US Presidential Election 2016

[Ansem]

This thread is to discuss the upcoming presidential election in 2016. While we do have about a year until the actual elections, a few political figures have shown interest in running for president. As for myself, I do believe that Hilary Clinton will run under the Democrat banner, if not Joe Biden. As for republicans, no dice, least not any that I have heard of.

[Cowboy Karimov]

CHRISTIE 2016

[Randa]

Republicans are probably gonna push Paul Ryan. He's a decent choice at the moment and could probably beat Clinton, but he'd get beat pretty easily by Biden. Christie is probably the Repiblicans best bet to actually win, but the democrats are going to continue their three year job of making shit up about him so he loses the independent votes.

[Ansem]

CHRISTIE 2016

There may be a few delays before this becomes a thing huehuehue

Republicans are probably gonna push Paul Ryan. He's a decent choice at the moment and could probably beat Clinton, but he'd get beat pretty easily by Biden. Christie is probably the Repiblicans best bet to actually win, but the democrats are going to continue their three year job of making shit up about him so he loses the independent votes.

I was thinking Jeb Bush or Rand Paul for republican ticket, though I doubt the former would get the nomination. He has some stark liberal tendencies(supporting common core would be one). It would be nice to have a moderate republican president to loosen up some of the centralized power, and Jeb Bush fit all of these categories, but he would never get the primary. Even if he did, he'd probably lose to Clinton as Americans will remember how the last Bush left America. I liked Ron Paul, Rand Paul's father. Don't know enough about the guy to formulate a solid opinion on him.

I feel as if Ryan is too far to the right for my tastes. In addition, he hasn't shown interest in running for '16. I also disagree with you saying that he could easily beat Clinton as she has been in the scene for so long, and Paul Ryan is merely the running mate of the defeated Mitt Romney. Christie's hopes for for president was crushed by the bridge scandal. I do recall Bobby Jindal showing interest in running for '16. He has a winning complexion(if you get what I mean), and if the Republican's are smart, they would nominate him. It is clear that the boring old white man isn't working, they need a new face. American's are obsessed with maintaining the tolerant image, so that may swing a few of the independent votes in Jindal's way. I also do recall that he has liberal tendencies that his Republican colleagues may disagree with, that may hurt his nomination.

[Arch]

Hillary Clinton runs and walks away with the Democratic nomination against a few minor candidates (Former Govs. Martin O'Malley of Maryland and Brian Schweitzer of Montana seem like the most likely "challengers from the left."

Republicans end up with a divisive, draw-out primary. Christie will not win, but damned if he'll go down without a fight. Jeb Bush declines to run, as does Paul Ryan.

- 1st Scott Walker

- 2nd Chris Christie

- 3rd Rand Paul

- 4th Bobby Jindal

Walker keeps it closer than expected, but Clinton grinds out the win. It's not going to be quite as exciting as everyone's hyping it up to be.

Edited April 15, 2014 by Arch

[dondon151]

i thought huckabee was a GOP contender

[Lord Raven]

I feel pretty good about O'Malley given that many parts of Maryland have had a consistently good economy and we've been in the Top 3 in terms of education the entire time he has been here.

For all you drug war dudes out there Maryland just decriminalized marijuana and we allows gay marriage around two years back. Also have a relatively large amount of diversity in our schools (once you go to the central part, between Baltimore and DC - everything else is purely white but also less densely populated, I do believe the majority of hte population is between Baltimore and DC due to quality of living/education and proximity to places like NASA/Goddard, DC, College Park/UMBC/Hopkins, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, and Northrup Grummon to name a few).

I think as mayor of Baltimore he actually did a really good job cleaning things up to an extent - you need the power of god to rid the streets of major amounts of crime but he managed to take out a bunch of the gang violence and major heroin dealings. Granted there's still problems there but it's a lot less of a shithole than it used to be. (And I do believe the system is quite racist with regards to the support they get, and that's a tough thing to fix because there are certain things that seemed to be instated after O'Malley became Governor).

