When he wins a primary in Iowa, NH, or SC. Or starts generating significant dollars and endorsements from institutional Republicans.
He just doesn’t have the resume that makes me think he can win a state-wide election, much less a nation-wide one. Nor has he shown the sort of fund-raising or institutional support that a national race requires.
Until some of that changes, he is more of a Ron Paul candidate (who also does well in straw polls and pre-election polls) than a legitimate contender.
Do you participate in Republican primaries?
I think a lot of people are biting their tongues right now. 
When he can raise serious campaign donations, which he failed to do last quarter. It really doesn’t make any difference how vocal your base is if you cannot raise the tens of millions of dollars necessary to compete.
Or let’s put it this way - can you name one person who’s first foray into electoral politics was as a major party’s presidential nominee?
I plan to.
Come on, there’s a 900 lb gorilla in the room. Let’s imagine Herman Cain approaching the town of Rock Ridge:
“Herman Cain is a n-” [DONG!]
“What’d he say?”
“He said Herman Cain is near”
“No gol durn it, I said Herman Cain is a n’” [DONG!]
And so it goes. Will the Republican base give him a laurel, and hearty handshake? I don’t think so. The party that has spent the last 40+ years cultivating and exploiting racial fears and latent racism among working class whites is not, I repeat NOT, going to nominate a black guy for president. Even if he holds a gun to his own head.
Besides, if voters have to choose between two Negroes on election day, so many heads will explode, the resulting traffic from first responder vehicles will prevent many people from getting to the polls at all.
This issue would’ve been more interesting if it were the '90s or 2000s and we were discussing Colin Powell.
If I did I would vote for Cain or Palin. In Michigan I can vote in the Repub Primary. Cain and Palin are the most easily beaten Repub candidates. They are also the most humorous.
They wouldn’t have seriously considered Powell. Whatever Powell may or may not have done, Cain is the first ever serious GOP contender.
Well, who first foray was presidential and hadn’t been a four-star general, thus addressing Eisenhower and Grant.
And I think Powell might’ve done quite well in 2000 with the electorate. The GWB campaign, though, would not have hesitated to use race in the primaries as a scare tactic and it would have worked quite well with some members of the Republican base, backfired with others.
He is not serious. He can not win the nomination.
Wendell Wilkie. Alton Parker.
And Chris Christie is going to be the Republican nominee, right? Your predictions have always been spot on.
It was his for the taking. The GOP bigwigs were begging him to run. They almost talked him into it. I figured with the piss poor collection of Repub candidates ,he would not be able to resist.
Now it will be Palin’s turn in the box. But it will be her decision. The GOP does not want her . They know she can not win. They know Cain can not win. They hoped Christie could.
They are not behind Romney, who could fracture the party and perhaps have conservatives stay home.
Which political positions in America do you think qualify an individual for the Presidency the most? Which do not?
Why wouldn’t success in the private sector not qualify an individual for the Presidency? Why would it?
We’ve had good Presidents with little political experience and a with lot of political experience; we’ve had bad Presidents with a lot of political experience or with little political experience. We’ve had good and bad Presidents, depending on who you ask, who had no political experience. Isn’t it safe to assume that the individual, and not his experience, is the ultimate qualifier for the ability to lead a country given that there has been no consistent correlation between political experience and success as a U.S. President?
Well, all we have to go on in Cain’s case is what he says he’d do as president, and that’s already extremely unimpressive.
You forgot Dwight Eisenhower.
Those are three reasons why it can’t happen today, however. Eisenhower was thought to be apolitical: he was seriously approached by both parties to run, although he seems never to have considered anything but a Republican nomination. He was also probably the single most popular and famous person in the country, barring Truman, and that’s a maybe.
Both Wilkie and Parker were doomed candidates, pinatas sure to lose overwhelmingly to popular presidents.
It’s more than ironic that four years after Obama was ripped apart for six months for not having the political experience to qualify him for the presidency that people are trying to argue that someone with no qualifications at all should be their party’s candidate. That’s why they call this part of the campaign the silly season. People get enthusiasms and mistake those for viability. But this is not 1952 and Herman Cain is not Gen. Eisenhower. Nobody is.
Well, Abloy, now you’re asking about what should be qualifications to be a serious candidate rather than what are qualifications. It has been a very, very long time that a non-war-hero, non-politician has been a serious candidate for president, and I see no reason to change that opinion until Cain proves he can actually get people to vote for him.