Buttload of Faith: the 2016 Presidential Primary Thread (Pt 2)

He addressed veterans' rally – and said Fox had been desperate to have

we are good at writing bullet points

With all his flaws, Obama is the first prez who feels post-Reagan.

Twenty-two emails from Hillary Clinton's private email server have been marked "top secret" and won't be released, the State Department said Friday.

The emails were not marked as classified at the time they were sent.

"We can confirm that later today, as part of our monthly FOIA productions of former Secretary Clinton's emails, the State Department will be denying in full seven email chains, found in 22 documents representing 37 pages," State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters.

The documents are being upgraded at the request of the intelligence community because they contain a category of top secret information," Kirby said.

Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon said that Clinton said the emails should be released and called at least one case, "over-classification run amok."

"We firmly oppose the complete blocking of the release of these emails," Fallon said in a statement. "Since first providing her emails to the State Department more than one year ago, Hillary Clinton has urged that they be made available to the public. We feel no differently today."

With all his flaws, Obama is the first prez who feels post-Reagan.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Friday, January 29, 2016 7:56 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Totally.

Man, I can't tell if it's just because I live in a cocoon, but not only does Clinton seem generally untrustworthy and unlikeable, which is one thing and nothing new, but she's also really uninspiring, isn't she? Maybe not down at Kerry or Jeb! levels, but she just seems ... there. So careful not to step on any mines that she can't take her eyes off the map. Give the GOP credit for this: their slate of loonies at least get the blood flowing, even if its among a minority of nutcase who can't get their fave kook elected. But Clinton?

I dunno. This election just bums me out, mostly because I'm not sure how confident I am that she will do well at the polls. I mean, statistically I get it, I get how she has a huge advantage, even several advantages. But she did in 2004, too, and she lost to a young, barely tested senator dogged by insane secret Muslim socialist not an American fascist anti-Christ rumors that make the stuff she's been accused of in the past seem almost reasonable.

It's totally anecdotal, but I haven't seen so much as a single Clinton bumper sticker or yard sign yet ...

Rubio had the charisma of a pepper mill.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

would vote for pepper mill, if eligible, over every currently declared candidate.

http://www.theonion.com/article/retreating-clinton-campaign-torches-iowa-town-slow-52261

clinton's totally winning. i called it ages ago. people will wake up from their bernie fever dream and do their duty as good dems.

i believe Chaucer called it "eateing shite"

hil doesn't have to do much of anything. keep her head down. ignore attacks. she's been through it all a million times. people don't care about her old shit anymore. slow and steady and bubba gets his fave white house ice cream sammiches again.

there are tons of conservatives who would much rather deal with bill and hil over the rest of those goofballs.

huh

https://twitter.com/NYDailyNews/status/693198331238072320

Jimmy McMillan, founder of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party, has endorsed @realDonaldTrump http://nydn.us/1SgTsdw

Maybe DT got him an apartment.

she's been through it all a million times. people don't care about her old shit anymore.

Some people seem to...

https://twitter.com/ChMadar/status/693164021118320640

founder of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party, has endorsed @realDonaldTrump

because Trump always charges very reasonable rents and is such a considerate landlord?

"'mo"? What?

worried about Marco regaining the traction he had at one point (no Io'mo)

per the NYT today, Rubio hoping for a Trump win in Iowa so he can directly go after him rather than Cruz.

jeb! should be rubio's vp

can't, president and vice president must be from different states.

"Must" is not the word. You could certainly nominate an all Florida-ticket, it's just that those electoral college members from Florida could not cast votes for both Rubio as prez and Jeb as veep.

As a keen watcher from not-America, I have never understood why Rubio (empty and uh, not handsome in the slightest, god, what is wrong with beltway journos? or Jeb (lol, look at this guy, people were no more going to nominate him than they were to nominate a dude called fucking "Tim") were so fancied, but I'll admit Rubio has marginally exceeded my low expectations.

Rubio got heat because he is Hispanic, and as I opined in some other thread, the pundit class thinks that the GOP is smart enough to try to put Hispanic votes into play, and dumb and racist enough that they think the way to do it is to advance the ambitions of the son of Cuban immigrants, a demographic much smaller than and extremely different from every other Latin@ population in the US.

But Alfred can address that more knowledgeably and eloquently than I can.

Rubio is also the best-looking of the lot (imo), which I think counts for something with the pundit class especially in the early analysis

I enjoy Alfred's pithy takedowns of that idea on his blog enormously. Should specify that I agree that he's the best-looking candidate though much of that is youth - young Ben Carson is way better looking I think (better, realer smile and he rocks the beard) but none of them are absolute dishes, only relative.

It's totally anecdotal, but I haven't seen so much as a single Clinton bumper sticker or yard sign yet .

Today I saw a youngish, hipsterish guy in a coffee shop with a big "Ready For Hillary" sticker covering the back of his iPhone. It was obvious since he was talking loudly on his phone while waiting in line.

Another piece of anecdotal "heard on the street" type evidence: I overheard a guy in a restaurant a couple of weeks ago saying that he had never voted for a Democrat for President in his life but if Trump was the nominee he would vote for Hillary in a second.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/01/30/business/donald-trump-unions.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=0&referer=

on the other hand...

canada ted trending

Rubio is also the best-looking of the lot (imo), which I think counts for something with the pundit class

He is, but I don't think Republicans are buying his rage. Maybe that's what Trump is somehow exposing, the phoniness of Rubio's rage or Chris Christie's rage. Or Carly Fiorina's. But then, if you don't have the rage, like Jeb or Kasich, you don't win either unless maybe you're Ted Cruz and you've got some slippery thing going on that folks can identify with.

one of the dumbest moves i can recall (cruz campaign confirms that yes this is something they're doing for some reason) - https://twitter.com/ggreeneva/status/693281396354347014

https://humanizingthevacuum.wordpress.com/2015/04/14/blood-inheritance-and-privilege-marco-rubios-problem-and-ours/

The End of the Republican Party as We Know It, part 37:

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/interrogation/2016/01/rick_perlstein_historian_of_conservatism_on_donald_trump_and_the_gop_crack.html?wpsrc=sh_all_dt_tw_top

The idea being that Trump just sails past the fail-safe point that Goldwater and Nixon and Reagan and W. honored (whatever their motives--recounting something from Perlstein's Goldwater book that I'd forgotten, Goldwater's pulling back is presented as a moral decision).

