(yeah this is another of my hobby topics, nothing to do with mobile or tech - or well, it has a little bit but not really worth reading if you are at this blog for my tech industry numbers and analysis. This blog is massively long detailed 2014 analysis of what the 2016 US Presidential election is all about, and this before the 2014 mid-term election is even done and we don’t know who the Republican candidate will even be.)
NOTE - blog has been ammended after the US Midterm election results to remove one element that I counted as a key to Hillary's win in 2016 (the part about Narwhal, Obama's get-out-the-vote engine). I am keeping the original text as written a week before the election so you can still read it, but striking out the text so it clearly is no longer relevant. Rest of this blog (and my forecast) still stands.
So lets talk 2016. The short version: Republicans will face a total drubbing, Hillary Clinton will walk all over them and win by a modern-era record landslide. Her margin of victory will be bigger than we’ve seen any first election of a President and biggest margin since the Gipper’s re-election over Walter Mondale, yes I mean the total wipeout that Ronald Reagan gave the Democratic challenger in his re-election vote of 1984. And I am totally convinced not only that Hillary will win and win by a landslide. I am even willing to call it, that this election will end with a result of 56 to 44 or better. Hillary’s margin of victory yes, will be at least 12 points in the electorate. And yes, I am fully aware that in his historic ‘landslide’ first election of 2008, Barack Obama only won by 7 points over John McCain (53 to 46 percent of the vote).
As to states won, roughly speaking Hillary win all states Obama carried in 2008 plus win about 6 to 10 more states than Obama’s landslide against McCain (excepting for the home state or states of the rival candidates, whoever those will end up being). I know perfectly well that US Presidential elections tend to be tight and close, Obama beat Romney only by 5 points and that was seen as surprisingly big victory. George W Bush beat John Kerry in 2004 by 3 points and actually lost the popular vote to Al Gore by 1 point in 2000. I know the general elections tend to be close and 2008 was an anomaly and the last time we saw a double digit blow-out was back in 1984 when Reagan was at his pinnacle of support in his re-election.
But I have done very deep analysis and thinking. I am confident in my view and I want to post it now, a week before the 2014 Midterms when several of these things are not yet obvious. I am certain that Hillary Clinton will win in 2016, she cannot be stopped. Some others also feel that way but I have not seen many argue that she’d win by double-digit margin. This blog is based on a lot of sound reasoning but probably many things you might not have thought of (yet) and some things many pundits will not even think of until long into the last weeks of the race two years from now. If you are also a political junkie and have followed US Presidential election, this may be of interest. Its the second longest article I’ve ever published on this blog (after that monster-long article exposing all the different ways in which Nokia was being mismanaged by its previous CEO Stephen Elop). I hope to give you plenty of insights that you can then use to monitor and analyze the election cycle as it starts now in early 2015. I think several of the observations I have here, you will find useful if you ever get into a discussion about US politics, because this upcoming 2016 election will be historic, but how historic, many pundits have not yet weighed in on all these matters. If politics is not for you, feel free to skip this and come back next time and I’ll have the usual techie-mobile topics to cover. (follow me over the fold to the full article)
(welcome back)
So yes, this is about 29,000 words in length, the second longest blog article I’ve written, about the length of nearly 3 chapters in one of my hardcover books. It will take you probably an hour to read. Put the coffee machine on, you’ll need some refills before you’re done with this. This article is also very deep and detailed so you may want to pause at times to absorb some of the points I make. And you can’t skip ahead, these issues build. But if you are a political junkie, this is all for you. Enjoy.
IT SHOULD BE A GOP YEAR
The US Presidential elections have swung between the two parties nearly like clockwork ever since World War 2. The Republicans (GOP, Grand Old Party) and Democrats have got two terms as President in a row, then it switches, almost like clockwork, 1952, 1960, 1968, 1976 etc and still now recently two terms of Clinton followed by two terms of Bush 2, followed by two terms of Obama. The cycle is nearly perfect but not quite. The DEMs lost one full two-election cycle when Jimmy Carter didn’t get re-elected in 1980 when Ronald Reagan took his seat. The GOP got one extra term when Reagan’s Vice President George HW Bush (ie Bush the Elder) won after two terms of Reagan stretching the Republican period to three Presidential terms. But Bush The First then lost his re-election in 1992 to Bill Clinton. But other than those two anomalies, its been eight years Democrat, then eight years Republican, then eight years Democrat again for literally 70 years (72 years to 2016). By that calculation, the next Presidental election 2016 should be the year for the Republican.
Furthermore the only time that a sitting President was able to pass the torch to a successor from his own party in the post-world-war years was within the same government. It was passing President to Vice President. It was Reagan to Bush 1, and Bush the Elder was Ronnie’s Vice President. This time its Barack Obama whose vice President would be Joe Biden and Biden has not ruled out that he might be running for President next. Yet I am predicting Hillary will win, and by a landslide. Even if Biden decides to run, he has zero chance of beating Hillary. And while Hillary did serve Obama’s cabinet early on as Secretary of State, she has been out of Obama’s cabinet for years now. So if you wanted to go by historical precedent, this would be the year of a Republican President.
If you go by Presidential approval ratings, Obama’s disapproval is far bigger than his approval, that should suggest that the nation is ready for change and would welcome the 8-year switch to ‘the other party’. And if you go by the only case of extending one party’s rule past 8 years, that was to a sitting Vice President. Even that would not be the case with Obama to Hillary Clinton. And I should remind readers that the last time this was tried, the Democrats failed in 2000 when sitting President Bill Clinton was ending his 8 years as President and his well-liked Vice President Al Gore tried to run for President. In came Bush the Lesser, George ‘Doubya’ Bush. To his credit, Al Gore won more votes than Bush 2, and it was the tightest election we’ve seen in living memory, decided by the Supreme Court who stopped the recount of the Florida election giving the Presidency to George W Bush. So you might think this is gonna be a promising year for Republicans.
THE FUNDAMENTALS ARE ALREADY BAD
Before we look at the actual 2016 Presidential election, lets start with a brief look at the fundamentals of US elections and current trends. In very rough terms the US population identifies itself more with the Democratic party than the Republican party (but about a third call themselves Independents). The Democratic affiliation has been growing in the past election cycles. The saving grace for Republicans has been that generally speaking Republican voters are more reliable voters in both mid-term elections and Presidential elections. The Democratic party ‘voter laziness’ is quite pronounced in mid-terms. But yes, Democrats have more registered voters which gives them a stronger foundation to build upon. That edge has been growing to their advantage in the Bush and Obama years. This has been partly due to the voter drives. Democrats (at least in the last few elections that I have been looking at this angle) have been registering more voters than the Republicans and the Republicans had various scandals with the private companies they hired in 2008 and 2012 to do voter-drives. So the base voter advantage is shifting even more towards the DEMs.
The far worse news is demographic shifts. The GOP (Grand Old Party) is increasingly a party of old white men as Senator Lyndsey Graham said in 2012 (one could argue its the party for old white rich men). If the GOP is the party of old white men, where are the women? With Democrats. Youth voters? Democrats. Blacks? Voted Democratic long before anyone suggested Obama should run for President. Hispanics? Vote Democratic. And old people will die if for nothing else, out of old age. The growth is in the youth end. And in terms of ethnic background, Hispanics are the largest minority group and when all minorities are counted including Native Americans and Asians etc, the combined population of all minorities will exceed ‘Caucasians’ ie ‘Whites’ within the next decade. The Republican party is on the wrong side of the demographic shifts. Every election cycle there are more Hispanics for example, who are increasingly now starting to decide votes, especially in many Southern states that are thought of as reliably ‘red’ for Republicans. In 2012 Hispanics voted for Obama 71 to 27. Women went for Obama rather than Romney 55 to 44 and Blacks, they of course led with that margin as Obama is their first President so they voted in 2012 for Obama 93 to 6 rather than the white rich dude called Mitt.
So the trends are all against the Republicans. They start off in a bad position (in Presidential elections specifically much more so than mid-terms we have in one week). And the demographic trends all go against them. The Republicans are stronger with men, Democrats with women. There are more women than men, and women vote more than men. The Republicans appeal more to older voters, the Democrats to younger. There are more younger people than older and while the elderly are more reliable to vote, in recent Presidential elections the Democrats have learned to churn out the youth vote ever more.
And the ethnic trends are in the same direction, especially the large and fast-growing Hispanic slice. They vote strongly Democratic and while they have been poor at turning out their total voter numbers as there are increasing involvement of Hispanic politicians, and the Democrats focus on that group, their actual voting percentage is also only growing. All this spells a very deep hole for the Republican party going into 2016, before we consider the candidate, the political machine, the message and the campaign. For year 2016 even a ‘generic’ candidate for Democrats beats the generic Republican by something like 2 to 4 points, just because of these demographic trends.
WHO WERE BEST CANDIDATES OF ALL TIME?
So lets look at the next US President. Hillary Clinton already in 2008 was the more experienced and seasoned candidate than her rival Barack Obama. Hillary, a lawyer had served as the first lady of the state of Arkansas when Bill Clinton was its Governor. Then Hillary was First Lady to the USA for 8 years when Bill was the President. While her role would be pretty ceremonial mostly, she did experience local elections and national elections. Twice the run for President with her husband. And Hillary took the most active role of any First Lady up to that time, when she tried to get Hillarycare - a national healthcare solution - through to a law. She failed but it gave her exceptional experience (for a First Lady) about how the US Congress (House and Senate) operate. Then after Bill left the White House, they moved to New York where Hillary became a Senator from New York to Capitol Hill. So even in 2008 in Hillary’s first run at the US Presidency, this was a seasoned politician who knew very well how to play the game. Obama was far more the novice at the time.
I can only remember back ten elections that I’ve followed closely (to Ford-Carter 1976). And being a foreigner I’ve mostly only followed US elections from a distance (I did live 12 years in the USA so I did also see the US political system through 3 Presidential election cycles up close, while living there. I witnessed the Reagan-Mondale, Bush-Dukakis and Clinton-Bush elections living in a ‘battleground’ state PA, a red state TX and a blue state NY). If we consider greatest campaigner (not as governing President running his administration) I think most Republicans and essentially all Democrats and Independents would agree, that the Obama we saw in 2008 is the greatest campaigner ever in US politics (obviously even better than Obama 2012). Not only charming and optimistic, he was inspirational and charismatic on stage, almost hypnotic with the ‘Yes we can’ chants.
He seemed perfect for the age. After the 8 years of George the Dimwit, here was a candidate who sounded very smart, considered, intelligent. And Obama’s ‘post-political’ message of moving past partisan gridlock was a fresh promise beyond what came from the Clinton machine of traditional Democratic talking points, and contrasted well with the Sarah Palin extreme rhetoric from the John McCain camp. And Obama was miles ahead of any 2008 candidate in how to use social media on the internet from Facebook to YouTube. Obama in 2008 was the first time in decades that the Democratic candidate raised more money than the Republican one.
So while we ignore how he did in governing as President (clearly a disappointment and let-down from his campaign rhetoric and aspirations), Obama in 2008 was a once-in-a-lifetime election phenomenon. The next nearest thing must have been John F Kennedy’s run in 1960 but I’m too young to have lived through that, and contemporary reporting of 2008 by Americans reporters who witnessed both said Obama exceeded JFK (as a candidate running for the office).
In the past 5 decades who were the next best things? The Gipper most definitely, Ronald Reagan was the best the GOP has had as far back as one can remember, clearly far superior as a political candidate running for office, than Richard Nixon or Gerald Ford or George Bushes 1 and 2. And far more than the losing candidates Mitt Romney, John McCain, Bob Dole. Considering how close he is to sainthood in the GOP, Ronald Reagan was ‘The Communicator’ and a brilliant campaigner. When Jimmy Carter (sitting President) and Walter Mondale (former VP) ran against Ronnie, it was like being hit by a freight train, nothing was left, Reagan smashed them. Mondale lost 49 of 50 states to Reagan. Reagan was folksy, very funny, witty, very optimistic, but unapologetically conservative. He was to the US conservatives what his compatriot Maggie Thatcher was in Britain. Not afraid to be proud of being a conservative.
Then who was the best in recent decades from the Democratic side when we ignore Obama obviously. Again its no contest, there is only one. By a wide mile that was the charismatic Bill Clinton, who took down sitting President George HW Bush ie Bush 1, and then easily disposed of Bob Dole four years later. Bill Clinton was as candidate (and still is) folksy, very funny, sharp-witted, optimistic. A great camera presence, and not at all afraid to be proud of being a Democrat, while perhaps a centrist more than extreme liberal (Hillary is more liberal than Bill was). Again remember the competition, other Democratic Presidents, Jimmy Carter. (Thats it, going back to Nixon). And losing fnalists like George McGovern, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore, John Kerry. The Democrats almost seem to have obsessed in finding the dullest and least optimistic candidates possible (Dukakis, Mondale, Kerry, come on, up to his movie, Al Gore was the most wooden block of wood this side of a live fully-grown Scots Pine tree in Tennessee)
The three best candidates, as pure national-election, Presidential nominee by major party, in living memory were in chronological order Reagan, Clinton and Obama. And they were clearly head and shoulders above the rest from their parties. And except for some who are near the Tea Party in their devotion to conservatist ideology, most will accept that as a candidate running the first time for President (not the re-election as sitting President) Obama is the best candidate we’ve ever seen. How you rank Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan after Obama is up to you, these were the Top 3 of the last five decades.
HOW WAS HILLARY THEN
Now it gets interesting. If you accept that Obama is the best candidate there ever was, consider this. Obama beat McCain in a landslide. As candidate in 2008 McCain was charismatic too. Not in an inspiring oratory sense but rather in patriotic heroic and ‘truth-telling’ style. McCain was not an extreme ideologue, he was a centrist and for years before the 2008 election primary process got under way, McCain had very strong appeal among moderates from both parties and huge cross-over appeal, and was highly attractive to independents (McCain had run against Bush 2 for the GOP nomination in 2000).
McCain was a ‘rebel’ Republican known for speaking his own mind and was not afraid to go against George Bush 2 the sitting presdent from his own party. McCain was a very long-term experienced Senator but more than that, he was a decorated war hero and spent years in a Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp where he was tortured but didn’t break. By every measure, for a divided country looking to find healing in a centrist candidate, McCain in 2008 was almost perfectly the medicine that the country needed. And for the baggage of the sitting President Bush the Lesser, whose approval ratings were abysmal by 2008, McCain could proudly point out to how often he had been vocally against the President. For any Republican running after Bush 2, McCain was perhaps the most ‘optimal’ candidate possible. He was furthest from Bush 2 and he was the most centrist of the field of Republican rivals (like Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney etc at the time).
By all logic and sense, McCain-Obama in 2008 should have been an epic battle with a razor-thin outcome similar to what was Bush 2-Gore in 2000. Obviously Obama wiped the floor with McCain. McCain lost because his gamble with Sarah Palin doomed his campaign. But to be fair, McCain was already losing by the conventions before Palin was selected. The nation had fallen in love with (candidate) Obama and by the conventions, McCain was under the water so badly, he had to do something. Announcing bombshell choice out-of-the-blue nobody-saw-this-coming Sarah Palin was a brave bold move but obviously a risky gamble. Unfortunately for McCain she turned out to be a totally incompetent wacko who only served to widen a clear loss to a landslide loss for McCain. And it didn’t help that the economy also ‘cratered’ and McCain’s idiotic decision to suspend his campaign suggesting he was’t ready to run the country. Here was a good candidate for the wrong election, who then worsened the final outcome with several damaging campaign moves from Palin to the suspension. 2008 was an economy election, McCain was not prepared for that.
A dominating rival can do that to you. McCain under normal conditions would never have considered Sarah Palin, if McCain was only behind Obama by a couple of points going into the conventions. So after the Bush 2 period, McCain was the perfect candidate from the GOP in a tough year. But he ran into the once-in-a-century miracle candidate Obama who could do nothing wrong. Now also, to be fair, McCain was no Reagan. He was folksy yes, but not an inspiring speaker like Reagan. McCain had some views but nothing like Reagan’s Shining City on a Hill etc (or Obama’s No Red States, no Blue States, but the United States) etc. Obama crushed McCain.
You still doubt Obama as best campaigner ever? Lets move 4 years ahead. In 2012, when the economy was the only thing on the mind of voters, the GOP nominated its only true businessman-as-candidate, the richest Republican ever to run, THE answer to economic crisis, Mitt Romney. The Mr Fix-It dude, after 4 years of economic malaise and misery, banking crisis and housing crisis. Get Mitt in to fix it. Again, Obama won by clear margin. Whatever you think of Obama as President and his actual record in office, Obama the candidate is a one-off, unrepeatable, phenomenon. Like his fun with Romney flipflops and the jokes of Romnesia. Again, Romney was a severely flawed candidate as we found out, from refusing to release his tax returns to moronic statements ‘my wife drives a couple of Cadillacs’ and ‘corporations are people’ to of couse the 47% video. But the US economy was so bad, that no sitting President or his party had ever been re-elected under such dire economic conditions. Until Obama. And by now the USA knew that Obama was no miracle-maker as President, but they still re-elected him. Against the most business-oriented rival ever to run for office. This was Obama brilliance, truly unprecedented brilliance as a campaigner.
Now consider Hillary Clinton. McCain lost to the original 2008 Obama by a landslide. Romney lost to the 2012 milder version of Obama by a wide margin. Who got closest to defeating the best campaigner of all time? Hillary Clinton, thats who. She ran Obama the closest, gave him a real challenge and forced the race almost to the convention, was competitive in the nomination fight to almost the very end. Hillary is the toughtest political opponent that Obama has ever faced. After Hillary, for Obama to go into the actual 2008 election against McCain was a ‘relief’ after the gruelling fight versus Hillary.
Undestand what I mean. Imagine being a Democrat in the 1980s going against Ronald Reagan. Or being a Republican in the 1990s going against Bill Clinton. Those were foregone conclusions. Those were going to be a clear loss to whoever tried (its a shame they never got to face off against each other haha, would have been epic). These were campaigning superstars of their eras and were essentially unbeatable. So too was just now in the past 2 election cycles, Barack Obama. Unbeatable. And yet, Hillary nearly beat him. If we did candidate rankings like they do tennis rankings, you could argue Hillary currently is ranked number 2 haha, sits at the second notch, just below Obama. And at the very least, Hillary Clinton of 2008 as a candidate for President was far stronger than Republican John McCain in 2008 or Republican Mitt Romney of 2012 (which should give you pause about the current field where Romney last time already beat Perry, Santorum, Bachman; and McCain beat Huckabee ..and Romney..).
Yes. Obama beat McCain by a landslide. Obama beat Romney by a clear margin. Obama only narrowly beat Hillary. She may well be the second best campaigner of all time (and I am not claiming that, only that we don’t yet know). And she DEFINITELY is in the class of Reagan and her husband Bill Clinton. So including the known field of 2016, of the finalist-candidates of both parties over the past 10-11 elections, the four best campaigners of living memory, of the past 5 decades have been in no particular order, Reagan, Bill Clinton, Obama and yes, Hillary Clinton. How many of the top tier Republicans decided in 2012 not to run, because it was a foregone conclusion that Obama was too strong and would win. Jeb Bush, Bob Portman, Chris Christie, Bobby Jindal etc, sat it out. They knew they would lose and didn’t want to tarnish their name, while they all had clearly aspirations to run. They felt Obama the superior campaigner, as sitting president up for re-election was too strong. Well, hello? Hillary is also one of the four best campaigners in living memory and is for all practical purposes, just as a campaigner (ignoring of course whether she can then govern), essentially unbeatable. (Or that it would take a new ‘Reagan’ to have a chance of beating her)
STRONGER AND BETTER
But remember Hillary in 2008? Her sourpuss face every time, lecturing the nation, always angry and tired. What a contrast to Obama’s always cheerful optimistic demeanor. THAT Hillary still took Obama to the brink. That was Hillary in 2008 when she lost. Have you been paying attention to what kind of Hillary Rodham Clinton has been seen in the public now, in 2012, when she’s stomping for Democratic candiates around the nation? This is a new Hillary. The happy warrior? She’s always laughing and making jokes (with that perhaps grating cackling laughter).
