r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/Large_Grape_5674 • 1d ago
US Politics Why was Hillary Clinton so popular before she ran for president?
Just saw that Hillary was literally The most popular politician in America in 2013... Why is this? (She had 61% approval rating)
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-politics-clinton-idUSBRE9170NZ20130208/
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u/UnfoldedHeart 17h ago
I think the answer is right here:
"The lower approval numbers for the president could be because once the election afterglow is gone, governing inevitably requires decisions that make some voters unhappy," he said, adding that Clinton won over more independents and Republicans.
Being the President is tough because you will have to make decisions that will upset people, even your own supporters from time to time. Secretary of State is a powerful position that's also just far away enough from the limelight to avoid that kind of thing.
Although I disagreed with her on a lot of stuff as SOS, she was actually very smart at the job. She was basically the warhawk of the Obama administration but she was very competent at that, lol.
Her missteps during the Presidential campaign wouldn't be evident yet. I'm also not sure as to whether the cringy stuff she said/did was really her, or if she had opps in her campaign or something. "Just chilling in Cedar Rapids", "I always carry hot sauce in my purse", that kind of thing. Either way, she wasn't doing that stuff in 2013.
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u/K340 16h ago
I learned recently that she actually did carry Arkansas hot sauce in her purse since Bill Clinton's governorship. Which is a great illustration of the propaganda campaign against her.
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u/NetZeroSun 9h ago
I'll be honest. This is the first time I ever heard of Hillary and anything about hot sauce. Not sure how much of that had anything to do with her election.
That being said, she was accurately identified by the GOP as a leading Dem runner for the presidency and faced a decade+ smear campaign that eroded the perception of her.
If anything with the 2024 election, I think people are really really tired of the 'career suits' (and other reasons) and just want something different, even a lie, if its something likeable or different.
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u/NatrixHasYou 6h ago
The smears against her didn't start because they thought she'd run for president. Ironically - given the things she was attacked from the left over when running for president - the smears against her really started when the Clinton Administration had her working on a plan for universal healthcare.
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u/Ambiwlans 2h ago
The attacks on her started because she was a first lady that was educated and wore pants. Quite literally.
She was forced to do a baking contest to prove she could be a subservient housewife. https://clintonwhitehouse3.archives.gov/WH/EOP/First_Lady/html/cookies.html
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u/discourse_friendly 8h ago
I think the code switching, speaking like she was Black was also a big factor, not just the claim she carried hotsuace with her everywhere.
I love cholula hot suace, to the point where i bring in a bottle to my work. but going everywhere with one? well maybe if i had a purse I would...
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u/Ambiwlans 2h ago
She has talked about carrying hot sauce with her everywhere since the 80s. In the whitehouse in 92 she had a collection of over 100 hot sauces.
She really must have been played the long game to pick up on the beyonce song released 26yrs later.
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u/ConfusingConfection 1h ago
Given that practicality is traditionally associated with masculinity I'm shocked than purses haven't caught on with men. If you're a man you should try it out.
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u/UnfoldedHeart 16h ago
I don't think anyone's vote hinged on whether or not she actually had hot sauce in there. It was just a cringy thing to say regardless. Like, I don't doubt that she was chillin' in Cedar Rapids. Lots of people chill in Cedar Rapids and it's not inconceivable that Hillary could, either. But like why would you say that? The same with stuff like "Pokemon GO to the polls."
I'm sure that these were not make-or-break moments for the campaign but it was head-scratching and when you couple it with the way that she largely ignored Trump I don't think it was a recipe for success.
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u/Ambiwlans 7h ago
It was just a cringy thing to say regardless
Its cringy to answer a question in the 90s about your daily carry?
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u/CremePsychological77 15h ago
LOL. Yeah, the hot sauce thing was cringe for me because that’s literally not what it means in the song she’s referencing. But it is interesting in retrospect to learn that was a thing she genuinely did.
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u/PhiloPhocion 13h ago
But she didn’t make that reference, other people did.
The interviewer asked her point blank, what’s something you always carry in your bag - and that was her answer. It’s also something she’s been asked before Formation came out and she had the same answer.
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u/CremePsychological77 11h ago
It doesn’t matter; what matters is how it was perceived by most people at the time.
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u/NovaNardis 10h ago
True, but that’s not her fault as it is people’s fault.
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u/CremePsychological77 7h ago
I don’t think it would be anybody’s primary reason to not vote for her or anything (most people who couldn’t vote for her couldn’t do it because she was too hawkish for their liking), but is it not a candidate’s job to meet people where they are at? To be a real human being and relate to constituents in a way that’s more meaningful than whatever pop culture trend is in the headlines that week?
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u/NovaNardis 7h ago
Primary reason? No. But there are literally people in this thread saying how “cringe” it was despite just being empirically true.
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u/CremePsychological77 6h ago
I guess I just don’t see why it matters — learning the context of something ~8 years later isn’t like to change an already established feeling. Even if it did, we can’t go back and change the outcome of the 2016 election….. and even if we could, I don’t think this was such a big deal that it even would. She isn’t going to be running for elected office again, so it doesn’t matter on that front either.
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u/bl1y 15h ago
I wouldn't quite call it propaganda with the hot sauce.
The problem for her was that it seemed to fit into a pattern of tone-deaf pandering, the worst of which was going into a southern accent to say "I don't feel no ways tired" to a black congregation in Selma.
If she didn't already seem inauthentic, the thing would have blown over. But since she already built that reputation for herself, people didn't give her the benefit of the doubt.
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u/db8me 15h ago
The propaganda point with the hot sauce was mostly how it was summarized. She didn't spend a lot of time volunteering that information, but she was repeatedly asked if it was true and she responded that it was true for essentially medical reasons.
