The Eve of Inevitability

Super Tuesday is upon us and each side of the election process, Republican and Democrat, is nearing the point of inevitability. Trump only needs to do moderately well tomorrow to acquire the last bit of momentum needed toward the Republican nomination. Hillary Clinton, after a landslide victory in South Carolina on Saturday, is ready to put down the Socialist threat and claim the democratic throne.

How did these elevations occur? A lot of people doubted one or the other possibility, even after early victories by these two contenders for the US Presidency.

Trump's Path to Ascendancy

Naysayers in the Republican party doubted, and liberals feared, Trump's chances from the very beginning. That he had a strong and devoted following was never contested. However, he had what was an apparently firm ceiling of 30-35% support among likely voters. Surely, thought his legion opponents, the party would eventually coalesce behind an establishment candidate and send this reality-TV star packing.

But this did not happen. And, really, by the time that this need to stop Trump became truly obvious, there were not many establishment candidates left. After the Iowa caucus, people looked to Jeb Bush and his uninspired campaign to stop the push for an outsider. But Jeb's number's hadn't left single digit support since the previous fall. For all the money that he had spent (over $100 million), Jeb had generated very little support. If you were one of Jeb's supporters before he left the race last week, you should feel flattered. He probably spent thousands of dollars just on you.

Besides Jeb. there was only Rubio, the junior senator from Florida. Cruz, Carson and Kasich could hardly be called establishment candidates and they each had a non-trivial portion of the republican vote. Cruz had even won Iowa, though there remain questions about the accuracy of the results from that caucus.

The establishment never had a chance. The truth is that there are not and never were going to be enough votes for any of the establishment candidates. The people supporting Cruz, Kasich and Carson were themselves troubling signs of cracks in the GOP foundation. Trump's ascendancy is due to the flood pouring in through those cracks.

High Hillary

For a while, it looked like Sanders really had some momentum. Even a cynical old bastard like me, who would never vote for a man who backed down so cowardly in the face of an interrupting BLM protest, was moved by his America campaign ad.

There was one major problem with the ad. It was super-white. I noticed this right away but I assumed that Clinton would have a hard time motivating black voters this time around. She did not. She certainly is not generating Obama levels of black voter participation but she is getting more than enough apparently. And this voting bloc was not enthused about Sanders' message. Like other democratic voting blocs, they wanted to know what politicians are going to give them specifically and Sanders' union background and free college offer was not considered relevant enough to black Americans, if the statements of leaders like John Lewis are representative.

So we head into Super Tuesday with several candidates holding on to slim hopes for a last-minute surprise. However, Trump and Clinton appear to be riding juggernauts toward a November showdown.

Republican Herd Stubbornly Refuses to Be Culled

As the contest in South Carolina approaches, I am amazed by the number of republican candidates that still hold on to some shred of an idea that they may pull this thing off and win the nomination. Of course, I admire their tenacity and respect the fact that they have some reason to cling to hope. This has been a season of unexpected events.

Not many people took the candidacy of Donald Trump very seriously when this campaign season began a year ago. No one took Bernie Sanders seriously then either but he has also made his potential for winning the Democratic candidacy very obvious, with unexpectedly strong support from more than just the youth vote. A number of lesser republican candidates have similarly experienced support that even they may not have believed possible.

Who would have expected that Jeb Bush would be fighting just to stay in contention? That Chris Christie and Rick Perry would already be out of the race after experiencing such national popularity as vocal and successful republican executives? Scott Walker was a major contender for this election a year ago and now hardly anyone remembers that he was in the race.

Instead, we have a junior Senator from Florida, Marco Rubio, contending for the candidacy with much more support than Jeb. We also have a Texan Senator, Ted Cruz, despised by apparently all of his colleagues, also challenging the unlikely billionaire front-runner, Donald Trump. Meanwhile, everyone is wondering if a neophyte neurosurgeon, Ben Carson, will make a comeback and regain his prior strong support for the nomination.

