2016 elections - because it's never too early

[jimmy olsen]

Is Diamond Joe gonna jump in!?

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2015/08/02/joe_biden_reportedly_looking_into_a_presidential_run.html

Vice President Joe Biden may be getting ready to run for president. Or maybe not. At the very least, long-standing Clinton-hater Maureen Dowd has pushed political observers to start speculating again. The New York Times columnist pulled at the heartstrings in her column this weekend, saying Biden's son Beau Biden told his dad to run shortly before his death in May. Now several news outlets, including both the New York Times and the Associated Press, published articles speculating about whether the vice-president was getting ready to try to become the oldest president ever elected to a first term.

Biden's staff has been reaching out to Democratic leaders and donors to hold "hushed phone calls and quiet lunches" weighing a potential run, reports the Times. Many say the vice-president is being pushed by the memory of his 46-year-old son wanting him to run. "He was so close to Beau and it was so heartbreaking that, frankly, I thought initially he wouldn't have the heart," the supporter, Michael Thornton, a Boston lawyer, tells the Times. "But I've had indications that maybe he does want to — and 'that's what Beau would have wanted me to do.'"

Dowd wrote in her column that Beau "tried to make his father promise to run, arguing that the White House should not revert to the Clintons and that the country would be better off with Biden values." Biden's other son, Hunter, also apparently told him to run, saying, "Dad, it's who you are."

Insiders insist there's more to that statement than Dowd being her usual Clinton-bashing self. After all, she's hardly the first to raise the possibility recently. On Thursday, Fox News' Ed Henry reported Clinton aides were getting increasingly nervous about a potential Biden candidacy. The increased chatter, some Democrats say, reflects the growing concern about recent polls showing Clinton's support among independents declining. Plus, the way Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has been attracting large crowds is being described as "evidence of a hunger within the party for an alternative to Clinton's candidacy," notes the Associated Press. So far though, "Biden has done little to lay the groundwork for a possible challenge to Hillary Clinton and the rest of the Democratic field," points out CNN.

If Biden does decide to join the race, it would be a difficult battle considering Clinton has already raised nearly $50 million and much of the party is excited about the possibility of electing the first woman president. Aides say they expect Biden to make a final decision by September.

Speaking to ABC News, Sanders said on Sunday that while he's "very fond" of Biden "the American people... want to go beyond conventional establishment politics."

[DGuller]

Is being a Democratic candidate a kind of hobby some old folks pick up to keep themselves busy?

[jimmy olsen]

America is obviously being punished for our sins

http://abc7.com/politics/donald-trump-widens-lead-to-2-to-1-margin-over-closest-competitor/900366/

Donald Trump widens lead to 2-to-1 margin over closest competitor in new poll

NEW YORK --
Donald Trump has widened his national lead in the latest Monmouth University Poll of Republican voters and now holds a more than 2-to-1 advantage over his nearest rivals, Jeb Bush and Scott Walker.

The poll also found that few GOP voters like the idea of a Top 10 debate, with many preferring back-to-back debates with the field randomly split in half.

When Republicans and Republican-leaning voters are asked who they would support for the GOP nomination for president, Trump leads the pack at 26 percent, Jeb Bush has 12 percent, and Scott Walker has 11 percent. The remainder of the top 10 includes Ted Cruz (6 percent), Mike Huckabee (6 percent), Ben Carson (5 percent), Chris Christie (4 percent), Rand Paul (4 percent), Marco Rubio (4 percent), and John Kasich (3 percent).

Carly Fiorina and Rick Perry each earn 2 percent and Bobby Jindal, Rick Santorum, Lindsey Graham, George Pataki, and Jim Gilmore each get 1 percent or less. Another 10 percent of GOP voters say they still are unsure who they will support for the party's nomination.


Compared to the Monmouth University Poll released three weeks ago, Trump's support has increased by 13 points. Walker's support has increased by 4, while Bush and Cruz have decreased by 3 points. No other candidate's support has changed by more than 2 percentage points, but the undecided vote went down by 8 points.

Trump's support spans nearly all demographic groups:

Ideology - Trump leads Walker 27 percent to 16 percent among very conservative voters; has 22 percent support among somewhat conservative voters to 14 percent for Bush and 12 percent for Walker; and takes 28 percent of the moderate to liberal voter compared to 20 percent for Bush.

Tea Party - Tea Party supporters back Trump (35 percent) over Walker (15 percent) and Cruz (11 percent). Non-Tea Party supporters split their top support between Trump (20 percent) and Bush (16 percent).

Age - Trump (26 percent) has a clear lead over Bush (15 percent) and Walker (12 percent) among voters age 50 and older. Those under 50 years old also prefer Trump (26 percent) over Walker (10 percent) and Bush (9 percent).

Gender - Trump leads among both male and female Republicans, with men (32 percent) giving him a large advantage over Bush (13 percent) and Walker (11 percent). Women (20 percent) give him a narrower lead over Walker (12 percent) and Bush (11 percent).

"Republican support for Donald Trump just continues to grow with no clear sense of who his constituency really is," said Patrick Murray, director of the independent Monmouth University Polling Institute in West Long Branch. "This makes it very difficult for his opponents to figure out how to take him on in the upcoming debate."