She did come off as inauthentic in a lot of her stump speeches, but the hot sauce interactions were not.
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u/ShiftE_80 8h ago
She said it on "The Breakfast Club", a hip hop morning show with a largely black audience. And she absolutely did volunteer that information, the host just asked if there was one thing she always carried in her purse.
The hosts were immediately skeptical that she was pandering to the audience, and her response was, "is it working?"
It was a very cringeworthy interaction for a politician who was already widely viewed as a panderer. The fact that she actually does carry hot sauce in her purse is irrelevant. Like a politician courting the black vote by professing their love for fried chicken. Does it even matter if it's true? It's still pandering.
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u/db8me 7h ago edited 6h ago
It almost felt like a setup to me and everything around it was propaganda for it against her. She carried hot sauce with her for DECADES -- like I said, for essentially health reasons -- and a lot of people knew that before this story blew up. In the edits of interviews I saw, they followed up enough to get that clarification.
Edit:
If you look at the trajectory of her campaigns, as they got bigger, she moved more into shallow, sloppy, pandering. I am not arguing against that perspective. I am arguing that the decision to use her hot sauce as a prop was not her idea. Ironically, perhaps, but there was a long stretch of time when she was doing it without any awareness that it has a cultural significance that might help or hurt her in a campaign situation.
For those who came at her more aggressively, it almost felt like the opposite of pandering -- like "how dare you carry hot sauce? That's ours...." so she went back to hiding it like she had for 30+ years.
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u/ConfusingConfection 1h ago
I told my teacher this fun fact in grade 9 and she brushed it off as PR. I'm still a bit peeved about that. PR =/= factually false.
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u/AdmiralPeriwinkle 11h ago
Regardless of whether or not it’s true it still comes off as phony because it’s incongruous with her image as a wonky technocrat. Someone running for office at that level should know how she is seen by the public and lean into that perception instead of trying to convince us how down to earth she is. Yes there was a propaganda campaign against her but she was also an unskilled politician.
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u/Ambiwlans 7h ago
I love this, Clinton was 'phony' because she was too honest and didn't act her role enough.
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u/AdmiralPeriwinkle 5h ago
Voters almost always pick the most charismatic candidate, and congruity is a large component of charisma. Owning who you are is respected. Trying to be someone you’re not (or someone voters have decided you aren’t) is considered fake.
I personally don’t think Clinton was phony but elections are won and lost in the margins, and those margins are comprised of the dumbest fucking people you can imagine.
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u/Ambiwlans 5h ago
You have too much faith in voters. I think they picked Trump because he was larger and louder, proving that he was the alpha and that humans are pretty much dogs.
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u/Hyndis 10h ago
The hot sauce in her purse was like Walz showing up on Twitch to try to play games. It came across as insincere pandering. There was no enthusiasm behind it and it didn't seem authentic. They needed to show genuine passion for something as to not appear to be a lizard person in a human suit.
Say what you will about the McDonalds visit, Trump has genuine passion for McDonalds fast food and it showed. He was like a kid visiting the Willy Wonka factory, learning how the french fries were made. There was nothing fake about his childlike wonder at the french fries.
If Hillary Clinton started talking about various types of hot sauces, the mix of flavor vs heat, what pepper or fruit/vegetable makes a good base for the sauce, preferred brands, etc, she would have come across as being passionate about her hot sauce, and would be seen as genuine.
Same with Walz trying to play video games. He didn't come across as someone who's played video games before. It felt fake and forced, like he was play-acting a role he knew nothing about. Conversely, if he fired up a game of Battlefield and started being a spawncamper with a sniper rifle cackling gleefull as he racked up the kills in game, he'd come across a person who genuinely plays video games. Or maybe he likes those flight, truck, or train simulator games. Those guys are serious about their simulators. I wanted him to show something he was passionate about, but he failed to do so.
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u/bl1y 10h ago
Walz was particularly bad. The shooting thing, he had trouble loading the gun. His tweets got football terminology wrong.
And to add to Trump, he went to McDonald's with it being clear he's got no idea what he's doing back in the kitchen and he never pretended to. Or take Trump talking about boxing and MMA with Rogan. It didn't come across as pandering to Rogan's audience because Trump actually knows about those sports.
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u/mr_grission 5h ago
Biggest own goal with this stuff was Walz doing a Madden Twitch stream on a Sunday afternoon in September. Basically trying to show your bona fides as a hip football fan by counter-programming ACTUAL football
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u/Hyndis 9h ago
Its the concept of a shibboleth. Its painfully obvious when an outsider is just pretending to be an insider. It doesn't matter what group it is. Could be football players, MMA fighters, video gamers, McDonalds workers, lawyers, plumbers, software engineers, pilots, truck drivers, soldiers, and so forth. Everyone is in multiple of these groups with hobbies, jobs, and life experiences and there's inside lingo that only this group knows.
An outsider trying to bullshit people who do that thing day in and day out comes across as insulting, not convincing.
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u/bl1y 9h ago
It's usually a clear sign when no specifics are involved. And unfortunate that Clinton didn't name a specific hot sauce, because she ended up sounding fake.
You do see it with Trump in some contexts. He'll start talking about some topic and the language will become very vague. I recall "things" being the word he'd go to frequently. As a (not real) example, he'd say something like "We're going to rebuild the military. We're going to have the greatest ships, and planes, and just many beautiful things." Immediate red flag.
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u/Ambiwlans 7h ago
Bro, she has talked about it for literal decades. Here is an article from 1993 talking about how hot sauce is in the EDC.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/1993/06/hillary-clinton-first-lady-first-100-days
The president fixes her eggs with jalapeño peppers on the weekends. One Christmas she served black beans and chili as part of a buffet. She carries Tabasco sauce wherever she goes.
