Best campaign: Clinton 1992 Reagan 1980 or Obama 2008

[OSR stands with Israel]

Where do u think trump 2016 ranks in these

[OSR stands with Israel]

Following the 1976 GOP convention, it was pretty clear that Reagan would be the party's nominee in 1980. Coupled with the fact that the incumbent was a notoriously weak politician, having barely beat the Republican the previous election following several years' worth of controversy, and the country's economy/foreign policy was in shambles--it's easy to see why Reagan curb-stomped Carter in 1980. He ran a good campaign, but no huge surprises here.

Clinton ran an excellent campaign in 1992, and successfully built momentum as the primary went along, and had to do so partially because the winners of Iowa and New Hampshire were certainties going into the primary. It's hard to give him an enormous amount of credit for the general election victory, considering there were so many external factors affecting the outcome (economy, third party candidacy, running against a fourth term of Republican Presidents, etc.).

Considering the state of the country at the time, Obama's general election performance wasn't too impressive. However, he ran an incredibly skilled campaign against a skilled politician who had the party's full support, and most people--going into the 2008 election--simply assumed would be the party's nominee.

Have to go with Obama's 2008 campaign, specifically the primary. He achieved a seemingly impossible task.

Seeing now that she lost to Trump , that win gets a little less impressive .

[uti2]

Without Bill Clinton 1992 the candiate would have been Jerry Brown who wouldnt have campaignedd as a moderate, New Democrat who doesnt support defict spending and wants welfare reformed. He would have campaigned as the Same Old Liberal Democrats in the past which then would make half of Perot voters vote for Bush in fear of the same democrat as the old and would have lost every state Bill Clinton won by less then 6% plus all the Southern states he won.

Something else to consider is that without Bill, Perot might not have even run. Perot probably had a slight preference for centrist Bill over Bush, but if it was center-left Jerry Brown, Perot would've probably had a slight preference for Bush, in which case he doesn't run and Bush wins reelection.

The closest parallel to this is Trump. Trump ruled out running in 2012 due to his dislike of center-left Obama and so he backed Romney wholeheartedly, but he had a slight preference for Clinton over his GOP primary opponents which he hinted at in the first debate when he said that he wouldn't necessarily back the GOP nominee. Obama won in 2012 anyway, but he had an incumbency advantage, which the Dems didn't have in '92.

Remember, Trump said he would run independent if he lost the primary:

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/155415-trump-probably-run-as-independent-if-i-cant-win-gop-nod


Without Bill's run, likely no Perot run. Without Hillary's run, likely no Trump run.

[SingingAnalyst]

I agree, Clinton '92. Reagan won in 1980 mainly because of Carter's bad luck (having Anderson attack Carter at the debates while Reagan smiled, an anti-Semitic gaffe by a Carter supporter, etc.)  Obama won in 2008 largely because of Bush's extreme unpopularity. Clinton's centrist '92 campaign was masteful in that it had a David and Goliath quality: the farm boy from Arkansas versus the experienced internationalist.

[hopper]

Clinton, because his election actually brought a national realignment.  Obama couldn't have won in 2008 if Clinton hadn't in 1992.

1992 was not a realignment. If it was, WV, LA, AR, KY would still be voting Democrat.

1988 was a realignment.

1992 was a realignment because most of the Northeast and Upper Midwest have been voting D ever since. 2000 was only a regional realignment because the Outer South began shifting to the GOP nationally, but the rest of the country stayed the same.

Trump did pretty well in the Upper Midwest!

[hopper]

Clinton, because his election actually brought a national realignment.  Obama couldn't have won in 2008 if Clinton hadn't in 1992.

1992 was not a realignment. If it was, WV, LA, AR, KY would still be voting Democrat.

1988 was a realignment.

I agree. I hate how everyone says/said: "Oh wow! Look at that 1992 map! Clinton made states like California and Pennsylvania blue forever." These states did not trend Democratic because of Clinton! I really feel bad for Dukakis... if he had at least won CA or VT (which he lost very narrowly, along with PA and IL), Clinton wouldn't be given much credit for some kind of "realignment". And Clinton would have won a much narrower victory without Perot (probably not more than 290 EV). He also won many of the states by a very small margin (for example Ohio, Georgia, New Hampshire and New Jersey).

Exactly! For example, if does anyone really believe that Pennsylvania and California were going to stay Republican for long after Reagan left? Those states changed based on trends that started in the 70s and 80s, hell even the 60s.

If Clinton "realigned" politics, then we simply would not have the electoral map we have today.

