a clown car full of millionaires: the 2016 presidential primary thread

My recollection was that he was just sort of around until Iowa, and that Clinton's only bump was that driver's license stuff in the one debate. I stand corrected re those numbers above--with Gore not in it, it was a two-person race pretty early.

lol tommy thompson's name up there take me back also. had totally forgotten he was briefly actually a candidate, he was one of those midwestern governors whose names always came up in the 90s. did you know john engler is still alive?

Fred Thompson gave an excellent impersonation of a living man during the debates.

His candidacy was just a convenient pathway to his life as the face of reverse mortgages.

2008 Primaries Thread

i literally have no idea if trump is gonna go full trump in the debate or if he's gonna learn a move from reagan and let himself appear reasonable, mature, and electable.

i literally have no idea if trump is gonna go full trump in the debate or if he's gonna learn a move from reagan and let himself appear reasonable, mature, and electable.
--balls

The latter

Fred Thompson gave an excellent impersonation of a living man during the debates.

Big phlegm problems for Fred, I can relate with the mountain cedar allergies this summer

or if he's gonna learn a move from reagan and let himself appear reasonable, mature, and electable

I'll believe that when I see it. Not having ever seen him appear reasonable, mature or electable at any point in the last 30 years, I have trouble believing he can pull that off for even 10 minutes.

LOL at him appearing any of those things.

I'll believe that when I see it. Not having ever seen him appear reasonable, mature or electable at any point in the last 30 years, I have trouble believing he can pull that off for even 10 minutes.

he's only been dead for eleven.

This being the Atlantic, I would not suppose that if reporter had talked to anybody who said, "pick Bernie OR ELSE!" those voices would have ended up in the article anyway. But here's a hint for the Kupers: you're not "fighting like hell for Bernie" by admitting that you will just vote for whoever ends up as the Democratic Party nominee anyway. I'm not sure you even count as supporters.

This is how voting in party primaries work when you are a member/supporter of that party. They are democrats who prefer one of the potential nominees. This isn't some sort of pathetic error on their part.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfHN5QKq9hQ

They are democrats who prefer one of the potential nominees

unfortunately Bernie is also going to support the nominee, and he isn't really a Democrat, allegedly.

when do we put Biden in the clown car btw?

yeah i've been thinking that reagan 80 is so clearly the smart move that trump would do it, at least for the first debate, come out w/ some 'detailed' (for primary campaigns) plans, let himself look intelligent, throw his opponents off balance, answer attacks in kind (though pithily and briefly) but not go on offense. at the same time i'm like 'like donald trump is actually going to do any of that'. it's amazing that a stage w/ ten morons on it could be not crowded enough but every one of them thinks they might be president of the united states. if you had bobby jindal up there fox could go to him and say 'you want a tv show? here's the deal - troll trump. get him riled up. we need this to be embarrassing for everyone involved - you, him, the ppl at home. then you'll get yr damn tv show.'

watching this Reagan-Bush debate is bizarre. I have to remind myself that they were competitors, Bush has the same subject-verb agreement problems as a younger man, and Reagan is clearly the winner.

It IS pathetic to use the words "fight like hell" - presuming this phrase means anything - and in the exact same sentence signal "but whatever." They show their expectation and acceptance of defeat before anyone even demands it of them. These are the people who put the curl in Rahm Emanuel's lip.

reagan-bush debate brings out exactly what is so damned frustrating about reagan in general - this super-slick, audience-winning presentation of out-of-context facts, thread-derailing anecdotes, and zingers, all perfectly tuned to do exactly what balls describes above. in hindsight the whole thing feels like a dress rehearsal for the empty but perfectly effective "there you go again." you see the seeds of so many future republican candidates trying and failing to pull it off. no GOP candidate has, IMO - - dubya had the folksy troll thing going on, a similar knack for infuriating anyone trying to actually engage with him, but he wasn't as committed to looking like he'd done the homework (or in reagan's case, reviewed his shoebox full of poorly-sourced newspaper clippings). gingrich clearly thought he could be that guy - wizard of facts and figures, cite lots of numbers in the growth of government jobs, make it look like the people disputing your numbers are the ones doing something shady. but not likeable. slick willy IMO is the only politician since to come close and he clearly learned a lot from the gipper specifically.

