The 2016 Presidential Candidates Thread

KimDracula said:

I'm not even sure what "it" is. This is one vague argument.

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Well rest assured I appreciate your consistent grasp of the topics at hand and the resulting contributions.

In a nutsack:
Dubya & co. tried to drive the US off a cliff;
Obama somehow pulled us over to the slow lane;
But we're still motoring down the road to hell.




So it looks like cruz beat trump, and (asshat) rubio is gaining steam.
Not that any of these guys matter, but at least paul made a decent showing
Carson did surprisingly well; he has the zombie vote all locked up!

On the democrat side it looks like popular sentiment is tied, but hillary was somehow able to grab all of o'malley's delegates so she wins the tie-breaker. At least that's how I think it works
http://www.politico.com/2016-election/results/map/president/iowa?lo=ut_b1
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/02/iowa-caucus-2016-donald-trump-bernie-sanders-218547

Not bad for an old "jewish socialist" that was ~60 points back ~a month ago!

My friends are all convinced that Bernie is going to win the election because young folk will vote for him. Is the US ready to elect a "socialist" Jew as president? But my friends are also the same people who voted for Nadir.

Ben from Ben & Jerry's talking about Bernie on Fox:

http://video.foxnews.com/v/47326063...g-bernie-sanders/?intcmp=hpvid1#sp=show-clips

Thank goodness Trump didn't win Iowa. Last night did bring a few questions to mind.....

If you had to choose between Cruz, Trump or Rubio who would it be? Rubio strikes me as the best house in the bad neighborhood. Or should I have said the least crazy in the asylum? What's your take?

I watched Hillary's parting speech last night and it felt like she was changing her soap box soliloquy to sound more like Sanders. It felt insincere and more than a little obvious. What's your take?

EDIT: One more question....For awhile now I've thought there was something amiss with Bill Clinton. He seems slow of thought and that creepy smile behind Hillary last night was off putting. Does Bill seem OK to you?

What's your take?.....Politicians sell their branding and the Trump branding wasn't as good as the Cruz branding in Iowa. That and I suspect the Cruz folks just did a better job on the ground. However Cruz is still Cruz and I don't know if he will play as well in other states. The fun part and telling part will be watching possible support shifts happen.

For the Dems its still working, the candidates are holding voter interest and there is no serious blood on the floor. So whoever walks with the nomination could reasonably expect a show of support from the defeated contender.

Now all this is supposition on my part because I can't see into the future and the election isn't over till they announce it on TV. For what that is worth.

His_Highness said:

If you had to choose between Cruz, Trump or Rubio who would it be?

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Rubio.

His_Highness said:

If you had to choose between Cruz, Trump or Rubio who would it be?

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Suicide.

lwien said:

Rubio.

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Rebellion?

President Barack Obama greets Speaker of the House Paul Ryan before his State of the Union address on Capitol Hill Jan. 12, 2016 in Washington, D.C.
Photo by Evan Vucci/Pool/Getty
On Groundhog Day, Republicans vote to repeal Obamacare

02/02/16 02:31 PM—Updated 02/02/16 02:49 PM

President Obama hasn’t spent a lot of time with House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), but the two leaders, joined by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), met at the White House this morning. The point, according to everyone involved, was to look for ways the policymakers can find some common ground and try to get things done in 2016.

To help set the tone, the Wisconsin congressman told reporters yesterday he was excited about the Iowa caucuses because “what it tells me is the days of Barack Obama’s presidency are numbered.”

He’s a real charmer, this one. You can just feel his enthusiasm for bipartisan policymaking in an era of divided government.

After the meeting in which the president tries to find areas of possible agreement with GOP leaders, Ryan will hold another vote on repealing the Affordable Care Act. The Washington Post reported:
Asked about today’s events, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters, “Republicans are poised to host another vote in the united states congress today for the 60th time to repeal Obamacare. It’s almost like it’s Groundhog Day, except today it is actually Groundhog Day and they’re doing it again.”

Earnest added, “So I’m not really sure that qualifies as the contours of a proactive legislative agenda but it does put some pressure on Speaker Ryan and Leader McConnell, and other Republicans in Congress, to lay out what it is exactly they support and try to find some common ground with the administration.”

For the record, estimates vary on exactly how many times Republicans have to repeal all or part of the ACA, but the last time I checked, they were up to 62. In other words, Earnest might have been understating the case a bit.

Incidentally, shortly before the last repeal vote, Ryan was asked why he was moving forward with a bill to eliminate the Affordable Care Act before the Republican alternative is ready. The Republican leader told reporters with a smile, “Just wait.”

We later learned that this wait will continue past this year – because GOP lawmakers have already effectively given up on their plans to unveil a reform alternative in 2016.

As for today’s veto-override vote, there’s no chance of the bill succeeding. Paul Ryan and his team know that, of course, but they’re holding the vote anyway, just to go through the motions.

Postscript: In case anyone doesn’t get the reference, I should probably mention “Groundhog Day” was a classic movie from 1993 in which Bill Murray is stuck in a time loop, forced to live the exact same day over and over again. For those who haven’t seen the movie, I can assure you it’s far more entertaining than watching Republicans vote 63 times to take health care benefits away from millions of families for no particular reason.

