I think that’s wrong. Let’s face it, they underestimated Trump in the primaries and they underestimated him in the general. All the people who said there was no way he could get the nomination were wrong. The usual analysis does not apply to him. I’m pretty sure he would have crushed anybody the Democrats put against him because they completely misread his appeal. Hillary may not have been the most likeable candidate but she knew how to run a campaign and I doubt that anybody else could have done better.
In my mind, I think it’s like All in the Family. There is a huge group of voters who are terrified that things are moving too fast and they they are being left behind and are desperate to cling to what they know, even though change is inevitable. None of the Democratic candidates could tap into that fear. Even Biden would be seen as too progressive with his support for the ACA and marriage equality. People wanted an old white man with “old-fashioned” ideas and that is what they voted for.
The election was very close. A 1% change would have changed the results. Clinton lost votes because of things like the email server and the $250,000 speeches to Goldman Sachs (and corresponding perception Goldman Sachs bought her). Biden wouldn’t have lost those votes.
I would disagree on both counts. I didn’t think Hillary’s campaign was well run. She spent too much time and money going negative on Trump. Should have learned from the GOP primary that that was a losing strategy. On Monday I mentioned that it felt like her campaign was going for the scare tactics of a typical GOP campaign of recent elections.
And I believe the early polling way back when had Bernie and Biden outperforming Hillary against pretty much any GOP candidate. Biden certainly would have had a better shot at winning Pennsylvania.
I, too, agree with the OP. Bernie and Biden were never tested on the negatives that would have been heaved at them by the Trump campaign in the general election. It’s easy to look invincible if no one ever hits you.
This race was about gender, nothing else. We’re largely a patriarchal country due to ignorance and religion, and there are many low information, uneducated people who are genuinely uncomfortable with the idea of a woman in charge.
You can Monday Morning Quarterback all you want to, but Hillary ran a great campaign. She couldn’t afford to ignore the endless false bullshit that was being flung at her every single day by Trump. The lessons of the Kerry Swiftboating had to be taken seriously. She had every surrogate available out and hitting her message.
People here have said she went too negative on Trump and paid not enough attention to her position on issues, but that’s not true. Her issues were well laid out and available for anyone to look at – if they cared to look. She also talked about them a lot. Simultaneously, she did hammer on Trump’s character. I don’t find a lack of attention to anything except the following obstacles: (1) the resistance in this culture to a woman in charge of the ultimate office; and (2) she – and all of we – underestimated the number of ignorant jerks out there who would overlook the flaws of someone who didn’t even meet the standard of Basic Human Decency, just to put another old white guy into the office of President, at the cost of nearly everything else.
Don’t forget his ability to project power and tell people things they want to hear.
It’s not just about “progressive”. Between the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent bailouts, ISIS, income disparity, and disruption of major industries due to technological advancement and outsourcing, there is a perception by “Middle Americans” that the system is rigged against them by the wealthy elite. They believe the world is becoming a more dangerous place and that political and business leaders only really care about lining their own pockets, even at the expense of other Americans. Rightly or wrongly, Hillary Clinton played into that narrative between her emails, Clinton Foundation, Goldman Sachs speeches and the perception of the DNC being “rigged” against Bernie Sanders.
Any other Democratic candidate would have either appeared as dull and boring as the Republican candidates who opposed Trump. Or they would have been perceived as being part of the same “establishment” screwing them over.
I think I can agree in hindsight that not ANY Democrat would have been better, and Bernie would have had serious vulnerabilities of his own. But not all Democrats are the same, not all can be attacked equally. Obama proved that. Attacks never stuck to him as well as they stuck to Clinton and he brought a better voting coalition with him than Clinton could command. If it was legal for him to run for a third term, or if he was running for the first time because we went back and made Clinton President in 2008, I think he beats Trump.
Likewise, I think Biden beats Trump. Biden has been in the public eye for 40 years, been through two runs for President, and served eight years as VP. He’s vetted, and he has working class cred. He would have beaten Trump, I have no doubt. Plus he passes the likeability test. Clinton wasn’t likeable at all. Likeability matters in elections and Biden had it.
As for lower profile Democrats like Martin O’Malley, Mark Warner, Cory Booker, etc., I’d bet on them probably beating Trump but it’s not a sure thing. A lot would depend on how well they campaigned, what their message was, and how well they responded to the inevitable attacks.
