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Romney was a fairly purple-ish candidate. As governor of Massachusetts, he introduced the forerunner of the ACA. He was popular in a deeply blue state. He’s been deeply critical of some of Trumps actions.

So what went wrong? He was smeared as a racist misogynist. (On popular leftist sources like ‘The View’.). No doubt that hurt his chances in 2012.

Both charges are false, of course. Romney is a gentle Mormon bishop with a Black grandchild. His guidance has fomented great careers for many female colleagues and employees.

One has to wonder what might have been had Romney won in 2012. It may have brought the right further left, and may have changed the Republican nominee in 2016. But that’s not the way things unfolded.

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To be fair, he really played down/ backpedaled and shifted right from a lot of positions he took as Massachusetts governor when running for federal office.

I thought he did very decent job here in Massachusetts, but was really hard to see him run away from that experience in his presidential campaign. His “binders full of women” gaffe seems quaint now days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binders_full_of_women

Decent enough person/politician despite coming from management consulting. He didn’t loose his spine in Washington.

2012? Against the wildly popular incumbent? Blaming it all on smears seems like a rationalization. So the real question is what would have happened if Romney had run in 2016. But we basically know what would have happened, because there were other moderate/conservative candidates who did run in 2016. And the answer to that is the Republican party would have still fallen for the temptation of the New York democrat con artist who paid lip service to their longstanding frustrations but didn't have any actual policy beyond "burn it all down".

Actually, Obama was below average for approval ratings. ( Maybe a sign of today’s polarized politics. )

The average approval rating is 52.

Obamas first term was 49, his second term was 47.

Personally, I disliked some of his policies but thought he was a great orator, one of the best of our times.

https://news.gallup.com/poll/116479/barack-obama-presidentia...