You’re absolutely right, they usually are. But no need to tighten it. My point was that those qualifictions listed by Little Nemo are too tight. Vote on those qualities alone? Simply meet the the criteria of those four and a candidate gets a punch?
Um, no. The process of becoming a viable candidate for the office of POTUS tends have an additional filtering effect. By the time a candidate makes it as far as HRC has, it is fairly safe to assume that the bank robbers, for example, have been screened out.
No (with the exception of “competence in politicians”, whatever that means 
), I’m not making that argument. But I am saying that to vote on those qualities alone is misguided, especially when it comes down to the direct future of our country, and world.
I love how analogies take a direct “factual” taking here. Have bank robbers been filtered out? Yes, most likely. Has HRC’s intentions of bringing out the worst of our country under her thrown been ruled out? Hell no. That is what you were to take from the analogy.
Oh. Thanks for the clarification, because it certainly wasn’t clear from your original statement of the analogy.
I think we need another clarifying memo. Did you mean “throne” instead of “thrown”?
Yes, sorry. Just did a flip from 3rd shift to days on 3 hours sleep for a 12 hour shift.
Yeeks! Sorry to hear it. Get some rest.
Hillary has the big advantage of Bill. Effectively she gets two Vice-Presidents she can send out to represent America.
I scoff at your naivete.
I’d rather have one of the Dalton Gang in the Oval Office than some of the unindicted weasels we have in politics.
Because she is a centrist that appeals to independents and moderates of both parties. The only Republican with a ghost of a chance of beating her is Giuliani.
I apologize for the use of the word, “diehard.” I think that’s not the sense I want.
Why, instead, is there this presumption that people want Bill & Hillary back? When I was volunteering at local Democratic Party HQ last year, there were cutouts of them (or at least her) standing around. As someone who was not really a fan of them at the time, & became a Democrat after 2000, it was a tiny bit uncomfortable for me.
Maybe it’s just me, but I think the Dems would do well not to go back to the “only won a plurality” couple. Aren’t there people who would gladly throw the GOP of DeLay & Cheney out on their ear who will take a chance on Biden, Richardson, Edwards, or Obama, but sooner vote for a Giuliani or a McCain than “oh no, them again”?
–or even vote for Romney (to me, he exudes vapidity; but not everyone sees that) over the same old goobers from the 1990’s?
“Better the devil you know,” & all, but I feel like I know Biden well enough, I know McCain well enough, I don’t need Little Miss Self-Righteous Cronyist back again. Let someone else get a crack at it.
The nightmare of the Bush II era ? For that matter, I know Democrats who are suddenly nostalgic about Bush I, or Nixon.
Compared to Bush, most of our previous Presidents look good (though it makes me realize how ghastly Reagan’s foreign policy really was–Bush’s is the child’s version of “what made Reagan great”). But, to use a film metaphor, I like actually doing auditions instead of just giving the role to an established name.
I’m still baffled by your point.
Hillary Clinton is leading in the polls. The people being polled aren’t being given a dollar by some Democrat machine to say Hillary, they are just saying Hillary.
Who exactly do you think is shoving Hillary Clinton down whose throat?
That’s the whole point!
I feel like she’s being pushed down my throat but I don’t know who! There’s no squad of Hillary cheerleaders. Nobody going crazy for Hillary. When asking people who they like, almost all of them I know say, “I suppose I’ll have to vote for Hillary” Nobody I know enthusiastically wants to.
I would like to see a closer race, but we have yet to really have a race. Last time around we had the whole Dean deal where he lead during the foggy murky days, and when it got closer to primary days, Kerry won, and thus went on to the nomination. But it looks as if Hillary is going to win before anyone else even gets started. I think it’s funny but everyone seems to think of it as a foregone conclusion. I refused to think so for a while, but now I’m slowly accepting it. Hillary and Rudy it will be.
http://www.pollingreport.com/wh08dem.htm
As you can see, she has yet to ever be in peril of losing her lead. This is going back to '05 as well.
