Your 2016 Presidential Candidate Speculation Thread

she's the better half of the US's greatest POTUS administration since 1969

this is a bit rich

A low bar

Wow better than Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush? So amazing

Vote for this one they are better than Richard Nixon.

obama is better anyway

^^^

Obama spent a significant portion of his administration cleaning up Clinton's fuckups

ie, healthcare, finance regulation/wall st bailout, DOMA etc

I'm just hoping for a 3rd party candidate who wants to curb foreign aid/defense and spend money on infrastructure/domestic issues and is not afraid of being called a commie by Fox news.

i give obama + bill clinton a draw re domestic economy (the latter had a stronger one but he didn't have to clean up after GWB). clinton >>>> obama re foreign affairs tho.

yes a female president would be great, but as an argument for clinton as a good candidate it is pretty weak

i mean i would fucking love a hispanic president but that's not a reason i'd support ted cruz

how are you defining "foreign affairs"?

clinton >>>> obama re foreign affairs tho.

I can't even... Obama had two stupid wars to end, killed Bin Laden etc. I hate the drone warfare thing like nobody's business but Clinton didn't have shit to deal with besides Bosnia, which he didn't exactly handle well imo

a female president would be great, 99% of presidents will share 99% of the same policies, and hillary is the only woman likely to be president = clinton is a good candidate

argument against clinton is that from a legislative stand point he spent a lot of his time enacting cruel republican policies that helped to shred what little safety net we had left for no good reason except he thought being a centrist was very cool and smart, its true too

btw lol http://www.vox.com/2015/3/16/8220537/al-gore-president-2016

i mean i would fucking love a hispanic president but that's not a reason i'd support ted cruz

tbf he's Canadian

lagoon otm

i'm not going to go into a whole spiel about what i think is wrong about obama's foreign affairs yet again. if you don't think obama is responsible for the turmoil in egypt, libya, iraq, syria, ukraine, etc, okay fine. we have different povs there.

that Vox article this morning inspired more if-only speculation from friends and wistful exclamations about What Might Have Been.

argument against clinton is that from a legislative stand point he spent a lot of his time enacting cruel republican policies that helped to shred what little safety net we had left for no good reason except he thought being a centrist was very cool and smart, its true too

I'm wondering if it would've been worse if Dole had had a chance in '96.

I would vote for Gore but c'mon

Clinton basically fulfilled Reagan's dreams much like Ike consolidated the New Deal's advances.

also when clinton had the congressional majority to pass anything liberal at the beginning of his reign he bungled the hell out of it

if you don't think obama is responsible for the turmoil in egypt, libya, iraq, syria, ukraine, etc, okay fine. we have different povs there.

it seems bizarre to state that Obama is directly responsible for (most of) these things. I can get how a reasonable person would have issues with how he's directed US policy in response to these things, but to say he caused them is just crazy.

u didnt know the arab spring was a cia plot smh

Clinton's first year in office was the most amateurish bungling ever. That's the only correct part of the conventional wisdom.

Even with a GOP that didn't accept the legitimacy of a Dem president and already sniffing around Whitewater, the way he wasted time on unvetted attorney general nominees, caviled on gays in the military, and was already hinting to "end welfare as we know it" forced me to all kinds of twists to defend him.

it was p sad

it amazed me around '99-'00 when his approval ratings hung consistently over 60 percent and he was already beloved by a considerable portion of the American electorate. I remember idle chatter concerning how sad it was that he was limited to two terms. We love "survivors," don't we.

libya he actually intervened in, syria he had on-and-off interventions and didn't arm the FSA, egypt he somehow managed to convince that he was pro Muslim Brotherhood, iraq he was in charge of the withdrawal -- i mean these are all actual things he did (or didn't do). plus he alienated sunni allies w/ his iran rapprochement (which has no indications that he's going to be able to put together a deal). ok, he didn't tell putin to invade ukraine, but the US did help foment the ukraine revolution by most accounts -- like i don't blame him for everything that happens in the world, but the stuff he's done has been at best ineffective and at worst disastrous.

what are his foreign affairs accomplishments? leaving a power vacuum in iraq? toppling Gaddafi? his drone projects in yemen have obviously been completely ineffective.

he killed osama bin laden -- i give him credit for that. but i don't see many other accomplishments.

