US Presidential Election 2016: Place Your Bets!

Yeah, I really don't know who you're talking about, especially since you brought it up in the context of them not having a voice in the US... I honestly can't think of what might constitute a "fringe" left in Western Europe that even exists in the US, insane or otherwise.

And the rate of population growth will make it more blue, and more urban (in 2000 it was only 17% rural and has been increasingly urban at a very fast rate).

The East Coast will have the BAMA Sprawl (Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis), Texas will have the DFASH Met-Tri-Plex (Dallas Fort (w)orth, Austin, San (a)ntonio, Houston Metropolitan Triple Plex).

(I'm changing that to put Fort Worth first, making it the FDASH, or F-, MetTriPlex.)

I have to say I do kind of appreciate the way they didn't even try to pretend that they might somehow win it the way third parties sometimes do.

Neuromancer was awesome, wasn't it?

Goddammit, Marco. You're supposed to be the guy helping your party get their heads out of their theocratic asses, not pulling this crap. Granted, it's a stupid question and he at least gets that right (you don't need to know why fossil fuels are a finite resource, only accept that they are) but trying to waffle between science and theology helps nobody.

Amen. I'm flaming the shit out of a theocratic apologist on Facebook right now over this crap.

Why is Rubio supposed to be that guy? From all appearances he's a bog-standard Republican.

The gist of his answer is that it doesn't matter, which is actually pretty damned brave of him.

Eh, I'm not sure that I'd categorize "teach the controversy" as a brave answer. I guess he gets a little credit for implying that a scientist would be the appropriate person to answer that question, at least.

Did you read a different quote from me?

That's not a kind of scientist. Did people really think Rubio was some kind of beacon of sanity, though? I have no idea why.

Edit: also:

No I think we can answer that very easily in fact.

From his speech at the RNC, he appeared to be advocating a move away from the extreme ideologies that a lot of the GOP supporters have been pushing.

What part? I skimmed the text just now and I saw, in order: American exceptionalism, anti-regulation, small government fetishism, class warfare, more American exceptionalism, and then this jaunt into at least semi-theocratic reasoning:

Then he goes on with even more American exceptionalism (we're the best!), adds a little Horatio Alger to taste, then closes with a little more small government talk. Not seeing the part where he's advocating a move away from the extreme tendency that has dominated the GOP lately, or the part where he's rejecting crazy theocracy, unless you're giving him credit for not literally foaming at the mouth. Which granted is kind of an accomplishment for a modern-day Republican, but still.

From my skimming, Rubio has been doing what everyone has been doing for the past week: hammering home that the problem is the message delivery, not the message content.

I get that there's limited wiggle room when you've built a party around increasingly bizarre loyalty tests, but at some point you need to acknowledge that your message contents might be part of the problem. So far I haven't seen many mainstream potential candidates willing to run up the idea that their core values may no longer be the silent majority, and may in fact be increasingly considered fringe bullshit.

And compared to most of the GOP - he's a moderate. He espouses the key values of the Republican platform without turning things into ad hominem attacks. Yeah, I don't agree with his platform or views - but I'm not liable to agree with any Republican's platform or views. What I respect about him is that he can express them reasonably. You need someone like that in government to be the voice of the loyal opposition, to remind the people that there are opposing views out there and that the government isn't some monolithic entity.

I've got no problem with people using American exceptionalism as a rallying point. I have a problem with them trying to enforce it through foreign policy, because that gets planes flown into buildings.

I don't know how you make the leap from "polite enough to get through a speech without saying that all Democrats are demons from Hell" to "helping his party get their heads out of their theocratic asses," though. He's clearly espousing the same insane bullshit including the theocracy, he's just managing to do it with less ranting and raving. That makes him like point one percent better as far as I'm concerned; what we need is not someone to stand up and be the face of the opposition that politely demands that the US be turned into the Christian version of Iran. What we need is an opposition who doesn't want to turn the US into the Christian version of Iran at all.

But you aren't going to get that. What we need, ideally, over the next four years is a modernization of the Democratic Party to focus more on foreign policy and budgetary issues in order to court the moderates, while the Republican Party needs to stick to their platform, but tone down the angry fire-and-brimstone rhetoric. This will shift more votes to the Democratic Party, keeping them in power and thus moving the country forward, while the Republican Party gets to appear as a relic of the past - rational discourse will not attract new people to the party, most of their members are only there for the classism, warmongering, and hatred anyway and thus reasonable leadership will disenchant the extremists and get them to stay home in their bunkers stockpiling Spam instead of voting.

This way, you get what's effectively a permanent minority opposition party that occasionally comes up with good ideas (hell, Rick Perry's plan for reforming the Supreme Court was, in my eyes, one of the most progressive ideas to come out of the GOP since ever) and you can let the people who give a damn about the realities of the country rather than the imagined ideals of the Founding Fathers take the reins and run the government.

Don't get too comfortable comparing American exceptionalism with religious zealotry. That venn diagram has some overlap but a whole lot of not overlap; doubly so considering the particular religion to which you're referring.

I refuse to link it because it's crazy clickbait, but the Unskewed Polls dude is now running a site claiming widespread voter fraud, running on the theory that Romney receiving zero votes in small minority heavy districts is obviously fraud and not statistically plausible.

Because this dude has shown his amazing grasp of statistics thus far.

Dear GOP: STEP AWAY FROM THE CRAZY LIGHT. Come back to us, there's still time! :(

Dear GOP: KEEP GOING! YOU'RE ALMOST THERE!

From his article explaining why he was wrong.

HAW HAW!

