Looking back after HRC’s First 100 Days
AMERICA’S first woman president won last November by taking two large risks, transforming an election campaign that had seemed to be slipping away from her. One of those gambles, her hard-edged response to the Cuban-refugee crisis and post-Castro turmoil on that island, may yet pay off for her. The second, her populist “Contract with the Middle Class”, has hit early turbulence, bogging down the rest of her domestic programme.
Source: The World If: A compilation of scenarios
Thought those already bored with 2016’s script (I mean OG commenters Likko, Truman, Ewiak, and any like-minded) might enjoy having some new things to speculate about even more prematurely.
Reads plausible enough.Report
Um, what?
This reads like bad fanfic.Report
I’d agree that Cuba seems unlikely.. and I am very dubious that HRC will be “losing” to her GOP opponent within the course of the main campaign. Maybe if she phoned it in really bad?Report
I’m unimpressed by any of their prognostications (though, to be fair, I had Perry as HRC’s opponent in the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny).
No way Cuba falls apart that way with the current rapprochement to the US and the visible efforts of the Castro boys to pass power to a handpicked successor. Maybe in 5-10 years something like that happens, but not in 2016.
The article makes no mention of HRC talking about race, (well, about the status of African-Americans in US society, there’s lots in there about hispanics), which, as the other thread demonstrates, she’s going to have to do. The policies of ‘the contract with the middle class’ are stuff the Sanderistas want, but marketing like that would alienate those portions of the progressive left that think it’s throwing the working class and poor under the bus. (and doesn’t do anything to address structural racism)Report
What the article gets kind of right (tho it’s possible we’ll have a snooze of an election – those do happen, too) is that issues emerge over the course of a campaign, either from the campaign, in the course of external events, or in combination, that no one anticipates, but that at the same time are not thoroughly random either.
No one in mid-late 2007 anticipated the financial panic, and Republicans were still thinking that national security in War on Terror/War in Iraq terms would be a decisive issue, thus Giuliani’s big (empty) lead and McCain’s durability despite his disastrous pre-campaign (in which was virtually reduced to thumbing rides to events after his team imploded). One of the things holding his up was his support for the Iraqi Surge – which hardly anyone was talking about a few months later.
Could be that Race! is a big deal in 2016, or November 2016-7, or it could be that no one figures out how to make a politically useful issue out of it, that African Americans still vote 90+% Democratic, and that even progressives are well and truly tired of having their speeches and lunches interrupted, and BLMers are tired of interrupting them, by Christmas of this year. Could be Russia tries to re-annex large sections of the Baltics, or Russia implodes, or both…
And so on… The author chose a currently unexpected Cuba crisis, then points to the likelihood that no Dem is going to find passing a liberal program easy, if possible at all, given the current state of things. Another financial panic or some other catastrophe might change that dynamic, though it’s hard to say how: If anything goes too terribly wrong in the world – which happens! – blame might tend to fall on the President’s party, whether it’s truly responsible or not, and especially if the Dems’ response is unimaginative.
In short, assuming HRC is even the nominee (that the wrong thing hasn’t happened to her personally), she could be on the way to a loss or to a much bigger win than currently we’re mostly presuming, on the basis of things none of us is talking about. The author makes a bet that she’ll run an effective enough campaign, but that in all likelihood it won’t be enough to put her in a promising position to govern. I think that’s also pretty good bet, but it’s just a bet.Report
No one in mid-late 2007 anticipated the financial panic,
Except all the people who were screaming about the dangers of subprime mortgages and CDS’s, of course.Report
I guess your list of 2007 blog commenters predicting a financial collapse coinciding precisely with the final weeks of the 2008 campaign is longer than mine.Report
I agree that the collapse of Cuba within the next year or so seems completely unlikely. My hope is that the Castros will be able to thread the needle of trading with America when the embargo is finally removed without becoming the next location of McDonalds and WalMart or losing their exceptionally strong education and health care system. But even in a worst-case-scenario, I don’t expect anything like the collapse the article is describing.
