Your 2016 Presidential Candidate Speculation Thread

as always, the corner's comments are even better than the article.

ANYONE is better than any candidate the DEMS will run...Fat, old, ugly Hillary is thinking about running..She should be running away from the mirror! My cat is a conservative thinker and she could win the next Presidential election. Thanks to Obama, Dems are finished for at least a decade..Thank you Obama, may I have another

a -- ny -- one.

unskewed pollcats

THANKS OBAMA

So how bout HRC and Kissinger as friends?

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2014/09/05/hillary_clinton_henry_kissinger_pals.html

They are both members of the International Power Politics Club. Oh, and former Secretaries of State, too.

homeboy needs to kick it so we can find out how corrupt he actually was.

how does he manage to stay politically relevant? there are lots of other smart guys in dc

how does he manage to stay politically relevant?

That Nobel Peace Prize of his, maybe?

The American political spectrum has moved genocideward.

Fuck you, HRC. And I mean that in the George Carlin "What if" sense.

Heard this miserable interview during my morning shower :((

In six years of subject-heading lunacy in DNC e-mails, this might be my favourite:

✔ Barack ✔ Michelle ✔ Joe ✔ Hillary ❑ Phil

at least we know that Friends of Bill and Friends of Hil are now... FOKs!

David Corn nailed it btw:

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/09/hillary-clinton-henry-kissinger-world-order

This WOULD finish her if the Den rank&file stood for anything (or knew who HK was).

The media overwhelmingly play along with the Kissinger-as-respected-elder-statesman charade, for the obvious reason that the 0.1% wholeheartedly agree with Henry's brand of power politics and are eager to see it embraced by the general population as normal and reasonable. And the 0.1% own almost all of the media outlets. Mother Jones is among the very few exceptions.

most of the public have no recollection of kissinger or what he stood for

Sad but true

the majority of those that know who he is only know that he has a funny voice

that a person as wholly evil as Henry K can get a makeover is the sort of thing that makes real cynicism seem appealing

The media overwhelmingly play along with the Kissinger-as-respected-elder-statesman charade, for the obvious reason that the 0.1% wholeheartedly agree with Henry's brand of power politics and are eager to see it embraced by the general population as normal and reasonable. And the 0.1% own almost all of the media outlets. Mother Jones is among the very few exceptions.

― Aimless

Certainly the case during the eighties and early nineties when the likes of Ted Koppel invited him on "Nightline' so often that he was a co-host practically, but he's vanished recently; I wonder if age or fear of getting arrested has done it.

almost certainly it's just old age. his ego appears undiminished.

lol:

At this point, I wasn't working on any remixes - just writing. Deeper and Deeper, Erotica, Rain and Thief of Hearts made up the first batch of songs we worked on together. I did the music and she wrote the words. Sometimes I'd give her some ideas lyrically and she'd go: "Oh, that's good," or "That sucks." I remember when I gave her some ideas lyrically for Vogue and she said, very curtly, "That's what I do."

wrong thread too

God, he and hrc In cahoots worse than I thought.

it's the Cahoots Party

(xpost) Glad you left out the serial comma--not fair to drag god into this unholy alliance.

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush says his wife, Columba, who has been repeatedly described as skeptical of him pursuing the presidency in 2016, is “supportive” of the possibility. Bush made the comment in an interview with The Associated Press as he campaigned for his son, George P. Bush, who is running for land commissioner in Texas. “As it relates to my mom, my mom’s been around the track … she just believes that it’s something that she doesn’t want my family to go through, although she’s changed her mind on that. So I’m marking her down to ‘neutral, trending in a different direction’ than she was,” Jeb Bush said. As for Columba Bush, he said: “My wife is supportive, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t understand the challenges that this brings. This is ultimately my decision with as much consideration as I can to take into account the people that I really love.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/10/jeb-bush-2016-bid-columba-bush-111890.html?hp=l5

one thing that's really nice about jeb bush is that i could see myself hanging out and drinking a beer with him. in fact, i can see that with all of the bushes. just all of us hanging out at the bar, having a beer or two, being normal

they seem normal to you because so many politicians are sideshow freaks

oh, i'm just kidding. i'm sure that if you tried to have a beer with jeb bush in a bar it would immediately get very awkward if it wasn't a PR stunt. for some reason whenever i hear about jeb running for something i immediately flashback to everyone talking about how, love him or hate him, you could "have a beer" with GWB, and then proceeding to vote for him in 2004

Really want someone for president who doesn't have the same name as a previous president.

