OK, what Shayna said was oddly weighted, but technically true. It can be assumed that Sanders would veto a hypothetical repeal of Davis-Bacon.
What’s Hillary stance on Davis-Bacon, BTW?
I understand that. I was only referring to Republicans’ ability to recruit good candidates who avoided killer gaffes in 2014, something Republicans could not accomplish in 2010 or 2012. Except for the Presidency, the logic of candidate recruitment and messaging for Congress and the Senate is exactly the same. If the Republicans do that job as well as they did in 2014, there will be no self-destruction.
Like it or not, Clinton actually has to WIN, and that goes for Senate Democrats as well. There probably won’t be a Trump at the top of the ballot or an Akin downballot.
So does frequency. The problem with Clinton is that she’s always secretive, gets caught telling lies pretty much constantly, and then resorts to lawyering an issue to death when caught.
In the case of her private email account, which apparently is done by nearly everyone important in the government according to recent reporting, if you use a private email account for official business it becomes a public email account subject to FOIA law. She evaded FOIA by wiping the server. That just doesn’t look good no matter how you spin it.
Now it could very well be that other issues will loom larger. If Clinton enjoys a massive competence and likeability advantage over the GOP candidate, she’ll win. Personally, I think the odds of her enjoying an advantage on ANY quality other than ideological(for Democrats) is unlikely. THe GOP candidate will likely be younger, more honest, more likeable, more straight-talking, more transparent, and have a record of competence and honorable service. So all that will be left for Clinton is “I’m right on the issues!” It won’t be enough. See: John Kerry, Al Gore.
The ones who listened to Limbaugh did. Limbaugh busted Clinton’s chops daily over the nonstop lies he was telling during Clinton’s campaign against Bush. I remember Limbaugh paraphrasing some activist college professor’s defense of Clinton’s lies during that time: "Of course he can’t tell the truth! He’s running for President!!
Can you point us to the GOP candidates that tick all of these boxes?
Younger & more transparent aren’t hard. But you want likeable, straight-talking, *and *with a record of competence?
Nevertheless it is a blimp. Assuming that one transient blip up means “favorable”! especially when it occur when someone is not under the tear apart microscope is a foolish thing to do. When placed in the 24 7 bright lights looking for pimples to zoom in on Biden historically has … not done well. Saying that he sees Obama as “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy” might have been honest of him but it was still … better filtered before said out loud without adjustments.
You’re awesome.
Biden’s favorability during the 2012 campaign was around -2 to -4 which is still better than Hillary’s -8.
And if you diginto the individual states, Hillary’s numbers are brutally bad, close to disqualifying. In Florida she is -18 on favorability and -32 on honesty. Biden is +1 and +8 . In Ohio she is -18 and -26 compared to Biden’s +3 and +26. In Pennsylvania(!) she is -17 and -31 compared to Biden’s +3 and +30. Even if you knock off 5 points from Biden’s favorability as a temporary sympathy factor he is still far ahead of Hillary.
How will Hillary turn these numbers around? Her numbers have gotten worse after starting her campaign so it’s hard to see how more campaigning will solve the issue. And it’s reasonable to expect more negative stories down the line as well as a massive blast of negative advertising once the general election campaign begins.
Candidates do recover. Mitt Romney had positively dismal ratings in late 2011. But does Clinton have the ability to recover when she’s down? Plus she’s avoiding taking questions from the media, a strategy which she can’t sustain forever.
At this stage of the campaign, Romney’s net favorability was around 0. It did rise to -13 at the height of a brutal primary fight but that was always going to be temporary and probably consisted partly of disgruntled conservative voters who would come back. Bill Clinton also recovered from a relatively poor position in 1991 but both he and Romney were far less well known quantities than Hillary is today and Bill was a far more talented campaigner. And I doubt either of them had ratings of -20 to -30 on honesty.
Hillary’s problem is that she is already a well-known quantity about whom a lot of voters have likely made up their mind. She is mediocre at best as a campaigner and yet she is faced with the difficult task of persuading people who already dislike her and consider her dishonest.
Plus her support is strong among Democrats and weak everywhere else. Romney faced disapproval from Republicans, who eventually came home once he won the nomination. It’s a lot easier to win your own side back then to win independents.
Really? How much did Romney’s likeability ratings go up? Where do I look that up?
I know people who like him, and I understand it. But overall, you had an “establishment” candidate that the party took a long time to settle on, whose religion turned off a huge chunk of the base, whose privileged country-club life turned off some more, and whose salesman manner wasn’t exactly known for honesty or even consistent lies.
Here is his approval history:
Given Quinnipiac’s record this cycle of being a far outlier in polling results I’ll need more than one poll from that one house to take those individual numbers seriously.
Why do you think his numbers during 2012 are at all particularly more meaningful than early 2014 when he was -7? A VP is with rare exceptions (Palin and Quayle duly noted) not the subject of election attention especially when it is an incumbent running. They are pretty much like looking at HRC when she was SOS; not reflective of what things look like once you are in the ring a few rounds.
Longer view: when not under the microscope Biden had about 40 to 45% of voters consistently viewing him favorably and Hillary, no longer SOS and not yet running around 50%. I welcome him in the race if he enters but thinking that his current blip is what is real and will be enduring just does not seem likely.
Quinnipiac isn’t looking like an outlier anymore. CNN is. Other pollsters are seeing the same thing Quinnipiac is.
You can’t compare a VP with an SOS; it’s an inherently more partisan position; after all the VP is on the ticket, speaks at the convention and has a debate. Biden in particular has been associated with many of Obama’s most controversial domestic policies including the stimulus and Obamacare. He has come under a fair bit of criticism through his vice-presidency but for the most part his net rating was significantly above above Hillary’s right now, and around -4-5 even before Beau’s hospitalization. And like I said, you can’t just dismiss his numbers as a sympathy blip. It’s been 3 months now and his rating has steadily improved over that period.
We can also compare Hillary with Obama in 2011-12. He bottomed out at 0 net favorability and ended up winning by four points. Obama was widely considered vulnerable in 2011 and Hillary is now 8 points worse than his worst number.
The fact is there is plenty of evidence that Hillary is a weak candidate. Aside from the Quinnipiac polls ( more than one poll )there was a PPP poll showing her tied with Rubio and Walker in Iowa and another poll showing her tied with them in New Hampshire. Both are must-win states for Democrats which Obama won by more than 5 points. They are also states which know Hillary especially well because of the primaries.
Those right-wing minions of Fox News over at The Atlantic are speculating that Biden (with his long Senate tenure and some good friends in the State Dep’t) may know more details about Hillary’s emails than the general public. And that some of the emails may have been classified, even if they weren’t marked that way.
Yes, yes, I know that the HillaryLovers will either attack the extreme reactionary magazine “The Atlantic” or say “Piffle, it’s just speculation designed to undermine Hillary”, but still. It’s interesting how a magazine like The Atlantic (which is to the National Review as National Review is to Mother Jones) is picking up on the "This Hillary e-mail thing is looking a lot more serious than the “It’s just a right-wing plot!” folks want it to be.
I read that article and it’s pure click bait garbage. There’s no evidence that Biden knows any damaging secrets of Clinton, and the writer even admits this. Just crap journalism.
Yes, maybe he knows secrets. Maybe he has x-ray vision too. Shame on Atlantic.
How many God damned ‘smoking gun’ articles am I going to to have to read about Hillary and her God damned emails that turn out to be nothing but bluster and speculation?
About a million.