Johnson will get 11% of the actual vote the same year that Romney beats Obama.
What makes Johnson less viable than Ross Perot? It’s a similar political environment, only with much worse major party candidates, and the third party guy has actual governing experience plus a VP with actual governing experience. If PErot can get 20%, Johnson can get 20%.
Wasn’t Perot doing much better by this point? I don’t think many period have heard of Johnson.
Perot was an earlier Trump. He was a showman and a billionaire. He commanded media attention. He had an army of supporters mobilizing behind him. From Wiki:
Johnson is a media nullity, in addition to not being a showman and billionaire. He’s the Jeb Bush to Ron Paul. He couldn’t win his own party’s nomination on the first ballot. It’s possible that he could drive the vote under 1%.
You need to be a delusional unskewer to believe he will get 10% of the popular vote.
Hey, what ever happened to Dean Chambers? What’s that? He’s all over right-wing media? He’s accepted as a voice to be listened to on serious issues? I swear, there is no bottom to modern conservatism, is there?
Perot actually led at one point. A lot depends on media coverage. So far, coverage of the LP ticket is WAY ahead of what it normally is, with a pretty decent and favorable story almost daily in a major publication. But it’s still not at Perot level mania yet. We need the media to cover the ticket the way they covered Perot in the beginning.
That would happen if they had gotten Trump or an equivalent media magnet to run. They didn’t, so it won’t.
Also, there’s never been a more paper qualified third party run, not since Roosevelt in 1912. The next most qualified ticket was the Wallace/Lemay ticket, which also did well.
Two former governors is a ticket that is impossible to just relegate to the sidelines. The media is not treating this as a nullity, they are covering it at about the rate you’d expect given their current poll standing. Plus William Weld is for some reason drawing attention to himself a lot lately.
Nonsense. Trump got some unbelievable percentage of media time, somewhere around 75%, running against 16 other candidates, most of whom were governors or senators. Jeb Bush, a former governor and possessor of one of the most famous names in politics spent $100 million and got regularly ignored by the media. They were media nullities, all of them. So were every Democratic candidate except Sanders and Clinton, and it’s a stretch to include her. She’s unarguably famous and her every move makes news, but if it weren’t for her history she’d be as mediagenic as Romney.
True, the media, by some press reports, is beginning to rethink its overcoverage of Trump. That means only that it will increase coverage of Clinton, not that it will give Johnson a fair shake.
He’s getting a fair shake right now, actually. Not as much coverage as I’d like obviously, but a lot more than normal and it’s all glowing coverage.
At first I thought you meant “media magnate” but no, I get it now…
Perot actually had an appeal to people beyond the ideologues, the fedora tippers, and the Alex Jones crowd.
Fans are drawn to Trump and Sanders because of Personality. If this is hard to accept, note that Hillary supporters poll as more progressive on issues than Sanders supporters! If Rand Paul wants to get his own large fan club he needs to grow taller, get a deeper voice, and be more bombastic.
I watched Johnson try to bob and weave last night on PBS. He wants to cut 20 percent from the budget and doesn’t want to eliminate social security. That would leave the military, and they apparently don’t want to touch that either. I can appreciate the fact that libertarians attempt to be more of a thinking man’s brand of conservatism, but it frequently runs into problems with basic math and the attempted suspension of reality.
I don’t expect Johnson/Weld to have a great impact, but I wouldn’t rule it out either. I don’t know if I agree that this is a libertarian ticket that’s especially strong, but it could have the appearance of strength if Trump continues to look like a complete ass in the media. Yes, I know Trump has already come a long way by basically being who he is, but the dynamics of the general election are not the same. Trump has probably had his worst 10-day stretch of the entire campaign, and much of it is completely self-inflicted. I still suspect Trump has it in him to pivot and try to do some image repair, but so far that hasn’t happened. And why has he been campaigning in California of all places?
My stepdaughter has been supporting him, and I respect her opinion, so I’ve been meaning to look into his campaign more closely.
I was therefore primed to pay attention when Samantha Bee interviewed him last night. This is the first time I’ve ever heard him speak. Overall, SB was fairly supportive of him, I thought.
While he started off strong, concisely describing his Libertarian philosophy as being fiscally conservative but socially liberal, he ended up coming off a bit loony by the end of the piece, IMHO. I think he was trying to show that he has a sense of humor. (After all, Samantha Bee is a comedian in addition to being a political commentator.) Nevertheless, I was not impressed. The overall impression that I got was that he was a complete lightweight.
No, they are not the “thinking conservative’s” party unfortunately. They are the “tolerant conservative’s” party. The 20% number is completely pulled out of the ass and I’m not even sure Johnson or Weld know what’s in the federal budget. Not wanting to cut military spending is an unusual development if that’s what Johnson said or implied.
A more sensible goal would be 20% reduction in spending to GDP ratio over four years. That’s doable.
First, the LP candidate getting all these media appearances is unprecedented. So that’s great. Second, Johnson does have governing experience so he’s obviously not clueless. However, he does seem to have less familiarity with national affairs than his running mate. I realize Johnson is the guy at the top of the ticket, but he really should consider letting Weld do at least half of these interviews.
Johnson said in a recent interview that he’s so thrilled about how many media requests they are getting. He said that in 2012 they got about two a week now it’s about 30. That’s awesome, but you gotta be ready for the spotlight if you’re going to be in the spotlight.
I say this as a libertarian (small L) Republican, I am voting for Johnson and not Trump in November.
I listened to a recent episode of Penn’s Sunday School podcast where Penn talked to Johnson about his history & campaign. Penn is a Libertarian, and really likes Johnson, although he has made noses about maybe voting for Hillary because Trump is a walking disaster.
So they start with Johnson talking about how he hates hypocrisy, especially in politics. He says what he means and sticks with it.
Later, Penn asks for an example of something Johnson might do in foreign policy. Johnson days he would get together with China and see about unifying Korea under Seoul, the two major powers working together to make this happen. Yeah, that would happen. :rolleyes:
Right after this, Penn asks about Johnson’s opinion on current foreign policy, and the other candidates’ outlooks. Johnson hates all the military interventions, and especially hates regime change by the US. Apparently, Korea wouldn’t count because… Reasons? :dubious:
So the guy’s a Republican who doesn’t want to play The Accomplishment Game and has therefore been ineffectual, in pretty much the same way that Sanders has been a Democrat.
And he doesn’t try to hide liking weed. Whoop de fuckin’ do.