- Joined
- Nov 13, 2006
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I love counterfactual "what if" questions, so here's one. Let's imagine that the 2008 race had gone differently. Mike Huckabee never cut an ad with Chuck Norris, and while he surged a bit in Iowa, it wasn't enough to beat Mitt Romney. After John McCain's last stand in South Carolina and a slightly more drawn out race, Romney goes on to win the Republican nomination. Because of the longer Republican race changing the dynamics of the news cycles and what perspective candidate the Democrats would be running against, Hilary Clinton wins the nomination. Mitt Romney picks a social conservative, let's say Huckabee, to be his VP, and Hilary Clinton picks an inoffensive white guy who would be a good surrogate, let's say Tom Vilasik.
The race in this alternate world is neck and neck throughout most of the summer, much like it was in ours. But when the economy crashed in October, Mitt Romney is able to pivot his message to "Trust me, I know the economy and I can fix it." Scared voters flock to him, and he is able to pull off a win on election day. Hilary retires to a cabin somewhere to write her memoirs and to play elder statesman of the Democratic Party. Obama stays in the senate as the Democrats' Heir Apparent. Mitt Romney is able to pull off some fairly impressive legislative victories, perhaps some financial reforms, that are popular with most but not all of his base but are overall unpopular (i.e. some conservative equivalent of Obamacare and the stimulus.) After 4 years, the economy is in roughly the same place that it is in our world. Obama is able to steamroll over his primary rivals and easily wins the Democratic nomination. As election day draws near, President Romney and Senator Obama make their case to the American people.
Now the point of this, of course, is to set up a situation where we're in roughly the same situation we are in today, but with the candidates swapped. If something like this had happened, what state do you think the race would be in? Most polls today give President Obama a small but persistent lead. If the candidates were swapped do you think that would still be the state of the race, or do you think one candidate would be blowing the other out of the water, or what?
The race in this alternate world is neck and neck throughout most of the summer, much like it was in ours. But when the economy crashed in October, Mitt Romney is able to pivot his message to "Trust me, I know the economy and I can fix it." Scared voters flock to him, and he is able to pull off a win on election day. Hilary retires to a cabin somewhere to write her memoirs and to play elder statesman of the Democratic Party. Obama stays in the senate as the Democrats' Heir Apparent. Mitt Romney is able to pull off some fairly impressive legislative victories, perhaps some financial reforms, that are popular with most but not all of his base but are overall unpopular (i.e. some conservative equivalent of Obamacare and the stimulus.) After 4 years, the economy is in roughly the same place that it is in our world. Obama is able to steamroll over his primary rivals and easily wins the Democratic nomination. As election day draws near, President Romney and Senator Obama make their case to the American people.
Now the point of this, of course, is to set up a situation where we're in roughly the same situation we are in today, but with the candidates swapped. If something like this had happened, what state do you think the race would be in? Most polls today give President Obama a small but persistent lead. If the candidates were swapped do you think that would still be the state of the race, or do you think one candidate would be blowing the other out of the water, or what?