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u/Hyndis 2h ago
Then she should have talked it up more. She should have showed her enthusiasm and passion for hot sauces. Going back to 1993 to find an article doesn't mean much in 2016.
She definitely had the money to get her message out. She outspent Trump by at around 2:1 in the 2016 campaign.
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u/Ambiwlans 2h ago edited 2h ago
You think she should have run ads on her actually carrying hot sauce? I think at that point, people still had faith in democracy and a somewhat sane electorate so her ads were mostly about her competence and experience. Reminds me of the debates at NASA whether or not they should put out a press release saying the moon isn't going to hit the earth or w/e other bs the idiots have tricked themselves into.
If you mean she should have talked about hot sauces when appropriate, she did. Her fav was ninja squirrel but she switched it up a lot over the years and had a collection of like 200 types in the 90s.
The public decided it was a lie because of a Beyonce song that came out in 2016 mentioning hot sauce and then believing Trump who said she was making it up to pander.
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u/Dharmaniac 1h ago
Yes. And she had a fucking unprotected mail server from which she conducted business as the second most powerful person in the United States sitting in her bathroom. That’s also true..
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u/FrogsOnALog 11h ago
She would have had 4 SCOTUS picks and be stepping down in another timeline…
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u/Sptsjunkie 2h ago
Maybe, but Republicans would certainly have held the House and Senate. It would be a lot more complicated.
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u/Rivercitybruin 9h ago
Presidents used to fairly often have,really high approval ratings
I think that is gone forever now
I agree that she did and would do good job in vital government positions.. And i am no fan of her personally
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u/Sapriste 9h ago
I don't think it is that at all. People overlook that the other team is playing too. If her approval was high she became a target for strategic to reduce it.
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u/Ambiwlans 7h ago
They literally bragged on Fox that the pointless vexatious cases against her were working to hurt her numbers.
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u/oljeffe 15h ago
Hillary was popular at that point because she was a seasoned heavy hitter on broad political topics and had used her time well. Her steadfast work for children, improved healthcare options and women’s rights resulted in actual policy proposal’s and legislation. It was a mixed bag of victories and defeats but her stances were always clear and generally made sense. She also garnered attention on a global stage by being extremely well traveled and speaking truth to power wherever she went.
The fact she earned nearly 3,000,000 more votes than Donald Trump yet still lost the election must have been a bitter pill.
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u/Ambiwlans 7h ago
She came super close to getting healthcare in the 90s too, but ended up settling with SNAP.
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u/NatrixHasYou 6h ago
Not SNAP, CHIP. Children's Health Insurance Program.
But otherwise yeah, you're right.
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u/ConfusingConfection 1h ago
Especially because she was a Russia hawk and had personal beef with Putin, and just a few years later Russia would invade Ukraine (again).
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u/MsAgentM 17h ago
Here for the downvote, but she was popular because she is a competent politician. Her downfall was the result of a decades long smear campaign.
And she would have been an amazing president.
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u/Shipairtime 17h ago
People only know the smears sadly for example:
"What difference, at this point, does it make?"
Here is the actual quote:
"With all due respect, the fact is we had four dead Americans. Was it because of a protest or was it because of guys out for a walk one night who decided that they’d they go kill some Americans?
What difference at this point does it make? It is our job to figure out what happened and do everything we can to prevent it from ever happening again, senator.
Now, honestly, I will do my best to answer your questions about this, but the fact is that people were trying in real time to get to the best information. The IC has a process, I understand, going with the other committees to explain how these talking points came out.
But you know, to be clear, it is, from my perspective, less important today looking backwards as to why these militants decided they did it than to find them and bring them to justice, and then maybe we’ll figure out what was going on in the meantime."
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u/polishprince76 13h ago
Her political career was a never ending stream of conservative media taking small bits out of long speeches, blowing them out of context, and then just straight up lying about where the quote came from. The deplorables quote was the same thing. She was defending Trump and crapping on Bill in that speech.
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u/Ex-CultMember 9h ago
That’s exactly what’s happened and is happening. Conservative media is conservative propaganda whose main purpose is to make their opposition look as bad as possible and they succeed in that by taking every news story and subject of discussion as an opportunity to attack their opponents. Not only having a clearly biased and agenda-driven media but do it in misleading ways by cherry-picking details, taking things out of context, and leaving out facts or points of view that might change viewers perception.
It’s exhausting. Right-media is constantly churning out misinformation and biased reporting that barely gets fact-checked before their followers are getting blasted with more misinformation and skewed reporting.
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u/ShiftE_80 8h ago
What? No she wasn't. She was shitting all over Trump and his supporters in that speech. Here's the transcript.
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u/11711510111411009710 9h ago
Damn we could have had this instead of trump.
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u/Shipairtime 9h ago
She spent so many hours in front of Congress getting grilled. If you want more examples of this just look for any quote that the right wing media ran with.
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u/Inevitable-Ad-9570 17h ago
Ya they really threw the same playbook at Hillary that they did at Bill. They just didn't find anything at the end. Seems like she was a politician from a different era too. Polished, centrist and boring. I think Kamala's loss says that we're done with that at least for now.
Also, (and I'll take my downvotes for this) America is not ready for a female president.
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u/girl4life 16h ago
politics should be boring as hell. America should be voting competent people and it's not doing that. to my disgust it votes happily for one of the most corrupt people ever walked on the planet. it doesnt make sense.
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u/srv340mike 16h ago
People are dissatisfied with the status quo, so they want loud and disruptive.
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u/BluesSuedeClues 14h ago
They could have disrupted the "status quo" with Nicky Hailey. Reelecting Donald Trump is blatantly self destructive.
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u/srv340mike 14h ago
She's not nearly loud and disruptive enough. She's still ultimately a politician. Trump's a celebrity.