trump's not capable of it for a second and tbh he'd be a fool to try. perry clearly is hoping that with the right glasses and a lot of coaching he could seem like - surprise! - the smart guy in the room. but you can bet they all dream of being that reagan, every single one of them. they may not tell anybody about it, but they all write that fanfic in their heads.

oh, and paul ryan. there was a guy totally deluded as to how charming the general public would find his cocky college-debate-team libertarian policy wonk steez.

Every one of the GOP candidates says things like "Well, I wouldn't believe the GAO if they were in front of me!" all the time too.

yeah, that's a perfect example - huge laugh line with his GOP crowd, and by the time the chuckles are over and he's talking about something else anybody going "but you didn't really answer the question" looks like the slimy "gotcha question" reporter with a boring axe to grind.

the Perlstein book is good on chronicling how the grim, truculent California governor taunting students into open violence metamorphosed into this grinning palooka.

not saying this is unique to the GOP btw. if anything reagan's success is just a testament to how crappy carter was as a candidate and politician. an old-school barnstormer give-em-hell-harry inner-party democrat type would have had access to similar rhetorical judo and maybe re-framed the whole election, but of course such a person was unable to win the nomination in 1976.

xpost yeah i should read that - i loved nixonland, filled in a lot of gaps for me. the ratfuckery stuff i knew about but it does a nice job IIRC of sketching out what kind of america would have thought this guy was just the thing, and how he billed himself to them. like what the "silent majority" actually looked like. i may actually be conflating it with some other books as suddenly the only specifics i can remember have to do with campaign-trail shenanigans.

Carter was doomed bcz his substance was p close to Reagan's, solar power aside

Not really -- we know that now amd libs knew then but not the public that awarded Reagan a landslide and the Senate to the GOP. The public saw a harridan in a cardigan.

ugh nauseous at the memory of 1980 debates. "there you go again" moment upended my complacent collegiate leftism & ushered in 12 years of wandering the desert #sickbag sunday

The thing with that election, and I wasn't around, but it's always felt to me more like Carter was unpopular by a landslide than that Reagan was popular. Had he not been seen as, indeed, the cardigan harridan, or if Reagan had been just a smash with all segments of society, I don't think that John Anderson (not AFAICT a compellingly telegenic super-candidate) would have been able to soak up near 7% of the popular vote (with a Democratic running mate!).

speaking of complacency jeb's still convinced it's his turn at the helm of the county club

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/03/us/politics/jeb-bushs-camp-counts-blessings-of-donald-trumps-surge-in-the-gop.html?_r=0

Reagan won b/c he wasn't Carter, yep. The debate helped measurably.

What are these guys going to be debating, anyway? The Iran deal, the Affordable Care Act, uh...

Immigration! Not that I'm aware of any points of contention among them.

Feel like "debate" in this situation means just "guaranteed airtime" so each person marches up and gets the chance to demonstrate what kind of public speaker they are, and party/media has official opportunity to muse on whether they seem remotely viable as a candidate. "Pageant" would be a better word really. Like suddenly after this event the media will be ready to evaluate their prospects as if something has Happened and their "performance" can be evaluated, which was somehow not possible watching them deliver the same canned soundbites in their stump speeches. But all results (people actually quitting the race) will be postponed until the first primaries anyway, unless the sheer stench of loserdom marks some people so much that they get it through their heads it's over and quit. The ten-person threshold might do more than the actual contents of the event.

