Posted on 10/21/2015 5:33:17 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Hillary Clinton has glaring weaknesses as a candidate. The historical odds are against her goal: getting a third term in the White House for one party. The Democrats should nonetheless be considered the likely winners if they nominate her.
Clinton has had months of bad news. Her mishandling of official e-mails as secretary of state, along with her clumsy lies about it, have kept generating unflattering coverage. Her favorability ratings have been falling for four years straight. A small majority of Americans have an unfavorable impression of her in the latest poll average at RealClearPolitics. In August, a Quinnipiac poll found that 61 percent of voters say she’s not honest or trustworthy. Starting that month, nine polls in a row had her behind Bernie Sanders among New Hampshire Democrats.
While she has recovered the lead there and enjoyed better press since the first Democratic debate, Republicans can point to other reasons for optimism. They have control of Congress, most governorships, and most state legislative chambers: Perhaps that means that the country now has a natural Republican majority? They will also benefit from time-for-a-change sentiment. Only once since 1952 has a party won the Electoral College three times in a row. The exception came in 1988, when George H. W. Bush succeeded Ronald Reagan. But voters then were much happier about the state of the country than they are now. In the fall of 1988, most polls found that Americans were slightly more likely to say that the country was “headed in the right direction” than that it was “on the wrong track.” Now, more than twice as many people give the negative answer as give the positive one.
Clinton also lacks an advantage that Barack Obama had in 2008 and 2012: being the first black nominee and then the first black president. Black turnout was higher than usual in both years, and the Democratic share of the black vote was even higher than usual too. If black voters in 2016 act as they did in 2004, during the last pre-Obama election, that change by itself will erase roughly half the Democratic margin in the popular vote from last time.
Against all these reasons for optimism must be set the fact that Democrats have won the popular vote in five of the six most recent presidential elections. It may be that Republican victories in legislative and gubernatorial elections don’t carry over to presidential elections for structural reasons. For example, the geographic diffusion of Republican voters helps their party win legislative seats but doesn’t help them win the White House.
One common explanation for the Democrats’ White House winning streak is that demographic trends favor them: Asians and Hispanics, two rapidly growing groups, have leaned increasingly left; young white voters are moving left, too, as Christianity weakens among them. Another explanation is that voters, even ones who are middle-of-the-road ideologically, think Republicans’ priorities are too skewed toward rich people and big business. These are intertwined theories, since the party’s plutocratic image is partly responsible for its weakness among blacks, Hispanics, and young people, all groups that tend to be less prosperous than the national average.
#share#Clinton’s campaign would like the public to warm to her personally, but it does not appear to have any illusions that she can have anything like the charisma Obama did in 2008. Instead its strategy seems to be to bet that the Democratic party’s advantage on demographics and issues can overcome Clinton’s deficiencies as a candidate. When Clinton officially launched her campaign on Roosevelt Island in June, her speech did not contain any memorable statements. Instead it celebrated the elements of the Democratic coalition and championed a series of poll-tested liberal policies.
Clinton’s program includes an increase in the minimum wage, expanded child-care subsidies, universal preschool, mandatory paid leave, and legislation to make it easier to sue employers for sex discrimination. These are policies that deliver concrete benefits to large groups of voters and signal that she is on the side of women, families, poor people, and employees.
As a nominee, she would spend some time making the case for these policies. It seems likely, though, that she will spend at least as much time using them to wage a negative campaign against the Republicans as the enemies of those policies and, by extension, of their beneficiaries. She will also use Republican opposition to Obamacare, including the contraceptive mandate it enabled, for this purpose. If she is running next fall, she will bank on the appeal of these policies and fear of the Republicans to keep black turnout high and increase turnout among single women, who also vote heavily Democratic.
Republicans have very little in the way of popular policy proposals to counter the appeal of liberalism. The Republican presidential candidates have not built their campaigns on offering conservative ideas that would give any direct help to families trying to make ends meet. Their tax-cut proposals are almost all focused on people who make much more than the average voter. So far, Republicans do not seem to be even trying to erode the Democratic advantage on middle-class economics.
The Democratic nominee will also probably benefit from a slight edge in the Electoral College. Eighteen states, with 242 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win the White House, have voted Democratic in each of the last six elections. Some analysts call these states a “blue wall” that Republicans will not easily break through. That’s overstated — Pennsylvania, which is part of that wall, has been getting less Democratic — but a popular-vote tie would probably mean a Clinton victory.
Finally, Clinton will need some luck to win, as any candidate does. It may materialize. The economy is, if not roaring, as good as it has been since the crisis hit in 2008.
Clinton could, of course, be nominated and then lose. But her bet is that the liberal coalition will show up and that swing voters who do not love her will nonetheless decide that they prefer her to a Republican party out of touch with most people’s concerns. It’s not a bad bet.
— Ramesh Ponnuru is a senior editor of National Review.
On this happy note I head out for the day. /sarc
Ramesh has lost his once fine mind!
Can she win if she’s in prison?
Donald Trump understands Americas problems and he resonates with the blue collar workers. The others, not so much.
She won’t win the popular vote, but she will win the official vote tally in key states, late in the evenings.
It’s not who votes, it’s who counts the votes.
Millennials will elect her. I believe she is inevitable.
Weird that Republicans can win statewide governorships in OH, FL, WI, PA, MI, etc. Senators too. Then when it comes to presidential politics, it’s demographics that are trending against the GOP. I propose it is crappy candidates causing the problem. Why would Florida overwhelmingly elect Rubio and governor Scott twice (not as overwhelming on the reelection against Crist, but by a reasonable margin in a an all-in opponent), and not be able to win a presidential race? Scott is a terrible candidate with glaring weaknesses, but won. Yet Romney, Ryan got beat. Same in Ohio. Flawed candidates win statewide.
If we put someone in who can win voters over, we win. Enough about the deck stacked against us when it shows up no where else in statewide elections.
No. This is his “back door attack” on Trump. He’s trying to say Trump won’t move NY or PA or NJ or FL if he gets the nod. I’ll bet he believes Jebby could do it though!
I completely agree.
Donald Trump is head and shoulders above Hillary with America’s working people. He’s for bringing back American jobs. That is a very powerful message.
Quite a lot of them, in fact. Trump will swamp Hillary.
The others, would probably lose.
To tell the truth.
Sad part is I have met so many woman who said they don’t trust her or like but will vote for her because she’s a women. I ask if they think that sexist and they answer “No, because we haven’t had a women president”. Blows my mind..
At best, there was a dead cat bounce. There's a federal government with $3 trillion in assets, a $19 trillion debt, at least $200 trillion in unfunded liabilities, and more than $750 trillion in derivatives liability exposure.
Then there are insolvent states like Illinois that pay their lottery winners with IOUs.
ACORN Voter Fraud + 40 MILLION ILLEGAL ALIEN INVADERS & their Driver Licenses = HELLRY Communst Dicktatorship...
...unless God saves America.
‘Mishandling of emails’??!!
Like it was accidental??!!
Oh, that’s rich!!!
If republicans do manage to break through in the next presidential election, along with the pressing economic and defense issues, the democrat election fraud machine has to be eliminated. It has to be job #2
The tenor of this article is that the electorate is hopelessly gimme-ist. That may be a fair assessment.
Just goes to show that serving time in jail can rehabilitate people (g)
Fraud.
I think a lot of Hillary’s support is really people supporting Bill Clinton. In people’s minds, his presidency was one of good economy, no war, plenty of jobs.
I believe many think if Hillary is elected, they are really getting Bill. They don’t follow day to day political news or pay attention to the scandals, they just remember the “way things were.”
No, that was D’Inesh DeSouza.
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