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

hey I like Bernie, I agree w him about a lot of stuff (not everything). But no, I don't think he will win, and this is all essentially a sideshow. On the other hand even if he could win I honestly don't think he would be that good a president. Despite his ideological positions, he doesn't seem particularly suited to leading a party (much less a country), being good in a crisis, wrangling legislation through congress, navigating foreign policy etc. He's fine, even valuable, in the Senate. I don't see him being a successful president.

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, August 25, 2015 4:13 PM (4 hours ago)

yeah the leading the party thing would be awkward considering he's been at odds with them so often, but then again i sort of doubt the GOP could be any more hostile to him than they've been to obama. and man, i have so much respect for you but it bums me out to hear you more or less buy into the "presidential" BS like this, like you'd rather have hilary's "experience" when it comes to foreign policy -- the woman who voted for iraq and has been a hawk her entire political career -- over bernie's? i mean the guy's been a US senator for a long time, i'm pretty sure he's got a good grasp of foreign policy

i genuinely can't tell with all the gabbneb wannabes we have around here but like, i assume the vast majority of us would, on the issues, prefer a bernie presidency to a hilary one? like when shakey says he "doesn't support" a bernie candidacy he means he thinks it's futile and it's not worth his ten bucks?

― usic ally (k3vin k.), Tuesday, August 25, 2015 1:09 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Nothing particularly makes me feel like I should be fired up over anyone in particular being the president. A Republican will not be president, so it'll be some adequate Democrat. Hilary Clinton is adequate. Bernie Sanders would likely also be adequate. It really doesn't matter which Democrat.

Basically my entire adolescent and adult life so far has been in "endless war" mode so I assume all presidential administrations will perpetuate endless war by its own logic and it will not affect my life directly.

hey I like Bernie, I agree w him about a lot of stuff (not everything). But no, I don't think he will win, and this is all essentially a sideshow. On the other hand even if he could win I honestly don't think he would be that good a president. Despite his ideological positions, he doesn't seem particularly suited to leading a party (much less a country), being good in a crisis, wrangling legislation through congress, navigating foreign policy etc. He's fine, even valuable, in the Senate. I don't see him being a successful president.

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, August 25, 2015 4:13 PM (4 hours ago)

I understand having some doubt about these things, but he's not exactly Nader.

I guess that's why we have debates.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/08/25/first-trump-booted-univision-anchor-jorge-ramos-out-of-his-news-conference-then-things-got-interesting/?tid=sm_fb

"Go back to Univision."

An MSNBC commentator correctly called Jorge Ramos a combo of Anderson Cooper and Walter Cronkite in the non-Cuban Hispanic community.

this guy is beginning to get frightening now

For the umpteenth time, i do not support hillary.

Xp

I cracked up when the chyron popped up mere seconds after Trump talked about having thousands of Hispanics under his employ - "TRUMP: HISPANICS LOVE ME".
This is Daily Show/SNL fodder but real; an amazing new reality.
I'm almost hoping the country votes him in and we all burn at this point

http://www.stereogum.com/1826639/chris-christie-wrote-an-essay-for-born-to-runs-40th-anniversary/news/

In the summer of 1975, I was 12 years old, pitching on my little league all-star team and living the life of a soon to be teenage boy in the suburbs of New Jersey.

Bursting into my summer vacation came a bearded New Jersey twenty something with a big, burly sax player on the cover of an album entitled “Born to Run”. It took my breath away.

The music was exciting, dramatic and exhilarating. As a kid from Jersey it spoke to me. Bruce wrote of the places and the people I knew. He wrote about our hopes and frustrations. He gave voice to the suburban kids like me who were filled with dreams and doubts. He was one of us.

Later that fall he appeared on the covers of Time and Newsweek in the same week. Not only was he one of us. He was a star. We all filled with pride.

The welcoming opening of “Thunder Road” (my favorite Bruce song ever), the pounding rhythms of “Night”, the desire in “She’s the One”, and the operatic power of “Jungleland” all surrounded the title song in near perfection.

Decades later as Bruce started to perform entire albums in the order the songs were laid out on the original album, I stood in the Count Basie Theater in New Jersey and experienced once again the genius of not only the songs individually but their relationship to each other in the album. It took my breath away again.

It is my desert island disc. It is the most powerful rock album of my lifetime. – Chris

"We all filled with pride."

Chris must have written this himself.

of the many "if X is president I'm moving to canada" scenarios, few feel quite so like the right bluff to play through as during a trump presidency
i can't imagine we're anywhere near that level of dystopia but nobody ever went broke underestimating the american public so

"a big, burly sax player"

So that's the word in Jersey?

TPM has a breakdown of the Ramos-Trump fight.

Expect to hear grumbling from assholes like Morning Joe reprimanding (mildly) Ramos for not waiting his return and for being an "editorialist" instead of a reporter. This incident is a winner for both the Ramos and Trump camps.

I like the idea of Christie seeing the cover of "Born to Run" and identifying with the burly guy.

Guys, it's not the worst essay to be written by a 12-year-old.

oh wait, didn't get to the end yet...

christie making a bold bid for the top of the 'is this the worst piece of music writing ever?' leaderboard there, great work big man

I would've been bummed out but I could've handled a Romney or a pre-Palin McCain presidency. Trump as prez would send me through his big, beautiful door so fast his toupee would spin.

From a newspaper friend of mine: "No one who's ever read an online comments section is allowed to be surprised that Trump is his party's frontrunner."

univision is the #1 network in the country

I would've been bummed out but I could've handled a Romney or a pre-Palin McCain presidency.

a Romney presidency in which decade?

