This is a recurring theme from you – that Democrats somehow only will support “big name” candidates. But that’s not it – “big names” in either party will have a big advantage. This should be obvious – someone becomes a “big name” by showing political skill, charisma, appeal, and other attractive qualities. Republicans voters would love to support a “big name” too… but in the last few elections, there haven’t been any to support – no Republican has shown any significant amount of political skill, charisma, appeal, etc., nationally. If one does, it’d be a trivially easy bet that Republican voters would flock to support them.
So her winning big, twice, even in one of the biggest states, simply doesn’t count. It was only because the GOP is so pathetic there. Gotcha.
Now extrapolate that to the whole country. 
Yes, we know. So, how many Southern States will that wrap up for her in the general? That was the issue being discussed.
I always wondered how Hillary got the nod to become the Secretary of State.
Did she make a backroom deal with Obama when she conceded the nomination to Obama? We may never know, but here’s the first offering on record from President elect Obama December 15th 2008: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/11/14/clinton-met-with-obama-ab_n_143810.html
They even listed her qualifications …
But I think women have to be conscientious grinders to be taken seriously. Men are allowed to be shooting stars. A male shooting star becomes Reagan. A female shooting star becomes Palin.
I just saw Obama on TV describing Hillary Clinton as “tenacious”. Which she is.
Like a stain you just can’t remove.
IMHO HRC is the favorite but not anything near the lock that people seem to be assuming. Public opinion is very fickle, and very prone to changing dramatically based on scandals or pseudo-scandals or just plain old media hype. Some obscure or semi-obscure Democrat does a lot better than expected in an early primary state, and suddenly they have a zillion articles written about them and the momentum on their side, and the polls move in a hurry. Anything can happen.
OK, when I said “anything can happen” I didn’t mean this. This can’t happen.
If both Bush and Rubio are on the ticket, then FL electors can’t vote for both. In a close race, this could cede the VP slot to the Democrats, even if the Reps win the presidency.
There’s a lot of time before Election Day. Back in 2000, Bush and Cheney were both legal residents of Texas. Cheney just switched his residence to Wyoming before the election.
If there is a Bush/Rubio ticket, one of them can switch their home states. It would probably be Bush - he was born in Texas and didn’t move to Florida until he was 27. Rubio would have a more difficult time relocated himself because he’s currently serving as a Senator.
Huge difference.
Cheney had been a resident of Wyoming since he was a child and on through years of representing the state in congress, and had only lived in Texas for a few years prior to the 2000 election (possibly connected with the Halliburton job?). Both Bush and Rubio have been in FL for decades.
Just exchange the Bush/Rubio ticket for a Bush/Rand ticket solves the problem 
IMO RP is too much of a loose cannon to be anyone’s VP running mate.
What I could easily see as a formidable ticket is Bush-Walker. That’s two swing states right there.
(While VP candidates have a weak record in terms of winning their home states, this is frequently a problem when the name at the top is more out of line with the home state (e.g. Lloyd Bentsen), where the VP candidate himself has moved away from home state electibility (Al Gore) or has never held statewide office to begin with (Kemp, Ryan). But Walker is a sitting governor and I would think a guy like Bush is even more electable in Wisconsin than Walker is, so he at least wouldn’t drag it down.)
What is your estimation of the probability that HRC wins the Democratic nomination? At what probability do you consider something a lock?
I don’t claim pinpoint accuracy on this, but I would think her chances are somewhere in the realm of 60%.
90%?
You’re under, but not horribly far off from, the betting markets. Link.
So what? Jeb Bush could move to North Dakota tomorrow and declare himself to be a legal resident of that state. Establishing state residency is a trivially low hurdle which makes the two state requirement pretty much a moot issue. The only way it would be a factor is if you happened to have two candidates who were both holding office based in the same state, like if Andrew Cuomo and Chuck Schumer ran together.
That’s why Jeb Bush is the prohibitive favorite… Oh wait. But then there was Mitt Romney, who coasted to… oh, never mind. And then John McCain, oooh, really bad example. Now GWB, that guy, he just coasted. Oh wait, John McCain forced him to resort to dirty tactics to fend him off.
With the Democrats, we now have two data points: 2008, when the base only had eyes for the three junior Senators in the race, overlooking a bevy of ultra qualified individuals, and now, when Hillary Clinton, the most accomplishment-free figure in politics alive today despite all the time she’s spent in it, running against people with actual accomplishments who won’t get a look because the part of the base that doesn’t want Hillary wants Warren.
Even 2004, the flirtation with Howard Dean aside, the rather immature reasoning surrounding the popularity of Kerry and Wes Clark was “Ooh, we’ll get a veteran, that’ll be the perfect opponent for that chickenhawk Bush! They can’t possibly say a veteran is a pussy!” Yeah, about that…
He is the favorite, I think. But he’s not nearly as big a name as Hillary, and he doesn’t have nearly the same big numbers in the polls right now.
What’s the point here? Romney and McCain lost big in the general. GWB won (barely) against candidates who ran poor campaigns.
As has been shown time and time again, experience only matters in terms of the “threshold” – if the voters believe a candidate is over the threshold, then “extra” experience doesn’t matter.
“Accomplishment-free” is bullshit. And the other candidates will certainly get a look. We’ll see how they appear – if any of them have great talent, charisma, skill, etc., they’ll have a chance to win.
Wes Clark was a bad candidate who ran a terrible campaign – no idea why you’re mentioning him. Kerry was a decent candidate who ran a bad campaign, and came very close to winning.
This is just a shotgunning of weird, lazy, Halperinesque criticism with little basis in fact.
Here’s the bottom line. The Democrats have gotten more votes in five of the last six presidential elections. The only exception was the one campaign where the Republicans had an incumbent running.
So the Democrats don’t need to come up with a new strategy. They can simply do what they’ve been doing and count on winning. You don’t have to fix something that works.
The burden of trying a new strategy is all on the Republicans. If they use their same strategy again they will probably lose again.
So was Sarah Palin.
Clinton blew it in 2008 in the 3-4 weeks following Super Tuesday, when Team Hillary basically didn’t show up for all those caucuses where Obama took the lead that he never relinquished.
So I’d give her a B through Super Tuesday (especially given her comeback in NH after losing Iowa and trailing in the polls in NH), then a D- for the rest of February, then a B+/A- the rest of the way. But that one bad grade really killed her average. 