Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

I think I've said here before that one vote I would cast differently today is my 1992 (my first) presidential vote. I voted for Clinton, who, I think, was a decent president. But my current standards, given the options then, I wouldn't vote for him. I don't think he was trustworthy enough to be handed the keys. GHWB was, by most relevant standards, a good president, and he was definitely more trustworthy than Clinton, and he was a relative moderate.
I think it's fair to think that Perot took more votes from Bush than from Clinton. The recession really hurt Bush. Ironically, at least in California, my memory is that the "peace dividend" played a big role in the recession. California lost--I think--13 military posts/bases as a result of closure, thanks in large part to winning the Cold War. It was brutal--in the short term--for California's economy. If you go back and watch Presidio--a Sean Connery movie from the late 80s, I think--you'll see a San Francisco that had a huge military presence. The base closures in 1991 wiped that out (and not just in the Bay Area). It was hard on the area's economy; one of the few times that housing values have significantly dipped here.
Without the recession, not many people would have cared about "no new taxes." But combine that with the push for NAFTA, and Bush's huge victories over both the Soviet Union and Iraq were swept away. That's actually a pretty remarkable result--and grist for Clinton's "it's the economy, stupid" mill.

Once Clinton was President, even given my current political views, I likely would still have voted for him over Dole. To become the nominee for the Republicans, Dole had to go too far to the right, IMO. In my Democratic and aging memory, that was the era that Buchanan was really pushing the Rs to the right on social issues. Two years later, after the Lewinsky scandal was in full view, would I still have voted for Clinton over Dole? That's a close call. Realistically, I probably would still have voted for Clinton, but I'll say that I would at least have had to think hard about it.
The 2000 election will probably not get a lot of attention from historians because of what's happened since then, but my recollection of it was: things are going pretty well, so do we go with the guy who's pretty charming, doesn't seem that far to the right, and won't screw things up, or the guy who is kind of an annoying nerd, feels a little lefty on the environment, and won't screw things up? So we had a historically close election, a lot of drama, but not a lot of real angst at the time over the result. Can you imagine if we had the same scenario today as between Biden and Trump? It literally scares me to think about the consequences. Hopefully I'm just being melodramatic.
I recall looking back at the details of the GWB presidency when Trump was in his first term because of the liberal line of thought, "I'd even go back to Bush..." Nope. the GWB presidency was an epic failure in my mind. It was probably the combination of threatening Social Security and Katrina hitting at the same time in 2005 that fundamentally changed the national view of GWB, but there was an awful lot wrong with that presidency. Was Trump v.1 worse? I'm not at all sure. I thought Trump 1 was not good, but also not that effective at doing the things that he said he wanted to do. While I was very glad to be rid of him (I thought), it wasn't until after the 2020 election that he really scared me.
Back to 2000. I literally did vote for McCain in the California primary. My recollection, flawed as it may be, is that by the time California voted, the Republican primary was basically already decided, which I was disappointed in. In 2000, I thought McCain was a really good option. He was certainly always more conservative than me, and he had his own flaws, to be sure, but he struck me as honest, honorable, and more concerned about the country, than any particular election. But I think his loss in 2000 changed his approach to presidential politics. By 2008, he was willing to sell out his independence to capture primary votes. I have no regrets about voting for Obama. Once he was out of the presidential politics game, I think McCain went back to who he really wanted to be as a politician. Again, I disagreed with him about a lot of things, but when he wasn't trying to be the president, I thought he was a good voice in the room.

Now we are here in 2025. The landscape has changed a ton, and the parties have, too. People on the right think that the left has gone crazy. For my part, I think that the "mainstream" Rs have completely different policies, except on taxes and abortion, than they had even 12 years ago. And the electorate feels like it has dug in more for each side than it used to.
Things will continue to change. It will be a wild ride--as it often is.

Good stuff, SF.

I think we're in agreement on the general view from R's on taxes and abortion.
I also think that a big driver of the rise of Trump was the failure of W. He had been very popular, but following Katrina, the dragging on of the GWOT, particularly all that was happening in Iraq 2005-2008, then the historic economic meltdown, it's easy to see why W went out of favor, even among his supporters. But in so doing, he may have wrecked it for "establishment" Republicans. I also have a theory--that I don't expect my Republican friends here to agree with--that one of McCain's biggest mistakes was nominating Palin for VP. While she was--IMO--wholly unqualified, that wasn't the real damage. The real damage (this is the part that I expect lots of push back on) is that Republicans caught a glimpse of just how much her populism could light a fire in the political base. After that, why run establishment when you could run on that fuel? A significant problem with my theory is that Romney was the next nominee, who certainly felt very establishment. (In my view, Romney was a Republican version of Clinton--as far as his politics, not her personal life--happy to say what he needed to say to get elected; likely captive of whatever special interests backed him.) But my view is that Palin's populism lit the fire that grew into Trump--particularly after another failed establishment candidate. Even more so when (I think) Romney losing surprised the Republican establishment (because they weren't yet as data focused as campaigns today are).
SFIrish was given the adage about politics: its like waiting for public transit. The bus doesn't come to you, you go to the bus. You have to be ready when the bus comes, but if the bus is full, or you miss your stop, you're out of luck. I think that happened to Romney. At a lot of other moments, Romney probably could have won, just not 2012. Curiously, I don't think that about McCain. Conversely, every other President elected since I've been voting (so everyone after GHWB) relied on a decent amount of luck to get where they were going. I guess they all had a certain amount of luck, but at least GHWB, Reagan, Nixon, and LBJ had long careers at significant levels of politics before they were President. Carter won the anti-Nixon lottery. Biden is probably the closest to fitting that bill. I think he would have been a strong candidate in 2016, but--again--the party wanted Hillary because, it was once again her turn, and Biden had just lost his son, which is a hard thing to just ignore while running for president. In 2020 he won the "most normal person to face Trump" award. But, damn, he was old.

Contrary to the two things you mentioned, my stance on taxes and abortion have not changed.

So abort taxes? Ya might be onto something here

Anyone think Don Junior would run?

If more liberals were like SFB, I'd be a lot happier in life.  Well, some happier.  Well, I'd enjoy talking issues a lot more anyway.

My wine group in Cincy was about 90% liberal, which was fine with me, I liked nearly all of them, but in my view most of them had some ... poorly thought out views on some topics, and they weren't really receptive to any discussion on something like "taxing billionaires", which is a thing not easy to do.  Raising marginal income tax rates won't do it.

My "way too early guess" for 2028 is Vance v Newsom.  They both are pretty articulate and seem "bright" in a political sense.  I realize of course they perhaps are not the BEST candidates we could round up, but given the hierarchical nature of both parties, I suspect they are what we have.

Harris, in my opinion, was a terribly flawed candidate (I'm not speaking about policy, just how she came across often on the campaign trail).  And she almost won.

Vance and Newsom are much better candidates in my view.  We could of course have a "Carter" come out of the governor ranks, that is not unlikely of course.

I'm an oddball here. A non-lefty leaning Badger.

ya see why MDT might have thought you were a lefty while talkin to you while standing in Madison?