Had Clinton Won in 2008, Would She Have Been Reelected?

Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Romney needs to win three out of these four states. Florida is easily attainable given he lost it by less than a percentage point to Obama.

So how do we get Romney, a patrician looking man of wealth and privilege, two states with large blue collar voting populations and one state whose northern suburbs lean Democrat?

Christie would help in the Pennsylvania suburbs considering NJ is right next door. Plus Christie is Italian and Irish and a tough guy, so he'd play well in the Philadelphia area.

If HRC has Strickland as VP, then Ohio is going to be tough. Doubling down on the Northeastern Republican aspect might play well in New Hampshire though.

Get those three, and I think Romney is better off targeting Colorado and Nevada (where media is relatively inexpensive and there's more Mormon voters to mobilize in Nevada's case).
 
Christie would help in the Pennsylvania suburbs considering NJ is right next door. Plus Christie is Italian and Irish and a tough guy, so he'd play well in the Philadelphia area.

The problem with picking Christie is that both he and Romney are moderate Northesterners. This doesn't provide the ideological and geographical balance needed for a ticket to pull through on election day. Conservatives who were already uncomfortable with Romney are going to be outright upset they aren't represented with "one of their own" on the ticket. This would depress voter turnout and hurt Romney even more than OTL in important swing states.
 
She lost an election to Donald Trump. This surely has to raise significant questions about her capacity to win any half way competitive election.
Would Romney and whoever would have been the Republican presidential candidate in 2012 have received the same clandestine Russian support Trump did in 2016 though? Would it have really been in Putin's interest to have a halfway competent Republican US President in the White House compared to the utterly clueless incompetent walking and sadly talking and twittering embarressment that support gave him in OTL in 2016?
 
Would Romney and whoever would have been the Republican presidential candidate in 2012 have received the same clandestine Russian support Trump did in 2016 though? Would it have really been in Putin's interest to have a halfway competent Republican US President in the White House compared to the utterly clueless incompetent walking and sadly talking and twittering embarressment that support gave him in OTL in 2016?

Romney was actually a critic of Putin and slammed Obama for allegedly not standing up to Russia. That's in sharp contrast to Trump who openly praised Putin and called on Russia to hack Clinton's campaign.
 
Would Romney and whoever would have been the Republican presidential candidate in 2012 have received the same clandestine Russian support Trump did in 2016 though? Would it have really been in Putin's interest to have a halfway competent Republican US President in the White House compared to the utterly clueless incompetent walking and sadly talking and twittering embarressment that support gave him in OTL in 2016?

Romney was widely mocked by the Obama campaign and Democratic media for calling Russia America's number one geopolitical foe, so no.

In any case keep in mind that the Russians were primarily interested in causing chaos through the creation of a toxic political environment. I highly doubt they expected Trump to win and I don't think 2012 was the year to attempt such an operation.
 
I wonder if he'd have thrown another rock in the water:


Obama got a record low primary percentage of 88.9% - the lowest an incumbent had gotten since George HW's 72.8% in 1992, though Clinton got 89% against Lyndon La Rouche's 5.5% in 1996. Obama got that low number despite there not being an opponent.

I figure an organized opponent could get 15-25% against HRC.
 
Alternatively, so to speak, we could have had Clinton versus Trump four years early...
Donald Trump was actually a longtime supporter of the Clintons, Hillary included. He endorsed her for president in 2008, and after she lost the primary, publicly wondered why she wasn't the VP candidate. Indeed, he was singing her praises as late as 2012. While obviously things can change, it strikes me as more likely that this is one universe where Trump remains a committed Democrat.
 
Donald Trump was actually a longtime supporter of the Clintons, Hillary included. He endorsed her for president in 2008, and after she lost the primary, publicly wondered why she wasn't the VP candidate. Indeed, he was singing her praises as late as 2012. While obviously things can change, it strikes me as more likely that this is one universe where Trump remains a committed Democrat.

And in 2008 he went on TV singing the praises of Obama and declared what a great thing it was that America had elected a black President. Yet within four years' time he switched parties and accused Obama of faking his birth certificate. This clearly was motivated by selfish, shameless political opportunism and I don't see how Trump wouldn't follow a similar path under Clinton. Odds are he still switches parties, only in this TL he floats a sinister conspiracy theory about President Clinton.
 
And in 2008 he went on TV singing the praises of Obama and declared what a great thing it was that America had elected a black President.
Really? I'm not going to claim this is exhaustive, but I spend a good ten-fifteen minutes googling this and can't come up with Trump saying anything about Obama prior to wading into birtherism in 2011.
 
Really? I'm not going to claim this is exhaustive, but I spend a good ten-fifteen minutes googling this and can't come up with Trump saying anything about Obama prior to wading into birtherism in 2011.

Check out the docuseries "Trump: An American Dream." Trust me, that specific clip where he raves about Obama has to been seen to be believed....
 
Really? I'm not going to claim this is exhaustive, but I spend a good ten-fifteen minutes googling this and can't come up with Trump saying anything about Obama prior to wading into birtherism in 2011.

And here he is again lauding Obama in 2009:
“I gave him an overall grade of at least a B+ and I think he’s lived up to his challenges in a big way. As the British Prime Minister Gordon Brown told him, ‘You’ve changed America’s relationship with the world.’”

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