Michelle Obama Could Be Strongest Challenge To Hillary Clinton


If Michelle Obama challenged Hillary Clinton for president, a recent poll shows she could be the strongest challenger that the former Secretary of State might face, The Washington Post‘s the Fix blog reported. A recent Rasmussen Reports poll shows that Michelle Obama would get 22 percent of the voting if she ran against Hillary Clinton.

“”Among Likely Democratic Voters, it’s Clinton 56 [percent], Obama 22 [percent],” the polling firm reports, adding, “Among all voters, Clinton earns 37 [percent] support to Obama’s 17 [percent].” Among black voters, Michelle Obama does better — by eight percentage points,” the Fix reported.

The Fix noted that other news outlets reported this poll result, and speculated that other personalities such as Oprah Winfrey, Elizabeth Warren, or others could have been named in such a poll as challengers to Hillary Clinton. The exercise of taking such polls was labeled “dump” because these other individuals, unlike Hillary, have not declared, nor shown any interest in, running for president.

“The answer is: No one knows, because none of those people is [sic] challenging Hillary Clinton. There is this thing called a ‘campaign,’ in which candidates debate and run ads and talk to voters that tends to move poll numbers quite a bit. In a survey earlier this month, NBC News found that the least appealing trait in a possible presidential candidate is a lack of political experience. Like Michelle Obama. Some dude calls you up and says would you vote for Michelle Obama over Hillary Clinton, you think, sure, why not. When you’re in the voting booth, the calculus is different. Just as if someone asked you to put money on 50-plus-year-old Michael Jordan going up against LeBron tomorrow. You might not put your money where your big ol’ mouth was,” the Fix stated about the hypothetical Michelle Obama vs. Hillary poll.

The Hill reports that Michelle Obama would be Hillary’s strongest Democratic challenger. They also cited the same Rasmussen Reports survey.

“A telephone survey of 1,000 likely voters conducted by the polling company found that in a hypothetical match-up between the current first lady and the former secretary of State, Clinton would best Obama 56 percent to 22 percent,” the Hill reported.

“That may seem like a significant margin, but according to the most recent RealClearPolitics polling average, Elizabeth Warren, a popular hypothetical challenger to Clinton, receives only 12.5 percent to Clinton’s 64 percent.”

The Hill noted that the only other candidate currently declared to be in the race to challenge Hillary for the Democratic nomination is Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who polls at 7.4 percent in that same survey, and that the First Lady is unlikely to enter the race.

While she may not run for president, Michelle Obama has stepped into politics, as the Inquisitr reported in November of last year, when the First Lady urged blacks to vote for a straight Democrat ticket.

“That’s my message to voters. This isn’t about Barack, it’s not about the person on the ballot, it’s about you. And for most of the people that we’re talking to, a Democratic ticket is the clear ticket that we should be voting on, regardless of who said what or did this. That shouldn’t even come into the equation,” the Inquisitr quoted Michelle Obama as saying.

While we can probably guess that Michelle Obama is not running for president in 2016, the poll numbers are certainly interesting. They show that many voters, who will vote in the primaries and caucus contests, are looking for someone else to vote for other than Hillary Clinton.

[Photo of Michelle Obama by Saul Loeb / AFP / Getty Images]

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