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.
The Obamas will see to that.
Then his reasoning is totally flawed.
But you knew that.
“Donald Trump understands Americas problems and he resonates with the blue collar workers”
Thanks to both parties the blue collar workers are going the way of the dodo bird. China is happy enough though.
National Review’s writers have ol’ William F spinning in his grave. Buckley hated Perot, but Trump is working inside the party, and thereby is the difference. This fellow and Mona earlier. This is transparently pro-Bush.
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Alternative theory...Ramesh’s contract at NR is up....so he’s trying to generate a lot more Tweets and emails to prove people read him..
I pray with every fiber of my being that you are wrong. Of course, I prayed for months that Obama would not be elected and prayed he would not be re-elected. The thought of Hillary as president makes me actually want to leave this country.
hillary would have a rather serious problem if elected. that would be being alive on inauguration day
Ramesh was always an Establishment suck up.
Ah, thanks for the correction..they all sound alike LOL
“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.”
I don’t know - Hillary is telling them the rich will pay for their existence. Why should they work?
“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.”
“Republican party out of touch”
This article is a prime example as to why this author and National Review are completely out of touch. In fact, one may conclude that they have acrobatically positioned themselves in a strange anatomical contortion.
Actually, Ramesh sounds like a GIRL when he talks!
Yes, the author omits one critical factor why Hillary will win: cheating.
“Millennials will elect her. I believe she is inevitable”
And that is why they are having trouble getting good jobs, they are dense slow learners. College diploma be damned.
Uh huh.
This guy makes one good point: Hitlery (or Plugs, or Bernie) begins with a big electoral college advantage.
Overcoming the solid Demon Rat states (California, New York, Minnesota, Illinois, Michigan and Pennsylvania as well as the little states in New England) is going to be tough for a Republican.
104% turnout in some inner city precincts that vote 99.7% Democrat really helps the fascists.
No way this woman votes for her due to her gender. That’s as bad as the women who gush at how “handsome” male candidates are. If that’s as far as your thought process leads you; it’s no wonder why we are rapidly declining
Why Benghazi Still Makes a Difference
Hillary Clinton may not see the point, but her Thursday testimony may tell us much about her ability to lead.
By John Bolton
Oct. 20, 2015 6:12 p.m. ET
351 COMMENTS
Only in Perry Mason stories does the real culprit break down in open court. After Hillary Clinton’s now-immortal Capitol Hill outburst about investigations into the deadly 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya—“What difference, at this point, does it make?”—the former secretary of state and Democratic candidate for president is unlikely to offer any such spontaneity when she testifies Thursday before the House Select Committee on Benghazi.
Nonetheless, the committee’s work is utterly serious, its preparations extensive (and extensively stonewalled by Mrs. Clinton’s team) and its mission vital to our fight against still-metastasizing Islamist terrorism. Much is at stake. The hearing’s focus must be on the key policy and leadership implications of the mistakes made before, during and after the murders of Amb. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans on Sept. 11 three years ago.
Morning Editorial Report
Before the attack, there was ample warning that the U.S. consulate in Benghazi wasn’t secure, with terrorist threats in the area multiplying. Even the International Red Cross had pulled out of Benghazi. After a string of requests from the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli for more security, in mid-August came a joint Embassy-CIA recommendation to move the State Department’s people into the CIA’s Benghazi compound. The State Department in Washington was invariably unresponsive, even though, as Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey later testified, the rising terrorist threat in Libya was well known.
Given her self-proclaimed central role in deposing dictator Moammar Gadhafi, why was Mrs. Clinton so detached from the deteriorating situation in Libya? She has so far dodged the issue, pawning off such “technical” matters on her subordinates. Working in the State Department in 1990 when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, I saw firsthand how Secretary of State James Baker dived into every detail of safeguarding U.S. diplomats stranded in Kuwait City. If earlier secretaries of state have been perfectly prepared to get their fingernails dirty in operational details when those under their responsibility were threatened, why wasn’t Mrs. Clinton?
http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-benghazi-still-makes-a-difference-1445379145
If Buckley could read this twaddle he would jump up out of that grave and snatch this wanker baldheaded.
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