Which Hillary states would Rubio have won?

[Lechasseur]

My primary point of contention is with people who say Rubio/Cruz are dramatically different electorally. Rubio/Cruz have almost the same positions, what's the difference besides some superficial attributes? It doesn't work if you look at the historical record.





These traits like youth are not advantages in and of themselves, they are double edged swords (see Reagan, etc.), Clinton or Biden would mock his youth and liken him to an insecure child. So, the superficial facade of his candidacy would be broken, what would he do following that?





He doesn't have any actual moderating policies of note when you look beyond the superficialities.
His policies for the most part are the same as Cruz, so electorally he'd functionally end up as equivalent to Cruz following the facade breaking down.

People mock Clinton for 'not having a message', but Bush Sr. didn't either, electoral coalition of the incumbency is the message by default.  What was the fundamental raison d'etre behind rubio's candidacy? He didn't have one, other than the fact that it was 'my party's turn', and 'my electoral coalition and views are better than yours', very Dukakis/Dewey-esque. For Bush it was about his 'faith', and he was the first major presidential candidate to actually offer concessions to the Religious Right and he also offered moderates policy concessions. For Reagan/Nixon/Kasich it was about conservatism with a Realpolitik bent (Reagan supported Gun Control as CA gov, he was one of the first governors in the country to legalize abortion, as president he banned machine guns, supported the brady bill, he used people like Manafort as intermediaries to open dialogues with dictators, etc.).


Rubio's Message was literally PNAC, meanwhile Clinton ran her campaign courting neocons was called 'a warmonger who would start WW3'. Let me get this straight, the Jeb/Rubio message was defeated in the election through Clinton, but that is somehow supposed to speak to the strength of that message? Clinton up against a normal republican would have literally been attacked for 'not wanting to start WW3 enough' instead.





Republicans who like Rubio generally assume an incredibly shallow and banal notion that Obama won because he was black and well-spoken (while curiously ignoring the exact nature of Obama's content in those speeches). This is objectively false. If anything, Obama's coalition was a trade-off (compare the Clinton/Gore/Kerry/Clinton '08 polling numbers in the Deep South to Obama's, compare what happened to the Blue Dogs & Southern Democrats in statewide races), but he was able to win primarily due to keeping the far-left in line by playing off against economically unpopular GOP positions (Bush was smart enough to moderate on that front to improve his margins a bit, but Christie & Kasich where the only candidates following in his footsteps on the economic front). It was the Far-Left/Bernie vote that elevated Obama in '08. had Obama's campaign in '08 been like Rubio's, 'vote for me i'm black and well-spoken but I support the same policies as Hillary(Jeb)', he would've easily lost, Obama won by reaching out to the far-left (slamming the establishment Foreign policy consensus, and attacking Free Trade, Wall street, etc.).





In contrast, if you look at the primary issue republicans care about, immigration, rubio literally did the equivalent of voting for the Iraq War. The GOP coalition is also more electorally precarious. Bush barely won 2 elections, Obama won both of his elections with ease, leaving more room for margin of error for Clinton.



If there was any candidate comparable to Obama based on campaign style it was Cruz.

Cruz was at least going all in on the base. The only reason why you'd assume Cruz to be unelectable vs. Rubio is if you fundamentally assume GOP policies to be unelectable at face value. Jeb & Rubio had similar strategies of flipping off the base, while superficially trying to court suburban Democrats (the people who love Clintonism and vote D for social reasons are not flipping for someone socially to the right of GWB). That approach would've been identical to the GOP courtship strategy Clinton specifically deployed against Trump, she changed her entire original Obama-2012-style strategy to mimic a Jeb/Rubio style campaign in reverse against Trump.


Also, here is the most amusing fact, Center-Leftists loved Clinton, the Democrats who hated her were Far-Leftists, who didn't believe she was left-wing enough, so they disliked Clinton for being a Wall Street/TPP-loving warmonger and they're supposed to vote for a right-wing republican who would attack Clinton for not wanting regime change in Iran and for not supporting free trade/wall street capital gains/dividends hard enough?





In conclusion I suspect someone might comment about how the ideas don't matter (despite the similar policy platforms of rubio and cruz), and it's all about the messenger (the argument being that Rubio is a 'better messenger' than Cruz), but here is the exact problem with that analysis:

They entire Jeb/Rubio strategy was predicated on trying to win over those very same suburban democrats who loved the Clinton years in the first place, so again, what incentive would they have to cross over? Let me get this straight, you think you can just call Clinton 'old', and literally manipulate the most educated suburban voters with simplistic slogans and memorized speeches? These voters you are talking about are quite literally the voters most likely to pay attention to policy details and look beyond slogans.

In 2000, Bush was able to barely peel off Clinton's coalition by moderating with compassionate conservatism, which was Kasich's platform.

Then, of course, there's also another school of thought that suggests 'any republican would've beaten Clinton', that camp is at least more respectable and intellectually consistent compared to the 'Cruz would lose bigly, but someone who has his near exact positions would win bigly' - but that logic in and of itself demonstrates the paradox of Rubio's candidacy, if you're an anti-Trump republican and anyone could've beaten Clinton, your focus should've been to support the Republican closest to Trump and who would therefore have the best odds of beating him in the primary, meaning Cruz...

A very good analysis, I agree