The trends are the other way. But you can hope for things to turn bad, if you want to.
You overestimate the importance of that issue outside a Republican primary, or the ability of a Republican to make it an issue other than with the typical “Dummycraps gonna take yer guns!” stuff that can no longer convince anyone it hasn’t already convinced.
That’s a way to ensure losing. Again, check the numbers.
Easiest way for a Republican to win is make the conversation about change. With minor exceptions like Bush the 1st we switch parties when the incumbent isn’t running.
If we’re gonna talk electoral votes, no, Pennsylvania isn’t necessary for a GOP win. And because, as the saying goes, in between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh, it’s all Alabama, Republicans keep on trying to win PA in Presidential years. And it keeps on not happening.
OH and FL, of course, are genuine swing states. And if the GOP gets those in addition to the states it won in 2012, we’re looking at a 285-253 Dem margin, which means the GOP only needs to pick up 16 more EVs to throw the election into the House (where it would win), or 17 EVs to win outright.
Those last 16 EVs will be tough to come by, though. As possible swing states, you’ve got a lot of states that seem to be trending Dem these days (CO, NM, NV, NH, VA), and some Rust Belt states that usually go Dem (MI, WI, IA) as potential targets.
If I were playing the black pieces for this election, I’d probably go after Iowa and Wisconsin, which in 2000 and 2004 were decided by <1% both times, and hope that the two Obama elections were an aberration.
The only way a Republican can win the Presidency in 2016 without finding some way to win Pennsylvania is if there is some sort of seismic shift in American politics that makes any and all forecasting at this point completely irrelevant.
I know the “dynasty” meme is here to say and not going anywhere, but I frankly don’t get it.
The Clintons do not have parents that were political figures. Neither of them have brothers or sisters that are political figures. Their child is not a political figure, in fact neither of them has a blood relative that is in politics.
Yes, they are the ultimate high profile Uber-power couple of politics and any definition of “political insider” should include a picture of them. But to me the word “dynasty” suggests an generational political family and often includes the implication that the public office holder’s or wannabe holders got where they were by virtue of their family affiliation rather than their own accomplishments. I just don’t see this with the Clintons.
Hillary Clinton was a backwoods ambulance-chaser before becoming First Lady. She never would have been elected Senator from New York, a state she had essentially never set foot in before accepting the nomination, were it not for being First Lady, nor would a Senator with eight years in office who disagreed with the President on fundamental points of foreign policy have been named Secretary of State without same. “Getting there by virtue of family affiliation rather than her own accomplishments” is the story of Hillary’s political career, and I’m surprised more feminists aren’t upset about her displacing women who earned it.
First Lady of Arkansas, you mean? And wife of the state’s Attorney General before that?
You don’t think much of New York voters, do you? Or of all the groundwork she did on Hillarycare which was crucial to ACA.
Is that a claim she had no ideas of her own, or only that she did and does generally see eye to eye with a fellow responsible-adult Democrat who happens to be President?
You seem to forget all the discussion during Bill’s administration about who was really in charge, who was telling who to do what, and his own grateful acknowledgments about her being an equal partner in their joint career enterprise.
If you’re genuinely surprised, perhaps you ought to reconsider your premise.
You’re actually disputing that she rode her husband’s coattails to becoming a Senator as her first political office?
First *elective *office. Not first *political *role, not by any means.
Are you disputing that she ever did anything worthwhile of her own before that?
Well, she did defraud several people out of their life savings and cackle at a 12-year-old rape victim, but I don’t know how worthwhile those pre-2000 achievements were.
For the first item, you’re going to have to be more specific about the claim. Not all of us keep track of RW Facebook glurge.
For the second, she was laughing aboutthe reliability of polygraphs. Not the girl.
But, whatever fantasies make you happy. She’s not getting your vote, of course, but she doesn’t need it.
No one on the political radar screen is even close to her for the democratic nomination. I wouldn’t count out VP Biden joining the race or another candidate that no one in the press has thought of yet (a dark horse so to speak lol).
