The GOP nomination may be limited to the two individuals Trump has mentioned, Rubio and Vance – as well as, in the most authoritarian scenario, Trump himself. IMHO, Vance is a real front-runner, tremendously ahead in polls, and the logical heir to the kingly throne.. .
The Democratic nomination is, by contrast, wide open. I see that as good for the Democrats. The Democrats, unlike the Republicans, have two equal front-runners per the polls – Harris and Newsom – which means no real front-runner.
At this point 20 years ago, the “front-runners” were Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani. 12 years ago, people were certain it was going to be Jeb! vs. Biden. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say neither Newsom or Vance is going to be their party’s nominee.
One of my hypotheses is that to win, the Democrat needs regular guy vibes. Biden somehow had them in 2020, giving the impression of being the most centrist of Democrats, and he won.
One way to give those vibes for the general election is to be an actual, by American standards, centrist. Shapiro looks to me the closest possibility, and I think he has a great case for November electability without ever having been to Iraq. But to win primaries, the Democrat needs to be a bit more of a progressive than Shapiro (hope I’m wrong). .
The way the combat veteran thing works in my mind is that it will signal to swing voters that the Democrats have nominated a normal centrist type, even it if isn’t true. Nominating a Californian non-veteran would send the opposite signal.
Also, Vance is the probable GOP nominee,and I think many swing voters would notice the difference between a military journalist and an actual combat veteran. I’m sure being a military journalist can be dangerous, but it sounds the opposite.
The Democratic military veteran is going to be Swiftboated no matter what his service entailed. They’re going to spin it so there’s something he did or didn’t do that makes him a huge pussy and negates his entire military record, and the dumb-assed swing voters will buy it.
Kelly can successfully overcome this only if he ACTS like the fighter pilot he is. It is not enough that he was, indeed, a fighter pilot. Were he to run for president, he would need to bring that fighter pilot attitude and I don’t mean the attitude of a fighter pilot in front of a camera at a press junket. I mean the attitude of a fighter pilot six beers deep who just got called a pussy by an Army lieutenant in front of a bar full of other fighter pilots.
Oppo research will always find stuff to use for character assassination. I don’t think military service is unique there. And America wasn’t going to throw out the incumbent just three years after 9/11.
And my recollection is that many progressives tried to tear down AKA swift boat GW Bush’s military service, even though he, in the reserves, flew a seriously dangerous old fighter plane. .
In 2028, the Republican is likely to have bigger such vulnerabilities.
Some of those are Civil Servants, and it is trumps idea to fire Civil Service employees. Doing that is a really bad fucking idea.. The worst will be transferred somewhere harmless .We had a whole thread about this.
Biden is a regular guy, so was Clinton, and Obama.
I meant appointees in the broader sense. Not just cabinet level people that have to be confirmed by a vote in the senate, but the people that those appointees hire, and the next level or two below that. There was a thread a while back where the topic came up about the later days of Obama’s second term and how Rudy Giuliani was using his influence in with mid-level people in the New York DOJ offices to hinder Obama’s agenda. I’m not familiar with the details, but if that did in fact happen, Obama would have been well within his rights to instruct the AG to fire those people. The next Democratic POTUS and their cabinet level appointees are going to be dealing with hordes of people at those levels of government that are more loyal to Trump and the MAGA agenda than they are to the Unites States. Why shouldn’t those people be removed from their posts?
Could you post a link to that thread you referenced? I’m interested in reading it.
If there is one thing I have learned it is that this far out from the primaries, much less the actual election, the presumed frontrunners typically do not end up being the nominees. For that reason I will predict Vance has a less than 25% chance of heading up the GOP ticket. I don’t give Newsom more than a 50% chance on the D side. It’s just way too early for it to be more than a crapshoot at this point.
Seconded. It could be that by the time the election rolls around an eternity from now, Vance will be so tainted with the reek of Donald Trump that even the Republicans won’t be able to tolerate being in the same room with him. They (particularly Bannon & Miller) will be looking for a newer, fresher puppet that they can dress up and acclimate to perfoming his (and it will be a man) office with one of their arms shoved up his fundament.
Except Trump has already done that. The only options are either to let MAGA have multi decade control over the Civil Service or to get rid of the MAGA loyalists once Trump is gone. What other options are there?