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US President 2016 - the Great Horse Race

Ben Carson shows, as Herman Cain, Alan Keyes, Star Parker, Alveda King, Thomas Sowell, and Walter Williams do, that US black people have moved up enough in US society to have successful careers as right-wing kooks. It is also more evidence that racial differences do not include profound mental differences -- black right-wingers can be as kooky as white ones.
 
mr roger bowser._Dog-in-Suit.png

The next president of the United States. He will hound out corruption. He will dig up new sources of revenue. He will sniff out the best people. I give you, Mr. Roger Bowser, the next president.

Eldarion Lathria
 
angelo said:
Obama having broken that taboo has made it possible for other African-Americans to aim for the highest office.
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Well, the racists did call this. They were very clear about the fact that if you let whites and blacks marry, it will open the door for men marrying their horses. I guess the same thing is true about Presidents. Once you let a black man in, soon enough people will be electing their dogs.
 
Tom Sawyer said:
angelo said:
Obama having broken that taboo has made it possible for other African-Americans to aim for the highest office.
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Well, the racists did call this. They were very clear about the fact that if you let whites and blacks marry, it will open the door for men marrying their horses. I guess the same thing is true about Presidents. Once you let a black man in, soon enough people will be electing their dogs.
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I've no doubt there is a minority of racists in the States, as there is here. But the vast majority are not. Most wouldn't give a rats arse what colour their skin!
 
Presidential candidates, 2016 - Ballotpedia has a timeline of announcements of who's in and who's out.

Republican:
Ted Cruz: 2015 Mar 23 -
Rand Paul: 2015 Apr 7 -
Marco Rubio: 2015 Apr 13 -
Ben Carson: 2015 May 3 -
Carly Fiorina: 2015 May 4 -
Mike Huckabee: 2015 May 5 -
Rick Santorum: 2015 May 27 -
George Pataki: 2015 May 28 - 2015 Dec 29
Lindsey Graham: 2015 Jun 1 - 2015 Dec 21
Rick Perry: 2015 Jun 4 - 2015 Sep 11
Jeb Bush: 2015 Jun 15 -
Donald Trump: 2015 Jun 16 -
Bobby Jindal: 2015 Jun 24 - 2015 Nov 17
Chris Christie: 2015 Jun 30 -
Scott Walker: 2015 Jul 13 - 2015 Sep 21
John Kasich: 2015 Jul 21 -
Jim Gilmore: 2015 Jul 29 -

Democratic:
Hillary Clinton: 2015 Apr 12 -
Bernie Sanders: 2015 Apr 30 -
Martin O'Malley: 2015 May 30 -
Lincoln Chafee: 2015 June 3 - 2015 Oct 23
Jim Webb: 2015 Jul 2 - 2015 Oct 2
Lawrence Lessig: 2015 Sep 6 - 2015 Nov 8

Green:
Jill Stein: 22 June 2015 -

Ben Carson's staff seems to be fleeing his campaign and joining the likes of Ted Cruz.
From Ed Brayton of Dispatches from the Culture Wars:
Carson Loses Most of His Senior Campaign Staff -- his national staff
Carson Loses More Staff, This Time to Cruz -- his New Hampshire staff
 
angelo said:
Tom Sawyer said:
Well, the racists did call this. They were very clear about the fact that if you let whites and blacks marry, it will open the door for men marrying their horses. I guess the same thing is true about Presidents. Once you let a black man in, soon enough people will be electing their dogs.
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I've no doubt there is a minority of racists in the States, as there is here. But the vast majority are not. Most wouldn't give a rats arse what colour their skin!
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How do you define "vast majority?" Ninety-eight percent, or thereabouts?
 
We don't like what you're saying, so get out of country! Way to ... prove him wrong? Show that you're a worthwhile group?

While it's funny that Cruz's attempt to use code words to denigrate his competition blew up in his face, the response to what he said seems to be dumber than what he said.
 
