How did Trump praise Clinton?
You mean Putin?
Oh of course. He only praised the Clintons when he wasn’t running.
Very encouraging - thanks.
You mean to say, that cold-blooded shit can work for the good guys, too? Not all that comfortable with promoting peace and justice like they sell a Big Mac, but if that’s what it takes…
And, what the heck, we’re already flooding the polling places with busloads of illegal aliens, so…why not?
Ha, yes: and don’t forget the black folks in Philly who will be voting ten times each.
You’re welcome! I’m glad someone else got the same shot of encouragement out of it that I did. 
Biden-10
Sanders-8
Kasich-8
Rubio-7
Clinton-5
Christie-5
Cruz-3
Trump-1
This isn’t an ideological analysis, just my view of their honesty+competence. if it was just honesty Clinton would get a 2. Rubio’s score is more about potential than current reality.
I disagree. The Presidency is one office. Trump can only govern as much as Congress and the courts let him, which means that as President he would probably just be a rather incompetent Eisenhower-style Republican. It wouldn’t be a good four years for the Presidency, but no President can bring the country down by himself assuming our constitutional form of government works the way it should.
It’s always appropriate to debate the candidates, even if only one is viable as a President. We don’t only have to decide to elect her we also have to decide whether to give her a friendly Senate and/or House, and how much political capital she should receive from the public to enact her agenda.
Obviously, the best outcome for me as a conservative who hates Trump is for Clinton to win but to take office a weak and distrusted President with zero political capital. Which results in Paul Ryan being the preeminent power in the federal government and the likely President in 2020.
I think you’re vastly underrating Clinton, but also overrating Sanders (who, as I noted in another thread, was very duplicitous about his taxes–and it’s hard for me to understand how a conservative like you would expect him to be a competent executive) and especially Biden. I will never feel the great warmth others have for that guy, given the shady way he snuck a draconian, counterproductive, and even deadly antidrug measure into the unopposable AMBER Alert bill in committee.
As for your fever dreams about Paul Ryan coming in and sweeping Hillary out of office in four years, bring it on. She will relentlessly hang his proposed Medicare and Social Security cuts around his neck. There’s a reason entitlements for seniors are considered the third rail of politics.
ETA: Not to mention that Ryan is likely to have a reduced GOP majority, which will give the “Freedom Caucus” and “Liberty Caucus” crazies even more power. He’ll either have to kowtow to their agenda, which will ruin his image with moderates, or do an end run around them and pass legislation they oppose with the help of Democrats, which will drive partisan Republicans nuts and ensure he won’t be able to win the nomination.
The first thing he’ll have to do is get rid of the Hastert rule. The kneejerk opposition to Democratic proposals has to end. Anything with a majority in the House should pass, regardless of where it originates, except under unusual, rare circumstances.
Ryan can win the nomination easier by being like other Republicans. He can’t win an election that way, especially given his Medicare plan as you’ve pointed out. If Ryan is to win in 2020, he has to be more likeable, more honest, and more of a statesman than Clinton, even if that means he’ll have to fend off Ted Cruz in the primaries. But he’s now clearly the leader of the party(assuming Trump loses), so he’s the logical “next” guy Republicans usually go with. Which means he has some room for moderation and pissing off the louder members of the base.
If Ryan and Clinton can work well together I think that actually benefits Ryan more than it does Clinton.
I agree with that. Which is why if Hillary’s smart, she’ll force him to compromise a *lot *if he wants to work with her. Which then of course makes his right flank very vulnerable.
While I sympathize ideologically with the right flank, they’ve been screwing the pooch in terms of actually demonstrating they can govern. Ryan needs to tell them that if they want to have influence they have to play a constructive role in the caucus, otherwise he’ll pass legislation with Democratic votes and leave them out in the cold. Standing up to them will cost him in a primary but gain him independents in a general election against a candidate who independents are already inclined to dislike.
Because “losing the primary to win the general” worked so well for Jeb! (Another example is Kacich, even if he didn’t use that exact verbiage.)
I think Hillary will have a pretty easy opponent teed up for her in 2020–and I wouldn’t put it past her to help ensure that is the case, the way Claire McCaskill cannily helped guide the Missouri Republican primary electorate toward Todd Aiken. 
