Hillary's poll numbers tanking...

[DVaut1]

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Do you think he would still have gotten elected if his name wasn't Bush?

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He wouldn't have had an established national political machine behind him with the ability raise lots of money early. That scared out a lot of possible Republican candidates.

But, don't confuse that with Bush Sr. being loved by core Republican voters. They certainly didn't. A bunch of them rebeled on him in the '92 primaries led by Pat Buchanan.



Could GWB have won the Presidency without the last name of Bush? I think so. Christian conservatives really think of GWB as "their guy". In many ways, he even surpasses Reagan with those voters. And, he leaves McCain, Dole, and Bush Sr. in the dust. Nobody among the 2008 candidates comes close either.

Of course, the difficulty for GWB would be establishing himself as "their guy" prior to the 2000 Repbulican primaries. That would be very hard to do.

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The question is absurd on its face because George W. Bush's entire life has been shaped by being a "Bush". From entrance to East Coast prep schools, to Yale, to B-School at Harvard, to his business ventures...these were all due in some way to the Bush family name and the accompanying networks.

If the question is, does George W. Bush get elected if he had the same kind of personal history and background up until January 1st 1999 (or something like that) but then his last name magically changes to "Smith" and he no longer has the same kind of name recognition that a Presidential family name grants, then I would say "maybe he does get elected". If the question is, does George W. Bush get elected if he isn't a Bush at all, and doesn't have privileged access to Phillips and Yale and Bush family business/political networks, etc., then I say "who knows, probably not".

[Jeremy517]

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To claim that it's a "fact of the matter that Hilary is way too polarizing of a candidate" to win in a general election is ridiculous. Has she had a bad month? Yes. Is she a lock to even win her own nomination at this point? Of course not. Is the smart money still on her to win the election? I'd say so. That's a far cry from "it's a fact she's too polarizing to win". The actual "fact" is that she's a huge favorite to win the general election and it's really not even close at this point.

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It has nothing to do with her bad month, it has to do with Republican turnout. There is always going to be dislike for a candidate from the opposite party, but not to the level of the Republicans and Hillary. I'm not exactly saying ground-breaking stuff here, so the fact that you are acting like I made some sort of shocking statement is a little baffling.

Also, the dislike for Hilary isn't just in the Republican party. There are swing voters who feel the same way. Check out the Zogby poll from last month (possibly from even before her "bad month"?), asking which candidate you would never consider voting for. Hillary won with 50% of the vote. For reference, Guiliani was at 43%, Obama 37%, Edwards 42%, Thompson 41%, etc. Considering the margin in swing states, those are huge differences.

[NickMPK]

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It has nothing to do with her bad month, it has to do with Republican turnout. There is always going to be dislike for a candidate from the opposite party, but not to the level of the Republicans and Hillary. I'm not exactly saying ground-breaking stuff here, so the fact that you are acting like I made some sort of shocking statement is a little baffling.

Also, the dislike for Hilary isn't just in the Republican party. There are swing voters who feel the same way. Check out the Zogby poll from last month (possibly from even before her "bad month"?), asking which candidate you would never consider voting for. Hillary won with 50% of the vote. For reference, Guiliani was at 43%, Obama 37%, Edwards 42%, Thompson 41%, etc. Considering the margin in swing states, those are huge differences.

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The "Republicans hate Hillary" effect is really overstated. (Note that I am not Hillary supporter.)
Certainly Democrats hated Bush in 2004 at least as much as Republicans hate Hillary now, and we see how that turned out.

Zogby is really the worst pollster you can cite right now, because as I mentioned before, he is attempting to use internet polls, and his recent record has been terrible. Also, citing figures answering the question "Who will you never vote for" doesn't indicate anything about how many people will turnout to vote against for. For example, I'll bet that 20% said they would "never" vote for both Clinton and Giuliani. If they are the nominees, what happens to GOP turnout?

[Luxoris]

[quote If they are the nominees, what happens to GOP turnout?

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Between the Clinton name and misogyny the GOP turnout will be huge. The only question is whether the net effects would be larger than the net racist effect.

The general election only has 3 out of the 4 possibilities (under the current economic and foreign policy conditions)imo: A narrow GOP win, a substantial GOP win, a narrow Dem win. I can't see a basis for expecting a substantial Dem win.

[Jeremy517]

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Zogby is really the worst pollster you can cite right now, because as I mentioned before, he is attempting to use internet polls, and his recent record has been terrible.

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It was a phone poll.

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Also, citing figures answering the question "Who will you never vote for" doesn't indicate anything about how many people will turnout to vote against for.

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Naturally. I wasn't trying to tie the two, I was just trying to make another point.

[AngusThermopyle]

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Zogby is really the worst pollster you can cite right now, because as I mentioned before, he is attempting to use internet polls, and his recent record has been terrible.

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It was a phone poll.



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Figures from the earlier surveys cited in this news release are from Zogby International telephone surveys, including 1,012 likely voters in the July survey and 993 likely voters in the May survey.

