Realistically, could anyone beat Hillary in a primary?

[King]

August 2006: "No one could beat Hillary in a primary."

The nice thing about being on a forum that's been online since 2003 is that you can actually test these theories and it's quite clear people here in August 2006 thought Mark Warner was a clear favorite over the Hillary for the nomination with Russ Feingold being the great liberal hope:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=43962.0

There's no real Warner or Feingold being pumped up at the moment. There's no Obama to be found anywhere either.

[Daleworld]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Al Gore. If I recall I heard his name being floated my Mark Halperin on MSNBC.

[Mister Mets]

August 2006: "No one could beat Hillary in a primary."

The nice thing about being on a forum that's been online since 2003 is that you can actually test these theories and it's quite clear people here in August 2006 thought Mark Warner was a clear favorite over the Hillary for the nomination with Russ Feingold being the great liberal hope:

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=43962.0

There's no real Warner or Feingold being pumped up at the moment. There's no Obama to be found anywhere either.

Thanks for the link. That was great.

[NewYorkExpress]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Al Gore. If I recall I heard his name being floated my Mark Halperin on MSNBC.

At this point, Gore has nothing to gain by running (Which is a shame, I liked him)

[Mister Mets]

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Al Gore. If I recall I heard his name being floated my Mark Halperin on MSNBC.

At this point, Gore has nothing to gain by running (Which is a shame, I liked him)

The advantages for Gore...
- It would provide him with lots of free media. He hasn't done anything as big as An Inconvenient Truth.
- There's a nontrivial chance he'd win, and he's unlikely to get another opportunity. Politically, he has high name recognition, and can attack Hillary from the left while taking credit for the Clinton years.

The disadvantages for Gore...
- He would be under a lot of scrutiny. Why did he get divorced? How much money did he get from Al Jazeera?
- Hillary Clinton is still ideally positioned.
- There's a nontrivial chance he would go down in history as the man who won every state presidential primary in one cycle, and lost every presidential primary in another.

[IceSpear]

August 2006: "No one could beat Hillary in a primary."

Polling at 35% and polling at 65% are quite different.

[Alreet]

I reckon Schweitzer makes it a race in Iowa, a state which is not a fan of the Clinton's. Maybe O'Malley makes it a race in New Hampshire, but Clinton wins by a large margin. South Carolina is in the bag for Clinton, as is Florida. Maybe a couple more western States fall to Schweitzer, but Clinton will win the primary.

[H. Ross Peron]

No barring some scandal or some other major event.

[Bull Moose Base]

Russ Feingold could beat her. I don't know that anybody else could.

I agree Feingold would be her strongest opponent but she'd still be a heavy favorite and he'd be a heavy favorite for his old senate seat. I assume he'll opt for the latter race, especially with Republicans winning  seats if not control of the senate in a couple months.

[daveosupremo]

Russ Feingold could beat her. I don't know that anybody else could.

I agree Feingold would be her strongest opponent but she'd still be a heavy favorite and he'd be a heavy favorite for his old senate seat. I assume he'll opt for the latter race, especially with Republicans winning  seats if not control of the senate in a couple months.

I'd agree with you but it looks like Ron Kind is going to challenge Johnson in 2016 in Wisconsin. Feingold and Kind are kindred spirits so I doubt Feingold runs for Senate again. IMHO, he's more likely to primary Clinton or challenge Walker (or Kleefisch) in 2018.

[King]

Feingold is nice and all, but the conspiracy theorist hysteria surrounding the nation's first Jewish President would break the internet.

[IceSpear]

I reckon Schweitzer makes it a race in Iowa, a state which is not a fan of the Clinton's. Maybe O'Malley makes it a race in New Hampshire, but Clinton wins by a large margin. South Carolina is in the bag for Clinton, as is Florida. Maybe a couple more western States fall to Schweitzer, but Clinton will win the primary.

O'Malley can't even make it a race in Maryland, much less New Hampshire.

[Mister Mets]

With the benefit of hindsight there are things that are obvious to us now, that weren't obvious years ago.

It makes sense that a young African-American senator from the big state next to Iowa with an activist background could be a strong contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, but people here didn't see that eight years ago. The Audacity of Hope didn't come out until October 2006, and that book tour helped get him presidential buzz.

A trap that we can fall into (and I'm not exception) is to look at everything through the lens of what's happened in the past. Sometimes it works (IE- Republicans nominate the next in line, so Mitt Romney was the favorite in 2012.) Sometimes it doesn't.

No small state Governor was elected President. Until Bill Clinton did it.
The nomination of a President's son seemed like a pre-Civil War relic, until George W Bush did it.
The presidential campaigns had obviously become too lengthy for people just elected to office, until Obama fought for the nomination.

Maybe there's someone who can challenge Hillary who doesn't fit the profile of previous nominees.

