Who should have easily won but ended up blowing it?

[Person Man]

From my perspective, in 1999-2000, I just thought that people were looking for someone else to give it a shot though things were going really well. As a 15 year old kid in 2000, that's how I looked at it.

When I was 18, I thought people just thought Bush was dumb, the economy was struggling, though I thought getting geopolitical closure in Iraq was important.  When I trolled a Republican classmate in current events class, she just replied on the quiz I made for her, "who is running in 2004?", and she responded "it doesn't matter. They are all going to lose." Now I understand why but all I thought that all Kerry had to do is solidify all the Gore and Nader voters and he wins. It was a rude awakening when Kerry struggled throughout the night, getting killed in Florida and barely coming from behind in the Great Lakes. Up until about midnight, I thought he had a chance because Nevada, New Mexico, and Iowa looked promising and he was still ahead in Ohio. The first hot take was that he mobilized a lot of voters around abortion but the exit polls showed that a lot of Bush voters who turned out were pro-choice. Then maybe I thought it was gays but eventually that fell by the wayside when I saw also that people were ready to at least compromise on the gay thing. Personally, I just thought the economy was a lot better than I gave it credit for (I was in college and couldn't find a part-time job until the February after the election). After all, people with only an Associate's degree were buying nice houses on TV and I eventually was able to buy a new car in college. Between that and people not quite moved on the Abu Ghraib thing, I think Bush got it.


I bet a lot of 19 year old Republicans probably saw 2012 the way I saw 2004 even though Kerry was ahead between clinching the nomination and roughly now. Romney was able to tie after the first debate.

One other thing was particularly extreme about Kerry losing was how badly the Democrats did downballot. They lost 4 seats in the Senate and 6 seats in the House. I really don't blame Bush for basically trying to phase out social security like he did after the election. And I imagine that's what the major issue next year will be in Trump's next term if he wins the house:

- Cancel Social Security to pay for a "working class" tax cut
- Graham-Cassidy or nothing if the ACA is overruled.
- Re-implement the 1986 tax code