I also know that he does a ton (in terms of support) for the islamic community - my dad has catered to him for quite a few events at the governors house where they hosted prayer during Ramadan, supposedly one of the first if not the first time such a thing had been done. Great PR move at worst. I've met him a few times and he's a relatively nice and open guy (better than I would imagine your average politician to be behind the scenes). The road to the White House changes everything, though (see: John McCain)

Though of course the idea is how that would translate to the bigger stage. Romney was against the affordable care act despite creating something similar in Massachusetts, but the size of the country and variance between all 50 states creates other issues entirely.

Edited April 15, 2014 by Lord Raven

[Anacybele]

I don't care who wins, as long as it's someone who can clean up Obama's shit. He tried, and I commend the guy for having the courage to try taking care of the problems Bush left behind, but he just couldn't do it.

Democrat or Republican, doesn't matter to me. We've had good presidents from both sides.

Edited April 15, 2014 by Anacybele

[Sifer]

*reads all of the above, informative and well thought out posts*

well, err... I am liberal -democrat so I guess I am going to side with the democrats. I just do not agree on the republican side of marriage and the fact they will not raise taxes no matter what. But I will do more research when the primaries actually start and make a decision then.

[Klokinator]

I just pray we don't elect the next president based on age, sex, race, or anything along the lines of "Well they LOOK like they'll make a good president." or "We can finally have X minority as president!". I'll take an Asian president, a native American president, any president, so long as they can do a good job and aren't corrupt.

But good luck with not being corrupt. Seems that just goes hand in hand with being a politician these days.

[Tryhard]

Politics is generally pretty fucked nowadays, but from someone not from the US it's rather absurd to see the elections treated as a sport, more or less. I guess I'll never understand it.

[Klokinator]

I've always felt that it's more of a deliberate ploy by the leaders of the country to swamp the country with more elections than the average american can give a shit about. County, mayor, police chief, president, senators, congress, all of them are too much to keep up with so rather than even pick just one, we say "whatever who gives a shit" and pick none. Or, you can devote yourself to following political races 24/7, but it takes up all your goddamn time, and you don't have time to do anything else aside from the necessities. My grandmother can keep up with it because she's retired and watches TV twelve hours a day. I have class, school, projects, hobbies... I can't keep up with Christie's actions VS Walker's. I can't even remember their names for more than 10 minutes.

So many names, so many offices, too much to keep track of. That's why it's easy to go corrupt. Nobody has the time to pay attention to you.

[Rehab]

On Ron Paul: not even getting into >libertarians<, the guy has a whole pit of skeletons that could be dragged out if he ever became a serious threat in an election.

Thinks the civil rights act didn't do its job to the extent he wouldn't have voted for it [in the most charitable interpretation of his words] and was the sole vote against a symbolic motion commemorating it in 2004, thinks courts shouldn't strike down anti-sodomy laws because of constitutional bugaboos having to do with the Establishment clause of the first amendment and a right to privacy [again in the most charitable interpretation, that doesn't think he's homophobic] [he also thinks the federal government shouldn't fund organizations that present, quote, "homosexual lifestyles" or gay marriage in a positive light, so, uh], called Roe v. Wade, quote, "one of the most disastrous rulings of this century," life at conception blah blah blah (curious he appears to be fine with the federal government legislating that), thinks we should go back to the gold standard and abolish the federal reserve, was the sole vote against divesting US federal government investments in corporations doing business with the genocidal government of the Sudan, wants to withdraw from the UN, has problems with: social security, public education, and birthright citizenship, and it goes on.

Goonpost dump, a good bit of which cursory searches confirm

So do a lot of politicians have skeletons, yeah, but, just, I don't know how -all that and more- gets elected.

Edited April 15, 2014 by Rehab

[Lord Raven]

Yeah it's come to a point where the Libertarian party is sincerely only Libertarian economically; socially they're incredibly conservative which is generally the opposite of what a social Libertarian would agree with.

I don't care who wins, as long as it's someone who can clean up Obama's shit. He tried, and I commend the guy for having the courage to try taking care of the problems Bush left behind, but he just couldn't do it.

Democrat or Republican, doesn't matter to me. We've had good presidents from both sides.

Lol what did obama do that wasn't an extension of what Bush did? And why does the president get the blame for an incompetent congress?