Given this background, you can't blame anyone for thinking that they might win. Nevertheless, I still blame George Pataki. Thankfully, he finally retired his run for the nomination several weeks ago.

With less than a week until the South Carolina decision, Trump remains in the lead. In fact, has increased his support, much to the chagrin of the media which still likes to trumpet headlines about the Donald's nonexistent losses. Immediately after the last debate, which media pundits claimed was a huge loss for Trump, they ran headlines saying that he had suffered terrible losses. Nevertheless, polls taken the following day showed the billionaire even more solidly in the lead.

The Iowa Caucus Approacheth!

Since the beginning, this blog has focused on the numbers more than the quality of the candidates. Hopefully, that can begin to change as hordes of candidates drop out of the race.

For the democrats, the nature of the coming battle is essentially decided.There is the status quo candidate in Hillary Clinton and the radical left candidate in Bernie Sanders. Personally, I have despised Sanders since he played pussy to the BLM protesters back in August. However, I am glad that he is on stage because I have long felt that the hard left of the Democratic Party has been ignored.

Both parties today are really amalgams of groups which have little in common. Clinton represents the status quo party but Sanders represents the significant segment of society that thinks that America is long overdue for socialist reforms. In fact, I have a crush on him simply because some of what he says resembles my dreams when I was a young democrat who still believed that the party represented blue-collar workers and their families. However, walking away from pond scum that should have been sent packing at that meeting in August soured whatever lingering sympathy I had for him. I am not interested in an America in which rude BLM protesters have any say.

On the republican side, the equation is only starting to become clear. While some are already calling for a Trump fait accompli, I am more cautious and, as always, remember the power of money, of which Bush has a lot.

Nevertheless, things have become more clear. At the very least, that fucking zombie candidate George Pataki has dropped out. His continuing candidacy was a sign that the republican party was still playing around and not getting serious about the election. The number of real republican candidates can now be counted on one hand:

• Donald Trump. Liberals long discounted the seriousness of his campaign because they are unable to imagine a world in which people do not agree with their views on some visceral level. In the minds of liberals, conservatives would agree with them if only they would engage in dialogue. Trump's ongoing popularity may finally be beginning to show libs that some Americans are simply out to get them, with no apologies.
• Ted Cruz. Long seen as an unofficial ally of Trump's, Cruz is starting to distinguish himself from the billionaire by courting evangelicals. He is increasingly looking like the hard-right Christian candidate, though his eligibility to be POTUS is even more in question than Obama's.
• Ben Carson. His star is definitely falling and I do him a favor just including him on this list. The era of white-guilt voting is over. Carson will not be the GOP candidate unless somebody literally kills three or four other candidates.
• Marco Rubio. The press tried hard to give the candidacy to this young Latino months ago but his appeal has waned. He is not the Christian candidate and he is not the white-anger candidate. In the GOP today, this means - no votes for you!
• Chris Christie. I am not a fan but but I commend him for sticking it out, fighting his way up from the kiddie table debates to be included in the final selection. He actually has more merit than many candidates in that he has held executive office and acted as a national figure for years now.

Notice that I forgot Jeb Bush? Okay, I admit that this was intentional. I do not want another member of the ruling Clinton-Bush-Obama dynasty to win but I actually think that his chances are decent. Money talks and Bush can hang in there for months to come. It does not matter if he loses Iowa and New Hampshire. He has the cash to wait in the wings and exploit any chaos in the electoral process to his own advantage.

GOP Candidates Slogging Their Way Into Winter

As much of the Midwest, a hotbed for Republican politics, was snowed in or iced over this last week, the slightly less numerous candidates for the GOP presidential nomination reached the end of the beginning in their election campaigns. Just two months to go until the Iowa caucus voices America's first decision with regard to each candidate's legitimacy.