The Green Lantern Theory of the Presidency, explained - Vox
Presidents consistently overpromise and underdeliver. What they need to say to get elected far outpaces what they can actually do in office. President Obama is a perfect example. ...
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Instead, he ended up much like Bill Clinton, though he succeeded in health-care reform where BC failed.
What is the Green Lantern Theory of the Presidency?

According to Brendan Nyhan, the Dartmouth political scientist who coined the term, the Green Lantern Theory of the Presidency is "the belief that the president can achieve any political or policy objective if only he tries hard enough or uses the right tactics." In other words, the American president is functionally all-powerful, and whenever he can't get something done, it's because he's not trying hard enough, or not trying smart enough.
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There are two main versions: the Reagan version, about a president persuading the general public, and the LBJ version, about a president persuading Congress.

The Green Lantern Corps is a series of comic-book characters who wear a green ring that gives them great power, but only if they exert enough willpower.
In 2006, Vox executive editor (and then-TPM Cafe blogger) Matthew Yglesias, responding to an argument for bombing Iran, coined the term "The Green Lantern Theory of Geopolitics". ...

In 2009, Nyhan, commenting on an argument Yglesias was having with the writer Matt Taibbi, extended the idea to arguments in "which all domestic policy compromises are attributed to a lack of presidential will."
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But reality is otherwise. The President is not some elected absolute monarch.
The problem with this is that the Green Lantern Theory isn't just false. It's often backwards. The basic idea is that more aggressive and consistent applications of presidential power will break down opposition. But political science research shows the truth is often just the opposite.

When the president takes a position on an issue the opposing party becomes far more likely to take the opposite position. In a clever study, political scientist Frances Lee proved this by looking at noncontroversial issues, like whether NASA should try and send a man to Mars. She built a database of eighty-six hundred Senate votes between 1981 and 2004. Typically, these votes fell along party lines just a third of the time. But but when the President took a clear position the likelihood of a party-line vote rose to more than half. In other words, when the president pushed on an issue the opposition party became more likely to oppose him.
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Something like the Green Lantern Theory may explain why turnout for elections is higher in Presidential-election years than in midterms.
 
What Is Bernie’s Plan B?
I think both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are fine candidates, and either would make an excellent president. This is especially true in comparison to the howling pandemonium that’s the GOP field, where all the other candidates are competing to be as vulgar, hateful and regressive as Donald Trump.
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However, he has criticisms of both candidates, and he wishes to focus on one issue about Bernie Sanders:
For this post, I’ll focus on one signature issue that’s a microcosm of the rest: his “Medicare for All” plan to scrap Obamacare and replace it with a single-payer system.

I’ve written that Obamacare is the greatest progressive triumph in the U.S. since the Great Society, and I still believe that. But even so, it’s a cautious, modest plan, meant to fill in the gaps of our existing health-care system while disrupting as few people’s coverage as possible. It’s based on conservative ideas, notably a 1980s proposal by the Heritage Foundation and Romneycare in Massachusetts.
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Then they turned around and demonized it as some left-wing monstrosity. Republicans refused to support it, and Obama needed every Democratic vote that he could get, thus some ugly compromises. They also made a big fuss out of imaginary death panels, tried to repeal it numerous times, shut down the government about it, and filed numerous lawsuits against it, with the Supreme Court coming close to destroying it twice. Republican governors have refused to accept money for expanding Medicaid.

Adam Lee's gripe is that Bernie Sanders proposes a *much* bigger change, and that he has no chance of getting Congress to support him -- even if the Democrats get back both houses of it. So he suspects that BS's admirers subscribe to the Green Lantern theory of the Presidency. He concludes:
My personal belief is that the next president, assuming it’s a Democrat, will basically have to play defense no matter who it is: shoring up Obamacare, continuing the Clean Power Plan, and protecting and extending Obama’s other accomplishments against a Congress that will at best be gridlocked and at worst actively hostile. That’s frustrating, but it’s also the reality of American politics, where most positive change is slow and incremental.
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Wining Iowa was supposed to be the predictor of the likely winner of the Presidential race. President Cruz has a nice ring about it. :)
 
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