Bill Clinton admitted smoking marijuana but didn’t inhale. Obama admitted he did inhale. Bush/Cheney were the first all DUI team running for the party of law and order.
The sample size is just amazingly small. I’m sure there would have been threads about Carter being too inexperienced had the SDMB been around back then. And, they may have had a point. While Carter did serve a single term as governor of Georgia, southern governors are notoriously weak. Most of their time is spent with ribbon cutting and take a picture (not a selfie in 1976) with the high school football champs.
Of the three who had been mayors, A.Johnson and C.Coolidge had run small cities - and succeeded to the White House after assassinations. Only G.Cleveland (of Buffalo NY, a major city then) was elected into the presidency.
The electoral system wasn’t so broken and rigged before. Russian campaign tampering wasn’t so intensive before. Fewer legislators were foreign assets before. Yes, much has changed.
The voters of the republican party and the voters of the democratic party are not the same people though. We aren’t comfortable with the same things they are comfortable with (rape*, treason, pedophilia, incompetence, dementia, etc).
*we did somewhat overlook this issue with the clintons though.
Ah yes, rape, treason, pedophilia, dementia, only being a mayor and not a Senator or Vice President - all definitely comparable attributes of a presidential candidate.
I think he does like H. Clinton and moves to a place he has a better shot at winning for the house or senate. He could win a safe Dem seat in Indiana but probably not Gov. or Senate.
If he doesn’t win the nomination and the Dems don’t win the presidency, I predict that Chasten takes a teaching job in a blue state and they move. He’s already finished his two terms and they’re so young it wouldn’t be blatant carpetbagging.
Oh, it would totally be blatant carpetbagging, but hey, it worked for Hillary. I think if he finds a landing spot with lots of white moderates and no Dem incumbent he could pull it off.
Jimmy Carter shrunk the deficit. (Before Buttigieg was born.)
Reagan blew up the deficit to pass tax cuts. (Ditto.)
Bush the Elder raised taxes, and all but got drummed out of the party because of it. (When Buttigieg was in elementary school.)
Clinton not only shrunk the deficit, he balanced the freakin’ budget for four years straight. (This happened when Buttigieg was in high school. He should at least have some dim memory of this.)
Dubya cut taxes on the rich and blew up the deficit again. (While Buttigieg was at Harvard.)
Obama, despite having to deal with the worst recession since the Great Depression, reduced the deficit on his watch. (While Buttigieg was mayor.)
Trump cut taxes almost entirely on rich people, and blew up the deficit again. (Ditto.)
Over and over and over again, Dems don’t spend money on stuff that would actually make people’s lives better, because they’re cleaning up after the elephants.
There’s a motherfucking reason why it’s not ‘fashionable’ for progressives to talk about deficits. It’s because the Dems have been the more fiscally responsible party for forty freakin’ years, and all it gets us is handcuffing ourselves from doing other things that might actually benefit people, and losing elections.
If Mayor Pete wants to take us through yet one more cycle of this absurdity, he can go fuck himself. With good old Midwestern heartland farm implements.
Re Plan A: remember everything Obama was able to get through the Senate with a 59-41 majority? Flipping the Senate is a necessary condition, but it’s far from sufficient. I give this plan an Incomplete.
Re Plan B: LOLOLOL. Man, I’d like to be in the alternate universe where this had a snowball’s chance of working.
Well, I know it’s missing “ask the senate to please change their rules and kill the filibuster” but there really isn’t a great answer to that question.
Yup, exactly. Sounds like he was playing into the right wing narrative that the GOP cuts the deficit and democrats increase it, which is the opposite of reality.
Democrats are willing to raise taxes, which is necessary to cutting the deficit. The deficit was down to 2% of GDP near the end of Obama’s second term. Now with Trump’s tax cuts and spending programs on the military its up to 5%.
Talking after that rally, he specifically says that the Dems have shrunk the deficit and Repubs have grown it. I think a more charitable interpretation is that he is talking optics.
O’Donnell response with a little more than a one line tweet quote:
He may be successful in a purple state against a beleaguered GOP Senator. Something like how Colorado is this year. Or Pennsylvania in 2022 against Pat Toomey?
I’d want to see him show some more appeal to minority voters before I’d be comfortable with him running in those States. Maybe Iowa, it’s only a couple States over and they seem to like him there. I don’t think he’d have a great chance of winning a Statewide race in Illinois, but there are certainly a bunch of Congressional districts Downstate he’d be a good fit for.