In 2008 Hillary was expected to have a short easy run for the nomination but in came once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon Obama who messed up those pretty plans and forced it into a long gruelling and frustrating fight Hillary would lose. Now in 2012 she won’t face a long nomination fight. First, there is no viable candidate. Yes, I know most didn’t see Obama as one either, two years before 2008 (and that includes me, even well into the nomination fight I thought Hillary would beat Obama in 2008) but that was a time when the Democratic party was vulnerable to the ‘lets change, lets go with youth’ message. The country hated Bush 2 and the Republicans. They hated the gridlock in Congress. They hated the partisan bickering. The nation was vulnerable to the allure of ‘Lets take the inexperienced guy’ to get maximum change. Especially if he gets whole stadiums to join in chants of ‘yes we can’ change it.
Now they’ve had that guy and his futile attempts to force the Republicans to go post-partisan (and conservatives will argue, the Democrats have been quite partisan too in this period). After 8 years of Obama, the electorate in general, and the Democratic primary voters in particular will now not accept more inexperience or ‘naivete’. They will nominate experience. And who could it be if not Hillary? Joe Biden? Seriously? The DEMs already in 2012 were supporting her massively over Biden. Even when they voted for Obama almost none of Democratic primary voters were ‘against’ Hillary, even those who voted for Obama for a very large part, would have been ok to have Hillary. Now after 8 years of buyer’s remorse, all those who were at all torn between Obama and Hillary are fully convinced, yeah, I shoulda voted for Hillary in 2008.. Plus all who voted for Hillary over Obama will now feel vindicated. None will switch to Joe Biden instead. She’ll win easy confirmation in the nomination fight, nobody else has a chance.
That means the sour, tired, frustrated, crying Hillary Clinton will not be seen. She can, rather, laugh at the modest challengers from pretenders like Bernie Sanders. Let him do his thing, no need to ‘crush’ him to win. Hillary in 2016 can afford to be magnanimous to her challengers. Yes, there will probably be some young guns who want to make a name for themselves. It makes sense, they are positioning themselves for the Democratic party to notice for 2024. However, they are mere mosquitos who will make tiny noises and soon be gone. Hillary will remember how rough it was against Obama, this time the Democratic 2016 field to be a walk in the park by comparison.
But there is something else. Hillary is smart and clever and she learns and adapts. In 2008 she lost to Obama and most likely was so steamed and bitter for the last three months of the campaign, that she mostly probably didn’t even watch TV. But then she served as Obama’s Secretary of State, and by 2012 she monitored the full campaign season with the sharp eyes of reconnaissance. The Republican field in the nomination fight of 2012 might very well include her eventual GOP challenger for 2016 (make no mistake Hillary never once wavered that she’ll of course run again in 2016). Knowing that opposition research prep can be valuable down the road, she would study the Republican primaries with a microscope.
And then the actual race after the conventions featured the best campaigner ever, so now, after she held no more bitterness, Hillary was able to watch Obama the campaigner for tips and tricks on how to improve herself. The single biggest change is that optimism and cheerfullness which we now are witnessing. Its what Reagan had. Its what Bill Clinton had. Its what Obama exudes. And what Hillary had trouble exhibiting in 2008. But what Hillary now is showing in spades. There will be no doubt many more nuggets of little subtle adjustments but Hillary in 2012 is more dangerous as a political rival candidate (in the general election) than she was (in the primaries) in 2008. And already in 2008 Hillary was far more powerful a candidate than John McCain who would have been her rival or the earlier not-that-much-flip-flopped-yet Mitt Romney who ran against McCain in 2008.
We have a cycle that should bring back a Republican President. Against that cycle we have an electorate that has already grown more Democratic-leaning than Republican-leaning. It is also trending ever more in the demographics that favor Democrats. And on the Democratic side we have one of the greatest campaigners in living memory, who only has grown better with age, maturing like a fine wine. She regularly polls well not just when tested against potential Democratic rivals or the Republican field. She also is a highly respected woman overall (up there with Michelle Obama) and in the 2008 election aftermath there were many Republicans who said nice things about Hillary Clinton when they tried to make Obama look bad by contrast. Those endorsements and nice words are all stored by the Cinton machine to use the videotape in her 2016 advertisements. She can point to almost unprecedented level of well-known Republicans and conservatives on tape saying nice things about her. What about the Republican field?
HILLARY AND THE 7 DWARFS
So the Republicans want to find another Reagan. That is what it would take as a candidate to match up fairly to Hillary. And gosh, this field from the GOP is weak beyond desription. There are wooden, boring, technocrat governors like Bobby Jindal. I am reminded of Michael Dukakis (who didn’t lose to Reagan, he lost to the wooden boring Bush 1) or John Kerry (who lost to, of all people, to the dimwitted Bush 2). Or similarly wooden Senator Rob Portman. Thats a surefire loss. You need charisma. Reagan didn’t win because he was Governor he won because he had charisma. The convicted ex-Virginia Governor, whatshisname Governor Ultrasound, Bob McDonnell was of the ‘style’ of candidate that is now needed. Charisma. Too bad he is a convicted felon.
What about Ted Cruz or Rand Paul? Or Scott Walker? Haha yeah. They want it. They can fire up the base feeding them red meat. They could very well be nominated. And then be utterly crushed for their extremist views against everything the country stands for today. Think Mondale who only won his home state against Reagan. Paul Ryan is as toxic as well (he couldn’t even deliver his home state of Wisconsin in 2012 for Romney) and would face the same fate in the general election. With the utter contempt that the nation holds the Republican party now (GOP approval is at literally record lows, down there with used car salesmen and telecoms calling centers) and especially the Tea Party wing, there is exactly zero percent chance for a right-wing Republican to win in 2016, after the past few years of Tea Party madness. Just look at how much in the toilet the Tea Party approval is among Independents and even moderate Republicans. Yes they could well be the nominee. But then be prepared for a worse drubbing than John McCain got, against any generic Democrat. In the hands of Hillary Clinton a right-wing Republican would lose at least 48 states (maybe carrying his own state and Utah. Maybe. A 20 point loss yes).
Marco Rubio could have chances in normal years and especially obviously with his Hispanic background but not after the disappointing Obama years when the nation wants experience not more youth and inexperience (naivete). Rick Perry, gosh, Governor Oops who thinks that buying new eyeglasses will help him finally count to three. Chris Christie had a compelling story as Governor of a blue state until Bridgegate and he couldn’t even get re-elected in his home state now. Plus his abrasive style can play ok in New Jersey, it won’t play well for a national win in any year, far less this election.
But of all the candidates, Chris Christie in 2012 was the strongest to come up to Hillary in 2016. If Christie had spent these past two years with occasional radical-sounding centrist sensible comments like the one about thanking Obama for helping after the hurricane devastated his state, rather than dodging questions about corruption and bridgegate, Christie could have built up a strong position of unwavering support in his own state. If Christie could walk into Republican nomination fight, with approval rating so strong, he would bring in New Jersey, a reliably blue state, to vote Republican - that would forgive him a lot of the centrist language and he might win the nomination. But if he can’t even carry his home state, what lunatic Republican primary voter would vote for him. He won’t be nominated.
So that gives us Jeb Bush. He has the misfortune of combining the worst brand in party politics with the worst brand in political surnames right now. Another Republican who is also another Bush? Even with that remarkable baggage (even Republicans don’t like the Bush brand right now after the mess left by Bush 2) Jeb would be one of the best, if not perhaps the best of the rich white man’s party mainstream candidates. He would almost certainly win Florida against Hillary. He’d be popular with Hispanics (arguably on par with Hillary’s popularity or at least far better than the other Republican hopefuls except of course Marco Rubio who is a Hispanic himself). But Jeb is a moderate, it would be a rough year and he might not get past the nomination process, or would have to veer so deeply into the extremist positions, he’d doom his general campaign. And even if the current Jeb Bush could somehow win a Republican nomination in 2016 in this Tea Party environment, and wasn’t tainted by the primaries, he’d go to lose to Hillary in a devastating double-digit loss that would forever doom him out of US politics much like how George McGovern and Walter Mondale were practically expelled from the Democratic party after their humiliating losses.
Jeb’s a smart dude, he can read the tea leaves. He also has very good political advice from his mom (former First lady) and dad (Bush 1). Jeb is young and if he waits it out this cycle, he’ll be the inevitable front-runner of the GOP going into 2020 or 2024 much how Chris Christie emerged after 2012 as the presumptive front-runner until Bridgegate. Jeb can see (as can any moderates) that the GOP will lose to Hillary in 2016. So after that election, what will the Republicans need? A strong leader, trusted leader, who is a moderate. What better than a former Governor of a purple state, Florida. A candidate who speaks fluent Spanish. By then its 12 or 16 years from the W years, and the memory of how bad Bush 2 was, will have diminished. Running in 2016 would end Jeb’s political career. Waiting to run in 2020 or 2024 could well bring him the Presidency. I am tempted to say Jeb won’t run. But we’ll see. An ego is an amazing thing and many will be begging Jeb to run, showering him with promises of billionaire-cash etc. But yeah, Jeb is to my mind the strongest of these Dwarfs for 2016 and would still lose to Hillary by double digits. He would, however, probably win Florida for the Republicans. It would also guarantee that Hillary appoints a Hispanic as VP so Jeb’s pro-Hispanic credentials would not extend one mile beyond the borders of Florida.
Who else is there? Romney is actually planning to run! Yeah like 47% plays better now than it did last time? 2012 was the rare economic election and he somehow found a way to throw that into the toilet. Thats his only card, he’s the business guy. He even disowned his masterpiece of his one term as Governor of Massachussetts, Romneycare. If Romney embraces Obamacare now, he’s crucified by the nomination process. If Romney doesn’t embrace Obamacare in 2016 when more than 30 million Americans benefit from HIS idea, he will lose the election by far more than he did to Obama when Obamacare hadn’t rolled out yet. Romney had his chance, he will never get a second chance, no matter how much the one wearing the pants in that family, Ann Romney wants to be First Lady.
Michelle Bachmann, gosh yeah lunatic fringe as is Rick Santorum. Governor-quitter Sarah Palin is on the wrong side of Donald Trump even on the wackometer. Palin is so incompetent that she couldn’t get elected even if the US election was limited to only registered Republicans. Mike Huckabee could play well in the Bible Belt but lose badly the rest of the nation. Who am I forgetting? Ha! Lindsey Graham (all the charm of the bitter late years of John McCain but without the war hero stuff, without a single thred of centrist past and with an effeminate voice) yes the man for whom every solution is ‘bomb them’. After wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and now against ISIS, the Daily Show could run on 24 hour endless loop of the moronic statements that came from Graham’s mouth about the past. Herman Cain? They said already in 2012 about the black womanizing pizzadude: Nein nein nein.
Yes we may find a surprise candidate, who knows, Condi Rice or Kelly Ayotte or a total dark horse but remember, the nation wants now experience, not youth and novelty. And while the Democrats are not beyond nominating an outsider, the Republicans have always nominated an establishment leader of long standing in their party. They are ‘conservatives’ and they respect tradition. Their DNA is not to seek an outsider. The field we’ve heard about, that is where the nominee will come from. It won’t be Colin Powell or Jon Huntsman etc.
What the GOP would need is a strong shift to sensible moderate positions (like Reagan on domestic policy or Clinton or indeed, Obama - remember Obama rejected Hillary Clinton’s model for healthcare as a single-payer system, Obama instead selected a REPUBLICAN idea of Romneycare from Massachussetts, a private sector solution. Much as Fox News tries to project Obama as a communist./socialist/marxist, he has been a moderate and often incorporated conservative ideas into his solutions. Obama has been more centrist than say Jimmy Carter and roughly on par with Bill Clinton. Hillary’s policies are FAR more to the left than Obama - on domestic policy. Like Reagan, Hillary is a hawk on foreign policy where Obama was and still partly is a dove). That was what W Bush promised in his first run, to be a ‘compassionate conservative’. That is how you win, not by being an extreme idologue but by embracing the center to woo the Independents. Only roughly one third of the USA identifies with either one party. You cannot win in the Presidential election unless you get strong support from the Independents (which usually means, in some areas, you then also get some cross-over from the moderates of the other party).
Its a mathematical certainty that if you can’t win Independents you lose. But the current environment in the GOP is driven by the reality-denial wing, the Tea Party, and right-wing celebrities like Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. So mainstream moderate Republicans are now in hiding and won’t run in 2016 (like Jon Huntsman or Colin Powell or Joe Scarborough). They know they’d be crushed in the primaries. They have to wait for the inevitable crushing defeat of the GOP now clearly already on the horizon, that then allows the party to regenerate back towards the center, like how Mondale’s crushing defeat gave rise to Bill Clinton and Al Gore and a revitalized centrist Democratic party.
Hillary is a rare supercandidate, and the only chance to beat a supercandiate is with another supercandidate. We’ve only seen that clash of titans once in our lifetimes (Obama-Hillary primary 2008). Reagan never faced a supercandidate and neither did Bill Clinton. Obama’s general election rivals (McCain and Romney) were flawed candidates not supercandidates. The current 2016 field of Republicans are all midgets, drwarfs. They have no chance against a supercandidate like Hillary Clinton. And thats before we look at the issues.
ON THE WRONG SIDE OF HISTORY
The 2010 Tea Party wave has poisoned the well for 2016 Republican candidates. There were plenty of sensible Republicans before 2008 and even into Obama’s first years. But the crazy wave that consumed Republicans in the 2010 midterms did indeed poison the well. More than half of the population and more than half of the voting public is women even in normal years. The Republicans admitted in the post-2012 Romney loss that women voted against Romney at an unprecedented gender gap, and thus the GOP had a problem with women.
What did they do since? The Republicans tried several times to rebrand themselves and change the rhetoric (the language) but they never changed their policies. They keep voting for all sorts of silliness in local and national government that attack issues that are directly womens’ issues. So this includes equal pay, abortion, contraception, and healthcare that is aimed at women not to mention the humiliating invasions of privacy in forced ultrasounds (in some states yes, even mandatory transvaginal ultrasounds - yes the Republicans want to forcibly mechanically rape their women as punishment for considering an abortion. This from the party of liberty and the Constitution. Yes in Texas for example a woman is forcibly penetrated by a transvaginal probe even after a case of incest or rape. Incest, to be clear, being raped by your dad. Or yes, rape. The lunatic wing has taken over the party of freedom and liberty. Reagan would not recognize this party. At some point soon in the future, the Supreme Court will find that the state has no right to invade a woman’s body like that on a medically unnecessary and truly invasive humiliating and cruel procedure. And the Republican once again sit on the wrong side of history). But beyond strictly the gender-specific matters, there are those that are very close to the women in families such as education costs and quality, healthy drinking water and the environment and pollution (such as the EPA), and minimum wage.
The Republican party has aligned consistently on the wrong side of issues that are very important to women voters. So if you thought the 2012 gender gap was bad, it will now be worse simply because the Republicans have made it worse (even before we consider Hillary on the ticket). No matter how much they hate the term ‘war on women’ that is what the Republican party has been waging on issues that really should have been decided decades ago (abortion, contraception) or should have no place in the 21st century like equal pay. This all before we consider how much more women will show up to vote in 2016 because there is a woman on the top of the ticket (I’ll discuss that later). And yes, Hillary’s run will bring the most ardent, feminist fighters up to the fore in the 2016 battle to hammer home the full record of the Republican war on women. Men don’t like to hear that, especially grumpy old white rich men who so often forget to include women in their Republican boys’ club or Congressional hearings. And the message may start to sound boring to even Independent men by September of 2016 but for women - this is the battle cry. These were issues that women thought were settled in the past century. Now the white man’s party has brought all these issues back. They will be crushed for it.
Ok thats women. What about the fastest-growing demographic in the nation, Hispanics? Who already voted 71-27 against the Republicans in 2012 (yes, even though Obama was not a Hispanic and Romney’s grandfather was born in Mexico). Now there are more of the Hispanics and they will vote in FAR stronger reliability than in the past (I’ll explain why here later in this article). Obama has tried to get immigration reform through, Republicans promise, but do nothing. The Senate passed legislation on immigration reform, Republican leadership in the House of Representatives refused to take it up. One of the few major promises Obama made that he has not been able to keep was to the Hispanics. This is not because he didn’t try. It is because the GOP has been blocking him. There is room for Republicans to argue its Obama’s fault or Harry Reid’s fault but most Hispanics do know and will lay the blame for this on the Republican party not the Democrats. (And thats before we consider how much the Latinos think Hillary is their best white friend.)
And the Republicans can be relied on utterly silly actions and comments about anything relating to ‘Mexicans’ etc... Like the crisis of the kids stroming over the border recently. These were not Mexican unskilled labor trying to come to ‘steal’ a job, these were kids. Children. Kids fleeing violence in Guatemala, Honduras etc, and their parents sent them to the USA to find shelter. Bring us your tired poor huddled masses, indeed. Party of Lincoln. Now Republican politicians lead chants of hatered against busloads of those children. And where is that threat to the nation? When those children crossed the border they immediately surrendered to the nearest police or border guards, as their parents had told them to. No threat. Just kids fleeing violence. Now. Which party has been helping them and which party thinks this is an invasion and more soldiers are needed to protect the USA against these kids SURRENDERING... For an outside observer like me, not living in the USA, it seems to me like the Republicans have made it their mission to anger the Hispanics at every single stage. From silly voter registration laws to objecting to Obama’s Dreamers executive orders etc.... And where is sensible Republican leadership on this issue? In hiding. Afraid of the Tea Party lunatic fringe.
Legalizing pot. Republicans are on the wrong side of history. Democrats push it. Hillary on the right side of history. Gay marriage. Republicans are on the wrong side of history. Democrats push it. Hillary on the right side of history. Green energy. Republicans on the wrong side of history. Democrats push it. Hillary was on the right side of history The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As Secretary of State Hillary was even involved in part, in bringing a negotiated end to those long wars. Global warming. Ebola. Science. Education. Student Loans. Voter suppression. Lower taxes for millionaires? Minimum wage. Consistently the Republican party is running away from facts, into the arms of Fox News and various conspiracy theories by the extreme fringe right. Bobby Gindal said the GOP has to stop being the Dumb Party. It hasn’t. These all will come to hurt the Republicans in ever increasing levels in coming elections not just in 2016, until the Republicans find a new leader to bring them back from the medieval age into enlightenment.
Being willing to say in public that you think the Bible’s version of creation is valid compared to science - that may play well among the bible belt but it brands you a lunatic among the sensible majority of the nation and it means die-hard (evangelical) Republicans love you but the Independents will not vote for you. Denying global warning was still arguable a few years ago, but now it is a fact, the planet is suffering and it will only get worse. Sooner or later the GOP has to abandon the wishful thinking and accept science on this. Up to that time the DEMs can laugh at the stupidity of the Republican rivals who reject science. On just about every issue the GOP today stands on the wrong side of history. Yes, their Tea Party wing loves those positions but the vast majority of the nation doesn’t. When will the Republicans wake up to reality? Again, as an outsider watching the evolution of the two parties, somewhere during the Bush 2 years, the Grand Old Party just seemed to abandon all reason and took a journey into the Twilight Zone. Please come back Republicans, the nation needs two strong SENSIBLE parties not one adult party and one spoiled child that lives in delusion and denial (haha, lets shut down the government...).
