I DON'T KNOW WHERE THE BOTTOM IS • US presidential elections part VIII

"My volunteers were very bad to me. Just awful. Sad!"

I can also imagine that, which is sad.

Very sad.

His 'concession' speech is going to be nothing but a blamefest towards all of the pathetic losers who unreasoningly helped him along the way and who probably could've secured the presidency for him if he ever listened to anyone but who really were just awful to him and pulled a total choke job. You're all fired!

is that kind of contract even enforceable for volunteers? i thought there had to be "consideration", i.e. the person signing it has to receive money or something.

I cannot only imagine it, I can also imagine someone creating a squad of volunteers designed to attempt to attract Trump persons' legal attention and action.

stay classy Arizona GOP!

https://thinkprogress.org/arizona-gop-releases-wanted-poster-with-bullet-holes-around-democratic-candidate-s-face-a10e022e64f5#.doqtgfiea

Enh, thats a dumb graphic, but the headline is overreacting. It's about as dumb as attempting to tar her to her Democratic-voting constituents with the current sitting and campaigning Democratic choices.

so the email shit is about to start up again, awesome

Gaby Giffords shooting at the very least makes it in poor taste imo

xp

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CrX1GneWcAA6Kzj.jpg:large

I read parts of the FBI 302 - basically confirmed my suspicion that nobody in the state department told her anything about email protocol

she's going to be a one term president with no accomplishments except maybe a couple of supreme court nominations. sad!

Hmmn I see nothing to indicate that Republicans are going to be able to get their sh*t together by 2020 so I'm not sure that's a great bet.

who will survive the bruising 2020 primary between ted cruz and ivanka trump?

I don't think she's gonna have many legislative accomplishments but agree w Alex that it's hard to see the GOP regrouping and reconstituting itself as a national party in time for 2020, esp with Cruz, Rubio and Ryan all taking a second swing w their tired bullshit

looking back at the nominees, i feel like if they'd have nominated anyone except trump, carson, santorum and huckabee they could have beaten her. how the GOP recovers from trump is not clear, but they don't have to recover very much to make such a weakened candidate beatable.

yeah i guess that's where we disagee: cruz and rubio (and kasich and lol jeb!) would both be running a much closer race.

ryan is a joke, granted.

they would be this time around, no argument there, but can you really see Jeb running again in 2020? the party is so fractured, I don't see any milquetoast "centrist" appeasing the base.

no jeb is not going to run. i'm just using him as a placeholder for a "moderate". they don't even need to run a moderate to beat her though. just someone with a shred of political experience would do.

of the last batch, cruz, rubio, fiorina and kasich will all be back for another shot, and all of them could win.

I don't think any of those guys can win, it will have to be someone not tarred by the stink of failure from this cycle (which is why I threw in Ryan, who will def be at front of pack if he can survive as Speaker)

Rubio = incompetent and unaccomplished, Cruz = way too many enemies in the party, Fiorina = just a bad candidate all around, Kasich = too old and out of touch

Problem with all/any of them is that they'll have to go to the presumed Trump audience "Here's why you should follow me now even though you were an idiot for following Trump in the first place." It'll be phrased this way, though: "Trump failed but he had some good ideas and this how I can make them better." Recipe for nobody to like you in the end.

i didn't think fiorina was that bad a canddiate, but the bar isn't "bad", it's "less bad than clinton after 4 years in office", which is going to be a loooooooooooooooow bar.

right the difficulty for all of them is getting out of the meat grinder primary. by doing the worst last time, fiorina may be best positioned for that.

the easy line against Fiorina is "remember how well it worked last time nominating a politically inexperienced leader of failed businesses"

Ryan is the figurehead of the most hated arm of the government, probably won't do him any favors, esp after five years at the helm of pure gridlock xps

she has literally nothing to recommend her beyond her gender and her party affiliation

xp

r five years at the helm of pure gridlock

this is what the GOP wants though. He's their knight in shining armor bulwark against Clintonism!

xp yes and that will be sufficient to beat hillary after 4 years in office!!! it would be enough to beat her now!

