How did Clinton pull of his 1992 primary win?

[Blair]

I know 1992 was a very very weak field for the democrats but I've never understood how Clinton was able to win. I mean not only was he a young southern governor but he had two major scandals emerge before the campaign. I know he ran as the 'comeback kid' but I still can't work out how he won.

Anyone got some good analysis?

[RINO Tom]

Because Democratic primary voters are a lot more Southern, moderate, working class and less educated than most Atlas liberals like to believe.  Clinton appealed to those people, and many might have preferred a scandal-ridden Clinton to those other duds.

[Hydera]

There were four other candidates, tsongas, jerry brown, tom harkin and robert kerrey. All fighting for the liberal vote. So bill clinton being the governor of a small southern state had some appeal to moderate+conservative democrats.

However he was third in iowa due to favorite son senator tom harkin being from that state. However a strong second showing in New Hampshire allowed him to dominate the rest of the primary.

However there were quite a few races that he did pretty terrible. And it wasnt until the southern states and rural heartland states started showing up that he became the clear winner.

https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/national.php?year=1992&elect=1

The race in the Liberal state of NY where Clinton was facing against then liberal favorite Jerry Brown. Jerry Brown said that if he was the nominee then he would have Jesse Jackson as his VP which offended jews because of a series of comments about jews made by Jesse Jackson. Clinton won the state because of liberal jewish primary voters voting for him. And from then on it cemented his status as the democrat nominee in waiting.

The sexual scandals did affect him, but he regained a lot of momentum when he kept telling the Press to focus on the race and not his sex life.

[sg0508]

Clinton had an outsider's appearance and the "New Democrat" label helped tremendously. The other candidates looked like recycled politicians.  Clinton's youth at the time also helped.

It was the NY primary that drove him to victory.

[Dancing with Myself]

Clinton's center based appeal won people over.  All of the other candidates were liberals but he had something else they didn't have and people ate it up.

Plus that chrisma and style was undeniable. No one else from that field could match it. "I feel your pain," and the convention video showing his childhood got in the bag. He was one of us who worked hard and made it, people eat that up.

[136or142]

Bob Kerrey was a moderate governor of Nebraska who was regarded as the initial frontrunner by most pundits of the day (or maybe the co-frontrunner along with Clinton) but, despite being known as being capable of being every bit as charismatic as Bill Clinton, he was also known to be diffident and he basically let his advisers tell him what to do which frequently went against his own instincts, so his heart was never really into running.

For instance, they insisted that he run as an anti free trade candidate in New Hampshire, which was in favor of free trade at the time and he was likely also personally pro free trade, if for no other reason than he represented an agricultural state.

I'd hardly say Paul Tsongas ran as a liberal.  He ran as a 'business' Democrat and was the first candidate to run on being anti debt/deficit months before Ross Perot came along.  Tsongas was also the media darling, which may or may not have hurt him in the race, though it probably didn't have much impact either way.  

Which is not to say that being anti debt/deficit means one is more likely to be a conservative as while conservatives/Republicans talk a good game of being concerned about deficits, the evidence that once they get into office they actually do anything about it is mixed at best, to the point of nearly being laughable.

Tom Harkin was basically a regional candidate.  Had he been from any othern midwestern state, a first place win in Iowa might have given him momentum, but being from Iowa, all the other candidates skipped the caucus, and Harkin's win there was ignored.

Brown ran as an anti establishment insurgent and did better than anybody expected him to do, but had it been necessary the party insiders would have done everything in their power to make sure he didn't win the nomination.

Had then Irvine Mayor Larry Agran managed to get into the debates and be treated by the media as a serious candidate, there was some polling that suggested he might have been a major contender, though I doubt he could have won the nomination.

[bobloblaw]

One reason is IA and NH were irrelevant that year. Harkin was from IA and Tsongas was from MA and won NH.

[DS0816]

I know 1992 was a very very weak field for the democrats but I've never understood how Clinton was able to win. I mean not only was he a young southern governor but he had two major scandals emerge before the campaign. I know he ran as the 'comeback kid' but I still can't work out how he won.

Anyone got some good analysis?

Watch the 1993 Oscar-nominated documentary The War Room. You may be able to catch it on YouTube. It was released a couple years ago on The Criterion Collection. It shows you the campaign. The extras give even more perspective.

@ http://www.criterion.com/films/28029-the-war-room


Long story short: The Democrats were still figuring they have to have much of the south. And, during primary season, Bill Clinton not winning New Hampshire but finishing so strongly directed focus to winning in the south … because, frankly, the competition wasn't going to be as strong there.

@ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_presidential_primaries,_1992

[Mr. Morden]

Yeah, it's overly simplistic to say that Tsongas was running to Clinton's left.  In many ways he was, but some ways he wasn't.  Tsongas was more of a "neoliberal" (not in the European sense, but in the 1980s American sense), aligning with folks like Gary Hart and Bill Bradley in terms of rejecting the more interest group-based politics of the party.

In any case, one thing I'm not sure has been mentioned in the thread so far is the regional polarization that existed in that '92 race.  Clinton dominated in the South, and Super Tuesday was largely Southern states.  Once Clinton swept Super Tuesday, he built up enough momentum to get big leads in states outside the South, specifically IL and MI.  At that point, it was over.