AHC WI:President Hillary 2008

What if Hillary Clinton, not Barack Obama, won the Democrat nomination and the presidency in 2008? What PoD would be needed to make this happen? What would be the effects? How would she be different from Obama? How would the 2008 and 2012 elections go differently? What if?
 
What if Hillary Clinton, not Barack Obama, won the Democrat nomination and the presidency in 2008? What PoD would be needed to make this happen? What would be the effects? How would she be different from Obama? How would the 2008 and 2012 elections go differently? What if?

Well, you may not need much of a POD, as Hillary came pretty close to getting the nomination in 2008 as it was. I guess if you want one, maybe no Iraq war or an earlier economic crisis, maybe it starts in September of 2007 instead of September 2008.

Either way, Bush's approval ratings will be in the pits in 2008, so Hillary beats McCain. As to how different her Presidency would be compared to Obama OTL, for foreign policy, she probably won't be so quick to pull out of Iraq (if the Iraq war PoD isn't in place, and I don't say that to say Obama made a mistake pulling out OTL either), Afghanistan more or less goes the same, we might be a little quicker in Libya, with the end result being the same, she probably gets Bin Laden to.

On the Domestic front, I personally think she'd be more committed to the economy than Obama was and therefore will probably see better results than he did, so healthcare reform is different if it isn't delayed or outright prevented. The GOP still makes gains in 2010 and retake the house, but the gains maybe smaller. 2011-2012 are more or less gridlocked like OTL.

For 2012, she wins it. The GOP was a mess that year and the base was too reluctant to get behind Romney, plus the Dems have the advantage in the EC, so the only way I can see the GOP winning it is if she does significantly worse than Obama did, and I don't see that happening. Keep in mind she is a Clinton, so she has big money locked up to.

As for the second term, it pretty much goes the same as OTL, except maybe in Syria and if healthcare reform didn't pass in her first term, she takes a stab at it in the second.

All and all, she's an improvement over BHO in some ways and is worse in others. In other words, she wouldn't be much different as President.

My question is with her as the Democratic nominee in 2008 is does Donald Trump stay a Democrat!?!?!
 
But Obama was all about the economy at the beginning of his presidency.

I think like a lot of presidents, from Reagan(?) onward, any clear domestic policy initiative where hopefully you could see, yeah or nay whether it works or not, instead it gets bogged by a welter of complexities introduced by Congress.

Or, put another way, the president is really a dictator on foreign policy, where Congress defers and goes along perhaps much more than it should. And we American citizens should probably keep this in mind when we vote for our presidents.
 
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The big difference is that the Republican backlash is sexist rather than racist. Stories like the Zimmerman murder don't become huge partisan flashpoints; issues of importance to middle-class white women do, like campus sexual assault or abortion. No Republican protests about "lyin' African," but instead more "iron my shirt"-style comments. Immigration reform still doesn't pass, and the GOP does become more nativist, with a few professional trolls saying immigration is bad for black people (in OTL, it's the amateur trolls who say that).

On the Domestic front, I personally think she'd be more committed to the economy than Obama was and therefore will probably see better results than he did, so healthcare reform is different if it isn't delayed or outright prevented. The GOP still makes gains in 2010 and retake the house, but the gains maybe smaller. 2011-2012 are more or less gridlocked like OTL.!

In the primary, Hillary ran to Obama's left on health care - Obama was against mandates, and attacked Hillary for her support for mandates. He ended up implementing her plan at the end.
 
But Obama was all about the economy at the beginning of his presidency.

Only for about the first 6 months of it. Once the recession was officially declared over in June 2009, his focus switched to healthcare reform pretty quickly, and despite the recession ending in June, unemployment (which didn't fall below 8% until well into 2012) was still on the rise, income inequality was still growing, and people were still losing their homes. The switch to health care reform, and all those economic factors I stated, are what did him in in 2010 and gave us the least productive congresses in history.
 
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In the primary, Hillary ran to Obama's left on health care - Obama was against mandates, and attacked Hillary for her support for mandates. He ended up implementing her plan at the end.

The primaries were before the economy collapsed though. Plus, I think she would've been more cautious if she attempted health care reform, as the memory of 1993 and 1994 would still be fresh for her. Obama seemed to forget about that.
 
The primaries were before the economy collapsed though. Plus, I think she would've been more cautious if she attempted health care reform, as the memory of 1993 and 1994 would still be fresh for her. Obama seemed to forget about that.