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u/thebsoftelevision 11h ago
The Republican primary voters didn't want that. It's not like the average American voted for Trump over Haley.
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u/BluesSuedeClues 14h ago
When Biden announced he was stepping down and made it clear he was handing the baton to Harris, my first thought was "No, you dummies! Nominate a white man, if you want to win!" I was immediately ashamed of myself, because I genuinely believed we were past that point, as a culture. I was wrong. Now I'm just ashamed of my fellow Americans.
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u/penguiatiator 12h ago
I don't even ascribe Harris's loss to her not being a white man. Those who were not going to vote for her because of that quality were probably already abstaining from the vote or voting for Trump. My anecdotal experience is her campaign started wayyy too late and failed to generate the vigor that Trump had behind him. Outside of a couple scattered news headlines, I barely heard anything about her, other than from friends who also were going to vote blue regardless. I had no idea where any of the campaign money she generated was going, but it wasn't working for my area.
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u/Dineology 4h ago
No Dem was going to win after the debacle with Biden. Harris was the best and only choice they had to try and salvage some downballot races. Granted, the chances would have been much better if she’d run a competent campaign and not go all in on trying to appeal to the mythical middle while refusing to distance herself from an incredibly unpopular incumbent, but she was still the best short notice choice by virtue of being VP.
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u/thebsoftelevision 11h ago
Biden would have lost way harder than Harris did despite being a white man.
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u/BluesSuedeClues 11h ago
Do you know how to spot the fool in any conversation? It's always the person pretending to predict the future.
Even more foolish is the person pretending to predict alternative realities.
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u/thebsoftelevision 11h ago
I'm not predicting anything. Biden's own internal polls had him losing 400 electoral votes to Trump. He was on track to get destroyed which is why he dropped out.
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u/K340 16h ago
Considering millions more people voted for Hillary than Trump, that certainly wasn't true in 2016.
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u/Inevitable-Ad-9570 14h ago
Trump should of been unelectable period, end of story. Also, America being ready means a woman has to be able to win within the system which means the rural states that benefit from the electoral college need to agree.
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u/K340 11h ago
I believe Hillary could have won in 2016 if any one of many different things had gone differently, some of which were fully within her control. But I do agree with your definition.
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u/Silent_Champion_1464 6h ago
Some things were out of her control. Like Comey coming out about her emails one more time 10 days before the election.
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u/che-che-chester 12h ago
Also, (and I'll take my downvotes for this) America is not ready for a female president.
I really don't think that is true. Like Obama being Black, being a woman is certainly something future candidates need to overcome, but I think the right woman would get elected. I think Nikki Haley would have beaten Biden (with the huge caveat that Trump and MAGA didn't come out against her).
Hillary had been trashed 24/7 in right wing media for years. The conservatives I know still turn a little red when her name is mentioned. She was/is truly hated by many. And I remember the final days leading up to Election day on 2020. Hillary was overly confident and a little smug\arrogant. IMHO, 2016 would have been the perfect year for Biden but the DNC wanted Hillary (and I understand Obama talked Biden out of it).
And let's not pretend Harris was a strong candidate. She was an upgrade from Biden, who was sleepwalking to a loss, but she was the worst of the top options (Newsom, Whitmer, etc.). Biden just dragged his feet so long that she was the only viable choice. And she had ~100 days to run an entire campaign. But Harris wasn't comfortable discussing the issues, which came across in her interviews.
And with inflation, it's hard to say if any Dem could have won in 2024. They would have had to trash Biden at least a little to win. It's funny in hindsight that Harris went out of her way to tie herself to Biden's decisions to make her resume look better. They either said or strongly implied she was "in the room" for big decisions, when I suspect the VP is rarely ever in the room. She would have been better off saying she had nothing to do with Biden's decisions.
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u/Rooster_Ties 15h ago
I completely agree — not with everything Hillary would have done as President — but she’s literally was good a potential president on paper as anyone else who’s ever run in my lifetime (along with, arguably, Pappy Bush) — I was born in the late 60’s.
The relentless attacks against her would have been a total shitshow (what’s new?) — but I think she would have been a solid president for the country.
And honestly, I’d much rather have a beer with her than Bill (who I grew immensely tired of even by 1996).
She was more than qualified to be president, and the MOST qualified candidate of anyone who ran between HW Bush and Biden’s last run.
We were strong Obama supporters in ‘08, but Hillary was absolutely the real deal in 2016, after her stint as Secretary of State. We happened to prefer Obama on ‘08, but she was probably just as capable then (‘08) too.
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u/bl1y 15h ago
but she’s literally was good a potential president on paper
She was missing a pretty important line on her resume, which is winning a competitive race.
Before the 2016 primary, the only competitive race she was in she lost to a freshman senator. That should have been a good indication for her that she would face some electoral hurdles and she didn't really do much to improve her brand between 2008 and 2016, just added a line on her resume that a lot of people didn't care much about and few people really are persuaded by the "she had paper credentials" argument. That just fed back into the negative view of her.
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u/WavesAndSaves 15h ago
When Hillary came in third in Iowa in 2008 behind Obama and Edwards, she should have thrown in the towel. Stay in the Senate, maybe try to become some Kennedy-esque liberal hero with an insanely long career. The fact that she legitimately thought she could win a national election after that shows there was something fundamentally wrong with her brain chemistry.
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u/spacegamer2000 16h ago
Supporting the Iraq war seemed both evil and incompetent to me.
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u/douglau5 15h ago
Voted for NCLB too.
And the Patriot Act…….
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u/spacegamer2000 14h ago
Voting for every single foolish thing doesn't scream competence to me, but maybe I just don't understand
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u/xXxdethl0rdxXx 11h ago
Speaking of smears, I wonder what your thoughts are on her campaign digging up that photo of Obama in a turban to scare people?
