To Recap.The United States of America just spent five billion dollars, countless volunteer hours, and anywhere from one to four years (depending on how you count) deciding who was going to be its next President. A nation that, in 2008, finally decided it was over its troubled past enough to put a black man in the highest office in the land, now went to the polls to decide whether, after four years of the worst economy since the Depression improving at a snail's pace and gridlock on a scale unprecedented in living memory, it wanted to keep him there.
And, as it turned out, it did. But what a ride it was. We've seen Bachmann warn us about the Muslim Brotherhood's impending coup; Gingrich fearing that his grandchildren will live in an atheist dystopia run by radical Islamists; Herman Cain ride to sainthood on the crest of his Sim City tax plan and then, just as abruptly, be brought low by allegations of sketchiness; Rick Perry promise to cut that hive of liberal waste and irresponsibility, the Department of Oops; RON PAUL! run for his umpteenth and likely last time; Rick Santorum refer to the President of the United States as a nigger; and Mitt Romney, after all that wailing and gnashing of teeth, win the nomination, mostly due to a) the RNC screwing with the primary scandal and b) not shooting himself in the foot quite as much as everyone else and being the last man standing when the dust cleared.
Then it started all over again, with Mittens picking the Republican Party's favorite poster boy, Paul Ryan (R-WI) as veep. After three months or so of extremely heavy campaigning on both sides, four debates, and a good scare for Democrats, Obama won, by a comfortable electoral margin coupled with a pretty close popular vote margin that at one point threatened to turn into a mirror image of 2000. In retrospect, it looks kind of clear for at least the few days right before the election; the popular vote was always going to be very, very close, but looking at it state-by-state, it would have been very, very hard for Romney to take the White House. In the week or so following, we all breathed a collective sigh of relief as months of dinner phone calls, attack ads, and endless bickering abruptly came to an end.
But Washington never sleeps, though it is often comatose, and here we are, Shinji Ikari-like, to have a mental circlejerk over the body politic. It's what we do best, after all. The most immediate piece of news is the looming debt ceiling, as Congress tries to make one last stab at a bipartisan debt deal after the debacle of summer 2011, in which it looked like the United States might very well default and- in the end- Congress delayed taking responsibility for eighteen months and ended up with an approval rating below that of pornography, the BP oil spill and Paris Hilton. In the meantime, however, we can all have a nice look at what's to come in four years, for last week,
Marco Rubio got a head start on the primary season by flying to Iowa under the transparently bullshit pretext of attending Iowa's governor's 66th birthday bash. It's probably a bit too early to talk very seriously about 2016 runs- check back in a year, maybe- but among names that have been floating around in the GOP are
Paul Ryan,
Marco Rubio,
Chris Christie,
Bobby Jindal,
Mike Huckabee,
Rick Santorum,
Jeb Bush, and Spawn of Ron,
Rand Paul. I have reserved the post below for a fuller outline of the presidential candidates, since
this post will likely be very, very long by the time this thread wraps up. To restate more clearly,
This is not solely a 2016 thread. It's a thread for American political happenings of all stripes, from Capitol Hill to the state legislatures; the 2012 thread has degenerated into a mix of general politics, election analysis and general light bickering, and I think it's time we had a fresh start. Though I make no predictions, likely it will slow down for a bit once the debt deal is reached through 2013, speeding up when there's a major news story but otherwise wandering on and off the first page, and then reaching a bump in September or October 2014 as the midterms approach. There may also be a bump in 2013, because New Jersey and Virginia are electing their governors then, and Kaine, Warner and Christie have all been put forward as possible '16 runs. After that, it's likely to become increasingly dominated by election news through 2015, and then full-blown in 2016. News about Puerto Rico can also go here, as if the legislature there gives it the go-ahead, we might have fifty-one states in 2016. But as stated, I make no predictions about candidates...not at this point, at least.
The biggest house rule, here, is
do not flame. I encourage friendly and constructive debate. But ad personam attacks (not the same as ad hominem, I should add, which is sometimes valid), malice, a refusal to be civil...leave it to the politicians, folks. It isn't welcome here and I will not hesitate to call in His Greatness the Toady One. Some bickering is inevitable, of course, and I will have a certain amount of tolerance for a low-level of mostly harmless name-calling and run-of-the-mill fallacious arguments- in other words, I'll be working on the assumption that anyone who stays in an argument will have a moderately thick skin. But the minute you start being actively nasty, or up the level of the argument just for the sake of upping the argument, I will step in.
Also, don't be a moron- I mean too much of a moron. This is a liberal board, and a Ron Paul or Rick Santorum supporter may very well feel surrounded by hostile lefties. But that doesn't qualify; I know a few perfectly sharp and civil people who have supported them in real life, and their kin are on the internet, as well. Go ahead and debate them, but don't be needlessly aggressive. I will draw a line, for example, between opposing abortion or even gay marriage on personal, moral or religious grounds, as opposed to calling for the return of all women to their rightful place in the kitchen and advocating concentration camps for teh gayz. The former is welcome. The latter will be booted. (This cuts the other way, as well. If you come in here screaming "JOHN B0NER WANTS TO TURN THE UNITED STATES INTO A FASHIST THEOCRACY AND DEPORT BLACK PEOPLE TO AFRICA!!!!11111!", I will go after you, too.)
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Topic: dhokarena56's American Politics Thread: not just 2016 (Read 963 times)