I think Biden would have won, partly because he didn't have nearly the kind of baggage that Hillary had, partly because he would have picked a better VP candidate.
Politics: US Presidential Election 2020 Question
- Thread starter Scraptor
- Start date
Let's be clear that everything any of us thinks (or says here) is speculative at best.
Given the narrowness of Trump's win over the 25 years of negative baggage HRC brought to the race (compounded by the email scandal), I figure Biden beats Trump maybe by a little less than Obama beat Romney. Lost in a lot of the blame game has been the fact that - ridiculous as he is - Trump followed a perfect plan for winning the Electoral College. It was a plan that any Republican running should have been willing to do but didn't: don't waste time going to the states Romney won easily and set up camp in Florida, NC/VA, and the Rust Belt and stay there the entire campaign.
His smarts in doing this has been lost in the dumbness of everything else Trump.
But I don't think that strategy would have worked against Biden, either.
The central question of the entire thing is: how much of Trump's vote was anti-Hillary more than anything else? That is the question we would need to answer to get a better idea of how the race played out.
And I seriously doubt Joseph Biden, generally considered one of the "nice guys" in politics on both sides of the aisle (a sort of modern GHW Bush if you will) would have made that comment about Trump's voters being "deplorable."
He likely carries PA as well as he was actually born there, so he does the whole "pilgrimage home" thing, and it's a good story.
Hell, if she would have listened to HER HUSBAND, she would have won. There's a lot of things I don't like about Bill Clinton, but the guy understands that your whole purpose is you go in and snag what you can of the voters who - in identity politics - are against you. And while the GOP might not have won Wisconsin since 1988, Bush lost the state by less than 6,000 votes in 2000 (and Pat Buchanan got 11,000 votes), and by 11,000 in 2004 (he actually led in virtually every single poll in WI in 2004, so much so that it's the only state I got wrong that year - because while my gut told me it's a left-leaning state, it's hard to argue with every single respectable poll across the board).
2) I think Biden wins all three. Hillary lost the MI primary to Sanders, the critical point in the Democratic race.
I think the following weigh in Biden's favor over Hillary
- no email scandal
- no deplorables remark
- does Sanders cut Biden as deeply as he did her?
- he's generally liked by the opposition
- he has experience enough to "play the statesman"
- he's actually from PA
- he was a more direct link as an Obama successor (for those who liked Obama but were lukewarm to HRC)
- he could have more believably talked about the Russian interference story that broke on the same day as the Billy Bush tape
- Trump could not have successfully pivoted on his own tape scandal by, say, referencing Biden's wife the way he did Hillary's husband
I think the following are easy marks against him
- when the Obamacare premiums rose in October 2016, what was he supposed to say?
- it's difficult to win what is, in essence, a "third term" for even the most popular incumbent (it's very hard to run for Prez from the VP slot)
- does Hillary cut him in the primary with references to him opposing the Bin Laden raid?
- does his candidacy pre-empt Bernie Sanders and propel Hillary to the nomination easier?
- he has a tendency to mis-speak and look dumber than he really is
- or do he and Hillary split the same vote and propel Sanders to the nomination?
And......is there something out there we don't know that destroys him a la Gary Hart, Herman Cain, or even Biden himself in 1987?
Just a note here: myths grow about candidacies that win, the naive idea that the winning campaign "ran a perfect campaign." Nobody runs a perfect campaign. I lived through the 1980 Reagan campaign, where he wiped the floor with Jimmy Carter. It's easy to look back now and say his win was inevitable, but on October 14 that year, Reagan trailed Carter in his private polling for the only time post-Convention. They rummaged around and came up with the idea of "appointing a woman to ONE OF THE FIRST Supreme Court nominations" that came up. It was intentionally worded that way to give him wiggle room. But the fact is that the landslide didn't materialize until after Reagan bludgeoned Carter in the debate, not because Reagan was impressive but primarily because Carter's whole case was, "He's going to start WW3." And Reagan didn't look anything at all like a mad bomber in the debate; Carter had so exaggerated what a risk Reagan was, he won the debate merely by standing there for 90 minutes and not blowing his stack.
But having lived through that particular campaign, Reagan blundered through July and August, and said so many dumb things that his mental capacity was called into question and Reagan actually said that if any rumors arose about that old coot in the White House, he'd gladly take a senility test. He said Creationism should be taught as science in the public schools, sided with Taiwan over China, said that Carter was opening his campaign in Tuscumbia, Alabama, which Reagan informed everyone was "the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan," confused oxides in an environmental speech, and just made a damned fool of himself to be blunt about it.
They huddled on Labor Day weekend and told him the facts of life......and then he got lucky when Carter decided he could finish him off by basically saying Reagan wanted a war. The press pretty much did the rest by actually finding Carter's comments reprehensible.
I only use that as a point of reference. Times have changed in terms of the 24 hour news cycle, but the basics are still the same. Nobody runs a perfect campaign, and there's no way to know Biden would have done any better. I surmise, however, he would have entered the swim contest with less baggage.
