# The case for Hillary Clinton 2020
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-case-for-hillary-clinton-2020/802607
**Category:** Politics & Elections
**Created:** [November 24, 2017, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-case-for-hillary-clinton-2020/802607 "2017-11-24T17:43:07Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 6
### Author:  [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2017, 6:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-case-for-hillary-clinton-2020/802607/102 "2017-11-27T18:11:32Z")
> [@Gatopescado](#):
>
> Because he was running against Hillary.
Who would have won vs Trump- backed by Rove, the GOP and the Kremlin? Not Bernie, certainly.
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### Author:  [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2017, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-case-for-hillary-clinton-2020/802607/103 "2017-11-27T18:16:11Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> Yes, Sanders would have been the target of a lot of attacks, had he been the nominee, or even looked close to becoming the nominee. And some of them might have stuck. I still say he would have fared better than Clinton in the general, and only a little bit better would have been enough to win.
>
> The key is to realize that a big chunk of Trump’s voters weren’t voting for Trump because they wanted Trump. They were voting for “I’m Mad as Hell and I’m Not Going to Take it Any More”, and Trump was the Mad-as-Hell Candidate. Clinton can’t appeal to the Mad-as-Hell voters, but Sanders could. It doesn’t matter that their policies are exactly opposite, because that kind of voter isn’t looking at policies.
Maybe. As long as we all know Bernie would have been just as savagely attacked, I can concede there was a tiny chance of him winning. My guess is that he would have done even more poorly, but we’ll never know. We can know the fake news, etc would have hit him hard also.
You do make a good point about the “I’m Mad as Hell” voter. But would Bernie have promised them their lost factory jobs back, their coal mines re-opened? I think not, Bernie was too honest to lie like Trump did.
Sure, most of the write in voters and third party progressives would have voted Bernie.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2017, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-case-for-hillary-clinton-2020/802607/104 "2017-11-27T18:38:47Z")
He couldn’t promise them that the factories and coal mines would re-open, but he could promise them new, better jobs. Then again, any Democrat could promise the same: What’s more important is that he could also promise that those Wall Street fat cats who got the mines and factories closed would pay. Note, I’m not saying that that’s entirely accurate (partly, but not entirely), but it’s a message that Sanders could and likely would sell.
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### Author:  [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2017, 6:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-case-for-hillary-clinton-2020/802607/105 "2017-11-27T18:48:47Z")
Trump promised that too.
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### Author:  [@doorhinge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/doorhinge)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2017, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-case-for-hillary-clinton-2020/802607/106 "2017-11-27T19:02:22Z")
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> The key is to realize that a big chunk of Trump’s voters weren’t voting for Trump because they wanted Trump. They were voting for “I’m Mad as Hell and I’m Not Going to Take it Any More”, and Trump was the Mad-as-Hell Candidate. Clinton can’t appeal to the Mad-as-Hell voters, but Sanders could. It doesn’t matter that their policies are exactly opposite, because that kind of voter isn’t looking at policies.
(post shortened)
Bernie and Trump had a lock on the “I’m Mad as Hell and I’m Not Going to Take it Any More” voters. I wonder if the major political parties truly understand this?
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### Author:  [@Gatopescado](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gatopescado)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2017, 7:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-case-for-hillary-clinton-2020/802607/107 "2017-11-27T19:12:54Z")
> [@DrDeth](#):
>
> Who would have won vs Trump- backed by Rove, the GOP and the Kremlin? Not Bernie, certainly.
Anybody but Hillary. As a life-long conservative Republican, I would have voted for Bernie.
To be perfectly clear: I \*\*DID NOT \*\*vote for Trump. 😛
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### Author:  [@purplehearingaid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/purplehearingaid)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2017, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-case-for-hillary-clinton-2020/802607/108 "2017-11-27T20:22:08Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#):
>
> That’s a hard case to make, even for her most zealous supporters. Hillary Clinton is guilty of the most unpardonable sin of all. By her inept campaigning she cost the Democrats a Presidency that was theirs for the taking. She lost to Donald fucking Trump! And she may well be the only Democrat in the entire country that is capable of losing to him again. I think people could be forgiven for being extremely reluctant to give her the 2020 candidacy. She had her chance and she blew it. Time to move on.