Elizabeth Warren (Harding)?

lol

The only normal Bush is Barbara, and she supports abortion rights except for the conception of her oldest.

But doesn't mind canning the youngest!

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/11/ben-carson-has-a-40-minute-infomercial-that-will-convince-you-hes-not-stark-raving-mad/

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/if-not-hillary-who-1114

the short answer is "whoever can raise a billion dollars from assholes"

@ggreenwald
American political culture, captured in a single headline

George W. Bush likes idea of Jeb Bush vs Hillary Clinton in 2016

t.co/gRwIGW5LpW

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/11/10/us-usa-georgewbush-idUSKCN0IU1KC20141110?feedType=RSS&feedName=politicsNews

"There are some people that’ll say there’s no way I’m going to vote for somebody with that name. Of course if he were to run against Hillary Clinton then I think the name issue would somewhat dissipate and then people would pick which one would be the leader. But neither one of them has declared and I really don’t know if Jeb is going to run."

still speaks off of badly written cue cards in his brain

And yet, he probably read that quote and thought, "Nailed it!"

O'Hehir is back, on why Resistance Is Futile.

Nothing is to be done. Hillary Clinton cannot be remodeled as a politician or a policymaker at this stage of her career, beyond superficial questions of campaign branding, and is not foolish enough to try. The only plausible way she can lose the Democratic presidential nomination is if she decides not to run, or through the intervention of some unforeseen scandal or crisis. Sanders and Warren probably won’t run, and if they do they will lose. Progressive voters are at liberty to stay home or go Green or flirt with the half-appealing, half-crazy, libertarian jazz-dance stylings of Rand Paul, as they choose. But they can’t stop Hillary....

Where I come down, and it’s a painful landing, is all the way at acceptance, the final stage of the Kübler-Ross process. I honor the rage of people like Doug Henwood, and I sympathize with the ardent bargaining of Katrina vanden Heuvel. But it’s just not worth it. Self-described progressive pragmatists like Markos Moulitsas and Arianna Huffington are right that it’s not worth trying to stop Hillary Clinton — but not because there is any reason to be optimistic about her presidency. (Yeah, I know: SCOTUS and abortion. Fine.) It’s not worth it because presidential elections in general are an irrelevant distraction from the long, hard struggle against money and power and entrenched dark forces that might someday, just maybe, return meaning to American politics — and the 2016 election is more irrelevant than most....

http://www.salon.com/2014/11/15/no_im_not_ready_for_hillary_but_heres_why_resistance_is_futile/

"Yeah, I know: SCOTUS and abortion."

This is always the most outrageous thing about this sort of attitude. I'd call it the pretense that the regulatory state doesn't exist, but it seems instead to be total ignorance of how government works, what it does, etc.

Btw, this thread: oh boy!

Surely you can muster more enthusiastic Hillary-cheerleading than that gabbs

I was expressing enthusiasm for the subject matter. There's no need to "cheerlead" for Hillary (nor any rival team to speak of), though Webb might create a little boomlet for himself if he takes a flyer. O'Malley might have a little appeal, but I have my doubts even he will chance a run. I can see him as Veep, but not sure Hillaryland will, even if he stands down.

My fun for now is with the other side's cattle call. More on that later.

I do hope Bernie runs, purely for the entertainment value. Not that he's Al Sharpton or anything.

More Gillibrand in the NYT today

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/07/us/politics/new-yorks-junior-senator-doggedly-refusing-to-play-the-part.html

She's a strong VP candidate at worst

― Multiple Miggs (dandydonweiner), Saturday, December 7, 2013 8:27 AM (11 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Big Fan

why a Bernie Sanders candidacy would not accomplish a single solitary thing

http://www.salon.com/2014/06/03/no_bernie_sanders_should_not_run_for_president_why_his_challenge_would_achieve_little/

― images of war violence and historical smoking (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, June 4, 2014 2:34 PM (1 week ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is a strange argument for you of all people to accept

― Matt Armstrong, Wednesday, June 11, 2014 8:31 PM (5 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not at all. It's classic Morbsism, which isn''t that different from any other defensively minoritarian counterculture. Accepting even for hypothetical purposes the possibility of winning requires this approach to a) confront the greys and complexities of actual power/responsibility/governance, and b) acknowledge just how marginal is in fact their worldview - they can't win because the fix is in, not because there really aren't enough people out there who agree with them.

she's awful

xpost