2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Very intersting opinion piece by a Black man on the Sanders campaign [View all]Armstead
(47,803 posts)Obama has natural leadership abilities and star quality. . My guess is that if he had mediocre grades and just scraped out of law school, moved to Chicago and made a name as a community organizer, and started running for lower office, those gifts would have been noticed regardless, and he would have had the same ascendency.
Clinton likewise, could have done okay on college, somehow positioned herself in some classic "entry level comers" positions in DC and exercised her ambitions to advance. She is more problematic because she also married a comer with amazing political gifts, so it is impossible to tell how she would have done if she had either been single or married to some ordinary schmuck.
And despite his early adulthood (and I would NOT discount his years as a student civil rights activist) Sanders made his name by being an exceptionally capable Mayor (and got attention as a socialist) who was named one of America's Best Mayors, and then advanced to Congress where he was repeatedly sent back by unbeatable margins for many terms.