Assume economic events, Olympics and Russia-Georgia still occur.
The more I think about it, the more I think she could have lost based on her over reliance on 'hand me down' strategy from Bill. There would have been no Palin either.
I think she would have been able to win the Gore/Kerry states plus Ohio and that would have been it. A win - but not a new coalition.
I'm not convinced Obama has built a new coalition for the Democratic party. These voters came together for him, the question is whether they will for someone else. And I'm really talking more about his primary coalition than anything else. I don't see that one emerging very often making it difficult for someone like him to get to the general.
Did the New Deal Coalition ever really come together for anyone besides FDR?
Truman lost much of the South to Thurmond.
Stevenson obviously didn't pull the coalition together that well, as he lost the Northeast pretty badly.
Kennedy didn't do too well in the South, but he pulled the Coalition together fairly well.
LBJ didnt' have the South.
By Humphrey, it was pretty much dead.
Carter held together the last remnants of the New Deal Coalition, but even by that time, Nixon had broken it twice in 1968 and 1972.
