very good at this. And frankly, what I’ve read about how she handles her inner circle tells me that she would have had major problems being President as well. Her competence may have been overrated. She has knowledge, and she’s strong, but competence doesn’t seem to really come from that in her case.
The comedian Mark Russell once spoke of Mondale’s “Norwegian charisma”, which he described as being “between that of a Presbyterian minister and a tree.”
However, he was up against Reagan, the very popular and charismatic incumbent. Mondale’s predicament was not unlike Bob Dole’s race against Clinton. Neither ever had a chance.
Hillary, on the other hand, ran against Trump. By any political calculus, she should have won. She didn’t.
Plenty of them would have voted for Sarah Palin.
Or Condi Rice, for that matter.
As to the OP, I pick McGovern. Mostly because it would have been better for the country if he had won. Get out of Viet Nam sooner, avoid Watergate, muddle around thru the 70s and elect Reagan anyway.
Realistically, neither Mondale nor McGovern had a chance. So it goes.
Regards,
Shodan
To use a sports analogy, McGovern and Mondale were the Broncos who got smashed 55-10 by the Niners in the Super Bowl; big underdogs who got walloped just as expected but still should have kept the score closer.
Hillary was the 2007 heavily favored Patriots losing to the wild-card Giants.
Heh. Fair enough. I have to admit that I don’t really have the analytical chops to assess which of the three would have come in third place in a presidential goodness contest with only the three of them as entries, had they all been elected President.
Not a lot of interest, either, as it turns out, so, sorry for the threadshit, I guess.
And 1988 (stupid fuck couldn’t even raise a decent human being)…
George McGovern, like Barry Goldwater, got his ass kicked. And like Goldwater, in the process of losing, he transformed his party completely.
So, McGovern sowed the seeds for a liberal party even while he was getting stomped. In the long run, he won. The modern Democrats are McGovern’s party.
Hillary and Mondale were losers WITHOUT a silver lining.
She let people down. She lost the election. Trump didn’t win it, she lost it. The entire election came down to half a dozen swing states that she spent less time in than she did in extremely safe states like California and New York. She is simply not a good candidate. She’s smart, knowledgeable and hard working but those traits are a dime a dozen in DC. Point to any positive trait she has and I can point to an army of career bureaucrats, lobbyists and DC lawyers who have more of it than her. The one thing that politicians offer that these bureaucrats, lobbyists and lawyers do not is the ability to get elected and implement these policies.
This was a winnable election and she lost it. Trump was not some unstoppable candidate of destiny.
And whose fault was that? Who was the one keeping private servers that created the hook for the investigation? This is not some simple mistake nor was ‘everyone doing it’ it was a deliberate attempt to maintain secrecy about your communications as a federal official.
Was it also Comey’s fault when he effectively exonerated Hillary a few months before by saying that no reasonable prosecutor would bring charges?
Most people thought Hillary would win (predictions were something like 2::1 in her favor, but you are fooling yourself if you don’t think a shitload of people who voted for Hillary didn’t need a have to hold their nose while pulling that lever.
Trump was a HORRIBLE candidate. If he was running against Biden or even Sanders, I think he would have lost.
Mondale was running against the most popular president in recent history, I don’t think he was beatable in 1984.
I don’t know much about McGovern. Did he cheat during the primaries too?
I disagree.
There was a sense of entitlement in 2008 and there was a sense of entitlement in 2016. I don’t know if it was just the attempt to create an aura of inevitability or what but the “ready for Hillary” crowd certainly seemed to deride the notion that anyone other than Hillary should be our candidate. Other more plausible candidates than O Malley were discouraged from running.
Its hard to lose an election to someone who cheated during the primary and undercut a populist movement within the party to maintain the lead of an establishment candidate during a year when anti-establishment sentiments and grassroots populism are the defining characteristics of the election cycle.
This.
The people who are criticizing Comey are essentially saying that he should have kept quiet - at least, until after Election Day.
I think to a large extent Clinton was a victim of her own success. With Republican obstruction leading to dysfunctional government, the country was in the mood for a protest vote. Since all the polls showed Clinton was likely to win, people felt safe to make a protest vote in favor of Trump, or to stay home and boycott the election. I think if the polls showed a closer race where every vote was needed to keep Trump from office then Hillary might have won.
‘Supposed to.’ There’s a term of art for you. Absolutely impossible to argue with, of course.
Thing is, Trump wasn’t supposed to stand a chance of winning the nomination to begin with. Remember all those ‘ceilings’ in his support among Republicans? He was just the entertainment before they settled down to pick a ‘serious’ candidate like Jeb or L’il Marco. But Trump mowed through that field with surprising ease. Comparing him with Appy State is bullshit.
Everybody underestimating someone doesn’t mean they should have been crushed.
Yeah, and if there had been a Carter v. Ford survey over a year before the 1976 election, Gerald Ford would have won in a landslide. What of it?
What the hell are you talking about?
Like I said, everybody underestimating someone doesn’t mean they should have been crushed. The Giants won because they were a much stronger team than people gave them credit for being.