If Hillary Clinton Runs, Will ANY Democrat Challenge Her For The Nomination?

Based on public opinion polls and general perceptions that are out there, Hillary Clinton is a shoo-in for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 2016, if she chooses to want it and run for it.

The hints are that she will run, and polls indicate more than 60 percent want her as the nominee, and only Vice President Joe Biden is in double digits with 12-13 percent, and Andrew Cuomo the only other person to really have even a few percent.

IF she does not run, there is an open season, with Joe Biden having the advantage, but certainly not a “slam dunk” against Cuomo, Martin O’Malley, Deval Patrick, and several possible women candidates, including Elizabeth Warren, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Amy Klobuchar.

It seems clear that Hillary Clinton, who even this author thought would not run, IS likely to run, and seemingly, be “crowned” the nominee, although there are skeptics who point out that she seemed in the same position in 2006-2008, and lost to a newcomer named Barack Obama.

But now , with extra experience as Secretary of State, it seems as if she is “unstoppable” if she chooses to make the run.

And the GOP is already starting to attack her, because they know it will be extremely difficult for ANY GOP nominee to stop her, as she could lose some of the states that Barack Obama won, and still win the election. The odds of Texas going to her, along with Georgia and Arizona, and the return of North Carolina to the Democratic column, seems possible, with growing Hispanic and Latino population and voting participants, and the likelihood that a higher percentage of women would vote for her, along with African Americans and young people, that how could any Republican nominee be able to come up with 270 electoral votes?

12 comments on “If Hillary Clinton Runs, Will ANY Democrat Challenge Her For The Nomination?

  1. Juan Domingo Peron May 5, 2013 6:34 pm

    Ron: I found this interactive map on the NYT that divides the electorate according to demographics and their votes in 2012. Nate Silver has created this interactive tool in which one can look at the presidential election results and calculate what would have happened if the racial and ethnic mix of voters had been different. The tool also allows one to project future results based on any number of scenarios in which the country’s demographic profile and voting patterns change. In 2012, President Obama famously won 71% of the Hispanic vote to Mitt Romney’s 27%, while Romney won 60% of the white vote to President’s Obama 40%.
    It is interesting to note that the Hispanic vote was about 7% of the electorate. In other words Obama and Romney when splitting that 7% of the electorate, Obama got 71% of it and Romney got 27% of it. Question: If all other factors remained the same, how large percentage of the Hispanic vote would Romney ( or any other future Republican candidate), have had to win to capture the White House? What if Romney had won 44% of the Hispanic vote, the high-water mark for Republicans achieved by George W. Bush in 2004? Would he have won? No Republican has ever, in a presidential race, gotten more. So when you plug that number in it turns out, that if Romney had hit that Bush mark, he still would have lost, with 240 electoral votes to 298 for Obama. But what if Romney had been able to make history and attract 50% of Hispanic voters? What then? He still would have been beaten, 283 electoral votes to 255. What if Romney had been able to do something absolutely astonishing for a Republican and win 60% of the Hispanic vote? He would have lost by the same margin, 283 electoral votes to 255. But what if we really go into fantasy land and give Romney 70% of the Hispanic vote. It’ll never happen. That’s what Obama got. Let’s give Romney the Obama percentage of the Hispanic vote. Let’s give Romney 70%. Surely that would have meant victory, right? No, it wouldn’t. Romney still would have lost, although by the narrowest of electoral margins: 270 to 268. Though he would have won the popular vote, he still loses in the electoral college. According to the Times’ calculator, Romney would have had to win 73% of the Hispanic vote to prevail in 2012. What do you think this means? Does in not mean that the Hispanic vote’s not the problem? On the other hand, Obama got 40% of the white vote while Romney got 60%. Do you know how much Romney would have needed to win in 2012? Just 4% more of the white vote. In other words, had the Democrats dropped a mere 4% of the white vote they would have lost. What is more possible and doable for the Republicans, to get 73% of the Hispanic vote or 4% more of the white vote? According to the Pew Center poll or AP, I don’t remember, if the “white vote” had shown up in the same percentage (74% in 2008 vs. 72% in 2012) and voted for Romney in 2012 as it voted for McCain in 2008, Romney would have won, because Obama got fewer votes in 2012 than he got in 2008.
    The difference-maker was, a lot of white voters stayed home. Which is to say, the conservative base stayed home.
    So in the future,I think that Democrats or Hillary, should worry more about not losing 4% of the white vote, or 2% more of the “white vote” showing up to vote, than Republicans worrying about the Hispanic vote. After all Republicans just need for 2% more of the “white” vote to show up and its a game changer. See the interactive electoral map here http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/04/30/us/politics/presidential-math-demographics-and-immigration-reform.html?_r=0

