Just an FYI - there is no official Democratic Nominee for President yet
So let's not go assuming anyone.
I mean everyone assumed Hillary was the nomination in 2008. I wonder how that turned out?
I'm not saying that I wouldn't support Hillary if she got the nomination. I'm just saying I'd like to hear what all the other candidates have to offer before we the voters make our final decision.
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Anyone we nominated would have won. That's the residue of Bush stuck in the low 30s to low 40s in approval rating for more than 2 years post-Katrina. We had a choice of one downhill snowball or another.
Magical assumptions were made of Barack Obama. On this site I couldn't differentiate him from someone who would cure cancer and enable 500 mpg with one pill. The problem, as many of us emphasized at the time, was that he would simply come across as too weak as president, and therefore not follow through on the amazing opportunity we had, given the pathetic reputation of the opposition party for more than 4 years. Young voters were avalanching in our direction.
With Obama as president we have lost white male percentages in droves, partially offsetting the ongoing inevitable gains due to demographic shifts. Consequently our margin for error in presidential years is not close to what it should be, and we are now sitting ducks in midterms, given the sharply lower participation of female voters compared to presidential years. Women are 51% of the electorate in midterms compared to 54% in presidential years. The midterm deficit is devastating, considering the vast majority of gubernatorial races are decided in those years. Our bench now has no logical method to rebound, unless a Republican is president and has a disastrous approval rating leading to a midterm, like Bush in 2006. Besides, our party doesn't really care about governorships. We give lip service occasionally. I registered Democratic in Florida two years ago, relocating from Nevada. The contact from the Crist campaign was nothing. Not next to nothing. Nothing. My father died two years earlier. He was still receiving emails. I got zilch. That's how well coordinated it was. The only benefit was I bet on Rick Scott to win that race, after seeing how inept the Democratic operation had been, including swamped on the airwaves throughout summer.
Hillary had greater strength among those white swing voters, as demonstrated in the primary states. She won the rurals. Either one would have won handily for re-election in 2012. That's the single most favorable scenario in American politics, as incumbent whose party has been in power only one term. I emphasized that as soon as I joined this site in 2002. Overall, Hillary with the stronger personality would have stood up to attacks and effectively stated her case throughout both terms. It's ridiculous that Obama has come across so weakly, and with an approval rating stuck in the 40s for so long, including leading up to a pivotal midterm. The right track/wrong track percentage was 13/87 when Bush left office. That's where the country was. How has Obama managed to avoid that topic, that reality? Clintons aren't shy of real world defining comparisons. The stock market has essentially doubled since the depths of the recession. Again, Obama fails to seize on basics like that. If a Republican were in office we'd be bombarded with that theme repeatedly, with every talking head flunkie mocking the opposing party for threatening our financial well being.
The more astute handicapping would have been to run it in reverse, with Hillary leading off and Obama following in 2016. Granted, that's a leap of faith, with Obama waiting in the wings somewhere for 8 years. Hillary is not considered as likable as Obama. That wasn't a factor in 2008, with the severe tailwind we benefited from, given Bush's reputation. But open races like 2016, after one party has held the office for exactly 8 years, are historically very tight, like 1960, 1968, and 2000. Personality is a huge plus in a setting like that. Instead of running an unblemished target in Obama, still riding his 2008 reputation, we've got polarizing Hillary trying to overcome 50/50 terrain, and potentially hampered by Obama's struggling approval rating and reputation as less than forceful, which attaches to the party image in general.
Naturally if Hillary loses the base will blame it on her, content to completely ignore the vast shift from 2008 to 2016. It's always hilarious when situational variables aren't factored at all. Far more comfortable to see two inches in front of your face, never beyond that. I'm sure much of the base would actually delight in a Hillary defeat, and never consider they could have prevented it by merely using a reverse platter.
I don't mind ripping conventional wisdom around here. Just the opposite. Conventional wisdom on Democratic Underground is largely responsible for my financial status. I didn't pick that Apple avatar here more than a decade ago because I wanted to. It was in response to a prolonged simplistic attack on Apple by numerous posters. One, in particular, a guy with a froggy user name. In every Apple thread those guys showed up with the dependable theme -- "overpriced hardware, blah, blah, blah." Nothing else mattered to them. They even mocked Apple in the Lounge. That's how desperate they were. It could not have been more ignorant, as I emphasized repeatedly. They were fixated on pricing comparisons of irrelevant items while completing ignoring the big picture, that a brilliant guy was in charge, and in his absolute prime. Steve Jobs wasn't going to settle for varying colors and configurations of basic computers. His goal was always to change the world, as he told the Pepsi guy upon luring him. Jobs was scheming something fantastic, even if I didn't know the vehicle. I guessed movies. It was phones. Who cares? Just buy the stock, as I touted here repeatedly. Align yourself with someone of ultra rare caliber. I bought considerably more AAPL than my intention, largely thanks to that froggy guy and his simpleton attitude. The only drawback is that now my sports betting career is not nearly as needed or interesting as previously. I still do it but the results are trivial and sometimes boring. But I did acquire a love of toads. 
