Posted on 06/03/2014 4:08:54 AM PDT by markomalley
Last week I set out a 2016 nightmare scenario for Republicans — not one that seems likely, but one that can be extrapolated from current polling.
In that spirit, let me set out a 2016 nightmare scenario for Democrats — again, not likely but a plausible extrapolation.
And it assumes that voters’ attitude toward the Obama administration remains roughly where it is today, with 44 percent job approval for the president.
At which point the Democratic party has a serious problem. Like the Republican party after it got crushed in 2006 and 2008, the Democratic party, after its pounding in 2010 and only partial rebound in 2012, has very few plausible presidential candidates apart from Clinton.
Polling matching other Democrats against possible Republican nominees is fragmentary and infrequent. But it shows that Joe Biden, presumably well-known as incumbent vice president, runs well under Obama’s job approval and Clinton’s higher numbers.
In polls over the last six months, Biden averages 32 percent against Chris Christie and gets 31 percent against Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio and 29 percent against Paul Ryan.
I haven’t seen polls showing other Democrats (except Clinton) running better. Possible candidates — Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, New York governor Andrew Cuomo, former Montana governor Brian Schweitzer — are little known nationally. The first two have fashioned records suitable to heavily Democratic states while Schweitzer’s home state has just three electoral votes.
In election years when a president is retiring, the vote for his party’s nominee almost always tends to reflect the incumbent’s job approval. You have to go back to 1896, when Grover Cleveland repudiated Democratic nominee William Jennings Bryan, to find an exception.
Over that period, only three incumbents saw their party’s nominee win the popular vote by a significant margin — Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, and Ronald Reagan.
The numbers for Democrats now don’t look good. Pew Research Center reports that 65 percent would like to see the next president offer different policies and programs from the Obama administration’s, while only 30 percent want Obama’s successor to offer similar policies.
That’s only slightly better than voters’ reaction to George W. Bush’s policies at this stage in the 2008 cycle.
Pew’s numbers look eerily similar to the results of the 1920 election, the biggest repudiation of a president’s party ever. Woodrow Wilson was president then, and his party’s nominee, James M. Cox, won only 34 percent of the vote. Republican Warren G. Harding won 60 percent and carried every non-Southern state.
Wilson and Obama have some things in common. Both were happy to live in university communities. Both had minimal experience in high political office. Both got heavily Democratic Congresses to pass major legislation in their first terms. Both were cheered by crowds of thousands in Europe.
Wilson led the nation to victory in World War I, but his last two years were disastrous. He suffered a disabling stroke. His Versailles Treaty was rejected by the Senate. The nation was hit by inflation and recession, waves of strikes, race riots, and terrorist bombings.
The Democrats’ collapse in 1920 was the voters’ response. It wasn’t because of a weak ticket. Cox was a three-term Ohio governor who created the Cox Communications empire; today his 94-year-old daughter is worth $12 billion. His running mate was Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The 2016 Democratic ticket, though perhaps weaker, likely won’t fare as badly. Americans these days mostly vote straight tickets. Even in 2008, 46 percent voted for John McCain.
And certainly everyone hopes the nation doesn’t suffer disasters like those of 1919 and 1920. But that election is a reminder that the bottom can fall out for a party.
Democratic nominees have received at least 48 percent of the vote in the last five presidential elections, going back 20 years. Obama has left them stronger than ever in central cities and university towns.
But the party has receded elsewhere. Bill Clinton in 1996 had better percentage margins than Barack Obama in 2012 in 36 states. A ticket weaker than Obama in central cities and weaker than Clinton elsewhere might fall well below 48 percent.
I don’t think a Democratic nightmare scenario is likely. But some numbers point in that direction
*sigh*
It’s DemoCRAT,
NOT
Democratic....
*sighs*
NOT
Democratic.... *sighs*
NO, IT IS demonRAT.
I wish I could have more confidence in his analysis, but he skips some major considerations that heavily favor Democrats, most notably the DNC's massive vote-fraud machine, not to mention how the current regime is using every aspect of the Federal government's power as a bludgeon against the GOP.
The only way a GOP Presidential candidate can win the 2016 election is if he does so by 25+ points (popular) and by a 1984-esque landslide. Anything less will be nullified by the machine you so eloquently describe.
