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

Jeb! is a Texan, sorta.

― Gorefest Frump (Doctor Casino), Tuesday, August 25, 2015 8:25 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Well, and say this, both of the Floridans are leading.

I mean, if we're going to let GWB get away with calling himself a Texan, then we gotta let Jeb call himself Florida Man.

J. E. "Florida Man" Bushington Jeb! III.

desperately hoping JEB! takes this advice: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2015/08/25/5-good-reasons-for-jeb-bush-to-attack-donald-trump/

He could do it; there's no predicting that guy. Jeb! is truly outrageous.

https://twitter.com/Hadas_Gold/status/636219144929677317

this high school shit.

sorry roger you created a monster. reap the whirlwind bitch.

oh come on, he knows this is good for ratings, this is faux outrage

this is getting so sad and pathetic i can't even believe it

well we might ALL be

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/08/31/the-fearful-and-the-frustrated

all be reaping the whirlwind that is

did the beating story make it itt? the two shitkickers from boston who beat up the homeless hispanic guy with trump's name in their mouth.

yeah I think that was mentioned

wonder what this means -- in 07 ilx was an obama hotbed, but now in 15 the vibe is only mildly pro-bernie if at all? unless i'm misreading folks here. or sort of shrug-resigned to hillary? has B's old-left stumbling around race in 2015 tanked him with internet left people? we're all 8 years older. idk, it's an interesting point in community evolution.

Personally I think Bernie is handling it fine. I mean during the incident he stepped back and let the activists speak, then hired them and put together an official policy for addressing their concerns. Haven't kept up w the FB outrage brigade tho so not sure if people actually upset about him or it's just news trolling during the slow summer.

HBO will one day offer Larry David the Sanders role, right?

If Jeb Bush wasn't in the race it would be easier to hold my nose and vote Hillary but just seeing "Bush vs. Clinton" it's like, dang, fuck this weak tea monarchy bs.

I support Bernie Sanders but he will never, ever win an election in this country

Great insight, bro.

p safe to say that Obama was a better candidate than any of the current crop, don't think it's anything more complex than that.

I don't really support Sanders' candidacy but *pedant alert* he's already won numerous elections in this country fyi

damn... owned

i support bernie but ultimately think his contribution (b/c he won't win) will be to shift range of acceptable topics among local and congressional candidates nationwide (making it okay to support socialistic/old-school FDR stuff again)

energy devoted to Bernie would be better spent getting Bernie-types elected to local office imo

and if those kinds of organizing/victories are a side-effect of his candidacy, that's cool

i dunno whassisname won, that was pretty unprecedented

It's early days. HRC v Bernie is barely off the ground. In some ways, Hillary's attempt to close out all competition and create a clear path to the nomination might work against her, in that the lack of alternative candidates has handed Sanders a good-sized voting bloc of "not Hillary plz" voters right from the start. That gives him a base, money and credibility he barely had to work for and something of a flying start he couldn't have achieved in a more crowded field.

I don't know if he's skillful enough to leverage that set of resources into a broad campaign that captures average middling voters, but Hillary is not a natural campaigner, so I'd say Bernie's got a puncher's chance.

Sander's support is so limited to white male liberals, that he really doesn't have a chance, and he quite simply was slow on the uptake that other groups wouldn't agree with him once they got to know him. Unless he gets more support in South Carolina especially, where as far as I can see, his best result is being just 38 points behind in a single poll, he won't go anywhere, no matter how many votes he'll get in Portland.

did the beating story make it itt? the two shitkickers from boston who beat up the homeless hispanic guy with trump's name in their mouth.

― goole, Tuesday, August 25, 2015 6:16 PM (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This isn't the story though - the story is Trump's response being "well, my followers are very passionate"

the real work is turning some state legislatures blue.

http://www.sfgate.com/news/local/article/This-tub-of-butter-looks-a-lot-like-Donald-6462398.php

my local newspaper is an embarassment to journalism fwiw

those state legislatures are labs for dangerous shit that gets introduced nationally when those bozos get to Congress

Sander's support is so limited to white male liberals

I don't think this is true at all fwiw, women love Bernie (certainly plenty of the white liberal women I know do)

Alfred otm

that tub of butter looks like kuato

In a yougov poll, Sanders was the most liked democratic nominee amongst the white vote, beating Hilary 38-37, but had the support of a whopping 4% of the black vote. Funnily enough, the white vote is the only one that Bernie wins. Not the liberal vote, though he obviously does well there. Not the midwest vote, though he is close. No, the only part of the vote where Sanders is beating Hilary is the white vote. And while that might be good enough to win the republican primary, it's a big problem for a democratic candidate.

look Bernie's not a serious candidate. He's gonna maybe win Iowa + New Hampshire (if he even gets that far) and then it's over.

the important thing to remember is it's endtimes, and i had better be fucking dead by the time shit gets real.

and the beginning of thae actual fucking voting is 3-1/2 months away, Frederik. Things can change. (But obv the Dems will stop Sanders any way they can if he figures out how to win the black vote.)