Hillary had 2 chances and blew it both times ! I with your post !
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### Author:  [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2017, 8:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-case-for-hillary-clinton-2020/802607/109 "2017-11-27T20:29:33Z")
> [@octopus](#):
>
> … I’ve been saying that rhetoric is as important as logic in debate for awhile. I also cautioned about the glee that many had with the success of Trump in the early primaries. Funny how so many smart people are now coming around to the power of rhetoric and emotion.
I agree with this.
> [@octopus](#):
>
> Going forward, I think we’ll see a further exploitation of division with these social media/mass media tools. The solution isn’t just critical thinking. It’s also genuine tolerance of divergent political views. My time on this board doesn’t give me any hope with this though.
Though I agree that there will be continued exploitation of division, I’m not so sure that “genuine tolerance of divergent political views” can exist when one of those political views is that certain groups of people–Muslims, female, black, Latino, gay, transgendered, etc.–are **inherently inferior**. _Born_ inferior.
You can’t deny that this is a bedrock belief of much of Trump’s base. And it’s a problem. Because it’s not a belief that can be tolerated.
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2017, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-case-for-hillary-clinton-2020/802607/110 "2017-11-27T20:31:58Z")
> [@](#):
>
> Quoth **ElvisL1ves** :
>
> Trump promised that too.
Oh, sure, I’m not saying that Sanders would have monopolized those voters. But if he split them with Trump, that’d still be enough to get him to victory.
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### Author:  [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2017, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-case-for-hillary-clinton-2020/802607/111 "2017-11-27T20:40:27Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#):
>
> But people absolutely \*hate \*admitting that they’ve \*been \*manipulated. Even to themselves. Admitting it to others who were \*not \*manipulated, especially those who pleaded with them to see it all along, well, that’s almost impossible for most. It’s much more comfortable to keep the bubble inflated.
>
> That’s got to be a large part of the reason for the continued vituperation of Clinton, with its intensity seemingly inversely proportional to respect for mere facts. It’s the very human need to avoid accepting a very uncomfortable responsibility.
I agree. The venom people aim at Clinton is all out of proportion with her actual words, deeds, and personality traits.
So great a degree of loathing is an unmistakable clue that pure logic and reason are not at work, here.
> [@Chronos](#):
>
> … The key is to realize that a big chunk of Trump’s voters weren’t voting for Trump because they wanted Trump. They were voting for “I’m Mad as Hell and I’m Not Going to Take it Any More”, and Trump was the Mad-as-Hell Candidate. Clinton can’t appeal to the Mad-as-Hell voters, but Sanders could. …
Though I agree that there was a strain of “I’m mad as hell” in 2016 voting, there was as large or larger a strain of “I want my country back.”
And “I want my country back” was pure racism. Bernie may not have been the choice of the majority of black and Hispanic voters—but he sure as hell was not going to go down the dog-whistle white supremacist road that Trump traveled from his very first press conference.
Bernie would never have won over the “I want my country back” voters. They were enthralled by Trump’s plausibly-deniable racism. Bernie’s anti-corporation message was not attractive enough to lead those voters to choose it over Trump’s white-supremacism.
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### Author:  [@sleestak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sleestak)
#### Post date: [November 27, 2017, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-case-for-hillary-clinton-2020/802607/112 "2017-11-27T22:02:15Z")
> [@asahi](#):
>
> I’m qualified to judge their stupidity, regardless of whether or not they believe they’re voting in their own interests or not.
No, you are not. If you do not understand how absolutely stupid your present tactic of insulting people is then you have no chance whatsoever of understanding what other people need.
None.
Slee
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### Author:  [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2017, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-case-for-hillary-clinton-2020/802607/113 "2017-11-28T03:18:53Z")
> [@sleestak](#):
>
> No, you are not. If you do not understand how absolutely stupid your present tactic of insulting people is then you have no chance whatsoever of understanding what other people need.
