I guess I just don’t see it burning itself out. All the things that should discourage them just wind up stoking the fires even more.
What’s wrong with a few jokes in the “crop”? That’s democracy. The Dems have had Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Denis Kicinich and Mike Gravel. I think the US has had a long history of side show politics. We can all laugh at many of the GOP candidates this time, and I’ve done my share. But in the end, the process has done a pretty good job of weeding out the nut cases. Maybe it’ll be different this time, but let’s wait and see.
Well, neither Kucinich nor Gravel ever were leading polls or the focus of the process. Sharpton and Jackson have a lot of crazy ideas and character flaws, but Jackson’s campaigns in the 80s were more or less about poverty issues, and he was running as an actual candidate with an actual intent to win the nomination. It’s of a whole different stripe than Herman Cain yelling a sequence of numbers like a schizophrenic as part of his fake campaign.
I apologize. I was looking for a different word than “crackpot,” perhaps non-mainstream or even “fringe.” I did want to evince non-partisanship and include a Democrat, thought of Jackson …
AndBTW, I even voted for George McGovern for President.
The problem with that position is that Jackson, Sharpton, and even Kucinich were only flash in the pans with no actual shot. And I haven’t even heard of Mike Gravel. While they campaigned, and raised money, it was never about winning, at least for Sharpton and Jackson. They are (were) the equivalent of Palin… raising issues, organizing, but not really serious about running for office. I don’t remember ever seeing anyone on your list being taken seriously by the media and by the party itself.
But now, at least in the GOP, we’ve got genuinely scary people running for president.
I can’t think of a democrat who has run, and been taken seriously, who has viewpoints as extreme as Perry or Bachman. And both have been at least TREATED as serious contenders.
The GOP is busted, and the Democrats are to weak to be as mean as they need to be to take advantage of that fact. I have no idea what is going to happen next year. I am genuinely worried about how this vote is going to go.
I like to think of Ron Paul as the GOP Al Sharpton. When Al ran back in 2004, I knew he wasn’t going to win, and I didn’t vote for him. But I sure did enjoy him in debates, and I appreciated what he did. We need someone up on the stage who doesn’t rely on talking points, who will say things no one else will. Even if they are straight-up crazy things. If anything it forces the other candidates to talk about them. So if anything, you get to hear candidates discussing things that you normally wouldn’t hear.
Even though Paul’s not doing too shabby, he’s not gonna win. As long as he stays in the race, though, he’s doing okay. I want him to keep pushing out those anti-Newt ads, at the very least. (He can keep those crazy views on taxes to himself, though).
The thing is that Mitt Romney WISHES he was a crackpot. At least crackpots have charisma. He might be a helluva guy, but if I were voting in the primary, I wouldn’t be too thrilled about him either. I don’t know if I’d be crazy enough to vote for the other jokers, but I wouldn’t be voting for him.
I think the racial aspect is at least overstated, and possibly fictional, and I think the fact that it gets so much attention is entirely the Republicans’ fault. They have an airtight defense against the charge that they refuse to offer. That is, it really doesn’t matter who the Democratic Party nominates for President, they will find some way to “prove” that he is unAmerican, likely a traitor but certainly completely out of the mainstream. If Joe Leiberman had been the nominee, we would be talking about the anti-semitism in the Republican Party, and they would be insisting that he is just as much of a Communist as Obama (which would be true).
The problem is, if they admit this fact, then they reveal to [del]their base[/del] Fox News viewers that the whole thing is Brechtian drama designed to angry up the blood.
This argument kind of reminds me of people who tried to draw an equivalency between the Birthers and Truthers. Sure, they are equally crazy, but the difference is that prominent elected Republicans were openly admitting to Birtherism, while no actual officeholder was arguing that Bush was behind 9/11.
By the same token, none of the wacko Dems have ever led in the primary polls, unless you count Howard Dean (who wasn’t crazy at all, just overly enthusiastic).
They got their asses handed to them in 2008, and decided they hadn’t been right-wing enough. Then, Zeus save us, they turned on the crazy in 2010 and did better. If they lose again in 2012 (save us, Odin), they’ll say it was because they veered left.
Quite the opposite, actually. Palin and Trump are not candidates, Paul is a little too over-the-edge as an isolationist for my liking. But any of the others stand head and shoulders above the clown currently in the White House.
Well, we agree they’re better clowns.
I don’t normally have a problem with you, so please read this as me attacking the sentiment and not you as such.
I get it that not everyone is thrilled with The Obamalama, it would be a dull planet indeed if we were that homogenous. But what I don’t get is how BO can be called a “clown” when his competetor demonstrated his own senility/irresponsibility with his choice of running-mate. McCain/Palin would have been a wise choice, reasonably beyond being labeled “clown”? Seriously? I firmly believe the only reason McCain is alive today is because he escaped the stress of the presidency, which happily prevented a President Palin situation. Which is not to say I agree with how BO handles discord–I think he’s a bit of a pussy and that what we really need is someone with his brains and Douglas MacArthur’s intolerance of bullshit. But perhaps those two traits are mutually exclusive.
That said, I think over a beer just about any two given Dopers could at least agree that DC is a circus, and that the presidential election will always boil down to “which clown do we want running it?” With that metaphor I could embrace BO’s label as 'clown."
And the same is true of you and me.
So what? When one of these “whackos” gets the nomination, you will have a point. Otherwise, it’s just inventing a category (leading in the polls) for convenient sniping. That category is meaningless, since the only poll that matters is the summation of the primary votes that pick the final candidate.
I think that was his point, that they can’t.
Or in the case of these clowns, Crap Circles.
The Republican electorate has made the qualifications for their candidate to be that they must be either mind-numbingly stupid or batshit crazy, preferably both. The party is merely giving the people what they want. I have no idea how Santorum (from the Latin for “asshole”) hasn’t had his day in the sun yet. That Mitt Romney is going to win the nomination despite the fact that 3/4 of his own party can’t stand him tells you all you need to know about this field.
On the Democratic side, we’ve not had anyone as batshit crazy as the least of these fools. I’ll take a Jackson-Sharpton ticket any day of the week over Bachmann-Palin. Both Jackson and Sharpton are good men (if you just overlook the Tawana incident with Sharpton) and care more about the 99% than the entire Republican field combined. For all their real and perceived shortcomings, neither was ever a front-runner candidate. As far as morals go, the worst of our lot was Edwards, but other than that he would have been a fine president. Give me an Edwards presidency over a Paul presidency any time. For all of his sins, Edwards never published racist newsletters.
If it’s meaningless, why bother polling? The polls don’t determine the nominee, but they certainly determine which nominees are credible and which are not. That’s why candidates have already dropped out even though the Iowa caucuses haven’t even begun.
You don’t think that just the fact that there are candidates who embrace ignorance, lie, and just exude all around kookiness - and that they resonate strongly with the GOP base enough to be considered serious candidates - is in itself problematic? Is there no point at which extreme, ridiculous, stupid views become widely embraced that it’s cause for concern in and of itself?
The fact that you can say that Cain and Bachmann stand “head and shoulders” above Obama helps me to understand the exact level of your powers of reasoning.
Their sole attribute that makes them better for you is the “R” after their name. That you’d be comfortable with a President Bachmann running the country with her pathetic knowledge about world politics and her finger on the nuclear button… well it tells me volumes about your powers of discernment.
He meant on Obama’s shoulders, it’s a clown act they do.