The 2016 presidential race (former: The race to the 2016 presidential race)

[snuggans]

It's funny you say that, because if you dig back in some of the reports that CNN did about Muslim neighborhoods in European countries, there were plenty of stories on this subject. The articles didn't refer to them as 'no-go' zones, but the implications of what was going on in those neighborhoods was clear.



But of course, when a Republican Bobby Jindal says the same thing, he is all of a sudden "ignorant" and "wrong." +1 for Hypocrisy.

you're saying Bobby Jindal isn't mentally retarded because 3 Muslims slapped a beer out of someone's hand in England and got it on video?

did you even watch the video past the beginning? maybe Bobby Jindal isn't a sensationalist retard who doesn't know what he's talking about and it IS perfectly legal to slap someone's beer off their hand in England if you're a Muslim in a predominantly Muslim neighborhood? those 3 'muslim patrol' idiots probably have police records longer than this thread and will likely be in and out of prison systems their entire lives when they are not being monitored by intelligence agencies, but yeah they sure are being catered to and accommodated by police.

[Admiral Piett]

Too many tend to look at the most radical of people as a model of our politics and this goes even more so for their perception of Republicans. Fact is, they are both parties that run on things that half-work and half-screw us up. We tend to switch between the two depending on which screw up needs fixing more quickly.

People focus a lot on dumb crap some Republicans say, but the Democrats are just as ignorant. Mostly because the relatively ignorant and moralistic baby boomer generation is trying really hard to keep its control of power because we are so different from them. Heck, even young Republicans seemingly support medical marijuana.

[mrmouth]

People focus a lot on dumb crap some Republicans say, but the Democrats are just as ignorant.

It gets old railing against the Republican's - especially when I need to be able to vote for for some in a two party system that works, but if we logically and honestly look at this, you can only accuse the Democrats of not having a spine.
A Republican party with any ideas would challenge Obama with their own. That is how this is supposed to work. They cannot even do that. It is ing unreal.

This week provided yet another reminder that American conservatives still instinctively look backwards, not forwards when seeking solutions to the challenges they face.

Nearly 30 years after he left office, the ghost of Ronald Reagan was summoned to the CPAC stage on an almost hourly basis, as speaker after speaker lined up to bash Obama's America and lament the passing of Reagan's mythical "shining city on a hill".

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worl...-election.html

[Denny Crane!]

Wasn't there an incredibly intelligent moderate republican candidate? How could I forget about him?

Then again the American right seem to manage to do it every time.

[Condottiere 40K]

2969
The trick is being all things to all people, or at least the majority in the electorally significant states.

There are sufficient intelligent moderate members of the Republican parties, but the ones that get nominated need to pander to influential factions within the GOP, or at least pay lip service to the issues they hold as important.

[snuggans]

Ben Carson on homosexuality: "being gay is a choice, people go into prison straight and they come out gay, prison turns you gay"

these people are receiving standing ovations at CPAC, conservative candidates are hilarious to follow.

[alhoon]

Ben Carson on homosexuality: "being gay is a choice, people go into prison straight and they come out gay, prison turns you gay"

You can't be serious.

So, since prison will turn me gay, and I would lose my soul, it's obvious I should NOT be sent to prison. I have a right to not be forced to become homosexual.

[Sphere]

Wasn't there an incredibly intelligent moderate republican candidate? How could I forget about him?

Jon Huntsman

He received one delegate out of 2288 last primary.

[mrmouth]

There are sufficient intelligent moderate members of the Republican parties, but the ones that get nominated need to pander to influential factions within the GOP, or at least pay lip service to the issues they hold as important.

If their numbers were sufficient they wouldn't have the problem of being dragged so far right. They absolutely squandered their majority to this point. It's a clown car of a party.

Jeb Bush is the only person making any sense and willing to stand up to the nutjobs. Problem is, he wont make it out of the primary if he doesn't go farrrrr right. This GOP eats their young. And they also drag dixie democrats to the right to squander the majority they had and make it an arguing point against Obama.