The online survey included 9,150 likely voters nationwide, and was conducted Nov. 21–26, 2007. It carries a margin of error of +/– 1.0 percentage points.

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[yjbrewer]

Get Bill back in office somehow!

[adanthar]

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The general election only has 3 out of the 4 possibilities (under the current economic and foreign policy conditions)imo: A narrow GOP win, a substantial GOP win, a narrow Dem win. I can't see a basis for expecting a substantial Dem win.

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We're one year removed from a historic Democratic Congressional sweep (pretty much the opposite of '94), the Dem candidates are summarily outraising the GOP candidates for the first time in several decades, the incumbent President is hampering his own party to a substantial degree, and there's a widely unpopular war on. The biggest criticism of Congress is, essentially, that they're not doing enough to reverse the policies the GOP has implemented and cave in to them too often. Finally, twice as many GOP senators are up for re-election as Dems.

If these factors lead you to conclude that the best the Democrats can hope for is a narrow win, I once again invite all comers to wager on it.

[owsley]

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The general election only has 3 out of the 4 possibilities (under the current economic and foreign policy conditions)imo: A narrow GOP win, a substantial GOP win, a narrow Dem win. I can't see a basis for expecting a substantial Dem win.

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I don't see how this can possibly be correct seeing how all of the online bookmaking sites I have looked at list the Democrat party as the favorite. If anything it should be the opposite, a substantial Republican win is the least likely outcome. I wouldn't go so far as to say there is no basis for that happening, but it is certainly the least likely option.

I think that people who view Clinton as a bad nominee are flat out misreading things. First, the people who hate Hillary have hated her and her husband for 15+ years now. No undecided voters are walking around saying "[censored] shrillary", all those people made up their mind a long time ago and probably would have been active in the election no matter what. Her husband was the most popular President of the last 20 years, despite the pathetically perpetuated Lewinsky scandal. Given 9/11 and how badly the war in Iraq has turned out, a mistake like that seems pretty quaint. I think running a black candidate has WAY more negative possibilities than Hillary by a long way. The bookmakers know about the anti hillary movement, and they have her ahead in the Democratic Primary and have the Democrats ahead in the election. What does that tell you. I don't remember the anti hillary crowd coming out and making threads about how well she was doing when she overtook Obama. Every campaign has ups and downs and I hardly see this development as a death knell. I think adanthar is pretty much on the money, especially the first two lines of this post:


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A lot of people keep saying that. These people usually have an (R) next to their names. The trouble is (and, incidentally, I agree this *is* trouble) they are extremely wrong. She might be a mediocre to bad pick, but she is a Clinton, has already shown she'll outraise any GOP candidate 2:1 without trying very hard, and - if she does win the primaries - will have her aura back. To counter this, the GOP will field one of their own slate of highly suspect candidates - if there's one person who can't win a general election in this entire field, it's Romney - who has the added stumbling block of trying to distance himself from a sitting, unpopular president of the same party. Hillary might well be the worst Democrat pick, but saying she can't win...yeah, I'd put up 5K, too.

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No matter how much some people hate hillary they are seeing things in a very biased way, and that is definitely not the same way the Democratic base or middle of the road voters see it. Don't get the impression from this post that I think its not a close race, it is, and it is still really early to be making broad statements like "Hillary can't beat the Republicans but Obama can" (uh, we are talking about hillarys weaknesses and the other guy is black? If hillary being disliked by hardcore republicans is that much of a factor to swing everyone against her, we probably shouldn't ignore the reaction that the other guy is black and running in a NATIONAL election... is it just me or is everyone ignoring that because they want to pile on hillary?)

I don't think it is by a large margin and its very early, but I am convinced right now she is the favorite to win. And given that she has the best run campaign and tons of other resources, that might mean more than an unknown being in the lead. And you had better believe that I do not like Hillary very much, I do NOT want to see her be president.

[owsley]

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Looks like the lefties are finally realizing that:

1) Presidential pillow-talk does not equal policy-making experience

2) Eating lunch and smiling for photos with foreign leaders does not equal foreign policy experience

3) It doesn't matter how many times you call Bush a moron if you keep voting with the repubs on foreign policy issues. That's the problem with voting based on politics instead of principle.

There's also The Oprah Factor (chicks dig Oprah, in case you haven't noticed), and potentially the lesbo-affair scandal.

Obama is a sharp dude. Politics aside, I'm beginning to really like his dry sarcasm. He'll destroy Hillary if they ever do a HU4POLLZ debate.

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90% of the time I totally agree with you Ron, but not here. It would fall under "ignoring the fact that Obama is black and running in a national election." I really think it bears repeating how big a weakness this in a really large amount of the country. Considering how little I agree with him (like... not ever) I do find him appealing in the way everyone else seems to, so in a certain sense he is probably the mainstream contender I want to win most, but not for any distinct policy reason I can name.