If Romney had narrowly won in 2012, could Obama have pulled a Grover Cleveland in 2016?

As title. It’s an interesting premise to me - Imagine Romney carries a narrow Electoral College win, but Obama wins the popular vote. Would Obama have enough retained support to mount a successful 2016 challenge?

It seems however in TTL that Clinton might have been seen more as ‘The candidate we should have picked in 2008’ so perhaps this would carry her to the 2016 nomination and then a potential victory.

Thoughts?
 
You can draw some very interesting scenarios and this thread belongs in current politics chat. Romney in 2012 would keep Trump out of the race. Obama could run in 2016 but Hillary could have a different type of appeal. I'll stop because the mods should move this thread.
 
Depends on how Mitt does. If he provides peace and prosperity it'll be hard to make a case for change. If he's a disaster on the level of W, Obama can use buyers remorse.

Doesn't necessarily butterfly DJT though. Might get him running as a Dem.
 
I wrote a timeline a little while ago about this, although I abandoned it soon after I began it. I positioned Trump to still run, although he would do so as a Democrat, a social democrat who is oddly against immigration. Obama running again could probably happen, although it would depend massively on Romney's success, as much of Obama's appeal would be due to a kind of buyer's remorse, which was partially the appeal of Cleveland in 1892, and the near-candidacy of Jerry Ford in 1980. Hillary, though, would almost certainly have run against Obama, and I don't think Biden could be totally counted out. If you add a socially democratic, populist Trump, probably Bernie Sanders, and any other more left-wing figures, and it will be a split field led by a defeated President who would have been seen as largely failing in his bipartisan attempts, an extremely controversial former First Lady-turned-politician, an older gaffe-prone former Vice President, a brash, big-mouth billionaire without any experience, and a somewhat elderly man offering radical changes. All of these people offer different things and could possibly end up tearing up the party, especially if the Republican Party unites around Romney, with added points if he is even moderately successful. Honestly, with the economy being the way it was at that point, it would be more difficult for Romney to fail than to succeed.

(Goddamn it, I got beat to it, but the point still stands)
 
He could but I’m not sure he’d want to-in my Romney victory TL I had Obama be considered a potential candidate in 2016 and 2020 but opt not to.
 
It would have been surprisingly hard for Obama to win the popular vote yet lose the electoral. In 2012, the Electoral College actually favored the Democrats.

If you don't believe me, look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_States_presidential_election Obama won the popular vote by 3.86 percent. He won 332 electoral votes. If he had lost all three states which he won in OTL by less than 5.37 points--FL, OH, and VA--he would still have won 272 to 264. You may of course say that some of the states which Obama carried by 5.37 points or more went for Trump in 2016 (PA, IA, WI, MI) but how you get them in 2012 to be more Republican than the nation as a whole is not clear to me. A running mate with local appeal might have helped but after all Ryan wasn't even enough to make WI close.
 
I would say it's possible to make have Obama try for a comeback only if the 2012 election ends with lots of corrupt 2000-esque vote count shenanigans. It has to look dirty and illegitimate.

That can help Obama avoid being seen as an out and out failure and more like the Republicans had no intention of letting him either govern or run in a fair election. In that scenario, it might make 2016 a poisoned chalice for the GOP if the "dirty cheaters" optics stick.

Then again, in today's media environment, I doubt that the memory of 2012 would last long enough to help an Obama reelection.
 
It would have been surprisingly hard for Obama to win the popular vote yet lose the electoral. In 2012, the Electoral College actually favored the Democrats.

If you don't believe me, look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_United_States_presidential_election Obama won the popular vote by 3.86 percent. He won 332 electoral votes. If he had lost all three states which he won in OTL by less than 5.37 points--FL, OH, and VA--he would still have won 272 to 264. You may of course say that some of the states which Obama carried by 5.37 points or more went for Trump in 2016 (PA, IA, WI, MI) but how you get them in 2012 to be more Republican than the nation as a whole is not clear to me. A running mate with local appeal might have helped but after all Ryan wasn't even enough to make WI close.

I think the fact that we are dealing with Mitt Romney as the candidate is pretty limiting. Sure, he wasn't destroyed like McCain/Palin in 2008, but I think he really just performed as well as he could with Paul Ryan at his side.

If we had some kind of outsider like Ron Paul, I think we'd still see an Obama win like IOTL, but I think there would be more options and paths to victory.

You'd need a medium-to-large sized Obama scandal a week or two before the election. That would definitely be one of the worst scandals of his administration and it would have happened at the exact wrong moment. Extremely unlikely and difficult.

But! The PoD topic specified is "could Obama have pulled a Grover Cleveland in 2016" and the answer to that is yes!

Obama, as a former President and probably the most outwardly competent of party higher ups (well IOTL, but in one where he lost the presidency in 2012, not so much). He's a good campaigner and would be really confident.

I would say it's possible to make have Obama try for a comeback only if the 2012 election ends with lots of corrupt 2000-esque vote count shenanigans. It has to look dirty and illegitimate.

That can help Obama avoid being seen as an out and out failure and more like the Republicans had no intention of letting him either govern or run in a fair election. In that scenario, it might make 2016 a poisoned chalice for the GOP if the "dirty cheaters" optics stick.

Then again, in today's media environment, I doubt that the memory of 2012 would last long enough to help an Obama reelection.

This is way more likely and would feed into Obama's chances in 2016. If the GOP did rig the election, I wouldn't necessarily be for the likes of Romney in most cases. I could see somebody like Gingrich getting that kind of backing, or anybody about as far to the right as post-2016 Guiliani.
 
This is way more likely and would feed into Obama's chances in 2016. If the GOP did rig the election, I wouldn't necessarily be for the likes of Romney in most cases. I could see somebody like Gingrich getting that kind of backing, or anybody about as far to the right as post-2016 Guiliani.

You think any of those could believably cheat an election? For that to work it has to be someone close enough to be in the margin of error. I would hope at least.

I don't know if CrossCheck was as big a deal in 2012 as it is now, but I don't know if the Republicans could pull a fake deep enough to put a Gingrich/Giuliani in office.
 
Would something else work to make him step out of the race, perhaps? Say one of his daughters dies (As distasteful as that is) and he resigns at some point?
 
What could guarantee Obama's victory will be in a debate Obama warning that Romney's policies would crash the economy. Then have Mitt Romney's policies crash the economy.
Having Obama win the popular vote but lose the Electoral College would also help greatly in that scenario
 
What could guarantee Obama's victory will be in a debate Obama warning that Romney's policies would crash the economy. Then have Mitt Romney's policies crash the economy.
Having Obama win the popular vote but lose the Electoral College would also help greatly in that scenario

As David T pointed out above Obama losing the popular vote and winning the Electoral College seems far more plausible than the reverse, short of some sort of collapse of Romney's vote in deep Red states that still sees him do much better in the Rust Belt.
 
If Obama loses the Electoral College narrowly and Romney does really poorly in the next four years, I doubt that Obama's chances for a comeback in 2016 would depend much on whether he had narrowly won or narrowly lost the popular vote in 2012.
 
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