Rubio is better than Cruz or Trump, but just barely. He came in with the Tea Party wave and has very, very right-wing positions. Rubio is terrible, actually. He only looks good by comparison to the others.

It just doesn't matter who wins on that side.
Worst case:
Say trump gets all 20% of the "radical conservative" vote.
(Isn't that the biggest oxymoron ever?)
And say sanders runs as an independent after losing the nomination.
Sanders gets 35%, clinton gets 35%, and the remaining 10% gets divvied up + write-ins.
The "conservative" still has no chance.

Pursuant to the Twelfth Amendment, the House of Representatives is required to go into session immediately to vote for president if no candidate for president receives a majority of the electoral votes (since 1964, 270 of the 538 electoral votes).

Are you really looking for the House to choose the next President? Really?

Is it simple majority or are there other thresholds?

cybrguy said:

Are you really looking for the House to choose the next President? Really?

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C'mon... nobody is suggesting that! Let's educate, not denigrate...

I am merely pointing out the law, I'm not denigrating anyone. If nobody gets a majority of electoral votes the decision goes to the House of Representatives. I would love to be wrong on this, but I don't think I am.

So if a third party runs and keeps anyone from getting a majority of the electoral college, the House decides. I don't know if that has ever happened...

YES. It has...

"As no presidential candidate received a majority of electoral votes in the election of 1824, the U.S. House of Representatives votes to elect John Quincy Adams, who won fewer votes than Andrew Jackson in the popular election, as president of the United States. Adams was the son of John Adams, the second president of the United States."

Gawd... sometimes I just fucking hate politics!

I just wish it weren't so consequential. This stuff really matters and most folks just don't take it very seriously, or seriously enough...

Robert Reich: The Real Reason Hillary Won't Effect Change, But Bernie Could
History shows us you need a movement, not a dealmaker-in-chief.
By Robert Reich / Robert Reich's Blog
February 2, 2016

In 2008, when then-Senator Barack Obama promised progressive change if elected president, his primary opponent, then-senator Hillary Clinton, derided him.

“The skies will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect,” she said, sarcastically, adding “I have no illusions about how hard this is going to be.

Fast-forward eight years. "I wish that we could elect a Democratic president who could wave a magic wand and say, ‘We shall do this, and we shall do that,’” Clinton said recently in response to Bernie Sanders’ proposals. "That ain’t the real world we’re living in.“

So what’s possible in “the real world we’re living in?”

There are two dominant views about how presidents accomplish fundamental change.

The first might be called the “deal-maker-in-chief,” by which presidents threaten or buy off powerful opponents.

Barack Obama got the Affordable Care Act this way – gaining the support of the pharmaceutical industry, for example, by promising them far more business and guaranteeing that Medicare wouldn’t use its vast bargaining power to negotiate lower drug prices.

But such deals can be expensive to the public (the tab for the pharmaceutical exemption is about $16 billion a year), and they don’t really change the allocation of power. They just allow powerful interests to cash in.

The costs of such deals in “the world we’re living in” are likely to be even higher now. Powerful interests are more powerful than ever thanks to the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision opening the floodgates to big money.

Which takes us to the second view about how presidents accomplish big things that powerful interests don’t want: by mobilizing the public to demand them and penalize politicians who don’t heed those demands.

Teddy Roosevelt got a progressive income tax, limits on corporate campaign contributions, regulation of foods and drugs, and the dissolution of giant trusts – not because he was a great dealmaker but because he added fuel to growing public demands for such changes.

It was at a point in American history similar to our own. Giant corporations and a handful of wealthy people dominated American democracy. The lackeys of the “robber barons” literally placed sacks of cash on the desks of pliant legislators.

The American public was angry and frustrated. Roosevelt channeled that anger and frustration into support of initiatives that altered the structure of power in America. He used the office of the president – his “bully pulpit,” as he called it – to galvanize political action.

Could Hillary Clinton do the same? Could Bernie Sanders?

Clinton fashions her prospective presidency as a continuation of Obama’s. Surely Obama understood the importance of mobilizing the public against the moneyed interests. After all, he had once been a community organizer.

After the 2008 election he even turned his election campaign into a new organization called “Organizing for America” (now dubbed “Organizing for Action”), explicitly designed to harness his grassroots support.

So why did Obama end up relying more on deal-making than public mobilization? Because he thought he needed big money for his 2012 campaign.

Despite OFA’s public claims (in mailings, it promised to secure the “future of the progressive movement”), it morphed into a top-down campaign organization to raise big money.

In the interim, Citizens United had freed “independent” groups like OFA to raise almost unlimited funds, but retained limits on the size of contributions to formal political parties.

That’s the heart of problem. No candidate or president can mobilize the public against the dominance of the moneyed interests while being dependent on their money. And no candidate or president can hope to break the connection between wealth and power without mobilizing the public.

