Talk Elections

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Same as the 2004 version

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Hillary Clinton vs. Rudy Giuliani

The Democratic candidate would have won handily regardless of who the nominees were. In a lot of ways, the actual 2008 results were a best case scenario for Republicans. There was enough hatred and ignorance to keep McCain's numbers somewhat respectable.

Not to mention that McCain was perceived as pretty moderate (at least in comparison to the other GOP candidates) but still more or less respectable to the base.

Clinton would have won by a bigger landslide, McCain was the best the GOP had to offer in the general election.

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Hillary vs. McCain

lol. If Obama, with all his controversies and inexperience, amanged to defeat McCain in a landslide, Hillary would have as well.

Are you trying to be a hack?

What do you mean and what are you getting at? It would've come down to Ohio.

None of that mattered. It was all about the economy and getting someone as far from Bush as possible.

LOL at Hillary losing Iowa, Florida, Ohio and New Hampshire to McCain. Not to mention that she would have won Arkansas and West Virginia.

I'm glad you brought that up. Arkansas was no longer winnable for the Clintons, hence the escape to NY where they'd be welcome. West Virginia is about as winnable for the democrats as Kansas nowadays. Virginia was due to Obama and Kaine being close and Kaine helping alot. Florida is a few points to the right of the nation and Obama only won it by a couple of points whereas Hillary Clinton was a weaker candidate. Ohio? well that would depend on voter turnout.

So many things wrong with this, don't know where to start.

1) Clinton would have won Arkansas, Rasmussen (your favorite pollster) showed Clinton winning the state easily against McCain, while that same poll showed Obama losing by 15-20 points, which was accurate.

2) If she could win Arkansas, she would win West Virginia easily.

3) Virginia was due to heavy black turnout and voters in the liberal areas in Northern Virginia, not Kaine. If there were any coattails, they were from Warner and they were small.

4) Florida has an elderly population, favoring Hillary. Not to mention Hillary would have gotten much more support among Northern Florida whites.

5) Ohio would vote for Clinton by more than it voted for Obama, her base, rural blue collar workers, would have made this state a pretty easy win.

Nonhacked Hillary vs. McCain

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Exactly. Hillary could run on her husband's good economic record and Hillary's policies were farther from Bush's policies than McCain's policies were.

Anyone but McCain equals Dem landslide. A different Democratic candidate shifts a few close states here and there, but doesn't change the map fundamentally. (The real struggle for the Dem nomination was for who becomes the anti-Hillary early on... and that field was arguably wide open, so there's a lot of quasi-plausible contenders here.)

It could be flipped around too based on doing nothing to stop terrorism in several cases and her having nothing to do with the good economy too.

Hard to see any Republican winning after what George W Bush did to this country. Maybe, if a GOP nominee had had the balls to oppose the bailouts. That was the only chance the Republicans had.

Hillary and Bill Clinton could counter that by arguing that the GOP said Clinton was too obsessed with catching bin Laden in the 1990s, before saying that he was not obessed enough after 9/11. Bill Clinton could also say that Hillary helped him in regards to the economy as President and that she will continue his economic policies. Since many voters gave Clinton credit for the economic prosperity of the 1990s, they will believe what he says in regards to Hillary. Seriously, if Obama managed to defeat McCain in a landslide after going to a racist church for over 20 years, Hillary would have also defeated McCain (or any other GOP opponent) in a landslide.

That's why I say that Mike Huckabee might have been a stronger candidate than most people give him credit for.

He might have been, but he would have still lost because many voters perceived him as too religious.

Huckabee was a stronger candidate than he appeared he'd have won FL, VA, and OH bringing the GOP up to at least 260.

I'm guessing no one has any arguments with me over why Hillary would have defeated McCain in a landslide?

Yes, yes definitely. Had Romney or Thompson or Huckabee won the nomination, it would have been a blowout.

What arguments can you provide to back any claims that McCain was able to perform the best? IMO, almost anyone could have performed better except maybe Fred or Rudy.

That's the CW but I'm skeptical. As I mentioned elsewhere, Romney and Huckabee had their own sets of strengths and weaknesses and nobody can say for sure how the campaign would have played out if one of them was the nominee.

Romney wouldn't have been so massively outspent, had a far better grasp of economics than McCain and his campaign would have been arguably much more efficient.
OTOH, his corporate past, his phoniness and his Mormonism would have hurt him.

Huckabee was the most charismatic of the three, his economic populism was well suited to the 2008 campaign, he could have pummeled Obama for his bailout vote and his candidacy would have kept the republican base enthusiastic.
OTOH, his lack of national security credentials, his overt religiosity and his inability to raise funds were serious cons.     

I don't think Hillary would've won in a landslide. The longer your past, the higher the negatives.

That's not always true.

I wonder how John Edwards would have done, assuming no affair with Rielle Hunter.

For that matter, I wonder how Gore would have done.

Edwards:

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Gore:

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IT WOULD HAVE BEEN EXPOSED.

He means that Edwards would not have had his affair with Hunter in the first place, thus Edwards would have had nothing to expose.

Gore vs McCain:

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Gore/Obama-355

McCain/Thune-183


Gore vs. Huckabee:

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Gore/Obama- 295

Huckabee/Brownback- 243

Well he did have the affair. You mean if it just didn't happen?

With John Edwards, we would simply pick apart every case he's ever been involved with and treat it as if he were on the wrong side. Or how bout he was making millions off of others' misfortunes. The difference between a guy like Edwards and someone like Bill Frist is if one were to witness an accident, Bill Frist would save a few lives as a doctor. John Edwards would demand to know if it were the tire or the car because someone is owed money and he is entitled to some of it. Those ambulance chasers just make me sick.