Re: Fiorina: also the Cruz alliance/cloning. Plus the fact that her being Ms. Anti-abortion/Planned Parenthood is, I suspect, going to be even less relevant in four years. (Movement conservatism isn't per se dead but it is being smashed into constituent elements; most of the pieces on the subject I've seen lately are desperate dreams about reconstitution that devolves into insane hairsplitting -- here's a perfect example: http://theresurgent.com/three-types-trump-supporters-future-gop-tent/ )

yeah idk I think there's good reasons she didn't catch fire this time around, and it wasn't just cuz Trump was sucking up all the oxygen

Fiorina is remarkably uninspiring. Closest I ever saw to any actual enthusiasm for her came from a clutch of friends of my dad a year ago after, what, the first GOP debate I think? I took it more as them hating everyone else, and never heard about it again.

(My comment there earlier was agreeing more with Shakey than caek.)

i get that there are all sorts of reasons why plausible GOP candidates are compromised in the eyes of primary or general voters. but they are going to nominate ~someone~ and that person doesn't have to be very good to win.

I kinda think that unless the GOP revises their primary rules, we're liable to see yet another 12+ band of nutjobs, none of whom will be able to claim a majority

Fiorina's purpose was to embarrass Trump's anti-woman shit. She works as well as one of her printers.

In general, incumbents are harder to beat. Assuming the economy continues to slooooowly improve, and that Clinton doesn't fuck anything majorly up - and how could she, when she won't get a thing through congress? - why should she be more beatable in four years?

Walker I could see trying to make a deeper run next time. (Note I said trying, not succeeding.)

yeah I was kinda surprised Walker failed so quickly

Assuming the economy continues to slooooowly improve, and that Clinton doesn't fuck anything majorly up

these are massive assumptions fyi

Really, the worst thing that could happen to the GOP would be if they got the idea 'ANYONE could beat her'. That means once again 15+ candidates with a healthy dose of nut jobs in there.

which seems like a likely scenario

A key problem here for 2020 is the assumption that the GOP as a more uniform and generally understood voting bloc will simply reconstitute -- an assumption I really don't buy at present. All current rumblings about a purported Trump TV and Fox fearful of its right flank translates into a conservative media impulse that would be fully at war with itself to some degree, especially if a Trump TV audience manifests as a quasi-political force. That may seem extreme -- and I don't mean it in a sense of them fielding candidates -- but the internal 'no YOU'RE the RINO, you cuck' back and forths already part and parcel of the whole thing will just become institutionalized in full, putting pressure on all kinds of primary options, local and federal. Candidates will presumably want to appeal to all sides within the internecine warfare somehow, and after the primaries all the other side has to do in the general is go "So hey you'll all be thrilled to learn my opponent sought the approval of these clowns -- or you would be thrilled to learn about it except you've already seen it for months." Absolutely none of this is new -- this is the story of the electoral process as a whole -- but it'll become institutionalized as noted, even MORE material will be generated, and this utter fucking slog of an electoral season will seem like a Canadian election cycle soon enough.

sounds like a deep bench to me guys. perhaps the best ever!

xp

heh

What if the rump GOP never gets its middle back, on a national level? Will a progressive (and funded) wing of the Democratic Party start trying to build its way towards being the second party? Will state GOPs start imploding?

i think republican downward slide will just get worse. 4 years from now there will be more millennial voters, more minority voters, and fewer old white people. there's no indication that they can keep their current coalition of big business and nativist racists together. plus, tenuous but hillary's approval ratings have gone up whenever she's held office. potus is totally different ballgame but i wouldn't write her off just bc of the current cycle.

Yeah I think Mordy's right. Maybe this is just wishful thinking but I don't know if the GOP can really recover from this.

a lot will depend on the economy. if there's a recession in 2019 and the republicans field someone with say mitt romney level appeal then id imagine they'll be back in the whitehouse

I don't know if the GOP can really recover from this

the GOP may suffer somewhat in down ballot races in 2016 bcz of trump, but they'll recover from that rather quickly. it's the presidency they will have a tough time capturing for the foreseeable future. (hint: the future is v hard to foresee.)