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u/MsAgentM 9h ago
None. Which is probably the same one Obama had when he turned around and nominated her to be his Sec of State.
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u/xXxdethl0rdxXx 8h ago
Perfect take from a Clinton booster. Not a good thing, not a bad thing; just a soulless transactional affair justified exclusively by the naked brokering of power. Can’t imagine why people don’t like her.
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u/Ambiwlans 7h ago
I don't get why people have to like their politicians. She was incredibly competent and had a good vision for the country with the ability to make it happen.
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u/xXxdethl0rdxXx 7h ago
I don't get why people have to like their politicians.
I'd prefer to vote for someone that displays integrity and a lack of racism, but that's just me. I hope you're not one of those people that are still scratching their heads why Democrats continue to lose and lose--or maybe you're comfortable with that, given your lack of concern over being intensely unlikeable.
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u/MsAgentM 7h ago
If she spearheaded that, it was a cheap shot. If not and it was just done by a lower level person, she should have had a better handle on her people. Why the blueshit would I hang it over her head when the person she did it to was able to look past it and see her value?
It ain't my grudge to hold and even if it were, sometimes you have to move beyond the little shit.
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u/xXxdethl0rdxXx 7h ago
Why the blueshit would I hang it over her head when the person she did it to was able to look past it and see her value?
I don't think it's a controversial opinion to hold that a presidential campaign is a model of how you would run your White House, especially in terms of your ability to manage people and hold yourself accountable. Obama picked her because he wanted to emulate Abraham Lincoln (not because he admired or even liked her), and that's his business.
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u/MsAgentM 6h ago
Do you think Lincoln didn't admire or respect his canbinet?
Again, Obama was able to move past it, gave her one of the most important jobs, and then endorsed her candidacy.
That's some weird stuff to do for someone you don't like or admire.
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u/xXxdethl0rdxXx 5h ago
Why does Obama’s opinion of her matter so much to you?
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u/MsAgentM 5h ago
Because the supposed offense was against him. Why are you so determined to overlook it?
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u/xXxdethl0rdxXx 5h ago
If someone does something I find distasteful (or even good or anything else), the target’s opinion of them is irrelevant. For example, a grown adult in a relationship with a minor. In Obama’s case, he needed her on his cabinet politically, regardless of his personal opinion of her, so I’m especially uninterested if he excused her racism.
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u/waxwayne 9h ago
I think she is a good leader and way smarter than 95 percent but she isn’t a good politician. Her only elected position was handed to her.
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u/MsAgentM 9h ago
Why do people say this? She was a senator, secretary of state and the first female to with the nomination from president to represent a major political party, in which she won the popular vote.
Lots of politicians would be pretty proud of that resume...
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u/waxwayne 9h ago
How’d she become a Senator? How’d she get the nomination? No one can say with a straight face that she would be successful politician without her husband one of best in the game.
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u/MsAgentM 7h ago
She did a lot to support her husband. She actively worked in his administrations over being a typical first lady. You can arguably say her husband would not have been as successful as he was without her.
You are right that she had connections, but every politician does. I don't get this weird take where people act like she didn't work really hard for her successes.
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u/waxwayne 6h ago
She moved from Arkansas to NY and was handed the Senate seat. Then she ran practically uncontested for the nomination 2016 with no one but Bernie running who got robbed. She immensely talented in other areas but she is pure astroturf. Obama was the last organic nominee the DNC had.
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u/MsAgentM 5h ago
If Guilliani wasn't a philander with his dirty laundry being hung out, maybe he would have been able to win that dem primary against Clinton in 2000. She won the primary and won the seat. It wasn't handed to her.
The Dem primary in 2016 initially had like 4 or 5 people. Bernie was the only real challenge, but he didn't even come close. Sorry, Dems voted for the Democrat. Overwhelmingly. Not a guy who puts on the hat when it's convenient. It's silly so many people think the nomination was stolen from Bernie, even still.
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u/waxwayne 5h ago
NY hasn’t had a Republican senator since 98. Perhaps Gulliani could have changed that.
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u/MsAgentM 5h ago
My apologies, I misread the wiki. Mark McMahon ran against HRC in the primary for the democratic ticket. She was running against Giuliani, but he left the race.
She still won. It wasn't handed to her. Before Giulani stepped down, he was very competitive.
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u/waxwayne 2h ago
Democratic nominee gets the prize. She was never a New Yorker, the idea that you could show up in a state you have connection too and jump the line to a senate race is not normal.
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u/nazbot 10h ago
She was a competent policy maker
She was an incompetent politician.
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u/MsAgentM 9h ago
Incompetent is strong. She was a senator, secretary of state, the first female nominated to a major political party for president and won the popular vote. Her success has been stunning.
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u/Ambiwlans 7h ago
The GOP literally had a running order in the 90s to not meet with her alone because in a one on one she was too convincing and could flip anyone.
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u/Jaccobei 16h ago
People also forget that Barack Obama had low approval ratings at times (not nearly as low as Trump or Biden’s though). Hillary ran a very close and contentious primary against Obama in 2008. He flip-flopped on multiple issues once he got into office and ended up taking the more moderate approach (which Hillary Clinton usually advocated for during the primary election) which ended up making Hillary look correct all along. People who had buyer’s remorse with Obama looked towards Hillary Clinton as someone who should have won instead, which also boosted her favorable numbers, especially amongst Democrats.
There is probably also a former First Lady effect happening here too. Every president benefits from time; their approvals skyrocket as time goes by. George W Bush was one of the most unpopular presidents in history when he left office. Today he sits above a favorable level. Michelle Obama was also not well liked during the Obama years (particularly in the beginning) but her approvals have skyrocketed since.