The rumor is that Hillary Clinton announced her candidacy early due to a falling approval rating. Now that she is in the race a lot of dirty laundry is surfacing mostly to do with her husband Bill Clinton’s involvements with Russia obtaining the uranium mining deposit rights in the USA.
Did Hillary, while acting as the SOS, have any influence on the outcome of that decision? The unreported contributions are not small.
Here’s the bottom line … Hillary Clinton might not even make it to the Democratic National Convention being held July 25, 2016.
These present day problems will be talked about for the next 18 months. The Clintons foundation has to be above reproach for an honest run on the white house.
If the Clintons can’t prove they didn’t do anything wrong and the GOP can’t prove they didn’t do anything wrong then it will still be a campaign issue, not only with the GOP candidates bringing it up, but also with any Democratic runners for the white house.
She’s the front runner now, but with 15 months left leaves plenty of time for another person to step up to the plate and he or she is not going to win playing nice guy.
She (Hillary Clinton) is like in a batting cage with pitches coming at her from all sides.
Is she made of the right stuff?
If she wins the primary … I think Bush and Rubio can take her by not even bringing up her name.
Like selling cars don’t tell the customer how bad the other cars are … tell them why your car is better.
Chait has a nice a round-up of the Clinton Foundation stories and it looks bad.Probably there is nothing which is outright illegal but it certainly looks sleazy in a way which voters will care about eventually when they come to know about it. It will be a serious vulnerability in the general and Democratic primary voters should take a close look before nominating her.
To me it sounds like deja vu all over again, with “scandals” that in reality do not amount to much but have to be maintained by corporate media to ensure that we get a horse race. (And then get more political advertising money for the media groups)
The NY Times also signed some kind of agreement with Schweizer which gave them the scoop that they reported. I’m actually really shocked that a liberal paper like the Times wouldn’t do better checking given the source.
I still think Clinton deserves a lot of the flack she’s getting. The Foundation accepted foreign donations in spite of an agreement she signed with the administration and the revelations in the book were enough to get Reuters on the case auditing the Foundations returns, which in turn made the Foundation admit they’d “made some mistakes”. Strange how those mistakes involved forgetting to note that foreign companies were giving money to the Foundation while Clinton was SecState and that those companies had business before her office.
At least this gives her some deniability, although it would be nice if she’d answer questions rather than hunkering down like it’s Hurricane Katrina.
You know what’s most troubling for her supporters though? One of the keys to winning Presidential elections is batting down these types of stories quickly. Obama had a rapid response Truth Squad. Clinton has an actual campaign now. Their lack of effective response is very Dukakis-like. What happens when my guys with the big bucks really start to throw mud?
After four years of lying about the ACA you still couldn’t beat Obama. After two years of recreational outrage over Benghazi, nobody cares about it who already wouldn’t vote for Clinton (or any Democrat) in a million years. What is Team Red going to bring up about Hillary that we don’t already know and have already moved on from years ago? She’s pre-scandaled. Nothing sticks. Republicans might be better off finding a decent candidate than focusing on running against Hillary.
These are new scandals. Sure, she’s inoculated from her previous baggage(or more accurately it’s already baked into her poll numbers), but new stuff does damage. And she isn’t responding effectively. She’s been letting surrogates go out there without talking points, where they get to defend her without knowing any facts, which damages their credibility when facts do come out. A proper rapid response campaign tells surrogates what they need to know at the very least. So far, all they know is “right wing author”, which doesn’t help when the nation’s leading liberal newspaper is supporting his allegations. So now they need facts and they aren’t coming up with much. Why did Giustria come out with the first real rebuttal and not the Clinton campaign? So far, her campaign is looking worse than 2008, not better.
You’ll notice that the Obama administration isn’t having any of it. When asked about Clinton, they say, “Ask the Clinton campaign”. Then the Clinton campaign refuses to answer questions. I’m not sure what part of this looks promising to you.
The fact that Republicans have no credible alternative.
THe fact that Democrats don’t think THEY even have a credible alternative kinda makes that argument look foolish. You’ve all lost your minds. Do you truly think that Hillary Clinton is the only person in a country of 300 million who is fit to be President? Oh yeah, Warren too. So two people who are fit to be President in your minds.