The top 10 candidates in the field, based on a national polling average, will make it into the first sanctioned GOP debate later this week. Few Republican voters are on board with this idea. When presented with three possible scenarios to determine who gets into the first debate, nearly half (45 percent) prefer to have two back-to-back debates with the field randomly split in half. Another 29 percent say it would be better to put all the declared candidates together on one stage. Just 23 percent favor using polls to select a top 10 group of candidates for the main debate while having the remaining candidates participate in a separate debate.

[Eddie Teach]

America is obviously being punished for our sins

Now, now, Hillary's not that bad.

[jimmy olsen]

This election just keeps getting weirder.

http://www.salon.com/2015/08/03/the_gop_crack_up_continues_the_raging_civil_war_over_the_disgusting_%E2%80%9Ccuckservative%E2%80%9D_slur/

The GOP crack-up continues: The raging civil war over the disgusting "cuckservative" slur. Combining racism and misogyny, the insult lets Donald Trump backers claim other Republicans aren't real men



I had a hard time taking this seriously, but the disgusting term "cuckservative" really is taking hold on the right. I'll be honest: I learned about it a couple of weeks ago from the mild-mannered, clean-cut conservative writer Matt Lewis, but I thought he was making too much of it. It seemed like trying to shame one's critics based on the behavior of the worst asshole in a comments thread. I didn't bite.

Then "cuckservative" started showing up in my Twitter mentions last week, after I suggested Donald Trump supporters might not be the brightest bulbs. As I clicked around, I came to a shocking conclusion: I've been uncharacteristically downplaying the amount of racism and misogyny powering the right today. The spread of the epithet "cuckservative" is a sign that the crudest psycho-sexual insecurity animates the far right.

"Cuckservative," you see, is short for a cuckolded conservative. It's not about a Republican whose wife is cheating on him, but one whose country is being taken away from him, and who's too cowardly to do anything about it.

OK, that's gross and sexist enough already, but there's more. It apparently comes from a kind of pornography known as "kind and sensitive person," in which a white husband, either in shame or lust, watches his wife be taken by a black man. Lewis explains it this way: "A cuckservative is, therefore, a race traitor."

This is not merely a new way to shout "RINO." It's a call to make the GOP an explicitly racist party, devoted to the defense of whites. It's no accident it's taken off in the wake of Donald Trump's presidential campaign launch/performance art, where he attacked illegal Mexican immigrants as "rapists" and "criminals."

White nationalist Richard Spencer of the National Policy Institute explained Trump's appeal to Dave Weigel: "a) he is a tougher, superior man than 'conservatives' (which isn't saying much), and b) he seems to grasp the demographic displacement of European-Americans on a visceral level. We see some hope there."

Rush Limbaugh helped spread the term to the mainstream when he praised Trump like this: "If Trump were your average, ordinary, cuckolded Republican, he would have apologized by now, and he would have begged for forgiveness, and he would have gone away."

The folks behind the term are also wildly anti-Semitic. Huckabee became a popular target after he claimed President Obama's Iran deal was "marching Israelis to the ovens." The guys who bray "cuckservative" hate Obama, of course, but they may hate Israel more.

In the New Republic Jeer Heet shared this porny snippet from Gregory Hood's anti-cuckservative manifesto in the white nationalist site American Renaissance:

They are like a man who tries to appeal to a woman through acts of submission; they inspire not desire but disgust. Each new conservative surrender inspires only further contempt in the hearts of leftists, which of course encourages conservatives to capitulate even more eagerly the next time.

There's also the variety of cuckold who gets a thrill from watching another man mount his wife. Such a creature possesses the illusion of control. He can tell himself that he is directing this obscenity and thus remain, in some way, the dominant figure.

American conservatism is perhaps best summarized as maintaining a posture of command even as the reality of control is lost. Thus conservatives cheering on the demographic transformation of the country tell themselves they remain leaders in the new America. The kind and sensitive person in the corner begging to be degraded is still technically the 'man of the house,' for all the good it does him.

Disgraced former Breitbot Chuck C. Johnson embraced the term last week in Takimag:


[Cuckservative is] about the fake, phony conservatives who enjoy watching the real fighters on the right get sodomized while they gleefully gawk. They crave respectability over power and the limelight over influence. Seldom paid for their performances on Fox News or MSNBC, they repeat conventional wisdom after getting gussied up—but you can't polish a soul.

[garbon]

That was ridiculous, Tim.

[Razgovory]

Is being a Democratic candidate a kind of hobby some old folks pick up to keep themselves busy?

I support the idea of Biden running.  If anything should happen to Hilary I really don't want to see the nomination go to the Goddamn red.

[Gups]

Is being a Democratic candidate a kind of hobby some old folks pick up to keep themselves busy?

I support the idea of Biden running.  If anything should happen to Hilary I really don't want to see the nomination go to the Goddamn red.

Yeah, that was FiveThirtyEight's perspective. The Dem establishment need Biden in there as a Hilary reserve.

[garbon]

Machine gun bacon?

[Syt]

[derspiess]

Machine gun bacon?

Tastes like freedom. 

I picked out a food-grade barrel to make mine

[garbon]

I'm just sort of sad that such is what the GOP has fallen too.

[jimmy olsen]

Machine gun bacon?

Did I miss something?

[lustindarkness]

America is obviously being punished for our sins

The last 7 years have nothing to do with the article you posted.

[derspiess]

Machine gun bacon?

Did I miss something?

Yes.