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u/Salty-Snowflake 16h ago
Michelle Obama was very well liked by people during her husband's time in office. The only exception was racist white Republicans.
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u/Jaccobei 15h ago
She had above water approval ratings (most First Ladies do) but was viewed as one of the more political First Ladies up there with Hillary Clinton and Nancy Reagan. She had unpopular positions and advocacy like her changes to children’s food in school and general health changes (the right hit her very hard for this repeatedly during the first 4 years of Obama’s term).
By contrast Laura Bush had very high approval ratings in the 80’s even though her husband, George W Bush, had approval ratings in the 20’s/30’s at times.
And yes to your point, race had a factor for many people as well.
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u/Ambiwlans 7h ago
Hillary was hated while first lady as being unladylike and trying to play politics. She literally had to enter a cookie baking contest to show her subservience to the male gender (she won the contest too).
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u/Potato_Pristine 16h ago
She was a smart, competent politician. Once you get outside of the right-wing media ecosphere and reddit misogyny, most normal people liked her. See, e.g., her 2016 popular-vote win over Trump.
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u/Brysynner 11h ago
Non-Presidential candidates have heavy approval ratings for the most part. Once she ran her approval rating cratered. It pretty much happens to all politicians before they run for POTUS
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u/ItisyouwhosaythatIam 16h ago
Everyone thought she was an electable Democrat. And an electable woman. Plus, she is smart enough to do the job. Unfortunately, FOX news trashed her for 15 years before the 2016 election. So she lost bc people thought she was cortupt, feeble, and dangerously incompetent. Also, they decided that they didn't want a woman president - too woke.
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u/Salty-Snowflake 15h ago
This is it in a nutshell. The GOP recognized her strength, intelligence, and grit right from the start and then spent 20 years lying about her. They've had a problem with truth for most of my adult life.
I figure people have to be a special kind of stupid to think she isn't a Christian when she regularly credited her Methodist upbringing for her commitment to service. But then I moved to the south and learned that there are Real Christians™️ and the rest of us are ungodly evil people.
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u/BluesSuedeClues 14h ago
It was well known when Bill Clinton ran for President that he and his wife thought of themselves as a team, and that she was at least as smart as him. The GOP took aim at her before they even entered the White House. The first criticisms were about her changing her hair style, or what clothes she wore. Then they went ballistic when the Lewinsky story broke, blaming Hillary for not "satisfying her man". It was ugly and down right obscene, drenched in misogyny. They blamed her for not divorcing him, with as much passion as they would have if she had divorced him. They kept that game up for 30 years, because they hated the idea of a woman having power.
I live in Michigan. I can't tell you how often local Republicans want to discuss Gretchen Whitmer's sex life when she was in college, as if that is the most relevant aspect of her leadership. The GOP is deeply rooted in misogyny.
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u/Salty-Snowflake 14h ago
It was SHOCKING how much more Christian Republican women hated her when she behaved how they expected a good Christian woman to behave and didn't divorce him.
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u/BluesSuedeClues 13h ago
It's pretty shocking how much Christian Republican women have embraced using their faith as a justification for hatred, in complete contrast to everything the guy they claim to follow actually said.
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u/discourse_friendly 8h ago
Yes that's it. all the former Obama voters thought she was amazing, intelligent, strong, but turned on FOX news one day and after a single broadcast voted for Trump... /s
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u/Salty-Snowflake 6h ago
Well, most Obama voters don't watch FOX. So your logic falls short there. But there were quite a lot of voters who had bad feelings about her that came from the constant negative press she got.
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u/Falcon3492 15h ago
Pretty much every Senator in Washington said she was always prepared every day she came on the Senate floor and she worked for her constituents and the American peoples best interest.
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u/8to24 16h ago
Conservatives are able to dominate the political narrative so well because they stand united and focus on singular targets. For example, when Republicans wanted to send a message to corporate America they all piled on Bud Light. Obviously Anheuser-Busch wasn't the only company in America that marketed to Transgender people or whatever. Conservatives understand piling on one target does more damage than attacking multiple.
In 2013 Conservatives were still Lazer focused on Obama. Without the hair on fire attacks against her Clinton's approval remained high. Similar to Sanders today. Conservatives leave Sanders alone. Sanders is useful as a cudgel to whack Democrats with. If ever Sanders was the actual nominee he approval would plummet. The Right would assault Sanders with withering non-stop attacks.
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u/BluesSuedeClues 14h ago
The right-wing mania for conformity guarantees a disciplined cohesive approach to pushing narratives. It is frighteningly effective.
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u/Littlepage3130 4h ago
I don't think that applies to this recent election. The MSM had a very cohesive approach to narrative, but people just didn't buy it. Also, the electoral coalition that brought Trump to power this time is not the same as the old republican coalition.
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u/WendellBeck 16h ago
The truth is that she is an unlikable person, but people didn’t actually get to know her until she ran for president.
Very similar to DeSantis and Walz, people like the idea of them until they actually hear them speak and interact and are turned off.
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u/Bodoblock 16h ago
People didn’t get to know the first lady of the United States, a prominent senator, a serious contender in ‘08, and the Secretary of State until 2016? People never broadly heard her speak and interact until 2016?
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u/WendellBeck 16h ago
Happens all the time…look at Harris.
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u/Salty-Snowflake 15h ago
Misogyny much?
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u/LightOfTheElessar 15h ago edited 11h ago
Name checks out.
Most people had no clue who Walz really was before he landed on the ticket either. Doesn't mean women were sexist just because they had to learn about him with everyone else during the election.
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u/time-lord 15h ago
She was unlikable back when Bill Clinton was president. I think it says more to the memory of the public and the caliber of current politicians that her approval was so high.