Frederik B - This line keeps getting repeated, and it's not without basis in the facts, but it's also weird... like repeating his current performance makes it into a prophecy of the future. Do I expect that Bernie is going to eventually capture 75% of the black vote? No. Does he have some innate weaknesses owing to his career/background in trying to reach a national audience? Sure. Do I think his numbers have some potential of going up once he's actually, like, actively courted black voters? Well, yeah. The first primaries are not til February. Is he even airing any ads yet?

Why would it be "over" after Iowa and New Hampshire? Not to say he has a huge shot of winning any other primaries, but given that he's likely not running to win, I could see him beating his drum as long as there are money and donors. The example here would be Kucinich 2004, who kept it rolling basically up until the convention without winning anything.

points deducted for resorting to Rumsfeldian Q&A style there

We go to ILX with the dull rhetorical tropes we have.

as for it being over after Iowa and/or New Hampshire I'm just making a guess. In a close contest with only one other candidate, Bernie's going to have to contend with Hillary going to go all out to co-opt and/or destroy him and she has the money and backing to do it, even if she is being a totally shitty candidate at the moment. Bernie's gonna run out of money and support when it's demonstrated he can't marshal voters outside of his narrow band of appeal. And this is a pattern that has more or less been repeated in every Democratic election since I've been alive, I don't see anything marking out Bernie as exceptional this time around.

For the record, Kucinich survived in 2004 in a much more crowded field and on the strength of a single issue (being against the war). In 2008, with a much narrower field, Kooch dropped out after not winning any of the first three primaries.

also lol xp

It's quite possible that South Carolina could be such a big embarrassment for him that his campaign would be done. He is running a populist campaign, when it becomes clear that he is really just appealing to a specific minority in the party, then the rest could just be embarrassing. At some point, him getting trounced over and over would just give cover for Hilary to actually ignore his ideas.

(and also, through a quirk in the primary calendar, I think that most of the coming primaries after NH and Iowa are in regions where he doesn't have a chance of winning. Portland won't vote til may.)

And I know it's early, but 4% is pitiful

Though another fun thing: Sanders has a better net favorability rating amongst black voters than white ditto. 13% compared to 6%. Neither of those are particularly impressive, mind you. And also, I'm just scrolling through a stupid poll thing, can't really be used for anything.

look Bernie's not a serious candidate.

Maybe, but Bernie has pinned his campaign to a serious issue. Lefties may like to call it economic justice, but to ordinary voters it is "everyone is working their goddamn butts off, but a tiny group of people are raking in all the money". Young people 'get' this issue in spades, but it cuts across all demographic groups.

This issue is a big unknown in terms of national political payoff, mainly because most politicians won't touch it for fear of drying up their big-money contributions. If that issue starts to resonate with voters, he'll do very well. It all depends on how fed up voters are on that bread and butter issue and whether they think he can help them. If it falls flat, or the media can kick up enough dust and distractions to obscure the election, he'll crash and burn by mid to late March.

xposts re: Kucinich - Well, analogies could be drawn, right? Sanders's "single issue" is economic/social justice and it's not entirely clear to me that the kind of $10-50 donors that have gotten him going so far will just give up interest in the issue, in a way that people opposed to the Iraq War didn't for Kucinich. Again, assuming that his appeal can only be to the smallest sliver of your hopelessly leftie Democrats - through the figure of "when it's demonstrated he can't..." is maybe assuming a little too much.

I just don't think he's running the kind of campaign that has to read all tea leaves and go "wellp, this thing's over, we're not doing well enough in Minnesota and we can't afford to also lose Arkansas so may as well pack it in after Nebraska" or whatever. He seems like he wants to be at least a gadfly, keep his issues in the air, maybe even soak up a few delegates for shaping the platform, since the Democratic primaries are not winner-take-all. I guess maybe I'm arguing that a Kucinich or Sanders (or, really, Nader) type candidacy is a different animal than the "slightly more traditionally liberal alternative trying to win in a conventional sense" (Bradley, Dean) which is what I absolutely do see in every Democratic election since I've been alive.

Nader never ran as a Democrat

4% is kind of pretty good for a guy who seems to be barely campaigning or, like, doing anything. I'm finding that he just visited South Carolina for the first time this campaign, uh, two days ago. Again, I'm not seeing him winning the state, it's just too much ground to make up, but so, if 4% is "pitiful" what are numbers that would seem "reasonable"? What's the stay-in-this-thing point for an issues-based campaign? Be nice to pin this down now so we don't have to move the goalposts around later.

re: Nader - I know, just naming someone else running as a "real left alternative" with no shot at being President, who stayed in the race forever and a day.

Nader's whole point was Sanders' whole point only in a much more destructive "both parties are craven corporate lackies" way

"destructive"