Given the narrowness of Trump's win over the 25 years of negative baggage HRC brought to the race (compounded by the email scandal), I figure Biden beats Trump maybe by a little less than Obama beat Romney. Lost in a lot of the blame game has been the fact that - ridiculous as he is - Trump followed a perfect plan for winning the Electoral College. It was a plan that any Republican running should have been willing to do but didn't: don't waste time going to the states Romney won easily and set up camp in Florida, NC/VA, and the Rust Belt and stay there the entire campaign.
His smarts in doing this has been lost in the dumbness of everything else Trump.
But I don't think that strategy would have worked against Biden, either.
The central question of the entire thing is: how much of Trump's vote was anti-Hillary more than anything else? That is the question we would need to answer to get a better idea of how the race played out.
And I seriously doubt Joseph Biden, generally considered one of the "nice guys" in politics on both sides of the aisle (a sort of modern GHW Bush if you will) would have made that comment about Trump's voters being "deplorable."
Biden is old school, so I slightly disagree here. I can tell you one thing right now Biden would have done: he would have actually gone into Wisconsin during the campaign. And he's Catholic, which is much of the base vote there, so he probably carries the Badger state for starters.
He likely carries PA as well as he was actually born there, so he does the whole "pilgrimage home" thing, and it's a good story.
If Hillary had listened to her advisers who were telling her this all along, the outcome is different. She got a memo in May warning her to add 3-4 points to whatever Trump was polling (Parmes and Allen covered this in "Shattered," which was originally intended to be a book about her winning).
Hell, if she would have listened to HER HUSBAND, she would have won. There's a lot of things I don't like about Bill Clinton, but the guy understands that your whole purpose is you go in and snag what you can of the voters who - in identity politics - are against you. And while the GOP might not have won Wisconsin since 1988, Bush lost the state by less than 6,000 votes in 2000 (and Pat Buchanan got 11,000 votes), and by 11,000 in 2004 (he actually led in virtually every single poll in WI in 2004, so much so that it's the only state I got wrong that year - because while my gut told me it's a left-leaning state, it's hard to argue with every single respectable poll across the board).
1) The faithless elector scenario was only believed by people who actually think there's a such thing as free health care.
2) I think Biden wins all three. Hillary lost the MI primary to Sanders, the critical point in the Democratic race.
I think the following weigh in Biden's favor over Hillary
- no email scandal
- no deplorables remark
- does Sanders cut Biden as deeply as he did her?
- he's generally liked by the opposition
- he has experience enough to "play the statesman"
- he's actually from PA
- he was a more direct link as an Obama successor (for those who liked Obama but were lukewarm to HRC)
- he could have more believably talked about the Russian interference story that broke on the same day as the Billy Bush tape
- Trump could not have successfully pivoted on his own tape scandal by, say, referencing Biden's wife the way he did Hillary's husband
I think the following are easy marks against him
- when the Obamacare premiums rose in October 2016, what was he supposed to say?
- it's difficult to win what is, in essence, a "third term" for even the most popular incumbent (it's very hard to run for Prez from the VP slot)
- does Hillary cut him in the primary with references to him opposing the Bin Laden raid?
- does his candidacy pre-empt Bernie Sanders and propel Hillary to the nomination easier?
- he has a tendency to mis-speak and look dumber than he really is
- or do he and Hillary split the same vote and propel Sanders to the nomination?
And......is there something out there we don't know that destroys him a la Gary Hart, Herman Cain, or even Biden himself in 1987?
Just a note here: myths grow about candidacies that win, the naive idea that the winning campaign "ran a perfect campaign." Nobody runs a perfect campaign. I lived through the 1980 Reagan campaign, where he wiped the floor with Jimmy Carter. It's easy to look back now and say his win was inevitable, but on October 14 that year, Reagan trailed Carter in his private polling for the only time post-Convention. They rummaged around and came up with the idea of "appointing a woman to ONE OF THE FIRST Supreme Court nominations" that came up. It was intentionally worded that way to give him wiggle room. But the fact is that the landslide didn't materialize until after Reagan bludgeoned Carter in the debate, not because Reagan was impressive but primarily because Carter's whole case was, "He's going to start WW3." And Reagan didn't look anything at all like a mad bomber in the debate; Carter had so exaggerated what a risk Reagan was, he won the debate merely by standing there for 90 minutes and not blowing his stack.
But having lived through that particular campaign, Reagan blundered through July and August, and said so many dumb things that his mental capacity was called into question and Reagan actually said that if any rumors arose about that old coot in the White House, he'd gladly take a senility test. He said Creationism should be taught as science in the public schools, sided with Taiwan over China, said that Carter was opening his campaign in Tuscumbia, Alabama, which Reagan informed everyone was "the birthplace of the Ku Klux Klan," confused oxides in an environmental speech, and just made a damned fool of himself to be blunt about it.
They huddled on Labor Day weekend and told him the facts of life......and then he got lucky when Carter decided he could finish him off by basically saying Reagan wanted a war. The press pretty much did the rest by actually finding Carter's comments reprehensible.
