Talk Elections

Did Trump win dispute his party affiliation, or did his party save him and any republican would have coasted?

Similarly was Hillay a uniquely bad candidate, or would the Democratic Party have sunk most potential candidates?

Hillary's campaign was uniquely annoying.  Lecturing Trump on his behavior was a YUGE turnoff.  Why wouldn't she think Trump couldn't insult his way to the Presidency?  No one really likes her, and Trump proved that slinging mud really works.

Hillary got down in the dirt with Trump.  Bad move.  She should have stuck to policy, tied Trump in knots, and hope that this would keep voters in the middle from giving into their dislike of her.  Instead, she lectured Trump, and that turned lots of voters off, because they find her annoying to start with.

Then, too, there was all this emphasis on "our daughters", "women and girls",  and "the example for our kids", etc.  To that, I'd point out (A) that 1/2 of all kids are males, (B) which means that parents of sons felt left out in Hillary's diatribes, (C) and this reinforced the impression that Hillary was all for improving the lot of women and girls at the expense of men and boys.  Lots of women who are parents of boys know that the condition of boys in America isn't that great, either, and they perceive Hillary as part of the "blame the boys" crowd.  This is not to say that Trump's rhetoric was always commendable; it certainly wasn't.  But Hillary's campaign strategy, her persona, and her pot-calling-the-kettle-black-tut-tutting were just stupid, stupid moves on the part of a candidate who, really, has made herself repulsive to half of America.

As much as I acknowledge Trump has outperformed for someone of his persona, this was a GOP year. I am thoroughly unconvinced that only Trump could have pulled it off when a hard-core conservative like Ernst wins by 8 points in Iowa.

Kasich would have likely carried rural Midwest by a bigger margin and wouldn't have needed a huge late break from undecideds to win. Anyone who carries OH by 13 probably is carrying WI, MI, and rural PA by a good margin as well. He would have won the popular vote.

Cruz would have probably done no worse than Trump. It isn't as if he hasn't talked about securing borders or repealing Obamacare. He also would have appealed just as much to evangelicals with his promise on Supreme Court justice.

This election was beyond just rejection of Hillary or "establishment". Look at McGinty and Feingold. They did no better than her.

Agreed.

We were coming off two terms of a Democratic president. The GOP took both chambers of congress by an earthslide in 2014. The economy wasn't great. Obama's approval ratings were in the 40s before the election season started. Anti-incumbent and and anti-establishment fervor was sky high.

The Democrats, the media, and Hillary herself were kidding and deluding themselves all the way to Tuesday night. Geopolitical undercurrents are far stronger than the candidates on the ballot, pure and simple.

And before anybody replies "But she won the popular vote!!"...just take a look at the swing/trend maps from 2012. My point is still valid.

2 and 3.

I believe that Trump and Clinton were the best of the field for the year, despite being the worst for each other in match ups.

Sure, any other Republican probably would've looked better on paper, but none of them captured the anger in the same way, and besides Kasich, all of them are even more unlikable than Hillary...and not in the likably unlikable way.

The debates would've been an even bigger massacre, and thanks to higher expectations, it's highly unlikely that the media would've been like "Oh hey, he actually could say something coherent".


However, while there's no doubt Hillary blew it, at least she had a chance. I'm just not sure Sanders or anyone besides Biden would've been able to get under trump's skin the same way Hillary did. For all the lament about the Midwest, the Sunbelt came a long way closer...and quite likely would've flipped with just another week.

I'm just not sure NH, Nevada, Colorado, or Virginia would've held out without Clinton, so the Popular Vote would likely have been lost too.

All the same, I do believe that someone else would've done more to help Congress and let the candidates run more for themselves than try to get one message across.

While that means, Opt. 2 is solid....I'm not so sure it's either 3 or 4 solidly, but rather a combination of both. I voted 3 because of the high-stakes and the fact that it came to one tipping point to finish off a fragile edge.

I think only Ted Cruz( maybe) would have lost to HRC, so I choose the first. DJT was really the only one GOP candidate, excluding Cruz, beatable for Hillary, but it is also true the opposite, she was the only dem beatable for Trump.