This country, and world, would look so much different without the middle-south being such a huge factor. Hard to imagine it not being entirely positive. And you can take Ohio, too. Ohio.

In this political reality, Reagan couldnt be the Republican he was and Clinton couldn't be the Democrat he was. That suggests a large problem.

[JohnCarlo]

if i see hilary win in 2016, i buy a bunker

the only viable candidate for the usa seems to be rand paul, he will never win

[YukonTrooper]

[justicar5]

That is kinda funny.

[Symphony]

I'd also note that it is possible that Joe Biden is considering throwing his hat in the ring.

The VP of an outgoing two-term president is traditionally a strong candidate because nobody else in the party has put together a national campaign for 8 years. The VP has access to a ton of good campaigning assets, and important contacts.

....except that, historically, they don't win. In the last 100 years, the only VP to actually win the election following his party's 2nd term was Bush. Of the last 100 years of two-term presidents:

- Wilson's VP lost in the primaries
- Truman succeeded after FDR's death (but was later elected himself, so not sure how you'd score that)
- Eisenhower's VP, Nixon, lost the general election to Kennedy
- Ford succeeded after Nixon's resignation, and lost the next general election
- Bush, as mentioned, won the general after Reagan's two terms
- Gore lost after Clinton's two terms.
- Cheney was frankly unelectable after Bush's two terms....I don't recall whether he was ever seriously discussed as a candidate

I don't know if they should serve Hilary, I mean Americans voted a black man to run before voting a woman; which seems to fit in the general misogynistic society America is (judging from all the sexism related cracked articles lately) so I'm not sure if they should run the risk of running a woman

Did you just cite a humor website's content as a barometer of the current state of sexism in the United States? Were you serious when you did it?

[Condottiere 40K]

1333
Cheney was considered a hatchetman with no Presidential ambitions, and no serious base or grassroots support either, which meant that he could/would follow his/Bush's agenda(s) without worrying about getting nominated.

[sabaku_no_gaara]

Did you just cite a humor website's content as a barometer of the current state of sexism in the United States? Were you serious when you did it?

considering it's my main source of life in America, yes.

Before I always thought Jerry springer and american tv in general where the window to American life and culture...

Cracked often has very serious subjects by the way, and very informative articles, I couldn't care less about the humour (which isn't very good anyway). If they feel it's important to discuss sexism in the USA on a weekly base it must be a huge issue.

[Symphony]

Cracked often has very serious subjects by the way, and very informative articles,

Completely agree with you here...I'm a huge Cracked fan. They're also (generally) fairly well researched and decently cited compared to the rest of the genre they're in.

If they feel it's important to discuss sexism in the USA on a weekly base it must be a huge issue.

....I just can't agree with you here. Cracked is like any other media engine; they exist to make money, which in their case means driving article hits so they can sell advertisement. Sexism riles people up, and drives people to click on that story. The frequency of stories on Cracked doesn't prove it's a relatively big issue, it simply proves it's a good driver of traffic.

Which is in itself a relevant data point; it helps demonstrate that sexism, when it occurs (because of course it still occurs), engenders a lot of outcry and a lot of defensiveness. It just doesn't demonstrate what you were trying to make it demonstrate.

[tarvu]

I think Hillary is done and will not get the Democratic nomination. If I am wrong then they are throwing the election away. I thought the email scandal was just another fabrication to whip up zealots who already wanted to burn her at the stake and it would die down because she could just release more emails and people would buy that (whether she ever released all of them or not, who cares no other secretary of state did as this is a new regulation, and we'll see if any Republican SoS ever does in the future *I seriously doubt it*), but admitting at her press conference (which she did horrible at all around) that she then deleted 30,000 of those emails was pretty shocking.