Clinton and Somalia... Also, we all know Mordy dislikes Obama's foreign policy because he doesn't fawn over Bibi.

yes that's the only reason and not the many other reasons i gave u asshole

syria he had on-and-off interventions and didn't arm the FSA

― Mordy, Monday, March 16, 2015 12:19 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the did arm the fsa! and continues to do so, it was just secretly through intermediaries

but sure, let's bring israel in too - in addition to alienating israel thru reaching out to Iran his team completely fucked up making a deal w/ the Palestinians. i'm not a huge Oslo fan but at least Bill secured a photo op on the white house lawn.

xp is that the benghazi consulate conspiracy theory? at best, if american weapons did make it to FSA, it was without the influence that might've kept them moderate + from turning into al-nusra/ISIS/etc

libya he actually intervened in, syria he had on-and-off interventions and didn't arm the FSA, egypt he somehow managed to convince that he was pro Muslim Brotherhood, iraq he was in charge of the withdrawal

these are all scenarios where literally *every* option available to the US was shitty, and none of them were instigated by the U.S.

without the influence that might've kept them moderate + from turning into al-nusra/ISIS/etc

this is a pipe dream and you know it

So he wasn't responsible at all for the premature withdrawal of all forces from Iraq? Or despite the rise of Isis we think that's a good thing?

Also plenty of ppl smarter than shakey thought promoting the fsa might've helped. I'll tell you what def didn't help tho- the insane red lines fiasco

just find it bizarre that you think it's the responsibility of a US president to maintain stability in notoriously unstable and uncooperative middle eastern regimes I mean come on that is delusional. lol "premature" how long would you have us stay in Iraq, forever? they wanted us to leave! military operations were over and there was never going to be some heavy-handed "installation" of a puppet regime (is that what you were hoping for)?

I guarantee you Hillary's response would have been to bomb everything in sight, she's going to be even more hawkish than Obama in order to avoid being painted as "weak"

yes that's the only reason and not the many other reasons i gave u asshole

― Mordy, 16. marts 2015 17:22 (41 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes. I def believe that you are angry because he alienated sunni allies, that was not at all disingenuous of you to claim. Come on, man.

xp is that the benghazi consulate conspiracy theory? at best, if american weapons did make it to FSA, it was without the influence that might've kept them moderate + from turning into al-nusra/ISIS/etc

― Mordy, Monday, March 16, 2015 12:24 PM (11 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

im not a super close follower of the conflict but its been reported in like the nytimes that the us started funneling weapons to the rebels fairly early on in the conflict, like when republicans were grousing about how we werent doing it we were doing it, so idk might want to change yr perfect reverse engineered logic, if just the right weapons were brought in the insane chaotic war couldve been perfectly game theoried as always lol

provision of arms/guns turning enemies into ideological allies = that is not really a thing that happens in the real world, esp not in places like Syria

frederik, it's pretty offensive to ignore a list of like 20 things that have nothing to do w/ israel and decide that actually my secret motivation for hating obama's foreign policy is that he doesn't like bibi enough. i thought you were better than that. that's morbz level idiocy.

fwiw i think all the terrible fp was worth it for obama's domestic policies which i think were more important to improve, and will ultimately have a better impact on the US's ability to maneuver globally. but you're lying to yourselves if you think there's nothing to critique in obama's fp.

of course there are things to critique im just always very suspicious of the tidy counter factuals

xp re Clinton's great accomplishments (domestic), let's not forget how the Telecommunications Act of 1996 destroyed television and radio cross-ownership rules, while failing to regulate the Internet as a common carrier ... Obama might be trying to clean up after Clinton on the last point, but there's no rolling back the hegemonies of News Corporation or iHeartMedia/Clear Channel