Great list, I would like to add though: 1. H W Bush being a milquetoast Reagan also helped Clinton in 92 (he had charisma back then). 2. Biden was pressured (at least a little) by Sanders’ popularity in the primary to promise some absolute bare minimum progressive policies, which imho helped.
1. Much like Trump in 2024, I’m reticent to attribute anything about Clinton himself as causal. He only got 43%. Without Perot, he almost certainly would’ve lost to Bush, even as horribly unlikable as Bush was and as charismatic as Clinton was. I just have a hard time seeing anything in the data…
…that suggests that Clinton had anything to do with his victory besides being there to catch it when it fell into his lap. 2. I do think you’re right on this point, that being forced, begrudgingly, to adopt a few progressive points probably did help Biden, but that was never a focus for his…
…campaign, and he still just barely squeaked out a win against the single most hated man to ever hold the office of the president, with the worst approval ratings ever recorded. That, again, doesn’t really speak to his success so much as the totality of his opponent’s failure.
It for sure wasn’t a focus for him, but those couple of progressive promises brought in enough voters who probably would have not shown up otherwise. Trump was just as unpopular in 2024, yet Harris lost the popular vote and electoral college. She may have squeezed out a win had she run just…
Absolutely. Harris actually had a very strong chance to beat Trump. It took a really concentrated effort from her campaign to kill so much momentum, enthusiasm, and hope in just 100 days. A truly heroic effort to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
A few progressive promises like Biden. When without Gaza she was dead on arrival bragging about the Cheney’s support
That’s fair, without Perot he most likely would have lost. But that charisma probably helped him do better than Dukakis against the same opponent despite having similar (if not the same) policies. Unfortunately Dems only saw a centrist win and thought “this is how we win again”
Which was never in any way a conclusion based on evidence, any more than “Trump’s victory is evidence of a right-ward shift” is based in the evidence from 2024. But it may have been what certain wealthy donors WANTED the conclusion to be…
Yeah for sure. Not a conclusion you would come to based on evidence, but given how so many liberal networks still have Carville on 30 years later, it’s one some want us to believe is true