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

Basically, yeah.

I basically buy that, but I think Andrew Farrell is also kinda right re: Christie's own personal timeline and his scandals and so on. It doesn't look like Bridgegate is ever going to sink him, but he can't run for reelection in 2018 (NJ doesn't have term limits but does prohibit more than two consecutive terms), his reputation there is in bad shape, and it's hard to imagine where else he goes once he leaves the governor's mansion. He must have figured, starting the campaign, that even with his star not shining as bright as a few years back, he wasn't going to get a better chance. And now that he's in it, he might as well ride it out and hope for a lucky break somewhere; what else is he gonna do?

At the current moment, things look kinda bleak. Even New Jersey Republicans aren't enthused about voting for him and he's been demoted to the secondary debate tomorrow night. It's possible he could turn out to shine there, with more time to speak and a rather pathetic trio of opponents in Huckabee, Jindal and Santorum. But it's not like "winning" the undercard debate has necessarily been a ticket to the big leagues, and even his seemingly lauded fantasy-football line from the last debate apparently didn't do him any good because here he is. Right now, further floundering from Bush benefits Rubio, unless both flounder, at which point their donors/supporters strike me as more likely to go Kasich than Christie. IMHO all four of those guys are playing a separate, parallel primary: assume Trump and Carson are overhyped paper tigers who will collapse on their own.... one of these days.... and focus instead on looking grown-up, common-sense, and electable enough to be the natural recipient of each other's currently slim percentages. Those don't add up to much but they would make for a very solid front runner if the Trump and Carson people were to just quit and never show up to vote.

Here's the thing I can't figure out: where exactly are the evangelicals this time around? It's easy to say that that's Carson's wing - but before he became a relevant force, where were they? Were they really all thinking "Trump's our man"? Trump just seems like an odd fit for your old-school fire-and-brimstone Moral Majority types, and anyway, Carson and Trump's numbers have generally risen and fallen together - Carson's surge came at the expense of everybody else in the race. So... are the fundamentalists just all too damned old now? Is the combined Huckabee/Santorum vote (3.2%) really all that's left of them? Were they actually on the Jeb train, back when he peaked at 16-18%? Does Fiorina's remaining 3% represent people still stoked about her Planned Parenthood bullshit? Or did the evangelicals start the race evenly spread around all the candidates, waiting for someone to really ring their bell, finally coalescing around Carson?

RCP's averages at this moment, btw:

24.8 Trump
24.4 Carson
11.8 Rubio
9.6 Cruz
6.0 Bush
3.0 Paul
3.0 Kasich
3.0 Fiorina
2.4 Huckabee
2.2 Christie
0.8 Jindal
0.8 Santorum
0.3 Pataki
0.0 Graham

Sometimes I get really tempted to treat these like parliamentary seats in a coalition government and imagine what kind of weird pluralities you could put together by combining X, Y, and Z. I'm sure at least some of the lower-tier people keep themselves going like that: well, if X keeps declining, I'm sure to rise! But in reality those tiny slices just get subdivided and spread around and it affects nothing.

dang, bush is tumbling. is he at a point of no return or is it still fathomable he could ride out shit and come away with some support from uh "conventional" republicans?

who are these 0.3 for pataki? i really want to know

poor lindsey

Carly Fiorina's moment passed so fast I forgot to notice it passing.

allowing for margins of error, pataki could actually have a negative percentage of republicans voting for him. actually so could most of these jokers. statistical noise.

i wonder at what point they'll pull the plug on the whole junior/senior debate business and just cut loose anybody who can't actually find two or three in a hundred republicans who say "you're my first choice." or, like, suppose jindal and santorum just quit, or came down with bronchitis - surely they wouldn't run a junior debate of just two people? i suppose they'd just move the threshold around to make it work but at a certain point it's sort of ridiculous.

