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Originally Posted by Resolute 14
Somehow, in an election between Clinton and Trump, Bernie Sanders supporters somehow end up being the most embarrassing group.
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Ehhhhhh... it's a pretty damned strong field, I'll grant you that... But Trump supporters are still far worse, let's face it.
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Originally Posted by New Era
There would have been no mopping the floor by anyone. American elections are all about activating the political base and getting your voters to the polls. Just like Republicans refuse to turn their back on a nut bar like Trump Democrats wouldn't turn their back on Clinton. The primaries are all about deciding who is going to excite the base and drive them to the polls. Kasich, as nice a guy as he is, is boring as hell and wouldn't have sold well to get the base excited. Remove the wackiness from the Trump campaign and you likely have a boring election cycle where the policy package is what is going to drive the activation of voters. Frankly, Kasich and the Republican platform is weak in this regard. Facing the spectre of running against the first female presidential candidate the Republicans needed a loose cannon to say stupid #### that would excite people. Unfortunately, they didn't expect Trump to be so uncontrollable. But give Trump credit, he activated the hell out of the base. The downside is he also scared of the moderate Republicans and forced them over to vote for the "other" candidates.
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I agree with you that it wouldn't be a landslide if someone else had been the nominee, but I do think he'd have won comfortably. One of Clinton's biggest boons in this campaign has been Trump taking news coverage away from things that should have put bigger dents in her, and the general sense that as much as she's largely disliked (and outright despised by some) she'd literally have to murder a puppy live on CNN to be worse than Trump is. A relatively boring, traditionally conservative GOP candidate who seems like a likable enough sort of guy, not unlike Romney, was just what they needed in this election.
Of course, that depends on how successfully they could paint him with his past pro-life, anti-planned-parenthood positions. But that's just Kasich in particular. But Rubio wouldn't have that problem, and was probably a more likely mainstream candidate. Paul Ryan probably could have managed in that role, too. Ted Cruz of course doesn't count as a boring, traditionally conservative GOP candidate for obvious reasons.