Although I agree Obama would wipe the floor with any of this cycle’s crop of candidates, including Hillary, I think he’s had it with the job and would not run again even if he could.
Regardless who ends up becoming president, I believe we will all look back nostalgically and sadly to Obama’s presidency and marvel at his steady hand at the helm, and wonder what he could have achieved for the country with just a modicum of cooperation from the other party.
This is not to say Obama did everything right, far from it, but his pragmatic approach, although infuriating at times, did help to steer the country, generally, into calmer waters.
There’s no way that Trump is getting offered a VP slot by the GOP nominee. The establishment would not want that, and the only one crazy enough to do it anyway also hates him.
Man, I disagree with you. Trump’s an egomaniac. His entire goal is “NOTICE ME!!!”. The Veep, even ones as stupid and inarticulate as Quayle and Biden barely get any notice even when they drooled out their crazy-assed gibberish.
He might take Press Secretary or something that gives him a constant camera on him.
Biden as stupid or inarticulate? Where did that come from?
I think it’s probably going to be Cruz. From what I’ve heard, he’s the only one who actually grasps how the process works, and has been working behind the scenes to woo delegates. Many of the delegates who are pledged to Trump actually prefer Cruz, and so if Trump can’t make it in on the first ballot, a lot of those guys are going to flip.
And being VP gives him the opportunity to exercise that egomania without any of the responsibility. He can meet and greet all the important people and file their details away for making deals when he stands down in 4 years’ time.
I think it would be Cruz. Oh, sure, they’d love to nominate Kasich, but the optics would be pretty bad. The guy only won his home state and really got drubbed in most other states. If Cruz can make it close there’s a good argument for him. Plus some establishment Republicans have already endorsed Cruz and they can’t very well backtrack.
The GOP can’t afford to alienate both Trump’s and Cruz’ supporters. They’re welcome to try, but I think they’d see how dangerous that would be. So either Trump or Cruz will be the nominee.
A lot depends on how close Trump is to 1237, and how big the gap is between his and Cruz’ delegate totals. If Trump has >1150 delegates and Cruz has only ~700, the party insiders will face a tough choice between pushing Trump over the line to avoid a civil war, or letting Cruz win on a second or third ballot and hoping the war fizzles out.
I’m thinking that if Trump doesn’t show up at Cleveland with 1237 votes in hand, it’ll be Cruz.
Unless something really astounding occurs in the next two months, Trump is going to enter the convention with the most delegates and several million more popular votes than his closest competitor. I am the farthest thing in the world from a Trump fan, but under those circumstances I don’t see why he would be happy to accept a VP nomination or even really why he should consider it.
I believe that if it comes to a brokered convention, the GOP smoke-filled rooms will go with what they see as the safest, most familiar compromise possible, and that’s Romney. That kid Ryan will get his turn when he’s old enough.
If the Republicans are nervous about losing to the Dems in November with Trump as their candidate, how nervous would they be about losing to the Dems in November with Trump running as an independent?
Let’s say Trump rolls up to a contested convention (assuming he arrives with comfortably more delegates than Cruz or Kasich), and he says, “look, either give me the nomination, or I’m running as an independent, taking swathes of Republican voters with me. Good luck beating the Dems in November if that happens”.
The party would revolt if Kasich got in. Polls schmolls…he hasn’t won a damn thing - and I say that as someone who basically likes Kasich and respects the way he’s run his campaign. At the end of the day, though, you have millions of voters and campaign volunteers who’ve poured their heart and soul into this election and two of the guys going to the campaign will have crushed Kasich by that point. Kasich exists to deny Trump the nomination. That’s it. That’s he’s rason d’etre at this point.
