"Before This Is Over, Republicans Are Going to Wish Hillary Clinton Won."

[kstewart33]

An interesting and debatable perspective.

Jonathan Chait at New York magazine:

Imagine what the political world would look like for Republicans had Hillary Clinton won the election. Clinton had dragged her dispirited base to the polls by promising a far more liberal domestic agenda than Barack Obama had delivered, but she would have had no means to enact it. As the first president in 28 years to take office without the benefit of a Congress in her own party’s hands, she’d have been staring at a dead-on-arrival legislative agenda, all the low-hanging executive orders having already been picked by her predecessor, and years of scandalmongering hearings already teed up.

The morale of the Democratic base, which had barely tolerated the compromises of the Obama era and already fallen into mutual recriminations by 2016, would have disintegrated altogether. The 2018 midterms would be a Republican bloodbath, with a Senate map promising enormous gains to the Republican Party, which would go into the 2020 elections having learned the lessons of Trump’s defeat and staring at full control of government with, potentially, a filibuster-proof Senate majority.

Instead, Republicans under Trump are on the verge of catastrophe. Yes, they are about to gain a Supreme Court justice, no small thing, a host of federal judges, and a wide array of deregulation. Yet they are saddled with not only the most unpopular president at this point in time in the history of polling, but the potential for a partywide collapse the contours of which they have not yet imagined.

The failure of the Republican health-care initiative was a sobering moment, when their early, giddy visions of the possibilities of full party control of government gave way to an ugly reality of dysfunction, splayed against the not-so-distant backdrop of a roiled Democratic voting base. They have ratcheted back their expectations. But they have not ratcheted them far enough. By the time President Trump has left the scene, what now looks like a shambolic beginning, a stumbling out of the gate, will probably feel like the good old days.

Link: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/04/republicans-are-going-to-wish-hillary-clinton-won.html

[Aristus]

1. I'm pretty sure the Repubs would rather have Hillary to tear into,

than to have to constantly be defending Tangerine Tinyhands.

[Proud Liberal Dem]

6. Seems like they have no problem

continuing to pick on President Obama by accusing him of running a "Shadow Government" against Trump and blaming his supposed inaction for Syria for their chemical attacks and now, Susan Rice, who Senator Cotton has maliciously referred to as "Typhoid Mary". I'm sure that they won't leave Hillary completely out of it. They've also announced their intentions to start blaming Elizabeth Warren for all that is wrong with the Democratic Party and the country-at-large.

[dalton99a]

15. Pretty soon they'll blame Carter/LBJ/JFK and every Democrat in the phone book

[mr_lebowski]

23. Conveniently forgetting Drumpfs admonishments throughout the Obama Admin that he better NOT ...

... get involved in Syria.

Now he wants to turn around and act all 'Obama neglected Syria, now we have a HUGE, TREMENDOUS problem' ... when he CONTINUALLY in the past said 'Obama, Don't Get Involved'.

And when Obama went to the GOP Congress (like ACTUAL PRESIDENTS DO before they shoot off 59 Tomahawk missiles into a war-zone), the GOPpers, echoing Drumpf ... all went "NAH! Don't get us INVOLVED!"

I mean ... these drooling, knuckle-draggers are so stupid, and have such SHORT memories about ANYTHING ... it's not worth considering their idiotic viewpoints on anything of import.

[Cracklin Charlie]

2. She did win.

[nikibatts]

3. TAHT!! And some already wish that.

[dalton99a]

16. That is a fact.

[Hortensis]

27. And if she'd REALLY won, she'd have the senate,

and at worst a far better deal in the house. As for her "dispirited base," pure rubbish. That's me in this era, and I and over 50 million others were feeling very good about what we were planning.

[kstewart33]

4. My 2 cents worth.

He is discounting potential catastrophes abroad - potential nuclear war with North Korea for starters - simply because our so-called decision maker is an unstable idiot and his Secretary of State does not know what he is doing.

[tanyev]

5. I bet many already do.

It's so much more fun obstructing someone else's policies than trying to come up with your own.

[gratuitous]

12. I think that is correct

The Republican base is getting a little dispirited all on their own. They hold all the cards and STILL can't get anything accomplished. Obamacare is still the law of the land, gays and lesbians, blacks and women, and a lot of those people still think they're entitled to the full benefits of citizenship, despite their betters' best efforts to set them straight. That wall hasn't appeared. In addition to Russia, a bunch of tin-pot dictators are pushing us around. Europe doesn't like us very much. And the loss of respect from countries around the world hasn't been translated into fear.

[JTFrog]

7. I think time will tell that she may well have had a Congress in her own party's hands.

Once we muddle through the whole affair of voter purges, Russian interference and hacking, I think we will find that more than just the presidency was thrown to the GOP. And top level GOPers were complicit in all of it. That's why they don't want a real investigation.

"The morale of the Democratic base, which had barely tolerated the compromises of the Obama era"? Sorry, but the Democratic Party would hardly have "disintegrated altogether". I also don't think that our DNC team is going to allow another spoiler situation in the coming elections which is what really hurt the morale of the Democratic base.

[Jim Lane]

19. What do you mean about a "spoiler situation"?

You write:

I also don't think that our DNC team is going to allow another spoiler situation in the coming elections which is what really hurt the morale of the Democratic base.

I can think of several possible meanings, all of which I strongly disagree with, but maybe I'm missing something.