I don't understand why you'd blame problems on the president when the system in general requires the collusion of multiple different factions. Obama can't directly introduce new legislation or anything, all he can really do is veto and if all that comes out of congress is bad ideas or no ideas at all then there's very little he can do outside of diplomacy. It also doesn't help that a good majority of Americans are ignorant with regards to the issues and complacent with regards to voting for congressmen (which leads to a cycle of complacency and we end up in our current state where congressmen do nothing but try to keep their job).

I personally would rather vote for a president whose views coincide with my own but that means very little in the grand scheme of things. But I don't know anything about political science, so whatever.

Edited April 15, 2014 by Lord Raven

[Rehab]

RE Klok: I've been told those local elections are at least as important as the presidential ones, in terms of actual legislation in one's area. It might be a lot to keep track of, but I assume you're a lot more likely to be able to influence what happens in your state by giving feedback to and voting for those candidates, than by, like, voting in a president and writing them a letter.

[Alertcircuit]

Honestly at this point I'll just go for whoever has the best plan to pull us out of (or even just make a small dent in) our $17 trillion debt, Republican or Democrat.

[Defeatist Elitist]

Honestly at this point I'll just go for whoever has the best plan to pull us out of (or even just make a small dent in) our $17 trillion debt, Republican or Democrat.

Hahahaha, no, your country is never ever escaping from that terrible pit because nobody is willing to slash military spending or raise taxes and you absolutely fucking have to do one (or both) of those things. If it's any solace, other countries are inexplicably following your lead, so you won't be alone!

Edited April 15, 2014 by Defeatist Elitist

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

I am not from the U.S. , so I cannot say anything about the social situaion there.

But I think the main problem is the whole policy system in the U.S.

Every president is helpless until his party has no majority in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. And the Democrates have no majority in the House of Representives currently, which is a huge problem to legislste laws.

Edited April 15, 2014 by MisterIceTeaPeach

[Orpheon]

I am not from the U.S. , so I cannot say anything about the social situaion there.

But I think the main problem is the whole policy system in the U.S.

Every president is helpless until his party has no majority in the House of Representatives and in the Senate. And the Democrates have no majority in the Senate currently, which is a huge problem to legislste laws.

I think it may be the fact that English is not your native tongue and fault of a mistranslation, but Democrats do hold majority in the senate currently. Although you are pretty much correct that political gridlock is the biggest dampener on political progress and people are too concerned with their party's agenda to actually try and actually govern. I'm not a fan of how bipartisan the government seems to increasingly become with each election, with the divide ever widening, but the only way we can actually fix things for the most part, is get a moderate president with a favorable party majority in both houses without political stagnation from within the party, or a third party president, with the latter being highly unlikely with the polarization of political thought.

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

I think it may be the fact that English is not your native tongue and fault of a mistranslation, but Democrats do hold majority in the senate currently. Although you are pretty much correct that political gridlock is the biggest dampener on political progress and people are too concerned with their party's agenda to actually try and actually govern. I'm not a fan of how bipartisan the government seems to increasingly become with each election, with the divide ever widening, but the only way we can actually fix things for the most part, is get a moderate president with a favorable party majority in both houses without political stagnation from within the party, or a third party president, with the latter being highly unlikely with the polarization of political thought.

Yes my bad.

The democrats have no majority in the House of Representitives.

The HoR and the Senat should be consolidate somehow or change their influence or function. Otherwise the stalmate will never stop, if the governing party has no majority in both. And the Democrats and Republicans are just want to get their own way. So the health care reform was not great at all. There are still around 40 millions of inhabitants, who are not medically insured. And about 17 billions debts! That is really sad.

Edited April 15, 2014 by MisterIceTeaPeach

[jiodi]

Jeb Bush has been pissing off the base because he says we should show compassion to illegal immigrants and has been pushing core education stuff. Christie is gonna try to fight for candidacy most likely but I doubt it will go far. It's too easy to hit him on bridgegate. Huckabee can't win a general election. Ron Paul is laughed at by the establishment (also: old).

Hillary is the favorite right now, which puts her at a disadvantage in the primaries. Gives her opponents time to go nuts with preparing attacks on her. And you can bet all this Benghazi stuff liberals are laughing off will get brought up in the primaries.

None of these assholes are good candidates for the presidency.

- Clinton is an establishment Democrat and more hawkish than a good number of Republicans.

