When I say that Jeb Bush isn’t ready from primetime, I don’t mean that he might blow a chance at the nomination like Hillary Clinton did in 2008. No, Hillary made some early mistakes that proved catastrophic, but she proved to be a formidable candidate and she would have easily dispatched John McCain.
Jeb isn’t a strong campaigner with some glaring weaknesses. He’s a very bad campaigner. He’s reactive and doesn’t drive the agenda at all. He’s insincere. He doesn’t resonate. He has no instincts and can’t respond in real time. Trump calls him “low energy,” which seems fairly accurate, especially when compared to campaigners like Barack and Hillary.
If Bush doesn’t win the nomination, it won’t be because he didn’t understand the process. It will be because he’s terrible at convincing people to vote for him.
Say what you want about Hillary’s 2008 campaign, but she had no problem convincing tens of millions of people to vote for her.
And is Kasich really the back-up plan here?
I think he is.
Kasich would be less scary in terms of the “what if he actually won” question. But it’s hard to see him getting far with the Republican base. Bush is incompetent to scale the highest political cliffs. He’s got all the structural advantages and cannot gain traction because he comes across as a spoiled rich guy who had all the world laid out before him. Now he wants the presidency laid out before him (as it was for his brother, who pretty much just had to show up). But his brother stunk up the joint so badly that the rank and file are nauseated by the Bush dog and pony show. If the guy had a bit of talent, maybe he’d have a chance of convincing folks that this one is not like the others. But the talents not there. In fact, if anything, Jeb! just keeps reinforcing that he’s the latest model of Bush. What’s with this effort to defend the surge and blame Obama for the failure in Iraq. No one’s gonna buy that crap; not even those on the far right. Whoever dreamed up such a strategy should be shot. Any candidate who would go along with it has no business running any organization, let alone a country with really scary weapons.
A national campaign isn’t something thrown together at the last minute. JEB! is a horrible campaigner but he has tens of millions in his immediate war chest, tens to hundreds of millions on call, hundreds of millions in various PACS, the Bush machine, & so on.
Further, the modern GOP is incompetent when it come to governing but they are shrewd enough politically to know if anybody but JEB! becomes their candidate they are toast from the git-go in the general. JEB! will almost certainly lose the presidency but he has neutral coat tails. Any of the other Clown Car riders will have negative coat tails: people will vote to vote against them and go on to vote against every other Republican for spite.
JEB! will almost certainly lose the presidency but he has neutral coat tails.
What natural coat tails?
He said neutral; not natural.
Jeb! is Sideshow Bob. No matter which direction he turns, he steps on a rake. And he’s “the smart Bush”? Uh-huh.
Kasich is not the backup plan. If anyone was a establishment backup plan to Bush, it was Walker. But even he has crashed and burned.
Rubio, Paul, Christie and Kasich won’t work either.
Before Trump, I was convinced the nominee was going to be Cruz. After Trump, I am convinced the nominee is going to be Trump and his VP will be Cruz.
> I am convinced the nominee is going to be Trump and his VP will be Cruz.
Wow … now that’s a truly scary ticket. If it turns out like that, I would start to lean towards Hillary for extra catastrophic insurance. Even in a perfect storm where everything goes wrong for the dems, the contrast between the first female candidate and the worst misogynist of the modern era OUGHT to be enough to guarantee an HRC win.
But then again, is Trump really scarier than Walker or Christie or Rubio? I’m not going to relax until I start seeing the kind of 538 and Sam Wang battleground state maps that we saw in ’08 and’12.
Insurance? Sanders is polling better against Trump than Clinton is.
Remember, John Ellis Bush-Bush had to be BEGGED to run by the money people in the Republican party once their first choice (Christie) came apart at the seams. A year ago he was happily ensconced in trading on his family name and sitting on corporate boards. He doesn’t have the burning desire, the fire in the belly to be President. He’s running out of a sense of grim obligation, not because he’s always wanted to be president, and it shows.
Say what you will about Mitt Romney, but the guy did spend six straight years being laser-focused on running for president. Bush just seems annoyed by the whole process, like he’d rather be doing anything else. I seriously wonder if he isn’t tanking his campaign on purpose.
I think he’d love to be president. It’s just that life has always been so easy for this scion of wealth and power, he has no idea how to buckle down. Plus he’s a crappy candidate, blind and tone deaf to what’s right there. His efforts to fend off challenges and address difficult issues are oafish.
He wants to be President.
He just doesn’t think that he should have to do the WORK to be President.
He wants a coronation.
Bush was toast when The Donald talked about his wife and Bush said nothing. The Donald saw weakness and has pounded him ever since. Note The Donald did not spend a penny to push Bush polling into single digits.
Who will be next? Kasich? Or will all that dark money in the PACs go after The Donald? IMO it will be the Dark Money who will determine who runs for the GOP.
I mean, seriously, does anyone think that Jeb…BUSH…ever had a real chance at anything?
Seriously, there is literally almost no way that he would win the Presidency, based on his last name alone.
And, can you imagine if the last 3 Republican presidents were all Bush family members, father followed by two sons? Not only gross, but how would the enablers of the right wing be able to actually argue that the Republican party is anything other than a party of the rich, for the rich?