Those Cruz mailings are going to endear him to millions. Trump's political instincts mystify me, but Cruz's are recognizably awful.

Big thread--maybe someone can start part 3 after Iowa?

Wooooowww at that Cruz mailer. Remind me again why he's universally disliked?

If Trump is defeated, do you think the Republican Party can right itself, or do you think Trump has opened up a permanent wound?

[Pauses.] Let the record show that I’m speechless. I have no easy answers for this one. What would it mean to right the ship? You have some very profound and fundamental problems. You have every senator who has ever worked with Ted Cruz turning toward Donald Trump, because they can’t stand Cruz. You have much of the infrastructure of the conservative movement explicitly saying that Donald Trump is unacceptable. That’s a pretty profound breach, especially for liberals who are so used to seeing conservatives and Republicans as united strategic geniuses. Again, I have to end on that note of humility. Where was the original contradiction? Where did this come from? Is it, you know, really just this one guy with big hair? Is this situation the result of the failure of political economy as practiced by the Democrats and the Republicans? I don’t have any good answers, and anyone who does, I think, is being glib.

potential new board description in last sentence

I like it when knowledgeable people admit they don't have the answers.

One of my favourite things too. I think the main reason I wanted Romney to lose the nomination last time--besides the fact it would have been fun to see him lose--is that I wanted people who tend to make statements/predictions on political matters with such declarative authority to maybe admit "All that stuff I say that I know will happen for sure, truthfully I haven't got a clue." I tend to equivocate, but this time I got caught up in that too: early on, I said with absolute declarative authority that there was no way Trump was going to win the nomination (or even last very far past Iowa). Pretty clearly, I didn't have a clue when I said that.

Iowa hasn't even voted yet! I still don't think he'll get the nom

True--I'm jumping the gun a bit. Interesting listening to this yahoo out of Buffalo, Tom Bauerle, coming home on Friday. He's a Cruz guy who's decided that after Thursday's debate and non-debate, Trump is now the certain nominee.

It would be amazing to see the fallout if Iowa went Cruz, with someone out of nowhere second and Trump third--maybe there's an inherent sliver of potential chaos attached to a caucus state. That Cruz mailing isn't a good start in that direction.

don't know if anyone finds this surprising but NYT endorses Hill: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/opinion/sunday/hillary-clinton-endorsement.html

tbf alot of the 'nobody could've seen this coming' was a result of ppl ignoring the data in favor of assumptions. to an extent it was totally fair to ignore the data in favor of assumptions - polling data that far out from the primaries is nearly meaningless (trump didn't go away but ben carson did, and alot of the rationale for why trump would go away - inexperienced, gaffe prone - were also true for carson and were largely why he went away), hell nate silver will remind you that polling data this close to the primaries isn't especially useful either. ppl discounted the numbers when if it had been rubio or jeb! w/ those numbers they would've been the obvious front runner. i think the horserace day-by-day strategic, uh, brilliance of trump has been overstated in importance. he's been very effective at picking off the latest challenger yes but ultimately the reason his supporters support him isn't because this gambit or that but because they like his personality and share a common ideology w/ regard to the issues they care about most. these are pretty normal reasons for a candidate to become a frontrunner. the only reason it appears insane here is because the republican base is insane. trump could still blow it, either in iowa or down the road and if he does it may be for the reasons ppl thought he couldn't possibly win. either way assumptions will be tested.

NYT endorses Kasich: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/31/opinion/sunday/a-chance-to-reset-the-republican-race.html

idk how much a NYT endorsement is worth on the Dem side but on the Rep side you'd probably prefer they don't endorse you

https://scontent-dfw1-1.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpt1/v/t1.0-9/12494974_10156429228390623_234325197527024804_n.jpg?oh=5dbc2d955f21df3cbe7bba3d355b53f8&oe=573B11A0

lol

Where was the original contradiction?

(*ahem*) supply side (*ahem*) trickle down (*ahem*) deregulation

*christian*

Mrs. Clinton can be more hawkish on the use of military power than Mr. Obama, as shown by her current call for a no-fly zone in Syria and her earlier support for arming and training Syrian rebels. We are not convinced that a no-fly zone is the right approach in Syria, but we have no doubt that Mrs. Clinton would use American military power effectively and with infinitely more care and wisdom than any of the leading Republican contenders.

man this is some spineless shit. her military record is disastrous. it's telling that -- in what is supposedly an endorsement in the democratic primary -- her contrasts with republicans are highlighted

the thing that strikes me about this race is the growing perception that, one way or another, this is endgame for american democracy, that the legislature is unwilling or unable to perform its prescribed duties and that the next president will more or less openly rule by fiat. of course when the supreme court strikes down rule by executive order this spring (an outcome the obama administration is openly courting, presumably because they assume it will give the democrats an electoral advantage) that will throw another wrinkle in things. all of the arguments of just a few years ago over the "nuclear option" in congress seem quaint and hollow now.

(this also neuters one of the key anti-bernie arguments, because you can answer "how will he work with congress?" the with "the same way clinton will- by ignoring them".)