If Ryan had that kind of statesmanship, he wouldn’t be scrambling to try get a continuation funding bill passed before the government shuts down again on September 30.
The calculations are different when you’re already the frontrunner. Conservatives didn’t always trust Bush 41 and they certainly didn’t trust John McCain or Mitt Romney. Kasich and the guy before him, John Huntsman, weren’t frontrunners, they were effectively the challengers and challengers can’t win from the left. But when you’re the party’s best hope, as Ryan is, he’s got more room for maneuver.
Oh, no question, she’ll do all she can to get Ted Cruz the nomination. And Cruz might just get it if there’s no clear frontrunner. Which is why Ryan pretty much has to run. If he runs, the party will try to clear the field for him. Guys like Rubio, Pence, and Haley will be asked to wait and they probably will. A Ryan vs. Cruz matchup with a few marginal candidates probably works out fine for Ryan. But put Ryan in there with 15 other establishment choices + Cruz or God knows what reality show candidate tries to run and things get more difficult.
Clinton was never going to pull away from Trump. She wants to put herself in a position so that when the race is tight in late October she still has money to pay faceless phone bank workers in Reno, Nevada and Jacksonville, Florida. Not that she would do particularly well in those areas, but that she might get just enough of her own kinda, sort, maybe supporters to get off their duffs and vote down her angry critics.
I suspect, however, that the real advantage has more to do with Trump’s lack of a campaign infrastructure, although he seems to be putting one together on the fly as we write. It might seem not to matter, but it could come into play if Trump has another serious gaffe. Trump’s map right now is pretty big – he has to cover a lot of geography to win the race. He continues to defy convention with his ability to wake up from political death but sooner or later, I can’t help but think that the holes in his campaign will be revealed somewhere.
The question is, what kinds of problems will Hillary run into. This is a race to see who is more unpopular.
Hillary is a Stoli-Drunk. She’s been in some kind of “recovering from the trail” status since Thursday before Labor Day, then she fielded softballs from the “press” on that crummy plane of hers. Before Labor Day? Propped up, drunk, needs help up a flight of 5 steps by two helpers, stuttering, the TIA stroked, brain-bleeds are just some of her problems. She also hides, within the bloomers of her pants suits from the Chairman Mao collection, her diapers, because her vodka-wrecked bladder doesn’t hold up anymore. Several times she’s left with “emergencies” from the podium, once at a debate. And, she has a personal assistant constantly nearby to catch her if she falls back from the podium and curiously, he gives her some kind of injection, probably a speedball of some kind, very quickly and discretely. Her Chief of Staff, Dear Huma, compromised by her perverted husband has a decade-long history as editor of a hard might Muslim news outlet and is widely known to be pro-Sharia Law. And women, feminists, they’re ok with this?
Then, there’s the coughing jags. Emphysema? Budding/full-blown lung/throat/esophageal cancer? TB from hanging out with too many immigrants? She thinks Trump is her husband one time, she referred to Russia as the Soviet Union several times in speeches the past several weeks. She stutters and stammers sometimes, all symptoms of strokes or dementia. She corrects herself belatedly, but she’s clearly in trouble from strokes or early-onset dementia or Alzheimer’s. The fresnel prismatic lenses in her glasses are to turn her double vision into single. Forgetting policy, forgetting the “First Vagina” considerations, this is the creature that will be poured into the White House, IF she even makes it. This to say nothing of her cretin of a husband, regardless of his likeability, wandering the White House doing…what?
She’s a wreck and she ain’t gonna make to to November without constant nursing and personal care. They’re gonna try to get her across that finish line if it kills her. She grows more haggard and ill by the day. Democrats know now, it’s out there, more and more by the day? And yet, this is their best? No Liz, no Biden, there are others. Instead, this.
Just sayin’…
Oh joy, a visitor from the deepest recesses of the alt-right fever swamp.
So, why don’t you start a thread on Republican Great White Hopes for 2020?
Nice username/post combo.
I take personal offense to this; there is nothing wrong with Stoli. It’s a decent medium-range Vodka that’s easy to acquire in international markets and makes for an excellent duty free travel gift.
Can we keep it? I’m guessing there are plenty of people willing to feed it.