Your 2016 Presidential Candidate Speculation Thread

Let's just agree that they're all horrible.

idk how many votes a president could get by being explicitly pro-pot but it seems like you'd gain more votes than you'd lose (from millennials, from boomers, from big pot money, etc) so i gotta figure it's coming sooner than later.

nah, all a candidate has to do is blow some racial dogwhistle shit about black and brown people high on drugs and no longer locked up in our wonderful prison system and there ya go, pro-pot candidate is damaged goods

ie it's ok for most of America if white people with "medical needs" get away w it, but full-blown legalization means fewer non-white people in jail, can't have that

you have a greater chance at alienating old folks than getting stoners to go door to door for you, even if the majority of the country is for it it's gonna be a long time before any politician can embrace the issue

NBA Injury Report ‏@NBAInjuryR3port -- Jason Terry (getting tattoo that says "Jeb Bush: 45th President of the United States") will not play tonight.

write it in a book; president jeb is happening.

it's going to be like gay marriage - it's going to happen at the state level first, which will spur legal challenges, which will slowly percolate up to the federal level. Perhaps relevant to note that we have never had a presidential candidate that supported gay marriage btw.

xp

I guess the prospect of hilary vs ted cruz is just too bleak for me on this cold wet day during finals

― Treeship, Tuesday, December 16, 2014 9:14 PM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I stand by my claim that Cruz both looks and sounds like too much of a bitch to win a national election. Positions be damned. American voters are fickle and superficial as fuck.

"looks and sounds like"

agree he has too much of a greasy weaselly used car salesman vibe to go far on the national scale

his hair looks like a ferret is chilling on his head

he looks like a pervert. sounds like a pervert.

greasy weaselly used car salesman vibe

http://media2.s-nbcnews.com/j/MSNBC/Components/Video/__NEW/x_dc_mtp_fbnixonsweat_11101.video-260x195.jpg

haha yes

actual 1960 button

http://worthopedia.s3.amazonaws.com/images/thumbnails2/1/0307/01/1_ffc944110851d8c92ef82551ac6e6196.jpg

Yeah, in the George W. "would be a good guy to have a beer with" category, NOBODY wants to have a beer with Ted Cruz.

if the beer were a brown ale he'd deport it

lol sigh

Sarah Kendzior ‏@sarahkendzior 46m46 minutes ago
2016 prediction: winner of presidential race will be relative of previous president; win announced on TV by relative of previous TV anchor

Ted Cruz strikes me as the type of politician whose following is mainly people who aren't stupid, but who hated school and struggled with it, who are basically ignorant about anything beyond their own experiences. They are both insecure and extremely resentful about that. They love Ted Cruz because he has all sorts of really-smart-person credentials and he thinks just like they do so his existence is hugely validating for them. You can travel pretty far on that ticket, but not to a presidency.

The Cruz that emerges from the New Yorker profile I recognize from guys I've met: sons of Cuban parents who resent anyone looking as if he or she got a free ride despite knowing (and their parents' boring them with the stories) that their parents got the most generous refugee package in the history of U.S. immigration. He's also supposedly one of the best lawyers to argue before SCOTUS in a generation.

his anti-immigration shit is just amazing given his background

see it every day

Alcoholics and ex smokers are the biggest scolds.

He's also supposedly one of the best lawyers to argue before SCOTUS in a generation.

I was thinking about this the other day. I've read on several occasions about how smart he's alleged to be, but this procedural backfire last weekend seems like a dummkopf's move, Bachmannesque or Rickperryish. Some long game in the works?

Plenty of presidents were good lawyers.

he must realize that a ton of his support is from racist "he's one of the GOOD immigrants!" assholes. I suppose he's power-hungry enough to not care but it's got to bug him on some level. giving him the benefit of the doubt that he's not a sociopath, which perhaps I shouldn't.

have they even established he can run for president, what with the whole born-in-Alberta thing?

i have no doubt he's a brilliant lawyer. being a brilliant politician is a largely different set of skills.

doesn't matter anyway.

http://i910.photobucket.com/albums/ac310/t44j21hawk/JohnBoehnerDancingfortheTeaParty.gif

jeb gonna be pre-si-dent.

Jeb Bush is a colorless campaigner. He won in Florida the first time against the tree stump of a lieutenant governor briefly governor after his beloved predecessor, the second at the peak of his superior older bro's popularity.

*after the death of his beloved predecessor

I have never seen Jeb speak/campaign etc. I'm curious about his skills in comparison to Romney and McCain who were both never going to overcome their limitations as old white bores.

He is undoubtedly the harder worker of the two, but he's as charmless as a copy machine and is crippled by (a) turning Florida into a lab for No Child Left behind (b) speaking fluent Spanish.

holy shit he is stiff as fuck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIB0aTmm-s8

it is really not fun to listen to jeb talk

my reporter friend who covered state politics in the mid 2000s said Jeb was the sort of guy who'd respond to emails at 2 a.m. -- it wasn't staff -- and was well informed on anything; he had impressive command of state infrastructure. But the guy was a Trojan horse for the Codina family: a plutocrat with a good memory basically.

he's like a bad first-time guest lecturer at a community college

I mean, George W. Bush was a vivid campaigner in '04. It's impossible to imagine Jeb getting riled up except getting his table mixed up with mine at the Coral Gables Hillstone.

http://i.imgur.com/HVCmSxe.jpg

haha agree w/all comparisons to pieces of furniture

Dubya was a horrible monster of a president but there is no denying he had that avuncular aw shucks I'm-just-a-regular guy aura.

also...

there's Terri Schiavo, which I will never let anyone forget.

lol I forgot that was in Florida. You guys have the weirdest cause celebres - Schiavo, Elian Gonzalez

jeb bush isn't crippled by speaking spanish! he's not going to be the president, but it isn't because of that.

that action proved Bush was a menace and didn't believe in modest conservatism

jeb bush is crippled by being made out of styrofoam

y

he wasn't born, he was extruded

i can't confirm that, but it sounds right.

sr was kinda styrofoamy tho no?

not the same.

Sr. had the bitter, steely anger of a career cloak-n-dagger plutocrat, Jeb looks like a plushtoy by comparison

also Sr.'s competition was a midget with a funny name.