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

"At the time of the wedding, she did not speak English; therefore, a part of the wedding ceremony was conducted in Spanish." - WHO KNOWS what he has promised to her in the sight of God? No-one, that's who.

a slightly deeper dig into fundraising numbers:

Compare Carson to the other major grassroots candidate in the race: Bernie Sanders. The Vermont senator has also put up fundraising numbers that dropped jaws, and he’s also doing it almost entirely with small-dollar donations. But Sanders’s overall burn rate is less than 45 percent, and he’s spending very differently—by far his largest expense is on digital consulting and advertising, and he spent less than $100,000 on postage. Sanders’s trick is that much of that money is coming in through ActBlue, an online platform for making donations to liberal causes. It’s highly useful because it provides candidates an off-the-shelf tool, it tends to hook donors by, essentially, gamifying giving, and it’s extremely cheap—in general, it charges less than 4 percent commission to candidates. So while Ben Carson is netting around half of every dollar he raises, Bernie Sanders is taking in 96 cents of each greenback. (So much for the free-spending socialist.)

This isn’t a problem unique to the Carson campaign. Ted Cruz also had a high burn rate, for example. Republican candidates are at a disadvantage because there’s no GOP equivalent to ActBlue. Democrats are just farther ahead on the digital game, much to the frustration of forward-thinking Republican strategists.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/10/where-is-ben-carsons-money-going/410839/

Even with the best of intentions, a heavy reliance on direct mail has sometimes led campaigns and PACs to squander their muscle and money—including some staffed by the same people who are now working for Carson. One of Carson’s chief fundraisers is Mark Murray, who’s also president of TMA Direct, a direct-mail firm. TMA Direct was one of the top vendors to the Carson campaign in the third quarter, along with InfoCision and Eleventy Marketing, two companies based in Akron, Ohio, that have long worked with TMA Direct.

Murray was previously treasurer of American Legacy, a PAC affiliated with Newt Gingrich. As Mother Jones noted at the time, American Legacy’s spending in 2013 looked questionable. As of July 15 of that year, it had raised $1.4 million while contributing only $27,500 to actual candidates. The biggest recipient of American Legacy’s cash was InfoCision. TMA Direct also took in about $14,500. American Legacy’s mid-year report for 2015 is even worse. It raised $1.25 million but spent $1.38 million, and gave just $2,500 to candidates.

Carson’s national finance director is Amy Pass. She was previously the national finance director for Newt Gingrich’s 2012 campaign, and before that she was the director of major gifts at American Solutions, another blandly named Gingrich-affiliated PAC. Pass was apparently good at her job—American Solutions raised some $50 million over four years. But in 2011, the PAC went bankrupt. “Campaign finance reports showed that much of that money went to pay for charter flights for Mr. Gingrich as he traveled the country, keeping his political profile high,” The New York Times reported.

The 2012 Gingrich campaign and the 2016 Carson campaign share staff, and they share candidates who have proven they are able to rise to the top of the field—though the former speaker’s campaign showed that such success can be fleeting. Both campaigns have also been accused of using a campaign as a tool to sell books. Late in 2011, Gingrich and his wife Callista seemed to be combining a tour for their various books along with his stump appearances, requiring a delicate balancing act to adhere to the law.

To be blunt: Carson's campaign is a scam.

tbf this is a perfectly legitimate response to a USA Today reporter

Stumping the Palmetto State a day after his campaign announced staff reductions and pay cuts, Bush dismissed critics who said the changes reflect a struggling campaign that is losing ground to any number of rivals.

"Blah, blah, blah," Bush said. "That's my answer — blah, blah, blah."

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/2015/10/24/jeb-bush-campaign-tim-scott-trey-gowdy-charleston/74525090/

lol, he really dngaf

sorry for all these copy+paste quotes but they keep making me lol. it's like that one part in the matrix where the guy realizes that he's actually one of millions of people trapped in a pod, providing energy to his overlords in a future dystopia machine hell

"On our side, you've got the No. 2 guy tried to kill someone at 14 and the No. 1 guy is high energy and crazy as hell," Graham said. "How am I losing to these people?"

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/lindsey-graham-ben-carson-kill-someone

There are 14 candidates? Oh wait, he means 14-years-old. That makes more sense.

kinda wonder how bush would be doing in an imaginary universe without trump. probably still poorly but everyone's numbers look so bad when trump and carson suck up 50% of the support.

also think trump coulda similarly undermined romney if he were doing this 4 years ago. he actually would be in a good position to pick at romney's business career, taxes etc.