>
> None.
>
> Slee
I’m not running for office, so I can say what I want. I’m angry and I don’t care who’s offended by my comments. A lot of the voters in this country are kinda like little puppies who need to have their noses rubbed in the shit that they’ve left on the carpet.
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### Author:  [@Try2B\_Comprehensive](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Try2B_Comprehensive)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2017, 3:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-case-for-hillary-clinton-2020/802607/114 "2017-11-28T03:58:12Z")
“It is easier to fool a man than to convince him he has been fooled.”
I really believe Bernie would have won. He has a genuine vision and message which, while being perhaps a tad unrealistic, actually does address the needs and concerns of the general electorate. I think that could have stacked up very well against, “blame brown people.” Instead we got Hillary and what was largely a load of triangulated corporate gobbledegook, delivered in a frequently unrelatable/robotic style. Sure, she would have continued Obama’s policies against the brick wall of GOP obstructionism, only far more annoyingly than Obama.
Bernie, if similarly stymied, would at least have been thought-provoking. “Why Does the GOP intend to impoverish every working person to further enrich the wealthy? Are they haters or what?” It coulda been worth a shit…
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### Author:  [@EddyTeddyFreddy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EddyTeddyFreddy)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2017, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-case-for-hillary-clinton-2020/802607/115 "2017-11-28T04:08:19Z")
> [@Sherrerd](#):
>
> Bernie would never have won over the “I want my country back” voters. They were enthralled by Trump’s plausibly-deniable racism. Bernie’s anti-corporation message was not attractive enough to lead those voters to choose it over Trump’s white-supremacism.
And let’s not forget, Sanders is a Brooklyn-born Jew who looks and sounds enough like the caricature of that ethnicity, despite all those years in Vermont, to open another angle of dog-whistling attack. New York socialist Jew: Yeh, the “I want my country back” voters would vote for that over Trump? I very much doubt it.
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### Author:  [@Lamoral](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamoral)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2017, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-case-for-hillary-clinton-2020/802607/116 "2017-11-28T04:36:32Z")
It’s true that Sanders would have been the first Jewish presidential candidate and therefore would have been vulnerable to attacks based on anti-Semitic stereotypes. The alt-right characters with their “((( )))” would be meme-ing away at full throttle - oddly, these people seem to be able to compartmentalize Jews when they’re associated with Trump, like Ivanka and Jared. (It’s kind of ironic that Trump actually has a more personal connection with Judaism than any previous president, given his familial situation.) In any case, yes, I’m sure it would get ugly with the anti-Semitism if Bernie were in the general election. I’m not sure it would be enough to defeat him, though.
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### Author:  [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2017, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-case-for-hillary-clinton-2020/802607/117 "2017-11-28T07:11:21Z")
Somehow I think, given the relatively mainstream position of secular Jews in the USA, and that Bernie was a very secular Jew married to a Gentile, being Jewish would not be as bad for his electoral prospects _in this country_ as it would be in most other countries.
I think he would have had a very hard time in office; between much of the Democratic Party having been on Team Hillary, and a socialist prez attracting various leftist kooks. But he was a more credible _candidate_ than some people want to admit. Trump took the GOP nomination by raising his own base of voters who didn’t normally vote in primaries and bringing them to primaries; Bernie was doing the same on the Democratic Party side.
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### Author:  [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2017, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-case-for-hillary-clinton-2020/802607/118 "2017-11-28T12:50:19Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#):
>
> Somehow I think, given the relatively mainstream position of secular Jews in the USA, and that Bernie was a very secular Jew married to a Gentile, being Jewish would not be as bad for his electoral prospects _in this country_ as it would be in most other countries.
>
> I think he would have had a very hard time in office; between much of the Democratic Party having been on Team Hillary, and a socialist prez attracting various leftist kooks. But he was a more credible _candidate_ than some people want to admit. Trump took the GOP nomination by raising his own base of voters who didn’t normally vote in primaries and bringing them to primaries; Bernie was doing the same on the Democratic Party side.
Bernie would have brought out more independents than Hillary Clinton – this is indisputable.
