With regard to Obama, the right-wing fringe nutcases were going on about martial law, “dictator”, “king”, communist-styles “czars”, and of course the alleged complete shredding of the Constitution.
With Bush, it seems to me that the prevailing meme of the left about him was “dangerous idiot”, especially after the 2003 Iraq invasion and then the economic meltdown. If there were ever any leftist nutcases that claimed Bush would appoint himself dictator, I never heard from them. It certainly never made any major news if it even happened at all.
Let’s be fair here. It’s not only a false equivalence, but I think it ignores the fact that raving paranoia finds its most die-hard adherents more on the far right than anywhere else – the sorts that stock up on guns’n’ammo in their bunkers, demand home schooling to save themselves from the leftist indoctrination that has taken over public education, and “know” that the government is out to get them.
You’re funny. Maybe I should like to a google image cite of Bush.
If you want to debate this, I’ll be happy to do so in a different thread. It’s a hijack of this one.
If you want to claim it didn’t happen, think again.
Also, you weren’t posting here in the Bush years. Unlike some other posters, you don’t have to erase the memory of the nonsense that was batted back and forth during that time.
The only way a President would ever just cancel an election is if he could count on support from other power structures within the government. That’s the beauty of a government with so many power centers and so many veto points. A President can’t pull such a thing off. Either Congress would have the capital police throw him out, or the military would do it and put the Speaker in the White House, or many states would simply refuse to acknowledge the federal government’s authority as long as there was no legal executive(and many are just looking for an excuse). Meanwhile, the President would have to always be at an undisclosed location to hide from an irate citizenry.
In other words, the time to worry about something like that happening would be when a President seems to be setting up the groundwork to make it happen: he’d have to sack politically unfriendly military leaders and replace them with cronies, for starters. Without the military with him, a President has no ability to illegally maintain power.
Now, as for Hillary Clinton, “the most uncompromising wartime President in history”,
she’s not really in control of her own destiny. It’s already tough enough for a candidate to succeed an incumbent of the same party, but she’s a poor campaigner with positives and negatives already baked into the cake. The polls currently show her averaging about 48% and that’s probably her base, with the ability to rise or fall another 3% depending on her performance. The Republican candidates have much more room to either impress or revolt the public. So this election will be primarily decided by how well the Republican does. Obama and Bill will also be factors, maybe bigger factors than Hillary herself. That was certainly the case in 2008, and Obama showed a remarkable ability to make himself a bigger issue than he already was in 2014 by saying that a vote for Senate candidates was a vote for his policies. If he says that a vote for Clinton is a vote to continue his policies, then how Hillary does as a candidate matters even less.
Same goes for the primaries. If a candidate is able to get enough attention as an alternative, he will probably beat her. She will not win a competitive primary.
One iroincalistic thing about this whole scenario is that Bill C. ran against GHW Bush at a time when few other Democrats wanted to bother because Bush was soooooo popular it seemed like a waste of time.
Besides, I only believed it because W took so much vacation time, he sort of had an argument he could serve another four years and not violate the 22nd amendment.
I was referring to her opposition to the Vitter Amendment, which was written to forbid the government from confiscating legally owned guns without justification, as was done after Hurricane Katrina.
He’s arguing that Hillary Clinton can’t win unless she wins by default.
I thought that in 2008. It was time for the first female nominee for President. Then this black candidate with a message of Hope entered the race. Bye bye Hillary.
Right now I don’t see any serious challengers for the nomination, but its still early.
She’s not a “poor campaigner”, she’s just not as good as Obama (or she wasn’t in 2008), and not as good as Bill. But those are two of the best campaigners in the last half-century.
You keep saying this but never give any reason for anyone else to believe it.
She was the favorite in April 2007 and she’s the favorite in April 2015, but that is where the similarities end. Where she is now is more similar to where Gore was in 2000 or Dole in 1996 than Clinton 2008. Except that she’s in even better shape than Gore or Dole.
It will take a major black swan event (stroke, dead hooker, etc.) to take her out of this race. There is no way another Democrat picks up enough steam to win the nomination straight out.
She almost won – if Obama hadn’t ran a brilliant A+ primary campaign, she would have won. I’m sure there are plenty of mistakes in hindsight (and ignoring the caucus states was a massive mistake), but she still came very close to winning against an excellent candidate.
Bye bye Hillary.