- Christie is already coming out as either a corrupt asshole or surrounding himself in a bubble of plausible deniability akin to his old waist size.

- Huckabee is a fundamentalist Christian. No thanks.

- Ron Paul sounds nice but he's obviously a kooky old man with some serious skeletons as someone above has already mentioned.

- Rand Paul can't decide on if he wants to suck the lobby teat or be a libertarian.

- Jeb Bush says some nice stuff, but so did George W. Bush. These guys are part of a political establishment dynasty so I wouldn't trust em as far as I could throw them.

- Marco Rubio talks like a guy that wants to have a conversation but he's not strong enough to do what needs to be done as president to fix this country. He'll get gobbled up by special interest.

- O'Malley did a pretty good job with Baltimore and Maryland but he's another establishment member.

- The last GOP primary contenders may show up, but they won't get very far.

- Paul Ryan cannot win a national election.

- For Ted Cruz to even entertain the chance of a presidential run is a sign of ailing Tea Party hubris. The Republican establishment is tired of the Tea Party and won't hold em up anymore or tolerate their nonsense.

- Elizabeth Warren is the only not-shitty possible candidate from the two major parties but she most likely won't even try and run. She may not be able to win, either, given the power of political dollars.

What we need is an overwhelming third party outpouring that wrecks the stupid, shitty two-party safeguards that are in place to keep good candidates out.

I'm voting for the candidate that promises and has a track record on campaign finance reform. We need to gut the current political system and rewire it from the ground up. We can talk about all the political shit we want once we have an actual say in it and the election process isn't a dog and pony show.

[Lord Raven]

What do you mean by establishment member?

[jiodi]

People who are stuck in the political establishment of the two-party system. Basically the guys and gals who have all the incentive to keep the system as broken as it is.

[Ansem]

+1 to the notion that we need an independent leader. Growing up a heavily liberal dominated community, I have learned that taxing the rich to serve the poor does not work. It was actually this online game called budget hero that pushed me towards the middle of the political scale. Here is the link for anyone who is interested: http://www.marketplace.org/topics/economy/budget-hero

Decreasing defense funds barely puts a dent in the deficit. Health is one of the bigger costs of the US. I think everyone should have a go at it and see how long they can prevent a budget bust. It may change your political tendency.

[jiodi]

Yes, health care needs to be fixed. The costs are too high and enough people aren't covered. I'll be liberal for days about that issue.

You're wrong about the defense spending, however. It is comparable to healthcare spending (21% for defense compared to 27% for health care in 2013- source: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/federal_budget_detail_fy13bs12014n)

And yes, baby boomers are getting old as shit and we are rolling out obamasnowcare and all that jazz so the pie chunks are a little different than previous years (health care has been gaining on military spending as of late).

The problem isn't the slice of the pie, though, it's the ludicrous amounts we deem necessary to defend ourselves.

Our military budget dwarfs every other country by a lot. Take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures and look at the number 2 country in expenditures: China.

They are modernizing their military and spending what the world perceives as insurmountable money on their defense funding. They spend about 29% what the US spends (source: type 188 / 640 into Google).

We could cut our defense spending in half to 320 billion and invest the rest of that money into infrastructure (like making cool shit, moon bases, stuff to get this country invigorated again without attacking another country) to maintain the jobs that would be lost by such a drastic cut and China would still only be spending about 58-59% of our defense budget.

We can even roll Russia into the equation: 87.8 billion on defense in 2013. Let's say China and Russia are mad at the US and wanna duke it out. Ignoring the fact that we already have the most advanced military in the history of human civilization, missile defense to keep nukes out and enough nukes to destroy our planet a gazillion times, both countries combined spent 43% of our defense budget in 2013. We cut that in half they still, as a combined entity, only spent 86% of our defense budget. This is to maintain their military and attempt to modernize it enough to even try and take us on.

The point is we don't need to spend as much as we do on defense. And moving 320-400 billion dollars from money we spend to have the biggest stick to infrastructure and a universal, loophole-less healthcare system would do wonders for our country.

I want a guy who's willing to just have the conversations and fix the political structure and face fear of death and slander from big money to either start a cultural evolution or be the product of one.

edit: im bad at words

Edited April 15, 2014 by jiodi