AHC: Hillary Clinton comeback after Super Tuesday 2008

Your challenge, should you accept it, is with any PoD after Super Tuesday 2008, make Hillary Clinton the Democratic nominee for 2008. This is hard, given there were a lot of caucus states right after Super Tuesday that Obama had an advantage in and enabled him to gain a sizable delegate lead. Also, deaths and all are forbidden. Clinton has to beat Obama, though Jeremiah Wright and the superdelegates can, and probably will, help her. This is something I've always sort of wanted to happen just so the underdog wins and/or the 2008 Democratic race is even more close and contentious. Go ahead!
 
If I remember right I believe Hillary had the lead if you included the superdelegates. So I believe a good point of departure would be to have the superdelegates not switch at the convention. In fact I believe at one point she even said that she still win due to The superdelegate .
 
Would this be possible:

After Democratic convention Barack Obama is elected as candidate but someone racist hothead can't accept black guy seeking presidency and he murders Obama. So then Democrats elect Clinton as candidate.
 
I think having the financial crisis happen earlier would possibly work, given Obama's lack of experience and the fact that Hillary could use the prosperity of her husband's Presidency to her advantage in this scenario. The economy of the 1990s would triumph over the triangulation and drama of the 1990s, which I think played a role in Obama's appeal/victory. Of course you all would probably know better than me if this were a good enough POD.
 
Would this be possible:

After Democratic convention Barack Obama is elected as candidate but someone racist hothead can't accept black guy seeking presidency and he murders Obama. So then Democrats elect Clinton as candidate.

Sorry, I'd rather she actually beats Obama. Challenge rules out deaths, comas, that kind of stuff. There'll be a way.
 

Yuelang

Banned
Obama has a sudden craving of Nicotine and he caught smoking in front of his still toddler children. In front of reporters who originally want to report something else.

Obama pledged not to smoke again but failed...

The reaction of that news cause women voters of obama to change into Hillary...
 
Hard to do it after Super Tuesday. The states directly after it were extremely favorable to Obama and it allowed him some strong momentum after he built a nice win streak with wins in Louisiana, Nebraska, U.S. Virgin Islands, the Washington caucus, Maine caucus, the Potomac Primary (D.C., Maryland, Virginia), Hawaii and then Wisconsin. That stretch is what killed Hillary, even more than Super Tuesday, because it gave Obama a huge chunk of positive press coverage with those wins.

Maybe the primary schedule is set up differently and Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania come right after Super Tuesday, which would've resulted in earlier wins for Clinton and allowed her more solid footing. Instead, those states came after the onslaught of Obama wins and while it did bring about questions on whether Obama could close, even after those states voted his lead was strong enough in the delegate count that he felt inevitable.

Without changing the primary schedule, though, maybe Obama stumbles on the Rev. Wright problem, instead of giving his well received speech, and he's hurt far more than he eventually was. I know the only point after Super Tuesday where some doubts crept in about his inevitability was around the time of the Indiana-North Carolina primaries. At that point, Obama still held a significant lead, but the consensus was forming that Hillary could make a play for the convention if she won both states - especially North Carolina, which was supposed to be an Obama favorite.

The polls had Obama leading in North Carolina, though the consensus was muddled, as some polls had him leading by a large amount and one even had him losing (Insider Advantage) - while he was also down significantly in Indiana. There was a lot of chatter about Obama maybe being in trouble if he got trounced in Indiana and lost, or barely won, North Carolina.

Instead, Obama trounced Hillary in North Carolina and very narrowly lost Indiana. This was the night Tim Russert said on MSNBC that Obama would be the nominee.

He was right. Hillary was pretty much toast.

The delegate math still would've favored Obama had he lost North Carolina and Indiana, though.

BUT

Say Hillary wins North Carolina in a stunning upset and romps in Indiana. You get to that point with Obama's poor response to Rev Wright, which became an issue AGAIN around this point with his speech to the National Press Club. Hillary now has momentum heading into the final weeks of the campaign. She still trails Obama but questions begin to mount over his viability. With wins in West Virginia and Kentucky, Hillary mounts a huge win in Oregon and then caps off the primary with wins in Montana and South Dakota. At this point, there's huge concern over nominating Obama. Enough that superdelegates begin to abandon him. In reality, Obama, with his superdelegates, only beat the threshold by 40 delegates.

They abandon him to the point where neither Hillary or Obama reach the threshold and the race goes to the convention where Hillary comes out on top in a contentiously bitter fight.

She then goes on to lose to McCain.
 
The underlying demographics in 2008 are so strong that I think essentially any Democrat wins, including Hillary, Joe Biden, and the reanimated corpse of Lyndon Johnson.

Demographics and more importantly Bush's unpopularity and the GFC.
 
I've been planning a detailed scenario for this And here it is:
Obama doesn't give "A More Perfect Union" speech. Instead he tries to evade the Wright issue and shakes it off, but it lingers on and he loses his mojo. Heading into Pennsylvania, Obama has been having a very bad time. He had a bad debate in which he kept getting skewered, media coverage gives him much more scrutiny, fears he is unelectable are rising, he makes his 'bitter gaffe', and questions about Wright keep lingering. All the while, Hillary the underdog has her mojo back. Perhaps if need be the whole Bosnia lie can be avoided also.
Pledged delegate count before Pennsylvania
Obama: 1,533.5
Clinton:1,427.5