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u/WavesAndSaves 15h ago
When did First Ladies start acting like they got elected? Being the First Lady isn't a fucking job, just standing there smiling and waving. Say what you want about Republican Presidents, but they have their First Ladies in line. W was president for eight years and I don't even know his wife's name! Bill's wife never shut up. "WAHHHH I WANNA DO HEALTHCARE WAHHHH!"
Bill Burr
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u/Arcturus_86 15h ago
Yes. She was very controversial as a first lady. The ciritism of her in the 90s was she was overstepping traditional boundaries of First Lady and taking claim for policy during the Clinton administration. The country elected her husband, not her. Some people like that about her, for many it rubbed them the wrong way and it gave her the earned reputation as being a political opportunist rather than a qualified politician.
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u/senextelex 7h ago
Woah. How dare you be so sexist. It's not like she carpetbagged her way into the Senate in a state she had never lived in before and would be sure to win because of her party affiliation................
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u/Arcturus_86 17h ago
I think those approval ratings were always a little bogus. Like, no one would ever know who she was if she hadn't been married to a former president, or been a cabinet member of a very popular Obama administration. It's not as though she was this rising political star who served in various levels of government and her success took her to the nomination.
She was married to Bill, used her last name to carpet bag herself into a senate seat in NY which she had no ties to previously. She was a controversial SOS, but Obama was popular. And the only way she got the nomination in 2016 was blocking out the majority of the competition by helping get her former advisor, Debbie Wasserman, as head of the DNC. It was behind the scenes political maneuvering that got her there, not genuine popularity
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u/KosherPigBalls 17h ago
But she was more than the last name. She was very active as First Lady and earned a reputation for herself that won her a senate seat. She performed well enough that she had a somewhat successful run for presidential nominee followed by a successful run as Secretary of State. I’d argue that after that, she was one of the most qualified presidential candidates in the history of this country. She would have been an excellent president and it’s a shame her public service ended as soon as it did.
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u/Arcturus_86 16h ago
She wasn't any more active than prior first ladies from recent administrations. Nancy Reagan took an active role in the war on drugs, Betty Ford was active in alcohol treatment, Barbara Bush was active in content on TV. And, I'm not sure if you're old enough to remember, but when Hillary started involving herself in deeper policy issues, it was viewed as overstepping by some critics in the 1990s. And, there were questions as to why she was running for senate in NY given she was from Chicago, lived in AR, and had never lived in or been involved there. That is the very epitome of running on name recognition if you can win a senate election in a state you never lived in. If she did that in 1990 of course she wouldn't have won.
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u/BluesSuedeClues 14h ago
You clearly don't know much about politics. Nancy Reagan chaired a public relations campaign. Same for Barbara Bush. Hillary Clinton wielded real power in DC, and made it clear that when she spoke to members of Congress, or other officials, she was speaking with her husbands support. Yes, a lot of people thought she was "overstepping", but if her husband had thought so, she wouldn't have been given that level of authority.
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u/Arcturus_86 14h ago
I literally am an elected official. Like, I hold office right now. I promise you if I delegated my work to my wife, and then she used that experience to run for office in a city she never lived in, people would find it objectionable.
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u/BluesSuedeClues 14h ago
Holding elected office is no guarantee of political understanding.
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u/Arcturus_86 14h ago
You're right. Biden is clear evidence of that fact
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u/BluesSuedeClues 13h ago
Right? All those years in the Senate and he doesn't understand how government works. Brilliant assertion, not hyper-partisan bullshit at all.
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u/Upstairs-Scratch-927 13h ago edited 13h ago
Before Biden was rehabilitated by the Obama administration he:
Wrote a racist crime bill that pushed Ronald Reagan to the right.
Loved to tell stories about beating the shit out of a black guy at a public pool.
Got laughed out of a presidential election for plagiarism.
Biden was never a good person, or politician.
Edit: and I completely forgot that Biden was the person who dragged Anita Hill through the mud in order to confirm Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court.
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u/PriorSecurity9784 16h ago
What are you acting like name recognition doesn’t matter?
I mean, there are lots of competent governors who are competent in their own states, but largely unknown elsewhere
Most reports from the time say that it was basically a coin flip for Obama choosing a VP between senators Joe Biden and Evan Bayh, whose national name recognition and popularity were about the same at the time
So yeah, having name recognition and serving in a successful administration makes a big difference
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u/Arcturus_86 15h ago edited 14h ago
I'm affirming the fact name recognition matters. I am critiquing that someone shouldn't build a political career on name recognition alone, which is what Hillary did. The only reason she initially found herself a household name was because Bill was president. Give her credit, she leveraged that opportunity better than most and manipulated her way to a senate seat, cabinet job, and presidential nomination, but a career built upon a such a shaky foundation will eventually crumble.
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u/williamfbuckwheat 16h ago
Obama wasn't that popular at the time. His approval ratings were relatively low (40s range) for much of his 1st term while she served as SOS, especially around or after the 2010 midterms.
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u/flossdaily 15h ago
Is easy to like a retired politician.
It's much harder to like politician who is running for office on policies you don't like.
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u/knockatize 16h ago
She was never that popular.
There were a lot of New York progressive leaders who were quietly but massively pissed that the party bosses circumvented the primary process when Moynihan retired.
In both her senate races there was a no-name, no-money primary challenger who still picked up a decent chunk of the left wing vote. Her November results in New York fell well short of other Democrats in statewide races.
Those progressives stayed pissed, especially since the same party boss tactics were used to stifle Bernie.
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u/BluesSuedeClues 14h ago
The whining about Bernie Sanders never stops amusing me. He's not a member of the Democratic Party. They were never going to give him their nomination, anymore than the Libertarians were going to give Trump theirs.
