Of course you can. And just for the record, I think you could have beaten Trump.
See how easy it is for an Obama to declare he could beat someone. It’s not as if they are ever going to have an actual contest to prove who would actually win.
Interesting take from a liberal writer on Politico.
Reading the whole article actually made me reconsider the conclusion I came to in the OP, that Obama would have beaten Trump. Now I’m not so sure. What do you guys think of the article?
There is a great deal of racial resentment among white Americans, and Obama didn’t fix it.
It had me reading until I got to this part…
I haven’t talked to anyone yet who likes or has benefited from Obamacare. Not one.
Undoubtedly it’s because they’re all racists.
Oh yeah? Well I’ve talked to plenty of people who appreciate what Obamacare has done for them, like allowing their college-age children to remain on their family insurance plan or preventing companies from denying coverage due to pre-existing conditions. Break out of your homogenous circle of friends maybe?
The article seems to be written by someone who believes that Hillary almost one rather than someone who acknowledges that Hillary lost. He focuses a lot on things that would be problems for Obama in 2016 that weren’t in 2012, but doesn’t touch on the big negatives that Clinton has that he doesn’t, or the big advantages that he has that she doesn’t. I mean, he’s a much more charismatic speaker and much quicker on his verbal feet than Clinton, which gives him a huge advantage in actually winning people over to him and actual-winning debates (as opposed to ‘Clinton supporters declare that she won the debate’). He ran a very successful campaign and visited a lot of smaller states, I can’t see him deciding to campaign heavily in solidly blue states ignoring swing states hoping to cement a popular vote victory at the expense of the election. He actually appeals to a lot of minority voters instead of just being ‘Not Trump’. While not popular with Republicans, he doesn’t inspire the kind of hate Hillary does. He has serious accomplishments in office and not just ‘qualifications’.
Obviously, I’m ignoring the issue that running for a third term against precedent and the law would make Obama’s run much more difficult, since the statement was clearly about running a winning campaign and not literally running for a third term. Other than that, though, it’s clear that Obama didn’t make the mistakes Hillary did during his two runs (one of which involved beating her) and was unlikely to decide to make them this time, has more charisma and real accomplishments, and doesn’t have the massive hate-on that Hillary does.
I would tend to agree, especially with this part:
I think people wildly underestimate the effectiveness of smear campaigns (except, perhaps, against Trump, who seems to be somewhat insulated by the fact that some people like him BECAUSE he’s an awful person, rather than in spite of this fact – but it should be noted that Trump is ALSO limping into office with a negative approval rating). Anybody who wins a major-party nomination, these days, also wins at least six months of incessant mud-slinging from the opposing party. Anyone who wins an election wins four years of it. Obama was pretty clearly compromised by this in the 2012 election, which he won by a much smaller margin than in 2008, and I suspect that 2016 would have been either a loss or a win by a razor-thin margin indeed.
I can’t prove it, but I also believe that if the Democratic nominee had been Sanders or Biden or Webb*, we would have been having virtually identical conversations throughout the election season about how awful BOTH of the candidates were, and why on earth did we nominate an avowed socialist who is probably also an atheist / some gaffe-prone old guy who is like your embarrassing uncle at Thanksgiving dinner / a one-term senator who is practically a Republican and writes embarrassingly un-PC novels, when we could have had a popular and accomplished candidate like Hillary Clinton? I don’t know for a fact that all of these candidates would have lost to Trump, since the election was basically a coin-flip and it’s plausible that one of the others could have flipped just enough voters in the right states, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if any of them lost. And if they did lose, they would look like a uniquely awful candidate right now – the person who lost to TRUMP! – and all of the people who didn’t run, including Clinton, would be looking great by comparison.
- This goes for Martin O’Malley too, I just don’t know enough about Martin O’Malley to know what the specific line of attack would have been.
Considering the number of black voters who voted for Obama, but didn’t vote for either of the two white candidates in 2016, there seems to be a great deal of racial resentment among black voters. Obama didn’t fix that, either.
When you whoosh upon a star…
He would have gotten smoked. He’s right now trying to fuck everything up on his way out. What a total loser.
So maybe the country didn’t become the Ku Klux Klan overnight. Perhaps racism isn’t why Trump won the general election.
Live cams… I’m very happy Trump didn’t catch on during the campaign.
There’s a YUGE disconnect in a lot of people’s minds between “Obamacare” the concept and the actual benefits of the Affordable Care Act. Many people who oppose “Obamacare” are solidly for most aspects of the Affordable Care Act.
I blame Obama. One of his major problems was that he thought you campaign, you win, you govern. He did not recognize that governing effectively requires that the campaigning never stop.