OBAMACARE IS JUST PAST ITS TIPPING POINT
And Obamacare. Its now past the tipping point. Many conservatives already admit yes, there will never be a repeal of Obamacare, it ‘unfortunately’ did succeed and now it has become an institution that can never be ended, like say Social Security. If you my reader cannot accept this at least as plausible, then I think that is a good test about your open-mindedness. You should stop reading because this blog will sting too much. But for all other readers, the realists, this is the situation. Obamacare has now more than 25 million Americans signed up or benefitting from it. The costs are less than projected. It works as advertised. There are no death panels. There is more choice than before! The insurance premiums have often gone DOWN and some insurance companies have even sent refunds to their customers.
Its not perfect. Yes, in a few cases there were instances where someone ‘lost’ the insurance they had (against Obama’s promise) but in those rare cases, that was essentially worthless insurance which would have screwed you anyway. Most - yes MOST - of the publicized cases of ‘losing you doctor’ that Fox News has reported - were cases where the individual did not try to find a replacement in Obamacare and could either have actually been allowed to keep the doctor or gotten BETTER protection and usually for less. The facts are now clear. This train has left the station and there is no going back anymore.
So yes, there are still some on the right fringe who keep up about Obamacare being evil. There are no death panels. It did not bankrupt the nation and not collapse the healthcare system. But it now brought health insurance to 8% of Americans and growing. And it costs less than expected. And the healthcare is often better than expected. Most - not all - but most who signed up to Obamacare ie ACA ie in Kentucky Kynect etc - are VERY happy with this. Sensible Republican Governors now can smell the change in the wind and are adopting parts of it to their states because it works so well. This will soon become a decisive issue that kicks out some of the most stubborn Republican governors in coming elections, who resisted adopting Obamacare.
Obamacare is here now. It will never be repealed. And soon the Republicans have to stop that silly Tea Party demand to repeal Obamacare. Now, what happens in 2016 and 2018 and 2010 elections when various Republican politicians are seen flip-flopping on the Obamacare position - or worse - holding on to the new ‘third rail’ of politics, where promising to repeal Obamacare means you lose your election? Just look at how much Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell had to twist himself into a pretzel in answering why would he repeal Obamacare as Kynect (which is Obamacare in Kentucky) works so well in Kentucky? By 2016 all Democrats will know the drill, in exactly how to skewer their Republican opponents on Obamacare (and Mitch is fighting for his political life right now in the Midterms, he may well lose his seat, in part because of that nonsense of trying to have your Obamacare cake and repeal it too).
This is a definite vote-winner for Democrats down the line. Not yet now in 2014, its too soon, but by 2016 it will be clear and from then on, it will be seen as one of the most significant achievements by any US President, Obama’s signature law. (Incidentially remember Hillary wanted even bigger more expensive ‘single payer’ healthcare, so OBVIOUSLY she will never reduce or diminsh Obamacare in her 8 years in office, she will only EXPAND Obamacare to become more like what she wants it to be).
And the ultimate irony is that Obamacare is totally a Republican idea. If they had played this card correctly, Republicans could proudly take ownership of Obamacare that its just another example of why the GOP is the party that gives the nation the best ideas that even a Democratic president with Democratic control of both the Senate and House, still installed a purely conservative idea rather than the (“silly”) liberal idea of Hillarycare. Romneycare was (is) as is Obamacare a ‘private sector’ solution to a ‘socialized medicine’ alternative like in all other Industrialized countries from Canada to the UK to Japan to Australia (none of which have death panels or bad healthcare). Republicans could indeed should use Romneycare as yet more proof that the private sector solutions can work and that is core Republican ideology. Now there is the greatest recent triumph of the private sector alternative and the Republicans hide from their invention. Idiots. Now, instead, Republicans have to run away from a conservative idea and Democrats can celebrate its success.
Note this gives great credibility for Democrats to claim they also understand the free market system and are not ‘against’ the private sector. This Obamacare argument imbalance greatly diminishes the classic Republican mantra that Democrats are pinko communist labor-union-huggers who hate business and will destroy it. No, it won’t flip the arguments, but it gives a lot of ammunition to the Democrats in DECADES to come, to show Obamacare as obvious proof that Republicans don’t understand or support private sector solutions... (You can thank Mitch McConnell and John Boehner the Republican Congressional leadership on this madness that dooms one of the biggest political issues of several decades to come, to be always a Democratic gain and Republican pain. One where every sitting Republican has to become a turncoat sooner or later, or be booted out of office).
Again if you doubt this, remember Social Security. Its adoption was a close parallel to Obamacare now. Back then Democrats pushed it, Republicans thought it was a nepharious pinko communist plot and resisted it and promised to repeal it etc. Today nobody would suggest repealing Social Security and nobody thinks it makes America any less ‘American’ or threatens some communist revolution of the very foundations of the nation. Its so beloved that if any politician even carefully suggests to raise the retirement age, that politician will face severe voter hostility like Paul Ryan as Romney’s VP in 2012 as the biggest single isue that doomed the state of Florida for Romney. Yes, Obamacare will become another such holy cow in the coming ten years. Nobody will dare to suggest dismantling even parts of Obamacare by the time Hillary leaves office in 2024. Exactly as Republican strategic thinkers feared, when they saw how it would play out, back in 2008. They saw if it would be launched, Obamacare would then become etched in stone. That has now happened and is irreversable.
There are really no major topics where Republicans sit on the winning side of history. They now look like arrogant inconsiderate bastards similar in history to those who wanted to keep slavery in the mid 1800s or who wanted to deny women the right to vote early in the past century. Even gun control, one that is very dangerous to take on the NRA, the national mood is for reasonable background checks on gun sales, closing the loopholes (the vast majority of the nation thinks so. Get this, the majority of Republicans think so, even many NRA members think so). Again the Republican party is on the wrong side of this issue, fearing being ‘scored’ by the NRA.
Come on, look at the Surgeon General confirmation vote and the ‘NRA veto’ of it. How idiotic is that? The nation is fearing Ebola but Republicans won’t nominate a DOCTOR because a DOCTOR thinks guns are a major contributor to deaths in America. Where the vast majority of Americans including Republicans agree. This is again GOP cowardice and overall long-term political suicide not to grow up and join the nation’s mood. I cannot think of one major issue where currently the GOP holds the nation’s majority view and the DEMs the minority view. The Democrats hold essentially a ‘straight flush’ in poker terms. They are unbeatable on the issues. And it shows, while Obama’s approval ratings are bad, and the Democratic party approval is worse and Congressional approval is in the toilet; the Republican party’s approval is truly toxic. At unprecedentedly low levels. The above is a big reason why. They’ve made their bed, now they do have to sleep in it (and lose elections in it).
ITS NOT THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Normally most elections if the candidate focuses on the pocket book, economic issues like jobs, they do pretty ok. The economy is always a factor and the past two elections have been economy elections where it was the biggest factor. Yes, even in 2016 the eocnomy will be a major factor (but not the biggest, I’ll explain later). But there is a natural ying and yang to US politics. Because the economy so much dominated the past two Presidential elections, its role will be significantly less now. The Republicans usually are trusted better on the economy than the Democrats (who have traditionally a reputation of being tax-and-spend liberals who bust up the budget and run up huge deficits, even if the reality hasn’t been so for many decades).
Here, first the ‘economy’ wave has crested and is receeding. So where it was a major factor in 2008 helping Obama beat McCain (while he had no business or economic credentials, Obama successfully maneuvered onto the ‘I am more competent on the economy’ side of that argument compared to McCain in 2008, especially as Obama could point to warnings he said about the economy earlier, while McCain had repeated the Bush 2 administartion talking points that the economy was fine) and then again was an even bigger factor in 2012 where it helped keep Romney in the fight far more than his incompetent campaign should have let him, that is now declining in importance. It won’t be gone, no definitely not. But if you think the economy is always the safe ground that Republicans always win over Democrats, its relevance will be down in 2016. But wait. Bill.
So the overall economy is improving (as facts clearly say even though Fox News desperately tries to find ways to deny this). There have been 55 months of continuous job growth which I think is a record for the USA of all time. Unemployment is now below the levels it was when the economic crisis started. The problem for the Democrats is that the ‘feel good’ factor about the state of the economy lags reality. So while the economy now is good in the USA, the voters don’t feel that way (yet). They will by Spring 2015 when its too late for these midterms. But after huge collapses in the economy even the next recession is usually mild and brief. If there is a recession into the 2016 election, it won’t be the big story. But Bill.
So yeah. Bill. The Big Dog. The best politician ever to argue the politics of the economy is... Bill Clinton. The facts are clearly on the side of the Democrats, during Reagan the budget deficits exploded. Bill Clinton’s administration brought them back to balance. Then in came Bush the Lesser who again wrecked the budget and produced record deficits and national debt. And what happened in the next Democratic administration, Obama has reduced that deficit to the lowest level its been for a long time. The facts very clearly show, that over the past 3 decades, the party that wrecks the economy is the Republicans. The party that is fiscally responsible and fixes those damages is.. the Democrats.
Obama didn’t make this argument very well (but he did make it) in 2012. It will be very much in Obama’s interest - for his legacy and reputation - to learn to make this argument very well and he no doubt will. After these midterms are done, the only thing that matters anymore to Obama will be his legacy. He will want the nation to remember he fixed the broken economy (among the many other things he did from saving Detroit to ending the wars to Obamacare to killing Bin Laden). It will be in Hillary’s interest to argue time and again that the Democrats are the fiscally sensible party while the Republicans wreck the budgets, give tax cuts to millionaires and shut down the government to cause billions more of damage. But the Big Dog.
So two great orators will be singing this message. Then we have the Big Dog. Bill Clinton is the master at this song. He loves this story as it helps build his growing reputation for his legacy (that his Presidency was more than Monica Lewinsky and his time was a good time in America). Obama rarely used Bill Clinton in the economy-election of 2012. Hillary will happily use her husband Bill everywhere. And he’ll always hammer that message. So we’ll have the best orator there ever was, eager to prove to the doubtful electorate that yes, his Obama administration did indeed bring USA back from the abyss, a hole driven by the Republicans. That message, echoed by the second best Democratic speaker in living memory but the one best to explain economics to the electorate (Bill Clinton), eager to remind them his administration, like the current Obama one, had to fix a Republican economic mess. Those messages in sound-bites in a TV-advertising barrage, joined of course by Hillary’s own populist rhetoric, time to tax those millinaires, raise the minimum wage, etc.
The Republicans don’t have facts to stand on, and the deficit in campaigning prowess will sink them when economic issues come up. And of course they will come up. It is in the Democrats’ best interest to remind that the GOP is the party of irresponsible government, tax cuts to millionaries, unfunded wars, huge budget deficits and ballooning the national debt. Then they top that all off, with their economic Russian Roulette of shutting down the government and causing the US credit rating to be downgraded. No, in 2016 the Republicans can’t run on the economy (anymore). I believe, that the 2016 general election cycle will shift public opinion so, that for the first time the majority will believe that Democrats are inherently better at the economy than the Republicans. If so, the GOP is sooooo doomed for decades to come.
So we have a general national imbalance with more voters on the DEMs side, and in Presidential elections they show up. The demographic trends move those every election cycle more into Democrat favor. We toss in one of the best campaigners in living memory, who will face off against whoever emerges from the political dwarfs on the Republican side. The GOP candidate is also stuck defending issues that all are against US majority view by now, where Hillary can point on most of those being on the right side of history already 8 years prior. And on the biggest issue that the GOP has made their clarion call, Obamacare, now that issue is turning against them. By 2016 Hillary will pummell them on it too. And the Republicans will lose their signature credential, being better on the economy. So that was the issues. Now lets look at the money.
THE COSTILEST ELECTION EVER
So next up, a fundamental Republican stronghold. If the DEMs hold the advantage in voters and have lots of volunteer grassroots support, the GOP generally can count on having the most money. So they can buy more ads and influence the electorate with the money. And in most recent years the Republicans have had more money than the Democrats. But Obama changed all that. His two elections were the exception to the rule, the Democrats had more money. Before Obama, Bill and Hillary had built a strong financial support base out of Wall Street and New York City. They were, to begin with, by the time of Hillary’s Senator campaign, some of the best-funded politicians that ever were. Hillary probably would have had more money than McCain had Hillary gotten into the general election in 2008. But yes, Obama broke the bank, so to speak, inventing a radical new fund-raising methodology that yields far bigger amounts, based on the internet and social media (and even SMS text messaging based fund-raising). In 2008 the two systems went head-to-head, and Obama’s fund-raising outraised Hillary’s. In 2012 Hillary wasn’t running and Obama’s machine broke its own record for most money raised. Now Obama doesn’t need his machine anymore and it will be available to Hillary. So now we get the full Clinton ‘New York’ money machine merged with the Obama online-grassroots fund-raising machine. She will definitely set a new record for fund-raising. Hillary will be so wash with cash, she won’t know what to do with it.
And as she faces essentially no serious primary challenge, all the fund-raising power can be concentrated for the general election. Meanwhile the Republican field is wide, spreading the primary donations very broadly, depleting some of the funds that are available for the GOP. So the Republican donor base will be asked to spread their money to probably the widest field there ever was, into probably one of the longest, and most definitely the costliest nomination fight (thanks to Citizens United) ever. What is worse, is that by the time the general election starts, Hillary’s polling will show her regularly with a double-digit lead over whoever is the sap who is stuck running against her. That means that many who might consider contributing, will see its a hopeless cause and the money will quite literally run out for the Republican candidate. (Note also, that many rich donors will usually support both sides, just to be safe haha, so Hillary will get money while the GOP candidate won’t. Some rich people will calculate that they will then give most of the ‘intended’ money directly to the DEMs rather than splitting it, because its so obvious Hillary will win. Why waste the money on the losers and you want to buy access and favors from the new President and her team. Hillary will get even more money above the huge record-breaking lead she already would have built.)
As the TV-ad wars will be lopsided, Hillary with unlimited funds and the GOP rival out of money, the Clinton machine will redirect much of the ad-slots to support the local candidates with a massive superiority in ad spending and campaign support. It also means, that Hillary won’t have to defend many ‘traditional’ battleground states like say Wisconsin or Iowa or New Mexico or Colorado - they will be so far into her camp by September that they need not worry - it means Hillary can ‘invade’ red states pulling them into play like Georgia, Arizona, Texas yes Texas, Louisiana and her past home-state of Arkansas. The fight in 2016 will not be about who wins, it will be about massively big will Hillary’s victory be. And that means, its about how long are her 'coat-tails’ ie how many Senators, members of Congress, Governors and other elected Democrats can she help win in 2016 being on the same ticket with her on the top.
The nation leans more Democratic as it is. In 2016 the electorate will turn out more Democrats than usual. The national trends produce even more Democratic-leaning voters by then than in past elections. The Democratic candidate is one of the best there ever was, the Republican candidate is no Reagan. On the issues the Republican party has poisoned the candidates already on essentially all matters that the electorate cares about today and Hillary sits on the right side of history on essentially all of them. The one stronghold for the GOP, money is not just neutralized by the DEMs it is likely to turn into a catastrophy, if polls show double-digit leads for Hillary after the conventions. And then we have to think about the ground game of the campaign. This is the Democratic stronghold that balances the usual Republican money advantage.
NOTE - This next section has been striked out after the 2014 Midterm election results. I think the evidence no longer supports the position that this would be a natural Democratic election advantage beyond Obama's elections.
DEVASTATING GROUND GAME
We saw how strong Obama’s ground game was in 2008. But in 2012 Obama was supposed to be in a razor-thin race against Romney, with Obama approval ratings lukewarm and the economy still a mess. They had secretly built a massive upgrade to their ground-game support systems, called Narwhal. The world’s largest and costliest political activity database and support IT system, took a year to construct and test, cost over 100 million dollars to build, and had 120 fully paid programmers, data-miners and other professional staffing the system. The cost was so enormous in 2012, it amounted to taking one fifth of the total money collected by the Obama campaign four years earlier in 2008 just to build the machine! Yes, they risked that much of their campaign funds that every month they reported went into their mysterious ‘Narwhal project’.
And yet, we found out after the 2012 election in November and December, it was so powerful, it far more than paid for itself - just in donations alone, the growth in donations powered by Narwhal more than paid for the machine with 100 million dollars LEFT OVER as extra cash to the campaign. This is the ground-game game-changer. It is the only reason why Obama’s victory in 2012 over Romney was not 1% but was five points. If you want a military analogy, this is the introduction of the tank to World War 1, which after four years of stalemate butchering of soldiers in the trenches, finally helped the British and their allies break through the German lines. Or a more contemporary example yes, the Atom Bomb in 1945 that instantly ended World War 2 and forced Japan to surrender, where the Japanese army had previously committed to fighting to the death to defend their emperor and invading mainland Japan would have cost millions of lives on both sides. The tank in 1917 and the atom bomb in 1945 were total game-changer which decided those wars. Narwhal was that in 2012 in US Presidential elections. A game-winner in fact. If you want to read the full analysis of Narwhal it is here.
Do the Republicans have something like it? No. Can they build one? They will try, for sure. Romney was on that path already, only their system was like a BB gun (air rifle toy gun) compared to a machine gun built by the Obama team. That Narwhal machine is now used by the Democrats in the 2014 midterms right now, elections next week. We have heard about it in minor commentary almost just in passing but enough that we know it is active and in use. We also know that in 2014 the Republicans have not yet done anything to rival it (thats idiotic, I know). We will now see in a week, is Narwhal for real. I predicted last week that the Democrats will hold the Senate and will have a 52-48 majority in the Senate (latest polls show Democrats losing the Senate about 49-51). If I am right, this is the (only) reason why. Narwhal.
If the Democrats do lose the Senate, then there is no election-changing ‘magic’ to Narwhal that can be transcended beyond the Obama elections. I have studied Narwhal extremely deeply for someone who has never seen it or used it (I’ve even spoken - quite by accident - with one Democratic party boss who was involved in the 2012 Obama campaign - we were both at the same tech conference - and that person verified my blog has the fundamentals very well described). I will stake - am indeed staking - my data-mining reputation on the election-winning prowess of Narwhal right now (that is what my blog did last week, I am quite clearly committed in public to believing in it). We’ll see. If I am correct, then Narwhal (in 2014) is yet another huge advantage for Hillary worth something like 3 points of margin just for using it (unless Republicans can rush a valid rival to it by then).
Even before Narwhal (and Romney’s modest rival system called Orca), the Democrats in every election held ‘ground game’ advantage, due to their strong support by labor unions. Now, the membership in labor unions has been in decades-long decline and is nowhere the superpower in elections as it once was, but it is still considerable advantage all by itself. With Obama, they relied on Narwhal and the online volunteers but of course never turned away any other Democratic-leaning supporters like labor unions, women’s issue organizations, military veteran groups etc. Hillary, however, in 2008 was the labor union favorite rather than Obama. She now comes ‘home’ to those supporters, while bringing with her, the awesome power of Narwhal to help those groups serve Democratic causes even more powerfully. There is definitely a DEM advantage in the ground game. Its heart is the labor union movement. Obama has only been a lukewarm candidate to labor and labor support of Obama has been modest at best (Obama had a 23 point advantage in the labor union vote against McCain in 2008 but that was down to only 18 points against Romney! Yes even as Romney shipped jobs overseas, labor only voted for the Democrat by 18 points. Hillary’s margin of the labor union vote will be something like that). Hillary is their darling. Expect labor union support of Hillary to be exceptionally strong. They also will welcome the end of the Obama years, so the many older labor warriors will come out for one last hurrah with Hillary as their candidate. There will be a labor surge too helping Hillary.
