OK, I hate to say it, because I do think that the general election for President of the USA is largely between parties, and the individual doesn’t make that much difference.
But the answer to the question of, “Would [reasonable candidate who was beating Trump in head-to-head polls in 2015 or spring 2016] have beaten Trump?” is going to be, “Yes.”
Biden? Yes.
Sanders? Yes.
Jim Webb? Maybe.
Martin “mass arrests” O’Malley? Granted he couldn’t get the nomination; if he had gotten the nomination, sure, why not?
Lincoln Chafee? Yeah, most likely.
Al Franken? Yes, blowout for the Dems.
Elizabeth Warren? Yes.
Sherrod Brown? Yes.
Jerry Brown? Yes.
Bill Richardson? I’m going with “Yes,” Bob.
John Edwards? Maybe not, because John Edwards is a bag of hair. Maybe not.
The animated corpse of Paul Tsongas with a mysterious glowing sigil on his forehead, speaking only in the Black Speech? Yes.
Pick a living Kennedy, any Kennedy including the former MTV VJ: Yes, I think so.
Anthony Weiner? Maybe!
Trump’s approval ratings were abysmal. So were Hillary’s. It was absurd to nominate either of them.
But yeah, this is the thing. Clearly a Democrat could get some votes. The question is whether they could get them in the industrial Midwest. Obama and Clinton tried to tell a region that’s been sliding since, oh, the last time the Clintons were in the White House that things are looking up and will continue to be swell. That was wrong, and trying to sell a Clinton with that kind of thing was more wrong.
What talk about the “white working class” misses is that Bernie appealed to NORTHERN WORKING CLASS FOLK. People who came from a region that was once protected by protectionism and felt sold out by Reagan and the Clintons. Hillary was the enemy; she stood no chance. Biden could have grabbed some of them.
I think a lot of people who are convinced that anyone other than Hillary would have beaten Trump are ignoring history. Incumbency becomes a disadvantage after 8 years. True, there have been times when that’s not true, such as when HW Bush defeated Dukakis in 1988. And incidentally, I think Biden is probably the candidate who would have been most likely to win for reasons that are similar: Biden vs Trump would have been a bigger mismatch between an establishment guy who doesn’t come with serious baggage against an outlier candidate. But all of the other names mentioned, from Bernie to Warren to O’Malley, would have had some serious liabilities for one reason or another. Sanders and Warren would have been too far to the left and O’Malley would have been too boring.
That’s the Biden I’m wondering about. Trump being Trump would have likely gone over the line with some name-calling or insult. Would we have witnessed a physical altercation? Biden has spent decades in DC so he knows how to maintain his composure, but Trump is Trump.
Oh, I think the GOP had a huge advantage due to the awful regional economy in the industrial Midwest. (Keith Ellison told me not to call it the Rust Belt, but that’s what I mean.) And Trump could grab Perot voter types who felt the Clintons had sold out working-class Democrats. On paper, this should have been a GOP blowout because of those two factors.
Except (!) that Trump had approval ratings so low that they should have made him non-viable. He won by grabbing disaffecting working-class Dems and swing voters and building the right coalition despite his personal deficiencies. Had they put up somebody actually likeable, the Democrats could have beaten Trump and staved off collapse a little longer. The big party policy problems would still be there, but a candidate with personal charisma and personal credibility could have bought the Democrats another term.
But they put up Hillary Clinton, who was seen as The Enemy and the Bride of Giant Sucking Sound by working-class people; she could no more win over blue-collar manufacturing sector northerners than could Hermann Goering win in Israel. Worse yet, most of the Democratic candidates endorsed her, and some early on; that meant they didn’t understand what she meant to blue-collar voters and didn’t care. So they lost their races, and the party as a whole is discredited.
At this point, the only chance for the Democrats institutionally is an internal coup (if not a purge) of the remaining finance-oriented Democrats (and Clinton loyalists). Or progressives may have to let the Democrats join the Whigs in the grave, but take the progressive wing and build something more like a Labor Party. If we keep running the same party, then we’re running the Friends of That Woman, and will probably keep losing indefinitely.
Brilliant analysis. Completely original. Gaffe prone? You don’t say. Who knew?
If Biden could take PA, he could just as easily take WI and MI. Jesus Christ.
Does Parade magazine still exist? This mindless drivel would be exactly the sort of thing they would publish as in-depth, post electoral pablum for the masses.
Yes, it is my point. People are acting as if Hillary Clinton is the most unpopular candidate ever nominated by a major party. So I’m rebutting that by reminding everyone that she got more votes than any other candidate in the election. How does that support the claim that she’s unpopular?
She won more votes than the proud sexual harasser & con-man… What an achievement. If the Republicans had nominated Rubio or Kasich, she would’ve been lucky to carry any state outside of New England & the West coast.
