# Would Joe Biden have won against Trump? **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [June 13, 2017, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-joe-biden-have-won-against-trump/788838 "2017-06-13T06:59:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-joe-biden-have-won-against-trump/788838/101 "2017-07-11T14:22:06Z")
> [@davida03801](#): > > Personally I doubt it. Like it or not Trump was the one that read the electorate right in the past cycle. Hillary lost by a handful of votes in several swing states. If 40,000 voters had swung their votes from Trump to Hillary in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin it would have swung the election. If Hillary had spent more time in these states, she could have won. If she hadn’t moved so far to the left on guns to try to get to the left of Bernie on at least one issue, she could have won. If she hadn’t cheated during the primary debates, she could have won. If the DNC hadn’t shown evidence of bias, she could have won. Sure there were other factors but this was an election that could have been won by any reasonably electable candidate running a reasonably competent campaign. Hillary is reasonably electable but between all the self inflicted wounds and what may be the worst run general election campaign I have seen in my adult life, I think Trump STILL needed a bit of luck on his side to pull it off. I think Biden would have won easily. I am pretty sure he regrets not running. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-joe-biden-have-won-against-trump/788838/102 "2017-07-11T14:28:17Z")
> [@Shodan](#): > > I doubt it. Hillary lost because blacks and other core Democratic constituencies didn’t turn out to vote. Biden doesn’t have any more charisma than she did. They wouldn’t turn out for him either. > > Plus “it’s time we had a woman President” has at least slightly more appeal than “it’s time we picked another old white guy”. > > Regards, > Shodan I think the whole woman president thing is a mixed bag. It probably helped her in states she was already going to carry but she was riding that woman thing too much and getting a woman in the white house simply isn’t as important to most people as it was for the ready for hillary crowd. Biden has a LOT more charisma than hillary. He comes off googobs more genuine than Hillary. He has a historical connection with white working class voters that hillary does not. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-joe-biden-have-won-against-trump/788838/103 "2017-07-11T14:39:39Z")
> [@asahi](#): > > Trump was going to win that nomination no matter what. The GOP tried like hell to stop the Trump train precisely because they assumed, like most pundits, that he would lose to Hillary Clinton. They feared that his white nationalist campaign would forever brand the GOP as the part of racists – and I still suspect that it could – but they overestimated Hillary’s strength just as the Democrats did. He was a phenomenon. I’m not sure it’s a phenomenon that can be repeated but he wasn’t going to lose the nomination no matter whom the Dems chose. > > This does lead us back to the original question, which is how he would have fared against Joe Biden. That question leads me to consider another: how would Joe Biden have fared against Hillary Clinton and a strong Bernie Sanders insurgency. It’s entirely possible that Hillary Clinton, who absolutely was going to run for the nomination no matter what, would have gotten into a political brawl with Biden over the heart and soul over the establishment. Meanwhile, there’s this other guy over here to the left who somehow keeps building a cult following, only in this scenario, he quite likely wins some of the primaries he lost because two establishment candidates keep siphoning votes from each other. In this scenario, the same situation that bedeviled Republicans confronts Democrats: a guy who wasn’t even supposed to be here is now in a tight 3-way race because there’s no clear victor. Now maybe, just maybe, Biden consistently finishes a strong 2nd in races that he loses to Bernie and maybe Clinton consistently finishes in 3rd a la Jeb Bush. And then maybe as it was with Bush, the pressure builds for her to concede by late February. But does she? And meanwhile you’ve got the legion of Bernie Bros attacking the Democratic establishment, calling it a "rigged’ system and that they’re the party of Wall Street. Even if Biden finally gets Hillary off of his back, he’s still got a much stronger Bernie Sanders contingent to deal with now. Maybe Biden comes away with a win before the convention but it’s conceivable in this scenario that this thing goes to the convention without either side having the needed delegates. The convention turns into a brawl over super delegates. Suddenly, what was supposed to be a nightmare for Republicans becomes the nightmare for Democrats instead. Worse than a Trump Presidency? I suspect that Hillary takes this one all the way to the convention and then throws her delegates to whoever makes her VP or something. I suspect that a LOT of Bernie voters would have voted for Biden, I know I would have. Biden the senator from fucking Delaware would be seen as less corporatist than Hillary. He was the viable alternative to Hillary that Martin O’Malley was not. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-joe-biden-have-won-against-trump/788838/104 "2017-07-11T14:51:22Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Yeah, and the team that scores the most home runs in the World Series should be the winner. We just have a flawed system of scoring that sporting event. :roll eyes: How stupid are those teams that try and win the most games!?!? > > I think Joe Biden would have been a very good antidote to Trump. I’m pretty certain he would have beaten Trump. He would not have made a dumb move like trying, on purpose, to win the popular vote. He would have gone to those places HRC neglected, but not only that, he would have actually connected with the voters there. You’re just trying to normalize the electoral college system. