Wow, that’s a trick to stay aligned with both of them. I can’t say I see them on the same team even.
Thankfully Pence has shot himself in the feet too much to run.
And we can cross off Santorum, Trump, and Huckabee.
Bush is only popular with the establishment.
Paul doesn’t have a chance. Too weird for most people.
Walker, unions, “down on schools”. (Though I love that his biggest anti-union move is to stop forced dues collection, they were enough of a wreck that this killed them)
Cruz, “Canadian”, not hispanic enough, against gay marriage
Rubio, soft on immigration, not cuban enough, a little unpredictable
Fiorina, no political experience, hasn’t stepped on any landmines yet. VP maybe?
At this point I have no idea who I’m voting for, and in Indiana I usually don’t get a choice anyway. And I would vote for all but the first three against Hillary/Sanders/Warren. Any Democrat Governors get involved I’ll have to look at them if I don’t like the Republican.
Halfway between now and the first primary, most likely. It will start to drop after that. I’m betting on Jindal and Carson being among the first to duck and run from previous gaffes.
Obama won because people felt that he had the ability to forge some bipartisanship, unlike others who were running at the time. But that didn’t work, starting on the day after the election, because you can’t be bipartisan with a bunch of people whose only goal is to knife you the moment your head is turned.
Hillary will probably get the nomination. People see her as being more no-nonsense, more determined. She’s seen as someone who has no problem giving the GOP brick wall a good kick in the nuts.
If things had been reversed, it might have worked better. If Hillary had been elected, she would have bulldozed the brick wall down, and she wouldn’t have been nice about it. She doesn’t seem to have a problem pointing out “you brought this on yourself, no Mama’s going to give you a spanking.” She would have reigned in a few of the Tea Party Democrats as well, and most likely would have told Norquist, Rove, et al., to get the hell out of Washington.
Then Obama could have come in, with the bipartisanship and the studied, deliberate negotiation tactics, and the GOP just might have acted like more than 10% of their actual age.
By the way, if you thought Obamacare is bad, you wouldn’t have liked Hillary’s. It was the exact same plan Nixon tried to propose.
Okay, fine, yeah. The only reason anyone voted for Obama was because they wanted a black president, and if it had been Farrakhan, that would have been just peachy too.
None of the Democrats anywhere give a damn about the country, and most are just race traitors and treasonous villains willing to sell American to China, piece-by-piece, via Amazon.
Seriously though. He had a democrat congress that could do anything he wanted for two years, and it was all wasted on Obamacare. He couldn’t even get a budget done. And his actions and the actions of Congress managed to create a movement inside the Republican party, and his own party, to cut out the bullshit and run the federal government according to the document with which it was created.
He’s also been the least transparent government in ages, and put more reporters and their informants in jail than anyone else. This from the guy who wanted debates on Obamacare on C-Span.
The negotiations on Obamacare… “I won” and “Elections have consequences”. Behind closed doors, and little to nothing changed once they realized they could pass it without republican support. Even after a seat was lost to a Republican in a race run specifically on this issue, they managed to shove it through on a technicality. Failing to see any negotiations.
You don’t make Eric Holder your Attorney General if you are looking to heal race divisions and work for bipartisan solutions. You don’t show up on national television calling local police stupid and opining on every little bit of perceived racial inequity that comes to your attention. You don’t publicly call out your opponents as idiots and fools. I don’t recall any president in the past calling out more individuals from the bully pulpit. Maybe I didn’t notice before, but the presidential finger got pointed at a lot of individuals in this administration.
And who the fuck is Valerie Jarret and why does her opinion matter more than elected and appointed officials?
There was no brick wall until he pissed everyone off. There has never been any time in my life where a president was elected with such hope, even though I voted against him I was like, ok lets try something new. And he went hard right into identity politics, secret deals, backroom talks and divisiveness right out of the gate, strong arm Chicago politics and Alinsky all the way. And even with a majority in both houses couldn’t get even the simple shit done.
She also kicks the law in the nuts. Secret servers, overseas donations, obstruction of justice, clinging to the stupid “youtube video” explanation for Benghazi. Hillary scares the shit out of me, and I’d rather see Obama’s third term than Hillary’s first. Hell Hillary was the original birther, she’ll do what she has to to get where she needs to be. Ask that poor girl in the rape case in '82. She’ll continue the expansion of the imperial presidency, that republicans and democrats have been doing since the 30’s.
Republicans were stating, prior to the inauguration, that their goal for the next four years was to make sure he didn’t get elected - that was McConnell, Boehner, Cantor, Bachmann, and plenty of others . He hadn’t even done anything yet, other than maybe agree to continue George W’s bailout program.
The Tea Party got started, against Obama, before he took office.
George W pushed the Patriot Act and kept adding to it. He was pushing Executive Decisions and immediately classifying them, for heaven’s sake.
How many journalists had their reports blocked so that the folks back home wouldn’t know how many died, until a few reporters figured a way around it?
We learned more about George W in one day of Wikileaks than we suspected in a year of George W. More records missing from his administration than Assange could find. More lies about intelligence than even his staff could keep track of.
But “heh heh, we’re going to get Osama, no wait, we’re goign to get Hussein and execute him, no wait, we’ll let the Iraqis have him, we’re gonna get Osama, we’re winning,we’re winning, we’re winning, we’re losing, let’s elect McCain.”
Yes, @Woodman, Obama bad, Hillary is a lying bitch. They conspired to kill lots of Americans.
