Hillary's limited appeal

[HillOfANight]

The Clintons came into national prominence believing that the voters would never support liberalism.  Their message was a centrist one crafted for the post-Reagan era: pro-business, pro-military and reigning in welfare.  All great things.
Now we are in an era in which everything traditional in America is under assault, and Hillary must pivot left.

http://www.quinnipiac.edu/news-and-events/quinnipiac-university-poll/national/release-detail?ReleaseID=2265

55% support citizenship for undocumented immigrants, only 32% support deportation.
68%, including 46% of GOP accept scientific evidence of climate change and human responsibility for it.
65% oppose businesses discriminating against lgbt people.

"Traditional" America is dying.

[Ljube]

She's in the 'generic' tradition of American presidential candidates. There have been plenty of those - Romney, Kerry, the Gore of 2000, Dole, Bush the Elder, Dukakis etc. The other type of candidates are the charismatic/maverick/game changing types like Obama, McCain (yes), Dubya, Bill Clinton, Reagan, McGovern, Nixon, Goldwater, LBJ, JFK etc.

Though it could be argued that she was more in the latter category in 2008.

Add TRUMP to the charismatic list!

[Reaganfan]

One thing that I've observed is that in practice Hillary appeals to very few people. Obviously conservatives of all stripes hate her, most progressives and people on the left do as well where she's seen (correctly IMO) as one of the people most responsible for moving Democrats to the right. She doesn't seem to have much appeal to the working class (white or otherwise) and while her strength is purported to be highest among ethnic minorities I can't see there really be much love there either, especially with her cynical hispandering and the fact that she was a big supporter of broken windows policing in the 90s. The only group that really seems to like her are upper middle class liberal feminist types who just identify with her and they aren't really a significant demographic. I also think that the country in general is in an anti-establishment mood and there's no way that she would be doing as well in the Democratic primary as she is if they weren't trying deliberately to rig the process for her and done everything possible to prevent a competitive primary for the sake of some ed up seniority.

The only way that she wins is the toxicity of a Trump or Cruz.

Nonsense, the polling at the moment does NOT show a desire for change, unlike in 2008. Hillary has issues when it comes to cross-over appeal, yes but she is very strong among the broad left and the het-up leftists aren't big enough in raw numbers for it to make THAT much of a difference in the end.

Plus you're granting Hillary far more of a role in the Democratic Party's policy development than she actually had (forgetting how the (Bill) Clinton centrism aligns with the moderation seen among the mainstream centre-left parties in most Western Nations during the 1980s and 1990s) ...

Yet again, this is Hillary derangement syndrome, I get not liking Hillary I get supporting Sanders... but for the life of me, just because you don't get why people do support her doesn't make your conclusions facts.

I have to disagree about the change argument. When 70% of the country says it's on the wrong track, and the current President sits in the low 40s approval (at best, and he gets blind support from almost 100% of African Americans), that hardly is a call for continuing the status quo.

Plus, if a bad candidate like Mitt Romney came as close as he did in a time before ISIS and before Obamacare's penalties kicked in and before Rachel Dolezal and Black Lives Matter and the riots and before going after guns and before Dukes of Hazzard and all the PC stuff that has so many people pissed, I think *if* Hillary wins, it's by the absolute skin of her teeth.

[The Dowager Mod]

Hillary is not a likeable person.  There are lots of reasons for that, but she's not really likeable, and that's the way it is.  I suspect that a lot of feminists who are pushing her candidacy with that the first Madam President would be someone else.

My experience has taught me something: If someone is not likable, they normally lose.

Like Nixon in 1972...

[Virginiá]

I have to disagree about the change argument. When 70% of the country says it's on the wrong track, and the current President sits in the low 40s approval (at best, and he gets blind support from almost 100% of African Americans), that hardly is a call for continuing the status quo.

It's not enough to just go by national averages, though. For instance, strong & widespread disapproval in the large parts of the South skews some polls even when that isn't the case in the states that count. In an election where wins are based on state results and not a popular vote, it's important to look at key battleground states:

http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/florida-obama-job-approval
http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/virginia-obama-job-approval

Obama himself had more disapproval (or close to it) than approval around 2012 election time in Virginia and Florida, yet he still won. The fact is, Democrats have high approval ratings of Obama and in a country where more people are becoming Democratic-leaning, I think that is what counts. I'm not saying 2016 is a sure thing but simply going on standard national average polls is not going to cut it.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_obama_job_approval_among_democrats-1046.html

Thinking a country is on the wrong track doesn't necessarily mean people are just going to hop to the next party, either. If they simply do not see their values or desires represented by the opposition party, then they will stick with the incumbent party. Nixon badly damaged the Republican reputation, and Carter just barely won the next election. He was then defeated by Reagan 4 years later in a EV landslide. Simply put, these polls do not always strongly reflect who people end up voting for in the next election.

[Reaganfan]

I have to disagree about the change argument. When 70% of the country says it's on the wrong track, and the current President sits in the low 40s approval (at best, and he gets blind support from almost 100% of African Americans), that hardly is a call for continuing the status quo.

It's not enough to just go by national averages, though. For instance, disapproval in the South skews some polls even when that isn't the case in the states that count. In an election where wins are based on state results and not a popular vote, it's important to look at key battleground states:

http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/florida-obama-job-approval
http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/virginia-obama-job-approval

Obama himself had more disapproval (or close to it) than approval around 2012 election time in Virginia and Florida, yet he still won. The fact is, Democrats have high approval ratings of Obama and in a country where more people are becoming Democratic-leaning, I think that is what counts. I'm not saying 2016 is a sure thing but simply going on standard national average polls is not going to cut it.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_obama_job_approval_among_democrats-1046.html

See but this is the question, is the country really going more Democrat? I keep seeing how much people want guns...but they also want gay marriage. They hate taxes and the IRS...but they want weed. It almost seems as if the country is going libertarian. I don't know.

