Who ran a worse campaign Hillary Clinton Or Michael Dukasis

[All Along The Watchtower]

In 2016, an historically unpopular and polarizing Democratic Party presidential nominee won a plurality in the popular vote by 2 points against an historically unpopular and polarizing - albeit for different reasons - Republican presidential nominee, with 6 percent of the presidential vote going  to third-party candidates or write-ind and with a likely record or near-record percentage of voters leaving their presidential ballots blank; yet Donald Trump ultimately won the Electoral College 304-227 (with 7 EC votes going to write-ins) - and hence, the Presidency - because of very narrow wins in several key states.

In 1988, by contrast, after eight years of Ronald Reagan Americans everywhere were begging for the bold ideas and charisma of George H.W. Bush even more than they were begging for the bold ideas and charisma of Hillary Clinton after eight years of Barack Obama, as you can see from his more than 7-point win in the popular vote and 426-111 win in the Electoral College.

But seriously: at least Hillary Clinton had the "break the Glass Ceiling" thing going for her. What did George H.W. Bush have that would be genuinely exciting or appealing to anyone outside of some country clubs and a bunch of old hands from the State Department, CIA, and other concentrations of Skull and Bones alumni? "Oh, I loved Senator Prescott Bush back in the 1950s!"

Guess how I voted.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Again: after two terms of the vastly overrated and polarizing Ronald Reagan (1984 landslide notwithstanding - that was irrelevant by 1988) and Democrats retaking the Senate in 1986, the burden was on George "Wimpy Lapdog for Reagan/Ford/Nixon" Bush to win the Presidency in his own right without distancing himself from Reagan too much while at the same time, providing his own version of the "vision thing."

George H.W. Bush was, needless to say, not a very smooth campaigner, certainly not a natural (as 1992 painfully revealed for him). And again: Iran-Contra was still very real and very fresh, and he was directly caught up in it, despite his protests to being "out of the loop"*

*(Yeah HW Bush, everyone certainly believed that you - a Vice President whose resume included CIA director, Ambassador to the UN, Presidential Envoy to China, member of Congress - not to mention, being a multi-generation Skull and Bones alum and the son of a US Senator/confidant of Allen Dulles - were "out of the loop" of all of that skullduggery in the 1980s that included the highest levels of the National Security Council and the CIA in the administration of a senile B-movie actor who had no pre-presidential foreign policy experience. Uh huh. )

At the very least, Dukakis or any other Democratic candidate should have given "Poppy" a run for his money. Pretty embarrassing result in 1988.