But he probably would have under-performed elsewhere among the electorate. He would have under-performed among African Americans. He probably would have under-performed with the moderates who would have been concerned about Sanders’ economic and national security agenda. Without the help of major donors - which Bernie actively pushed away - it would have been hard to compete against Trump in the general election, who despite being his own man still took GOP money.
But even beyond money, there’s something that Trump represented, something that he alone spoke to, and that is the anxiety among whites that their country is being taken over by evil forces. And ultimately I go back to the intelligence of the average voter: if they were dumb enough to pick Trump (and settle for Hillary if you will), then by extension, they’re probably not smart enough to see that Bernie would have been a safer candidate than the disaster we have now.
I think you’re giving too much credit to voters and assume that they would see what you see - that’s not necessarily the case. This is the country that elected GWB twice, after all. The country that voted for a GOP congress because they were convinced that Obama was a communist whose healthcare proposals were going to take white grandmothers from Nebraska and have death panels euthanize them.
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### Author:  [@Shodan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shodan)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2017, 1:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-case-for-hillary-clinton-2020/802607/119 "2017-11-28T13:31:54Z")
> [@asahi](#):
>
> But he probably would have under-performed elsewhere among the electorate. He would have under-performed among African Americans. He probably would have under-performed with the moderates who would have been concerned about Sanders’ economic and national security agenda.
“Probably”? I think that seriously understates the case.
As a rule, primary voters (on both sides) are more partisan and more extreme that the electorate in general. Hence the tendency to run back to the middle after getting the nom. A socialist who cannot muster enough votes to get the nom is not going to muster enough votes to win the general election, even if magic happens and he beats Hillary.
Not to mention that (per Wiki)
> [@](#):
>
> Black Americans of all education levels are significantly more likely than whites of the same education level to be anti-Semitic.
and
> [@](#):
>
> …less than 5% of whites, Asians, and “others” (including Native Americans) combined hold deeply entrenched anti-Semitic views, compared to over 30% of African Americans and Latinos…
[Cite](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2014/02/19/entrenched-anti-semitic-views-very-rare-among-whites-and-asian-americans-common-among-blacks-and-latinos/?utm_term=.90d29f134058).
Hillary lost in part because she didn’t turn out the black vote. Sanders is even less likely to have done so.
Regards,
Shodan
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### Author:  [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2017, 1:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-case-for-hillary-clinton-2020/802607/120 "2017-11-28T13:40:59Z")
> [@asahi](#):
>
> Bernie would have brought out more independents than Hillary Clinton – this is indisputable.
>
> But he probably would have under-performed elsewhere among the electorate. He would have under-performed among African Americans. He probably would have under-performed with the moderates who would have been concerned about Sanders’ economic and national security agenda.
Do you think a Clinton/Sanders ticket would’ve been a good move? Such that you’d presumably pick up _some_ of those independents you figure he would’ve brought out; but you’d of course still actually have Hillary Clinton as the candidate at the top of said ticket, with an economic and security agenda pitched to moderates?
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### Author:  [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)
#### Post date: [November 28, 2017, 2:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-case-for-hillary-clinton-2020/802607/121 "2017-11-28T14:53:45Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#):
>
> Do you think a Clinton/Sanders ticket would’ve been a good move? Such that you’d presumably pick up _some_ of those independents you figure he would’ve brought out; but you’d of course still actually have Hillary Clinton as the candidate at the top of said ticket, with an economic and security agenda pitched to moderates?
I’ve wondered a lot about this. I’ve thought that Sanders would have been open to being the vice president had he really been pursued, but it would have been a concession of sorts for Hillary and Bill, and the Clinton’s don’t do concessions. They’re just unbelievably arrogant sometimes and that’s a major reason why she lost. Hillary’s biggest and most fatal flaw was that she believes she’s the smartest person in the room. Every mistake that was made in her campaign, and every mistake she made as Sec of State, can be traced back to her thought process and work style. It wasn’t like she failed because she delegated too much and others just weren’t up to the task. We saw this in 2008 and again in 2016.
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