There are not quite so many of them now and the dynamics have changed somewhat. Donald Trump is still a leader among them but his primary rival of just a few weeks ago, Ben Carson, has seen his star decline a little. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have gained significant support in the polls. Jeb Bush has remained hobbled with single-digit poll numbers while some others, such as Bobby Jindal, have given up in the face of nearly non-existent support. Unbelievably, George Fucking Pataki is still officially in this race.

Here are the candidates that remain believably in this race. While Jeb Bush's numbers suggest he should possibly bow out, I will continue to include him. As I have stated before, his money can keep him in this race while he waits for one disaster or another to overtake his less-milquetoast competitors so that his blandness can finally shine.

1. Donald Trump continues to lead the pack with percentage of support somewhere in the mid-twenties. It depends on where and when you poll. Some polls have shown him briefly as high as the low 40s but these gains seem to be ephemeral. Furthermore, the Donald continues to say things that alienate, at least for a time, his less entrenched supporters. For example, he has come out in support of waterboarding and apparently made fun of a handicapped reporter's disabilities during a press conference.
2. Ben Carson has been brought down a few notches, particularly as a result of various statements he has made with regard to religious topics. He has said openly that Muslims should be prevented form holding the Presidency and he was ridiculed for speculating that the pyramids of Egypt were for holding grain rather than the corpses of deceased Pharaohs. In general, someone has made a point of degrading Carson's intelligence. I suspect that this was Trump, who has frequently bullied people with regard to their intelligence. Just look at the way that he hounded Perry out of the race.
3. Marco Rubio has certainly made a run for Golden Boy if not for the presidency. Some competent work in the debates has brought the spotlight to this young senator for Florida. In addition, his willingness to take on his former mentor, Jeb Bush, has earned him kudos from some voters.
4. It has been said in some circles that Trump is really running interference for Ted Cruz. The idea, apparently, is that Trump will eventually drop out and his supporters will have nowhere else to go but the Cruz camp. By then, Rand Paul and other potential recipients of Trumps support will have all dropped out. Whether or not such a conspiracy exists, things may play out that way. Cruz rivals Rubio now for 3rd place.

There is still a pack of others but there viability is lessening. Carly Fiorina has not made any headlines recently. Jeb Bush is still a gelding among stallions at this point. Chris Christie has managed to stir the pot with regard to certain statements made by Donald Trump but he has repeatedly replied that he is getting sick of being asked about Trump. He should be wary of getting what he wished for. The Donald is the only issue that gets him in the news.

Let Their Numbers Be Diminished: The GOP Herd Thins

Ignore the man on the far right. Everyone else does.

The first primary is still months a way but a reduction in the numbers of GOP candidates seems overdue. I am not chiming in with Trump to harass underdogs into dropping out. According to the Donald, anybody with less than 1% of the average polling should have already withdrawn. However, it sure seems like some of the men running for office should have taken the hint a while ago.


Who's Out

If you have been paying attention at all, you probably know that the Republican field of presidential candidates was pretty large this time around. Technically, it is always large as there are scores of people running obscure campaigns every time an election rolls around. This time, though, there were about 17 or 18 with recognizable faces and some chance of actually being nominated to the official candidacy of the Republican Party.

Since that inauspicious start, there have been a handful of dropouts and or demotions. Rick Perry was the first major name to drop out. His end was particularly surprising because he made a stronger run in 2012 and seemed to have put much more effort into the race this time around. He even left his job as governor of Texas in January 2015, staking everything on this run.

Scott Walker dropped out a few weeks ago. His early departure was also surprising, considering his background as conservative stalwart and successful office holder.

What is much more surprising, though, is the identities of some candidates who continue to stagger along with absolutely no chance of winning. I mean, for the love of Pete, why in the fuck is George Pataki still in this race? He is like that annoying guy who shows up uninvited to your party and just never goes home.

Nevertheless, Pataki has been shown the door, even if he has not made any movement in that direction. The fourth GOP debate has been scheduled and Pataki, along with Lindsey Graham, is scheduled neither to appear on the main stage nor at the kiddie table where the second-string waits for an injury on the field to let their stars shine, These two have not officially recused themselves ( I am not even sure that Pataki is really alive. He may be a drone) but we can finally count them out and focus on the real contenders now.

