2008 Without Hillary Or Obama?

Without Hillary Clinton, Tom Vilsack probably stays in the race and wins only Iowa

I'm dubious about his ability to make it to actual caucusing, but this is an interesting possibility which I hadn't considered: that Vilsack totally voids the relevance of Iowa a la Tom Harkin 1992.

That seriously diminishes any left/anti-war potential in that cycle, if the race begins in New Hampshire. If there's no meaning to that anti-war corn caucus state. Whoever the Senate left candidate is isn't coming first in NH, and they're maybe not coming second either. And then the race turns South.

The more I think about this, the more it feels like a Clintonisation 2: Electric Boogaloo scenario. Bad news for, let's say, VP Brown when he finally runs, good news for The Bern and all related developments in the party. I don't see Bayh/Warner getting any early leeway at all, in the way that the OTL inheritor of the Dean antiwar lustre did in Obama. Just not going to happen.
 
I'm dubious about his ability to make it to actual caucusing, but this is an interesting possibility which I hadn't considered: that Vilsack totally voids the relevance of Iowa a la Tom Harkin 1992.
Although, Daschle and Feingold likely tie for second behind Vilsack. Dean and Kerry probably ignore Iowa altogether and transfer that effort to winning in New Hampshire. Edwards makes a desperate move for South Carolina.
 
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On the theme that only Nixon can go to China and only Bill Clinton can do welfare reform, I’d love to see a pro-business Democrat win.

Congress already voted the first bank bailout in Oct. ‘08, with some credit to the Bush administration. We’re likely to see a second bailout early ‘09 just as we had in OTL.

But then, something really confident on the topic of business might successfully lead a move to break up the big boy banks. We end up with a more stable, less top heavy economy, and as an important side benefit, there’s much less anger in the body politic.
a decade or two too early dude. too many GIs/Silents alive for "populism" to get traction, on top of boomers sitll being vigorous and not having experienced bad times since the 1970s.
 
a decade or two too early dude. too many GIs/Silents alive for "populism" to get traction, on top of boomers sitll being vigorous and not having experienced bad times since the 1970s.

So long as they're scared it doesn't matter what they've gone through. "Populism" as we're understanding it (as Trumpian Demagoguery) gets the most traffic among suburbanites. The trailer park, factory town types are certainly vulnerable to it, but the people that respond to it most are usually those with more to lose than have already lost. Economic anxiety is about fear, if it comes early then you might get a similar response, just account for the more specific differences ATL.
 
Short answer: total chaos.

Long answer:

No Obama or Hillary means that you're looking at a field in 2007 that shapes up like this --

Frontrunner: John Edwards ('04 VP nominee, NC Senator, no scandals at this time)

Institutional Candidates: Bill Richardson (strong ties to the Clintons, former DNC chair, strong resume), Joe Biden, Chris Dodd

Fringe lefty candidates: Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel

From a strategic campaign perspective, you're missing (1) an African-American candidate, and (2) a candidate running to the right of everyone else. So my guess is that someone like Al Sharpton probably runs again to meet #1, and possibly someone like Evan Bayh runs to fill the DLC slot.

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So that's where we are in January of 2008 ITTL.

Edwards probably engages in the same strategy that got him second place and 30% of the vote in Iowa IOTL 2008: living in Iowa and running to the left.

IOTL, Obama won Iowa with 38%, and Clinton (narrowly) finished in third with 29%. Edwards was hurt late by the Des Moines Register's influential endorsement going to Obama.

ITTL, there isn't a viable left-of-center candidate for the Register to endorse, and it's hard to see them picking the conservative Bayh despite their misgivings over Edwards. So I imagine Edwards picks up a (lukewarm) endorsement which amounts to at least the 30% he won IOTL, plus an initial two-thirds of OTL's Obama voters, plus a third of OTL's Clinton voters.

Why? At the time, most Clinton supporters in Iowa were looking for the most conservative candidate, but some were liberal women who would probably go to Edwards. Similarly, most Obama voters were looking for the most viable liberal candidate, but some were just anti-Edwards. The Iowa primary electorate is very white -- Sharpton got 0% in 2004 -- so I think only giving Edwards 2/3 of the Obama vote is pretty conservative.

That gives you Edwards with something like 60-65%.

Given Iowa's viability threshhold, virtually all of the remaining voters probably go to Bayh. IOTL, Richardson got 2% and Biden 1%; that's probably something like what you'd see here. So call it: Edwards 60, Bayh 35, Richardson 2, Biden 2, Sharpton 1.

That makes it an Edwards vs. Bayh race in New Hampshire, which is a strong Clinton state but not a particularly conservative Democratic electorate. Moreover, because there's a contested Republican primary going on at the same time, you're unlikely to have a large crossover voter effect.

Edwards got 17% in NH IOTL; Obama got 36%, and Hillary won with 39%. Using the same breakdown as in Iowa gives you something like Edwards 55, Bayh 40, Richardson 5.

The race is now declared over by the press, but even if Bayh soldiers on, he's going to lose Nevada and South Carolina pretty decisively. (Bayh might win the disputed Michigan primary, which both Edwards and Obama boycotted IOTL, but I doubt he has the institutional support Clinton had to get those delegates actually seated). By January 26, Edwards will have gone 4-for-4 with more than 50% of the vote in all the contests that actually matter.

By this time IOTL, Biden, Dodd, Kucinich and Richardson had all dropped out; I see no reason to change that ITTL.

Now suppose the affair comes out early -- very early -- ITTL; sometime after the South Carolina primary but before Super Tuesday. You'd be left with a damaged front-runner (Edwards), an unpalatable challenger tagged with the 'loser' label (Bayh), and no real second-tier institutional candidate left as an alternative.