Guys the odds of trump winning are zero

tell that to my dad, sigh

xpost Oh, I know. But I also wouldn't have imagined he'd ever be the Repub frontrunner, so who even knows anything anymore.

Trump doesn't have to win in order to damage the country.

A lot of Trump's blather is just that, but "Go back to Univision" had a (barely) coded hatefulness about it reminiscent of Obama being called arrogant in 2008.

What kind of damage do u mean DJP?

Well, in part, he's put the grinning idiot face to every suppressed racist and classist impulse in the minds of GOP candidates; now the competition has to catch up to him with ever more outrageous shit.

I mean reigniting the country's racist far right and spurring them into actions that were deemed unacceptable in polite company, like the attack in Boston where the dudes namechecked Trump and Trump backhandedly endorsed them. This entire campaign is about making it okay to be hateful and to attack, dismiss and belittle others; not everyone is going to do this via words.

The process has been in progress for a while but Trump is dispensing with the dog whistles and code words and a distressing number of people are responding with "FINALLY!" He doesn't need to become President for this to be a real problem.

Ah yes that is all true

Yeah just by giving him the time of day we are so much legitimizing horrible behavior.

Has repealing the 14th Amendment even been seriously considered in recent times? First I've ever heard this notion.

Jon Kasich alluded to it in the early '00s.

I used to hate when Trump retweets would appear on my Twitter feed. Now the sonofabitch is headlining GOP debates.

He won't win, but I still don't like where this is going.

Yeah, agreed with this last sweep of posts. I mean if I'm going to say that a Sanders candidacy is good news if only because of the possibility for people to get out there and campaign for mayor or state senator or w/e on a socialist platform, then a Trump candidacy is extremely bad news in the same sort of way. Obviously this kind of thing is not foreign to our political discourse (see Arpaio) but...ugh.

I mean reigniting the country's racist far right and spurring them into actions that were deemed unacceptable in polite company, like the attack in Boston where the dudes namechecked Trump and Trump backhandedly endorsed them. This entire campaign is about making it okay to be hateful and to attack, dismiss and belittle others; not everyone is going to do this via words.

The process has been in progress for a while but Trump is dispensing with the dog whistles and code words and a distressing number of people are responding with "FINALLY!" He doesn't need to become President for this to be a real problem.

I don't see this as bad - it's making a long-term problem come out of the closet. like the right-wing racist/nationalist party-within-the-gop has always been there, but the gop hasn't had to suffer from the consequences of quietly collecting those votes every election.

the two party system lets us hide the fact that we've always had a front national. the fact that it's been growing more radical / influential within the gop over the last 2 decades is easier to hide if you only have jeb bushes and mitt romneys on tv. we've reached a tipping point where they can't hide it anymore.

Says the white guy who is not likely to be assaulted

Exposing this contagion is fine if it's cured, but that ain't happening either. The racists aren't numerous enough to affect national elections but local legislatures, however...

i kind of thought it would be a purgative experience to have all the racey-race shit on the right (and not even on the right, fuck) leech to the surface... in 2008. now i'm not really so sure frankly

shakes I am ambiguously ethnic w/ an very foreign name, I have gotten plenty of 'where are you from? no I mean..'s in my life.

w/a not w/an

also speak poor english

Ok my bad

But the point stands, people are indulging their innerworst racist thoughts without consequence, i.e. what goole sez.

Not just without consequence but also with the implicit approval of a presidential candidate who's leading in the polls.

the consequence is the gop doesn't get to pretend it's just a bunch of srs business dudes who want '4% growth', loses major elections that it could otherwise win and slowly falls apart as a national party. that's already happening. mitt romney and john mccain both had to crazyify themselves to win the nomination and sacrificed a lot of their general appeal in the process. someone who's trying to win the trump vote is going to have to go even further.

Feel like some of you guys are writing off Trump's appeal too easily; watched some the press conference last night. It's totally easy to see how he could break through to the electorate through charisma alone, "Make America Great Again", being a "bold" "decisive" leader who will "beat" China and Iran, etc. A lot of voters simply don't care that he's a sexist and racist shithead, and his oratory/pandering skills are A+. He's MUCH better at this than Bush, McCain or Romney, and miles ahead of all the other Republicans. And HRC.

I mean part of his shtick last night was he was blatantly saying he knows some really evil, despicable business people, but he'll put to them to work FOR US to those crafty leaders from China and Mexico and WE'll BEAT THEM. It's all sound business principles, of course. It's laughable that this is totally uncontroversial!

Real talk if it's Trump vs. Hillary I think he could win. Because? America

There has been this race to be most otm on the internet about "what's really 'problematic' about... etc." in a flood of think pieces. Everyone wants to be the first to have the most eye opening commentary on society, to the point that it is now a hugely popular conversation. Which is good, though comedians are having their satire picked apart and others in the media are having their comments picked apart "AHA but don't you see the joke perpetuates sexism even though it is parodying sexists" "AHA but don't you see you're empowering problematic sexist people by blurring the line between actual sexist comments and satirical ones, thereby complicating the conversation as we're unable to distinguish different levels of blah blah blah", which makes shitty people feel persecuted by "PC culture". So when Trump comes along and says all sorts of shit without catering to political correctness at all, the racists and sexists that felt persecuted look to Trump to liberate them. Even though he won't win he's stirring all those people up, and they're going to start overcompensating via dangerous, overt racism that's passed off as "passion".