I only use that as a point of reference. Times have changed in terms of the 24 hour news cycle, but the basics are still the same. Nobody runs a perfect campaign, and there's no way to know Biden would have done any better. I surmise, however, he would have entered the swim contest with less baggage.
Out of curiosity, who do you think he would have picked?
I always thought the choice of Kaine was to put Virginia in the bank, but a number of Hillary's inner circle insisted (yeah, I know) that her attraction to Kaine was because of how he had handled the actual day to day governance in Virginia. (The cynic in me always figured she got the dull guy because the last thing she wanted was a dynamic, Obama-style speaker that would set off the old, "The number two person on the ticket should be the head of the ticket" narrative).
John Kerry, the guy who went an entire campaign and literally said nothing about what he was going to do as President. (Granted, all Bush 41 ever said was that we should all say the pledge of allegiance, thousand points of light, and no new taxes, but still...)
I doubt it, though. He has to know it isn't in the cards. The only way I can see a previous loser in either party getting the nod is if the GOP runs Romney against Trump in 2020 in the primary.
He’ll turn 77 in December 2020. That makes age a factor for me, just like Biden, who’ll be 78 in November 2020. Sanders will be 79 in September 2020. Trump turns 74 in June of that year. Hillary will be 73 in October and Mitt 73 in March that year.
They need young blood. Another old retread won’t work.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
They need young blood. Another old retread won’t work.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
And I hate to agree with you, but so would I.
The reality is that if we aren't at war and the economy is moving along, he's got a way above average chance (assuming he's not removed or whatever).
I'm hoping there's someone who will emerge from the crowd.
All the Dems' currently-leading candidates just have too much baggage. Hillary, Warren, Sanders -- I'd see them all being media darlings, but not much more. They'd carry the coasts, but get trounced in most of the rest of the country. They'd have to carry Pennsylvania, and the upper Midwest especially Ohio and Michigan. But given their history of openly condescending disdain of industry, that would be a tall order. They'd also have to energize the black voters, and no white Dem has really done that -- not even Bill Clinton, who got in office primarily because Ross Perot siphoned off the votes that would have re-elected Bush 1, then rode the incumbency and a strong economy to a second term.
The GOP absolutely has to move beyond Trump, and I don't understand why they can't. He's a buffoon, and everybody, red or blue, knows it. I fear we missed our chance at the best president since Reagan when we turned down McCain. He was admittedly not the greatest campaigner -- Sarah Palin? Really? -- but I think he would have been a great president.
Here's hoping somebody like that will emerge. Who? I don't know.
All the Dems' currently-leading candidates just have too much baggage. Hillary, Warren, Sanders -- I'd see them all being media darlings, but not much more. They'd carry the coasts, but get trounced in most of the rest of the country. They'd have to carry Pennsylvania, and the upper Midwest especially Ohio and Michigan. But given their history of openly condescending disdain of industry, that would be a tall order. They'd also have to energize the black voters, and no white Dem has really done that -- not even Bill Clinton, who got in office primarily because Ross Perot siphoned off the votes that would have re-elected Bush 1, then rode the incumbency and a strong economy to a second term.
The GOP absolutely has to move beyond Trump, and I don't understand why they can't. He's a buffoon, and everybody, red or blue, knows it. I fear we missed our chance at the best president since Reagan when we turned down McCain. He was admittedly not the greatest campaigner -- Sarah Palin? Really? -- but I think he would have been a great president.
Here's hoping somebody like that will emerge. Who? I don't know.
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This is the Republican version of "we only lost because of the racist Southern strategy" nonsense. I voted for Bush that year and while my angrily partisan 22-year old self at the time would perpetuate this myth, it simply isn't true. When Perot got back into the race in October, he actually closed the popular vote gap because he took votes from CLINTON more than he did from Bush. A lot of folks who voted for Clinton in 92 didn't particularly care for him, but they watched Bush (in their view) basically sit around and do nothing about an economy in recession but always having time to play golf and race his boat around Kennebunkport.
The other part that nobody takes a look at is the fact that Bush got nine million fewer votes in 1988 than Reagan got in 1984, and the number of voters dropped by 1.1 million overall. In 1992, he lost 5/8 of the vote to a slickster who dangled participles every time he said something and a temperamental billionaire who lived in his own unreality. (If you could combine the worst traits of Perot and B Clinton, the computer spits out Donald Trump).
Let's please let this one go because it isn't even close to being true.
But this is not as easy in politics as elsewhere. Both parties right now are fighting internal wars - and to a point in a centrist country this kind of always occurs. I'll guarantee you there are a bunch of GOP politicians out there who find Trump distasteful and wish he would go away, but they can't come right out and say this or else they're going to be voted out in the next primary with 10% turnout because this is a vocal minority.
I don't care for Mitt "for Brains" Zombie at all, and I didn't vote for him in 2012, but I would certainly consider it next go around should I choose to participate in this perpetual illusion of choice.
The GOP has the same problem with Trump that the 1970s Democrats had with George Wallace - don't like him but can't keep power without his voters.
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