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You Decide 2008 has some interesting coverage on John McCain possibly pulling out of the race by September based primarily his poor fundraising efforts to date.
I personally don’t think McCain has much of a shot. I was formerly a fan of who thought he was a simple, kind moderate many years ago, but in recent years he is coming off like the sweet grandpa who is trying to be everyone’s favorite old relative by saying exactly what we want to hear. And not being able to keep up with what most of the country is watching or listening to, or even talking about. I think he could of had a shot if he was 20 or even 10 years younger, but now he seems past his prime and out of place in the current pool of candidates.
Here’s the FOX News coverage on the speculation that he could drop out of the race:
I really don’t have time to post much, but maybe I can at least get a few people to comment. A day or two ago, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg quit the Republican party and switched his affiliation to be an independent. So I’ll ask the obvious question: Is Michael Bloomberg setting the stage for an independent presidential run?
2008Central has an interesting post on the possible liability that Mike Huckabee’s son
can have on his campaign for president (or vice president) as his son has quite the interesting track record – an odd firing (because of the brutal killing of a stray dog), gun and drug charges as well as questionable business dealings while an elected official in college.
Mike’s son David has hopefully learned the err of his ways and has since turned over a new leaf and is changed man, and even if that isn’t true, that’s the angle the Huckabee team will have to play. But regardless, how much of an impact does a candidates family have on their chances of winning?
Has there ever been a presidential front-runner who fell to the back of the pack because of their family?
I don’t think it’s really a liability, you can’t really hold a person accountable for their family (especially those crazy aunts or nephews). It might play a bigger part in this case because David is Mike’s son, and technically if he can’t raise his son with good values or control his wild ways, then how could he control a whole country?
In the June 11th & 18th issue of the New Yorker, Elizabeth Korbert reviews the two most recent books on Hillary, “A Woman in Charge” and ” Her Way: the Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton”. The article does a good job of summarizing some of the main points the books made. Hillary and Bill declined to speak with the authors stating that they didn’t want to choose some writers over others. The books therefore rely on third party’s thoughts and memories and the “largely ghostwritten, highly santized account of her life, ‘Living History,’ published in 2003.
Some highlights from the article (and therefore the books) are:
- Her name – an interesting look at something as basic as her name begins with the “fabrication” that she was named after the first climber to reach the top of Mt. Everest, New Zealander Sir Edmund Hillary (which is why she has two Ls in her first name), since Sir Edmund didn’t make that fateful climb until 1953. Her party now claims it was just a sweet tale her mom told her as a child. As for her last name – she didn’t take Clinton to be her surname until Bill was struggling to regain the Arkansas governorship (seven years after their marriage). Then stayed Hillary Clinton until Bill won the Presidential office, and soon after she was being called Hillary Rodham Clinton, the name she used until recently. In recent months, the Rodham has now disappeared off her campaign collateral. Hmmmmm….
- Health Care Debacle – after Bill refused to have a separate dept handle health care for his campaign, he gave the duty to his wife since she stood by him during the Gennifer Flowers ordeal. Hillary then divided 500 members into 34 committees and drove military type meetings – refusing photocopies and pens and pencils to enter the meetings. And when things were not working out (shocker), she “responded that the Administration was prepared to ‘demonize’ those who opposed the task force’s recommendations.” She refused to look at alternative plans when her plans weren’t panning out and have caused many to think that because of her actions, millions of Americans could be covered with health care who currently go uninsured.
- Iraq War – the thorn in just about everyone’s side. Ten days before the vote to go to war with Iraq, Hillary and all other members of congress were delivered a 90-page classified document, that mostly has not been seen by the public, which stated what the government knew about WMDs and what was not known about Saddam’s capabilities. However, the summary of this report, which was publicized, was mainly based on later proved to be false information. Senator Bob Graham of Florida read the entire report and determined the evidence of WMDs in Iraq was weak and urged his colleagues to also read the full report. Graham was one of only 23 senators to vote against the war). Hillary voted for the war, but claims now that her decision was not a mistake, but rather than she was not informed. The evidence shows that she probably didn’t read the full report before casting her vote. Had she read the report that was given to her, would she have voted differently?
- You Don’t Know Me – after announcing that Clinton was going to run for the White House, she went on many TV and radio programs and claimed to each of them, “I may be the most famous person you really don’t know.” So Hil, with just 8 months to the primaries, why don’t you tell us who you are.
Chris Dodd decided to calculate exactly how much talk time each Democratic candidate got in the last debate. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a chance to see the debate, but this little handy dandy chart helps show how the front runners for the election hogged most of the talk time.
My favorite Sunday afternoon program, The McLaughlin Group, donated the entire last episode to the 2008 election, and began with six reasons why this election is the perfect time for a third party candidate to run in the presidential election.
“One, right track/wrong track? Way off track. Seventy- three percent of Americans say the country is going in the wrong direction — 73 percent — an exceptionally negative view in a critical poll.
Two, Anti-incumbency zeitgeist. President Bush and the Senate and the House of Representatives all have approval ratings in the 30s or below. The public wants fresh faces.
Three, a pox on both your houses. Voters are fed up with the red state/blue state designation and duality, with neither Republicans nor Democrats healing the breach. Color us different.
Four, partisan back-biting. Both parties have failed to bring originality to their thinking on vital issues like health care, Social Security reform, energy approaches and immigration realism.
Five, anti-globalist backlash. Outsourcing and immigration have alienated the conservative middle class and the liberal labor unions. In ‘92, Perot got his thrust from NAFTA backlash. Today’s Independent gains from globalism backlash.
Six, 2008 front-loaded primaries. Some 27 states are voting on their presidential nominees on or before February 5, Super Tuesday. By then — that’s February 5, ‘08, eight months from now — the world will know whom the Democrats and Republicans have chosen as their presidential nominee.
Between then, February 5, ‘08, and November ‘08, voters will have nine full months to find flaws with the Republican and Democratic nominees, during which time an Independent may be waiting in the wings to seize and conquer center stage.”
But even after these excellent points and the fact that the majority of Americans claim to be Independent (38%) over Republicans (28%) and Democrats (34%) – all of the panelists seem to agree that a third party has no shot of winning the election.
I don’t know – I think the most compelling reason why a third party candidate might step up this election is the time factor, that there are 9 full months between choosing the candidates and the final election. I think with how crowded the election is currently, there are bound to be people popping up in the third candidate category who have more of a shot than other contenders in recent years.
Probably the most disappointing statistic from the show was seeing the percentage of popular vote for the top running third party candidate for each of the past elections, and the electoral college count for each candidate. Although Perot had 19% of the popular vote he earned 0 electoral college votes. It just seems to me that if you earn almost 1/5th of the entire country’s vote, you should at least get a few electoral college votes. This is why people get discouraged to vote third party, Independent party. But I’m hoping this election brings more votes to third parties.
Do you think there’s a shot for a third party in the 2008 election?