That surge over what Obama had in 2012 will maybe be worth only a point or two in the polls as only 18% of the electorate are members of a labor union or have a family member that is one. This however, is part of Hillary’s natural base. The big key is Narwhal that could be worth three more points above that. And we’ll know in one week if Narwhal is a myth or is it so awesome that it can change elections. If Narwhal is as strong as I think (and if Democrats hold the Senate 52-48 or better) then its another SEVERAL POINTS of winning victory for Hillary who is already winning by landslide.
So to be clear. There is a Democratic systematic advantage in a better ground game always. Usually Republicans can neutralize that with their stronger fund-raising effort. Obama broke both. He has bigger fund raising and his ground game was FAR superior to the recent past by either party. Now we will see this midterm election on the actual transferability of Narwhal to the very tight races in Colorado, Iowa, Georgia and Kentucky (and a couple of other states). I am convinced this is something that works and will swing an election. I can’t believe that Republicans didn’t build their response. If these midterms do turn out as I predicted last week and the Republicans don’t gain the Senate, perhaps finally they start to take Narwhal seriously.
JAMAICAN BOBSLED TEAM. BRITISH SKI JUMPER
But even then, its a question of who builds it and for whom and what. Obama started building the predecessor of Narwhal (Houdini) for the 2008 election. Narwhal itself took a year to build and test. Will some Republican primary candidates built such systems during 2016. If so, will they then let their work be incorporated into a national system for the general election. And if so, how much can they be integrated in the short time that remains. And remember, this will be a candidate with very little cash, that would be very expensive. It is most certainly possible the Republican party can build a voter activation system to rival Narwhal during 2016 but its very likely to be less powerful and it will be optimized to get presidential votes. Hillary meanwhile is cruising to an epic victory and doesn’t ‘need’ Narwhal for herself, she can use the full power of Narwhal to help fellow Democrats win their local and Senate and Congressional elections.
But one last thought on a Republican Narwhal-clone. A Narwhal clone would definitely help the Republicans but its a bit like the Jamaican bobsled team in the winter Olympics. Sure they’d be fastest Jamaicans on ice but they never won a medal. Its not their national sport that everybody does. Much of the power of Narwhal is in directing various voter-engagement activities. They in turn should be digital interactive social media activities. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram (and of course SMS) etc. These come naturally for younger voters (core Democratic base) and do not come naturally for older voters (core Republican base). So even if they built equally strong systems the Democratic one will perform ‘better’ because many more of its ‘users’ and participants are young, already digitally connected social media and SMS users, similar to how bobsled teams win from countries that do bobsled racing and have snowy mountains and snowy winters (or why Finns win more ski-jumping than the British who don’t have snow enough in winters to jump).
Meanwhile the Republican supporters would constantly bump into suspicion, doubt, concern and rejection of that method - why can’t you send a flyer to my home address instead, I want to read things and have a record of it, not just contact me on Facebook (etc etc etc). Mobile phone ownership (SMS text messaging, the most powerful voter-activation tool on election day) is greater by younger ages, SMS texting use is lesser by older people who HAVE a cellphone, etc. Older voters fear more such matters as privacy and identity theft and are more reluctant to give out their cellphone numbers etc. Even if both sides built an equally capable voter activation IT system and database, that will serve better to motivate and activate Democratic core voters than Republican ones.
I calculated the actual election gain out of Narwhal in the 2012 elections, in December, based on the data from the election, to be 2.9% of the vote. So after all is said and done, if in 2016 Hillary has Narwhal and the Republicans didn’t build an equivalent rival (far stronger than using Romney’s Orca machine) then Hillary gets a bonus of nearly 3 points of election victory, a bonus above all other natural strengths she already has, from money to labor union support to issues to campaigning. A bonus of 3 more points. Incidentially the Narwhal bonus is one that up to now has not been correctly measured by the pollsters, so very likely that bonus 3 points will not show up in the polls leading up to the election.
So the nation has more registered Democrats. The population trends only grow that number as we get into 2016. Hillary is one of the best campaigners there ever was while the Republican candidate is mediocre at best, lousy in the worst case. The Republicans sit on the wrong side of all issues. The Republicans have lost their money advantage while the Democrats have actually improved their ground game Get-Out-The-Vote advantage. The But wait, I am only warming up. Lets next look at voter enthusiasm.
LOPSIDED VOTER ENTHUSIASM
In 2008 Obama had unprecedented support of blacks and of the youth vote. In 2012 those had subsided, blacks a little bit and youth more. There was an overall decline in Democratic support compared to 2008, voters disappointed in Obama. He still won. Now for 2016 Hillary being white, we can expect the black vote to be further down, to about the normal historical levels. And the youth vote to also be further down, maybe down to normal levels or perhaps a little bit above (as the Democrats have learned a lot about how to speak to those concerns and bring out youth votes even if the candidate is not a young person, and Hillary will be the oldest running candidate we’ve seen since Reagan).
So you might think the Democratic enthusiasm will be down from the euphoric near-hysteria levels of Obama’s Yes-we-can in 2008. But lets see. Hispanics are a larger demographic than blacks but don’t vote nearly as reliably. Obama was not seen as one of them and there was some competitive doubts among Hispanics (during 2008 campaign) that Obama will favor blacks at the expense of Hispanics. Still he easily won the vast majority of those Hispanics who showed up to vote both in 2008 and 2012. What about Hillary? The Clintons were very warmly seen as ‘their’ people by the Hispanics. They were locally known in the South back in Bill Clinton’s time as Arkansas Governor. Hillary in her 2008 run was very warmly embraced by the Hispanic community. Bill and Hillary have both regularly supported various politicians and causes of that community. They will be seen as the best friend the Hispanics have ever had in the White House (with the exception of if the GOP nominates a Hispanic as their candidate, like Marco Rubio).
The Democratic party has been in the past few years working very hard to convert non-voting Hispanics to become regular voters. That action has been mostly under the radar. They have for example worked to get the Texas Hispanic population to vote. If the Texas Hispanics were to vote at the same level as whites vote in Texas, then Texas would go from solidly red to purple just by that change. If Texas is purple, it then only takes some a hard push in terms of serious campaigning and TV ads, plus some lucky breaks for the Democratic candidate to win Texas, as it is a natural battleground state if it is purple (like now normally states like Ohio, Virginia, Florida and Colorado). And if Texas votes for a Democratic candidate for President, the Republicans cannot win that election for President. Then all three of the big states would vote for the Democrat (California, New York and Texas). It is game over. That is the nefarious master-plan that the Democratic party is working to achieve and its foundation is the Hispanic vote. If I was to guess who will be Hillary’s Vice Presidential choice, I’d say it will be a Hispanic (man, youthful, and quite possibly from Texas).
Yes, there will be a natural decline in black support in 2016 to historically normal levels, just about. But against that, there will be a significant upsurge of Hispanic voting to a record level. But this trade-off will be to Hillary’s gain on many levels. First of all, there are more of the Hispanics than blacks. So in numbers, this is a trade-off that adds Democratic turnout not reducing it. However the silver lining to a golden cloud is the location. Hispanics are far more concentrated in the Southern red states like Texas, Arizona and purple states like Florida etc where Democrats ‘need’ help while many blacks live in Northern states that are safely ‘blue’ like New York, New Jersey, Illinois, etc. This ‘trade-off’ will benefit Hillary a little bit in the overall vote count but it will help massively in winning battleground states and even winning some states that she really should not be winning, which are somewhat red.
BRACE FOR THE UNPRECEDENTED TSUNAMI-WAVE
So then what about the youth vote? That was the tidal-wave for Obama in 2008 that produced his landslide. It will not be back in 2016, no matter how well Hillary may activate that year’s youth-vote. Compared to 2008 the youth vote will be down definitely. But not to say 2004 levels, probably somewhere near 2012 levels. So yes, the big tidal-wave of Obama’s victory in 2008 powered by youth voters will be greatly diminished. So against that decline, now consider Hillary’s natural wave. Its not a tidal-wave. Its a goddamn genuine tsunami-wave: women. It is the first time a woman is on the top of the ticket and every single woman who doesn’t think Democrats are literally evil, will want to show up to vote in that election, as its been a long time coming. They will want to join in that party. If they possibly can find an excuse to pull the Democratic lever, those women will want to be able to say, yes I voted for Hillary, even if they are conservatives or registered Republicans.
Remember. Women are more than half of the nation. They voted 55-45 for Obama over Romney. Since 2012 the Republicans have continued their silly war on women. Now if the ‘sleeping’ women are awoken (40% of electorate who isn’t voting) and say only one quarter of those sleeping non-voting women are activated by the Hillary campaign.. thats 10% of women total registered women voters ie a little bit more than 5 percent of the total electroate just there. Signed sealed and delivered. One quarter of women who are eligible to vote who normally can’t be bothered to vote. Get them to the polling booth and Hillary’s win goes from single digits to double digits. And this election may well be one that nearly half of eligible women non-voters will register and come to vote. It will be an avalanche burying the Republican candidate. If she’s lucky, it is plausible for Hillary to win by 20 points and win every state except Utah.
Hillary will have stronger labor support than Obama did. The black vote comes down from its all-time peak of course but the Clintons have always been seen as friends to the blacks (Bill Clinton so much so, he was considered an honorary black as President) so this is not necessarily to bad levels, just down from the peak. But Hillary swaps that support for record-setting Hispanic support and gets it in many states that usually are not in play, and winning handily several that were considered battleground states like New Mexico and Colorado. The youth vote will be inevitably down from the record 2008 levels but likely similar to 2012 levels and it won’t migrate to Republicans because on all major issues the DEMs are on their side from student loans to legalizing pot. Against that, Hillary gets the ultimate wave, an unprecedented surge of women voters this side of the suffragettes and the original right to vote a century ago. As in the past few years the Republicans have been annoying labor, blacks, youth, Hispanics and women - all of these will be natural Democratic votes of at least similar proportions as Obama got (except for blacks, and youth near the 2012 level not 2008 level) and obviously the voter advantage gain will be greatest in... the gender gap. Obama won women 55-45 over Romney. Hillary will win the Republican candidate easily 60-40 or more whoever it is unless the top of the ticket on the GOP side is also a woman (and at extreme long shot it might be a Condi Rice or Jan Brewer or Kelly Ayotte or Carly Fiorina or haha in an alternate universe, Sarah Palin etc).
The female vote advantage is so enormous - exactly because the GOP has been continuing its utterly silly war on women - that this is an insurmountable lead. Because its the first election where a woman is nominated on the top, it will bring out the vote and that means a surge in the biggest conceivable voting block. As the Republicans cannot ‘steal’ any of the other regularly-democratic blocks to their side, this means certain election loss (as we can be pretty certain Hillary won’t turn out to be a nincompoop like untested Sarah Palin was exposed to be by the campaign of 2008, or to fold under pressure like untested Governor Oops, or be found with election-ending sex scandal like say Herman Cain).
REPUBLICAN CORE VOTERS
The Republicans can count on their core voters but they will see some alarming leakage out of several of those. Lets start with the most solid base. Evangelical voters will remain loyal to the GOP. Its the party of religious fanaticism including the sillyness about the Bible vs science or the personhood ammendments vs abortion rights etc. When the Supreme Court gives a ruling that private companies can discriminate on healthcare issues based on ‘religious objections’ and deny contraceptions, that is again utterly just silly where the supposed party of ‘liberty’ is now forcing religious dogma into employer-relations and healthcare. Not to mention the mandatory ultrasounds etc. So the little slice of extreme Republican supporters who are evangelicals will love the GOP and will vote against Hillary but even mainstream Republicans are not this extreme.
The Tea Party will want to cling to their guns and demand the end of the IRS and insist there should be no vaccinations while borders must be closed to Ebola countries and why didn’t the government create an Ebola vaccine... Yeah. All sorts of Ted Cruzian nonsense. They will never vote for anyone on the other side. And so too is the gun lobby, NRA members etc. They fear that any democrat will come and take your guns so they vote very reliably Republican. No matter what happens, the core Republican and conservative wing is good for at least 25 points in the election, safely for the GOP candidate. Now, unfortunately the election is based on real math, not imaginary math.
Next there is the business wing of the conservatives. Business owners, small businesses, investors and those who feel strong affinity with the Republican party for its support of business (and low taxes etc). The right-wing media has spent the past 6 years painting Obama as a ‘socialist’. For what level that has worked, does serve Hillary that she clearly is thus not as much another socialist (even when in reality Obama is more the centrist and Hillary more the liberal. Go figure. How the right wing media can square that circle without suddenly elevating Obama to hero status remains to be seen. They cannot help Hillary obviously). Her husband was a very business-friendly Governor and President. Hillary held pretty centrist positions in her votes, definitely not against business while in the Senate. And she’s worked very hard to secure the endorsement of Wall Street and New York business leaders. She is not a Republican, no. But for a Democrat, she is not ‘anti-business’. She is far more acceptable for the business-wing of the GOP. Compare Hillary to the left wing of the party like Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Shumer and Elizabeth Warren.
Now, just ‘not being anti-business’ won’t get Hillary to win over those Republicans who are business-oriented, but if that Republican-registered voter or conservative-leaning Independent has some other issues with the Republican candidate (like extreme views on social issues for example), and would still not have voted for Obama ‘the Socialist’ then Hillary is far more acceptable. She’ll pick up some voters here, and probably strongly skewing female. Not a huge amount but a couple of percent of registered Republicans of the ‘business wing’ will defect to Hillary’s side. More women (and Hispanics) definitely than men. Not more than one point at best in the big picture but this is core Republican support leakage away from voting for their candidate and voting for the enemy. There will be some in the economic/business wing of the GOP and this leakage will hurt. It will be enough to be measurable in the exit polls of 2016.
Which brings me to the last major Republican voting block: military. Current and past military members and vets and often their families. Plus others whose primary reason for supporting the GOP is because Republicans are strong on defense and national defense is the government’s first priority. The military vote is strong in such states as Virginia, Florida, Texas and Arizona.
This will be where ‘Hillary Republicans’ will be found. The current field of Republican candidates (excluding the extremely dark horses like Lindsey Graham or Colin Powell or Condi Rice or Jon Huntsman) has nobody with any foreign policy credentials or actually served in the miliatry before getting into politics. They are domestic Governors or else Senators or members of the Congress none of whom have served abroad as Ambassador or Secretary of Defence or State or the National Security Advisor or in any such capacity. So if you are a conservative and find national security the overriding reason to vote, and you find Hillary was Secretary of State (and a very competent one, even disageeing with Obama about how dangerous is Putin, obviously Hillary seeing it while Obama seemed not to) and then the Republican field has no competence in that area - this is a danger sign. It is a VERY serious danger sign. So they reluctantly go vote for Hillary in 2016 even though recognizing on many social issues, they disagree with her.
I would guess the exit polls in 2016 will show that women voters who are registered Republicans and who think national defense or foreign policy is the top issue - such women voters will break for Hillary, yes, she’ll take the majority of that slice of Republicans. The men who hold those views will give a minority slice also to Hillary. She can steal as much as 12% to 15% of total registered Republican vote to be ‘Hillary Republicans’ this way. Because there is no John McCain in the running this time, someone who also has solid foreign policy credentials on that side. That is yet another 3 points in the general election that Hillary steals from the registered Republican voters, into her column.
The nation skews Democratic. The population trends produce an even more Democratic electorate for 2016. Hillary is one of the best campaigners we’ve seen and none of the current field of Republicans matches that. The issues are all on Hillary’s side. So is the money. So is the ground game. Democratic voter enthusiasm will be at unprecedented hysteria levels powered by the largest voting block, women, and the largest minority ethnic group, Hispanics. Some Republican voter enthusiasm will be at normal or perhaps even raised levels but one of the core Republican voter blocks, those prioritizing military and national security, will see severe erosion to Hillary. So that is the general situation going into the election cycle. How about the world politics and the ‘October surprise’? We know one thing. There will be some severe Putin on the menu in 2016.
PUTIN FACTOR
There will be, as always, one of the televised debates that will focus on foreign policy. Hillary will rule that debate. And it will be in the shadow of Putin’s latest gambit. So lets talk Novorossiya. Putin has said in public many times, he intends to restore the old Russian empire. He has acted to take parts back from Georgia and Ukraine already and is wildly cheered at home whenever he snatches a piece of territory from a neighbor. His domestic approval rating is through the roof. So, Putin not only told us he’d be doing this, he’s doing it, and worst of all, when he does it, his people love him. You can be sure Putin is not done snatching more territory. But now, consider the Iron Lady. Hillary already met Putin so Putin already met Hillary (when she was Secretary of State) and at that meeting Putin saw the difference between Hillary’s resolve and Obama’s waffling. Putin knows very well that Hillary will be projecting an image of ‘Iron Lady’ in the style of Maggie Thatcher in Britain and when Putin does some of his tricks, Hillary will react far more aggressively than Obama has done now.
Its a bit like how Iran reacted to Reagan’s coming from 1979 to 1980. They toyed with Jimmy Carter but when Reagan was about to take office in 1981, they released the hostages after 444 days, because they feared Reagan might actually launch a nuclear attack... Putin definitely wants more land than Crimea. He will definitely take more. He might do some now this year or next. But he knows that from February 2017, Hillary Clinton will be US President, no more Obama. So Putin will make one of his most audacious land-grabs just before Hillary takes office, confident that Obama won’t do anything. That would be late Autumn 2016.. Just about the time when the US political system is focused on the election and immobilized for any foreign policy stuff (haha just look how inept the’ve now been with ISIS and Ebola as the Midterm elections loom). About say September or October of 2016.
So yea, we can expect a major land grab in Azerbaijan or Georgia or Ukraine or Moldova. (If you didn’t know, Putin has already troops, yes boots on the ground in territory that technically belongs or belonged to 3 of those four countries, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. And he’s busily messing right now with the fourth, Azerbaijan from the Armenian border.) And out of all the ex-Soviet break-away republics, why is Putin so obsessed by these four nations? They had the nerve to join into a military alliance (a sort of midget-NATO) called GUAM (take the first letters from each of the four countries). Putin has already punished 3 of the four, he’ll definitely also punish Azerbaijan for that transgression. And he likes snatching territory, so Crimea won’t be the end either.
So Putin eh? That in turn will consume the election news cycle for many weeks - and only serve to highlight how much Hillary is the only candidate of solid international credentials and whose long history of political comments were concerned about Putin already back in 2008, etc. The Republican rival will seem like a child in that context. In what was already a foreign policy election (ISIS, Ebola, Ukraine, China, North Korea etc) once Putin throws his weight around, it won’t even be a fair fight. The one lady who has solid foreign policy credentials - and is a foreign policy hawk - will run away with it.
Normally a foreign policy crisis always favors the Republican. But not in 2016. Hillary has diligently worked on her impeccable foreign policy credentials. Secretary of State was a masterstroke. The Republicans will still continue to try to pin a Libya Bengazi-gate on her and she’ll laugh that off, in that it was a Republican Congress that refused to give her more men to go guard the embassies when she asked for that in the months before Bengazi. And this time the Republican candidate is completely without credibility on the foreign policy side (there would be good candidates if they were to run, like Jon Huntsman or Condi Rice or Colin Powell). The GOP candidate will try to keep away from any foreign policy discussions rather than try to beat Hillary on Bengazi.
