You literally sound like my Dad. He's an old ex-hippy who is so bitter about how centrist Bill was that he tends to ignore all the ways the Clintons aren't actually like Republicans.

One upper/middle class straight white male privilege is not having to care about those differences imo.

Yeah I remember Obama got a lot of criticism for his "boring" VP choice, said Biden didn't represent "change", was too much of an establishment insider... some people wanted Hillary, but Obama was not that dumb. Unlike McCain he knew boring/competent is what you want in a VP.

I don't think McCain's choice of Palin hurt him as much as his horrible handling of the financial meltdown, though.

On economic issues, Hillary may resemble a Republican of thirty years ago, but she doesn't much resemble nutjobs like Ted Cruz.

I think that Jeb wins the Republican nomination. Despite all the LOLs, the Republican party does not tend to nominate the true firebrands. The winner of the primary usually is a relatively centrist candidate (by Republican standards) like McCain or Mittens who tacks to the right in the primary. The real laughs start when the "centrist" candidate loses in the general election and the Republican base starts talking about about how the Democratic candidate won because the Republican party abandoned the crazy.

You seem to wrongly be suggesting that GWB was not also an extremist. And no, I wouldn't agree that the opposition was particularly extreme, or encouraged extremes between 2000-2008. If anything, those years further radicalised the right becuase they realised they could run the place from quite far to the right, even if Bush was not able to get much of his domestic agenda through.

What kind of odds will you lay that the nominee isn't named in the OP or has run previously?

Your perception of what the middle is much different than mine. Is Obama center right to you? Was the failed "grand bargain" an example of right wing extremism? Has W Bush even been mentioned in this thread?

A generation of lying to your base about how the Founding Fathers were secular Gods of whatever the **** you want them to be has lead to where it needs to go:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewir...unding-fathers

ya rly

I havent heard anyone mention the fact that scott walker doesnt have a college degree. Thats an increasingly negative attribute for a presidential candidate. especially when typically you need a college degree to manage an arbys let alone the whole country.

That just proves he's not some egghead. He probably would have gotten his degree if his liberal professors weren't making him be a Marxist-Leninist Black Panther, and the political pressure of bearing the cross of being a conservative on a college campus wasn't so great. He saw through their propaganda and joined the American workforce, putting food on the table for his American family, with hard work, which is all the experience you need to fight Bin Ladens all over the world and know that unions are full of lecherous lazy gays who are driving wages down, and Obamacare caused Benghazi.

---

There. I think I just solved his problem for the GOP electorate with a coherent set of talking points they will understand perfectly. Will take my freelance contracting consulting bitcoin payments from his Presidential campaign team whenever they're ready.

He attended college for four years, and left before graduating because he was offered a full-time job. I can't see anyone thinking "Well, I like his record in the private sector and as Governor, but not sitting his final philosophy exams to take up a job as good as he would have got anyway? How can you trust a man with such poor judgment?"

The main reason college degrees are useful is they're a handy shortcut for employers who don't have the time to screen every job applicant thoroughly. When it comes to Presidential candidates, though, they tend to have a lot of time to introduce themselves and have plenty of post-college experience that it should really be basically irrelevant.

In any case, it gives an opening for someone to make an ill-advised attack using that issue, which will very likely backfire and make the attacker look like an elitist and allow Walker to play up his everyman appeal.

Bitcoins? Sorry dirty commie, we don't like your kind around here.

And the Republicans would do well to push a candidate who supports immigration reform, the future of their party is looking bleak without new blood.

The problem was the McCain ignored what has to be the threshold question for any candidate when selecting a running mate -- namely, would the country be OK if my running mate were to become President? Within a matter of days, it became apparent that Palin was not qualified to be President, was not intelligent enough to be President, and lacked judgment. The conclusion that I and many others drew was that McCain wanted the brass ring so badly that he was willing to risk a Palin presidency to get it.

His willingness to put the country at risk revealed that he was completely unprincipled.

What a ridiculous thread..LOL at any of these guys having any chance. What a group of insignifigant goofs.

You guys realize how popular the Clintons are with poor white people right? I mean Obama got absolutely destroyed by both McCain and Romney with this demographic. If you manage to get poor white people, poor black people (who also liked Bill), the standard demographic constituents, Hispanics, and Women on board with one candidate and it's not beyond the realm of possibility that you see a Reaganesque sweep of the general election.

Come on people Obama won all the swing states and he's a MUCH harder sell than Hillary would be. She's at risk during the primary if some as-of-yet undisclosed strong candidate emerges from the wings and takes her down... But that already happened once. I'd be very surprised if it happens again. She has no meaningful opponent on the Republican side as of today... And if I was a potentially meaningful Republican candidate who was young enough to still be under the radar I'd just wait for her to finish her second term and for my party to get desperate enough for a win to allow me to be a moderate in the primaries.

I don't think it's something for an opponent to attack, but I think it just shows poor judgement on his part. Everything you're saying is true re: a main point of going to college is to be able to get a job and he got that. But if you've already got four years completed, it just seems lazy and imprudent not to just finish it at some point.

A college degree is certainly a handy thing to have, and unless you achieve Zuckerberg/Gates/etc. type success (or at least reasonably think you have a path to that), it seems a like a smart thing to finish if you're so close. If his job (which apparently was marketing for IBM) didn't work out, then having the degree would be incredibly useful.

All of the above assumes that he was actually very close to a degree. If he was a part-time student or for some other reason was not really close to graduation despite having been in college for 4 years, then his decision not to complete may be more reasonable.

TIME article

So he tried to finish, but found that hard to juggle with family.

I'd imagine that if his job hadn't panned out and he found himself unemployed or underemployed for a significant stretch, he would have gone back to complete his degree. But since that evidently didn't occur, it's probably been more of a "pride" thing that's been on the back-burner for having more important things to do.

I agree with Nichlemm. Problems people have with walker arent going to be because he didn't get a degree. I also think Dvaut's post was right in that for many on the right who hate academia, it can be spun as a positive character trait.

Personally I think Hillary's biggest problem is that she's just not that good of a politician. Good at policy perhaps, but not good at getting people to love her and vote for her in elections

Easily won election to the Senate and lost a functional tie on delegates to one of the GOAT presidential campaigns. Story checks out.

I also think Hillary might have some surrogates to help out with that on the ole' campaign trail.

When is the last time the gop nominee was anyone out of left field?

Is there some specific reason why they always go for someone with 'standing'?

Clinton's initial election to the Senate was by a decent (12%) margin, but she considerably underperformed Gore on the same ticket (who won by 25%). Her re-election was by a sizable margin, but nothing out of the ordinary for a well-funded incumbent in a blue state (it was less than Senior NY Senator Schumer's victory 2 years earlier in a more Republican climate). She did nearly beat Obama, but she had an enormous head start with her connections and name recognition, so a "close loss" wasn't really an endorsement of her likability.

Small sample sizes and confounding variables, though. Maybe we need a more specific measure of "love" for Clinton. But then again, does it really matter that much?

Oh Nich. With competent advisers she runs away with the presidency. Somehow her team didn't understand what superdelegates were and also didn't understand the difference between winner take all and proportionate delegate states.

It's really ****ing hard to basically tie for a presidential nomination, and the only reasons she didn't coast was running into the GOAT/incompetent management.

She's a very, very strong candidate.

Somebody list all the 50+ female politicians people do like? (using whatever standards ikes has that sorts Hilldog into the "unliked" category).