Pennsylvania
Clinton-59% 95 delegates
Obama-41% 63 delegates

Pledged delegates after Pennsylvania
Obama: 1,596.5
Clinton: 1,522.5

It is a shocking landslide, the sheer magnitude of which debilitates Obama's campaign. The flow of superdelegates to Obama stalls to almost nothing. Polls start showing that more Democrats want Hillary as their nominee, albiet by narrow margins, or Democrats are still undecided. The media pumps up the upcoming North Carolina and Indiana contests. If Obama wins one or both, then he is still in fine position. If not, it would be a sign he is damaged goods.
Guam caucuses
Clinton-52% 2 delegates
Obama-48% 2 delegates

Obama tries to pivot to North Carolina, saying Indiana is 'made for Hillary' and North Carolina is a better signal. However, Hillary knows North Carolina is a state with a lot of black voters, so she tries to add weight to Indiana. They needn't have bothered.
Indiana
Clinton-58% 43 delegates
Obama-42% 29 delegates

North Carolina
Clinton-50% 58 delegates
Obama-48% 57 delegates

Pledged delegate count
Obama: 1,704.5
Clinton: 1,642.5

Tim Russert says that night "This race is up in the air. Either Senator Obama or Senator Clinton could be the Democratic nominee." Superdelegates begin fleeing Obama and going to Clinton, who regains a lead in superdelegates. Polls show Clinton doing better in a general election.

Obama is in a bad position. He can't regain momentum with primary wins, because except for Oregon every state on the map is a state made for Clinton. He appeals to the superdelegates against making Clinton the nominee, pointing to his pledged delegate lead and saying "We can't let this victory be stolen." The last lot of voters say, in a bitter mockery "Yes we can."

Kentucky
Clinton-68% 38 delegates
Obama-31% 13 delegates

Oregon

Obama-55% 30 delegates
Clinton-45% 22 delegates

West Virginia
Clinton- 70% 21 delegates
Obama-23% 7 delegates

Puerto Rico
Clinton-70% 39 delegates
Obama-30% 16 delegates

Montana
Clinton-51% 9 delegates
Obama-46% 7 delegates

South Dakota
Clinton-60% 9 delegates
Obama-40% 6 delegates

The two bright spots for Obama in those terrible weeks is his Oregon victory and the close call in Montana, which Obama uses to say he still appeals to a wide electorate. But the race is now truly in the hands of the superdelegates, and Obama is not in their good books anymore.

Pledged delegate count
Obama: 1,925.5
Clinton: 1,865.5

Obama has a delegate lead, but only 60 delegates, enough to be overturned easily by hundreds of superdelegates. After South Dakota, Clinton declares "They doubted me, and they doubted you. Yet that glass ceiling, the highest glass ceiling has 18 million cracks in it and it is about to shatter. I can tell you, I am the comeback kid! In fact, we're all comeback kids! Let that be a lesson. We kept fighting and now we are going to win."

No candiadte has the 2,117 delegates needed to win. Obama urges superdelegates to obey the 'will of the people', but Clinton says the people want her, as most counts of the popular vote show her narrowly ahead. Obama points to his pledged delegate lead, but Clinton calls on the supers to "fulfill your responsibility to the party and make the right choice." A divided party struggles to choose but at Denver, Colorado, after months of back and forth and division, it does just that. By a margin of 50 votes, it chooses the first female President. It chose Hillary Clinton. And now, sitting in the Oval Office doing the finishing touches on her legacy, Clinton is glad they did. The party is pretty sure they made the right decision.

There. That is it. Hope you like it.:)
 
I think it's plausible. The primaries were close OTL.

Thanks, I put some good work into that scenario and a few months ago it really frustrated me when I was failing to fulfill this challenge. Great that I can finally succeed there!
 
I think having the financial crisis happen earlier would possibly work, given Obama's lack of experience and the fact that Hillary could use the prosperity of her husband's Presidency to her advantage in this scenario. The economy of the 1990s would triumph over the triangulation and drama of the 1990s, which I think played a role in Obama's appeal/victory. Of course you all would probably know better than me if this were a good enough POD.

So if they let Bear Stearns fail then Clinton wins.
 
Your challenge, should you accept it, is with any PoD after Super Tuesday 2008, make Hillary Clinton the Democratic nominee for 2008. This is hard, given there were a lot of caucus states right after Super Tuesday that Obama had an advantage in and enabled him to gain a sizable delegate lead. Also, deaths and all are forbidden. Clinton has to beat Obama, though Jeremiah Wright and the superdelegates can, and probably will, help her. This is something I've always sort of wanted to happen just so the underdog wins and/or the 2008 Democratic race is even more close and contentious. Go ahead!

Hillary Clinton has and already the very rare ability to infuriate so many people that all shades of republicans would rally against her. She already was very hated and it started since the beginning of her husband's presidency.
Last, but nos least, Hillary is terrible at campaigning nationally and already was in 2008. And she would be torn apart with all her lies, especially the special one about her journey in Sarajevo where "magic snipers" threatend her.

So if she is the democratic nominee in 2008, then John Mac Cain as a good chance of being elected POTUS.
 
Hillary Clinton has and already the very rare ability to infuriate so many people that all shades of republicans would rally against her. She already was very hated and it started since the beginning of her husband's presidency.
Last, but nos least, Hillary is terrible at campaigning nationally and already was in 2008. And she would be torn apart with all her lies, especially the special one about her journey in Sarajevo where "magic snipers" threatend her.

So if she is the democratic nominee in 2008, then John Mac Cain as a good chance of being elected POTUS.
I think she'd still win. McCain also ran a terrible campaign and I can't see Hillary doing worse than him with regards to campaigning, plus I doubt once the financial crisis broke that she'd lose especially if McCain responds to it as he did OTL. Butterfly the financial crisis or make Edwards the nominee, McCain has a chance. If none of that happens, he's toast.
 
Top