So beyond Putin. there is China, it has its first aircraft carrier. China is toying with Japan and the Philippines about some contested islands. It may well observe that as Obama is so reluctant to stop Putin, why not go snatch some territory from China’s smaller neighbors just like how Putin is doing of Russia’s helpless neighbors - and to do that while Obama is still in office. Hillary must have felt devastated in 2008 that her grand plan didn’t pan out to become President, but if you look at how the past 6 years evolved, her time is now, 2016. This was the election Hillary Clinton was born to win, much like 1980 was tailor-made for Ronald Reagan, after the Vietnam War, Nixon’s disgrace, Jimmy Carter’s oil crisis, Soviet Union invading Afghanistan and the Iran hostages. What the world needed back then was to once again believe in a strong upbeat positive USA, led by that actor who played the role of President, to perfection. 2016 is the same now for another long-time-waiting, biding her time, hawk. Hillary the Hawk.
So the electorate is already tilted to Democrats and demographics push it even more so. The Democratic candidate is a campaigning jedi master, the Republican candidates are well, political ewoks. The GOP has poisoned essentially all issues to burn any chances for their candidate. The voting blocks find a surge for the Democrat while they also find a leakage away from their own supporters. The voting machine of the get-out-the-vote is even stronger than normally for the DEMs while the money advantage by the GOP is neutralized or likely even now a deficit. And over it all, it will be a foreign policy election where one party brings a remarkably competent candidate and the other party fields a candidate with literally no foreign policy background. (Are you feeling depressed already, how can this election really be this lopsided? But wait.. we have the campaign itself).
WHAT KIND OF CAMPAIGN
So part of winning is the candidate. Part is the message. Part is the environment. And of course part is the campaign. McCain was yes losing to Obama but he also ran a horrid campaign (suspending his campaign for the economic crisis etc). Lets examine some very certain aspects of the 2016 campaign. The Republican candidate has to run through a gruelling primary season where there will be tons of debates and cameraphones will capture every waking moment posted soon on YouTube. Hillary is a totally known quantity. She’s known for at least 28 years that she’s eventually running for President so while Bill Clinton had his moments of crisis (Monica Lewinsky) Hillary was always the stronger of that pair, and played the long game. She knew Bill had to go first, Hillary had no chance of becoming President unless she pushed Bill to be that first. So she’s waited and bided her time. There are no skeletons in her closet. All of her dirty laundry has been washed out in the open for decades now. She is as well a known quantity as is humanly possible.
The Republican field has one well-tested member who doesn’t have a chance but desperately wants to run (Romney) and the rest are potential time-bombs. You never know which candidate suddenly is caught having some extra-marital affair or embezzlement crisis or bridgegate etc. But lets just assume the final GOP candidate is going to be relatively pure and brings no shocker surprises (my three points are... oops). Nonetheless, the GOP nomination fight will result in the winning candidate having plenty of nasty TV ads and various conservative commentary saying nasty things about him or her. That is inevitable. For Hillary there is nothing new anymore she is a totally known quantity. No shocking TV ads can be made now by the Democratic field and most will have so much self-preservation instinct, seeing how inevitable Hillary is, that they won’t even try to create really nasty ads about her and against her. But the GOP?
The Republicans will now feel for the first time the full heat of Citizens United. The unlimited donations by rich supporters. The various conservative billionaires have woken up to the fact, that for less than a hundred million dollars they can own their own GOP primary candidate and with some luck and some extra money, they can even likely own the President. And yes two hundred million seems like a lot of money for us mere mortals but consider the Koch Brothers. They are worth 41 Billion dollars. Each. For them to invest in a Presidential candidate at say 200 million dollars, that is less than half a percent of what they own (each). For someone earning median salary its equivalent to contributing 140 dollars to a campaign. Does you 140 dollars get you any time with your presidential candidate? But the megabillinaire would essentially own a potential President. And that President could be certain not to raise taxes on the various polluting industries that the Koch brothers run.. That the best invested 200 million they can possibly spend (each). So it will be a very special kind of poker game or long-running auction. Remember Captain Moonbase? Newt Gingrich had no place staying in the 2012 race, would have dropped out months earlier except for the constant funding by his personal sugar-daddy billionaire, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.
In 2012 that was still a novelty. Billionaire Harold Simmons did prop up Governor Oops until he finally dropped out. Adelson funded Gingrich’s unlikely run. Billionaire Julian Robertson and billionaire Frank VanderSloot as well as billinaires Bill and Richard Marriott all funded Mitt Romney’s campaign. Billionaire Foster Friess was tossing money at Rick Santorum. So the game has already been ‘invented’. The candidates now seek their own sugar daddy and the billionaires out there will sit on cash they are trying to find a good investment for. Owning a President sounds to many like a novel and potentially very lucrative idea to safeguard whatever business they are in. At least seven billionaires have already experimented with this extremely exclusive poker game. I’m sure more billionaires will get the Presidential bug this time around.
In 2016 the Republican candidates know they can’t win without tons of money. They know now, that with Citizens United, its no longer illegal to beg for the billionaire cash and the billionaires know they have a buyer’s market. What are the secret deals that are made to secure those campaign donations, we’ll never know. But now both sides, donors and politicians, have had time to adjust and think and plan for this. Every ‘major’ candidate (on the GOP side, where they depend on rich donors rather than the DEMs side who mostly depend on grassroots donors) will have a personal billionaire or they are no longer viable. And if free markets really rule in America, it also means several billionaires will jump into this, perfectly legal racket and attempt to legally purchase their own President. The TV ads in the 2016 Republican nomination fight will be the nastiest seen on record. The so-called Reagan’s Eleventh Commandment - say no bad things about fellow Republicans - will be as forgotten as the fact that Reagan himself actually was a compromising moderate who raised taxes.
This means that going into the general election of 2016, Hillary’s team will have hours of nasty videotape of what Republicans have said about her eventual opponent but the GOP won’t have the same ammunition on her. Then when the Republicans try to run some Bengazi-gate claims in TV ads, they will not seem at all relevant and are quickly fact-checked by the media and corrected by Hillary’s ample TV budget. But all the nasty stuff that was just said some months ago by the other Republicans about their nominee, the electorate will easily remember and the videotape is very compelling evidence. A Democrat will not need more evidence to vote for Hillary but those negative ads will demoralize the Republican voters and help convince some of their voters to switch and vote for Hillary. Others will look at the miserable polls, and stay home.
Let me again do some weaseling here, yes, its possible one Republican candidate catches fire early and puts the nomination fight away. I do think, that would require a very charismatic candidate (like Reagan) and this field is only mediocre rivals. We’ve seen them all speak. There is no Reagan there. Also, because there is no front runner, it is very likely that the nomination fight runs long. In past elections there always was a clear front-runner for the Republicans.
In the absolute worst case for the GOP, the nomination fight might not be resolved and the Republicans could even face a brokered convention. But the big (at this point totally unnecessary) gain to Hillary is if the GOP nomination fight lingers on far into the Spring of 2016 and turns ever more nasty. Remember, this is the primary season after Citizens United, when the various billionaires witnessed the unlikely run of Newt Captain Moonbase Gingrich, and that it was indeed totally legal to bankroll a candidate. They are a competitive lot, the billionaires. Most lean strongly Republican and no viable Democratic candidate is even ‘for sale’ into 2016 as Hillary has this already decided that side of the aisle.
If the Republicans can’t quickly find their candidate, there will probably be a couple of candidates who then slug it out long into the primary season. The factor that in the past forced weak candidates out was when they ran out of money. Last time in 2012, four of the seven billionaires supported the obvious front-runner Romney. This time there is no such front-runner and the billionaires will also test their preferred candidates far more thoroughly before committing their public support for one. Its extremely likely that in 2016 the billinaire club will be more than 7 and will support more than 4 candidates. And those candidates will be more the stronger than weaker ones (Santorum, really? Perry, Gingrich. Seriously). We might have 10 billionaires supporting 7 of the rivals who tend to be all stronger members of the field, meaning the fight will continue long and become ever more nasty, bitter, hostile and vicious. Also at least some of those billionaires will want ‘their boy’ to say things they want, ie start to push an agenda obviously to the advantage of that billionaire. They want something for their dollar. They want to hedge their bets, its safer if all Republicans commit to some pledge in a debate for example, than just their own boy. So some of the candidates will actually take positions that are in a billionaire’s interest but against their natural convictions and against the nation. And those who refuse whatever that pledge-of-the-week is will then face the wrath of TV ads. You think you’ve seen attack ads. You ain’t seen nothing yet.
Like I said, its possible one candidate catches fire in Iowa and New Hampshire and just runs away with it. That is very unlikely but possible. It is at least as likely that the nomination fight continues for months without a clear front-runner. That would mean a fractured party and the eventual nominee has to try to fix any such rifts by picking a suitable Vice Presidential candidate (ie his rival rather than the best candidate to help win the election). This is like how Reagan had to pick Bush 1 as his VP in 1980 or how Bill Clinton had to pick Al Gore in 1992. Neither was the best election-winning Vice Presidential choice, but rather appointing the rival challenger from the primary fight to satisfy a split party. (Again this is more unnecessary political gain for Hillary, she can safely pick the best person to help her win not worrying at all about a split in the party and won’t have to limit herself to picking from the lot of those who ran against her).
Then there is the base vote. The longer the primary season runs, the more the last remaining candidates have to pander to their base (at either party), ie in 2016 for the GOP finalists, ever more lunatic Tea Party-hugging positions and statements. So the race to the right. Who is the most ‘severe conservative’. Stuff that then just sinks the candidate in the general election, like Romney’s ‘self-deportation’ statement said at a Florida debate against Rick Perry, that doomed his chances in the general election in the vital battleground state of Colorado he had to win (exit polls of 2012 tell the tale, Colorado voters had overwhelmingly decided their vote well before the Conventions started, it was because they knew they didn’t want the ‘self-deportation guy’).
So of the campaign, the primary season will pollute the Republican eventual nominee far more than it will Hillary Clinton. And Hillary will have a huge TV ad spending advantage to exploit all the video soundbites that damage the rival. Yes, of course the Republicans can also try that on Hillary but she’s the known quantity here. Her Democratic rivals won’t go out of their way to badmouth Hillary because her coronation is so obvious. The primary season will be remarkably lopsided to bring a badly damaged Republican candidate (possibly even forced to compromise with the VP choice just to fix a rift in the party) while leaving Hillary essentially unscathed heading into the conventions and the general election.
WHO WEARS FLIP-FLOPS
So then lets go to flipflops. Hillary doesn’t have to pander to her base to win her nomination. They are now just eager to get her coronation over with and get Hillary to go do the cleaning after the mess seen as Obama’s two terms. To be a real liberal that the base Democrats want, rather than what Obama has attempted time and again to appease the Republicans on Capitol Hill to get some of his preferred compromises. Hillary can safely take many centrist and even some conservative positions and will win her nomination handily because she is so well known to be a liberal at heart on most significant issues to Democrats. The liberal wing of the Democrats is loving her already now, two years out, with Chuck Shumer, Nancy Pelosi, Elizabeth Warren, Harry Reid, Al Franken etc all just singing her praises. So Hillary won’t have to ‘move left’ this time. She will have no damning statements from her primaries to walk back.
The GOP nomination fight will be the worst we’ve yet seen in attempting to woo the base. Why? First, its the tea party. Remember the tea party only emerged in 2010. They flexed their muscle in 2012 they feel even more empowered now with more of their kind in various positions of power led by Ted Cruz in the Senate and Sarah Palin’s amusingly confused statements outside of power (haha did you catch 1400 Pennsylvania Avenue? Just a couple of weeks ago Palin quoted the wrong address trying to talk about the White House which is at 1600). The nomination fight is long but last time in 2012 there was a clear front-runner (Romney) who still struggled to end the nomination fight. This time there are more contenders and no front runner. Some from the 2012 clown circus will be back like Governor Oops but also several of the stronger candidates will now run for the first time, like very likely Rob Portman, Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio and perhaps Jeb Bush. Oh, and of course Chris Christie who was the front-runner until his chances imploded on the world’s busiest bridge.
What I mean is, some of those who were novices last time (Bachmann, Santorum, Perry, Cain) will come back with more experience - that means a few of those are likely to fight longer/stronger this time (and a few others will drop out faster). And most of the strongest hopefuls of 2012 stayed out of the game then, but are now joining the race. Plus Romney still returning and possibly Huckabee too. The field may have 16 candidates at the start. So its very likely that the delegates won in early primaries will be spread very widely among as many as a dozen rivals and nobody gets any meaningful leads until the ‘winner take all’ states start to have their primaries.
With so many candidates, its even more difficult to limit the badmouthing. Because of Citizens United every major candidate will have a personal billionaire to bankroll their run and the also-rans will still have multi-millionaires to play the lottery that perhaps this candidate catches fire and they might own a President. So the budgets for attack ads will be totally unprecedented at the nomination stage of the primaries. But again it will be worse than ever before. Thanks to the Colbert Report we learned just how much those SuperPACs can get away with such as the coordination with the campaign and how donors can hide from being disclosed etc.
Who can be the most conservative of the conservatives. Who gets the endorsements from the gun lobby, the tea party and the evangelical wing and the lunatic fringe like an endorsement from Donald Trump. Pledges about not raising taxes, about personhood and defending life and drill baby drill and no EPA and repealing Obamacare etc etc etc. So the eventual winning candidate will have tons of extreme statements on videotape that promise all sorts of silly things to the ultra-right wing that will scare away the moderates and Independents in the general election. Two things about this. While it always happens in all elections that the candidates have to move towards their base in the primaries and then back towards the center in the general election, this time Hillary needs almost none of this, and this time the Republicans feel the pain more than usual. They have to do more of the pandering, for a longer time than in past, over more issues than before, under unprecedented spotlight, and towards a GOP base that has more Tea Party flavor than ever before.
(I should say that likely/hopefully also never again this much, as the Tea Party voices will be stifled after the total drubbing of 2016 much how like Mondale’s campaign forced the extreme liberal wing of the Democrats to finally shut up. What today Fox News calls socialists are nowhere as liberal as the Mondale wing was in 1984. Plus Citizens United will be changed by law, see below, so very likely 2016 will be the last year where the billionaires get their little private poker game).
So during the general campaign, one of the many damaging TV ad formats that Hillary will run constantly is the flipflop ads what all her rival has recently switched positions on. And when the contrast is that Hillary in October 2016 says still the same things we all heard in 2008, she will be seen as reliable and steady as a rock while the Republican sounds like the most despicable of politicians, the one who panders to every audience and whose words mean nothing. As this was also the label that stuck very strongly to Romney, this will very much start to apply to all Republicans. That, in turn, will be well exploited by the 2016 Democratic political field throughout their campaigns as there will by then be plenty of those flipflops by their rivals on issues from Obamacare to immigration to minimum wage to personhood to gay rights etc etc etc etc. Because the Democrats now stand on the right side of history, they don’t need to flipflop but Republicans have to.
As Hillary pillaries her opponent on this, so too will the next tier of candidates echo her call and make the same damning accusations about the Republicans. Not only did they wreck the economy, launch costly wars, give tax cuts to millionaires and block any sensible legislation, they now are flipflopping on everything trying to fool the electorate. If you think the Republican brand is bad now wait until the Hillary Clinton campaign gets into full swing in 2016. Its not just the enormous money advantage she’ll have on the advertising wars, and massive audiences flocking to see her speak, and in another town to see Bill Clinton, and on some days simultaneously in a third huge packed auditorium, Obama - there will be tons of strong sound-bites from the three, on true real issues fresh from the day’s headlines, not ancient ‘scandal’ of Bengazi.
There will be ample video tape of the Republican nominee (and the other Republicans running in 2016) saying the wrong thing either in the past years or in the primary campaign, exploited by an unprecedented TV ad budget advantage. Then the most damning things will happen - several Republicans will flipflop on the very issues that Hillary’s campaign is pushing. These will be local candidates or some members in Congress or Senate who have decided not to run for office anymore, but thoss voices will be devastating. Not to registered Republican voters but to Independents. When Hillary stands on the right side of history, her Republican rival argues for the wrong side, and suddenly rats start to jump off the sinking ship.
So the campaign of 2016 will see either a record-breaking flipflopper in the GOP candidate who does understand his or her political chances and loses by 12 points, or else, a stubborn extremist who goes down in flames to a 20 point thrashing (worse than Mondale to Reagan). Either way, the Republican candidate is doomed on the forced extremist views he or she has to take in the primary season.
The Citizens United cash, the widest field ever, having no clear front-runner, and the moment in time when Tea Party influence is at its pinnacle, the 2016 election cycle will produce the most damaging Republican primary video soundbites ever seen. Those will be fully exploited by Hillary’s advertising team. And on the other side of the aisle, Hillary will coast to probably the easiest nomination fight in recent memory by a candidate who was not the sitting Presdent, yielding essentially no new video footage for the Republicans to exploit.
So the campaign leading from the primaries to the general election will feature either a record number of obvious blatant flipflops by the GOP candidate, to try to shift the image from a fiercely conservative to a moderate, or else run as a totally extremist right-winger. In the first case the Republican candidate will be the butt of all jokes on latenight TV and in the other case, the Republican candidate will be the butt of all jokes on latenight TV. The comedians will have to then resort to making jokes about Hillary’s wardrobe and haircut to get something to ‘balance’ the jokes. Hillary will seem like the only adult in town by October.
COMPARING THE CONVENTIONS
What of the conventions. It is extremely rare in modern times to have a brokered convention, so lets assume GOP has its nominee well before that. (Oh, gosh, a brokered convention in modern 24 hour news channel and social media and Twitter world, gosh, it would be some epic political theater and might even trigger a genuine split of the Republican party... but it is very unlikely and the Republians are already so doomed, lets not consider this unlikely scenario).
But it is highly likely that the nomination fight was nasty (nastiest in history) and the GOP has to do repair-work in the Convention, allowing the hurt parties to have chances to speak etc and inserting some of their positions into the party platform etc. At the very least, the Republican nomination convention is a mixed message and inefficient. In the worst case its a fight still then. The Republican convention will be even more bitter and argumentative and split because the polls will show already then a massacre coming. The blame-game will be already on, at least on Fox News and the right wing talk shows. So the party will be torn on should it stand with its obviously-going-to-lose Presidential candidate and let Senators, Members of Congress and Governors go down in flames with him/her or should they abandon the candidate and save their own skins.
Compare to the Democratic convention. It will be organized, it will be united. It will be a party celebrating the huge lead that Hillary will have in all the polls by then Obama was not the close darling of much of the base of the Democratic party but now Hillary is. So its a huge rainbow coalition party from the gays to labor unions.
And consider the lineup. Would the Republicans really want George W Bush to speak in 2016? Not likely. If so, then only via videotape and only briefly. How about Dick Cheney? John McCain? These are not electrifying speakers even if you do have them speak. What about the DEMs? So want a superstar speaker? How about the sitting President who is after all, still beloved by the base of Democrats, whose Obamacare by 2016 is an election-winner almost all Democrats eagerly embrace. As the conservative mass media led by Fox News has shifted its guns from bitching about Obama to attacking Hillary, it means the relentless barrage of nastyness about Obama finally comes to an end after Hillary offially announces in January 2015, and that means Obama’s favorability ratings also start to rise. But remember, its a convention. How does Obama do his speeches? Oh my gosh. It will be another epic Obama speech and likely it will be one taking heavy shots at Republicans who ruined much of his Presidency. Obama also knows the convention will feature other great speakers, so he will bring his A-Game. This is his church, he will shine like rarely seen before.
SURROGATES? I’VE GOT SURROGATES UP TO HERE
Greatest orator in politics? Democrat. What about Hillary’s hubby? No slouch either, that Bill Clinton is deeply beloved by the DEMs and a great speaker, far far better than anyone in the Republican field. Then Hillary herself, of course. Three of the four greatest campaigners in living memory will all be on stage, each with a prime time full speaking slot, and as the final of the four greatest is dead (Reagan) so he can’t even come give some balance on the GOP side. As is the custom, Democrats will also feature some young-and-rising star like a certain Barack Hussein Obama who delivered the Convention keynote speech in 2000. If the GOP convention is in panic sensing their nominee will lose, their keynote could be as self-serving as Chris Christie’s keynote was in 2012, barely mentioning Romney. No danger of that, the Democratic keynoter will sing songs of praise about Hillary.
