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

You remember him saying this last week:

"This should actually be the rule in the entire government, where if you're not doing your job, you should be fired." ---

Naturally, the DNC and Jeb Bush pounced on this because he just isn't bothering to show up for work anymore.

He's had a bunch of excuses:

Excuse #1: It’s normal for presidential candidates to miss votes. (Des Moines Register)
Excuse #2: He gets briefed on hearings by his staff. (Washington Post, Politico)
Excuse #3: He would never miss a vote where he would have been the deciding one. (USA Today, Reno Gazette-Journal, Roll Call)
Excuse #4: He’s leaving the Senate. (Republican Primary Debate in Simi Valley, CA)
Excuse #5: Votes he has missed are “show votes.” (Breitbart, Huffington Post)
Excuse #6: He wants his votes to be meaningful. (CNN’s State of the Union)
Excuse #7: He is frustrated. (Washington Post)
Excuse #8: He feels as if he is standing around and doing nothing. (Washington Post)

digby

if his opponents were competent, ''marco no-show,'' a la children's pool game ''marco polo,'' would make a decent campaign ad.

brb gonna start this at Trump rally

I kind of wish fewer members of Congress would show up.

Sooner or later someone will be elected to the house who doesn't realize they're supposed to show up in DC at all

and 74% of likely caucus voters will approve of that

ben carson said that all that he cares about is selling copies of his books, and that he'd like to shit in your mouth! do you approve?

84% yes
7% no
9% undecided

fuck this asssssshole

http://observer.com/2015/10/hillary-clinton-falsely-calls-bernie-sanders-a-sexist/

i'd rather see the GOP win

D'you mean the author of that post? Because, yeah, playing the man-card without using quotes and dates is pretty assholish behaviour.

i have assessed the situation carefully & am positive that dr morbius was defending hillary clinton

frederik, i'd say get out of my country if you weren't already

if you prefer:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2015/10/hillary_clinton_is_smearing_bernie_sanders_as_a_sexist_it_s_an_insult_to.html

Fuck William Saletan.

Current Conservative dream- sorta conservative FBI Director Comey will somehow get Hillary charged with crimes

from some right-wing columnist

http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Columns/2015/10/27/How-FBI-Could-Derail-Hillary-Clinton-s-Presidential-Run

James Comey – not Bernie Sanders -- is the biggest challenge to Hillary Clinton’s presidential ambitions, a prospect that should keep the former Secretary of State up at night. The fiercely independent head of the FBI is directing the investigation into Clinton’s use of a personal email server and attendant issues raised during the Benghazi inquiry, which could lead to indictments of the former Secretary of State or her various aides.

...

What could bring Hillary down? According to some who have followed the case closely, Mrs. Clinton could be charged with breaking several laws, including willfully transmitting or retaining Top Secret material using a private server, unauthorized removal of classified information from government control or storing such information in an unauthorized location, lying to Congress, destruction of government property (wiping the server), lying under oath to a judge about having given the government all her emails or obstruction of justice.

Digby linked to it last night, and after catching the cadaverous Kraut-ham on a FOX show last week while flipping channels I noticed his fervent hope that the FBI could still indict her in January. That's all they got.

according to some who have followed the case closely

the comey indictment stupidity seems to function as an automated rage release valve. if it didn't exist, something else would form out of the ether to take its place

i'll see you in the spring, millennial fussbudgets, after i search for the perfect poli-circus writers who can meet your rigorous vetting standards!

Have fun, see you tomorrow!

http://i.imgur.com/oht3ald.jpg

Why does it always rain on me?
Is it because I lied when I was seventeen?
mmm mmmm dooot deet doooo
Why does it always rain on me?

lolol lindsey graham plays fmk

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/10/27/lindsey-graham-pours-beers-contemplates-marrying-carly-fiorina

Pretty bad when the Washington Post can't even spell your name right.

"John and Hillary were drinking, toasting; they were with others I won't name because they have political futures," Graham said.

Quality zinger, Lindsy.

Bash concluded the lighthearted part of the evening with a game. "There is a fun bar game, which I will clean up, because we are in mixed company, and on television," said Bash. "So, I'm going to call it: Date, marry, or make disappear forever."

