We've beat this horse over and over again but it's so weird to see people insisting that nobody likes Hillary and she's got all this baggage and all these scandals but the elites just picked her.

1) The elites know all that stuff, too. Why did they pick her?

2) Hillary, for someone who is just super unpopular, keeps on winning popularity contests. And it's not like people don't know about Bernie, he's run a competitive campaign.

So Hillary faced a serious primary challenger and beat him by getting more votes. Determining who the best candidate the party can field is literally the point of holding all these state-wide popularity contests. She's winning them! She's got more votes than Trump.

You can walk through the Senate and Obama's Cabinet and just other notable Democrats not currently in office and it's like, yeah, some nice enough people I guess but there's not some deep bench of obvious candidates there. I'm sure it comes off as hopeless Hillary apologetics but I get it, she's flawed. OK, you win whoever says that. Lot not to like about Hillary.

But the process that landed on Hillary was the result of a lot of predictable inputs and all the players (politicians, elites, the party, voters, professionals, etc. -- all that stuff that creates a Presidential field) knew them and it played out as expected. Democrats had 4 years to imagine alternates to HRC but the fact that was hard was not for lack of trying.

Petraeus was like the only competent guy with power in Iraq. Doubt he would accept but scandal aside he would be the best choice if you wanted a military guy.

That's not even counting the secondary impact of not being able to have Booker, Brown, or Warren give up their Senate seats because those blue/purple states have GOP governors.

The CNN poll you cited is an outlier. No other recent poll has her less than u+10. http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/...vorable-rating

For VP, are there any GOP analogs of Al Franken I'm not recalling, celebs or quasi-celebs who somehow found themselves in Congress? Arnold is ineligible, and I don't see Jesse Ventura happening, but I don't know what the congressional bench looks like.

OK, fine. Who's viewed more favorable?

I haven't studied it like that deeply but I can make two guesses: Obama and Biden. Maybe Kasich? Bernie?

Go through the rest: Cruz, TRUMP, McConnell, Ryan, Pelosi, Harry Reid, whoever. Probably all worse than Clinton.

I guess we're saying the Democrats should have nominated either Bernie or Kasich, then? Sort by favorability and win all the elections? Can we collectively imagine some reasons that might not have worked?

Being a woman will help as it sets Trump up to continue to say things that drive women (and some men) away. He's not winning if 80% of women are voting against him.

Maybe Biden but I can't think of a better choice than Hillary.

I like Biden, but he doesn't seem like he could win potus. Obama would obviously crush Trump.

Bernie would beat Trump.

Hillary will too though.

I think all 3 would. I guess we are bickering over style points.

I think the bickering is that it's been suggested that it's really obvious the Democrats should have nominated someone else instead of hated Hillary Clinton who is so deeply offensive to everyone but so far we have the following alternatives:

- an almost 80 year old
- Biden
- a generic person

So I don't think it's that obvious.

Rubio STILL has more delegates than Kasich. Sad!

Also just saw a graphic stating that Kasich needs 235% of remaining delegates to get the nom, seems doable

I agree with you. Hillary is going to identify and target voting blocks and will win in a boring fashion against Trump's gut feel approach. The style may be a bit dry but I suspect she will slice and dice him with ruthless efficiency.

This is like when people are polled on if they like Obamacare vs if they are polled on if they like what Obamacare does (provide insurance for people pre- existing conditions etc).

Clinton won big among black voters because of name recognition. If you were to poll the same voters on the issues, they would find that they align more with Sanders than Clinton.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sean_Duffy

I think Bernie could easily lose. He and Trump are both unacceptable to alot of powerful people who I think would be willing to gamble on a 3rd party candidate in the center.

Right. So Biden would be a better general election candidate than Hilldawg. No other realistic nomine has as much name recognition as those guys.

Many on here in the last topic insisted that a major terrorism attack will just reinforce to America the need for restraint and experience and Clinton's numbers will skyrocket.

The stuff about banning all muslims, killing terrorist family members and torturing them even if it doesn't work will only appeal to a tiny majority of Americans.

This argument gets repeated a lot but it seems rather condescending to black voters. Like, if they really cared about the issues rather than just a name they know, they would vote Bernie.

Hillary and her husband did not gain all this good will with black voters by accident. They have a long and clear record.

I'm not even a big Hillary fan but it's crazy to say she hasn't earned her cred with the black community.

Seattlelou is the biggest Hillary fan on the site.

Doesn't seem implausible, imo. Helps out in state Trump would want to make competitive, no scandals listed on Wikipedia, in office long enough to have some knowledge of the ropes but not so long that he undermines the "outsider" message, young.

Stolen from a Reddit post (that was apparently copied from Something Awful):

"I just want to remind everyone of something.

One of the most loathsome people to ever ****ing live on this planet, Ted Cruz, backstabbed and ****ed over every person he came in contact with for the past four years, forced his party into a bunch of no-win scenarios that made them look stupid and clueless, and generally called out everyone in his entire party as a bunch of commiesymp Islamolibs who want to dress up as a gay-married woman and **** a child in a public bathroom. He did all of these things knowingly, burning every bridge he's ever crossed, mauling every hand that's ever fed him, all in service of one dream: He would become the Republican nominee in 2016 and win the Presidency and then the trail of blood and nightmares he left behind wouldn't matter because **** you I'm POTUS that's why.

He sacrificed everything to this goal, and he's going to lose to the political equivalent of the Fukushima meltdown. His strategy would (probably) have worked! It's pretty clear that the JEB! never stood a chance regardless of how much money he raised because he's a ****ing walking Ambien who conservatives thoroughly despise, Scott Walker couldn't even figure out how to hire someone who understood things like "a budget," Ben Carson looks like an attractive candidate up until he has to speak in anything other than meaningless fortune-cookie platitudes, etc. All that work, all that planning, all that treachery, all that time.
ALL FOR ****ING NOTHING AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

He's been reaching for this brass ring his entire life, leaning farther and farther out from his carousel horse. What would he lose first, his balance, or his nerve? But he never flinched, leaning out further and further with each turn of the carousel, and then just before, just before his fingertip brushed it a tiny orange hand came out of nowhere and took that bitch right away from him, right in front of him, and there was never anything he could do to stop it. Now all that's left is the fall.

There aren't words in any language to describe the joy it brings me to see such a heinous, hateful mother****er destroyed in such a gut-wrenching, miserable way. Tonight was the beginning of Ted Cruz's descent to a talk radio host saying things like, "Well, when I was in the United States Senate, let me tell you..."

Ted is a mess. Ted is a waste.
Edit: It's true, I took this from SomethingAwful and posted without attribution, also I'm a raging *******."

Seeing an opponent batter the biased media and the Democrat nominee is what we have all been salivating for.

The fact that it's Hillary is the cherry on top.

He's like that super fish that plays in your favorite home game. As long as he has outs or thinks he has outs he's never folding.