Pelosi would not have let her be cautious. Obamacare gets Obama's name on it, but it was much less Obama's project than the party's project, with Pelosi twisting arms to get a Congressional majority for it. Obama was more interested in a climate change bill, which ended up not happening.
 
In 2008, given how close the race was it shouldn't be too hard to let her win. Even after the Iowa debacle she made a comeback in New Hampshire and perhaps if she'd done better in caucuses or kept Bill Clinton under tighter control she could probably have won. She might have to pick Obama if the contest is really divisive or close, but otherwise I'd say Strickland or Bayh would be VP. As for the general election, I'm not sure if she'd do better or worse than Obama. She'd have more support from white working-class voters and could be a stronger candidate in some areas and win over more of Appalachia, parts of the South and other states McCain won, though perhaps be weaker in North Carolina and with black and minority voters. Also, McCain might pick a black or minority VP as a 'game-changer' instead of Palin if Obama came close, I'd say JC Watts or Jindal, which could be more successful than the Palin pick, though not enough to save McCain.

I think Hillary would want to do healthcare reform, and in domestic policy largely be similar to Obama. I'm not sure if healthcare reform would pass: on one hand she would hopefully have learned from the mistakes of 1993-1994 and there could be more Democrats in Congress(such as Democrat victories in Kentucky and Georgia) depending on the size of her mandate. On the other hand she might not learn the lessons of 1993-1994, make a significantly different reform or somehow let it fail like her campaign IOTL. Perhaps also she might make different domestic policies and react differently to the economic crisis, any ideas on what that might be?

In foreign policy I think she'd be different. US troops could stay in Iraq longer, and it's likely she'd be more hawkish in Syria and bomb it by September 2013 or earlier.
 
Depends on the precise POD. If the primary race was quick (perhaps Hillary won Iowa and then New Hampshire), then he's VP, and the all-but-unchallenged primary contender for the 2016 election. If it was slower and more protracted as in OTL, but ultimately decided in Hillary's favor... honestly, I still think he's VP, but it's not 100% guaranteed.
 
I think McCain might be able to get his dream of picking Joe Lieberman as his VP rather than Sarah Palin.

The "celebrity" nature of Obama's candidacy made McCain go for a longshot unknown like Palin. Additionally, Republicans despised the Clintons in 2008 and so that could be relied on to turn out the base despite a liberal(ish) VP.

Unlikely to result in a McCain victory, but the generally centrist Hillary versus the centrist McCain and Lieberman might produce a different political conversation.
 
Obama did run on health care reform. And so, he was keeping a campaign promise.

I do wonder if he had keep it simple, say extend Medicare to young Americans from 0 - 25.

But, that would be expensive (although in my view probably well worth it).

As I understand it, Obama's team felt they needed to achieve three goals all at once: (1) expand the base of people buying insurance, and thus the mandate, (2) cost containment, and I don't really know what this involves, and (3) see that insurance companies are better citizens, such as legislating they can no longer pre-exist people.

With diabetes, I have read that it's cost-effective to have pretty regular office visits and to arrange it so that it's easy for the patient to see his or her doctor, in order to avoid the far more expensive hospitalization. Okay, so this clearly seems like it's win-win. But I'm not sure how many other examples of clear cut win-win there are in the area of cost containment.
 
I think a real question would be how does this affect LGBT rights? OTL they got a pretty significant boost from Biden (and then Obama) throwing their (rhetorical) support behind it. I doubt that Hillary, who's hung to the rear of the issue for years, would be quite as forceful.
 
Well, you may not need much of a POD, as Hillary came pretty close to getting the nomination in 2008 as it was. I guess if you want one, maybe no Iraq war or an earlier economic crisis, maybe it starts in September of 2007 instead of September 2008.

Good golly. This POD would likely butterfly the entire situation.
 
Not really, there would still be an economic downturn/crisis, and Afghanistan would go more or less the same way as OTL.

But Bush would be way more popular later on, economic growth would likely have been better before the crisis (military spending has a sub-1 GDP multiplier), Obama might not have even been the Senate nominee, Edwards would be more readily embraced by progressives... conversely, Kerry might have pulled off a victory - in 2004 the Iraq War was still popular, and Kerry's Iraq War votes made him look like an idiot.
 
And with more attention including from the general public, Afghanistan may have gone better. Who knows, one or two seemingly small, achievable changes, we may have gotten a healthy interchange going between theory and practice, may have found ways to appreciate or at least respect someone else's religion, find ways to educate a generation, get trade going that in the broad middle way is win-win, etc.
 
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