Cringe News Network

the lighthearted part of the evening

who will be the next candidate to appear on Get Wasted and play fuck marry or kill (i mean date marry or disappear forever) on national TV??!!

*campaign advisers explode*

no idea why lindsay's on the undercard, he appears to make really good decisions

never forget

(I know this is Lindsey-adjacent but otoh lmao)

brouhonohohomoha

Graham has said he is not offended by the comment. He has also said that his single life does not make him a defective person.

I absolutely agree that this is not what makes him a defective person.

Fuck William Saletan.

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Wednesday, October 28, 2015 8:49 AM (3 hours ago)

he's right tho *shrugs*

yes yes let's defend bernie sanders mansplaining for the cause of defending the 2nd amendment

or let's pretend that actually bernie sanders is mainly focused on o'malley, the central figure of that debate

I'm halfway through that Saletan article and I am under the impression that it thinks it is criticizing Sanders but is actually reinforcing Clinton's point

I'm also forming the opinion that some dog whistles are so ingrained that the people responding to them don't even notice them anymore

Saletan is such an imbecile he frequently winds up driving people even further toward the position he's attempting to argue against.

ftr i didn't actually read the article, just the headline and sub header, but if you think what bernie did was "mansplaining" then we're gonna be in for a lot of mansplaining over the next 12 months

obv bernie's position on gun control is lamentable -- though he's coming around it seems, kind of like hillary on, oh i don't know, the iraq war, trade agreements, gay rights, banking regulations -- but the uproar isn't about a policy position

reading william saletan re: any candidate's feminist bona fides is insane, he's written in the past that any abortion after the first term should be illegalized, that 'real feminists' would shame any woman who gets an abortion as it brings ill repute on their cause, and that feminists should 'admit' that any abortion is morally equivalent to murder. this was all as part of his grand compromise between pro-choicers and pro-lifers wherein in turn pro-lifers would accept that birth control (note: does not include abortion or morning after pills - still murder!) was legal (how grand of them!) and 'admit' that early term abortions, while still murder, are not as evil as second or third term abortions which would be compltely illegal as part of this compromise anyway. he also, for many many years though not of late that i can recall, argued that morally there is no difference between homosexuality and incest or beastiality and that if homosexuals were given 'special rights' than so much ppl that wanna fuck their sister or their sister's dog. then he would glibly dare anyone to point out a flaw in his logic and when dozens of readers would simply ignore them and go 'aha! so you admit i'm right!' he's the very definition of a slate writer, a fungus that grew out of a stack of moldy old new republics in the basement.

I've been spending way too much time in chat rooms soaking up all the HRC-Bernie bickering, and I must say, it's getting really bleak out there if you hoped he had a shot. The HRC people are saying this thing is sewn up and I'm starting to believe them. What I am hearing from people in their 20s is "gee, I like his ideas but he seems so decrepit" and people in the 30s and 40s are like, "he's the worst campaigner ever, he has no plan for how to achieve all this stuff". Depressed.

surprise!

right i know saletan is an asshole, my *shrugs* was meant in a "broken clock is right twice a day" sense xp

i didn't read every single response to the debate but i don't recall anyone arguing that sanders was being sexist by using the word 'shouting' until clinton decided to use it as a talking point in a speech a few days after the debate.

slate is awful in general but the observer piece makes some good points.

It would be cool if people voted for the candidate who they agreed w rather than the one that is 'going to win'. This isn't horse racing.

was that "surprise" directed at me, shakey?

yes

HRC had a great response to 'how would your candidacy differ from a third Obama term?' and her answer was she is a woman.

yeah i gave up on that article the moment he brought up "race cards." and tying that kind of persona in with being a captain-save-a-bernie dudeblogger is totally NAGL. nonetheless i do think the point about the "shouting" bit stands - sanders was creakily deploying a canard about two sides in a debate "shouting at each other" and one which he indeed uses all the time. that may totally be a lame answer to the gun control problem; that's a separate issue. for clinton to turn it into "when women talk, some people think we’re shouting" is cynical and disingenuous. she knows that's not what was going on but she also knows this will be a winning tactic.