How do you think Trump would have fared if he won in 2008 instead of 2016?

Like Mitt Romney with more money and worse hair.

I can’t imagine the scenario. Obama was elected as a reaction to Idiot Rich Boy Bush and the way he had handled the financial crisis. There’s no way that Trump could have been elected – replacing one rich idiot with another.

But in terms of your question: if Trump would have been president then, he would have farmed out all his economic thinking to the Tea Party and the republican kooks, and we would have millions of people starving and out of work. We would not have had bailouts or anything like that.

Our economy and industry would have crumbled and Trump would only have served one term.

The economy was pretty bad in 2016, and Obama told us that it was the new normal. That he didn’t know what kind of Magic Wand Trump had to say things were going to get any better. But the economy is better than it has been in over fifty years, so the question is kind of a moot point from the get go.

@elbanditoroso is right—about how Trump wouldn’t likely win after Bush. But Mitt Romney was essentially the Donald Trump of 2012, promising pretty much the same things as Trump four years later.

Really @Yellowdog the last three years of Obama he created 7.96 million new jobs, compared to Trumps first three years where Trump created 6.69 million new jobs both are great numbers but don’t tell me the economy was still pretty bad in 2016 NOT BUYING it.
And to deny the economy wasn’t in a pretty good up swing then is a down right lie.

No way to know. Trump did bring back confidence in the business world, so probably the economy would have eventually turned around even under Trump. This new “NAFTA” deal does seem better, so that would have happened then also. Obama reduced the deficit he inherited and Trump has increased it again, so if Trump had been president the years Obama was, the deficit would be even bigger, which is terrifying, Possibly, all of this racist shit would not be as extreme as it is now, because Obama being president riled up a lot of these WS’s, and then Trump made it much worse. As far as immigration. I don’t know if it would have been as bad, because we didn’t have jobs back then, but Trump still would have been saying horrible things about immigrants, so I guess there would still be some really big problems.

The 2008 campaign trail was so full of Kadiddlehoppers, Trump would have been lost in the mix.
I think it is safe to speculate that Obama got a lot of votes just because he was different from the crowd.
I honestly don’t think Trump could have won in 2008.

Totally different political climate, so I don’t think he would have ever been nominated to run!!!

Trump ran or has considered running in the primaries of several parties over the past twenty years. He was not hated or vilified until he was proclaiming himself a conservative.

Uh NO!He wasn’t hated or vilified until he revieled his true self, a lying self centered ,ego maniac, moron that has no real commitment other to himself.
What party he belongs to makes no diference.

@yellowdog I think he did exactly what he said years ago, chose to run as a Republican, because he knew they were easier to manipulate. I saw him talk about it when John Kerry was running against Bush.

Trump always was fairly conservative fiscally, but he used to lean left on social issues. He showed some of that when he was running for president, but he dropped it, finding the sweet spot that is in line with conservatives. In NYC republicans tend to be more liberal on social issues, but the Bible Belt is different.

I saw him in interviews years ago saying neither political party was getting it right. That most people wanted fiscal right and social issues left (that’s very northeast USA).

He was brutal when Bush went to Iraq, calling it a mistake at the time. He also questioned Bush letting the Saudi’s fly out of America right after 9/11. He even went into all of that a little when he was on the debate stage against other republicans, but the Republican audience didn’t like it, so he dropped that schtick. Oh, during the debates he also talked about all people having access to medical help, and he said Planned Parenthood delivered medical care to many women. He dropped that too, and I guess got convinced by some conservatives that women can be served in other ways, which is crap. Or, he doesn’t care, I don’t know. I think a couple more Planned Parenthood’s just closed in Tennessee.

I’m not sure what the real Trump is, but I do feel sure he thinks he is perfect and that it doesn’t matter how he stays in power, because in his mind he is so good at being president it doesn’t matter the lies he tells. It’s a means to an end. I think this plays just fine with his religious base, they ignore his faults, because he is the means to the end. Like my Christian friends say, “we are all sinners.” They just excuse all sorts of garbage for him, because he does what they want, and wouldn’t excuse the same type of thing for Clinton, because he didn’t do enough of what they wanted. Although, Clinton was fairly conservative on fiscal matters.

He changes with the wind on some things to stay in power. When he first started to run I though, it’s not terrible if he wins, but very quickly I saw he wasn’t going to be the man I saw in interviews 10–20 years ago. Back then he spoke of David Duke being a serious problem in America and all the WS movement and racism being destructive and scary, and then he runs for president and has amnesia real or fake, I don’t know. Some conservatives actually defend the WS label. Seriously, how the hell is that possible? Trump goes right along using the word nationalist. He is not the man he represented to the public politically many years ago.

When he took up that whole birther thing with Obama I thought to myself he must laugh at how stupid people can be when he is off camera that they believe Obama wasn’t born in America. I thought he was testing the waters. See how people react. Now, I don’t know what to think, whether he believes that garbage or just used it to manipulate people to get their loyalty.