I guess that, since it's going to be treated as an event, candidates will be consciously doing things to try and get that 1 or 2-point boost, relative to each other, in the hopes of "emerging" as the "leader" of their particular bracket, which helps them remain plausible longer in the race and soak up more donor money. Particularly among the low-tier wingnuts, they all have to be figuring that if it was just down to one low-tier wingnut, it'd be them, and depending when Trump quits, they're suddenly a competitive top-tier player. So people are going to be desperately trying to score a big memorable line or strike a chord, since with ten people nobody's getting a lot of air time. I imagine this will actually be even more desperate in the third-stringer all-losers debate, where everybody has to be figuring that if they "win" that, then they'll naturally be the wild card to step in and keep the main lineup crowded when someone drops out. All pure horse-race sideshow stuff but, hey, clown car. Not that I expect it to become a really substantive nuanced conversation once it drops down to 4-5 of these guys more clearly embodying a choice between standard 'types.'

Jeb does seem to be playing on "hey remember that mess last time, wouldn't it be a better idea just to get a front runner coronation this time after just the first clown wave" - while not reminding people that last time the eventual front runner was a malfunctioning fleshbot.

speaking of trump and reagan (and nixon):

CHUCK TODD: And, again, I know we're going to get into a lot more issues with you in a couple weeks. But I want to ask you about Black Lives Matter. The latest shooting of a white police officer shooting an unarmed black man. Do you see this as a crisis in America?

DONALD TRUMP: It's a massive crisis. It's a double crisis. What's happening and people. You know, I look at things. And I see it on television. And some horrible mistakes are made. At the same time, we have to give power back to the police because crime is rampant. And I'm a big person that believes in very big-- you know, we need police.

And we need protection. Look, I look at some of the cities. You look at Baltimore. You look at so many different places in this country. Chicago. Certain areas of Chicago. They need strong police protection. And those police can do the job. But their jobs are being taken away from them. At the same time, you've got these other problems. And there's no question about it. They are problems. There is turmoil in our country.

CHUCK TODD: Do you understand why African Americans don't trust the police right now?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I can certainly see it when I see what's going on. But at the same time, we have to give power back to the police because we have to have law and order. Hundreds of killings are in Baltimore. Hundreds of killings are in Chicago. And New York is not doing so great in terms of that front. And so many other cities.

We have to give strength and power back to the police. And you're always going to have mistakes made. And you're always going to have bad apples. But you can't let that stop the fact that police have to regain some control of this tremendous crime wave and killing wave that's happening in this country.

It's a massive crisis.
It's a double crisis.
What's happening and people.
You know, I look at things.
And I see it on television.

This reminded me of David Byrne lyrics.

kind of a don delillo vibe, the repetition

dude is talkin like it's death wish 2 and shit out there

At the same time, you've got these other problems. And there's no question about it. They are problems.

"i like this trump guy. he sees the world the way i do, sees things that no one else ever points out."

thanks Donald

http://www.theonion.com/blogpost/somebody-should-do-something-about-all-the-problem-11018

Dr. Casino currently bringing the awesome on this thread - Reagan fanfic, yes. Pageant, yes. Re: Ryan, "college-debate-team" is perfect. (Note that Cruz is currently occupying this slot, and he has more actual college-debate-team chops than anybody. (Good luck with that, Sen. Smugface. We'll see how far it gets you with the public.))

What's happening and people

This could be fun!

"Beau was losing his nouns and the right side of his face was partially paralyzed. But he had a mission: He tried to make his father promise to run, arguing that the White House should not revert to the Clintons and that the country would be better off with Biden values."

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/opinion/sunday/maureen-dowd-joe-biden-in-2016-what-would-beau-do.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

"Biden values"?

http://o.onionstatic.com/images/17/17948/16x9/750.jpg?4525

oh good Maureen Dowd here to explain how the conventional wisdom works

lol

I was near a tv showing the NBC nightly news yesterday, and I'm kind of in awe of how useless national news is. They had several minutes of commentary that was basically quoting Maureen Dowd and the WSJ about Biden and the current presidential candidate landscape, then basically went "hmm."

I guess if your broadcast is just pulling a quote from Maureen Dowd and displaying it on tv, you should reconsider whether you need to broadcast anything.

they're totally irrelevant and they know it