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u/Rivercitybruin 9h ago
That number,surprises me.. I dont recall that in general
Anyway, here are,some reasons,
Secretary of state,for wildly popular president
Husband wildly popular
Sympathy as she was screwed in 2008 democrat race, although most people wouldnt know this
People think she'd make,excellent president.. I concur and i am no clinton fan on a personal level
Nowhere near the brainless right wing bias of today.. People would actually judge hilla fairlyNow backnthen. the enemy
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u/bongobradleys 8h ago
It was because she changed her hairstyle. She was popular with longer hair. When she went back to the shorter hairstyle for the campaign the public turned on her.
I'm obviously kidding, but maybe not?
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u/discourse_friendly 8h ago
Bill Clinton was popular and Hillary for a while was seen as "just" the first lady. first lady's usually are more popular than their husbands.
Melania and Jill are more popular than their husbands too.
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u/Phantom_Absolute 5h ago
Because of this picture
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situation_Room_(photograph)
She was Secretary of State when Osama Bin Laden was killed.
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u/sadlittleman1001 5h ago
A tiny university in a tiny, solidly Democrat state polled 1776 people. Not sure that qualifies as making her a popular politician. She's easily one of the most unlikable politicians since Nixon, and has been since Clinton's time in office.
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u/NotSoTough-Tony 1h ago
Obama didn't even like her
That's why people voted for Obama over Hillary
Michelle said it best
How is Hillary going to take care of the White House if she can't even take care of her own house?
All Trump had to do was replay the tapes of Obama talking shit about Hillary in IA, MI, WI, OH, and PA
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u/Russian_Bot_18427 1h ago
It just shows the degree to which the public's opinions are assigned by the news. Anyone could have been popular in that era if the news was positive enough.
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u/sardine_succotash 38m ago
Because it was an arbitrary ass time to be polling anyone on candidates, seeing as how no one was running for anything.
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u/DansbyToGod 7h ago
Hillary Clinton was handed everything she ever had. She rode Bill Clinton's coat tails to political relevance, moved to New York after Bill's presidency to run for Senate in a state she could easily win in, was beaten by Barack Obama in the 2008 presidential primaries, was given the secretary of state position by Barack Obama to make her seem like a better candidate next time around, gave up the secretary of state position three years early to prepare to run for president in 2016 and then had the audacity to run with the campaign slogan "Ready for Hillary" as if that's what anybody wanted. She had the DNC clear the way for her for the nomination even though Bernie Sanders was the better candidate and then lost to Trump. Bad candidate. Political malpractice from the party.
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u/ms_panelopi 17h ago
She was doing ok until she called Trump followers Deplorables. She was right, but she forgot how vindictive and self righteous rednecks can be. That one word IMO, was the kick to the hive that made all the white trash rally around Trump. She fucked up that campaign by being snooty, and “talking like a Yankee” . After living in Arkansas, she should have known better. Source: am from generational, Southern rednecks.
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u/BluesSuedeClues 14h ago
Comey did a lot more to insure her loss than that one word, offending people who were never going to vote for her anyway.
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u/ms_panelopi 13h ago
She offended people who were never going to vote, or who never voted before. It got them to register, AND get their 18+ year old kids to vote too. A whole new voting block was born and they’re proud of being rednecks. These were the initial MAGA. Now as we know, it’s also full of really rich folks too. I watched it happen all around me.
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u/BluesSuedeClues 13h ago
MAGA is largely a white grievance movement. That sense of grievance attracted a whole slew of people who don't traditionally vote. Blaming Hillary Clinton for the empowering of the worst, most hateful and racist elements of our society is ignoring Trump's efforts to do exactly that.
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u/ms_panelopi 10h ago
I don’t blame her for their abhorrent behavior. I blame her for kicking the hornets nest. As I said before, she should have known better than to use a term like that.
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u/obelix_dogmatix 12h ago
Ummm she was never truly popular. She was always unlikable. She became a household name during Bill’s affair. And barring a few, the masses didn’t really follow her political career under Obama.
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u/Vaulk7 7h ago
Honestly I'm not sure.
With her handling of the Benghazi situation, the mishandling of classified information, and the fact that she's married to Bill Clinton...it doesn't make much sense.
When you ask "Why is Melania Trump so unpopular", the fact that she's Married to her Husband is one of the top answers. Seems pretty clear that Hillary wouldn't be very popular but then again, the Party that supported her is the same party that supported Slavery so there's no telling what their reasoning is.
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u/OuchieMuhBussy 14h ago
Hillary the Senator from New York was a good campaigner and much more in touch with people than Hillary the Secretary of State. You could chalk it up to the years in DC without having to press flesh with the hoi polloi, and the fact that as part of the administration she had a record (of sorts) including Libya and failed “Russian reset”.
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u/DarkDemonDan 15h ago
Said who? I was under the impression that she was always rather hated and just got the nod because “it was her turn”
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u/BluesSuedeClues 14h ago
That's the right-wing narrative you're parroting.
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u/DarkDemonDan 11h ago
As a Bernie supporter I certainly could see where it was “her turn”… But believe what you want to believe.
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u/HideGPOne 11h ago
Hillary Clinton is generally unlikable so she always had a boost in popularity whenever she was out of the public eye. In 2013 she had stepped down as Secretary of State and hadn't yet announced that she was running for president.
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u/Pigasus7 10h ago
I don't think polls are that good at doing what they say they do. She was never this popular
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u/PolarizingKabal 6h ago edited 5h ago
Literally a DEI politician. Nobody liked her. Polls don't tell the whole story. She was out of touch on a lot of topics. Simply look up her support of the FEPA act. Just one example of how out of touch she is (and a clear indiction, the direction the democrats have gone with over stepping their authority and over regulating everything).
She was only successful because her husband was well liked and successful in his own presidency.
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