Economic collapse muted the display of Mccain's electoral strength. All pre-Lehman polls indicated Mccain to be a stronger candidate in swing states than Romney 2012.
Romney's economic positions actually hurt him.
I agree with this post. Without the financial crisis McCain could easily have squeaked a victory on the back of a Palin-inspired culture war victory as Trump managed in 2016.
Economic collapse muted the display of Mccain's electoral strength. All pre-Lehman polls indicated Mccain to be a stronger candidate in swing states than Romney 2012.
Romney's economic positions actually hurt him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hF9ndn-R1_I&t=126s
This is the day Lehman collapsed (so polls before this day had to be compiled for this map). Mccain was doing far better than Romney ever did in 2012 at this point.
The final results of 2008 make it easy to forget what a close, intense election it was for much of the year.
It also allows people to forget how much of a polarizing figure Obama was. Hillary actually polled better than Obama swing-state wise.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2008/05/clintons-closing-argument-to-superdelegates/53314/
Obama wasn't picked for electability, he was picked for running a polarizing ideological campaign.
This is a bit exaggerated though. Really, Obama was picked for running a (deliberately non-polarising) "let's make America post-racial" campaign. Clinton polled better in the swing states because she had more support among the WWC demographic which is highly concentrated there (as we saw in 2016), not because Obama was polarising. In fact, his
fav/unfav during the campaign were stable in the low-60s/mid-30s. I also found
this article from the primary about Obama bringing up Clinton's relatively high unfavourability and saying she "starts off with 47% of the country against her" (sound familiar?).
Though, in retrospect, I think things would have worked out better for the Democratic party and America if Clinton had won the nomination in 08. President Hillary could have avoided the whitelash Democrats suffered under Obama and also probably would have handled healthcare with more experience, then handing the baton to Obama's unifying post-racial message in the more 'woke' America of 2016.