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-joe-biden-have-won-against-trump/788838/105 "2017-07-11T15:10:39Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > I think the whole woman president thing is a mixed bag. It probably helped her in states she was already going to carry but she was riding that woman thing too much and getting a woman in the white house simply isn’t as important to most people as it was for the ready for hillary crowd. I would go farther. I think ANY male candidate would have won this election, even if his campaign did the exact same things as Hillary’s campaign did. Don’t underestimate how much sexism there is, both subtle and overt, among people who might otherwise have voted for a Democratic candidate. In many cases, it may not even have been conscious – just a vague sense that Hillary didn’t seem presidential enough or trustworthy enough, or that some of the gender-inflected rhetoric about her resonated a little too much. (Remember how she was supposedly “frail” from a mysterious illness, and how she was “shrill,” like that scolding teacher you didn’t like in school?) ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-joe-biden-have-won-against-trump/788838/106 "2017-07-11T15:25:37Z")
> [@BlankSlate](#): > > Truth is, the DNC would have been just as willing to support Biden as Clinton. Sanders was the outsider they opposed. You really think Debbie Wasserman Schultz didn’t have a preference? ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-joe-biden-have-won-against-trump/788838/107 "2017-07-11T15:39:14Z")
> [@Urbanredneck](#): > > No, in 2008 she was up against a black guy and the truth is blacks vote democrat by over 90% so the democrats had to let him take the lead. I don’t think so. I think Hillary sucked back then too. She had a committed but ultimately very constituency. Her fans love her but noone else seems to be able to stand her. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-joe-biden-have-won-against-trump/788838/108 "2017-07-11T15:50:44Z")
> [@Fretful\_Porpentine](#): > > I would go farther. I think ANY male candidate would have won this election, even if his campaign did the exact same things as Hillary’s campaign did. Don’t underestimate how much sexism there is, both subtle and overt, among people who might otherwise have voted for a Democratic candidate. In many cases, it may not even have been conscious – just a vague sense that Hillary didn’t seem presidential enough or trustworthy enough, or that some of the gender-inflected rhetoric about her resonated a little too much. (Remember how she was supposedly “frail” from a mysterious illness, and how she was “shrill,” like that scolding teacher you didn’t like in school?) I disagree. What female candidate do you think would have lost to Trump? I think Hillary is using sexism as an excuse. IMHO, being a woman helps you at least as much as it hurts you. its not that we won’t elect a woman. its that we won’t elect THAT woman. Here is a gender reversed portrayal of one of the debates: > **[What if Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Had Swapped Genders?](https://www.nyu.edu/about/news-publications/news/2017/march/trump-clinton-debates-gender-reversal.html)** > > A restaging of the presidential debates with an actress playing Trump and an actor playing Clinton yielded surprising results. At the time this came out there were side by side videos of Clinton and the male actor and Trump next to the female actor and the actors do a pretty good job. ---
**Author:** ![adaher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@adaher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adaher)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-joe-biden-have-won-against-trump/788838/109 "2017-07-11T15:52:28Z")
> [@Gyrate](#): > > Seriously, Webb would not have beaten Trump. As I’ve said before, he was too conservative for most Democrats, too liberal for most Republicans, and too lacking in charisma for everyone else. He was a terrible candidate all around. Webb was weak for many reasons, but had he won the nomination somehow he’d beat Trump simply because he IS Trump, but with a brain and a moral center. And unlike Trump, his anti-war cred was real, which would have made most Democrats happy enough to turn out to vote for him. Webb probably couldn’t beat any other Republican, but just as he was the perfect guy to put up against George Allen in VA, he was a guy who could have matched up well with Trump > [@](#): > > Yes, much better to have someone who just says whatever pops into his head at any given moment. That’s working out great. That’s a false choice though. What you want is a candidate who is authentic, intelligent, and honest. Democrats still have some of those. Bernie Sanders is one, although he’s probably too old and can’t turn out minority voters. But there’s also Biden, who probably can bring out minority voters, and Al Franken, who would bring out young voters, and quite a few others, like John Hickenlooper. ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-joe-biden-have-won-against-trump/788838/110 "2017-07-11T16:21:18Z")
> [@Damuri\_Ajashi](#): > > I disagree. What female candidate do you think would have lost to Trump? I think Hillary is using sexism as an excuse. IMHO, being a woman helps you at least as much as it hurts you. its not that we won’t elect a woman. its that we won’t elect THAT woman. I don’t know whether a different female candidate would have won. What I do know is that there was a constant drip-drip-drip of gendered rhetoric against Hillary (her voice! her unseemly ambition! her cankles!), just as there was a drip-drip-drip of racially inflected rhetoric against Obama throughout his presidency, and I believe that in both cases, the candidate’s status as a woman or minority probably hurt them, on the balance, more than it helped. Obviously, the right candidate CAN overcome that sort of thing – Obama mostly did – but it makes everything a tiny bit harder than it would be for a white male candidate, and in this case, the election was so close that that tiny bit could well have tipped the balance. ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-joe-biden-have-won-against-trump/788838/111 "2017-07-11T20:00:28Z")
> [@Reddy\_Mercury](#): > > If he had run and been nominated, do you think former Vice President Joe Biden could have defeated Trump in last year’s election? Why or why not? Biden was half the clown show of the Obama Presidency. He made way too many gaffes and blunders to be a serious contender. ---