He also apologizes for making fun of Nate Silver's appearance. His explanation of why he did it is pretty great.

Guy on a blog I'm claiming to have never heard of insulted me, so I decided to take some shots at someone completely uninvolved.

The only part of his fake apology that is interesting is the part where he repeats Cesca's dead-on criticism of his shitty statistics. Personally, I love it when these guys remind me that Rush Limbaugh has a "Mr New Castrati" voice that they use as a cultural touchstone with each other because it reminds me of how their tribe is intellectually bankrupt in so many directions.

Unrelated:

Amazing how much he looks like Bruce Cambell in that picture.

Oh man, if HBO somehow decides to cast him in the inevitable movie, I will go seriously giggly.

Bruce Campbell is: Mitt Romney, Monster Hunter.

Follow-up by Rubio on the creation/evolution thingy, via CNN:
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/12/05/rubio-clarifies-age-of-the-earth-answer/

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida attempted to clear up Wednesday his controversial answer to a question about the Earth's age last month.

"Science says (the Earth) is about 4.5 billion years old. My faith teaches that's not inconsistent," Rubio said at a Politico Playbook Breakfast in Washington. "God created the heavens and the Earth, and science has given us insight into when he did it and how he did it."

[...]

On Wednesday, one morning after he gave a high-profle speech, Rubio said he doesn't "regret" his answer but wishes he had given "a more succinct" response.

"We were talking about hip hop and the guy pivoted to the age of the Earth," the junior senator said. "I'm not a robot." He added that if he had 30 minutes to sit down and write out his thoughts, he would have provided a better answer.

"It's not the worst thing that's ever happened to me," he said.

Rubio said he was originally talking about the "theological debate" over the Earth's age-not the "scientific debate," which he said has definitively established the planet is at least 4.5 billion years old.

He emphasized it was a matter of "how do you reconcile what science has definitively established with what you may think your faith teaches" and further maintained his stance that parents should be able to teach their children whatever they believe.

He also pointed to then-Sen. Barack Obama's answer to a similar question in 2008.

"My belief is that the story that the Bible tells about God creating this magnificent Earth on which we live, that that is essentially true, that is fundamentally true," Obama said at a CNN presidential forum. "Now, whether it happened exactly as we might understand it reading the text of the Bible? That, you know, I don't presume to know."

(by the way, I hella love the block indenting in Xenforo.)

I just prefer to wrap large sections like that in a quote tag but block indent is pretty OK too.

I like block indent (which I should use more), just because it doesn't change the size to "annoyingly small."

Democratic Party: I don't see anyone who can challenge Clinton, if she runs. IF she doesn't run, maybe Cuomo?

Republican Party: A mess. I don't think Christie will run (though it's possible - he can play the "party needs me" card). Gingrich again? Perry? Some moderates who can't get Tea Party support? Rubio's too young. Jeb Bush is too defeated already, doesn't seem to want it. I don't think Ryan can get enough support on his own.

I don't know whether to look forward to or dread another election cycle with Rick Perry.

I wanted Perry to be nominated for 2012. Seeing him in 2016 would guarantee another Democratic White House.

Never underestimate "next in line" in the GOP; they deviate from it occasionally but not often. Though I have no idea who's next in line!

Santorum would be next in line s there's that.

Well, at some point they run out of next in line. I think 2012 is one of those years; no candidate got even remotely enough of the primary vote last time or has enough influence elsewhere.

The real X-factor is how cray will the GOP electorate be in 2016?

If they're as crazy as they are today, then Santorum's got a big advantage. Because he's fucking loony tunes. I think even Jindal - cray though he may be - isn't the right brand of crazy for the whackadoodle GOP base. And forget Christie; he's at least somewhat sane which given the current GOP base is a total disqualification.

On the other hand if they chill the fuck out, you open the door to Jindal and Christie. Honestly I'd put my money on Jindal; Christie's "straight talkin" schtick gets good national play, but if you follow things closely here in NJ you'll figure out pretty quick that "straight talking" mostly means a bullying asshole. Unless the guy undergoes a serious makeover, the first time someone on the national stage really challenges Christie he'll just lose his shit and that'll be that. Jindal's obviously been rehearsing for POTUS for the past few years, so he'd be the logical "next guy." That said, if I had to put money on anyone right now I'd put it on Santorum. And I wouldn't put much down.

Has there ever been a straight-up Christianist candidate that's gotten more than 20% of the vote? Remember he was off the reservation on economics, just like Buchanan was. They're a key voting block, but they're not enough by themselves. You have to pander elsewhere, which is why Bush was so dominant - he ran the table of GOP factions.

Jindal's the most likely bet, but Indian guy from Louisiana with no national connections is just so implausible I don't see how it works.

fwiw I agree re: Jindal; seems totally implausible. But under the "been at this for a while" model of GOP nominations, he and Santorum are pretty clearly in the lead.

Also, Jindal sometimes talks a good game, but his policies are almost indistinguishable from Santorum.

Do any of you remember John Many Jar's post about being friends with Jindal in grad school (which, according to Wikipedia is Oxford, JMJ went to Oxford)?

Unfortunately JMJ took down his original post (and PM'd me to ask I remove the it from my quote). It was pretty clear after reading the original post that Jindal is a nutty weirdo. A quick googling reveals that even if you don't want to take the redacted testimony of an avowed fruit fornicator, there is plenty to disqualify Bobby Jindal -

I think the most compelling case against Jindal is that he is a grown man and aspirant for the most powerful position in the free world and still goes by "Bobby".

But he loves telling the charming origin story for that name.