She got more votes solely because a good amount of people (Republicans capable of shame, terrified Democrats) were disgusted by Trump & did their patriotic duty of voting for the one candidate that had a chance of denying him the presidency. That’s it… Though, as a horrible politician, she squandered even this advantage by running a rudderless campaign & ignoring crucial swing states.
A moderately more popular Democrat would’ve retained this voting bloc of Never-Trumpers, alongside an added group of people who ended up voting third party or not at all.
Even Bill Clinton and Obama thought Hillary ran a poor campaign. Bill, a man who won twice, knew you had to focus on the economy - not your opponents sex life.
Look, around here I hardly ever saw a Hillary bumper sticker or sign. I saw plenty for Sanders and Trump. Sanders and Trump also had rallies with massive turnout. Hillary did not and people mostly came to see celebrities like Beyonce. What we saw on tv at the Hillary rallies was careful camerawork.
That’s weird, I don’t remember Hillary saying anything about Donald’s sex life. I do remember him commenting on her ass, though.
Unless you mean the assault? I’d say openly boasting about criminal sexual activity is 100% relevant to his capacity for effective leadership. That so many people viewed this as a “distraction” is an indictment of our morally bankrupt culture.
That someone thinks sexual assault is just part of the assaillant’s “sex life” is equally troubling. So Urbanredneck, if he was found to have committed murder in the past, would you write off any criticism against it as attacks on his recreational activities?
And to address other points, why is so much noise made about the white working class? Why can’t it be the working class in general? Working class POC don’t exist? Their concerns don’t matter since they’re not white?
History isn’t going to look to kindly on those who justify a renowned bigot’s electoral victory because appeasing racist white people’s fears mattered the most.
Do you even hear yourself? You keep trying to throw out the same things Hillary did and guess what? It didnt work. It was a bad strategy by Hillarys campaign that Bill, Obama, and even Biden all disagreed with. So why do you keep repeating it?
That really isnt for you to decide is it? The DNC should have listened to the issues the voters (yes even the white ones) wanted and focused on that. Things like jobs, the economy, illegal immigration, etc…
Now sure, the DNC strategy is to keep going after a persons character. Get him labeled as racist, bigot, sexist, oh… maybe he also eats his own boogers… I dont know but thats what the DNC decided to make the focus of Hillarys campaign and ignore what the voters want. They should have listened to Bill and did what he did - focused on the economy.
And sexual assault? Are you kidding? When Hillary stood by and allowed Bill to have his way with dozens of women over the years? Plus your talking about Trump here. A man who ever the years has been seen working with women, promoting them in his company, and treating them very well. Yeah he said some bad things years ago but who hasnt?
And as I keep saying, if Trump was SOOOO BAD, why the heck did Bill and Hillary attend his wedding? Why was Bill a member of his club and played golf with him? Why were their daughters friends? and so on. So really other than the sheep, the democrats really had trouble making all that evil Trump stuff stick especially when Bill and Hillary have just as many skeletons in their closets.
Yeah, I don’t get why people say Hillary didn’t focus on the economy. Her ads and speeches talked about economics and jobs a lot. She desperately wanted to make that the issue and not Trump’s latest outrages, but they were simply too outrageous to ignore – kinda like now.
Her critics – both from the GOP and the Left – are ignoring the fact that she was the target of an unprecedented act of information warfare conducted by a foreign adversary that didn’t want her elected. We’ve been a nation that pretty readily buys into conspiracy theories for quite some time and it appears that many bought into the conspiracy theories being pushed on the internet about her.
A lot of people on the Left and independent voters were upset about her apparent ties to Wall Street and I’ve still yet to see a satisfactory answer as to why that would cause people to lose interest when anyone could have plainly see what an epic disaster this current president would turn into. The state we’re in now didn’t take much imagination. He was a big steaming pile of covfefe on the campaign trail and he’s absolutely one now.
I think people are really over-analyzing things here. I do wish Hillary Clinton herself would take a sabbatical and just go hang out in the Maldives for a while and stop publicly bringing up her own analysis, but I think people need to stop blaming just Hillary Clinton for her own loss. Voters rebelled not only against Clinton. Obama supporters are in denial if they don’t believe that a lot of the votes in the Midwest were just as much a middle finger to him and his legacy as it was to Hillary Clinton’s inevitable presidency. And more broadly they were giving the finger to the Democratic party, which they view is more focused on gay rights, police misconduct, getting amnesty for illegal immigrants, and transfer payments for the chronically unemployed. Any Democratic candidate would have had a hard time carrying around that baggage.
Hillary was a terrible choice for Democrats. And yet, she practically an unopposed. The “it’s your turn” candidate selection method has rarely worked out well. Yes, I think Biden would have defeated Trump. However, I’m not sure he’d have won the nomination over Hillary, if that makes sense.