And my gut says we’ll also see a shorter speech by Michelle Obama (she has serious political ambitions too, wants to follow Hillary’s path and become the second Wife-to-become-President). Expect Michelle to run and easily win office in Illinois, Senator or Governor or something. Expect that to happen soon after they leave office with Barack and the kids are out of the home. But yeah, remember Michelle Obama in 2012? She’s one of the best First Women to give public speeches and this is early in her political career. It does depend a lot how much the relationship between Barack and Hillary is actually tenuous or if it is becoming a good working relationship. As Barack’s time is done, he’ll want to help Michelle fulfill her ambitions just like how Bill supported Hillary from 2000. And expect Hillary to arrange a prime speaking slot (shorter speech of course) to Chelsea, her daughter, also wishing a political career soon. Older women, black women, young women... and the Republicans can’t afford to take time from their convention (if the fight was nasty) to do another rebranding/relaunch of their women’s issues.
So consider the two and a half months of the actual final campaign from the Conventions to election day in the first week of November. The Republican candidate comes in tired and bruised from the marathon of the nomination fight while Hillary sails in happy warrior, well rested for a short sprint. The Republican candidate is not a stellar speaker or campaigner, and likely neither is his/her VP. Hillary is one of the best candidates in living memory who now has been fine-tuning her skills. She can pick the best campaigner-VP who should bring in some state or states and be a great speaker too. Likely a Hispanic as I said. The Republicans have almost no strong surrogates who are great orators who can draw a crowd except haha, Sarah Palin (but would they want her? And her being the ‘maverick’ she would probably refuse supporting any candidate who didn’t profess severe conservative Tea Party credentials).
Meanwhile Hillary herself is better than any GOP rival, so is Bill Clinton so is Barack Obama. Being an ex-president, sitting president and next president, they all will draw massive crowds - embarrassing to the GOP candidate who may need to resort to what Mitch McConnell is doing - paying audiences to act ‘enthusiastic’ for the TV cameras.
But think about the issues just for a moment. If Hillary talks about womens’ issues its a ‘dog bites man’ story that nobody cares about. If Obama talks about black issues, same thing. Now, Bill Clinton is the honorary black. If Bill Clinton talks about black issues, he is instantly in the press. Then Barack. He is the most womens-issues-friendly President there ever was in the USA, so whenever he talks about issues relevant to women, its immediately paid attention to, and its again ‘man bites dog’ story. That means Hillary doesn’t need to care talking about black or women’s issues, she can focus on the foreign policy where the focus of the election is. In some ways that coordination of topics will be unexplored territory in how well the three can support each other by picking a topic that is most likely to end up in the nightly TV sound bites.
As to the big issues. Bill Clinton is THE master, of all time, on speaking of economic issues. While this won’t be an economy election, those issues will always be relevant, starting with minimum wage, a strongly motivating factor to Democratic voters, as well as taxes on millionaires. Obama rarely used Bill Clinton in 2012, but Hillary will use Bill a lot. Often talking of economic matters. Hillary herself tried to create Hillarycare and failed. So she’ll want to stay away from talking about healthcare matters but haha, its Obama’s signature issue and by 2016 its approval will be well above 50%. Obama will happily take on that role, to defend his ACA.
Spouces of candidates in modern times are expected to do the full politics in the last months of the campaign. But no US candidate ever has had the fortune of a living past President be the spouce. And by nice coincidence, one of the best orators we’ve heard. Its literally two Clintons for the price of one. And Bill alone already defeated George Bush 1 and Bob Dole. Remember. Hillary is a better campaigner than any in the GOP field and arguably the better public speaker (remains to be seen, we might find a surprise from the GOP finalist, who will, after all, get a lot of practise in the primary season). But Bill is pure platinum. This never happened before, in the first election run, where the spouce can draw giant crowds and speak the full gamut of the issues, with credibility. Even as popular as Michelle Obama was, she couldn’t help Barack even in 2012 as much as Bill will boost Hillary’s campaign in 2016. And she won’t need any of that, she’s already coasting to victory.
Furthermore, rarely has an outgoing President been involved in the current election. Nixon was poison to Ford. Ronald Reagan was then too old and tired (almost senile) to really carry on a campaign when his VP Bush 1 ran. George W Bush was too toxic to be invited anywhere by John McCain. And Al Gore wanted to distance himself from Bill Clinton’s shadow, and didn’t want the scandal-ridden Big Dog around him at the time. But if Obama stays clean the last two years, no significant scandals, the economy keeps improving, Obamacare gets ever more acceptance, and Fox News etc shift their focus to hate on Hillary, Obama’s approval ratings rise to near 50 percent, then yes, Hillary would welcome Obama to join on the trail somewhat (he also has to still govern, and remember, we expect Putin to go nasty at this time) especially in areas where he has huge support like car-making towns in Ohio for example or college campuses in Virginia. And yes, Obama the greatest orator of our age. Who wouldn’t want him to occasionally join on the campaign trail. And these two Presidents as Hillary’s surrogates, can the Republicans find even one live President to support their hopeless candidate?
The stars are so well aligned for Hillary that no Democrat will dare to say no to her. She’ll get total support of all Democrats, even those who may have disliked her (or Bill) in the past. And like often happens when a politician crosses over, there will be the occasional breakaway moderate Republican who will say nice things about her and some will also endorse her. These are likely to be women, but nonetheless, she’ll almost definitely get some Republican endorsers like Obama got that from Colin Powell against Mitt Romney.
In 2012 Obama made a severe mistake by being overconfident going into the first debate and fumbled it. That brought severly lagging Romney back into the game. Hillary won’t fall for that mistake, as it happened too recently and she knows she’s equally vulnerable to that first-debate rustiness. The GOP candidate has had a dozen fierce debates where his(her) own party members tried to destroy him(her). Hillary’s primary run is short and sweet, not challenging her. A bad debate can greatly alter an election. Hillary knows this and will be prepared. Expect her to be similar to how ‘fatherly’ Ronald Reagan was in his debates, while remaining happy and funny, like the candidate who clearly is already winning. Like Reagan said of Mondale, I will not hold my opponent’s young age against him...
BATTLEGROUND STATES
If an election is tight, recently the battleground states are about the same 9 to 12 states, such as Ohio, Virginia, Colorado and Florida. States that almost any year are always close. If its more of a Republican year you could add a Pennsylvania or Michigan. If its a Democratic year you could add Missouri or Indiana for example. But if its a consistent 5 point lead, any of the occasional battleground ‘light blue’ states are off the map permanently, like Michigan and Pennsylvania. At a 5 point lead the classic battlegrounds are not really be in play either, Ohio, Florida, Colorado, Virginia and similar states are consistently a couple of points light blue. Yes, Hillary will need to visit them but the battle is now in pink and even red states. If the Democratic lead is consistently above 5 points, the election is effectively won, and the fight is for how big will the margin be. Hillary and her Republican opponent will increasingly spend ad money and appear speaking in Missouri, Indiana, North Carolina, Georgia etc. These are all states that Mitt Romney won in 2012.
Now, an individual state might not be in play (safe for Republicans) or be contested where it ‘should not’ be, depending on who is the nominee from the GOP side. If they nominate Bob Portman then yes, he’ll probably win his home state of Ohio and most definitely Ohio will be in play. But even if Chris Christie is nominated, very soon the GOP will admit, by pulling most advertising away, that New Jersey will be a lost cause, it will vote for Hillary not Christie. Marco Rubio would bring Florida into play. Bobby Jindal would keep Louisiana out of play safely Republican etc. But that only matters on the top of the ticket. Even a well liked local boy politician like Paul Ryan was not able to ‘deliver’ his home state of Wisconsin for Romney in 2012. So yes, the Republicans can steal one of the desired battleground states away from Hillary by nominating a candidate from that state but even thats no guarantee. Romney lost all three of what he called his home states, Michigan, Massachussetts and New Hampshire.
Lets briefly touch on a couple of states and particular issues there. Ohio is considered the ultimate bell-weather, whoever wins Ohio usually also wins the election. Obama had a hard time in Ohio even though it has a nice black minority. Ohio has a lot of labor union membership but.. they were quite cool to Obama. Hillary is seen as a very close to labor candidate, she’ll easily win them over and that, with women, should be easily enough to deliver Ohio, in particular as they still remember it was Obama and the Democrats who saved Detroit and the well-paying car factory jobs that it brings to Ohio.
Florida the largest of the swing-states, is usually very tight. If there is a Floridian on the top of the ticket (Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio) that obviously would favor the Republicans. But if not, then Hillary is the oldest candidate since Reagan. Her age would resonate with the large retired-age vote in Florida (and there is likely to be a big age difference to the Republican candidate highlighting this difference). Again issues help, Republican votes against social security etc would be well exploited by Hillary. Yes of course women and Hispanics would also be big but the black vote in Florida would be down partly balancing that out. The decisive factor is the military vote. Hillary carries Florida rather easily as long as a Floridian is not the top of the GOP ticket against her.
Virginia has seen some of the fiercest war on women by the GOP and its past and convicted Governor, Bob McDonnell ie Governor Ultrasound. Romney lost Virginia in 2012 because of the women’s vote. Now that legacy is of course further poisoned by continued Republican war on women, exploited most easily by Hillary being a woman herself. Its most likely that both Presidential and VP choice by the Republicans are men, the gender gap alone in Virginia brings Hillary the win. But there is also a big military vote in Virginia. And here too, its totally Hillary with no hope at the GOP side. Easily Virginia is put away and will not be in play.
American politics by the vote-counting system of ‘Electoral College’ votes means that if one candidate wins two out of these three states, Ohio, Virginia and Florida, the election is essentially over (or becomes incredibly hard for the rival with remaining states). Hillary walks into the race having already won all three. Its going to be a bloodbath, because everybody knows this, and thus the GOP is doomed to attempt totally futile campaigning in these three states including expensive TV ads, while the needle won’t budge and Hillary consistently shows a stong lead in the polling and none of these three state show a tightening race. That will be utterly demoralizing to Republican volunteers and donors by September of 2016. It will be in Hillary’s interest to get the debates over early, so that the last gasp hope can be extinguished and the rats can start to escape the sinking ship. Because as long as there is a TV debate still to come, the losing side can still hold hope that it, the last debate, can be the game-changer they are praying for.
Let me mention one of the surprise states Hillary will run away with. Arizona. Arizona was just off the map with Obama, he considered it but found it out of reach. Now Hillary is the older candidate, Arizona has a large elderly retired population. Arizona has a large military vote, and Hillary appeals to that. And yes, Hispanics. Its not just one of the states where Hispanic population is a big minority, they also have had many fights with Jan Brewer the Governor and the ‘papers please’ laws etc. As the Democrats have been prepping the state to become purple and working to activate the non-voting Hispanic community, Hillary’s run will bring them out. I think Hillary will win Arizona rather easily with these advantages (as long as an Arizonan is not on the ticket). She will have to fight for it, but she will win it.
Has there ever been this lopsided an election? The electorate is already more Democratic than Republican. The population trends only push it more so. Hillary is a powerful campaigner and the GOP field has no Reagan-in-waiting. The issues all now align against the Republicans. The money is with the DEMs. The ground game is with the DEMs. The voter enthusiasm is severely up for Hillary including the greatest surge of a voting block ever seen while the Republican side will actually see the worst kind of erosion from their supporters - some will desert to vote for Hillary. The election will be a foreign policy election where Hillary has those credentials and none of the (currently expected) GOP candidates have any. And thats before the Putin tricks to supercharge the foreign policy matters. The primary season will severely bloody the GOP candidate while Hillary has one of the easiest primary seasons of anyone not actually the sitting President. The general election will see a whole flurry of flipflops by the Republican just to try to appeal to moderate and Independent voters while Hillary can remain steadfast on positions she held already eight years prior.
All this in a TV ad environment and social media echo chamber, YouTube videos and late night talk shows, where Hillary’s ads crush the GOP in volume and devastating content from flipflops to Republicans bickering and condemning their candidate in the primaries to some Republicans actually saying nice things about Hillary (from her time as Secretary of State). The conventions will almost certainly have discord maybe even open hostility on the GOP side while joyful indeed even gay cumbayah on the DEMs side. The campaign itself will feature superstar surrogates on Hillary’s side starting with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, while many Republicans will refuse to be even seen with their obviously-losing candidate. And political pundits will point out that as Hillary has a commanding lead in all vital battlegound states like Ohio, Virginia and Florida (and Colorado and New Mexico and Wisconsin), the race is essentially over.
THE INEVITABLE REPUBLICAN COLLAPSE
There has never been an election where all the fundamentals went to one side. Even in severely lopsided elections like Reagan’s re-election drubbing of Mondale, while Reagan held most advantages starting with incubency, Mondale did have the Democratic machine, get-out-the-vote and many strong constituents such as the far stronger labor union support to his side than what it is today. Mondale’s VP choice was Geraldine Ferraro which brought in some women voters to his side etc. And Reagan in his re-election 1984 was already 73 years old and had signs for example during a debate that he was confused. Reagan held most of the cards but not all. Hillary now has even more systematic total advantages going into 2016 than even Reagan had going into 1984. Some are new impacts that didn’t even matter then, like social media power and others of those advantages have grown from modest impact to far bigger (like the Hispanic vote). And Hillary to Democrats in a world of ISIS and Putin is pretty much the corollary of Reagan to Republicans in the world of 1980 with Iran hostages, Soviet invasion of Afghanistan etc. He was the strong hawkish proud conservative to head to the White House. She is now the strong hawkish proud liberal to head into the White House.
In 1984 the election (Reagan Mondale) was so clearly a bloodbath that many Democratic voters were demoralized and didn’t even show up to vote. So the final election result was even worse than last polls predicted and Reagan won by 18 points and won 49 of 50 states. Mondale only won his home state of Minnesota (and even that by a tiny margin). I believe that as Hillary will clearly lead going into the conventions in every poll side-by-side against her Republican rival, and then those polls don’t move into the GOP’s favor, there will be a collapse of Republican support. First, there will be a chorus of conservatives and past Republicans who will express admiration and support of Hillary Clinton, to the disgust of the GOP candidate. Then the money will vanish. Why would Republican donors bother to give money to the obvious loser. The support by the party will disapper, ever more of the sitting Senators, Governors etc will not want to be seen with the obvious-to-lose candidate. This all will be a vicious circle which means the polls will only worsen. There won’t be enough money to run a reasonable TV ad campaign and not enough money to travel as much as needed. The candidate will start to abandon states where they previously campaigned and claimed they had been competitive. The malaise will spread.
And then the ultimate happens, there will appear a small but very widely reported group of moderate Republicans and conservatives (mostly women) who will endorse Hillary. The election will be totally over by then. On election day many volunteers will not show up and actual voters will be severely depressed on the Republican side. Now, on the Democratic side there will also be a deflating of voter enthusiasm in as they feel the election is ‘in the bag’ but again - Hillary effect, the biggest single voting block - women - will not want to miss this opportunity. Even if overall Democratic voting intensity will be down for the blowout polls saying its a foregone conclusion that Hillary is going to win, nonetheless, women will show up in record numbers to celebrate the first female candidate for President. Even on this final election factor, Hillary can bank on her side winning big even when turnout is surprisingly low.
UNBELIEVABLE COAT TAILS
All the fundamental factors will favor Hillary over the GOP candidate. All of them. This has never happened before. The stars are truly perfectly aligned. So first, Hillary won’t need to break a sweat to win. Secondly, she has an unprecedented ad budget and unprecedentely strong surrogate team starting with Bill Clinton and Obama. There will be an incredible abundance of support that the ‘top of the ticket’ can give ‘downticket’ candidates. Hillary herself and the two Presidents will go help any Senators, Members of Congress and Governors in any tough races to go win their contests. The rival side has no money to waste on this and no superstar Presidents to spare for this kind of extravagance. There will be a Hillary wave so strong it will break through the gerrymandered Republican House of Representative seats in Congress, which the Republicans now feel are invulnerable.
Only a total massive Democratic tsunami-wave could dislodge those tea-party leaning super-safe gerrymandered GOP seats in red states. But those often very extremist conservative politicians have been voting for all the silliness that Hillary - and a huge chorus of Democrats and massive TV ad support - will now be campaigning against. As she wins the general election, her views will also support the replacement of many - by no means all - but enough of the Congress to bring in a Democratic House of Representatives, like Obama last had in 2008-2010 with Nancy Pelosi.
And the Senate? Same thing but far more pronounced as Senate seats cannot be gerrymandered very much. So the Democrats will sweep into the Senate and very likely have a filibuster-proof majority of 60 seats or more. Plus many Governors, and local state-wide offices will be flipped from Republican to Democrat.
This always happens when the President wins with a good majority like Reagan, Bill Clinton and Obama. But never has the first-election of a new President been anything near the blow-out it will be for Hillary in 2016. Even Reagan’s 1984 or Nixon’s 1972 were re-election blow-outs when they were incumbents. Hillary in 2016 has these massive coat tails in her first election. It will be enormous. And it will be unprecedented.
HILLARY AS PRESIDENT
Now, Hillary saw Obama coming and felt him rushing past her. Hillary then saw Obama try to govern and fulfill his promise of a ‘post partisan’ politics of compromise. And Hillary saw it bit Obama severely in the ass. Hillary learned. And Hillary is no Obama. She will come into the oval office with a clear Democratic partisan agenda. She’ll have the House with Nancy Pelosi and the Senate with Harry Reid. She can dictate what kind of legislation will be made. Pelosi knows the only reason she has the gavel is Hillary. Harry knows that the only reason he has no filibusters to worry about is... Hillary. They are both ambitious politicians with their own agendas. They know that Obama was a naive pretender but Hillary is the Iron Lady. They will give her everything she wants in 2016.
Hillary is a Clinton. That is synonymous with populist. So she will rush the most popular, populist laws early that get her the campaign promises and get her base to love her even more. Minimum wage, equal pay, immigration reform, environmental protection, student loans, abortion, higher taxes for millionaires. Obvious Democratic themes that the country will approve with high percentages. Her approval ratings will only soar (especially after 8 years of Obama and the gridlock they remember). The Republicans will bitch and complain that they are not consulted but she’ll ignore them. She is a Democrat and politician. And a partisan. After beating up the Republicans on the populist laws, she’ll listen to them but only allow the weak party its slightest contributions. Hillary saw what they did to Obama and won’t take any of it. Hillary also saw how quickly the nation turned against her husband and against Obama. She knows she has only a little bit of time with the majorities in both houses, so she’ll move fast, on mainly populist and popular legislation. Plus she’ll ‘play dirty’ to ensure the House will not revert back to the Republicans in 2018.
So she’ll run laws to make elections more fair, open and inclusive. These matters help Democrats win in the future and hurt Republicans. So she’ll force laws forbidding gerrymandering of districts (even as this will hurt some Democrats, she has enough support overall to run this in her first term). She’ll sign the law that overturns Citizens United ie limiting the total contributions allowed in elections - and forces all contributions to be openly identified, from whom and how much. She’s a lawyer and will employ great legal talent to make sure their law will also not be blocked by the Supreme Court. Overturning Citizens United will be a crushing blow for Republicans into the future as the Democrats now have a fund-raising machine based on grass-roots contributions but Republicans can no longer rely on unlimited secret cash from billionaires. She’ll also pass federal laws that forbid the voter restrictions like voter ID laws that Republicans have been running in many red states recently. And she’ll reauthorize the laws protecting minority rights in the Southern states that have a history of discrimination.