But here’s the main point: Clinton was UNIQUELY vulnerable to a Trump candidacy. She had too much baggage. She was unlikeable. She had a lecherous husband which gave many Trump supporters an excuse to overlook his own predations. She was insincere. She was the most status quo, establishment candidate conceivable next to the sitting Vice President. It was just a bad matchup.
HILLARY CLINTON WENT INTO THIS CAMPAIGN WITH A NEGATIVE NET APPROVAL RATING. MOST AMERICANS DON’T LIKE OR TRUST HER. NOMINATING HER FOR PRESIDENT WAS A BAD, BAD, VERY BAD IDEA.
This didn’t happen because Americans got any more racist or sexist than they were four years ago, it happened because both parties’ nomination process melted down and produced candidates who would have lost handily to any generic mainstream candidate from the other party.
Sanders appealed to the white blue collar workers who ended up abandoning Hillary for Trump. He energized the base and independents, which Hillary did not. It’s impossible to say if he would have beaten Trump for sure since the dynamic of the whole race would’ve changed, but it’s not that outlandish either.
Sanders could have beaten Trump but a) he might have brought out even fewer minority voters than Clinton did, and b) moderates would have been a tough sell.
But I do think a more likeable mainstream Democrat, like Biden or O’Malley would have beaten Trump pretty easily. Jim Webb in particular appealed to the same type of voters Trump did. Democrats didn’t like Webb because he was kinda Trump lite but what the hell, Democrats have won using Republican lite candidates for a long time. And Webb wouldn’t repeal Obamacare or end Obama’s climate change regulations.
I posted this in another thread but you need to look at it OP.
Now a smattering of votes are still coming in, but the bulk of that holds. Trump got LESS support overall in terms of the popular vote than Romney did. So why the difference? Because Hillary got around SIX MILLION votes less than Obama did in 2012.
A LOT of people did not show up for Hillary this time that did for Obama, that or some combination of that and some people switching over to Trump. But there was a MUCH bigger drop on the democratic side and millions less votes overall, so democrats were down in terms of turnout. So the question of other candidates being able to inspire more turnout is a real one.
I want to see the detailed numbers, who exactly did not show up for Hillary that was there in 2012.
Right. It’s just absurd to portray this as some massive, irresistible wave of racism that couldn’t possibly have been prevented from winning.
Trump got 48.5% of the vote. 61% of voters thought that he was unqualified to be President, and 66% have an unfavorable view of him. He didn’t win a majority of votes in his party’s primaries.
The bar the Democrats had to clear to win this election in a landslide was to nominate someone generally perceived as “qualified to be President”. They couldn’t do it, and now we’re all fucked.
Vote for Biden here as well, although I did end up voting for Clinton. But with Biden there would have been no hesitation.
Of course Biden would have been attacked and Republicans would mostly have rallied around Trump, but think of Joe Biden as your version of John McCain. Republicans don’t hate Joe Biden and many of us have affection for him. He would have peeled off a lot more of us than Clinton did.
I think it’s a mistake to overestimate Trump just because he won. Though he did a few things well, much of his campaign was a mess. He ended up with the same number of votes as Romney and remains deeply unpopular. He wasn’t even that good at attacking Hillary because he would get distracted by absurd tangents like Khan and Machado. He won because Hillary was a deeply disliked candidate and that was true well before the general election. If she had gotten the same number of votes as Kerry in PA, MI and WI she would be the President elect. I am still not sure about Bernie but I don’t think it would have been a problem at all for Biden.
Biden represented the status quo and he is more liberal than Clinton. Trump and the Republican party would have hit him hard over that. I think he wouldn’t have been able to appeal to more conservative types and especially those who wanted change. Remember, Clinton is winning the popular vote and she didn’t lose by much in several states. So if a few more Democratic voters had gotten off their butts and voted, she might have won.
Sanders possibly could have won as he did speak to the white working class voters that Trump was speaking to, but he couldn’t seem to connect to Democratic minority voters, especially blacks. His being a socialist also could have scared off more moderate and conservative voters who weren’t sure about Trump. Even if he had won, it wouldn’t be business as usual for the Democrats as he would have taken the party in a different direction as Trump may do with the Republicans. Even if I wasn’t scared of Sanders on a personal level (except that he seemed awfully grumpy), I wasn’t too keen about his leftist rhetoric or policies, plus he didn’t really have much policy mapped out other than some economic slogans (though that didn’t seem to hurt Trump). So I would have been scared of the result whether it would be Sanders or Trump, and the Republican party would have branded Sanders as a socialist and something really scary, just like they did Obama
