Why Did Southern Ancestral Democratic Legislators Think that Hillary Clinton Would Save them ?

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

I've been doing some reading of profiels of obama-trump counties that were written in 2014 and one thing i found surprising was that a lot of legislators representing these ancestrally democratic counties though that Hillary Clinton would bring these people back to the party when in fact the exact opposite happened.

Why was this the case ?

https://twitter.com/zubinjain/status/1314249156303622144

https://twitter.com/zubinjain/status/1313431991497285632

[Roll Roons]

I guess they were hoping there was nostalgia for Bubba Bill. Of course, Hillary is far less charismatic and skilled as a politician, and Southern whites swung dramatically to the right beginning in 2000.

[Ferguson97]

Hillary's base in the 2008 primary was white working class voters, if you can believe that.

[Kuumo]

They were probably assuming that Hillary's 2016 campaign would be more like her 2008 campaign and Bill Clinton's campaigns. This was also before Trump was in the picture to accelerate the Republican trend in these areas.

[darklordoftech]

They thought she would bring back Bill’s 1992 and 1996 voters. There were articles and people on Atlas saying that would happen.

[Samof94]

I guess they were hoping there was nostalgia for Bubba Bill. Of course, Hillary is far less charismatic and skilled as a politician, and Southern whites swung dramatically to the right beginning in 2000.

Even Gore was more appealing to these types, but he was still running at the tail end of the Clinton era. Hillary ran in a different time and was running against someone who appealed to white people’s racial sentiments.

[RINO Tom]

There was a very, VERY common assertion on behalf of Democrats that the "ancestrally Democratic" votes that Obama lost were entirely or almost entirely due to racism.  In other words, 2008 and especially 2012 delivered the "remaining racists" fully to the GOP.  (This talking point was of course hysterically abandoned after 2016, when it became essential to assert - only after 2016, of course - that there were in fact a sizable portion of racist and/or xenophobic Obama-Trump voters still voting Democratic because populism this whole time ... what a twist!)

There were two talking points circa 2014 for how Democrats could stop the bleeding in the South:

1) A more folksy candidate than Obama who resonated with former Democrats and could bring them back in the fold, leading to rebounds in places like Arkansas, West Virginia, Louisiana, etc.

2) Waiting it out for demographic change in order to make states like Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, etc. more Democratic.

Obviously, in our timeline, #2 looks to be the obviously better path.  However, I think that is entirely because of the combination of Trump + the type of campaign Clinton decided to run in both the primaries and general election.  I know we view *trends* as linear and slowly progressing things, but I think a 2008-style Hillary vs., say, Mitt Romney in 2016 running for reelection would have provided some VERY interesting changes from what we currently see.

[Alben Barkley]

There was a very, VERY common assertion on behalf of Democrats that the "ancestrally Democratic" votes that Obama lost were entirely or almost entirely due to racism.  In other words, 2008 and especially 2012 delivered the "remaining racists" fully to the GOP.  (This talking point was of course hysterically abandoned after 2016, when it became essential to assert - only after 2016, of course - that there were in fact a sizable portion of racist and/or xenophobic Obama-Trump voters still voting Democratic because populism this whole time ... what a twist!)

There were two talking points circa 2014 for how Democrats could stop the bleeding in the South:

1) A more folksy candidate than Obama who resonated with former Democrats and could bring them back in the fold, leading to rebounds in places like Arkansas, West Virginia, Louisiana, etc.

2) Waiting it out for demographic change in order to make states like Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, etc. more Democratic.

Obviously, in our timeline, #2 looks to be the obviously better path.  However, I think that is entirely because of the combination of Trump + the type of campaign Clinton decided to run in both the primaries and general election.  I know we view *trends* as linear and slowly progressing things, but I think a 2008-style Hillary vs., say, Mitt Romney in 2016 running for reelection would have provided some VERY interesting changes from what we currently see.

I have not abandoned this "talking point," which isn't really a "talking point" so much as it is a cold hard fact. Study after study after study has shown that there was massive "white flight" from the Democratic Party after 2008, and that "racial resentment" was extremely high in those formerly Democratic voters (predominantly WWC) abandoning the party for the GOP. The GOP encouraged this through dogwhistling and then, with Trump, a bullhorn. He accelerated the bleeding, but a lot of blood was already lost due to racist reactions against Obama.

You can't seriously argue that the map and the current situation wouldn't have looked quite different had Hillary won in 2008. And in fact you seem to tacitly admit that when you talk about a hypothetical Romney vs. Hillary match-up. And the reason for that is in very large part down to racial prejudice. No ifs, ands, or buts about it.