and a LOT of very rational people realize that ever leaving Iraq in the first place was a horrible mistake, one that the next POTUS is going to have to fix somehow.
As for Walker, no disagreements here. I might even vote for Uncle Joe over a fanatical thumper like him.On the Dem side, with all Hills troubles, I would lower her from the 90-95% range of being the Dem nominee only a few months ago, to about 55-60% now.
My hunch is that number will fall to under 50 in a month.
If Biden, Gore or Warren jump in, I think that number would fall another 10% or so, maybe more.
I think some are writing her off too fast, after all she is a Clinton and they have been known to sidestep a few land mines at times.
On the Rep side, I still think it is Bush first, Rubio second and Kasich coming up fast in third. My guess is Kasich will surpass Rubio at some point over the next month or so but I cant say he is there now.
Walker has faded a bit, so I would put him as a weak #4, and Fiorina and Carson have risen but not to the point where either are legitimate threats yet.
These aren't predictions of what will happen a year from now, just an assessment of where we are today and maybe a month out.
Thoughts
Clinton even with all the Benghazi related email brouhaha swirling around her will ultimately be the Democratic nominee. Anyone here who thinks the Justice Department under this Administration is going to indict Hillary needs to get their head examined, I call it wishful thinking or whistling past the grave yard. Now if the Justice Department decides to en-panel an Independent prosecutor, then all bets are off and Hillary Clinton is in serious, serious, trouble.
On the Republican side, either Bush or Kaisch will be the nominee. If the country is in a serious recession in the fall/spring time frame then all the ugly memories/questions about how Bush II handled the previous GREAT Recession come storming back, which will not help Bush III. Kaisch is the man to beat IMHO, he has "pragmatically" governed a purple state -Ohio- very effectively. If Republicans want to win the White House in 2016, Kaisch is the man to nominate, IMHO.
Rubio has ZERO chance of being the nominee, he's too unseasoned politically and also his initial backing of the Senate Immigration reform bill has done serious damage to his support among the Tea Party base. Rubio's only hope of occupying the WH is if one of the top two candidates offers him a VP slot.
Trump the big elephant in the room, no pun intended, is having a whale of time. Teflon Trump with all his money and private plane can stay in the race for as long as he wants, doing untold damage to the Republican brand with his ridiculous daily utterances. I like how Trump stared down Roger Ailes, the head of Fox News, post debate and WON!
Now about Scott Walker, what good has he done for the State of Wisconsin besides sow division and discord among Wisconsinites. Is this a guy we want as POTUS
about what she did during her tenure.
The issue is did she use her private email for exchanging data that was clearly marked as classified information by the sender? If the data was not clearly marked, then no laws were broken. If the data gets classified later, there is no case either.
Agencies classify data as secret to get around FOIA all the time.
Congress can appoint a special prosecutor, they haven't done it because they don't have a case.
A non-starter
It's pointless to speculate at this point on any of this. Warren isn't going to jump in. I don't think Gore has enough support to beat anyone, and it would just humiliate Biden if he made a serious run. There are only two things to watch in this race. 1) Bernie Sanders' poll ratings against Hillary and 2) if Donald Trump implodes.
I'm not convinced yet that Trump isn't doing this for the publicity. He may drop out of the race at some point, even if he could win. But the longer he's in the race, the less press time all the other Republicans get, and it will make it very difficult for the to win come November.
The demographics are still not looking good for Republicans. Short of an amazing candidate on the Republican side, you can expect the Dems to take the White House for the foreseeable future.
what happened to the leftist baters? some of them came from Air America.
They drove it off the air with the 'huge' following they had......now are gone from MSNBC......
but even though the odds makers have her at -500 to win, I don't think it's quite the slam dunk you think it is.
Bernie's poll numbers don't matter for shit, even less than Trump's. Trump has the money to make a serious run at the White House if he chooses, (he'll lose, but he can still make the run) Sander's has ZERO chance of winning, no one in power wants him. Obama only pretended to be against big business and Wall St., buy has proven himself to be in their pocket as I am sure you will agree. Sanders really is against ALL business, just like you, and no one in power is going to bankroll his run. Do you honestly believe that a bunch of very successful capitalists in a capitalistic country are going to allow an admitted socialist to have the least bit of power over them? Get real Willy, It flat out is NOT going to happen.
I think the odds are at least even money that a Rep wins the White House "If" Hillary implodes, if the Hillary campaign survives until election day I will agree that she is the odds on favorite to win, no matter who she is running against.
Hillary, IF she makes it to GE, would not beat a Kasich/Fiorina or Kasich/Rubio ticket imo.
Hills is a badly damaged and TERRIBLE candidate. The ONLY thing she has going for her is her vagina, something that would beat most R's but not all.