Who's In

The big kids' table will now host just eight primary candidates.

• Donald Trump. Of course, He still has about a quarter of the GOP electorate unwaveringly behind him and garners even more support on specific questions when it comes to who people trust with regard to economic or foreign policy issues.
• Ben Carson. He was actually leading the Donald in polls out of Iowa just a week ago. Since then, though, there has been a barrage of attacks on his past and his presentation of himself. My gut instinct was to suspect the liberal media of going after a successful black man who was not in their camp. Now that I have given it more thought, though, I have to wonder if Trump is not behind these leaks and attacks.
• Carly Fiorina. She's still running, even if the harridans on the View think she is ugly.
• Ted Cruz. He resonated with likely voters at the last debate and has secured a spot at this table until the primaries come, in my opinion.
• Marco Rubio. The young senator from Florida is surging after smacking Jeb Bush around at the last debate. I think we can also expect Rubio to stay among the leaders until the primaries really begin to cull the GOP numbers.
• Rand Paul. This was a surprise. I have been daily waiting for him to throw in the towel but he has been given another prime time opportunity. It may be his last but, for the meantime, he is among the leaders.
• Jeb Bush. His campaign is the very definition of fizzle but he has great big boatloads of money. No one should discount the staying power of cash, I really think that he is vulnerable this time around, though, and probably needs to make a good showing if he wants to be included in the next gathering of the cool kids.
• John Kasich. Fucking unbelievable. I had even forgotten that he was running. Not sure how this GOP zombie secured a place among the frontrunners.

Who's on the Way Out

There will be just four candidates at the early debate for also-rans.

• Bobby Jindal. Yeah, I don't get how he is still invited to anything. I have nothing against the man politically or personally but his campaign makes Jeb Bush's campaign look energetic and virile.
• Rick Santorum. He must still be getting credit for pulling off a surprise win in Iowa some years ago.
• Mike Huckabee. He seems like a friendly guy but he has made the most effete run for the presidency since Fred Thompson.
• Chris Christie. His demotion surprised me. I am not a fan but he has sounded pretty good compared to the non-presences of guys like Kasich. If anyone returns from the kiddie table to the front of the pack, it will be Christie.

So the running has been reduced to twelve. I am expecting a few resignations in the wake of this next debate. It will be interesting to see who capitulates and who continues forward with stubborn obstinacy (I'm talking to you, Pataki!).

Donald Trump: Bullying Opponents Out of the Race

Donald Trump is looking to bully another GOP opponent out of the race. It is becoming obvious that this was and is a major technique for Trump in business. Using pure, masculine aggressiveness to improve your position and drive away weaker contenders. It probably works well for him in the business arena but it remains to be seen if it will work in the long term in politics.

You're Fired!

Trump is forecasting that Rand Paul will soon drop out of the race and takes credit for pushing him into this decision.Rand Paul generally garners about 2% of the vote in polls conducted among likely GOP voters. All this after years of hard work and a much bugger percentage gained by his father in GOP races in 2012. In fact, Ron Paul went all the way to the General Convention and still got 190 votes when Romney essentially had the thing locked up.

Trump is probably right. Rand Paul, as well as several others, look poised to bow out of the race. Though there is still a long way to go and anything can happen, with so many contenders it just makes sense for someone with roughly 1% of the vote to step out. What is remarkable about this moment in American politics is how it appears that a leading candidate is actively trying to push people out of the race.

I an not sure that this is a good idea for Donald Trump in the long-term. It may be satisfying and it may appeal to his desire for conflict, but it may also strengthen his more popular opponents. One wonders how many Paul voters are likely to come into Trump's camp rather than throw in their lot with Rubio, Cruz or Fiorina. Paul was known for his libertarian views and it is anyone's guess where his support may go.

