US Presidential Contenders

[Dio]

In business, as a CEO.

I heard she did really well in the losers' debate, but I'm not even looking at anyone without government experience.  Pay Your Dues.  We've had really horrible 'luck' lately with under-qualified presidents.  Pay. Your. Dues.

How much homage, *donkey* snorkeling, and bribery must a person offer to the major political parties of this country in order to become President, Senator, or House Representative? Luck has very little to do with elections.

[Buster's Uncle]

Doesn't matter.  I'm SICK of having to vote for the least unqualified for President.  Leave that for town council seats, and find me some experienced candidates.

[Dio]

The fundamental problem is that some (many) individuals vote for a candiate based upon his or her overall emotional appeal on issues that matter to them. This ultimately means that the most qualified candiate is less likely to become nominated as president.

[Yitzi]

In business, as a CEO.

Yeah...she failed at the less demanding chief executive position, so no way should she be allowed near the more demanding one.

[Buster's Uncle]

There it is.

[Buster's Uncle]

The Powerful vs. [Sleezebag]
The powerful always win.
Splice Today
Noah Berlatsky  Aug 10, 2015, 10:25AM






Powerful people are in fact powerful. Ergo, when Donald [Sleezebag] pisses off powerful people, this is bad for Donald [Sleezebag].

That seems like a pretty straightforward argument. But pundits love to be counterintuitive, and so various people are in fact making the counterintuitive argument that [Sleezebag] helps himself by making the powerful hate him. Thus Jeet Heer on Twitter tells the "elite media & political class" that "all the things about [Sleezebag] that make you cringe are what his base loves about him." Josh Marshall adds "base Republican politics is about the appeal of rule breaking and grievance. I don't think [Sleezebag] will lose playing to those." GOP elites can cut off [Sleezebag]'s head, but whenever they do, two hair-pieces grow back in its place.

It's certainly true that the GOP has made a fetish out of anti-establishmentarianism. As a result, they've opened up space for unqualified candidates to use their lack of qualifications as a selling point. Herman Cain, Michelle Bachman, Newt Gingrich, Ben Carson, etc. etc. They all had their polling spurts and their moment to gorge on publicity, even though none were remotely acceptable to the party.

[Sleezebag], with his reality television brand, his money,  and his flare for the flamboyantly outrageous, has made a bigger splash than any of these little trumplets. But is he really qualitatively different? Has he truly found a way to defy political gravity? Will [Sleezebag]'s campaign reshape the face of the Republican party—by, for example, centering anti-immigrant policies, or by making the other candidates look weak and unPresidential?

I'm skeptical, largely because, again, powerful people are actually powerful. [Sleezebag]'s reckless bluster, and his refusal to make any effort to court party elites, has already cost his campaign badly. He's been frozen out by the Koch brothers, who refused to let him speak at an annual grass-roots summit, and also won't let him purchase vital data and analytics services that they control. Erick Erikson of Redstate disinvited [Sleezebag] from his conservative activist event last week, citing [Sleezebag]'s attacks on Fox News' Megyn Kelly. 

Perhaps most tellingly, [Sleezebag]'s attacks on Kelly led his campaign manager Roger Stone to quit ([Sleezebag] says he fired him, for what it's worth.) Stone said in a memo, "Unfortunately, the current controversies involving personalities and provocative media fights have reached such a high volume that it has distracted attention from your platform and overwhelmed your core message." In other words, the battles [Sleezebag] has chosen to pick with party elites have damaged his campaign and made his manager abandon ship.

[Sleezebag] is still doing well in polls. But political scientists have established pretty clearly that polls a year before a presidential election mean little. Party endorsements are much more predictive of who wins. Polls mostly tell you who has name recognition and who is in the news. Which is why [Sleezebag] can say horrible things about Mexicans or veterans or Megyn Kelly and still have his poll numbers go up. Any news is good news—if you're running to get high poll numbers, rather than running for the Republican nomination.

If you are running for the party nomination, though, you need an organization. You need access to data. You need party activists. You need endorsements from people who can connect you to party networks and resources. You need a get out the vote operation; you need call lists. You need donors (yes, even [Sleezebag] needs donors). You need media that won't just mention your name, but will tell people to vote for you.

