Realistically, could anyone beat Hillary in a primary?

[Mister Mets]

I'm conflicted on this. Based on what Hillary's done, sure. Her positions on military action, ties to Wall Street and smaller missteps suggest that she's vulnerable, especially with Democrats electing some of the most progressive officeholders ever (Warren, De Blasio, Tammy Baldwin, Chris Murphy, etc.)

But she doesn't have a credible opponent. Sanders is a socialist, and he's too old. Webb and Schwietzer appeal primarily to rural white guys, a small chunk of the primary vote. Warren doesn't seem like she's running. Dean's endorsed her. O'Malley's the only one from the younger generation (Gillibrand, Booker, Castro, Klobuchar, etc.) to lay any groundwork, and he hasn't demonstrated enough political talent to suggest he'd do better in a primary than the Bill Richardsons of the world.

[Mister Mets]

There's a concept of a person who can beat Hillary but no one actually exists.

I think they exist, but they're not making any moves.

A Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand or Elizabeth Warren could run a credible campaign against Clinton. But they're either not interested, or not willing to take that risk.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.