In retrospect, I think the Democratic primary was really for the presidency in the same way that sometimes the Western Conference Championship has been for the NBA championship, rather than the NBA Finals. Sure, you actually have to win the final round, but it is really the round before that is more important. I think Clinton v. McCain would have been closer, but Sen. Clinton would still have won.
I can’t believe I’m going to defend Hillary, because I dislike her for the carpetbagger reasons outlined above (I’m in NY) but… this scenario seems like bullshit to me. We don’t know why Bill felt the need to step out, but I doubt it originated with Hillary refusing to screw him. First of all, do we know that Hillary and Bill don’t screw? And if that is a fact, how do you know which came first? Maybe he was cheating on her and that is what made her stop screwing him, out of disgust. Sure, it takes two to tango, but I’m not ready to blame Hillary for Bill’s skankiness. He’s got to own that. Plenty of men cheat and blaming the wife seems like deflecting the responsibility off the party who is displaying the lack of self-control. Whatever the problems in their marriage were, it would have been nice if Bill had behaved with a bit of dignity, sexually, while in the White House.
Moving thread from IMHO to Great Debates.
Thanks. I had a fuzzy recollection of that, but did not take the time to check it out before I posted.
And yeah, I don’t think the Hillary Hate is entirely sexist. Some of it may be, but no more so than for any other female politician. I think **Elendil’s Heir **spells it out nicely.
Pick any of the top Democratic candidates. Given the bad economy, the Palin pick and the shifty desperateness of the McCain strategists, all would have beaten McCain.
Well, maybe not Dennis Kucinich, but you get the idea.
A lot of the reporting is indicating that both McCain and Clinton ran a fairly awful campaign, with lots of infighting and poor management.
I think either Clinton or Obama had a built in advantage, being the challenger to an unpopular party in tough times, but a Clinton campaign would have suffered the same way the McCain campaign did, so perhaps it would have been a much closer race that could have gone either way.
Of course, this just illustrates the futility of these “what if” situations. What does a world where Clinton beat Obama to be the nominee look like? It would probably be a world where the Clinton campaign was better run, nullifying some of the points above.
I’m confident she would have lost.
Everyone I know who was excited about this year was excited because there was a new, different, non-same-old-same-old choice. Hillary represented a falling back to same-old same-old. She couldn’t help it; the Clinton name alone insured it. A completely radical break with old politics might have changed that – like a total green/anti-global-warming strategy – but would have cost her the election in a different way.
She would have gotten zero of the Republican votes that Obama gathered in, and energized their base even more, and many of the Democrats I know would have felt a tired sameness instead of an urge to participate.
I myself would have seriously considered McCain over Hillary, and I’m not especially against the Clinton presidency; I usually defend it in debates. But I was greatly disheartened by Bill Clinton’s conserving political capital during his second term and not doing anything serious for the environment. “He can’t run again, what is he saving it for?” I said to my friends. Then we found out what the Clinton brand was saving up captial for – Hillary.
No more of that. Hillary would have governed “conservatively” (speaking of conserving favors and political reputation, not right-wing thinking) to save up and position for a second term, and then the same to position Chelsea for the future.
Enough of that. Time for some change we can believe in.
Don’t forget the many of us who weren’t excited, who would vote democratic because we want our income tax money back and the war to end. 
How many of us thought the same thing about Bush in '04?
Kerry only lost because of that October 29 Osama bin Laden video release. I knew the moment I heard about it “shit shit shit, there goes the goddam election”. Not that Kerry’s lackluster candidacy had nothing to do with it, mind you, but he was on track to a marginal win. The polls prior to the video mostly showed Kerry taking the electoral college in the 286 to 290 vote range. In just the last couple days before the polls opened, though, they (accurately) showed him in the 250’s instead. He lost by more than Gore did in 2000, but it was still a narrow loss. And that’s important.
Clinton is not Obama but she’s sure as hell no Kerry. And McCain would have had his hands more than full trying to get Florida into play at all with her in contention. No Kerry states would have been at risk. So it’s less a question of “might Clinton conceivably have won?” than “is there any reasonable possibility that McCain could have beaten her?”. And I just don’t see that he could have. North Carolina might not have been likely to go to her, and perhaps not Indiana, but she’d have eaten his lunch in Ohio, he’d have had no better chance against her in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, or Minnesota than he did against Obama, and she’d have taken New Mexico and possibly Colorado and Virginia. Might have snagged West Virginia which Obama didn’t get. He’d never come close to her on the west coast, nor do any damage to her in the northeast (OK let’s be generous and say he could have pried New Hampshire loose. That about makes up for her taking West Virginia). There’s just no room in that scenario for McCain to assemble an electoral college win. Starting off against someone who has a pretty solid lock on all the Kerry states plus Florida and at least a moderate lead in a few others is a very bad place to start.
Here is a comparision of how Obama was doing against McCain in the polls versus how Clinton was doing against McCain in the polls back in March and April. Never mind how her trajectory compares with Obama (he was more of an unknown at that point); folks did know McCain and Clinton, they were not unknown faces. Sure, a lot can change between May and November, but despite all those rumored people who would never vote for Hillary Clinton, the pollsters were finding that she would win the electoral votes, that the Hillary-haters were clustered in states that did not have the votes to deny her the Presidency, and the longer she stayed in the contest the more this was shaping up to be true.