Completely right. And I also don't understand why so many Democrats think that it was important that Clinton made these "inroads" (which he really never made) in the South. Yes, "muh honey Bill" got some white women in the South to vote for him but he wasn't even able to carry Texas (which every winning Democrat up to that point had carried). In my opinion, it was a major achievement by Bush to carry Texas and Florida (especially Texas) with such a high Perot vote. I don't want to generalize, but Clinton got the same and in some states higher (!) black vote share than Dukakis in many of the southern states even with THREE candidates on the ballot. Basically, Whites were split between the three candidates and African Americans were united behind Clinton. That probably explains a lot why Clinton won 4 southern states each time. Heck, I even think that Dukakis' performance in Texas in '88 was more impressive than Clinton's in 92.

And I really don't buy the myth that Perot voters would have split 50-50. Especially not in the South. The 1996 exit polls and the demographics of Perot voters prove that as well. Furthermore, the Democrat doesn't need the South to win anymore (Obama would have von even if he had lost the whole South, including VA).

Just looking at the 1992 and 1996 Presidential Maps Clinton won Southern States like KY, TN, AR, and LA twice. He won GA in 1992 but not in 1996. He won FL in 1996 but not in 1992. He never won NC, SC, VA, MS, AL, or TX.

[hopper]

Where do u think trump 2016 ranks in these

I don't think he ran a great or even a good campaign until the last few or several weeks of the General Election Campaign. He didn't tweet the crap that he was tweeting before and stayed on message for the last 3-6 weeks of the campaign.

[hopper]

Clinton, because his election actually brought a national realignment.  Obama couldn't have won in 2008 if Clinton hadn't in 1992.

1992 was not a realignment. If it was, WV, LA, AR, KY would still be voting Democrat.

1988 was a realignment.

1992 was a realignment because most of the Northeast and Upper Midwest have been voting D ever since.  2000 was only a regional realignment because the Outer South began shifting to the GOP nationally, but the rest of the country stayed the same.

By that criteria, if 1992 was a realignment then was so 2008 because of states like VA, NC, and CO switching partisan allegiances.  Certainly there aren't political realignments every 16 years.

In fact, looking trying to define political realignments based on how certain areas with certain characteristics vote is quite silly for the simple reason that the characteristics of any particular place are unlikely to stay constant for any considerable period of time.  It makes no sense to compare the voting habits of Forsyth County, GA in 1980 with Forsyth County, GA in 2008 because, between 1980 and 2008, Forsyth County might as well not even be the same place anymore.  Rather, it makes sense to define realignments based on changes in the party's respective coalitions or the rise/fall of wedge issues.        

Clinton won CO in 1992.

Anyways, I think Obama ran the greatest campaign I ever seen. I was too young to see Reagan's campaign in 1980 because I was a 1 year old on Election Day 1980 and I was too young and not into politics in 1992 as a 12-13 year old in 1992. If I'm not mistaken though wasn't Clinton's campaign in disarray in 1992 in the primaries really early and him and his campaign team were fighting just to stay above water and not drop out of the race early or it never got to that point?

[hopper]

Following the 1976 GOP convention, it was pretty clear that Reagan would be the party's nominee in 1980. Coupled with the fact that the incumbent was a notoriously weak politician, having barely beat the Republican the previous election following several years' worth of controversy, and the country's economy/foreign policy was in shambles--it's easy to see why Reagan curb-stomped Carter in 1980. He ran a good campaign, but no huge surprises here.

Clinton ran an excellent campaign in 1992, and successfully built momentum as the primary went along, and had to do so partially because the winners of Iowa and New Hampshire were certainties going into the primary. It's hard to give him an enormous amount of credit for the general election victory, considering there were so many external factors affecting the outcome (economy, third party candidacy, running against a fourth term of Republican Presidents, etc.).

Considering the state of the country at the time, Obama's general election performance wasn't too impressive. However, he ran an incredibly skilled campaign against a skilled politician who had the party's full support, and most people--going into the 2008 election--simply assumed would be the party's nominee.

Have to go with Obama's 2008 campaign, specifically the primary. He achieved a seemingly impossible task.

Seeing now that she lost to Trump , that win gets a little less impressive .

She didn't have a message for the future and the email thing hung over her head the whole GE campaign. That's what cost her the Presidency. Sanders could have really went after Hillary over the e-mail thing in the primary but he didn't because he was being a team player.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Clinton, because his election actually brought a national realignment.  Obama couldn't have won in 2008 if Clinton hadn't in 1992.

1992 was not a realignment. If it was, WV, LA, AR, KY would still be voting Democrat.

1988 was a realignment.

1992 was a realignment because most of the Northeast and Upper Midwest have been voting D ever since.  2000 was only a regional realignment because the Outer South began shifting to the GOP nationally, but the rest of the country stayed the same.

By that criteria, if 1992 was a realignment then was so 2008 because of states like VA, NC, and CO switching partisan allegiances.  Certainly there aren't political realignments every 16 years.