[mopinko]

8. well, i think this presumption is all wrong.

if hillary had "won", it would mean that their hacking and cheating had failed. or that we had an actual free and fair election.

ergo- dems down the ticket would have won, too.

[OnDoutside]

11. However, if you accept they only stonewalled Obama because he was black, they'd been waiting 20

years to attack a Clinton in the White House. That's all many of them have lived for. What Dickhead McConnell did to Obama would have been nothing to what they planned to do to Clinton.

[Jonny Appleseed]

9. I think the base was rallied into action more so by the Senate/House losses

Remember how polls predicted we'd take back the Senate? I think by 2016 most of the base dispirited with Obama realized it was because we didn't control the house and Senate.

[stevenleser]

10. I warned them of that back in September. A surprising number of them didn't disagree. nt

[triron]

13. The Dems would also control the senate if she won (which is probably true)

without the vote stealing.

[Snarkoleptic]

14. I'm reminded of this tune when I think of how establishment R's are now reacting to tRump.

[HughBeaumont]

17. " . . . white voters under 30 supported Trump, 48-43."

That is some sad-ass shit right there.

Hope you buncha microwave an-cap fucks can wipe your tears with your Pepe/cuck memes when you have no healthcare, savings, feasible job market, Universal Basic Income or path to retirement.

[reflection]

20. Hear hear.

That statistic is pathetic and they won't realize it until it's too late.

[pstokely]

21. still less than Mittens

though

[mr_lebowski]

25. It's cuz their parents have told their snowflakes since BIRTH ... that the reason they're not ...

The Starring Player on the Varsity Squad AND the State Spelling Bee champ, screwing the Homecoming King/Queen, and not being handed scholarships to Ivy League schools that'll lead to the millionaire lifestyles they deserve ... is because of affirmative action and illegal immigration.

The BROWNIES ... are (sadly) stealing all of what they DESERVE ... away from THEM. Getting the HANDOUTS ... that should've gone to Snowflake INSTEAD! So sad ... So WRONG!

Well, that ... and because at least 48% of people have IQ's of LESS ... than 100.

[mnhtnbb]

28. There was an expectation that young, educated whites would support Clinton

that failed to materialize.

Among whites, Trump won an overwhelming share of those without a college degree; and among white college graduates – a group that many identified as key for a potential Clinton victory – Trump outperformed Clinton by a narrow 4-point margin.

Trump’s margin among whites without a college degree is the largest among any candidate in exit polls since 1980. Two-thirds (67%) of non-college whites backed Trump, compared with just 28% who supported Clinton, resulting in a 39-point advantage for Trump among this group. In 2012 and 2008, non-college whites also preferred the Republican over the Democratic candidate but by less one-sided margins (61%-36% and 58%-40%, respectively).

http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/behind-trumps-victory-divisions-by-race-gender-education/

[jmg257]

18. Once Gorsuch is in many won't care.

Too many 1 issue voters who chose trump for that reason.

Another Judge would just be a big ol bonus.

[DeminPennswoods]

22. My thoughts exactly

nt

[struggle4progress]

24. Ain't It Hard

[mnhtnbb]

26. I just literally finished reading Jonathan Chait's book on Obama entitled "Audacity

How Barack Obama Defied His Critics and Created a Legacy That Will Prevail"



From his last chapter:

Worst of all, from the Republican point of view, Trump blew away whatever faint remaining hopes the party nurtured of healing its reputation. Trump was the very incarnation of every value abhorrent to the Obama coalition, the anti-Obama incarnate--loud, impulsive, ignorant, intolerant, backward-looking. Trump's racism, misogyny, and contempt for expertise offended college-educated voters, racial minorities, and feminists, among others. And the America that saw itself in Trump's vision rather than Obama's was dying off. In its desperation to stop Obama, the conservatives had signed their own demographic death warrant.

<snip>

Conservative Republicans won power, but they lost the future, and they also lost the argument. The triumph of a blustering, cartoonishly dishonest and manifestly anti-intellectual candidate was a forceful display of the party's retreat from seriousness. Their critique of Obama's program amounted to doomsaying predictions that had failed to come to pass. Their alternative was a retread of failed policies and free market aphorisms sold to the public through bombastic sloganeering and social resentment. Trump is the poisoned chalice of a failed ideology. Obama, not Trump,is destined to supply the model for American governance in the decades to come.

From the cover:

Over the course of eight years, Barack Obama amassed an array of historic achievements. His administration saved the American economy from collapse, expanded health insurance to tens of millions who previously could not afford it, negotiated an unprecedented nuclear deal with Iran, helped craft a groundbreaking international climate accord, reined in Wall Street, launched a fundamental overhaul of our education system, and formulated a new vision of racial progress. He has done all of this despite a left that frequently disdained him as a sellout, and a hysterical right that did everything possible to destroy his agenda, even in instances when they actually agreed with what he was doing before Obama was the one doing it.

I highly recommend the book.

[Mike Nelson]

29. I think...

...Mr. Chait begins with a defendable thesis. But his supporting ideas are mostly wrong... he means Hillary lost the electoral college? She won the vote - it wasn't close. It's also possible Dems would win the Senate, but the Republicans have gerrymandered and suppressed Dems. By the way, this has nothing to do with Hillary's message (which won). Also, I consider myself a "base" and was very happy with the Obamas in the White House - thank you very much. I knew President Obama - or President Clinton, or President Sanders - would govern as best as they could with what they were given. They are all progressives and would never have put a Gorsuch on the Supreme Court.

[Warren DeMontague]

30. We'll see.