The Chink in Trump's Armor

At the same time, Donald Trump seems to have displayed, for the first time, a weakness. He already admits that he has a fallback plan for failure. If his numbers get down to Scott Walker levels, he claims, he will just go back to running his business.

Is this an accidental slip that reveals some psychic weariness of the whole race? Is Trump already thinking about quitting and going back to his natural realm in business? Surely, the few times that his handlers have convinced him to moderate his remarks or apologize must rankle him. Perhaps Trump will make his own exit before anyone expects it.

That certainly won't happen now. Donald Trump still has a loyal core of followers giving him roughly 25% of the support available for GOP candidates. I am not sure that he will make it to the primaries due to his own quirky nature but I am sure that he will continue to entertain us for a few more weeks at least,

Who Is Marco Rubio?

After the second GOP debate, three top candidates were reconfirmed in their positions: Donald Trump, Carly Fiorina and Ben Carson. An additional member of the pack stepped into the foreground: Marco Rubio.

Some Biographical Data

Marco Rubio is one of the younger republicans running for national office this year. As of this writing, he is just 44 years old. If elected, he would be one of the youngest men to ever hold the highest office in the land.

Youth is not the only thing that distinguishes Rubio from past and present GOP candidates. He is a Cuban-American from Florida, one of three serving in the US Senate. His youth and ethnicity single him out at a time when liberals are more likely than ever to depict the Republican Party as a party of old, white men.

Furthermore, Rubio is a Roman Catholic. Only one Roman Catholic, the democrat John Kennedy, has ever served as US President, though the US population is more than 20% Catholic.

Political Background

Marco Rubio won his first election in 1999, when he narrowly defeated an opponent for the Florida State House of Representatives. In just three years, he became the Majority leader in that representative body. By 2009 he was ready for bigger things and ran for the US Senate seat that had been opened by resignation. He defeated the governor of that state, Charlie Crist, in that election.

As junior Senator from Florida, Rubio has represented ideas that have become fairly typical for Republicans today. He won his seat with strong Tea Party support. He has since distinguished himself somewhat from that political group with his stance on immigration reform (rather than enforcement) and his call for strengthening the military.

He takes a strong anti-abortion stance and received a B+ from the NRA on the issue of gun control. He is less republican on climate change, essentially taking an agnostic stance.

It remains to be seen whether Rubio will have the organization behind him to manage this sudden limelight. However, if his past is any indicator, he has been aiming for greater things since the very beginning.

GOP Front Runners

Even though we are far away from the Iowa caucus on February 1, things have really heated up in the Republican presidential race. Out of the crowd of some 15 or 16 remaining candidates, there are four distinct front runners coming out of the second debate.

• Donald Trump

Trump came away from the debate with fewer adherents apparently.

The latest polls have him at 24% support. Earlier surveys had put him above 30%. Most people seemed to think he either just held his own or did poorly at the forum of ten leading republicans that convened last week. So many posts are devoted to the Donald that I won't waste more space on him here.

• Ben Carson

Carson appears to be essentially tied with Carly Fiorina for second. Each of them comes in with 15% of the total GOP support. For Carson, this is a letdown because he was a strong second in the week leading up to the second GOP debate. I have already dedicated a lot of space to Carson so I will leave it at that.    

• Carly Fiorina

The former HP CEO made major gains after this last debate. There was a lot of buzz about her but not much movement in the polls prior to that. The expectations were high after her better-than-expected showing at the non-debate held outside the first GOP debate. She accomplished her mission and rose to vie with arson for second-place in republican hearts,

• Marco Rubio
  
  Someone was destined to rise up out of the remaining pack and make a respectable showing with these three leaders. Marco Rubio finally lifted his head above the rest and stood tall with Trump, Fiorina, and Carson. The junior US Senator from Florida since 2011, he is just 44 years old and notably hispanic. 

I'll give Rubio his own column shortly. In the meantime, I am noticing that the party which liberals characterize as old, white and male is supporting black, hispanic and female candidates, one of whom is just 44 years old.