WI: Trump Runs in 2012 And Wins?

The idea behind this post is exactly what the title describes. Assuming Trump uses similar, if not entirely the same rhetoric and ideas as he is using currently and wins due to many people's dissatisfaction with the Obama administration, how could you see things possibly changing?
 
People clearly weren't that dissatisfied with Obama, considering they re-elected him.

Regardless, he wasn't getting through the primaries. 2012 was mostly a story of Romney defeating all comers. He didn't do a particularly good job of it, but he did it nonetheless.
 
Trump wouldn't make it far,he probably wouldn't win any primary contests and would be relegated to a footnote.

One reason his rhetoric is working right now is also due to the rise of ISIL,a lack of trust for Government that wasn't there in 2012,amongst other things that wouldn't be there.
Also he was going through his birther phase,which would effectively keep the Republicans from nominating him no matter what the voters thought.
 
I don't think Trump would be successful in 2012. There was a sense that Obama needed more time for his reforms to work and people weren't yet so disappointed in him. I do think that the neo-cons had been discredited by this point though, so he would probably do better in primaries than people would expect: Ie, if he is tapping into the same issues on trade and "self-funding his campaign" he might do OK, but he won't hit the same success on the foreign policy failures which weren't so apparent in 2012.
 
I don't think Trump would be successful in 2012. There was a sense that Obama needed more time for his reforms to work and people weren't yet so disappointed in him. I do think that the neo-cons had been discredited by this point though, so he would probably do better in primaries than people would expect: Ie, if he is tapping into the same issues on trade and "self-funding his campaign" he might do OK, but he won't hit the same success on the foreign policy failures which weren't so apparent in 2012.


The primary, no pun intended, issues that gave him traction this time around was Trade and Immigration.

Both issues have been issues voters have been concerned with for some time, hence the regular lip service for them, and could very well have had a similar effect then as now.


A lot of conservatives were unhappy with Romney as he was seen as the Establishment choice.

Trump would have been as much of an outsider then as now.
 
I know this kinda defeats the point of this thread, but better question. What if Trump ran in 2008 as an independent, while painting McCain and Obama as establishment hypocrites who simply wear different colors? I know he probably wouldn't win, but could any of you see this having some sort of impact on politics? Before you go all "Perot 92" on me, remember in 1992 we weren't in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression and two complete failures of wars that made Vietnam look like WW2.
 
The time really wasn't right. I think there are two undercurrents of anger that propelled Trump.

The first is an internal Republican anger. A total revolt against a party that had continuously put up milquetoast nominees and then demand the quiet compliance of the base.

The second is more broad, more powerful, and more fresh. My Uncle is a good example. He was a lifetime Republican who was hit hard by the recession. He ended up voting for Obama in 2008, and by 2012 had become very tired of GOP obstruction. He very gladly voted for Obama again at the time (he lives in one of the most conservative towns I know of here in FL FWIW) but grew disillusioned. Obama, whether it's his fault or Congresses fault (that doesn't even matter at this point) failed to deliver the goods. The hope faded and the change never really came. Obamas shift from economic to immigration concerns also really turned people off, something that hadn't happened yet in 2012.

Basically, there wasn't anything strong for Trump to latch onto in 2012. He needed Romney and Obama to poison the well first.
 
My first take is that there are at least two more interesting alternative Trump runs. The first is that he becomes the Reform candidate in 2000 instead of Pat Buchanan, which is a plausible alternative scenario in that he actually entered the nomination contest and won a few primaries. The other is that he runs for Mayor of New York much earlier in his life, maybe in 1989.

The problem with 2012 is that the Republicans, or at least the Republican establishment, coalesced quickly around Romney, the 2008 runner-up, for reasons that are not entirely yet clear. You could see this by looking at who the 2012 runner up was, Santorum. Santorum flopped in 2016 and in fact has not been elected to anything since 2000, so he was pretty clearly an empty vessel for the social conservatives. Newt Gingrich, who has not been elected to anything since 1996, did try out a few Trump like themes but wasn't the best vehicle for them.

What happened between 2012 and 2016? Maybe Republican voters took a look at the Republican Congress and all the Republican statehouses and governors and concluded that they hadn't done all that much. Democratic voters have a similar problem, but the Republican primary electorate seems more willing to upset the apple cart.
 
Cynically enough too, I think there is a bit of a culture of "taking turns" in the US Establishment. Republicans are always keen to grab any opportunity they can (though not generally politic enough to shake off the more extremist baggage that can deny them otherwise easy opportunities) and always believe it is really "their turn." Democrats, establishment Democratic leaders anyway, are more daunted by the notion that it is only fair that each party gets a crack at running things.

Before the Sanders campaign took off the way it did, in the manner it did, I had very sadly written off the 2016 election as "in the bag" for the Republicans, no matter who they nominated simply because after 2 terms of Obama it's "their turn" by default. This country has not seen exactly three Democratic presidential administrations in a row since...well since the before the Civil War actually. For 20 years, between 1933 and 1953 they held the White House with FDR's 4 elected terms and Harry Truman's one. That makes Truman the first and only Democrat elected after another one had been immediately before. So, not since 1948!

And to be sure, since the 1920s we only have a single example of a Republican being elected after another one--Bush Sr in 1988.

I don't think many people think "8 years is enough for any party" is a strong rule, but many probably would say it is a good one, and so until the issues of this campaign cycle were radicalized by both parties I had to figure any Democrat would be doomed this year, pretty automatically.

This too has something to do with Trump going for it this year and not some prior year. Now is when the tide would most strongly favor any Republican, setting actual issues aside. Now therefore is the time for an outsider to capture it.
 
I understand conspiracy stuff is frowned on here (though semi-secret power rotation agreements between political parties recur often in Latin America), but in terms of outcomes, Shevek is on to something.

Since the 22nd Amendment to the US Constitution was passed, imposing term limits on the presidency, with the big exception of the 1977-93 period, the White House has switched between the Democratic and Republican parties every eighth year almost like clockwork. The exception was the one Carter term, followed by three Republican terms. The normal pattern would have been the switch between parties occurring in 1984.

Note that this was definitely not the case before the 22nd Amendment, when long periods of the White House being in control of one party was the norm. In fact, between 1861 and 1933, there were Democrats in the White House for only four terms, or sixteen years. Then you had the five terms of Roosevelt -Truman.

Another thing that happens pretty consistently, and this goes back to when states started allowing their electorates to vote for presidential electors, that in the election eight years after a party gains control of the White House, its popular vote percentage margin shrinks compared with four years earlier. This is a weird statistic, but surprisingly consistent. There are only three exceptions, 1892, 1896, and 1904. The 1892 and 1896 exceptions are partly explained by the circumstances of 1888, when the voters wanted to re-elect Cleveland but he lost in the electoral college, the voters made sure he was elected in 1892 then deserted the Democrats.

This can be explained by voter fatigue after eight years, similar to the "six year itch" tradition of Congressional losses in the sixth year of an administration.

But for whatever reason, the 2012 Republican primary field of contestants was fairly weak as these things go. It was definitely much weaker than in 2016, and I wold argue that it was weaker than in 2008 or 2000.
 
Actually 1848 and 1852. The Whigs won in 1840, lost narrowly in 1844, won fairly narrowly in 1848, then the party started to collapse. It should be noted that pre-Civil War elections were significantly different, with smaller electorates and different parties than after the Civil War, so maybe they all should be thrown out. The pattern does work in 1832, 1836, 1856 (though due to the Whig collapse), 1860 and of course all but three post Civil War elections.
 
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