Which election was more winnable for Democrats?

[President Johnson]

I'm being bold and say 1988, although 2004 was a lot closer. I always felt 1988 was a winnable election for the Democrats if they just nominated a better candidate that ran a strong campaign rather than Mike Dukakis. He just wasn't the right man for this political climate. The end result was much more his loss instead of Poppy Bush's win. Idealistically, the Democrats would have nominated a Southerner for president. At the time, they still depended on winning at least some Southern States outside their base in the North East and parts of the Mid-West, since the West was much less reliable in the Democratic column. Someone like Lloyd Bentsen, Bob Graham, Lawton Chiles, Sam Nunn or even Bill Clinton would have made inroads in the South, resulting into a much more competitive race. Other than them, Mario Cuomo with his charisma would have been a better candidate as well (and by far the best Northerner).

2004 was indeed a relatively close election in the Electoral College and another nominee than Kerry might have won against Dubya, but the electorate was much more polarized, leaving far less room to gain. Dubya also had being a war-time president going for him, and back then, it was compelling case to make, even if you don't like his policies. Poppy Bush on the other hand only had the case for Reagan's third term, but wasn't as strong as a candidate himself. As the concluding presidencies of Eisenhower, Clinton and Obama showed us, the popularity of a departing president can't be automatically transferred to his party's nominee. Consequently, as stated above, I'd argue the 1988 election resembles much more a Dukakis loss than a Bush win. With a different/better candidate, the outcome would have been much different, even if no post-1988 election surpassed 426 electoral votes or 53.4% of the popular vote (at least not for now).

Thoughts?

[morgankingsley]

I would still say 2004

[brucejoel99]

If the argument being made regards which one was ever more winnable in the abstract, then I guess an argument for 1988 could be credibly made. But at their conclusions, 2004 was obviously much more winnable for the Democratic nominee than 1988.

[darklordoftech]

Both were a case of bad nominees (Dukakis on crime, unwillingness to attack Bush or defend himself, always talking about science and low-energy, Kerry voted against the Persian Gulf War, voted for the Iraq War, and now was saying that the Iraq War was a bad idea). Gore probably would have been a better nominee in both elections (in 1988 because he supported the death penalty and was seen as “southern” and “rural”, in 2004 because he supported Reagan’s military spending, the Kuwait War, and the Bosnia and Kosovo interventions but opposed the Iraq War, which would allow him to run as a “hawk with good judgement”).

[TDAS04]

2004.  Kerry wasn't a very strong candidate, and he had a terrible running mate.  I could see Bob Graham, Dick Gephardt, Howard Dean, or Al Gore beating Bush.  Heck, a Kerry/Gephardt ticket could have won! (By flipping Missouri/Iowa and/or just Ohio.)

[dw93]

2004 based on the margins and polarization.

[TML]

In 1988, the tipping point state, Michigan, was 0.2% more Republican than the national average, whereas in 2004, the tipping point state, Ohio, was 0.4% more Democratic than the national average. The answer is clearly 2004.

[Redban]

1988 with a better candidate. Democrats could have taken it.

Internally, Bush's people were terrified at the prospect of facing Gary Hart. I think Republicans got lucky when he had to drop out because of a scandal.

And Bush 41 was not a great candidate.

[Podgy the Bear]

1988--much more than 2004.  Without an elected incumbent on either ticket, 1988 should have been at least a 1960 or 1976.  But it turned out to be more like 1928--a Republican landslide which showed Democratic gains in certain regions of the country and pointed the way to the electoral map of today.

Dukakis ran a lousy race and allowed himself to be branded by the Bush team.  Dukakis and his handlers acknowledged this on several occasions.

In 2004, the Democrats were the minority party--especially post 9/11.  And by then, the entire South was off limits.  In retrospect, the Kerry team ran a very good race--with only 118,000 votes in OH (plus a few thousand votes in IA and NM) to give him the electoral margin for victory.

[Statilius the Epicurean]

2004 because all Kerry needed to do was perform a bit better in Ohio. In fact he was leading in the polls in the Spring around the first battle of Fallujah, IIRC.

[Liberalrocks]

1988 was more winnable. No incumbent, Dukakis was up double digits in national polling the summer of that year before the infamous Willie Horton and other ads that he didn’t properly respond to. He never went on attack and ran one of the worst campaigns in the last 50 years. 2004, was also winnable but W Bush was an incumbent making it more difficult. As far as I know Kerry never posted double digit leads in any national polling.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Here is the map in 1988 if you give every state Dukakis lost by 10 points or more to Dukakis

Dukakis/Bentsen 280 50.6%
Bush/Quayle 258 48.4%%

So he could win by over 2 points in the popular vote and he still would barely win.

[KYRockefeller]

Close decision here but Kerry got much closer than Dukakis to taking the White House and I'm a firm believer he gets over the finish line with Gephardt or Graham as a running mate.  I think Al Gore would've been a better candidate than Kerry, though, and it's always surprised me that Gore didn't want to get into a rematch with Bush.