Yes. Read the bolded part.

Oh then we would've picked apart his cases as an attorney to make it look like he was on the wrong side of every issue.

Then the GOP would have failed epically, since no one would have cared about that. All they would have cared about would have been the economy. Thus, any Democrat would have defeated any Republican (except maybe Colin Powell) in a landslide in 2008.

John Edwards [no affair]/Hillary Clinton v. Mitt Romney/Condi Rice

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Edwards/Clinton - 516 EV - 60%
Romney/Rice - 22EV - 39%
Others - 0EV - 1%

No way Edwards picks Hillary for VP, unless it is a very close race between them for the nomination, and even then I'm not sure he picks her (since Obama didn't).

Yeah but it's true for any Clinton, who would've been haunted by Slick Willie's handling of terrorism that possibly led to 9/11, his personal problems that kept him distracted while the national security rug was being pulled out from under him.

Additionally, her healthcare credentials would have been called into question after she screwed up in Arkansas.

If Edwards would have won, we would have had a field day after his sexual escapades.

Obama was the only candidate whose background was clean enough not to be called into question.

He did have questionable connections though and he was lucky enough to face a man who didn't have the gonads to bring them up.

An extremely fortunate circumstance led to the presidency of one of the most incompetent men who could have possibly won it.

BO: I support offshore drilling!
BP: There was an oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
BO: Oh sh**t never mind.

9/11 occured under Bush Jr.'s watch, not under Clinton's. Also, terrorism and Clinton's affair weren't big issues in 2008. As for healthcare, Hillary could claim that she learned from her mistakes and that her GOP opponent will not implement any reforms at all. If going to a racist church for 20+ years didn't hurt Obama, then none of those things would have hurt Hillary in the general election.

That's true, but I mean, didn't Bill Clinton see something like 4 attacks on U.S. interests during his administration? (WTC 93, Embassies in Africa, Beirut, and the U.S.S. Cole). He didn't do much after those, if I recall. I wonder why?

Because he was a coward, that's why. I agree that Clinton deserves some blame for not preventing 9/11, but Bush Jr. deserves some blame as well. Bush Jr. received that Bin Laden Determined to Strike the U.S. Memo in August 2001, where it specifically talked about the possibility of al-Qaeda hijacking planes, yet he did nothing about it. He could have at least increased security at the airports. Anyway, I don't think her husband's failure to prevent 9/11 would have hurt Hillary much in 2008 because people were mcuh more worried about the economy and losing their jobs that year. And since the economy was booming under Bill Clinton's watch, many voters who were worried about the economy would have flocked to Hillary since they would think that she and Bill will be able to fix the U.S. economy again.

I agree, but I don't think I would have been convinced, especially since he created an unsustainable bubble that loomed large over his successors.

He was busy bombing medicine factories.

Yep anything to take public eye off of his misdemeanors.

You Republicans are hypocrites. When Clinton tried to do something against terrorism, you guys said that he was doing too much back in the 1990s. Now you say he wasn't doing enough.

He never did anything to fight terror. In 1998 the US Embassy in Africa got bombed and in 2000 he didn't do anything about the USS Cole either. Remember Oklahoma City. McVeigh had a pocket full of phone numbers from Iraq and the FBI wasn't allowed to investigate. All of these things went unaccounted for. Bush was handed the biggest mess in the history of any president. Oh, and the Clinton/Gore recession started in March of 2000.

Clinton did try to kill Biden Laden several times. He wasn't very effecient at doing it, but I read that the GOP criticized him for being too obsessed with Biden Laden before 9/11. I agree that Clinton should have responded to terrorism more strongly and decisively, but the GOP didn't exactly support what he did try to do against terrorism. Bush could have also done much more to prevent 9/11, such as increasing airport security after that Biden Laden Determined to Strike the U.S. memo was given to him. As for the dot-com recession, the economy began to slow down and the stock market (NASDAQ) began to collapse under Clinton, but the recession itself officially started under Bush Jr.'s watch.

I'm not sure what sources you're reading but I'm willing to bed it's either the New York Times or the Washington Post. The GOP never did such a thing. In fact, did you know that Al Gore laughed about Bin Laden being a threat in 1991? Google it if you don't believe me. There was no specific memo GIVEN TO BUSH. If there were such a memo, then it would've gone to the head people at the CIA or FBI. As for the Clinton/Gore recession, whose watch a recession starts under is irrelevant. What is relevant is when it started and how it started. So the dates are misleading but what you said is exactly what the democratic party and Nanci Pelosi would want you to think. You just admitted that the stock market started to downturn under Clinton. I repeat, you just told us that the stock market started to downturn under Clinton. I do agree with you there.

That Al Gore laughing at Bin Laden thing in 1991 was just a hoax. As for the memo,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_Ladin_Determined_To_Strike_in_US

Here you go. It was given to Bush directly a month before 9/11.

It's a fake document and if it were real what were the odds of 9/11 happening?

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Millennium_Plot&redirect=no

Oh give it up already.

That document wasn't fake and Bush did get it. It was even classified top secret until 2004.

It was a fake document. http://www.mrc.org/cyberalerts/2004/cyb20040910.asp

That source says nothing about the authenticity of the Bin Laden memo.

all the times Clinton missed Bin Laden.

That's true but irrelevant. Bush did get that memo.

If you think that's true why wasn't that Kerry's campaign slogan?

Because Kerry didn't know how to run a good campaign.

You got that right.

At least we agree on something.

What are we agreeing on?

That John kerry didn't know how to run a good campaign.