These also are all populist positions that the electorate will approve. They all are good for representative government and a Republican party of the 1980s would be well off with these changes. The current Tea Party crazed GOP will be crushed with these changes, giving most control of national and local government to Democrats probably for a decade past these laws (that advantage ignoring the other fundamental advantage of the demographic shifts in the nation also tipping it ever more to the Democratic side. Can you imagine, the Republicans will hark back to the time of Bush 2 as the ‘golden years’ when they last had power).
By not trying to be Obamaesque ‘post partisan’ but rather by being hyper-partisan, passing these laws that some Republicans often hate, she’ll then play dirty also here. Hillay will force the various laws to have language that Republicans hate, to ensure that even many moderate Republicans vote AGAINST the laws. This means that as these are all populist laws, the electorate will love them, and Democrats in 2018 (and 2020) can point to Republicans voting against popular laws. That in turn helps ensure that in the 2018 midterm elections, the nation will not vote out the Democrats and bring in another Republican wave to create more gridlock. This is the exact opposite of what Obama tried, by inserting Republican-friendly language and planks into all his laws, hoping to find Republicans to cross the aisle and come vote with him - to no avail. Hillary was in his cabinet when this happened, she saw it close up and being an ex Senator, she also heard from her friends how futile it was. She won’t even try it. No, Hillary comes in with unprecedented coat tails and a decisive mandate - she will also then rule as a liberal Democrat and iron lady.
And Hillary is a Clinton, she’ll remember and take revenge. Already in the 2016 election, when the votes are counted, you can bet in their privacy watching TV, Bill and Hillary will raise a glass of champagne several times when they see a few of their most hated Republican Senators or Members of the House go down to their first loss in decades - many such scalps coming now with Hillary’s coat tails - but grudges held by the Clintons from the Republican vote to impeach Bill Clinton all those years ago. Like the Klingons say, Revenge is a dish best served cold (actually Klingons stole that quote from the Sicilians).
So the Clinton revenge machine will also be live and well throughout Hillary’s term. Those Republican Senators or House Members in Congress who take a public stance against her, she’ll target for her 2020 election to crush (obviously of Senators only those whose election is in 2020). She is stronger and more partisan than husband Bill was, and she’ll hold a far stonger majority in both houses of Congress. And her wrath will be ever more severe by the fact that she’s seen what weakness and appeasing has given Obama. Nothing but pain. The only thing Republicans will respect is power. So Hillary will exhibit that power to an unprecedented degree. Expect her to have plenty of hated executive orders and early in her first term when the Democrats hold a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, she’ll push through liberal choices for judges and to various government postings. After 6 years of Republican obstructionism Harry Reid will be delighted to expedite those votes in the Senate.
The Republican leadership will then learn, that yes, Hillary will welcome their input to improve laws, not install any silly extremist views. They will want to have some influence, they will eventually come round, and work with the strong President. And she will demand the GOP leadership to then deliver votes too - meaning Hillary the strong liberal will actually achieve more Republican bipartisan votes than the ‘post partisan’ Obama ever was able to. Hillary knows what works and what doesn’t, and she’ll have such a strong power base (at least for two years till the next Midterms) that she can dictate the terms.
Hillarys biggest lasting influence will be, as it is with most two-term Presidents, the Supreme Court appointments. After 8 years of Democratic rule by Obama, another 8 by Hillary will mean a 16 year stretch for the DEMs to get their favored nominees in. Early in her term Hillary won’t need to worry about appointing moderates so for example Ruth Ginsburg can retire with confidence that Hillary will replace her with an equally sharp mind and strong liberal. (Oh, and don’t be surprised if Hillary appoints Obama to the bench. Somehow it seems like that is what he really always wanted more than to be President. The ex Law Professor. That is his first love, constitutional law; not being President. But law. What better place to protect the Constitution than to sit on the bench with a lifetime appointment and to get there as young as Obama still will be in 2017 or so. Listen to how much Obama’s press conference answers are like well constructed supreme court decisions, explaining all the points in such detail. Get to the point, please, Mr President, can you get to the point? Yes, it makes for boring sound bites but would make excellent written reasoning to explain a difficult court ruling).
OBAMA LOVE
The Republicans by about 2019 will be singing praises of Obama the post-partisan President they should have embraced rather than dictatorial and vindictive Hillary. (Oh, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and Ann Colter will hate Hillary like nothing they’ve ever hated before. I wonder how Hillary can then run some nasty law or executive order to punish Fox fake news station for being so partisan. I would guess the Nancy Pelosi-controlled Congress might investigate Fox neutrality in news coverage and there might be some penalties haha... it will be an interesting side show. But Fox viewers will feel the Obama hate was the polite period of Fox Presidential coverage haha)
Obama in the new Fox narrative of 2019 will be the Democratic moderate hero who was stopped ‘by the idiot wing’ of their own party. The Republicans will soon learn to fear Hillary and will not attempt any reneging on any promises made to her about any laws or ‘compromises’ that the John Boehner regularly did with his ‘negotiations’ with Obama. They don’t respect weakness, they only respect strength. In Hillary they will see the strongest President of the modern era. She is that way partly by nature (she’s stronger than Bill her husband for example, the real - or some would say only - iron in the backbone of that family) and partly by seeing both strength and weakness in the office of President and how that power actually works in practise.
Hillary finally will have to guard against overreach and the demands of the liberal wing of the Democrats to take everything and bankrupt the country doing that. There will be carbon tax and it will hurt some business. Hillary needs to guard against it being too severe. Over time controlling the liberal wing will become ever more difficult because the early populist liberal ideology will be very well received by the electorate and Hillary will avoid the usual midterm revenge of the electorate. The period will also be costly as there will be plenty of expensive military action too, she will be tested as first female leaders often are like Maggie Thatcher, Indira Gandhi and Golda Meir were for example.
And the risk of scandals will grow with time. The time I am talking about is not Hillary time that starts from 2017. It is ‘Democratic Presidency’ time which started with Obama in 2009. Hillary will have to fill cabinet posts from a Democratic talent pool that is already partly depleted by the 8 Obama years and some of the best Democratic and liberal talent will have done their time and won’t want to come back. By her second term and 12 years into it, the Democrats are definitely onto their third tier talent (sometimes fourth tier) which continuously increases the risk of various scandals developing ranging from incompetence to fraud and the inevitable sex scandal. I would consider it a miracle if there isn’t a genuine ‘Iran-Contra’ or Watergate scale true scandal by Hillary’s second term. We may see one even during the last years of Obama but his administration has truly lived up to ‘no drama Obama’ and is unprecedented in how little scandal has been there. Some Secret Service hookers? A broken IT system to launch Obamacare. These are truly peanuts compared to Reagan’s Iran-Contra for example or the Bush-Cheney lies about Weapons of Mass Destruction.
HILLARY RE-ELECTION OF 2020
As she can rather easily fulfill all her campaign promises (and to win her nomination she won’t have to promise too much, and she won’t promise the impossible what Obama tried with post-partisan end to gridlock in Washington DC) she will also have the easiest re-election anyone had since Reagan. That election 2020 will see her approaching Reagan re-election numbers and might see her winning 49 states like Nixon and Reagan did in their re-elections. There may be war (incumbent Presidents are never expelled during wars) or economic crisis or scandals and Hillary may have had some health issue, these all would be factors that greatly alter the equation. But probably by 2022 Midterm elections, the country will be ready for an alternative to Democrat rule, and as the Republicans will have re-generated they will by then start to have a new (and intelligent, smart, facts-based, non extremist) views and ideas and will win back many seats in Congress and some seats in the Senate. As the gerrymandering laws will prevent another Republican lock in the vote to House seats, and the Republicans have lost much of the future with an ever shrinking base, they won’t have much of a chance to take the House or Senate by 2022 or 2024 but the easiest win would be to try the Presidency after Hillary.
For 2024 the Republicans will be able to nominate a moderate who also will have a chance to win, as Hillary’s eight years will be up. Hillary will be seen as a very old grandma of the nation and some young gun with a fresh youthful energetic message will find fresh appeal. Remember young voters grow into middle age, the newest young voting public of 2024 were not even in their teens when Obama was on the ticket back in 2012. The youngest Obama voter will be 30 years old at that electon. So the ‘youth vote of 2024’ won’t have had time to remember what youthful inexperience can bring. And Democrats will still remember how badly ‘post partisanship’ worked for their guy, but the Republicans will have shred the Tea Party baggage into exile and the moderate wing will be in power. Many will then say, actually Obama had a good point, maybe we should try it now... Whatever the message in 2024, whether likely scandals and incompetence 16 years into Democratic rule, or just fatigue with that one party, or youth, or just ‘the next Ronald Reagan’ to emerge for the Republicans, year 2024 is the first tough challenge for Democrats in the Presidential race. By then the demographic shifts will have locked the Hispanic vote to a great degree for Democrats, but... but the Republican antidote would be a Hispanic candidate to President, wouldn’t it? Thats when Marco Rubio would have his day, or Suzana Martinez might be the new rising star or Brian Sandoval might be that hero. (Ted Cruz while being a Hispanic won’t have any chance winning the Presidency in any year, he’s as impossible as Sarah Palin would inspite of being a woman.)
HOW COULD GOP CHANGE THIS FATE?
Its of course possible that Hillary is not the candidate in 2016 or she falls on this journey. She’s 67 years old now. If she has a heart attack or some other such health issue, all bets are off. But essentially anything else is now impossible. If there is some war, she’s the most competent foreign policy President so its only to her advantage. If the economy turns sour before now and November 2016, that would hurt her chances somewhat yes, but not much, as so much blame can still be pushed at Republican obstructionism and any GOP candidates in this tea-party environment have to give conservative solutions. Hillary easily wins the economic argument that road-building, bridge-building etc is then needed immediately (and a higher minimum wage etc). Ebola? There is no Ebola-expert in the GOP field so it would be a wash. But the Democrats are seen better on healtcare matters overall. Etc.
But it IS possible to make a race of it. There is only one way. Because Hillary is on the ticket, this will be THE vote for women like 2008 was THE vote for the blacks. And as women are the largest conceivable voting block, that in itself is decisive. Because Hillary is so much competent on all aspects (she cannot be accused of not being competent to be President), there will be a gender gap which will be unbreachably wide. Romney had a gender gap of 10 points. Hillary’s will be at least 20 points. And the 2016 election will see the biggest difference in total voters women vs men, ie biggest gap in favor of female voters ever because the womens vote will surge (and likely Republican support will be down which skewes to men). So this is going to be the election Hillary cannot lose. Except with one way. If the Republicans also nominate a woman for President. Vice President is not enough. But yes, if the Republicans nominate a man for President against Hillary they cannot win. But if they nominate a woman for President then there is at least a chance. A distant chance but yes, a chance. This is sour medicine for Chris Christie and Ted Cruz and Rob Portman and Bobby Jindal and Jeb Bush etc but if its Hillary on one side and a man on the other side, that election is won by the woman by at least 10 points whatever superman was the rival. And none of those is a superman.
Now, that GOP woman Presidential candidate has to be very strong and acceptable to the moderates and Independents. The perfect rival woman candidate is strong on foreign policy, a moderate Republican, a minority preferrably Latina, and if possible with some business/economic or governing background. If the GOP can find that kind of candidate, then its still a race. Else its over in 2016. The gender gap is the strongest possible advantage and Hillary will hold it. Unbeatable. Plus its a foreign policy election so business skills or Governor background is not enough.
Now, acceptable woman? Sarah Palin that is not. Michelle Bachman has no chance. Jan Brewer cannot win. It has to be someone seen as sensible and reasonable, not a tea-party favorite or total basket case. So who? Well, Condi Rice or Kelly Ayotte or Carly Fiorina, or Susana Martinez or someone like that. And of that group, Condaleeza would be seen as the most competent in the upcoming foreign policy election and at least on paper, would be the most viable of these women that I can think of at this point in time.
None of them have in any way expressed an interest in running and are not mentioned as likely candidates. But it need not be. It is also possible, that the Republican nomination is so messed up, it goes to a brokered convention (unlikely). And then its possible that none of the front-runners can accept any of each other as the final candidate (even less likely). And its conceivable that the party leaders went out of that group, and seeked a true outsider compromise candidate that all can support (this is so wild, its a Hollywood script). But yeah, I can see that under that microscopically tiny chance of a scenario, the Republicans could find an outsider candidate and then, by some wisdom (unlikely) they do come to that conclusion to seek a woman and (even far more unlikely) they’d somehow manage to convince someone like one of those women I mentioned, to become the nominee inspite the splintered party and the steamroller that is the Hillary train by then.
THIS PAIRING COULD MAKE IT INTERESTING
So imagine Condi Rice as Presidential candidate and say Marco Rubio as VP. She’d be a woman neutralizing the gender gap. She’s also an ex Secretary of State so she’d neutralize the foreign policy advantage and in a foreign policy election would make it now an even score. At least on paper, Condaleeza Rice would arguably help bring California into play (that too a long shot but lets be positive). California in play would definitely be a game-changer. She’d still be a Republican and carry all the Weapons of Mass Destruction and other such baggage of the Bush-Cheney years but she could neutralize the two biggest factors in Hillary’s arsenal: the gender gap and foreign policy credentials. Condi is now the Director of Stanford University MBA school’s international business department so she’d also be more credible on purely economic things (arguably) than Hillary. Not yet an even fight but now the GOP is in the hunt. And Condi on the ticket would bring some blacks to the GOP ticket (but not the majority, the Republicans have been that long against various issues relevant to the blacks).
Toss in Marco Rubio and Florida is almost certainly now going to go red. And Rubio puts the Hispanics in play (but probably Hillary also nominates a Hispanic, so that would then cancel out). At the very least, now also the largest ethnic minority was also neutralized. And if Florida is saved for the GOP, there is still a fight to be had while it woudl be a severe uphill climb even with this pairing.
Now, those choices as candidate would not be enough. The electorate is not that dumb and Hillary has so huge bundles of cash that she will make sure everybody knows what the Republicans have stood for, for decades in the issues relating to women and Hispanics and the costly Bush-Cheney wars and running up the deficit. So there would need to be also a big change to the party. The GOP would have to eat some very serious dog-shit with this pairing. The party leaders would have to quite publically apologize (in typical politician non-apology weasel way no doubt) for the war on women and the hostility to Hispanics (yeah like thats gonna happen in time..). And they would need to do between now and October 2016 some clear gestures in Congress the earlier the better. And any laws they’d bring in now about women or Hispanics would be seen as victories for Obama so this would be incredibly painful for John Boehner, Reince Priebus and Mitch McConnell to stomach and essentially impossible for the tea party wing to ever vote for, so they’d have to also do it by inviting Democrats to vote with them. etc. So this is a pipe dream in any conceivable scenario.
Even then Hillary is the far more experienced campaigner and what we’ve seen of Condi she’s not very powerful on the stage or with the press (at least yet). Hillary has the ground game advantage, the issues advantage and the money advantage. She’s still be the favorite to win but at least if these two were not in the actual primary race (or dropped out early) then there would not be much damning videotape of them pandering to the tea party.
AN EPIC DEFEAT
Can this happen. No. The Republicans are doomed for 2016. Hillary will win by at least 12 points (56% to 44% in the popular vote) which would not just be a landslide, it would be the biggest winning margin in 32 years and the biggest first-election (non re-election) margin since the second world war. A 12 point margin gives Hillary about 7 more states than what Obama took in his landslide in 2008 (so think in addition to Indiana and North Carolina, states that Romney took back that McCain lost to Obama, add now in for example Georgia, Missouri, Alaska, Montana, Louisiana, Arizona and Arkansas. And yes, Texas would be a battleground state in 2016 which Hillary will take at least in 2020). In the Electoral College votes that margin would be something as crushing as 418 to 120. The Republican would win only about 12 to 18 states.
It may well be, as long as roughly everything I say here happens, depending on who the Republicans nominate, and how that campaign is run, that Hillary approaches Reagan’s 18 point margin of victory already in 2016. She will pass 20 points of margin (60-40) by her re-election when she may well match the Reagan and Nixon record of winning 49 states out of 50 (because in 2020 she adds to the above the power of incumbency and she’s also passed tons of laws that actually remove some systematic unfair election law advantages the Republicans have pushed through or the Supreme Court has approved. And finally, she’ll have signed a series of populist laws so she’ll have fulfilled her election promises and also enacted popular laws.)
Let me repeat. There has never been an election where one side holds all the cards. Democrats have more voters, their margin only growing due to demographics. Because the Republicans have not stopped waging war on the demographic and ethnic groups that are growing, this issue alone decides it for Hillary. The money and ground game are both in the DEMs column. The issues domestically all on Hillary’s side and she’s by far the more competent on foreign policy too. This will be a foreign policy election and that issue alone decides it for Hillary. With Putin fearing Hillary, he’s likely to make a major move right during the election which will only serve to highlight the foreign policy credentials issue and drive up her winning margin. For women this is the surge election where unprecedented number of normally non-voting women will show up. Their numbers are that enormous that this issue alone not just decides the election but guarantees a landslide victory. But the other demographic trends also help Hillary and hurt the rival. Even worse for the GOP those trends tend to impact Southern ‘red’ states to flip to vote for the DEMs. Labor will be energized, Hispanics will vote in record numbers, and Hillary will steal many Republicans from the national security/military wing.
Hillary’s campaign is better, she is the better candidate and she has an unprecedentedly strong surrogate team. Her rivals are forced to ridiculous extremist positions in a bitter long nomination fight probably meaning discord also at their convention. That contrasted to the party that the DEMs will throw for Hillary. Her supporters are very enthusiastic while most Republican supporters will be severely demoralized. Because there seems to be no hope, at some point in the last weeks the Republican support will simply collapse and Republican voters will not even show up. She has so much dominance to spare, she can help most other Democrats to also win. The mutual support will create a virtuous cycle where all Democrats and even some Republicans support her, and Hillary will help them win.
There has never been an election where one side held all the advantages. In elections with far lesser advantages, first-time (ie non-incumbent) Presidents have managed to win in landslides like Reagan and Obama. Hillary is destined to win by landslide even if all the luck goes against her. The only possible thing that could derail her is a major health issue like a heart attack and even that would not necessarily end her chances. Pay attention to the 2016 election, it will be historic.
In the 2008 election I correctly called it when the McCain campaign had died (suspend campaign). In the 2012 campaign I also correctly called it when the Romney campaign died (47% video). In 2012 I gave a prediction a little before the election and I did get 49 state elections predicted correctly and only missed one, obviously I called correctly the overall election win for Obama. So its not like I have no understanding of the US political process. But its not my core competence. I am a geeky expert and analyst and author of a totally different industry, mobile telecoms and digital tech. This blog article is just a public commentary about a hobby topic for me, to share with those of my readers who also share an interest in US politics.
Yes, there are many who already now are coronating Hillary Clinton, I am not the first to do so. But not many are daring to predict today before the 2014 midterms are done, that Hillary will win by double digits. I will be here in November 2016 for you to come and ridicule me if this was a silly posting or to discuss how it went, if I end up near the mark. And I will return periodically to this topic as we get into the contest, when significant developments happen, to update you if my prediction is still on track. But I have to tell you, I am stunned looking at my analysis, to find that yes, indeed, every conceivable advantage is with Hillary Rodham Clinton, the next President of the United States elected to office two years from now. Wow.