(A personal note: A few years ago OFA wanted to screen around America the movie Jake Kornbluth and I did about widening inequality, called “Inequality for All” – but only on condition we delete two minutes identifying big Democratic donors. We refused. They wouldn’t show it.)

In short, “the real world we’re living in” right now won’t allow fundamental change of the sort we need. It takes a movement.

Such a movement is at the heart of the Sanders campaign. The passion that’s fueling it isn’t really about Bernie Sanders. Had Elizabeth Warren run, the same passion would be there for her.

It’s about standing up to the moneyed interests and restoring our democracy.



Robert B. Reich has served in three national administrations, most recently as secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton. His latest book is "Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few." His website is www.robertreich.org.

I've noticed that hillary is saying buzzwords like "progressive" & "status quo" a lot lately.
Bill has expressed regret for repealing glass-stegall, I'd like to hear her talk about re-instating it.
Because that's what bernie is talking about, and the voting public is tired of buzzwords.

edit: I just saw "too big to fail"; highly recommended.

grokit said:

Say trump gets all 20% of the "radical conservative" vote.
(Isn't that the biggest oxymoron ever?)

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Yeah, but in a way, it's not an oxymoron at all, eh?

lwien said:

Yeah, but in a way, it's not an oxymoron at all, eh?

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Not these days, that's for sure!

I hope that Bernie doesn 't run as an independant. We've seen the consequence of that. And the issues between Hilary and Bernie remind me of that other time. Bernie may be a better choice than Hilary but Hilary is likely to be far less destructive than any of the Republicans. Hilary may represent big business and the status quo etc but all the Republicans represent change that is pretty frightening. What will this country be like after 4-8 years of any of the Republicans running?

little maggie said:

I hope that Bernie doesn 't run as an independant. We've seen the consequence of that. And the issues between Hilary and Bernie remind me of that other time. Bernie may be a better choice than Hilary but Hilary is likely to be far less destructive than any of the Republicans. Hilary may represent big business and the status quo etc but all the Republicans represent change that is pretty frightening. What will this country be like after 4-8 years of any of the Republicans running?

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He could also run as a write-in, that's how one of our senators stayed in office after a tea party challenge.
I hope sanders wins the nomination outright, otherwise we might have to elect someone we don't like!

Why America might elect a president it doesn't like
Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have among the highest unfavorability ratings of recent presidential candidates. Their success shows how US politics is changing.



It is possible, perhaps even probable, that this fall’s election will be contested between two of three most disliked presidential candidates of at least the past quarter century.

And it is possible, perhaps even probable, that this is not a coincidence.

A Gallup survey released Saturday shows that Donald Trump has the highest unfavorability rating (60 percent) of any presidential candidate since the polling firm started tracking the figure in 1992. For her part, Hillary Clinton ranks third (52 percent) with the no-new-taxes-breaking George H.W. Bush of 1992 at No. 2.

In other words, the 2016 presidential election could be decided between two people that the majority of Americans, according to Gallup, don’t like politically.

How is this possible?

Actually, it makes complete sense. In fact, one could argue that such a contest would perfectly befit the current political era.

At a time when partisanship has taken new and more rigid forms, the result has been an America increasingly wary of the other side. Many Americans are increasingly motivated to vote against candidates rather than for them.

Mr. Trump and former Secretary of State Clinton symbolize this shift in different ways, but they speak to the shrinking middle of American politics. As the national parties have less and less in common, their national candidates likewise have less in common, leaving voters with a starker choice that they are just as likely to oppose as embrace.

Indeed, political scientists note that Americans are more neatly “sorted” into the two parties than they have been in recent history. In other words, conservatives support Republicans and liberals support Democrats.

No more “blue dog” Democrats who want to reform welfare. No more Northeast Republicans who want to address climate change.

It means there is a brighter line between the national Democratic and Republican Parties than there has been in decades, because there is less internal pressure to moderate. If, increasingly, everyone in the party is left-of-center (or right-of-center), the party naturally shifts left (or right).

The result is two sharply different visions for America, two sharply different sets of solutions.

Another result is the vanishing swing voter. (See the Monitor’s Cover Story on the subject.) A larger share of American voters might register as independents than as Democrats or Republicans, but they don’t act that way. Those independents who reliably turn out to vote tend to take sides just like the partisans, voting in consistently partisan ways.

“People are more confident in their opinions when they see polarized parties,” Corwin Smidt, a Michigan State University political scientist, told the Monitor. “They think, ‘Well, if the choices are so stark, it’s just not a gray area at all.’ ”

And so they worry about the “other side” winning, according to research by Emory University political scientists Alan Abramowitz and Steven Webster. They found that voting behavior is increasingly guided by this “negative partisanship.”

This fall, it seems, American voters might have a lot to vote against.

more:
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Politics/2016/0131/Why-America-might-elect-a-president-it-doesn-t-like

Bernie is closer to my own political philosophy, but I'm not convinced he could win in the general election. The Cold War propaganda against all things socialist might keep a Bernie out of office out of fear.

The next president will appoint Supreme Court Justices that will influence the "Way Forward". I fear a conservative court.