Eh I think your criticisms of her campaign are too nit picky. I can't think of people save for outright sexists who were turned off by her advocacy for women and children. It's her niche; that would be like people criticizing a Catholic church for being too focused on Catholic communities and not enough on non-Catholics.

I'm convinced too that annoyance at Clinton's persona is the height of sexist nit-picking. Oh, she's annoying? Nobody's ever been elected or not-elected President for being annoying, or shrill, or for their generic "persona."

AOTA.

If you were a parent of boys (as I am), you might see things differently.

Before you fire off some piece of ignorance about how I'm some kind of sexist, I'm also a grandfather of seven granddaughters.  One of my sons is 11 (the other two are grown), so I am aware of what kids of both genders are going through in the here and now.

Lots of folks are shrill and annoying.  Lyin' Ted and Little Marco fit that mold.  They are nowhere near the hypocrites that Hillary is in doing so, however.  Someone who conducts campaigns to trash the reputations of Juanita Broaddrick and Kathleen Willey for the benefit of her own political future (which would have ended in 1999 if she hadn't trashed them) isn't the person I want lecturing me as to how to behave.  Hillary has the shrillness of someone who believes it's all about them; she cannot exude a modicum of humility, no matter how hard she tries.  That's a quality that's unpleasant from any gender.

Admittedly, Hillary comes off as a bit arrogant at times, but that's part of what I like about her. Though it's understandable many don't. (FWIW, Obama comes off as arrogant at times, too) Just as I'm sure some of Trump's supporters are thrilled about his polarizing personality while others are repelled by it. The point is though, all these things are subjective.

Congressional results seem to point to the first one being true. The rest are all disputable. Only voted for the first one.

Keep in mind how over-nationalized Congressional Races are and how overly anti-Trump things became on the D side, I'm just not sure that holds up so well.

Pretty much all things rested on that gamble paying off, it quite obviously didn't.

1 and 3. By any objective measure, Trump was s**t candidate who was unprecedentedly unpopular and had a megaton worth of scandals and bad qualities who won by an extremely slim margin. (The same can be said by Hillary.) In a world where Trump doesn't run, most the 2016 GOP field beats Hillary by a bigger margin. With an ok candidate, I think the Dem wins with a 2012-esque margin.

Is that why NM trended R this election?

The Republicans won in spite of our nominee.  The only state Trump flipped that Walker or Rubio (Generic R) wouldn't have was Michigan.  But, Generic R would have also won Minnesota, Virginia, Colorado, Nevada, and maybe Maine and New Mexico.  Rubio would have had a chance at a landslide, only losing California, Hawaii, Washington, Maryland, New York, Vermont, Massachusetts, and DC.

Woah! Hold it right there!

Rubio is absolutely not winning Illinois, New Jersey, Delaware, Oregon, or even New Mexico. They're just not flipping.

As has been mentioned before, he has an Extreme Republican bias.

Clinton was ahead all summer long and the Wikipedia leaks about her emails kept dripping and dripping outward. Until people wanted a fresh start and elected Trump in spite of not releasing his taxes.

And election day expectations among younger voters were apparently not met and more enthusasim from the conservative movement.

I picked Trump won in spite of the GOP and Hillary lost. Here's why. Hillary was the epitome of the corrupt establishment. Even many democrats thought that, which helped propel and obscure socialist to victory in nearly half of the primaries. She was a poor fit to defeat Trump's anti-establishment populism. Had it been Trump vs Sanders, Sanders likely would have won.

This is where it gets really interesting. I think a generic republican would have beaten Bernie but lost to Hillary because the upper middle class college educated voters in the suburbs would have broken hard against Sanders, like they did against Trump, since few of them felt the need for radical change. Against Hillary, the generic GOP would get caught up in social issues and talking endlessly about Obamacare (which lost its importance to the non-Tea Party people after 2010) and lose again like in 2012.

Trump>Hillary
Hillary>Bush/Rubio
Bush/Rubio>Sanders
Sanders>Trump