humor me in thought experiment: what if Hillary were the Republican presidential nominee?

[zazen]

I know I'm dreaming, but if she switched parties,

1) She'd have half the Republicans support her anyway. Moderate Republicans basically agree with her and I suspect will secretly vote for her against Jeb or a greater nut job anyway were she the Dem nominee. She might even win the nomination.

2) It'd shift the debates within the Republican party about what they stand for and help marginalize the fundamentalists and haters.

3) It'd allow the Democratic party to move more overtly to the left on economic issues, so that even if we lost with our more progressive nominee, we'd be building a much more coherent argument and educated base on old-fashioned labor literacy that even voters in the late 19th century understood.

4) Assuming the Republicans won the WH, which they might anyway, at least she'd be one those of us on the left could tolerate. She's brilliant and immensely qualified, though many of us disagree with her neoliberal and hawkish policies.

5) Our biggest issues are moving Congress and the Senate along (ideally getting majorities again of Dems with spines, but let's be realistic), and if the Republicans had a party head in the White House they'd have to be less obstructionist.

6) We'd move away from this scary precipice of the Faux Brainwashed voters who are primed to move into Christian Dominionist territory. Hillary's an Eisenhower Republican, and I can live with that. I'd rather move the Republican mainstream to the left, which would enable us to move the Democrat leadership back to positions supporting greater economic justice.

Oh well. Back to reality.

[brooklynite]

1. Thank you for wasting 30 seconds of my time...

Out of curiosity, why did you pick Clinton for your thought experiment? Could it be that Clinton isn't a "real" Democratic? Sorry to tell you, but your opinion isn't shared with the "real" real Democrats: the ones who vote in Democrat Primary, as opposed to the folks who frequent political blogs.

[marble falls]

2. I think you bring up good points. Hillary supporters need to tone back their purity purge....

a notch because it isn't as if we aren't all, every single one of us, going to vote for her. And a lot of moderate Republicans will, too.

On issue 6.) Rachel Maddow has said the same thing about herself, being a liberal that would have been an Eisenhower Republican in those times.

[Romeo.lima333]

3. i wish you gop-friendly dems would give it a rest

[Hekate]

5. Who says this person is a Dem in the first place?

This is a bizarre post.

[whatthehey]

4. even the absurdities are not realistic

People here often have the typical but silly idea that the political spectrum is centered around themselves, so come up with utterly fantastical crap about how "right wing" and "Republican" Hillary is because she is to their right.

Here is reality

Clinton has a 6% favorability rating with Republican voters. Warren has a 7% rating, better than hers. That's how right wing and Republican she is. Almost twice as many Democrats have a negative opinion of her

http://www.publicpolicypolling.com/pdf/2015/PPP_Release_National_22515.pdf