As far as campaign issues go, the only reasonably confident predictions I can make are the following:
1) Economic issues are going to be huge. The Great Recession destroyed a lot of jobs, and the recovery hasn’t restored many of them.
2) The article is right that both parties are going to make significant efforts to win over Hispanic voters. Republicans can’t win over black voters in any meaningful way, not when the party’s main race-related policy remains support for voter suppression, but I think the Republicans have realized they have to break out of the old-white-male demographic rut, especially if they’re running against Hillary.
(I’m not an identity-politics type at all, and even I feel the appeal of the US finally having a woman as president. 100 years after women’s suffrage without a female president is far too long.) They’ve already got two Hispanic candidates whereas the Democrats have none, and some of the candidates have eased off a tad on immigration. It’s actually surprising that this gets so little attention, relatively, compared to the 2007/2008 cachet of Obama’s potential to be the First Black President. I don’t know how much of a difference a Rubio (for example) campaign would make in terms of Hispanic votes, though. I suspect it would make some kind of difference.
As far as campaign politics go, my only prediction is that is going to be a slugfest. Whereas Obama used judo, letting his opponents damage themselves, Clinton is a pugilist. And Republicans fight dirty, especially against Clintons. There will be a lot of mud-flinging.Report
Sigh. I fear this will be entirely correct and likely to make the campaign much more tedious than it could otherwise be.Report
And Republicans fight dirty, especially against Clintons.
More than against Obamas or Kerrys? Or McCains for that matter, if you recall all the rumors that got spread about him in 2008.Report
The thing with Obama is that he’s so clean personally that all the Republicans had to go on were flat-out fringe wacko lies (Kenyan Muslim) and some fairly flimsy guilt-by-association. There wasn’t even the vestige of anything else they could run with. I don’t recall the Republicans making any major claims of him murdering people; they did make such claims of the Clintons. That’s why Clinton-hatred feels like it’s on a different level.
What Bush did to McCain in 2000 was extremely nasty but again, everyone except the far right saw it as Rove being a gigantic asshole, not as McCain having done anything wrong. That’s basically when Democrats and independents started to like McCain out of pure sympathy.
Hillary Clinton vs. any Republican is going to be both sides poring through the other’s entirely life history, digging up anything that looks, sounds, or is even remotely nasty, making it sound much worse, and throwing it at their opponent. And most politicians have a lot more nasty stuff to find on them than Obama did.
For a metaphor: Obama v. Republicans, in 2008, was like the Republicans continually throwing torches into the ocean. Hillary vs. Republicans is going to be like both sides attacking oil fields with Napalm.Report
And clinton doesnt fight dirty?Report
Was there anything in her first hundred days about her security clearance issues?
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/12/the-spy-satellite-secrets-in-hillary-s-emails.htmlReport
I’d imagine that the attempts to slime her over an offsite mail server will continue to not get any traction outside of the New York Times and the true believers on the right.Report
I predict this one will bring her down like Benghazi! brought down Obama!
This song and dance has gotten old. There’s always something in the fever swamps that will Bring Down the President! It’s like it won’t end until it’s even — Nixon resigned, ergo a Democrat must resign. When it’s fair, life can continue.
Whitewater, travelgate, Benghazi! and god knows how many others. There’s always something, and of course the Liberal Media Won’t Cover It.
Is it any wonder that most people have tuned it out? It’s been going on since 1994. The little boy has been screaming WOLF for 21 years now. People have been born, grew up listening to a never-ending drumbeat of nothingbugers, and probably drank their first beer to the fond wishes that they’d just shut up already.
21 years, and the big takeaway? Clinton got a BJ. That’s the “winner” of 21 years of constant scandals, screaming, investigations, hit lists, claims of treason, murder, sedition, theft, cover-up, misuse of power, embezzlement, failure to be a Republican, whatever….
After a certain point, there’s just a credibility problem.Report