  2. D May 5, 2013 8:44 pm

    I’m one of those people who felt that, while the period was still going, the 2012 U.S. presidential election went on for too long. So, I’m not in a hurry to get to the next cycle.

    Ronald writes: “And the GOP is already starting to attack [Hillary Clinton], because …”

    Of fear. Same thing Mitch McConnell was doing in Kentucky…well before a decision would be made by actress Ashley Judd on whether she would run against the minority leader of the U.S. Senate for the 2014 midterms elections.

    “they know it will be extremely difficult for ANY GOP nominee to stop her,”

    Newt Gingrich pretty much summed that up (a couple or so months ago).

    ” as she could lose some of the states that Barack Obama won, and still win the election.”

    From his first election? In that case, Indiana and the 2nd Congressional District of Nebraska. If she matches his 2008 margin or better, she would carry his other 2008 Democratic pickup states: Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia.

    The way the rest of her winning map would shake out would depend on numbers. On margins. The better her numbers, the larger her electoral-vote score. If the margin would be comparable with President Obama’s 2008 victory of a national D+7.26, she would retain those eight states (with North Carolina a pickup), and Indiana didn’t return, her map would fill out the rest with variations. (No electoral map from one election has ever been duplicated exactly. So trade-offs do happen.)

    An electoral model would give a good estimate as to where she’d strike: newer ground for the Democrats or some former territory carried by her husband in the 1990s. A mix of both. But my guess, aside from picturing that electoral map, is this: If the Democrats win a third consecutive presidential election cycle, in 2016, and she boasts better numbers than Obama, Hillary Clinton would win nationally by at least ten percentage points (say, 54 percent to the losing Republican’s 44 percent). That would be with her possibly winning men over nationally, with say 50 percent of their support (D+1), while women give her 58 or 59 percent (D+17 to D+19). A ballpark estimate, really, of 54 or 55 percent in the popular vote. That’s being kind and optimistic. (The 2008 numbers would have been even better because of what George W. Bush did to his party.) This would be depending on the mood, in 2016, of the country and the trajectory of that election.

  3. Dave Martin May 6, 2013 2:12 pm

    Hillery could not handle the emergency call that came in at 5pm needless to say her 3 am response would be little better! President? I doubt she needs to be there.

  4. Ronald May 6, 2013 2:13 pm

    Juan, and D, you both make interesting analyses of what could happen in 2016 and beyond, and what makes politics fun is that nothing is certain, as human voting behavior can be very unpredictable!

  5. Princess Leia May 6, 2013 5:42 pm

    2016: Hillary vs. a loony Republican. Hmmm. Very easy. Hillary for me.

  6. Princess Leia May 6, 2013 10:31 pm

    What shocks me is CBS peddling speculation as fact.

  7. Juan Domingo Peron May 6, 2013 11:25 pm

    Leia: They are finally doing their job, asking questions and reporting. Hicks was there, he asked for help and was denied help.He knew from the get go it was a terrorist attack by AL-Qaeda and he was in utter shock when he saw ambassador Rice say it was because of a video. We have a right to know who changed the talking points memo, who ordered change the word “attack” for “demonstrations”, and delete references to Al-Qaeda, Islamist extremist and Jihadist! You can see the 3 versions here and how they were changed! Why? Why lie, blame a video and spontaneous demonstrations? http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/benghazi-talking-points_720543.html?page=2

  8. Juan Domingo Peron May 7, 2013 1:32 am

    OMG Leia, even CNN has also now finally picked up on the Benghazi cover up! What are you going to do now? I know , just keep watching MSLSD.
    Ooops!
    ” In the interview, conducted on April 11, Hicks also makes clear that he immediately believed the September 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi had been conducted by terrorists, though the White House and other officials in the Obama administration initially suggested that the attack was the result of an out-of-control demonstration against an anti-Muslim YouTube video.