1988 was a Dukakis choke job but Lee Atwater's scorch earth tactics added on the pressure too.  I'm a big believer that if Atwater was alive in 1992 that Clinton's path to victory would have been much tougher.  I do think if the Democrats had nominated Lloyd Bentsen that year that they would've won 1988 in a rout.

[brucejoel99]

Close decision here but Kerry got much closer than Dukakis to taking the White House and I'm a firm believer he gets over the finish line with Gephardt or Graham as a running mate.  I think Al Gore would've been a better candidate than Kerry, though, and it's always surprised me that Gore didn't want to get into a rematch with Bush.

1988 was a Dukakis choke job but Lee Atwater's scorch earth tactics added on the pressure too.  I'm a big believer that if Atwater was alive in 1992 that Clinton's path to victory would have been much tougher.  I do think if the Democrats had nominated Lloyd Bentsen that year that they would've won 1988 in a rout.

Probably just a matter of thinking that he couldn't win even if he tried. It would've been hard enough attempting to put together a successful run after having already lost once: 2004 was long past the days of Nixon & Stevenson.

[KYRockefeller]

Close decision here but Kerry got much closer than Dukakis to taking the White House and I'm a firm believer he gets over the finish line with Gephardt or Graham as a running mate.  I think Al Gore would've been a better candidate than Kerry, though, and it's always surprised me that Gore didn't want to get into a rematch with Bush.

1988 was a Dukakis choke job but Lee Atwater's scorch earth tactics added on the pressure too.  I'm a big believer that if Atwater was alive in 1992 that Clinton's path to victory would have been much tougher.  I do think if the Democrats had nominated Lloyd Bentsen that year that they would've won 1988 in a rout.

Probably just a matter of thinking that he couldn't win even if he tried. It would've been hard enough attempting to put together a successful run after having already lost once: 2004 was long past the days of Nixon & Stevenson.

I still think he would've won the nomination fairly easily (after all, the guy won the popular vote four years before).  With Bush's unpopularity in the fall of 2003/early 2004, I still think Gore could've mounted a serious challenge.  Whether he would've won a rematch is up for debate, but I don't see how he could've done any worse than John Kerry and Kerry was very close to pulling it off.

[Real Texan Politics]

Didn't the war have a high approval back in 04? Because I imagine Kerry would've won if the approval for the war then was the same as it is now.

[Orwell]

Didn't the war have a high approval back in 04? Because I imagine Kerry would've won if the approval for the war then was the same as it is now.

The Iraq war was still semi well approved but it was trending downwards fast

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

Didn't the war have a high approval back in 04? Because I imagine Kerry would've won if the approval for the war then was the same as it is now.

Iraq war support did not collapse until 2005. In 2004, support was around 55-45 in favor.

[buritobr]

Kerry could have won if there was no Bin Laden video. Polls were showing a tie in the popular vote. On October 29th, Al Jazeera broacasted a video, in which Bin Laden criticized Bush in the same way an American liberal criticizes Bush.

[Orser67]

I actually think they're about even. I tend to think that Kerry was basically an average candidate who lost a close race to an incumbent with middling approval ratings, while Dukakis had an embarrassingly large loss in an open seat election against an opponent who was nothing special, and at a time when the sitting president had decent-but-not-amazing approval ratings (Reagan's approvals never fully recovered from Iran-Contra).

[Big Abraham]

1988 for sure. Dukakis was up 20 points over Bush in initial polling, and this widened even into late July. Kerry never came that close to Dubya; polling was always consistently close through the entire campaign.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

Kerry could have won if there was no Bin Laden video. Polls were showing a tie in the popular vote. On October 29th, Al Jazeera broacasted a video, in which Bin Laden criticized Bush in the same way an American liberal criticizes Bush.

Bin Laden obviously put out the video to help Bush. He knew that Bush's policies were good for Al Qaeda. Ironically Bush and then Obama's policies actually hurt Al Qaeda in the long run because they were too moderate compared to ISIS.

[Samof94]

1988 seems to be a more extreme version of 2016 in my opinion where it swung 180. 2004 probably could have been won with John Kerry running a better campaign and winning Ohio.

[AGA]

In the summer of 1988, Dukakis has a huge polling lead. Bush wasn't very popular, and Dukakis could have won if didn't make some major mistakes.

[OSR stands with Israel]

Dukakis lead in 1988 was extremely inflated due to huge convention bounces back in those days so the lead was never 17 it was more like 5 or 6 and Reagan's popularity steadily increased through the summer as well which benefited Bush too .

Bush then had his own convention bounce which wiped out Dukakis's lead and from there on he never really fell behind. Willie Horton , and the tank ad yes hurt Dukakis but he would have still lost by around 5 points without those things. I really don't see how 1988 is winnable for any democrat but Bentsen.


The math still really didnt add up for them to get to 270