**Author:** ![foolsguinea](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foolsguinea/32/14751_2.png) [@foolsguinea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/foolsguinea)\ **Post date:** [July 11, 2017, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-joe-biden-have-won-against-trump/788838/112 "2017-07-11T22:28:17Z")
If a man hates the humor of Kristen Wiig, is that gendered? What if he loves Melissa McCarthy? Hillary was damaged goods. She was also a woman. She got gendered insults as a woman, and would have gotten gendered insults as a man. ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2017, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-joe-biden-have-won-against-trump/788838/113 "2017-07-12T00:07:20Z")
> [@foolsguinea](#): > > If a man hates the humor of Kristen Wiig, is that gendered? What if he loves Melissa McCarthy? > > Hillary was damaged goods. She was also a woman. She got gendered insults as a woman, and would have gotten gendered insults as a man. If he hates it _while_ making irrelevant comments about her unattractiveness, her shrillness, and her frailness, heck yeah, it’s gendered. And pretty much the only male presidential candidate I can think of who got gendered insults was Dukakis (who got framed as a “wimp” and generally unmanly), although I wouldn’t be surprised to see examples of people talking about Gore or Kerry in similar terms. But when you want to insult a male candidate in a gendered manner, you call him _effeminate_ – in other words, it’s still misogyny at work, just a slightly different flavor of misogyny. ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2017, 9:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-joe-biden-have-won-against-trump/788838/114 "2017-07-12T09:16:10Z")
> [@adaher](#): > > Webb was weak for many reasons, but had he won the nomination somehow he’d beat Trump simply because he IS Trump, but with a brain and a moral center. And unlike Trump, his anti-war cred was real, which would have made most Democrats happy enough to turn out to vote for him. Webb probably couldn’t beat any other Republican, but just as he was the perfect guy to put up against George Allen in VA, he was a guy who could have matched up well with Trump Let’s not forget that Trump beat over a dozen candidates better-qualified than Webb in the GOP primary. You’re still trying to measure support for Trump by conventional metrics. Whatever else Trump is, he was not a conventional candidate, he did not run a conventional campaign, he was not elected for conventional reasons and you can’t make assumptions based on how other elections went. ---
**Author:** ![Zakalwe](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zakalwe/32/270_2.png) [@Zakalwe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zakalwe)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2017, 2:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-joe-biden-have-won-against-trump/788838/115 "2017-07-13T02:23:03Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > Biden was half the clown show of the Obama Presidency. He made way too many gaffes and blunders to be a serious contender. You’re so cute. ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2017, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-joe-biden-have-won-against-trump/788838/116 "2017-07-13T19:47:11Z")
> [@Fretful\_Porpentine](#): > > I don’t know whether a different female candidate would have won. What I do know is that there was a constant drip-drip-drip of gendered rhetoric against Hillary (her voice! her unseemly ambition! her cankles!), just as there was a drip-drip-drip of racially inflected rhetoric against Obama throughout his presidency, and I believe that in both cases, the candidate’s status as a woman or minority probably hurt them, on the balance, more than it helped. Obviously, the right candidate CAN overcome that sort of thing – Obama mostly did – but it makes everything a tiny bit harder than it would be for a white male candidate, and in this case, the election was so close that that tiny bit could well have tipped the balance. I don’t think Hillary being a woman hurt her at all. Obama spent almost no time talking about how it was time to elect a black President because he didn’t really think being black would help him that much. Electing a woman was part of her goddam stump speech. If being a woman was bad for her then she was either stupid to keep harping on it or (the more likely option IMHO) she thought being a woman helped her. And if being a woman hurt her, didn’t we know Hillary was a woman before we nominated her? That was pretty baked in when we picked her wasn’t it? What wasn’t baked in was getting caught cheating during the debates; having Debbie Wasserman Schultz and company revealed to be in the bag for Hillary; Hillary’s decision to spend so little time in swing states and so much time raising money in California and NY; And in the end, she even spent time in places like fucking Texas. Any one of these self inflicted wounds could have “tipped the balance” ---
**Author:** ![Damuri\_Ajashi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/898d66/32.png) [@Damuri\_Ajashi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Damuri_Ajashi)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2017, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-joe-biden-have-won-against-trump/788838/117 "2017-07-13T19:48:42Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > Biden was half the clown show of the Obama Presidency. He made way too many gaffes and blunders to be a serious contender. And even that drunken uncle would have beaten Trump. Only Hillary could have lost to him. ---
**Author:** ![pjacks](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e19adc/32.png) [@pjacks](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pjacks)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2017, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-joe-biden-have-won-against-trump/788838/118 "2017-07-13T19:50:05Z")
> [@Clothahump](#): > > Biden was half the clown show of the Obama Presidency. He made way too many gaffes and blunders to be a serious contender. Is this a joke? Do you not realize that we currently have an actual clown in the WH? Sent from my R1 HD using Tapatalk [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-joe-biden-have-won-against-trump/788838.md?page=5)