As stated by others, Bush is basically just a name placard running because as most others have stated themselves, the Republican candidates are a cast of clowns and the Bush family has a history in politics, full stop.
Hindsight is 20/20. The real question is whether anyone saw Trump carving up the field. Anyone who says they saw it coming should submit proof if they want me to believe them.
Just how did JEB get to be Gov of Florida? The guy just looks lost out there. No chemistry at all. He’s just fakin’ it.
Just how did JEB get to be Gov of Florida?
Because the Democratic Party of Florida was incompetent? After all, Jeb lost his first race, remember. Since Jeb was actually the one being groomed to be president.
Today, he apparently released a video, in which “Heckuva Job” Brown is seen endorsing him. Now that is the stupidest thing I’ve heard all day. Drawing attention to one of the most disastrous moments of 43’s tenure, bringing in a disgraced incompetent, etc etc.
On the 10th anniversary of Katrina? Head slap
And the Florida governor elections take place in the mid-terms which at the moment favor GOP candidates.
Need to be cautious taking polling this far out and projecting into the future. In 2011 a mid-August poll had:
Perry – 27%
Romney – 14%
Palin – 10%
On January 4, 2012 the polling was:
Romney – 27%
Perry – 6%
Palin – Gone
Sensible thought. Yes, Trump is looking strong right now, 15 months out. That is 3-6 political lifetimes.
He apparently thought he could write a book and go on a book tour and make lots of money and get lots of good press before he officially declared. His name would be so big and so well respected that he would win the nomination in a walk. It didn’t work out that way.
NY Times from March 2013:
As someone already said, he was “stepping on rakes” before he even started campaigning.
Dunno if Kasich is going to go anywhere, though. It seems like whoever wins NH and SC is going to be the favorite (as Iowa doesn’t seem to have much predictive power). At the moment, that looks like Trump.
Cheers,
Scott.
I think the hand has been tipped regarding the backup: it’s Fiorina. That’s who the Wurlitzer tried to award the debate to. As a GE candidate, she makes some sense: she neutralizes Clinton’s feminist cred and can (and will) play the gender card against Saunders. She doesn’t have a political track record, so she can say whatever she needs to without contradicting her history. She appeals to the “what America needs is a CEO, not a politician” crap that Trump also appeals to. Of course, she failed as a CEO and was fired, but some have already defended her retrospectively basically on the grounds that HP didn’t die. The elite can trust her; she is one of them, and therefore she can say anything and the elite will know it doesn’t matter. She won’t wreak the nation’s credit rating over budget arguments or anything like that.
not as the nominee. At the moment, it’s all about building interest and keeping people distracted by the clown car (so they don’t think about important things like the Iran deal, the budget, the debt ceiling, etc.) Having Carly and Carson on the stage is necessary to combat the “15 white guys who all believe the same thing even if they say it slightly differently” criticism.
Carly has no state or large group that she can point to as her base of support. JEB! and Rubio are still in the running because the Teabaggers need Florida to have any hope of winning, and JEB! has the 0.01% already. Cruz has the Talibanicals, if you believe this. Walker has the Koch brothers.
By mid-March, she’ll be gone or only going through the motions, hoping to get the VP slot.
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
I don’t know, it sure does seem to me that to be able to be competitive in a general national election you should be able to be competitive in a general statewide election. At least in a wave election like 2010 … against a not very good campaigner.
Of course, maybe losing by 10% is being competitive in CA.
I don’t think Barbra Boxer QUITE reaches the levels of campaign as Hillary, tho.
Maybe I’m wrong.
Can’t disagree with Boo’s analysis, and it’s heartening to see a Bush seem to fail at the family business of getting elected to high office none of them are worthy of.
This may well be the cycle, like 1964 and 1980, where Repubs are determined to go with whoever is offering the reddest of red meat. jeb? only offers medium-rare with light seasoning and a garnish of parsley.
Otoh, it’s still only August, 5 long months before the first voting ferchrissakes. A lot could happen especially to a shoot-from-the-hip frontrunner who has jumped out to an early two-touchdown lead midway through the first quarter and seems to want to call the game over right now.
I doubt if he can hold his lead until IA. I also wonder about his strategy of calling out jeb? alone for criticism — jeb? has been falling in the polls for weeks mostly by his own doing. Let the man hang himself. By calling attention to him Trump risks giving the guy significant media attention and making this a two candidate race. I think jeb? would like that at this point.
Clinton didn’t “blow the election” in 2008. She simply lost. And she did far better than most candidates do. She and Obama were virtually tied in the popular vote. That is hardly a sign of catastrophic mistakes.
Well, she was a poor manager of her campaign when it counted, early on in the first contest particularly, wild overspending by her female IA staffer. And the crucial misunderstanding by Penn of how Dem primary votes are allocated. Not sure how either of these situations escaped the attention of Hillary, or whether she accepted them w/o questioning. In the oversight and basic sound management areas, she did blow it.
Not that Obama wasn’t immensely helped by a gentle press corps which treated him as their guy while going after Hillary, especially obvious during the debates.
But all that’s herstory, and I don’t want to relitigate all that depressing stuff.
The stock market has me depressed enough. May need to take in another tenant and sleep downstairs on the couch if this thing doesn’t correct soon. Even if it means taking in another Republican …