So why is Lindsay graham wasting everyone's time

no fucking clue. i wonder if rick perry regrets not waiting around a little longer or is just glad to be shed of the headache.

fiorina's actually right back where she was before her big surge ever happened, at the 3% mark. she's still ahead of where she was before the first debate put her on the map. debate #3 gave her the real rise, and then there's a slow erosion in the weeks following; she seems to have not gotten anybody to actually stay interested in her long enough that the trump/carson show doesn't take up all the airtime and cancel out any momentary boosts. over the same time frame, rubio gained a similar amount of support, but held on to it and then boosted it again after the most recent debate.

there are so many of these damn things though and the polling obviously lags a bit behind them so it's very hard to judge what's causing anything to happen. would be nice if those RCP charts could be overlaid with events like the debates. it would also be sensible to just tune out, unbookmark thread, and not read these sites for a while because really some of the 'rules' of this race are a bit locked-in: until we hit actual primaries, it's totally unclear what kind of turnout the trump and carson numbers actually represent (i.e. how much are they "likely voters"), and how much either of them plans to actually spend money doing campaign-y things. as has been mentioned before it's hard to imagine trump wanting to squander his fortune on this, or seriously wanting the job of being president. if neither of them actually stays in past iowa/NH then all of the time spent on them has been a phantasmal non-primary - though with real effects, like drawing out jeb's wobbling-jello-like constitution for all to see.

So why is Lindsay graham wasting everyone's time

I wondering if the non-crazy 3% or under group are hoping to get a veep nod.

SHEP: Mr. Trump, would you kill Baby Hitler?

TRUMP: Sure I would. Just like I killed Baby Phanbot.

SHEP: Who, who was Baby —

TRUMP: Exactly. Next question.

For that to be plausible, they're going to have to start doing a LOT better. Even allowing for the idea of balancing the ticket with someone who "appeals to independents" or whatever, I imagine whoever becomes the nominee is going to be thinking in terms of ensuring Republican turnout, as much as winning over outsiders. If someone can't get 4/100 Republicans to consider them their first choice, then they're not delivering anybody who matters to the polls.

Just realized I forgot Cruz in my musings on the evangelicals above, which is kinda dumb of me.

You're surely right, but I wonder if there's some magical thinking on the part of these candidates. I mean, how much traction did Biden have in 2008?

XP Cruz inspires dumbness in all its forms.

So I see Trump is calling for a Starbucks boycott because it's a bandwagon and Trump is at a Jagger-level of jumping those at the moment...

Biden in 2008 is an interesting example because, yeah, he got nowhere at all in the race itself but clearly was selected to shore up a perceived worry that Obama might struggle with white working/middle/union-class voters. Presumably they were looking at finer-grained information than polls of "who would you pick for president out of these people here." But obviously there are cases where the VP is someone who actually was competitive in the primary at hand, and the goal is clearly to come out of the convention with a party-uniting ticket: Reagan/Bush, Kerry/Edwards...

Looking at that Facebook post from yesterday, it does look like Evangelicals have fallen for Ben Carson hard - worth remembering that whatever the swing in poll numbers, a lot more people care than they did six months ago - that vote may have simply got stuck in after catching a debate. Plus, just saying, they're largely defined by gathering in one place and being talked to on a weekly basis - if there's a word that needs to be got out, it can be got out quite quickly, I'd guess.

i feel like carson may be legit the craziest major-party presidential candidate in generations.

if he actually had a shot, i feel like we'd be entering some dead zone-like scenario.

I was half-asleep this morning when I heard a story about Bush using profanity more often on the campaign trail to sound "edgy." Did I dream this?

Bachman was close but she had more media training

Bachmann was clearly a horrible human being, but Carson seems genuinely unbalanced.

Sorry, Bachmann is clearly a horrible human being. I certainly don't want to deny credit for her present-day awfulness just because she's no longer a presidential candidate.

Should be able to watch tonight's debate regardless:

http://fortune.com/2015/11/10/republican-debate-watch-2/

Hoping Carson stabs someone right on stage, followed by a turn towards the camera and a casual "Your move, lamestream media."

"unbalanced" is a good word to describe to describe Carson.

He's all quiet and soft spoken, but I always get the feeling whenever he's speaking that he's about to start screaming for no reason.

Never happens though.

he's screaming deep inside his head. back in the late 70s he glanced at himself in the mirror late at night and thought he noticed something stuck in his eyelid. he leaned closer. he seemed to be losing control as he lit a candle, turned off the bathroom light and closed the door. he looked deeply into his eyes. he thought, "these are my eyeballs that see the world and provide the information to me. these are my eyeballs." although he eventually left the room and went to bed, the real "ben carson" never really came back to the real world

Palin got on the ticket, but seems to be more an unprincipled grifter than actual font of lunacy.

yeah he's a good illustration that being soft-spoken doesn't mean what it means in the movies (calmness, resonability, saneness)

he = carson

dunno if I'll bother watching this debate tonight but lol:

THE FIX: After the last debate, some of the candidates suggested future debates should be moderated by conservatives. Are you what the doctor ordered?

