Talk Elections

()

You change the candidates from both parties

You got the map wrong.

http://()

Here's a Bush vs. Leiberman map if you're talking about different candidates.

http://()

and Bush vs Dean

http://()

Don't forget Bush vs. Edwards

http://()

and of course Bush vs. Gephardt

http://()

oh and I almost forgot Dennis Kucinich

lol at Dean losing California.

California is only about the 10th most liberal state in presidential elections. In fact you probably don't know but California was closer thn Illinois and Hawaii. There was a point where Kerry led Bush 49-46 there while Bush had a 49% approval rating. It wasn't out of the question between the GOP convention and the debates.

Clark vs. Bush

()

Dean vs. Bush

()

How can anyone think that Howard Dean is electable. The guy is a raging moron and openly admitted that the healthcare bill didn't include a cap on frivolous lawsuits because they didn't want to upset the trial lawyers. When asked what he meant, he denied ever saying it despite the footage.

Ppppppplease. Dean is a modeate, just like Kerry. He is even in favor of gun rights and got an A from the NRA as Governor of Vermont.

Oooooooooooh gun rights, that's right the 2004 election was all about your right to own a gun. Dean is a socialist and even said that we need to find the right balance between capitalism and socialism. Socialism has no place in this country. He wanted to surrender authority of commander in chief to the UN when it came to sending our troops into harms way. Then there was the Dean Scream. Oh, and for the record, John Kerry had the most liberal voting record in the senate that year.

This could also be the map for Bush Jr. vs. Obama 2004.

I'd still give Obama IL that year but yea. Kucinich could have lost every state.

IL went for Bush by about 10%, if I remember correctly. Obama (a little-known state senator) would scare enough people about his experience that the state will flip to Bush. At least no one could question Kerry's experience.

That's true but it didn't work for Alan Keyes. IL went 55-45 I believe as did CA and CT.

Alan Keyes was a joke candidadte. Bush Jr. was not.

Either way the fact IL was Obama's state plus IL being a good state for a democrat to be from. I'm not ruling IL out for Bush if Obama was the nominee. It would be close.

I'm not sure if Illinois law would have allowed Obama to run for the Senate and for the Presidency at the same time. If it did, I could see a huge amount of voters voting Obama for Senate while voting against him as President. Also, many Presidential nominees who were more experienced than Obama was in 2004 lost or almost lost their home states.

While Obama would have badly lost if he were running for President from the State Senate, due to inexperience, an important caveat would be the following scenario:

Obama was originally elected to the U.S. Senate from Illinois in 2000 (I know IL didn't have a Senate election in 2000, but ignore that for my hypothetical scenario to be consistent with the actual). Then he runs against Bush Jr. in 2004. How would that election turn out?



Bush Jr. was too, but just wasn't perceived as one. ;)

Illinois didn't have a Senate election in 2000.

I know that. I used that as a hypothetical, to be analogous to the real scenario if him being a Senator for 4 years prior to running for President.

All right. IMO, in your scenario the map would be something like this:

()

A 346-192 Bush Jr. win.

as far as Dean I would say between a 3-5% swing in favor of Bush. He was a good candidate in some ways, awful in others. I think Bush's campaign language would be different and more focused on pounding Dean's remarks on the war rather than how he hit Kerry on personal issues.

If Clark was the nominee it's practically impossible to predict what would happen. On the surface he appears to be a better candidate than Kerry. He was a general, moderate, southerner, etc. But as was made apparent by the '04 primary race he was a very weak campaigner on the trail and was unnable to roll in the big bucks. So it's also possible that he would loose by a wider or simmilar margin.

He may not have been left wing enough for his party. Plus he joined late. I think Bush would've hammered Clark on the domestic issues. We did have a good economy in 2004 just not in alot of the battleground states.

The economy was in good shape in 2004, but rising fuel prices made many voters feel uncertain about the recovery. Thus, the Democrats could ahve still hammered Bush Jr. over the economy. Not to mention that no new jobs were created in Bush Jr.'s first term.

