I have never seen a race where so many downticket politicians have run away from the top of their ticket one both sides.
I have never voted for a Clinton in my life and I hate that I have to this time around. Sure, she is competent but that can be said for half the agency heads in government (and almost 10% of the politicians). Competnecy is nothing special. Sure she is experienced, but so was Bill Richardson who ran in 2008. So is Joe Biden. So are a lot of people. Being experienced is nothing special there are literally dozens of people who are experienced enough to make Hillary’s resume look a little weak. What Hillary has over all these people is name recognition and we THOUGHT electability. We THOUGHT she had coattails.
In a year when the Republican nominee is a guy who has been recorded saying “grab them by the pussy” and saying all sort s of truly offensive things, we should be looking at not only flipping the senate, we should be looking at flipping the house and more than a handful of state legislatures.
Instead we are happy that we will probably flip the senate. The fact that the house is so far out of reach when our candidate is running against Donald Trump goes a long way (IMO) to show that Hillary doesn’t have very much appeal, electability or coattails. She isn’t swinging the swing districts, Trump is and I submit that there are perhaps half a dozen other Democrats that would have had better coattails.
So who do you think would have had better coattails than Hillary Clinton this year against Donald Trump?
Of the Democrats who entered the primaries, I’m quite sure that Hillary is the best choice. Bernie had some good ideas but I don’t see him as President.
The list of “potential” candidates was a mile long but Hillary sucked up all the oxygen in the room and didn’t leave any room for competition. She also has a reputation for being vindictive and vengeful and people backed off rather than piss off the Clinton machine. The greatest act of bravery Obama ever performed as going against the Clinton machine and what it would have meant if he had lost.
Hillary could have increased her coattails by selecting Julian Castro as VP, not Kaine.
Hard to say whether a Warren or Bernie would have had better coattails. They inspire more rabid enthusiasm, but from a smaller group.
As for the Republicans, anyone would have been better than Trump. But the most electable might be Ted Cruz - he was No. 2 in the delegates, after Trump - or maybe John Cornyn or Kasich. Four years from now, maybe Ben Sasse. Problem is that Republicans have always had deep intra-party prejudices.
Maybe it’s my own bias, but I really don’t see Cruz as much more electable than Trump. For different reasons, obviously. But like Trump, he has a core constituency, but no appeal to anyone beyond that.
The Republicans had, what, 20 candidates? And the democrats could only manage to come up with 3, one of which wasn’t even a democrat?
It seems clear to me that the democrats let it be known that this would be Hillary’s year, and no one was to get in the way of Hillary’s coronation like Obama did in 2008. Absent that, the democrats probably could’ve fielded a good candidate. Instead they squandered the biggest opportunity they’re likely to ever have by nominating the only person they could that people have a hard time voting for over Trump. This should’ve been a landslide victory in which the entire federal government came under democratic control, but they were determined to make Hillary happen no matter what.
Joe Biden would have been fun as shit to watch debate Trump. I’ve never understood why Biden doesn’t get more love. He seems like one of the few genuine career politicians out there.
They liked her so much that no one else should even bother to throw their hat in the ring? She’s so universally adored that no one would dare even step in the way between everyone and their beloved Hillary Clinton by trying to run in the primaries?
As stated, O’Malley and Webb did. Both were perfectly fine mainstream Democrats, yet their candidacies didn’t go anywhere. That leads me to believe that most of the Democratic primary voters had a choice but preferred Clinton, unless you want to go full Trump and say that all of the polls that showed a strong preference for Clinton were “Rigged”.
Rather, put this down to very effective Republican gerrymandering of House districts such that they have quite a few more safe seats than Democrats. It’s going to take more than Democratic coattails to turn this situation around.
Indeed. It’s the Republican wave in 2010 (a census year) that let state legislatures gerrymander their congressional districts so the house would stay in Republican hands. Unless we magically go for proportional vote system in 2018 (ha!), it’ll be 2020 before that issue can be resolved, and then only if state legislatures flip.
I watched him in a friendly interview yesterday, either CNN or MSNBC, and he seemed to be nearly incoherent much of the time. Not in a “oh my god did he have a stroke” sort of way, but while his sentences were superficially grammatical I couldn’t string together any meaning from one to the next. He’s inconsistent and unreliable and not always in control of what comes out of his mouth. Not someone I’d want to pin my coattail hopes on.
On the other hand, he’s probably a good bipartisan negotiator, unlike Obama, who never even tried. Biden has that good-old-boy friendliness that goes so far in clubs like the Senate.
That’s where the Democrats need to put their efforts between now and 2020, in the state legislatures. But they don’t seem to have the stomach for that kind of unglamorous but effective work.
What Democrat is running away from Hilary? I haven’t heard of any.
We won’t know if she has coattails until after the election.
No, the House is surprisingly within reach, despite the fact that the Republicans have gerrymandered the districts to guarantee them a majority of the seats, despite the fact they don’t get a majority of the votes.
I was really hoping that Trump would have longer coattails than he turned out to have. One reason I was rooting for him so hard to take the nomination.
(Long coattails on a losing candidate DOES mean that he takes his party to Hell with him, right?)