If [Sleezebag] were a decent politician, he might have been able to turn his flair for publicity into a movement that could have affected the campaign. He might have pushed the GOP to the right on immigration for example (though it's quite far to the right already.) But he's chosen to be a clown-show, and now most of the media coverage of him, by left and right (check out the National Review on [Sleezebag]) is about how he's a clown. His poll numbers will probably stay high for a while, because, again, he's in the news. But without party actors and party elites, there's no way for him to convert those poll numbers to actual influence, relevance, or votes.

This is perhaps the real significance of [Sleezebag]. He hasn't changed the rules of politics, but he demonstrates how the Republicans have fooled their voters (and for that matter, many liberal pundits) into thinking that the rules of politics have changed, or should change. The myth of the pure populist poisons Republican politics, not because it means [Sleezebag] will win, but because it means that every GOP politician ends up pretending to be [Sleezebag], just a little. Refusal to compromise has become a default goal in itself, which makes it difficult for Republicans to offer any real policy proposals (they're still working on the health care plan, I understand.)

It would be nice  to imagine that [Sleezebag] will scare the GOP into changing. But I doubt that will happen either. [Sleezebag], who blusters about his own influence, doesn't understand or respect power enough to do anything, or get anything done, either for ill or for good. He's a decent entertainer, perhaps. But he's an ineffectual demagogue.

#.Vci4GT77ets.twitter]http://www.splicetoday.com/politics-and-media/the-powerful-vs-[Sleezebag]#.Vci4GT77ets.twitter

[Buster's Uncle]

Rusty, I've got enough in-pocket to pay off my bet with Uno, and I think I sorta lost.

I was right, but overestimating the good sense of the public and the desperation of the mass media group mind to get rid of the Pig.  -Also, the other candidates took him seriously, because the Group Mind is an idiot.

We need a ruling, I think.  It's been long enough.

[Rusty Edge]

I thought Fox would come out with another poll in a week. That's what I was waiting for.  They didn't. Or maybe they had one and they suppressed it, I don't know.

Obviously [Sleezebag] put his foot in his mouth at the debate, and in the aftermath. But if anything, he got a boost. Even more with people who didn't actually watch. He feeds off the spot light, and FOX put him under it.

Pay Uno, [Sleezebag] didn't lose big. That was the bet.

At this point in the election cycle, I think there's a lot of hostility for status quo politics and politicians, and anything that sounds fresh or unscripted is going to appeal to the public, thus-

Sanders and [Sleezebag].

[Buster's Uncle]

Paying.

[Buster's Uncle]

Paid.

[Rusty Edge]

Well, FOX finally came out with a post-debate poll.
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/08/16/fox-news-poll-shakeup-in-gop-field-after-first-debate-sanders-gains-on-clinton/


[/"Who’s up?  Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and businesswoman Carly Fiorina.  Who’s down? Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

 On the Democratic side, Clinton drops below 50 percent for the first time, while Sanders keeps climbing.  She leads among Democratic primary voters by 19 points (49-30 percent).  Two weeks ago Clinton was up by 29 points (51-22 percent). A month ago she had a 40-point advantage (59-19 percent).

Vice President Joe Biden, who is undeclared, receives the backing of 10 percent.

The remaining Democratic candidates are at one percent or less.
"b]

[Buster's Uncle]

Note that the quoted material does the same thing Huffington Post said it was going to do; not cover The Pig.  It is too much to hope that whorey Fox news will keep it up, but when they agree with HuffPo about ANYthing at ALL, that's really interesting, isn't it?

[Yitzi]

Note that the quoted material does the same thing Huffington Post said it was going to do; not cover The Pig.  It is too much to hope that whorey Fox news will keep it up, but when they agree with HuffPo about ANYthing at ALL, that's really interesting, isn't it?

Not really.  We already knew that they both agree that the current two-party political system is a good thing, and that media bias is ok.

[Dio]

An enlightened individual must have the capacity to keep an open mind while both eliminating poor options and minimizing personal bias on a particular issue.

[Buster's Uncle]

We already knew that they both agree that the current two-party political system is a good thing, and that media bias is ok.

I know no such thing as to the first part, and believe it indicates a lack of knowledge/understanding of what Ms. Huffington is about (besides founding a rather skeevey leftist news site).  -She thinks the system is nasty and borked beyond belief, I assure you.

In fact, I'm pretty sure almost anyone at Fox would say the same.  They just profoundly disagree about what parts are evil and ruining the whole thing.