In fact, looking trying to define political realignments based on how certain areas with certain characteristics vote is quite silly for the simple reason that the characteristics of any particular place are unlikely to stay constant for any considerable period of time.  It makes no sense to compare the voting habits of Forsyth County, GA in 1980 with Forsyth County, GA in 2008 because, between 1980 and 2008, Forsyth County might as well not even be the same place anymore.  Rather, it makes sense to define realignments based on changes in the party's respective coalitions or the rise/fall of wedge issues.        

Clinton won CO in 1992.

Anyways, I think Obama ran the greatest campaign I ever seen. I was too young to see Reagan's campaign in 1980 because I was a 1 year old on Election Day 1980 and I was too young and not into politics in 1992 as a 12-13 year old in 1992. If I'm not mistaken though wasn't Clinton's campaign in disarray in 1992 in the primaries really early and him and his campaign team were fighting just to stay above water and not drop out of the race early or it never got to that point?

except Bush in 1992 was  tougher to beat then McCain in 2008

[JoshPA]

reagan 1980 he did way much better then expected.

[Arbitrage1980]

reagan 1980 he did way much better then expected.


Polling back then weren't as nearly as extensive and sophisticated as they are now, and I've never been able to find state pollings from 1980 so didn't know what the expectation of Reagan's electoral vote count was going into election day. He was leading by a few points before the only debate between him and Carter. Reagan won decisively, and his numbers surged, but the debate was just a week before the election, so the polling didn't fully capture that impact.

[Arbitrage1980]

In terms of organizational strength and effectiveness, Obama 2008 was the best run campaign, but Clinton 1992 had to overcome much steeper odds than Obama or Reagan.

In 1980 Carter was an extremely unpopular incumbent President in the midst of double digit unemployment and inflation, rising Soviet power, humiliation by Iran, and Ted Kennedy crippling him during the democratic primary. Likewise, 2008 was a horrible year for the incumbent party. Bush was at around 25% approval rating, Iraq War, worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, McCain was a terrible candidate, Palin was a joke. I mean, Obama's victory was guaranteed. It's worth noting that even then, Obama and McCain were virtually tied before the financial crisis, a testament to the strength of the GOP and the voters' concerns over Obama's inexperience.

Although HW Bush was not terribly popular in 1992, he was at 70% approval rating when Clinton announced his candidacy in October 1991. And the economy was in a mild recession but not a severe one. Also, while nearly any reasonable Republican would have beaten Carter in 1980 and a Democrat would have beaten McCain in 2008, I don't think the same can be said for 1992. It took a charismatic moderate Democrat of Clinton's skills to run successfully against an incumbent President and convince white suburban GOP voters to go for him. 1992 was a re-aligining election.

[Mr.Phips]

Definitely Clinton 1992.  Clinton was basically starting from scratch in the electoral college due to there being no recent roadmap for a Democratic electoral college victory.  Both Reagan in 1980 and Obama in 2008 had clear and easy paths to work with in the electoral collage.

[Shameless Lefty Hack]

Obama 2008 has defined the technical art of campaigning that we live in.  Full stop.

Reagan, Obama, and Clinton might have been equivalently charismatic, and the top advisers might have been equivalently shrewd strategists, but if you're talking about who ran the better campaign? Obama 2008 and 2012 were technical masterpieces that won't be replicated for a good while.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Obama 2008 has defined the technical art of campaigning that we live in.  Full stop.

Reagan, Obama, and Clinton might have been equivalently charismatic, and the top advisers might have been equivalently shrewd strategists, but if you're talking about who ran the better campaign? Obama 2008 and 2012 were technical masterpieces that won't be replicated for a good while.

Before the crash in 08 Obama was barely beating McCain , while even without that crash Obama should have won pretty handily seeing how unpopular Bush was in 08.


Clinton in 1992 should have won no where near as big as he did while Obama should have won by a larger amount and Reagan won just slightly larger then he should have .

[Shameless Lefty Hack]

-snip-

Ross Perot was an unpredictable factor, the brilliance of the Obama campaign was in organizing persuasive field organizing that bore fruit over the course of the entire campaign, and where the heck are you getting numbers for "how big they should have won?"

[OSR stands with Israel]

-snip-

Ross Perot was an unpredictable factor, the brilliance of the Obama campaign was in organizing persuasive field organizing that bore fruit over the course of the entire campaign, and where the heck are you getting numbers for "how big they should have won?"

The GOP should not have won more then 140 electoral votes in 2008, seeing how bad the conditions they were .

Yes Clinton probably doesnt get over 300 electoral votes if Perot doesnt won,without Perot that election should be a slight victory for George Bush. Even with Perot Clinton should not have gotten over 310 electoral votes