[IceSpear]

Let's be real for a second here: if it was Joe Biden leading in the primary polls by 50+ points (both nationwide and in the early states) with his most likely opponents being Brian Schweitzer and Bernie Sanders, literally nobody would be talking about how he could possibly be upended in the primary. The only reason this is even a topic of discussion is because of the vendetta many on Atlas and in the pundit class have against Hillary. That and "muh 2008", which has already been thoroughly debunked by anyone who took 5 minutes to Wikipedia Hillary's position in 2006 relative to what it is now.

[Maxwell]

Let's be real for a second here: if it was Joe Biden leading in the primary polls by 50+ points (both nationwide and in the early states) with his most likely opponents being Brian Schweitzer and Bernie Sanders, literally nobody would be talking about how he could possibly be upended in the primary. The only reason this is even a topic of discussion is because of the vendetta many on Atlas and in the pundit class have against Hillary. That and "muh 2008", which has already been thoroughly debunked by anyone who took 5 minutes to Wikipedia Hillary's position in 2006 relative to what it is now.

Nobody would be talking about it because it clearly would be able to happen. Biden is a goofball, he's screwed things up before, he can do it again.

[IceSpear]

Let's be real for a second here: if it was Joe Biden leading in the primary polls by 50+ points (both nationwide and in the early states) with his most likely opponents being Brian Schweitzer and Bernie Sanders, literally nobody would be talking about how he could possibly be upended in the primary. The only reason this is even a topic of discussion is because of the vendetta many on Atlas and in the pundit class have against Hillary. That and "muh 2008", which has already been thoroughly debunked by anyone who took 5 minutes to Wikipedia Hillary's position in 2006 relative to what it is now.

Nobody would be talking about it because it clearly would be able to happen. Biden is a goofball, he's screwed things up before, he can do it again.

My point is that I think Atlas (and especially the pundits) aren't taking the numbers in context. Hillary's lead in every poll is so enormous that people don't actually process it in their brain, and instead think "Hillary has a big lead, not surprising, she did in 2008 too!". We tend not to distinguish between 20 point or 50 point landslides in our head, but that's a damn lot of difference (and in the real world, means millions upon millions of people).

Think about it for a second. The RCP average currently has Hillary leading by 54 points nationwide, 54 points in Iowa, AND 54 points in New Hampshire. She's at around 65% in all of these. This is a bigger lead than literally every single Senate or Gubernatorial candidate has this election cycle, even in states like Massachusetts and Wyoming. She's winning by 10 points more than Mike Enzi, and she leads by more than double the amount Ed Markey does. Yet if we saw people talking about how Enzi or Markey could lose, they would be (justifiably) mocked. Obviously this race is much later than those will be, but even if people suggested Enzi could be beaten back in 2012 they would've been laughed at.

Anti-Hillary hackery combined with 2008 nostalgia/misinformation is blinding people to just how heavy of a favorite she is to win the nomination. Assuming she runs, her chances are no less than 99%.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

It's more possible than people are willing to admit. Because Hillary Clinton is already the defacto nominee, she will stake out a few positions on policy issues that will irritate progressives and she will face increased scrutiny from progressive media outlets over the next year. A dark horse candidate could decide to enter the race if the conditions are right and win.

At the very least, I expect that a protest candidate of marginal status will enter the race and do fairly well in the Iowa caucuses (20-30%). In the end, she may win Iowa by less than 50-60%. We'll see though.

[Mr. Morden]

At the very least, I expect that a protest candidate of marginal status will enter the race and do fairly well in the Iowa caucuses (20-30%). In the end, she may win Iowa by less than 50-60%.

Well sure, if Sanders challenges her, then her margin of victory in either Iowa or New Hampshire being less than 50 points seems like a good bet.  Sanders would air criticism of her from the left that most Democratic voters haven't been exposed to yet because they're not paying attention to the race.  So I don't think he'd remain stuck at 2% by any means.  There'll be *some* traction for his message in the party, so getting something like 25% or more in one of the early states is very doable.

[TheDeadFlagBlues]

At the very least, I expect that a protest candidate of marginal status will enter the race and do fairly well in the Iowa caucuses (20-30%). In the end, she may win Iowa by less than 50-60%.

Well sure, if Sanders challenges her, then her margin of victory in either Iowa or New Hampshire being less than 50 points seems like a good bet.  Sanders would air criticism of her from the left that most Democratic voters haven't been exposed to yet because they're not paying attention to the race.  So I don't think he'd remain stuck at 2% by any means.  There'll be *some* traction for his message in the party, so getting something like 25% or more in one of the early states is very doable.

Even if it isn't Sanders, I bet that some vaguely qualified politician or prominent progressive figure will challenge her from the left and will receive a non-negligible number of votes because he/she will receive a some media coverage from MSNBC and a lot of media coverage from the progressive blogosphere and magazine circuit.

