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The 2016 Presidential Candidates

Scolenex said:
The Donald's lead in the polls is growing. He really is rubber and the other candidates are glue. Whenever one of the other GOP candidates lobs an attack at Trump, it always backfires, at least so far.

I underestimated trends. At the moment Americans faith in the Republican party is at all time low, and most of the drop came from Republicans. They aren't flocking to the Democrats. They loathe Democrats more than their own party. Supporting Trump lets Republican primary voters thumb their nose at the Republican establishment without supporting the Democrats. You can see the pattern elsewhere as among the other GOP candidates, the anti-establishment candidates are all rising with Trumps wave and the establishment candidates are slipping.

The logical part of my brain says Trump can't last long, but he has shown no signs of abating yet.

The conventional wisdom is that when the field thins out the anti-Trump vote will coalesce around fewer and fewer candidates. Problem is Trump shot up 7 points since then. Other candidates who are up include Carson who has openly mused on being Trumps running mate, Cruz who has openly defended Trump multiple times and met with him privately, and Fiorina who like Trump is a modestly successful business person who never held political office before.

Now I'm interested to watch the bottom tier candidates fall. My guess is maybe one will quit before the Iowa and New Hampshire caucuses, but I expect the field to thin out very fast after the caucuses. I'm betting one of these four will be the first to fall.

-Rick Perry is out of money (kind of) though he has a well-funded Super Pac, he had to quit paying his South Carolina staff. He is not even polling well in his home state.

-Walker has twisted himself in knots trying to hold contradictory positions and people are calling him on it.like

-Rand Paul has failed to mobilize the fanbase of his father Ron Paul and has similar problems with fence straddling that Walker has. Also he weakened himself attacking both Trump and Christie. Now a lot of his top staff was caught doing illegal things.

-Chris Christie faced early scrutiny and it buried him. I don't know if he is more corrupt than other politicians, or equally corrupt just not good at hiding it. Despite his many scandals, people like to focus on the fact that he's overweight.
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You're quite the political Panda aren't you?! :)
 
If he had a prehensile tail, would he be a swinging voter?
 
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spawning of Bob said:
If he had a prehensile tail, would he be a swinging voter?
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No, my voting patterns are too consistent. The term "swing votes" is not meant to be taken literally. Just like I should not get environmentalists mad at me if I say I wish the North American gerrymander went extinct.
 
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Arli said:
The stupid flows from his mouth when it is open.
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I have heard pundits say the same thing about Biden.

The mind boggles at the prospect of a Trump vs. Biden election campaign.
 
Apparently if Biden was to enter the race now he would take more votes away from Hillary than Sanders. That would make Sanders the top Democrat candidate. So Biden is probably continue waiting for now, and watch how everything goes, and if Hillary has an implosion in her presidential election campaign.
 
I'm going to paraphrase some articles I read and simplify the candidates.

To figure out what the Marhlect is going on, know that there are essentially three types of candidates.

Career politicians either think they have a good chance of being president or they expect to lose the nomination but expect to get enough of a base to secure a nomination in 2020 or 2024 and/or snag a juicy appointed position should their party win the presidency.. They will keep running until they think they are likely to fail. Notice the first two candidates to drop out are of this mold. Likely the third and fourth will be from this group. These candidates will leave when they run out of money and supporters, especially if a messy failure at their party's nomination will endanger their current posts. Pataki and Jindal are vulnerable because they have very few supporters but they are largely ignored. They can quietly subsist with very little in the polls for some time. Christie is the most vulnerable since he can't hide under the radar. If he does poorly, the embarrassment will harm his future political prospects. Rubio is a special case. He has a decent number of supporters both in terms of manpower and money, but his state of Florida specifically prohibits running for Florida state office while running for other office. Thus, if Rubio is not leading the nomination pack by Florida's deadline, he'll likely pull out of the presidential race to save his Senate seat. I expect two out of three of the low polling Democrats (Webb, Chafee, and O'Malley) to drop off shortly before or after the first two caucuses. I expect one of the three (not sure which) to reveal his true colors as an ideological purist with a pet issue. Bush, Kasich, and Rubio are the three establishment candidates with resources. The Republican nominee will probably be one of those three. There is a tiny chance that if the four narcissists stop fighting each other and work together, it will be one of them. I'd be a lot of bamboo that Hillary Clinton will win the nomination, but I would not stake my life on it. I'd say Sanders has a small, but real chance of winning the nomination.
Clinton, Webb, Chafee, O'Malley, Christie, Bush, Kasich, Rubio, Jindal, Pataki, Santorum, Paul, Walker, Perry