Also, this forum has been a bad barometer. Reading this forum the last two years had me so depressed (as a Republican). I figured Rick Scott, Larry Hogan, Bruce Rauner, Cory Gardner all were going down in flames. I figured the "HERO" act in Houston would pass or be close, I figured the Marijuana thing in Ohio would fail but not 65-35 fail. Reading this forum gives an impression of a much bleaker outlook for Republicans than I think there is. Not to mention these off-year elections have gutted Democrats out of the entire country. Literally in Ohio, there is almost no Democratic Party. We have a GOP Governor. Sec of State. State Treasurer. Attorney General. One U.S. Senator. 6/7 of the Ohio Supreme Court is Republican. We have the state legislature and senate. It's all Republican. We have a GOP Governor presiding over a Republican National Convention at the Q (home of Lebron James) for a week in Cleveland. Yet on this forum, you would think it was all the opposite.

You can't tell me that as a Democrat you don't feel a bit nervous at what turnout and the electorate will look like without Obama on a ticket?

[Virginiá]

You can't tell me that as a Democrat you don't feel a bit nervous at what turnout and the electorate will look like without Obama on a ticket?

Not really. Black turnout may drop a bit, but it's not going to go back to 2004-levels. If it does, it will take several cycles, just like white turnout had very gradually dropped instead of a giant nosedive. Hispanic turnout actually dropped from 2008 - 2012, but with Trump I am very confident it will go higher - Maybe the highest it has ever been. All groups of people have specific issues that catalyzes a spark of participation in the electoral process.

Also, I think in some ways conservatives are just more vocal about some of their issues. They basically started the culture wars over social policy and now they are losing, so personally I see it as the deathrattle of hard-right & religious folks who see the changing social dynamics of this country as an assault on their values.

But for me, at this point in time, it comes down to math: non-white voters are exploding the electorate while white voters are falling, and Republicans very regularly only get small numbers of non-white voters. The math isn't there long-term, and they should be worried. I wouldn't base opinions on Democrats' midterm losses, either. The president's party always loses seats in their midterms and Obama was especially bad because the South went sideways on him.

There are a lot of good ideas in this thread about the leftward movement: https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=222206.0

[henster]

There is not a single Republican candidate that is favored against Clinton.

That's not Hillary's achievement. The same would have been true if Biden had run... it just tells you that the GOP is in shambles and hasn't learned its lessons from 2012 yet.

I pretty much agree with Zen Lunatic here. The only way she can win is if the Republicans lose.

Well Rubio has been leading or tied with her in quite a few polls, I would say he has a 50/50 shot of beating her.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

The right-wrong track question only matters if people think the alternative is better. Considering the clear desire the GOP has to push itself into irrelevancy, I wouldn't get too cocky.

It's like the fundamental question about incumbents, it's a two parter, a) are things not going well? b) will this person be better than the person currently there?

It's a similar question in this case, are things going well? And if not, am I confident that any of the other options would be better?

Plus this myopia that a national security debate only helps the GOP isn't really paying attention to what the data is telling us. It's kind of like their assumptions that the 2008 electorate was an anomaly and 2004 was really the baseline... they're walking into the same trap.

[Reaganfan]

The right-wrong track question only matters if people think the alternative is better. Considering the clear desire the GOP has to push itself into irrelevancy, I wouldn't get too cocky.

It's like the fundamental question about incumbents, it's a two parter, a) are things not going well? b) will this person be better than the person currently there?

It's a similar question in this case, are things going well? And if not, am I confident that any of the other options would be better?

Plus this myopia that a national security debate only helps the GOP isn't really paying attention to what the data is telling us. It's kind of like their assumptions that the 2008 electorate was an anomaly and 2004 was really the baseline... they're walking into the same trap.

See and I feel you guys might not be at a new baseline and that 2008 and 2012 and the Obama phenomenon might be just that.

[Ogre Mage]

That is a strange statement about a candidate who got almost 18 million votes and won 21 states in the 2008 Dem Primary.

[Ebsy]

See and I feel you guys might not be at a new baseline and that 2008 and 2012 and the Obama phenomenon might be just that.

I guess we'll just have to wait and see who's right: those that base their opinions on anecdotal interviews with hot chicks, or those that are supported by a vast body of demographic and election data.

Also, I feel the need to point out that the Republican argument against Obama's reelection in 2012 was confidently stating that 2008 was an aberration and not the new baseline. I don't believe I need to remind you how that turned out.

[Fuzzy Bear]

Hillary is not a likeable person.  There are lots of reasons for that, but she's not really likeable, and that's the way it is.  I suspect that a lot of feminists who are pushing her candidacy with that the first Madam President would be someone else.

My experience has taught me something: If someone is not likable, they normally lose.

Like Nixon in 1972...

Nixon in 1972 had overcome much of his unlikability.  Most of his negatives from the Eisenhower years had faded away.  Nixon won by a landslide because he made the 1972 campaign a referendum on the counterculture, and McGovern helped by standing to the left of Nixon on every major issue.  Nixon was not a "movement conservative" by any means, but he was able to show himself as more conservative than McGovern even when he was slightly to the left himself.

[Lief 🗽]

I like how Naso apparently thinks black peoples' opinions don't matter when it comes to presidential approval rating.

Really surprised that this crazy ginger-haired sumabitch ain't supporting TRUMP.