Biggest "Rising Star" flops

[Mr. Morden]

Republicans: Bobby Jindal, Tim Pawlenty, Paul Ryan, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, John Kasich, Chris Christie (arguably the entire 2016 Republican field), Martha McSally

Democrats: Bruce Braley, Martin O’Malley, Patrick Murphy, Beto O’Rourke, Kirsten Gillibrand, Steve Bullock, Amy McGrath, Max Rose, Abb- (oops, almost said Finkenauer, but caught myself.)

This seems like a weird list.  Many of these people don't seem like they ever really rated much as "rising stars", at least not on the same playing field in which they "flopped".  For example, in the 90s, Kasich was more well known than the average Congressman, sure.  But not well known enough that many ever really expected him to be nominated for president.  (Maybe Vice President, but that's always a shot in the dark.). So no one was surprised that his 2000 presidential race was a dud.

And then in his second political life in the 2010s, no one expected him to get very far in the 2016 presidential primaries, and I think for a couple of those early 10 person debates, he was on the bubble for even qualifying for the debate, as opposed to being pushed off to the kiddie table debate.  I'd say coming in 3rd or 4th in the primaries counts as beating expectations for him.

This (and some other posts in the thread) seems more like a list of people who got at least a little bit of national attention among political observers at some point in time, and didn't win the highest office that they ever ran for.  But that's true of a huge number of politicians from American history.

[Mr. Morden]

If we are talking presidential aspirations, the name that comes to mind is Rick Perry. I was certain he was going to enter the race, clobber the field, and defeat Obama. Then he said oops and free fell out of contention, never to be seriously considered again. I really, really thought he was going to be the real deal though.

I guess there are two categories of “rising star flops” on the presidential campaign stage.  Generally, presidential candidates are at least somewhat popular among whatever constituency that elected them locally to begin with.  But in terms of how that translates nationally, there are two ways things can go awry.

On the one hand, you have someone like Rick Perry, who actually did lead some polls for a while, and was a co-frontrunner for the nomination with Romney for a time.  But he screwed it up, and his star faded during the campaign (which actually started before “oops”).  In those cases, I wouldn’t say it’s so much about pundits misjudging things, because the candidate in question *was* popular with primary voters nationally, at least for a while.

But then you’ve got people like I guess Jindal, whose presidential campaigns never took off in the first place, and the idea that his campaign was ever going to catch fire was a big pundit miscalculation.  In that case, the “rising star” status was pundit groupthink.