2016 Postmortem
Related: About this forumHillary is an incompetent election campaigner.
The real truth is that Bernie's won more elections, lost quite a few. He's been at this since the 1970's.
What's Hillary's election history? She won two elections in New York, a deep blue state full of people who would vote for a sack of potatoes, so long as it had a D next to its name on the ballot.
All the time Hillary has had real competition, she lost. In 2008, she lost to Barack Obama in the primary. Now she's running against Bernie Sanders, and she's struggling.
Hillary does not have good campaigning experience. All the time she's been in a campaign, she's played the game on Easy mode, with lots of money, lots of support from the establishment. And she's still struggling!
Bernie's won elections in Nightmare mode, with him running as an independent against both a Republican and a Democrat. He's worked his way up, from mayor of Burlington, to House of Representatives to U.S. Senate, and not all of his races were easy ones.
He may make it look easy to win in Vermont, but that's because he's damned good at campaigning, and has a lot of experience. That's what we need to keep the White House this November. Sure, maybe the Republicans will put an assclown on the ticket, but don't you dare take Republican incompetence for granted. We're in a nation that was stupid enough to elect Reagan.
Clinton keeps falling on her face. Just when she finally put the email-gate thing and the Benghazi thing to bed (yes, we all know there was nothing to them), now there's the speech transcripts thing, and she reacted by being defensive, and let her opponents create a shitstorm out of nothing. And this is just primary season. Hillary is in over her head on a Presidential campaign. She's not good at this, and she keeps making campaign fuckups.
My prediction: If Hillary makes it to the general election, the Republicans could very well find a new and creative way to tear her to pieces. Look what happened to John Kerry...
NowSam
(1,252 posts)Bernie has it and she doesn't - In my opinion.
HassleCat
(6,409 posts)We'll see. Clinton has an enormous campaign machine, support of the party establishment, important endorsements, a husband who is a terrific campaigner, and so on. It's hers to lose.
backscatter712
(26,355 posts)...that a self-described socialist.
I'm not sure I like the idea of Hillary going up against Rubio. Sure, Rubio's playing the assclown now, but he's good at pretending to be moderate. What happens if the GOP hits Hillary with an October Surprise? She could fall to pieces!
Remember, there are millions of people in this country who hate Hillary's guts, who will crawl over broken glass to vote against her.
daleanime
(17,796 posts)PoliticAverse
(26,366 posts)She was reelected to an office that has a 90+% reelection rate.
DemocratSinceBirth
(99,710 posts)http://www.vox.com/2015/4/24/8489825/john-kerry-fundamentals
What is striking about that graph is the candidates in 1964 and 1972 underperformed the fundamentals, by a lot.
6chars
(3,967 posts)Remember an Arkansas governor named Bill? 6/7 in governor races, 1/1 for attorney general, 2/2 for presidential primaries, 2/2 for president general election.
maybe she picked up a trick or two.
backscatter712
(26,355 posts)Sure, she was in the inner circle, but was she the decision maker? No, her husband was. He's a competent campaigner, as history shows.
I'd like to think that Hillary learned a few things, but the problem is that she's got all the traditional advantages, but she's still barely treading water. Hillary is making a lot of mistakes in her campaigning, and that doesn't bode well for her chances if she makes it to the general.
Bernie's used to playing the election game on Nightmare mode, which means he's got far more skill at this.