Edwards, of course, will stonewall, deny and obfuscate just as IOTL. Most of his supporters aren't going to jump ship right away.

Without Edwards' cooperation, it would be very difficult for a candidate to jump in at this point; he or she is going to miss the ballot deadline for most of the states with primaries or caucuses in March. But let's say it's Gore.

Bayh probably wins a few conservative states on Super Tuesday: Arizona, Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Utah. Maybe Al Sharpton is able to eke out a narrow Louisiana. And, I suppose, without Obama's caucus-organizing strategy, you might see Bayh prevail in North Dakota and Nebraska.

With all that, Edwards is still going to rack up huge numbers of delegates in California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, and New Jersey.

Here's what that means, in practical terms. By Super Tuesday, 2,129 delegates to the 2008 Democratic National Convention will have been selected on the basis of primary and caucus results. A candidate needs a majority of all delegates (including superdelegates) to win the nomination. That's 2,117.

My somewhat-more-than-back-of-the-envelope figures show that, by February 5, 2008, Edwards is going to have a minimum of 1,600 pledged, hard, hand-picked delegates to the convention. Bayh will have the remaining 500.

That leaves just 1,124 pledged delegates to be won in subsequent primaries and caucuses, plus another 850 superdelegates, plus the DNC rules committee could restore up to 313 disputed delegates from Michigan and Florida (which violated the rules); IOTL, they restored 184 of those delegates.

I don't see how those numbers gets any candidate to the magic 50.1% threshhold. If Gore gets in, gets on every ballot and runs the table -- something I am not remotely convinced he could actually do, mind you -- you're still talking about him picking up something like 800 of the remaining 1,124 pledged delegates. Even if you give Gore all 850 superdelegates, he's still going to be way short.

On the flip side: Edwards probably can't stall and hold off the impending death of his campaign long enough to get 500 more pledged delegates, and obviously he isn't going to win any superdelegates once his campaign is perceived as dead in the water.

That means Bayh gets first crack and playing kingmaker, here. The problem is that I don't think he wants the Vice Presidency. He was pretty clearly in the picture in both 2004 and 2008, and everything I've read suggests that he took himself out of the running. Also, it should go without saying that Bayh is going to be seriously pissed that the Democratic Party operatives recruited Gore to run against him rather than let him get the nomination.

So yes: if Bayh cedes his delegates to Gore, Gore can probably stop Edwards. But I don't know that Bayh is willing to do that.

Whatever happens, you're looking at a brokered convention. And maybe that's enough to send the eventual nominee down to defeat even in a Democratic wave year.
 
I do not see how any Republican could win in 2008 after the antic of GW and Dessert Storm 2 . I am pro republican /anti-democrat yet at the time I was very anti GW . I am not American however if I had a vote back then it would have been anyone not endorsed by GW that's how toxic I think he is . Obama (someone I do not like) ran a bloody good campaign that worked incredibly well . I do not see Mccain managing to do that and overcome the Republican outgoing President's many issues.
 
Sure Candidates:
Mike Gravel
Joe Biden
Chris Dodd
John Edwards
Dennis Kucinich
Bill Richardson
Tom Vilsack

Potential Candidates:
John Kerry
Al Gore
Russ Feingold
Evan Bayh
Tom Daschle
Wesley Clark
Mark Warner
Al Sharpton

I think Kerry and Gore are out, as it's hard recandidate a general election loser (it doesn't happen since Nixon 1968). Feingold declined candidacy in November 2006 so probably Obama and Clinton candidacies didn't matter so much. Warner declined in October 2006, to run for Senate, so it's the same. The others are in, I guess.

Mike Gravel
Joe Biden
Chris Dodd
John Edwards
Dennis Kucinich
Bill Richardson
Tom Vilsack
Evan Bayh
Tom Daschle
Wesley Clark
Al Sharpton

It's a my opinion but almost always the primary winner wins at least one of the first four states: Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Nevada. But this will be a unusual race.

In Iowa it's a Edwards vs Vilsack race but, with Daschle, Bayh and Clark all siphoning Vilsack's voters, the South Carolina Senator wins the state. Dodd, Biden and Clark drops out. Shortly after Daschle is found with his tax problems and forced to drop out too.
This leaves:

Gravel
Edwards
Kucinich
Richardson
Vilsack
Bayh
Sharpton

In New Hampshire Edwards plays the "Change candidate" posture and wins the state but Kucinich makes a strong figure appealing to anti-war voters.

Then Edwards and Richardson are going to battle in Nevada when suddenly Edwards announces his retirement, claims his wife's health as reason.

The primary falls in chaos as Richardson wins Nevada, Sharpton South Carolina and Biden and Clark rejoin the race.

Kucinich is able to win Michigan thanks to his blue-collar, workers family, anti-war platform, while Richardson heads in Florida. Shortly after it's reveled an investigation about possible improper business dealings in New Mexico, causing Richardson's support collapsing.

Then Super Tuesday arrives:
Gravel: Alaska
Kucinich: California, Colorado, New York
Richardson: New Mexico
Vilsack: Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Minnesota, North Dakota, Utah
Bayh:
Sharpton: Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee
Clark: Arkansas, Oklahoma
Biden: American Samoa, Delaware, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey

Gravel, Richardson, Bayh ad Clark are forced out, as Vilsack emerges as the moderate, Midwestern candidate and Kucinich as the radical, urban one, with Biden and Sharpton playing the white guy from North and the black one from South.

I could continue but seems an highly divided primary on geography and demography. At the end Democratic establishment decides Kucinich is too radical to win an election and a Vilsack-Biden ticket is quickly arranged. Of course, it could be happen also the opposite as Kucinich champions anti-war popular positions and strike a deal with Sharpton, leading to a Kucinich-Sharpton ticket.
 
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