The R's will unite at some point, and will launch a full on attack on Hills that I don think she could beat. She has the benefit now of the R's sniping at each other but when that stops, that will all turn towards her.
She is NOT anywhere near the candidate Bill was. She has no warmth, no charisma, no personality, she is wrapped in scandal, will be forced to answer for all things Obama, she will lose a sizable chunk of the Black and youth vote and she does not have the Teflon coating slick Willy had.
She has fallen like a rock in the polls only 2 months, has only a favorability rating in the high 30's which is disastrous for someone so well known and is having trouble fending off a socialist who is damn near 80 years old! LOL
Add all that to her horrendous tenure at State, and that is a candidate who is extraordinarily weak and vulnerable.
I think Kasich beats her soundly.
I also think a Rubio/Fiorina ticket would beat her.
in spite of the fact that she is most definitely no Bill Clinton. As you said, no warmth, no charisma, no personality and the more you see of her the less likeable she becomes. Even so, I think she can still beat just about anyone the GOP will throw against her. I do agree that if by some miracle Kasich can win the nomination, he can give her a good run for her money, but he is still a long shot for the nomination. Fuck the polls, follow the experts with money on the line. the current betting odds are 12-1 on Kasich.
Speaking of odds, Trump has gone from almost "off the board" to a tie for second pick with Walker at 4-1, Now THAT is a bit surprising. Bush is still the favorite, but not "odds on" at 3-2 and Rubio rounds out the top tier at 7-1. Hillary is still holding stead at 1-5 and boy would I LOVE to book some of that action. Hillary "should" win, but if I could book action at 5-1 against her, I'd put at least a few grand against her, those odds are just too good to turn down.
Hey I wonder how many of our looney libs would be willing to give "current odds" on her winning? The problem is, trying to collect from any of the deadbeats willing to bet on her. Can you imagine trying to collect from the likes of Hadji, fatgirl or Senor Grumpy?
As far as the betting lines though, they are meaningless. The public moves those lines after they are set.
Did you see the Nate Silver article? He puts Trumps chances at 2%, no where near 4-1 odds the dumbass public thinks.
Kasich at 12-1 drives my point home. Kasich is WAYYYYYYYYYY more likely to be the nominee than Trump. The two aren't even in the same hemisphere.
We are seeing a major shift in this country. Obama being elected twice demonstrates this. You have cities and states all over the country raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour. This would be unthinkable prior to 2008. Look at what happened in Furgeson.
The reality is that people have grown tired of big business calling the shots. They've had enough. After 8 years of Bush followed by a financial collapse, they've had enough. People believed that Obama would address these problems. For the most part he didn't, and you saw the rise of the Occupy movement. Now you see people protesting against the police for fuck's sake.
I dunno how much you guys follow the inside baseball of leftist politics, it seems that most of the people here are more closely following things on the right. But the reality is that there is not a single candidate in this race that has more loyal supporters than Bernie. A few weeks back the Hillary camp tried an experiment where she had a surrogate attack Bernie to try to boost Hillary's favorability in the left. It back fired. It resulted in more support for Bernie and less for Hillary. Why? Because the base of the left is fucking *loyal* to Bernie.
This election so far is proving to be a total rejection of the establishment. You see that with Trump's double digit leads. Even conservatives understand that our election system is broken and big business has too much influence. They might not be able to understand why, but they know things are broken.
Bernie is the only candidate who is addressing these problems and actually speaks to people's issues. And big business will hate him. The media, with their campaign dollar gravy train is also going to hate him, but the public are the ones who choose who wins and loses and the public hates big business and they hate the media.
In times past, the media ignoring you would spell the death of any candidacy. If you can't grease the asses of the corporate shitheads who run the for profit media, then you're essentially barred from running. But things are different now. We have the internet and social media. And it's now become a cliche to say that "in the media Bernie is nowhere. On the internet, Bernie is everywhere."
Before Obama got elected he became a bit of a rock star. Packing in stadiums of people wanting to hear him speak. Well guess what? Bernie is doing that now. And Bernie isn't just packing them in in the bluest of blue states. He's doing it in the red states too. We're seeing Bernie pack damn near 30,000 people into events. Bernie packed in 5 times more people in the same location that Bobby Jindal did when he announced his candidacy. This is in Louisiana, folks. Bernie routinely is packing in more people then all the other candidates combined. And Bernie is doing this while we're still a half a year out from the first primaries.
You can't underestimate any candidate when he's doing this everywhere he goes.
but if you are in a wagering mood, I'll give you 50-1 that Bernie will NOT be POTUS,
and if you think I am only offering to take action on long shots that I don't think I will ever have to pay off on, How about this one. I will take 3-1 odds against Hillary. Hillary is the 1-5 betting favorite right now, I am offering 40% better odds than you can get with any bookie taking action on her.
Feeling lucky?