For Dean, I think a large focus of the attacks would have been about Dean's lack of foreign policy experience. Bush Jr. would be unable to attack Dean as a flip-flopper, so I think he would want to avoid attacking Dean directly on Iraq, for Dean could then retailate and claim that he had good judgment by opposing this war from the start. TBH, though, I think that attacking Dean's foreign policy credentials would have been enough to make him lose by either the same or a slightly larger margin than Kerry. I agree with what you wrote about Clark.

The entire year you would have heard Bush reminding independents that Dean would allow our troops to be commanded by foreign leaders from the UN. The GOP would argue that it was Dean's way of shrugging off a responsibility that he had no clue about.

The GOP would probably have said this a lot, but Dean could have reminded voters that he, unlike Bush, is honest and has solid judgment.

Solid judgment like putting our troops in the hands of foreign leaders? Yea that's really solid judgment. Use your judgment and don't post things until you're sure they make sense.

Solid judgment like opposing a pointless war in Iraq from the start.

I'd rather have a war where our troops were led by a commander in chief, especially one who was surrounded by military experience and whose father was even a hero in WWII. If Dean had his way, women would still be oppressed in Iraq.

It's not our business if dictators in other countries are oppressing their people. Dean knew that Saddam wasn't an immediate threat to us and thus he had good judgment by opposing the Iraq War from the start. Bush didn't have a lot of military experience and it's irrelevant whether his dad had any or not because his dad wasn't the President back then.

None of our business? If you saw a murder taking place on the street, wouldn't you at least call the cops? I hope you would. Now replace the murderer with Saddam and the one being murdered with an innocent Iraqi. Even though they may not be citizens of the US, they're humans too!

Then how come we didn't invade Sudan? Unlike Saddam, the Sudanese govt. was actually committing a genocide when Bush Jr. was President. And if you're going to talk about human rights, Reagan sold Saddam a lot of WMDs when Saddam was committing genocide. So if you're going to invade one country while ignoring countries that have far worse human rights violations, then you Republicans are just a bunch of hypocrites.

There you go again right out of the playbook.

I am simply stating facts. It's not my fault a lot of Republican politicians are hypocrites.

Facts that only tell one side of the story. Facts can be very misleading out of context.

OK, explain your side of the story then.

Hypocrisy cuts both ways.

Why do so many Democrats support invading Sudan, an even s**tier country than Iraq, while opposing the Iraq War?

I know that many Democrats are also hypocrites. I don't support invading Sudan, though, and I always opposed the Iraq War. And I was just pointing out that it was hypocritical for Republicans to say that we should have invaded Iraq on humanitarian grounds when certain other countries (Sudan, North Korea, etc.) had worse humanitarian situations back then than Iraq had.

()

Howard Dean : 52%, 298 EVs
George Bush : 48%, 240 EVs

I doubt Dean would have won in 2004 considering he had no foreign policy experience (in a foreign-policy centered election year).

Here are my predictions:

Dean
()
Bush/Cheney (R): 342 EVs, 54% of the PV
Dean/Vilsack (D): 196 EVs, 44% of the PV

()

Bush/Cheney 56%, 447 EV's
Dean/Kerry 42%, 91 EV's

()

Bush/Cheney-300 EV
Dean/Clark-238 EV

()

Bush/Cheyney-47% of PV; 204 Electoral Votes
H. Clinton/Gephdart-53 of PV; 334 Electoral Votes

Of course this is a "Clinton runs the best campaign she possibly could have" scenario...

I think Hillary could have beat Bush, but she probably wouldn't have won by that kind of margin. Jeb would have probably delivered FL for his big bro, and Bush would have attacked Hillary as an indecisive flip-flopper and inexperienced, which would have somewhat damaged her.

Anybody want to do:

Ron Paul/Gary Johnson vs. Wesley Clark/Dick Gephardt vs. Ralph Nader/Dennis Kucinich?

Bush/Cheney v. Howard Dean/Irrelevant

()

Bush - 331  (52.4%)
Dean - 207  (46.7%)

Bush/Cheney v. Hillary/_______

()

H. Clinton - 284 (50.1%)
W. Bush - 254 (49.4%)

Hillary 2004 is no Hillary 2010, nor Hillary 2008 even. And of course, Bush 2004 was a bit more popular than Bush 2010. But she still would have been a better candidate than Kerry. Hillary BARELY wins