She is too tone deaf to run for president, I'm sure people are still going to push her because "there is literally no one else" but the same was true in '08 and we got a two term president out of that "empty field of opponents". They should run someone from the west, a Gary Hart for 2016. There is no way such a candidate would lose to any of the Republican nominees, and it would win back over many racist "blue dog" white democrats who will likely be needed if the youth vote can't be mobilized which is likely, people that I don't think Hillary can carry any longer unless she runs against another black candidate. Even someone like Bill Richardson I believe could pass for white now.

[Admiral Piett]

She is too tone deaf to run for president, I'm sure people are still going to push her because "there is literally no one else" but the same was true in '08 and we got a two term president out of that "empty field of opponents".

Huh? Senator Obama had been a very active campaigner since 2006 and became well known simply for the fact that he didn't appear to have all the baggage of the other candidates and had not voted on the Iraq War authorization. I really don't hear anyone talking much about any other Democratic candidate in the way that they did about Obama.

[Symphony]

The Republican's biggest issue going into 2016 (and really, for the last 25 years) is going to be how to combat perception with charisma....at it's time to admit that frankly, the Republicans are horrible at it.

If you accept the conventional wisdom that elections are determined by the middle 20% of moderates and independents, then you have to start with an assumption: that 20% thinks Republicans are a bunch of fat, rich, ignorant, white redneck racists and homophobes, and they also think Democrats are a bunch of shifty, obstinate, unrealistic communist ivory tower tree-hugging hippies. We all know that neither description covers more than the outer most-left or most-right 10% of either party, so let's not play the game where we argue those perceptions here....they're perceptions, and they carry a lot of collective weight.

Because they're perceptions, you can't combat them directly...no amount of rational discussion is going to override the collective volume of media saturation on both sides and talk anybody out of them....right or wrong, you have to combat them with a raw, unapologetic appeal to emotion, and the easiest way to do that is via personal, individual charisma.

The Democrats happen to have a lot of icons that are really, really good at playing up their charisma. Bill Clinton is arguably the all-time master of it. Obama, no matter what you think of his policies and methods, is also one hell of a charismatic guy....even if you disagree with him, you find yourself wanting to agree with him when he speaks. I don't' see the Republicans having a serious candidate that can compete with that level of collective charisma.

If they can find somebody, and if that somebody can survive the primaries, I think that candidate could beat a Clinton candidacy; as discussed here, I think she's overstayed her welcome on the national stage, and she's never had the kind of personal charisma that Bill or Obama had. If the DNC smarts up and backs away from her as a frontrunner, and if the GOP continues it's policy of eating their young and putting forward the least charismatic candidate they can find, I think the collective weight of the DNC's popular icons wins.

[athanaric]

Cracked often has very serious subjects by the way, and very informative articles, I couldn't care less about the humour (which isn't very good anyway). If they feel it's important to discuss sexism in the USA on a weekly base it must be a huge issue.

Their articles vary hugely in quality, and their main purpose is entertainment (except in some articles, which consequently suck). I find their "articles" on issues such as gender or race badly researched and unfunny.
I know they try to present serious issues in an entertaining way (and sometimes succeed), but the fact remains - you can't cite a humour site (or a comedy show, for that matter - I know many people nowadays get their news from the Daily Show, or Stephen Colbert, or one of those radio talkers) as a serious news source.

It has yet to be proven that the US are any more sexist in general, and sexist against women in particular, than any other country.

The Republican's biggest issue going into 2016 (and really, for the last 25 years) is going to be how to combat perception with charisma....at it's time to admit that frankly, the Republicans are horrible at it.

Good point. See Mitt Romney, for example.

Obama, no matter what you think of his policies and methods, is also one hell of a charismatic guy....even if you disagree with him, you find yourself wanting to agree with him when he speaks.

Hmmm...

His voice was "low and melodious, its very sound an enchantment [...] it was a delight to hear the voice speaking, all that it said seemed wise and reasonable, and desire woke in them by swift agreement to seem wise themselves ... for those whom it conquered the spell endured while they were far away and ever they heard that soft voice whispering and urging them."
(The Two Towers Book III Chapter X p.222)

I knew it...