    “I thought it was a terrorist attack from the get‑go,” said Hicks, who was in Tripoli during the attack. “I think everybody in the mission thought it was a terrorist attack from the beginning.”

    Hicks said he never had any indication that there had been a popular protest outside the mission in Benghazi.

    “I never reported a demonstration; I reported an attack on the consulate,” Hicks said. Stevens’ “last report, if you want to say his final report, is, ‘Greg, we are under attack.'”

    You know, it’s jaw‑dropping that ‑‑ to me that ‑‑ how that came to be,” Hicks recalled. “And, you know, I knew ‑‑ I was personally known to one of (U.S.) Ambassador (to the United Nations Susan) Rice’s staff members. And, you know, we’re six hours ahead of Washington. Even on Sunday morning, I could have been called, and, you know, the phone call could have been, ‘hey, Greg, Ambassador Rice is going to say blah, blah, blah, blah,’ and I could have said, ‘no, that’s not the right thing.’ That phone call was never made.”
    See: http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2013/05/05/benghazi-whistle-blower-hicks-internal-review-let-people-off-the-hook/?hpt=hp_inthenews
    Now if I recall correctly , back when Rice was up for Secretary of State , the media defended her relentlessly and of course attacked the GOP. The Washington ComPost had a “hit piece” titled “The GOP’s bizarre attack on Susan Rice” . From the Compost:
    ” Another is blatant disregard of established facts. Drawn up by Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.), the letter alleges that “Ambassador Rice is widely viewed as having either willfully or incompetently misled the American public” about the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya. But as congressional testimony has established, Ms. Rice’s comments on several Sunday television talk shows on Sept. 16 were based on talking points drawn up by the intelligence community. She was acting as an administration spokeswoman; there was nothing either incompetent or deliberately misleading about the way she presented the information she was given.”
    Really??? And now what is the Washington ComPost going to write? I know, they will probably start attacking David Hicks and the other 3 whistle-blowers!

  9. Princess Leia May 7, 2013 7:10 am

    Sighs and rolls eyes at Regressives, such as Juan, who are looking for a cover-up when there isn’t any.

  10. Juan Domingo Peron May 8, 2013 2:58 pm

    Nixon covered up a breaking in, that he didn’t know about and didn’t order, of a creepy Democrat office during his re-election where no one died or was beaten up or…and was ultimately forced from office. Democrats for the next thirty years tell tall stories about how evil Nixon was for misleading Americans that way. They made Nixon the “poster boy of evil republicans”. Today after eight years of Clinton lies and cover ups and Now 5 years of Obama cover-ups where people actually died. Nixon sure doesn’t look like the evil incarnate Democrat always tried to play him up as.
    http://www.cbsnews.com/2718-202_162-1973/u.s-consulate-attack-in-benghazi/

    CBS News national security analyst Juan Zarate said during a Tuesday edition of “Flash Points” that the reputation of the administration, as a whole, hangs in the lurch.

    “The stakes are pretty high,” Zarate said. “If it turns out that there’s some indication that the White House or others were not only manipulating talking points, framing how Susan Rice was talking about this on the Sunday talk shows, but was actually trying to construe this in a way that demonstrated it wasn’t a terror attack, and that actually impacted our response – the fact that perhaps they didn’t put things in motion was because it was purposely not being treated or discussed as a terror attack from the get-go, that’s a real problem.”

  11. Princess Leia May 8, 2013 4:58 pm

    Daily Nutty Guano Droppings.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.