This year's batch of republican candidates have my grudging respect for collectively abandoning any pretense of adulthood or propriety or trying to sound at all presidential. I guess when Trump sets the bar...

http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e289/mike4424/LovitzDukakis.jpg

It's like telling a room full of second-graders that they're allowed to say whatever they want and overhearing the wave of "penis head"s and "poopy butt"s grow to a beautiful crescendo.

again, the "what's going on with all these madmen leading in the polls" is inevitably voiced by a candidate who is also fucking batshit
though honestly lindsey fucking graham is maybe the most reasonable choice amongst these schmoes except that his voice is too effeminate for the electorate. WHAT A COUNTRY

“And I’ve tried to murder no one ever, so this should move me up a little bit,” he joked. “Well, the day’s not over, but as of right now, nobody.”

lol "please vote for me so I can finally murder somebody"

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CSQu1UmWcAAfzMM.jpg

Oh yeah, that slimeball is still running. Ostensibly.

HAHA, I thought that was Santorum. They all look alike to me.

The Walker mask looks less like a cartoon character than Walker does.

Walker's and Santorum's faces made back when the lizard people hadn't figured out dough ratio yet

To be blunt: Carson's campaign is a scam.

You can call Ben Carson a lot of things: a brilliant surgeon, a questionable surgeon, a man of faith or a story of inspiration. But you cannot in good conscience call someone who barely visits early-primary states, spends half his money on fundraising (as opposed to staff and organizers), and curtails his campaign to give paid speeches and sell books a serious presidential contender. This is not about ideology or strategy or even ability. It’s about cash, and who’s in this campaign to run the country and who’s in this campaign to run up a tab on donor dollars. It’s pretty clear which one Carson is, but some people may not figure it out until he’s already cashed out and gone.

and he's ahead in iowa

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/polltracker/ben-carson-tops-donald-trump-third-poll

NYT had a p good Poppy Bush quote as he surveys the smoking political landscape: "I'm getting old at just the right time."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO_gKb9dOi4

never forget:
https://twitter.com/AndreuAitch/status/625425436063989760

oh my god

beware clickbait: there are stories about a 'sexy bernie sanders' halloween costume.

beware

are you saying it's not sexy

i would have no idea, sir!

http://waytofamous.com/images/michael-moriarty-05.jpg

lmao

perfect.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CSOBrJRVAAAZDxi.jpg

it's such nonsense, obamacare easily best since blood on the tracks

To be fair, you say that every time a new benefit program is rolled out.

My takeaway from that is Iowan GOP primary voters are fucking crazy

Set aside the super partisan responses; how does "no experience in foreign policy" get 42%?

Missed cut:

Identified Grover Cleveland as a kind of tuber 83%
Believes that jazz hands can cause blindness 86%
Claims pistachios are alien nuts what's up with the green on the outside so freaky 91%

can't decide whether "no experience in foreign policy" is getting the thumbs-up from isolationists or hawks

It got Best New Music on Pitchfork last week.

http://m.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2015/1023/Why-Ted-Cruz-Ben-Carson-are-bulk-buying-copies-of-their-own-books

"Look where experience with <____________> has got us! No thanks!"

Foreign policy, taxes, education, oil, take your pick.

http://i.imgur.com/Rsvx9TT.jpg

if you combine trump and carson's support and just call it "CRAZY PERSON", that graph is even more terrifying (even more so if you want to add fiorina or cruz to the crazy pile)

yeah as always it's not the candidate but the constituency that you ought to look at

though the counter-argument is that if the 'real' candidates were stronger you'd see smaller numbers for the oddballs.

slatestarcodex had some interesting thoughts about trump's base of support, i thought

On the other hand, there is a candidate whom the media narrative fits like a glove. A candidate who may win primary among whites, but loses in a landslide among minorities. A candidate whose black support is almost an entire order of magnitude lower than his white support.

That candidate is Bernie Sanders.

According to the same YouGov poll mentioned above, 38% of whites support Bernie Sanders for President, compared to 37% of whites who support Hillary for President. However, only 13% of Hispanics support Sanders, compared to 63% for Hillary. And only 4% of blacks support Sanders, compared to 64% for Hillary!

obama's numbers among african americans were similarly abysmal early on in his campaign.

threw this together quickly so it's a little rough

http://i.imgur.com/qIjSnfy.jpg

I actually found the trump stuff less scary when it seemed like only 30% of the republican party was batshit insane. the fact that trump and carson barely seem to cut into the other guy's support is mind boggling, cause the total support for these guys is a not-insignificant % of the american population now.

Why does that chart add up to 273 percentage points?