The Houston Astros have a better chance of winning this year’s World Series than the GOP has of winning the White House anytime soon. The dems have structural and demographic advantages that the GOP simply doesn’t have the numbers to overcome. The country has moved markedly leftward and far too many are more accepting of government involvement in their daily lives... and with that is the anticipation “free stuff.” So long as the gravy rolls, there’s no beating Santa Claus.
The GOP would be far wiser to concentrate on winnable Congressional and state races. Fundraising for down-ticket races should be the main role of the GOP “nominee” for President.
I voted for Sarah in 2008 Mr. Barone.
Get it straight.
N-i-c-e deconstruction. Two of the vote-crazed Democrats' criminal MO's.....but the most significant.
On the plus side, I do think we have to factor in the huge buildup of anti-Obama sentiment going on throughout the land. I hear a popular parlor game coming out of once-staunch Democrat circles ...... "tying one end of a rubber band to a limo’s rear axle and the other end to Obama’s tongue — then asking him how great he is.” (Ouch...that's gonna smart.)
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We also need to be aware of the dangerous riptides about to engulf Hillary.
News hound Bob Woodward Definitely Doesn’t Buy Hillary’s Benghazi Denial. Woodward doesn’t believe Hillary's whine that it's all about politics. The reporter known for making news claims there are still “serious, unanswered questions about this.”
Hillary's book stoutly declares that everything there is to know about Benghazi has already been revealed....she is hoping to silence Republicans by charging politics is behind the continuing probe.
Woodward will not be dissuaded. ".....one of the questions I have -- did she keep a diary? Obama confirmed to Woodward that he keeps a diary. Woodward noted. “Ronald Reagan kept a very detailed diary of Iran Contra, and he finally turned it over.”
The veteran Post reporter also knocked Clinton and Obama....... noting it’s not all about partisan politics. “There are facts,” he asserted. “There is neutral inquiry. And there is a way to look at this and get that information and see if there is new information.”
Next thing you know, Bob Woodward will be comparing Benghazi to Watergate.
it also overlooks the fact that enough states are irreversibly blue (at least in the short term).....
I believe that liberals have never made up more than about 20-30% of the population.
Remember, they win elections by lying about what they stand for and telling lies about their opponents. Their strategy is two-fold: suppress the vote turn out of supporters of their opponents, and to hoodwink enough low-information voters to turn the election. Plus, they have institutionalized vote fraud and are unabashed about making sure the mechanisms for facilitating vote fraud remain entrenched in law (e.g. getting judges to overturn common sense voter ID laws).
We need to overcome the media and crooked judges. The country is still pretty much on our side.
Scenario for a Democratic Nightmare = the last six years...
“Nex thing you know, Robert Wodward will be comparing Benghazi to Watergate.”
Nevuh happen G.I.
IMHO
Democrats are going to pull out all the spin machines and run them overtime.
They’ve taught the population that to vote Progressive is brilliant while voting for a Republican is absolutely stupid and the 2014 midterms will be a frustratingly successful one for junior-high-school Progressive punks.
IMHO
Oh please, you GREATLY overestimate vote fraud. It can make them “win” when they lose by 1 or 2 points, not 20 for Christ’s sake.
That one's easy when the GOP keeps nominating RINOs.
“We need to overcome the media and crooked judges. The country is still pretty much on our side.”
I agree. Another factor is that Republicans, after Reagan, have been victimized to some extent by Reagan’s success in winning the Cold War. Once the population thought the USSR and foreign threats against the US were not a big worry anymore, they turned their attention to the social issues that the Democrats have grandstanded on.
The left used the opportunity, even characterizing the the USSR as ‘never really having been that much of a threat’.
IMHO, I think some of the populace is getting the message again that the world is a dangerous place, and that you must stay strong economically and in your ability to defend the nation in order to sustain freedom and prosperity.
Really! Nothing that happened in either of those years can compare to the disaster we've suffered the last 5-6 years. Not even close.
The Spanish flu comes to mind, as does the Chicago Race Riot in 1919
What made the 1919 Chicago Race Riot unique in the annals of Race Riot history in the United States is that it was the only one in the 20th century where whites were mainly the perps and blacks were mainly the victims.
Still, it paled in comparison to the 1863 draft riots in New York City, where the body count and damage was over three times as big as the riot in Chicago 56 years later. Suppressing the riot was the first task of the victorious Union Army after Gettysburg.
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