AHC Hillary viable with Bill NOT being President

Your challenge, any pods after 1968 is to make Hilary Rodham a serious candidate for the Democrat Presidential nomination without having been first lady
 
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She passes the DC bar exam and doesn't move from DC to Arkansas. She basically put her career on hold to be with Bill. With that, there are a number of ways she can climb to the top.
 
Bill loses the 1980 Gov. Election (as in OTL)

He loses again in the '82 Election

Hillary runs for Congress and then Senate in 1996

She runs for President in 2004.

Presidents ITTL
89-97: George HW Bush, R
1992 Election = Bush/Quayle vs. Cuomo/Richards
97-01: Al Gore, D
1996 Election = Gore/Kerrey vs. Dole/Kemp
01-05: John McCain, R
2000 Election = McCain/Engler vs. Gore/Kerrey
05-13: Hillary Clinton, D
2004 Election = Clinton/Edwards vs. McCain/Engler
 
Bill loses the White House in 1996 to Lamar Alexander, who runs as a moderate. Once Alexander is in office however the agenda is set by the conservatives in the Congress. So he signs into law controversial entitlement reforms--Medicare becomes a voucher-based system by which the federal government subsidizes private insurance plans and Medicaid is cut even more deeply than it was in our timeline.

However, the Medicare changes triggers a revolt among the elderly who find the premium subsidies aren't enough to make the private insurance affordable. At the same time, federal budget cuts takes enough air out of the economy that by 1999 and 2000 things aren't going so well.

So in 2000 Bill Clinton Grover Clevelands his way into a non-consecutive second term. Hilary runs for Moynihan's Senate seat just as she did in our timeline as a ringer to keep Giuliani from an easy victory. But she is also well-positioned to run to succeed Bill at the end of his second term, when he will be prevented from running again.

The only problem is the Republican governor of Texas, who is running on the claim that because the United States was attacked on September 11 2001 during a Democratic presidency, the Democrats are not able to keep America safe.
 
Assuming she never meets Bill Clinton, I think she runs for Congress in the early 1980's and is elected to the Senate in 1996. She could be elected in 2000, 2004, 2008, or even 2012.
 
There were a couple of other high-fliers she dated at Yale. If she married one of them then she could stay in CT or IL and make a career there. Probably on the federal side since CT is too small a gubernatorial pad and IL is well, IL. Get a congressional seat and eventually knock off Percy?
 
Bill loses in '92, and lets his gubernatorial term expire before retiring from politics. Hillary runs for the Senate earlier, possibly from a different state, and builds up a higher profile gradually. Exactly when she enters the Senate - and thus, mounts a presidential campaign - is entirely up to how the '96 election goes after four more years of Bush.

Going out on a limb, we'll assume Bush does decent with the economy - not as great as Clinton, but enough to get people confident, thanks to going back on his tax pledge - and then Bob Dole wins in 1996 and serves one term due to his age. Hillary waits until 1996 to jump in despite 1994 being ITTL a safe Democratic year (flipside from reality) so she can distance herself from her husband's failed campaign. A Democrat runs and wins in 2000 and survives through to 2008 as in OTL, but with war and terrorism strapped to his back. Hillary avoids a Republican year and is now in her third term in the Senate by 2012, when she can mount a presidential campaign with experience on her side, her husband's failure forgotten, and her strongest chance for the office she's had - she served out at least one full term, there's no Democratic incumbent, and it's a year that can swing either way presumably.

That was crack and I've been up for almost twenty-four hours now, but hopefully it makes sense.
 
I don't think Hillary ever had a shot at the WH without Bill's presidency.

Case in point: Nancy Pelosi has been a much more successful political leader (though HRC's stint as SoS has made her a statesperson, but that was all from a non-partisan appointee role.)

Where's Pelosi's post-'68 path to the Oval Office?
 
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