Ideological Purists don't expect to win anything. They wouldn't mind being president but it's an acceptable consolation prize to regularly climb onto the soapbox and endorse their favorite pet issue. They know running for president will give them an audience for their issue and might sway the winning candidate(s) at least slightly towards their point of view. These candidates will linger in the race as long as they possibly can. They don't care about their careers (much) they don't care about their image (much). As long as they can espouse their issue, they will be content. The most vulnerable is Huckabee, if he can't pick up some delegates in religiously Conservative states, he'll get egg on his face and bow out. Paul is setting up a late campaign season competing in western states and ignoring Iowa and New Hampshire, so he's planning to whether some early defeats. If Graham was worried about losing, he would have already left. Sanders has enough support to give Clinton a run for her money, at least for a while.
Sanders (I want to fight Wall Street and the special interests who toady to the wealthy)
Graham (I want to bomb ISIS and all other foes)
Cruz (I demand the obstruction of all things not-conservative)
Huckabee (I miss the 1950s and am not aware that the Andy Griffith Show was actually a work of fiction)
Paul (I believe in Libertarianism, sort of) (he compromises Libertarian values when convenient so he's listed twice)

Narcissists just like to see their name on the ballot and they like to be talked about. They will stay in the race until they are utterly humiliated or completely ignored. Note what qualifies as utter humiliation is a high bar because controversy attracts attention and buzz. Except for Cruz who arguably shouldn't be in this category, all the candidates here are retired and literally have nothing else to do with their time. They have nothing to lose if this doesn't work. All of them are polling fairly well in early primary states. None of them are going to leave until the career politician field thins out a lot. I'm not ready to bet bamboo on this, but I think Trump is actually more likely to leave first than the others. He has been leading the pack for so used to being the pack leader that if he falls to the middle of the pack, he'll view that as embarrassing. Given his personality he will prefer to leave loudly rather than leave quietly like I predict the others will do. The others would be perfectly content with the middle of the pack. Cruz is hoping to outlast the other narcissists and use his tiny iota of political backing to coalesce the "I want an outsider" vote.
Trump,Cruz (listed twice), Fiorina, Carson

I do not think Biden will enter the race. He is too rattled by the death of his son to make political moves at this time. He's not an attention-seeker and I don't think he has a single beloved pet issue. He might try to play kingmaker or make a run for president next cycle though.
 
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Scolenex said:
...In any event I would be half my bamboo that Jeb will win the GOP nomination (he has raised more funds than any two or three other GOP candidates) and all of my bamboo that Hillary will win the Democratic nomination (she has no real challenger)...
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NIGHTBRINGER said:
I hope you don't go too hungry with all that bamboo you wagered away. :p
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After BOTH bets are settled the Panda's stash of bamboo should be up 150%.
 
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pendrake said:
After BOTH bets are settled the Panda's stash of bamboo should be up 150%.
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Not quite, let's say for simplicity's sake he has 100 sticks of bamboo.

He places a bet for half his bamboo (50 sticks) on Jeb, leaving him with 50 sticks remaining.

He now places a bet for all his bamboo (50 sticks remaining) on Clinton.

He loses 50 off of Jeb and wins 50 off of Clinton. So he breaks even.
 
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The way I figured it he had 100 bamboo. He called his bookie and said, "put 50 on Jeb and 100 on Hilary". (Big trouble if he lost both...imagine a bookie with a Krox enforcer.) But, lose 50, win 100, net = +50. :)
 
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pendrake said:
The way I figured it he had 100 bamboo. He called his bookie and said, "put 50 on Jeb and 100 on Hilary". (Big trouble if he lost both...imagine a bookie with a Krox enforcer.) But, lose 50, win 100, net = +50. :)
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Too risky for my blood... you can only bet what you have.
 
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I ate it all before going to the betting parlor so everything is good.
 
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NIGHTBRINGER said:
You know certain places take out your kneecaps if you can't pay up
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1) I'm too adorable formidable to kneecap
2) I never actually made the bet because I ate the bamboo.

Any event I'm not the only political pandit to seriously miss-predict the primaries early on. That's why I'm not going to bother making more predictions. That and the GOP frontrunner makes me want to upchuck my bamboo.

The short version is this. The United States has a two-party system. Very few people have a set of political beliefs that personally match one of these two parties. This has forced both parties to form coalitions of different interest groups Right now both the Republican and Democratic coalitions are dealing with internal challenges to the status quo.
 
Hmm. I think the only problem with the batman pic is that Trump/joker has its/his hair under control. XD
 
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