Talk Elections

Back in '96, there was some talk of trying to nominate Colin Powell as the challenger. Let's say that he does run, and is somehow nominated as well. Does he beat Clinton? If so, who runs against him in 2000?

Not a chance of beating bill.
Clinton would have still won the black vote.

No win for Powell. He would probably break 200 electoral votes, but Powell woulkd lose. Clinton was unbeatable in 1996.

I'm not sure there would have been much of an ideological gap between these two.  But Clinton would've won easily.  Powell wouldn't get as many states as Dole, as places like Mississippi, South Carolina, etc, would've gone to  Clinton.

What makes you think that the south wouldn't have been ready to vote for a black Republican in 1996?  A black Democrat would have had zero chance to win the south and a black Republican would not have done well in the primaries, but I can't see any large scale white flight to Clinton.  At worst, those voters would have gone to Perot, and Powell would have easily been able to attract enough moderates from Clinton to make up the difference.  Powell would have done better than Dole, but not enough to win the election.

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States in green are Powell's pickups over Dole.

Well, you may be right, but I was assuming a white flight to Clinton.  I tend to assume a pretty high degree of racism in the South.  But you may be right that they'd go for Perot - still that could give Clinton a plurality in some additional Southern states.

The only really close southern Republican state in the actual 1996 race was Georgia.  However, the racist rednecks in general tend to believe in the America First trade protectionism that was a central theme of Perot, so a good part of those who might abandon the Republicans because of the race of their candidate already had.

but keep in mind that Powell was pro-choice, and many of those southern Republicans are single issue abortion voters. Phillips would've done a lot better and would've picked up those voters. So Clinton could've picked up a few southern states.

He said "the racist rednecks". That doesn't mean that all rednecks are racist; he's just talking about a certain group of rednecks, not all inclusive.

With a pro-choice Republican there probably would be a significant pro-life third party candidate. Perhaps Keyes or Buchanan(and I dont think he would run on a "safe-states" stratagey in this scenario.)

There are both racist rednecks and non-racist rednecks.  There also plenty of racist Yankees, so the south is hardly the only place where the color of Powell's skin would cost him votes for no good reason.

I'd vote POwell

My map (and I amy be too nice to General Powell):

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Bill Clinton/Al Gore: 314

Colin Powell/Orrin Hatch: 224

I don't think Powell would be stupid enough to run with Hatch.

I originaly had Pete Wilson as his running mate when I wrote it down, but wasn't he sick in 1996 so he had to drop out of the Republican Primary?

I ran this on President Forver, not what I expected to say the least:

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Bill Clinton/Al Gore: 345 Electoral Votes; 48% of the popular vote

Colin Powell/Orian Hatch: 193 Electoral Votes; 40% of the popular vote

Ross Perot/Pat Choate: 0 Electoral Votes; 9% of the popular vote

Harry browne/Jo Jorgensen: 0 Electoral votes; 1% of the popular vote

Kemp would be a good running mate for him as well, except isn't Powell from New York as well? Of course they would have no chance at winning New York anyway, so being ineligible for the EVs wouldn't be an issue.

Otherwise I think Powell would want a conservative on the ticket to balance it out but not an extremist to scare off potential voters. So I'd bet on a conservative but not extremist senator from a swing state.

Like Jim Talent