CAVUTO: No. I understand candidates getting annoyed, but they better be careful about looking like whiners and babies.

Fox Business, a totally objective, non-conservative news outlet

dang, whiners AND babies...burn

babies don't tend to whine, really. that requires a bit more cognitive development. they cry. and poop.

getting hardsonned by fox business, yet another new low

Fallout 4 is out today, offers a far rosier destroyed civilization to spend time in than the heads of these jackasses. I consider my wasted evening time better spent on that.

Less super mutants there, too.

^same

also the fallout 4 postapocalyptic world is more fun because my actions actually make a difference

yeah he's a good illustration that being soft-spoken doesn't mean what it means in the movies (calmness, resonability, saneness)

I dunno, in the movies hasn't soft-spoken been the mode for serial killers and psychos for decades? From Norman Bates to Hannibal Lecter?

Interesting rundown of the Republican candidates by former Obama adviser Dan Pfeiffer.

Ben Carson: No Democrat anywhere has spent any time worrying about Ben Carson becoming president of the United States. I won't waste your time or mine on him.

Ted Cruz: Cruz is running the best organized and most strategic campaign of anyone on the Republican side, and he is a dark horse favorite to win the nomination. It's easy to underestimate Cruz -- but he isn't actually crazy, he just acts crazy because that's what sells in today's Republican Party. If sane sold, he would be sane.

but he isn't actually crazy, he just acts crazy

people always say this and afaict it mostly boils down to "someone from Harvard law can't possibly be that stupid!". But I don't really see any evidence to the contrary, it's not like the mask has ever slipped and Cruz has revealed that what he *really* believes is different from what he espouses.

i don't think pfeiffer is right about cruz. his run for senate indicates the crazy goes pretty deep.

cruz isn't eccentric and bizarre like carson is turning out to be -- nor as flamboyant as trump -- but his ideas are pretty damned extreme and arguably even more founded on fantasies of conspiracy and victimhood.

i mean the closest historical antecedent for cruz is joe mccarthy (before he went into full-on alkie dissipation) and i wouldn't really characterize mccarthy as especially "sane" in the sense this guy means.

yeah I mean he is obviously a shrewd opportunist but shrewdness + opportunism /= sanity, the canard that he would be peddling leftism if it sold is specious.

Team Obama was mystified late last year when the political cognoscenti gushed over Jeb Bush's political skills and electability.

Team Obama + Team Soto otm.

pfieffer didn't say he would be a leftist if it sold, he said "he just acts crazy because that's what sells in today's Republican Party. If sane sold, he would be sane."

and the thing that people always say is "someone who argued 9 cases in front of the supreme court can't possibly be that stupid!". i know that because i'm the person who says it (here at least)! i think crazy and stupid are two different things. there are a lot of people who side with crazy people and end up with zero influence. if you're someone who has quickly accumulated an enormous amount of power, like ted cruz, that doesn't exactly guarantee that he's shrewd but it should at least open up the possibility. (cue the part where someone mentions that everyone hates ted cruz and his own party leadership blocks his moves in the senate, and then cue the part where i mention that he was able to almost singlehandedly shut the government down a couple years ago, then cue the part where i play fallout 4)

c'mon this guy screams electability
https://s.yimg.com/lo/api/res/1.2/Pltsyk8Z4MTXUSVHrWEatw--/YXBwaWQ9eW15O3c9NjQwO3F1YWxpdHk9NzU7c209MTtpbD1wbGFuZQ--/http://41.media.tumblr.com/f960b9568047820b4e5699f0c5416919/tumblr_inline_nxm2184bdf1t2npxi_1280.jpg

xp

lol

Cruz is definitely shrewd, opportunistic, careerist, etc. I mean shutting down the government for a PR stunt is p ballsy. At the same time, I have no reason to doubt his sincere belief in the batshit policies and positions he espouses; like I said, he's given no indication that he believes anything to the contrary.

The cash-rich group aiding Jeb Bush’s White House run has filmed a provocative video casting his rival Marco Rubio as ultimately unelectable because of his hard-line stand against abortion.

hahaha oh yeah that's gonna go well

winning over all those pro-choice GOP primary voters