The Democratic Party is too diverse for Hillary Clinton to win early primary states by gargantuan numbers. Even a some dude candidate could achieve a respectable performance with the right strategy. I'm sure that some of Ron Paul's supporters would be more likely to vote for a far-left oddity running on drug legalization, isolationist foreign policy, anti-NSA etc than for Rand Paul.

[Mister Mets]

Let's be real for a second here: if it was Joe Biden leading in the primary polls by 50+ points (both nationwide and in the early states) with his most likely opponents being Brian Schweitzer and Bernie Sanders, literally nobody would be talking about how he could possibly be upended in the primary. The only reason this is even a topic of discussion is because of the vendetta many on Atlas and in the pundit class have against Hillary. That and "muh 2008", which has already been thoroughly debunked by anyone who took 5 minutes to Wikipedia Hillary's position in 2006 relative to what it is now.

Nobody would be talking about it because it clearly would be able to happen. Biden is a goofball, he's screwed things up before, he can do it again.

My point is that I think Atlas (and especially the pundits) aren't taking the numbers in context. Hillary's lead in every poll is so enormous that people don't actually process it in their brain, and instead think "Hillary has a big lead, not surprising, she did in 2008 too!". We tend not to distinguish between 20 point or 50 point landslides in our head, but that's a damn lot of difference (and in the real world, means millions upon millions of people).

Think about it for a second. The RCP average currently has Hillary leading by 54 points nationwide, 54 points in Iowa, AND 54 points in New Hampshire. She's at around 65% in all of these. This is a bigger lead than literally every single Senate or Gubernatorial candidate has this election cycle, even in states like Massachusetts and Wyoming. She's winning by 10 points more than Mike Enzi, and she leads by more than double the amount Ed Markey does. Yet if we saw people talking about how Enzi or Markey could lose, they would be (justifiably) mocked. Obviously this race is much later than those will be, but even if people suggested Enzi could be beaten back in 2012 they would've been laughed at.

Anti-Hillary hackery combined with 2008 nostalgia/misinformation is blinding people to just how heavy of a favorite she is to win the nomination. Assuming she runs, her chances are no less than 99%.

There is a problem in comparing Hillary's current primary polling to general election polls.

There are bigger differences between candidates in General Elections.

Republicans in Massachusetts aren't inclined to vote for Markey. Democrats in Wyoming will have major policy differences with Enzi.

Most current Hillary supporters would vote for O'Malley over Jeb Bush or Rand Paul.

[IceSpear]

Let's be real for a second here: if it was Joe Biden leading in the primary polls by 50+ points (both nationwide and in the early states) with his most likely opponents being Brian Schweitzer and Bernie Sanders, literally nobody would be talking about how he could possibly be upended in the primary. The only reason this is even a topic of discussion is because of the vendetta many on Atlas and in the pundit class have against Hillary. That and "muh 2008", which has already been thoroughly debunked by anyone who took 5 minutes to Wikipedia Hillary's position in 2006 relative to what it is now.

Nobody would be talking about it because it clearly would be able to happen. Biden is a goofball, he's screwed things up before, he can do it again.

My point is that I think Atlas (and especially the pundits) aren't taking the numbers in context. Hillary's lead in every poll is so enormous that people don't actually process it in their brain, and instead think "Hillary has a big lead, not surprising, she did in 2008 too!". We tend not to distinguish between 20 point or 50 point landslides in our head, but that's a damn lot of difference (and in the real world, means millions upon millions of people).

Think about it for a second. The RCP average currently has Hillary leading by 54 points nationwide, 54 points in Iowa, AND 54 points in New Hampshire. She's at around 65% in all of these. This is a bigger lead than literally every single Senate or Gubernatorial candidate has this election cycle, even in states like Massachusetts and Wyoming. She's winning by 10 points more than Mike Enzi, and she leads by more than double the amount Ed Markey does. Yet if we saw people talking about how Enzi or Markey could lose, they would be (justifiably) mocked. Obviously this race is much later than those will be, but even if people suggested Enzi could be beaten back in 2012 they would've been laughed at.

Anti-Hillary hackery combined with 2008 nostalgia/misinformation is blinding people to just how heavy of a favorite she is to win the nomination. Assuming she runs, her chances are no less than 99%.

There is a problem in comparing Hillary's current primary polling to general election polls.

There are bigger differences between candidates in General Elections.

Republicans in Massachusetts aren't inclined to vote for Markey. Democrats in Wyoming will have major policy differences with Enzi.

Most current Hillary supporters would vote for O'Malley over Jeb Bush or Rand Paul.

But by that same measure, it's not like Hillary supporters are going to abandon her en masse just because O'Malley positions himself vaguely to the left of her.

[Badger]

I'm astonished at the number of yes votes, even though it's still a minority.