I have no problem admitting when anyone has screwed up, Democrat or Republican. I also have no problem admitting when they have done something that strongly benefits the country.
But hey, let’s get the absolutist, monochrome pinata dance going in full swing. After all, November 2016 is only 17 months away, that’s not nearly enough time to get it out of our systems.
I really feel for our friends overseas. For every four years of our election cycle, they have to hear about this shit for almost two years (and it keeps getting longer), plus the bitching and moaning for another five to six months. When they have an election, we generally hear about it for a couple months.
It really hurts me when you denigrate yourself like that.
That’s fair, I wasn’t adding, really. But, seriously, it was way more about race than bipartisanship or peace, so the BS flag needed to be thrown. 15 yard penalty and loss of down or something.
I’m not a knee-jerk-far-right-winger, as CWX seems to think, but I’m also generally not a big fan of political debate, so I usually don’t say much in this thread.
Ask anyone who worked at HP during her tenure as CEO. Especially the 30,000 or so that were laid off on her watch. She’s got plenty of skeletons. They’re just not important enough to the media and the Powers That Be to be dug up at such an early stage.
Also, when did the election cycle become damn near two years long? I bet I could get broad support (among the American people at least, probably not the government and the crony class) for a Constitutional amendment saying that no one can declare their intention to run or begin campaigning or soliciting/receiving donations until the beginning of the calendar year in which the election actually takes place.
Blame Iowa. When Primaries start in January, or even March, you have to have more than 30 days to work the crowds. You can also blame the media for candidates having to do that so much, the media will bury a candidate it doesn’t like so you have to try to create your brand before they decide to do something about you. There is plenty of reason for campaigning in September, it’s early now, but everyone also wants to clear the field as fast as possible as well.
And this is the reason candidates like Obama are popular, not enough history to have really screwed up in public.
Can you see a reason to slow down and control that access? Especially during an active shooting war? I’m not a fan, and I could have sworn there were almost daily updates on death counts, sure were enough people on MSNBC blood dancing in it.
I can’t see threatening reporters with jail time, or putting them in jail, for asking and investigating political issues.
C’mon man. Not really any better than RR’s comment.
Or you can blame the proliferation of PACs, as each politician, including those with no intention of running, tries to grab as much of the “market share” as possible.
There’s more than enough blame to go around. And there are quite a few who whine about how unfair it all is, only to block any effective conversation regarding reform.
Both parties are liable for the mess of the primaries and caucuses, but any suggestion for fixing that mess gets drowned out by cries of “states’ rights”, even though it is the parties that are controlling dates, not the states. The GOP cut off their own out-of-joint noses, by denying the delegates from states that didn’t get their permission to change dates.
And the only reason we even have different dates? If we had the same date, across the board, then the parties couldn’t bus in enough operatives to flood the states in the lead-up to each primary or caucus.
We’d do much better to have a lottery, where each state’s primary is decided by random, with five states voting each week, starting the first week of June.
But no, we can’t do anything like that. There are too many vested interests who would kick and scream, with fake arguments of “states’ rights” - rights they don’t want the states to have, on every other day of the year.
BTW, I heard a rumor that Meg Whitman is going to toss her hat into politics again. I guess she thinks that settling the argument with Craigslist has whitewashed her past enough to have a chance again.
I didn’t say anything about the Fed. But frankly, there is no rational reason why we shouldn’t have a Federal bank to handle inter-bank processing and all.
We are still in a halfway position between the 50 different experiments of democracy and a single government with some regional heads. I believe that the Federal government shouldn’t be part of my day to day life like it is today.
There shouldn’t be a department of education with 4,300 employees and a $60 billion budget, that doesn’t actually teach anyone anything. A department of Labor with 17 thousand employees, and a 107 billion dollar budget.
We’ve become a regulatory state, where each of us is a multiple felon by lunch each day. I don’t see anyone out there seriously running on a reduction of federal interference in our lives, some want to cut back here, but add there, and vice versa.
I don’t know what the right number is, but I know it’s too big now. Just about every time someone actually ends up taking a knife to someone’s budget, including the military, they manage to hit the mission still.
Best combo in my mind is a strong small state Republican president, so the press will watch like a hawk, with a decent democrat majority in the senate and a mix in the house maybe leaning republican. We almost had that with Bush, but he’s a Big Government spend it all dude.
The best way to deregulate government is to make people smarter and more ethical.
Why do we have umpteen regulations dealing with subject X? Because John ignored common sense and got injured and sued his boss, Sheila ignored ethics and found a way to sue the government for John’s settlement, and Sydney wanted in on the action.
When we have companies more interested in squeezing every last drop of blood out of their employees, we get minimum wage, FMLA, sick days, overtime regulations, ADA, OSHA, etc.
And I have yet to see a Republican who is actually Small Government when it comes time to line up for lobbyist, pork barrel, and PAC checks. There may be a few, but I haven’t seen them yet. I may have seen a few Democrats that spurn those checks, but it’s too soon to be sure (ask me in 50 years).
I don’t trust government. But I trust the admirals of the aircraft-carrier-sized board room tables even less.
No, regulations are not working. But, for the moment, they at least are slowing the leaks in a few areas.
I’m a practical anarchist. (please don’t assume you know what that means) But until we develop a pill that can retroactively reverse lobotomies, I have to settle for second best. And that’s as far as I am willing to settle.