We are just wondering why is she the one chosen…
Anyway. I just feel like somebody’s already decided for me, and the inevitability has essentially ruined the whole process for me. If there are no upsets between now and sometime next year then I will be disappointed.
Although he was born the son of Welsh coal miner.
What bothers me is this:
Of course Hillary has an early lead (I started to say “had” but it’s still early by most people’s standards). She has the name recognition. A lot of people don’t even want to hear about Presidential races until 6 months to a year before the general election.
(Seriously, this is my mom’s pet peeve: She’s disgusted that the TV networks are talking about who’s ahead, & people have publicly declared & dropped out already, in October of the previous year, well before a primary.)
So HRC has name recognition & a sort of familiarity for people who aren’t politix buffs. Big deal. That has jack-all to do with whether she’s the best choice.
Nominating her is the equivalent of sticking with a Ford because you never test-drive a Saturn or a Toyota.
We have this great nominating process, & people keep trying to make it irrelevant.
When I asked people I knew in '04 who they were going to vote for, none of them said Bush. Yet he got elected.
Which just proves that we don’t know the right people.
(I do know people who are enthusiastic Hillary Clinton supporters, by the way.)
In any case, unless you are suggesting fraud or monumentally poor polling, she is leading the pack. She’s either leading because people like her (at least above her competition) or because people think she can win.
I tend to think it’s the former since the latter strategy would more likely lead to an Edwards nomination (white, male, from the south).
I don’t think you can say that someone is shoving her down your throat if she’s the actual popular choice. If you don’t think she is the actual popular choice, what explains the polls?
If people don’t start paying attention to this election until 6 months beforehand, won’t they have pretty much missed the boat?
I don’t see how anyone can argue that it’s still early. The first primaries aren’t that far off. January, in fact.
How can someone “test drive” a candidate after their state’s primary has passed?
Just because someone is a likely voter (which is the question asked on polls) doesn’t mean they aren’t likely to make up their minds about most of the slate at the last minute.
Enthusiasm is not required. All a candidate really needs from the voters is enough of a lukewarm preference to get them to pull that lever across from his/her name.
Another factor that I think has been ignored so far is the desire to get Republicans back as an opposition party, in the hopes that they will then exercise some much-needed oversight over the executive branch.
Some of us, irrespective of our personal feelings about the competence or goodwill of Bush or Cheney, are just plain scared at what this Administration has managed to do in terms of sabotaging transparency, competence and professionalism in the workings of government bureaucracy. The attorney firings at DoJ, the meddling with scientific reports from Federal agencies, the wholesale sealing of records, the promotion of political cronies over the heads of technical experts as leaders of agencies…all this worries the hell out of me.
It is not only a bad thing in itself to have to put up with for eight years, but it is a built-in excuse and encouragement for the next Chief Exec to continue and expand the same unsavory policies.
Frankly, I don’t believe that Hillary Clinton (or any other of the current candidates except possibly Kucinich and maybe Ron Paul) would necessarily resist such encouragement. I would like to think that Clinton would run the federal government with more accountability and transparency and less sheer political jobbery than the current Administration, just because it would be the right thing to do, but I certainly wouldn’t bet any large sum of money on it.
What I would bet large sums of money on, though, would be the eagerness of conservatives and Republicans to minutely scrutinize a Hillary Administration’s policies, and yell loudly and incessantly about anything sneaky or underhanded. Yes, this would make them hypocrites if they had smugly sat by without protest while the Bush Administration did similar (or worse) things. But I’d be willing to put up with their hypocrisy for the sake of having them do their proper job of checking and balancing, which I think they’d finally find the balls to do if they had the much-loathed Hillary in the Oval Office.
We need not only a better Executive Branch leader than the one we’ve got now, but better Congressional oversight of the Executive Branch than what we’ve got now. I think Hillary Clinton, unenthusiastic as I am about her in most respects, could at least provide us with both.