Just a word to those posting comments. My regular readers know the rules. Your comment has to reflect the fact that you read this (horribly long) article. If my response to you would require me to write ‘if you had read the full article’ - I won’t waste the time of my readers for such nonsense and your comment will be deleted even if it otherwise made good points. Keep the discussion civil but yeah, lets talk 2016. What do you think about Hillary’s chances in light of what I wrote and did this article expose some hidden advantages that you hadn’t thought of yet?
Once again Tomi is posting what he wants to happen, not necessarily what will actually happen. Hillary is the favorite because no serious Democrat is going to challenge her, but 2008 shows she is far from inevitable. She actually is not a very good campaigner and never faced a serious electoral challenge until 2008, when she lost to a relative unknown, albeit one who was a very good campaigner and used data analytics like no one before or since.
2016 is a fundamentally strong year for Democrats, but so was 2000 when Al Gore campaigned. The economy was strong and Bill Clinton was popular, so Gore should have coasted. The GOP, after having thrown away very winnable races in 2010 and 2012, seems to have gotten the message and will likely vet their prospective candidates accordingly in 2016.
Posted by: KPOM | October 30, 2014 at 01:13 PM
@ Tomi, the Democrats are the party of rich white men.
Posted by: KPOM | October 30, 2014 at 01:17 PM
@KPOM
"Tomi, the Democrats are the party of rich white men."
Not by voters. Remember the "slut vote" and "They said what about rape?" jokes going around in 2012. The GOP is strong among (rich) old white male voters and weak everywhere else.
I think Tomi's predictions are most vulnerable to panic gripping the GOP when they realize the above scenario is going to happen.
That might bring them to do the UNTHINKABLE. The GOP might be driven to field a credible candidate. Say, a very bright female (Hispanic) candidate from their ranks.
Say, a ticket with one or two from Condoleezza Rice, Susana Martinez, Ana Navarro?
We might laugh now, but panic can do strange things to people.
Posted by: Winter | October 30, 2014 at 03:15 PM
The war on women has been fabricated for exactly this reason, but the believers jumped the shark and are now creating a serious backlash. Hillary has a lot of money and X chromosomes, but she also has a string of failures and no notable successes to her name. Maybe if the election was right now, just being a woman would be enough, but I doubt it will shield her going forward. You take that she is a strong candidate as a given, when it is anything but. You don't even present the history of Obama's administration honestly for exposition on how Hillary will learn from it. This is political fanfiction, but kudos on you for having the gumption to stake your reputation on a prediction so bold, especially one so far outside of your expertise. If it comes true, I will take your opinion seriously again. Until that day, take care.
Posted by: B.J.I. | October 30, 2014 at 05:45 PM
Will she be alive in 2016?
I think her health issues will force her not to run.
Posted by: Richard Martin | October 30, 2014 at 07:24 PM
Yep, demographics. It isn't just Hilary who would benefit, but yes, she is the likeliest candidate (like you I assume Michelle Obama will run for lower office first).
Think you've nailed it Tomi.
Only one quibble - could you please spell/grammar check your posts? You've got words like 'spouce' and you used 'then' instead of 'when' a couple of times...
Sorry. I get paid to do editing, and I tend to really notice stuff like that.
Wayne
Posted by: Wayne Borean | October 30, 2014 at 07:26 PM
@Winter, in current polls, the GOP has closed the gender gap considerably. Plus, Hillary is "old" and "white." Condi Rice is probably too tarnished by the Bush association. Susana Martinez would be interesting, but if she were interested, she'd probably have put her name in for the VP nomination in 2012 (my guess is Romney would have picked her instead of Paul Ryan).
The GOP establishment has thought about the exact scenario that Tomi describes, and is doing its best to prevent it. That's why there are no Todd Akins or Christine O'Donnells this time around on the GOP side. The most extreme example of this is what they did in Mississippi, when they actively courted African Americans to vote in the GOP primary to prevent a Tea Party challenger from winning the nomination. In any case, they are as aware as any that they don't have a very deep bench, but will do what they can with what they have.
Rubio and Christie are far less damaged than Tomi thinks they are. No one cares about "Bridgegate" and the investigation hasn't turned up anything. Odds are still with the Democrats in 2016, but Hillary isn't blowing anybody out. 2008 shouldn't have been close. Hillary should have had the nomination sealed by Super Tuesday but was outmaneuvered by David Plouffe and David Axelrod. It also helped that Obama wasn't burdened by a vote for the Iraq War, so he got the "progressive" wing of the party that is oddly suspicious of Hillary because they don't like Bill (though they do like his ability to raise money).
Tomi also overestimates what Hillary (or any next president) could actually do. Just because Bill Clinton was a centrist dealmaker who was able to get things done with a hostile Congress doesn't mean that Hillary would be able to do the same. Heck, Bill let Hillary run his attempt to reform the healthcare system and that ended up going down in flames and taking down the Democratic Congress with it. Her Senate career was mostly unremarkable. She tries to talk up foreign policy, but that generally doesn't win elections, and she was part of the administration that's perceived as having been asleep at the wheel on issues like ISIS and Ukraine.
The next president's biggest impact is going to be on SCOTUS. Chances are pretty good that before 2020, Ginsburg, Scalia, Thomas, and Kennedy will retire (almost certainly by 2024). The GOP has a tendency to nominate a mix of reliable conservatives (intentionally) and moderates (accidentally). The Democrats (even centrists like Bill Clinton) nominate reliable liberals. The current court has 4 liberals (including Ginsberg), a moderate in Kennedy, a weak conservative in Roberts, and 3 reliable conservatives (including Scalia and Thomas). We could have a 7-2 liberal court, a 6-3 conservative court, or something in between, depending on who gets elected in 2016. I'd much rather take my chances with a GOP president since liberal courts generally let the federal government run wild. I'd prefer more Kennedys on the court.
Posted by: KPOM | October 30, 2014 at 07:35 PM
Thanks guys!
Am dead from very long day here in Ecuador, but will return to chat about these things. I know it was hideously long but I just ran out of time to try to edit it down further. So I appreciate it that you guys read it and are commenting.
Pls keep the discussion going and I'll get you replies now over the weekend (from Bolivia... a James Bond country...)
Tomi Ahonen :-)
Posted by: Tomi T Ahonen | October 31, 2014 at 04:43 AM
My father is a very fundamental conservative, so I hear an interesting alternative interpretation of events.
In particular, Obamacare, based on Romneycare, is in no way a conservative thing. It mandates particular conditions on insurance plans (Boo! Hiss! Regulations!) and for unprofitable plans it has the government pick up the slack (Boo! Hiss! Welfare!). I'm currently underemployed, so I tried applying for California's version of Medicare, and only next month, almost a year after I applied for it, the health plan is being approved and I can start ruining the nation's economy with it.
I don't like Obama as Supreme Court Justice, after all his lies about mass surveillance.
The Republican Party is in seriously bad health. Nobody likes being called crazy, and even the big-business leadership of the party is calling the Tea Party crazy. The Republican Party is already the nation's smaller party, and I don't think it can win any elections being formally split apart.
I have personal distaste for this whole system of coalition parties that stand for nothing, with candidates that carefully flip-flop for particular voting blocs. The outcome I would like to see is for the Republican Party to shatter apart, and some new party rise out of the ashes being principled for something. Like how the Republican Party displaced the Whigs based on their stance on slavery. I think this is very unlikely, but a person can dream.
Posted by: R | October 31, 2014 at 11:13 AM
@R, as you point out, the parties are odd coalitions of groups that have little in common. The Republicans historically were a mix of affluent pro-business types out East and in the Midwest, "rugged individualists" in the West, and a decidely liberal wing in the Northeast. After the 1960s, social conservatives and evangelicals in the South left the Democratic party and joined the Republican Party. Reagan successfully wooed socially conservative lower-middle class voters (the "Reagan Democrats").
Democrats historically were a mix of socially liberal "progressives," the "working class," ethnic minorities, and union workers. Members latter three groups often actually very socially conservative.
There was much more overlap between the parties. In particular, the Northeast Republicans had much more in common with the "progressives" in the Democratic party on social issues (though they parted ways on fiscal issues) than they did with Southern Republicans, while Southern Democrats had much more in common with the evangelicals and a lesser extent the pro-business types in the GOP than they did with the progressives.
What has happened is that the overlap has shrunk quite a bit after successive wave elections in the 1990s through today (1994, 2002, 2006, 2010). Many Southern Democrats either were defeated by Republicans or switched parties. This election threatens most of what's left of them (though Michelle Nunn may pull out a victory, and Kay Hagan will likely survive, having run a virtually flawless campaign). Most of the Northeast Republicans were defeated in the 1990s or switched parties. Romney is a mix of the pro-business and Northeast liberal wings (no surprise since his father was governor of Michigan and he's lived most of his adult life in the Northeast).
By and large, the GOP Establishment is mostly the pro-business wing, while they depend on the votes of what's left of the "Reagan Democrats" and their descendants (who are now mostly Republican), and the evangelicals. The latter two groups generally are socially conservative and are suspicious of foreign labor (particularly the "Reagan Democrats"), which puts them at odds with the Establishment. The Reagan Democrats are generally suspicious of high taxes and government waste, but are perfectly fine with entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, which they view as insurance programs that they "paid for" through their taxes. The Tea Party started out as an economic reaction to the bailouts that briefly united all wings of the party, but was quickly co-opted by the evangelicals and social conservatives, and thus more closely represents the "Reagan Democrat."
It's getting harder and harder to reconcile or paper over the divisions in the GOP. The pro-business types would love to make an immigration deal with the Democrats, perhaps in exchange for a cut in the corporate tax rate. It would be a win-win for them. But that would anger the Tea Party types.
I need to run, but my next post will focus on divisions within the Democratic party.
Posted by: KPOM | October 31, 2014 at 02:07 PM
Tomi, I think your prediction is pretty much a pipe-dream, and I'd have to go a little further and note that it is a pipe-dream based three issues. The first issue is a very reasonable, very justifiable anxiety. The second is a clear misunderstanding of how the American media operates. The third is a deep misunderstanding, both of Hillary Clinton and how Ms. Clinton is perceived in the U.S.
FIRST, With regard to the anxiety, the current crop of Republicans is so very, very deeply insane that the idea of a Tea-Party Republican as President getting everything he/she wants from a Tea-Party Congress is deeply frightening. These are people who could do any number of horrible things, both nationally and internationally, including the appointment of Supreme Court justices who will overturn every single law that doesn't acknowledge the supremacy of white, male heterosexuals.
In the event of a Republican win in 2016 we're looking at renewed war in the Middle East, possibly including the use of nukes (against Iran,) a renewed cold war with Russia/China, and a horrible chilling of relations with Europe. On the national front we're looking at the end of all gains made by women, people of color and gay/bi/trans people. We're looking at the end of environmentalism and the end of any further efforts against global warming. We're looking at a surveillance state far uglier than our current surveillance state, and that surveillance will apply internationally, complete with all the thuggery and blackmail a surveillance state implies.
If the Republicans win control of the Senate in 2014, you'll get a good look at how crazy they are. I suspect that the first thing we'll see is an attempt to impeach Obama and to destroy every member of his administration.
It is completely understandable that someone from a country with good schools and a functioning news apparatus will go into deep denial about the possibility of Tea-Party America.
SECOND, I don't think you understand how worthless our news media is when it comes to communicating with the American people. As you probably know from polling data, most registered voters agree with liberal ideas when polled about these issues using neutral language which is divorced from politics. However, a substantial number of those who agree with liberal ideas don't vote that way. That's because our press is 90% owned by huge media companies with conservative agendas and most reporters are spouting bullshit. This goes from the largest television news outlets to website to magazines to newspapers; it is impossible to get a clear view of which candidates correspond to the positions a single citizen actually agrees with.
Most of our news media practices "responsible" reporting, which means they don't explain in clear terms that Sarah Palin is crazy, that the Tea Party is a deeply racist, male supremacist institution, or that global warming deniers are fundamentally ignorant. "Responsible" reporting also includes the idea, or at least the implication, that Hillary is a communist, terrorist, socialist, Muslim feminzai, and a surprising number of our voters aren't even capable of understanding that the idea of someone being both a communist and a Muslim is deeply self-contradictory.
THIRD, I don't think you understand either Hillary Clinton or the way she is perceived in the United States. The first thing to understand is that Hillary is not a liberal. This cannot be over-emphasized. Hillary Clinton is not a liberal. She is, at the very best, a centrist. She is deeply tied into the business community and she will be getting millions of dollars in donations from that business community. She will represent the "sane" portion of the business community and will occasionally throw the social liberals a bone. Don't expect her to effectively work against global warming, the financial community, or big coal/oil. It isn't going to happen. (Remember that her husband signed the bill that killed Glass-Steagal.) If Hillary is "Liberal" it is only because these days an American "moderate" inhabits the same political terrain as Ronald Reagan or Richard Nixon.
As to how Hillary is perceived... there are very few Liberals or Progressives who actually like her. She's much too far to the right for any Liberal to work terribly hard on her behalf. She tends to treat the right with appeasement rather than opposition and this does not endear her to Liberals. To be blunt, most Liberals see her as a wolf in sheep's clothing. Some actively hate her.
To the right, Hillary may as well be Eva Braun. The average Tea Party Republican regards Hillary as Satan's Handmaiden and any moderate Republicans that remain are deeply suspicious of her. Outlets such as Fox News or CNN will report any new half-sane accusation against her as "serious" news and less "responsible" right-wing journalists will happily report that she keeps young Baptist virgins as sex-slaves for the UN Black Helicopter pilots in her Super-Secret Islamic Volcano Fortress. If she does run for President in the general election, expect to see the ugliest propaganda campaign since World War II.
Will Hillary win the election in 2016? It's possible, but it certainly won't be a blow-out. It will be an uphill battle against both the Liberal and Conservative wings of American politics, both of whom dislike her for their own reasons. If she does win, I'd expect very poor results for Democrats in the down-ticket races as Americans hedge their bets.
Posted by: Troutwaxer | November 02, 2014 at 07:42 PM
@Troutwaxer, calm down buddy. The Tea Party is a minority component of the weaker of 2 parties, and the GOP establishment is doing its best to marginalize them. That's why there are no Christine O'Donnells or Todd Akins running on the GOP side this year.
I'm far more concerned about the Elizabeth Warren wing of the Democratic party. They are just as nuts as the extremists in the Tea Party, but their views are becoming mainstream within the Democratic Party. How has it come to it that not wanting to pay for someone else's birth control is tantamount to wanting to "ban contraception and abortion"? Why is Hillary out there saying that businesses don't create jobs? And politial correctness has run amok. The left is far more intolerant of dissent than the right.
Posted by: KPOM | November 02, 2014 at 09:47 PM
Tomi is Finnish. I'm Canadian. We both have experience with 'Functioning Democracies' which the United States most definitely is not.
Part of Tomi's analysis depends on the mi or fact that the United States is effectively a one party country. The Republicans and the Democrats are separate wings of that party, trading power every so often.
No other advanced country has such a limited political landscape. In Canada we have five different parties represented in the House of Commons, our legislature. Tomi can tell you how many parties are in the Finnish legislature.
Under that set of circumstances, Americans really don't have any choice in their leadership. And that is going to kill the country.
Posted by: Wayne Borean | November 03, 2014 at 03:49 PM
Here is a site with some beautiful pictures of gerrymandering in action:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/05/15/americas-most-gerrymandered-congressional-districts/
and here another rendering:
http://pjmedia.com/zombie/2010/11/11/the-top-ten-most-gerrymandered-congressional-districts-in-the-united-states/
These district shapes are pure art.
Posted by: Winter | November 04, 2014 at 08:12 AM
@Wayne, the number of parties isn't a reliable indicator of how functional a democracy is. Germany in 1933 had 11 parties represented in the Bundestag and we all know how that turned out. The proportional representation system gives too much power to minor parties. If we had that here in the US, the Tea Party and Greens would be potential kingmakers in red and blue states, respectively. We'd be even more polarized.
Posted by: KPOM | November 04, 2014 at 01:30 PM
@KPOM:
" If we had that here in the US, the Tea Party and Greens would be potential kingmakers in red and blue states, respectively. We'd be even more polarized. "
Instead you get an entire party being eaten up by those cancerous elements so the minority is not just 'kingmaker' but will eventually become the kings and dictate policy.
The only reason they haven't been sent into the desert is your two-party system because without the crazies the Republicans would lose all power they have.
The system is completely and utterly broken right now - but what baffles me most is that some (presumably sane) business types still support this hodgepodge of insanity, actually believing it'll benefit their agenda.
I agree with Wayne Borean, this will eventually kill the country and possibly tear it apart if some extremists like the Tea party gain power.
The American political system was fine when it was created in the 18th century, but it was never really modernized since them, most of its archaic idiosyncracies are still fully present and make abuse far too easy.
Posted by: RottenApple | November 04, 2014 at 03:09 PM
@RottenApple, the GOP establishment is weeding out the Tea Party elements and even appealed to Democrats in Mississippi to overcome a primary challenge. The only Todd Akins and Christine O'Donnell's this time around are on the Democratic side (e.g. Mark "Uterus" Udall, Alison Lundergan "I support a minimum wage increase while my family's restaurant pays their servers $2.13/hour" Grimes, and Bruce "Senator Grassley is just a farmer from Iowa" Braley).
Meanwhile, the anti-business "progressive" wing is slowly taking over the Democratic party, and no one seems to care. Even Hillary (supposedly a "moderate") is out there campaigning with Elizabeth Warren saying that businesses don't create jobs.
Look at Israel if you want a modern example of how a proportional government works. The two major parties would have signed a peace settlement years ago. But particularly the center-right parties wind up having to form coalitions with some hardline parties to form working coalitions. Grand coalitions between the center-right and center-left fall apart.
Posted by: KPOM | November 04, 2014 at 04:42 PM
It's laughable the way leftists here, there and everywhere call the people on the other end of the spectrum "crazy". I don't call Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders crazy. I call her wrong.
Hillary strikes me as the Romney of the Democrats. A chameleon, she will shift her external behavior and views to however the wind is blowing. Assuming no further-left candidate upstart steals her thunder again like Obama did in 2008, she's going to get a decent amount of the base out. Let's not rule out third party (Green) candidate siphoning off her votes if she's painted as too cozy to business and not enough of a dove for the socialist-pacifist base.
On the Republican side, it's wide open. KPOM may be right, in that the GOP is trying to quash "Tea Party" elements, but Ted Cruz is not shutting up, and Rand Paul (who is painted with the same brush but absolutely is not in the same boat as what the Tea Party became) is also getting a lot of run. Cruz wouldn't have a chance. Rand Paul would, since he can change some of the demographic shift with his appeal to the youth. Paul could successfully paint Hillary as a continuation of the disingenuous Obama administration whose CIA spies on your phones, reads your emails, has sent arms to god-knows-who in the middle east, etc.
Romney was a mediocre candidate. Obama was the first black president and hadn't quite yet been exposed. Still the difference in vote was less than 4%. The reality is that the U.S. is still very much split down the middle in terms of affiliation. Any competent Republican candidate should fare at LEAST as well was Romney did (47.2%) which means definitely no landslide as Tomi predicts.
Posted by: Matches | November 04, 2014 at 06:36 PM
The US is not split down the middle, exactly. It's more like ranging from 30-30-40 to 25-25-50. The last number represents the people who can vote but do not. There are various reasons for this.
I know I would be much less motivated to vote if I didn't live in San Francisco, California with all these fun initiatives to vote on.
http://techcrunch.com/2014/11/02/so-you-want-to-fix-the-housing-crisis/
Posted by: R | November 04, 2014 at 10:53 PM
US Republican have just recaptured the Senate majority. Turn out is around 40%, even the best voter identification database in the world cannot force people to go out and vote.
Posted by: Ronin8317 | November 05, 2014 at 04:52 AM