Thursday, February 18, 2016

State of play

If current trends continue, this is shaping up to be the most depressing presidential election cycle of my lifetime. The three people who are most likely to be the next president are, as follows:

  • A carnival barker
  • The most comprehensively corrupt public figure in the last fifty years
  • A straight-up socialist
Criminy. Mencken is right -- one of these shaved apes is going to give the people what they want, good and hard.

13 comments:

Gino said...

But carnivals are fun!!

jerrye92002 said...

Latest national poll has Trump in 2nd place behind Cruz. Guess that Carny will have to move on.

Mr. D said...

Latest national poll has Trump in 2nd place behind Cruz. Guess that Carny will have to move on.

I'd like to believe that, Jerry, but I don't. It's an outlier until we see other polls that show the same result.

jerrye92002 said...

Well, the thought is that Trump is a "bandwagon candidate," someone who is inevitably the winner, until they're not, at which point they either lose interest in the voters or vice versa. It's a hopeful sign that the bragging, bombast and BS may be exceeding its sell-by date.

Mr. D said...

But carnivals are fun!!

Not when you have to clean up the vomited cotton candy and the horse crap left behind.

Mr. D said...

While the notion that Trump is a bandwagon candidate is plausible, I'd like to see more evidence. If Cruz wins a few states on Super Tuesday, then I'll be more willing to entertain the notion.

Gino said...

Blame the GOP for trump. The bushes and bohners and the rest who fiddled around with wall street money men while the working class got burned. I'm going to enjoy the show and wait for the pitchfork revolution to get real.

Bike Bubba said...

Lot of people to blame for Trump; the GOP headship is one, but we've got to blame our local politicians (who gave billions for his bankrupt businesses), the media (who utterly fail to vet guys like our current POTUS), and ourselves--it wasn't that long ago that clear adultery, business bankruptcy, and being a general blowhard was electoral death.

(yes, Kennedy and a host of others were adulterers, but it was not known to most voters....)

For that matter, DC is a target rich environment, with a lot of blameworthy parties, in a LOT of ways.

I am hoping and praying for a candidate who's a little quieter, one who realizes that it's just plain obnoxious to force nuns to buy birth control for loose women, one who realizes that my kids just starting out shouldn't be subsidizing Teslas for lawyers, and the like.

Gino said...

pray hard. its all we really got.
(and keep our pitchforks in good working order, i think we are gonna need them)

Anonymous said...

"I am hoping and praying for a candidate who's a little quieter, one who realizes that it's just plain obnoxious to force nuns to buy birth control for loose women, one who realizes that my kids just starting out shouldn't be subsidizing Teslas for lawyers, and the like."

Uh, his name is John Kasich, but the GOP base is too dumb to see that.

jerrye92002 said...

If I thought it was the GOP base supporting Trump rather than Kasich, I would take your comment as an insult to them. And other than Trump, the other remaining candidates can all make the same claim.

Anonymous said...

Jerry,
The GOP Base is supporting Trump.
I think you are confusing the GOP Base with the GOP Establishment.

jerrye92002 said...

I don't think it is the GOP base. The heavy turnout in these elections tells me that the base is being augmented by people that don't normally vote Republican-- the base. That concerns me because the GOP base has some ideas that I would like to see in public policy; I don't see those policies in the Trump stump speeches or past actions.

Now, what I would like to see is the "establishment" get solidly behind Trump and see how long his popularity lasts.