Looking through the final Des Moines Register polling numbers, I’m struck first of all by how stunningly unsuccessful Jeb Bush has been in winning support. He’s polling at 2%, which means that one out of every fifty people say that they intend to caucus for him. He’s the second choice of 4% (or one in every twenty-five respondents). His 53% unfavorable rating is higher than anyone else polled, including Sarah Palin. His net favorable rating is minus 12%, which is only surpassed by Palin’s minus 13% rating.
When asked how enthusiastic they would be to vote for a candidate in the general, only John Kasich has a lower rating, and that’s because Kasich appears to be largely unknown in the Hawkeye state after having focused all his efforts on winning in New Hampshire.
We really need to stop and savor this complete collapse of the House of Bush.
The numbers are hard to explain if you restrict yourself to looking at Jeb without considering the family legacy. Jeb hasn’t been a particularly negative or divisive campaigner. He’s tried to be more of a sunny optimist, at least until it became clear that that tact wasn’t going to work. If he’d been savaging people left and right, it’d be easier to understand his sky-high unfavorables.
Considering how poorly credentialed the other leading contenders are to take over the job of the leader of the free world, you’d also think that Jeb would be the second choice of more voters.
With Bush’s enormous budget, you’d think he’d break through with some people through advertising and also through pure organizing power. Neither seems to have happened, which can’t be explained away as simply poor messaging or resourcing. This is more of a situation where it doesn’t matter what Team Bush does, there’s simply no way to get people to consider going back to their family for leadership.
I blame Obama.
100 Million dollars just doesn’t buy as much now as did in 2012. Just ask Karl Rove.
GOP nomination goes to the best hater. Nixon’s Law.
Jeb’s just not vile enough…
This is an election of “stick it to the man.” Bush represents the man!
This is an election of “stick it to the man.” Bush represents the man!
The Republican base wants to “blow up” their establishment candidates. This was true in 2008 and 2012; however, there was not as strong an alternative candidate like Donald Trump. Additionally, Jeb’s campaign didn’t take Donald Trump seriously, when The Donald was excoriating him early in the race. Personally, when I hear Jeb’s name mentioned, I think of his interference in the 2000 Gore v. Bush race, Elián González, and Terri Schiavo. Ugh!
Maybe a bit OT, but looking at that poll, Trump combined first and second choice numbers are the same as Rubio and less than Cruz.
Considering all the reports I have seen that Trump has really crummy staff people, he may be a bit of a paper tiger. Crummy staff means difficulties with getting electors onto ballots, not just GOTV issues. (Can’t vote for someone who is not on the ballot.)
Considering the signs Cruz might be peaking, dare we hope prospects for a brokered convention are looking up?
All those things should have been positives with GOP primary voters. Not positive enough, it seems. And ancient history.
I’m not sure I agree with this. Jeb! is just a truly terrible campaigner with no natural political instinct. Donald Trump’s zinger about him being “low energy” was so devastating because it’s what everyone was already thinking. Before Trump even entered, people were saying that the problem with Jeb! was he didn’t seem to want the job enough. The way he talks about himself, the way his supporters talk about him make it clear that he was never a Presidential-level campaigner, and nowhere near disciplined enough to close the gap in time for people to start voting.
Since his “coming out party” when he launched his book calling for immigration amnesty which he was then forced to almost physically eat within weeks, it’s been clear that he and his advisors are completely and totally out of touch with the country and their party as it currently exists today. Without the Bush name, Jeb! probably wouldn’t even have run, or if he had, he would probably have done the same thing as Walker by now – gotten out in the hope of someone with pretenses of sanity beating Trump or Cruz.
To me, the only numbers that are hard to explain if you restrict yourself to looking at Jeb! without considering his family legacy are his initial fundraising numbers.
I believe that, like Al Gore, the Presidency was his father’s ambition for him, not his own. al gore campaigned well as VP candidate, but didn’t seem to have the fire in his belly for the top slot.
But the weird disjunction between the person’s intrinsic total mediocrity and their inexplicable status and privilege IS the “Bush” effect.
Meaning, people might not be consciously associating it with his brother or father or the name Bush, but that central concept is still what they’re recoiling from. We’re being served that same dinner again: a conspicuously bland, awkward, inarticulate, bored, slightly-weird-faced guy who can’t really talk and comes off kind of goofy and weird and disengaged…and yet who’s obviously reeking of money, privilege, connections, and entitlement, and has spent his entire life in the corridors of power.
And nobody wants this any more. The name “Bush” is just redundant; whether people draw the connection or not, they’re just not interested.
he did a lot of it himself. i remember a period when every time he opened his mouth the response was “didn’t we used to think he was smarter than W?”
He has credentials, just no brains or charisma. nor does he seem to have much “fire in the belly”.
Trump’s attacks on Jeb were perhaps his most effective. “Low energy candidate” taken together with his last name and poor presence make Bush a loser, to borrow an apt description.
from Jeb! campaign insiders/operatives desperate to distance themselves from the outcome (“flawed candidate” yadayadayada) should be entertaining sport.
Yes, I really do savor this complete collapse of the House of Bush but it does seem a somewhat hollow victory because the House of Clinton seems to remain so strong, or is it? Jeb’s unfavorable number at 53% and Hillary’s unfavorable number anywhere from 50% to 56% depending on who you ask, doesn’t look that much different. Jeb with his House of Bush plus a lot of money has not managed to move his needle at all. Hillary with her Clinton Machine, most all of the Democratic Establishment plus Wall Street has managed to move her needle a very little. This should worry people who support Hillary because they fear a Republican in the White House. Do you really expect voters to elect someone they don’t like?
Hillary is saying she wants to do all the things that Bernie wants to do but she’ll do them better and it won’t cost anyone any money (excuse me; I’m having a FDR flashback). Just like Ronald Reagan reading his flash cards, you start to wonder just who wrote those flash cards. We would all do well to ask the very same critical question of who is behind that Clinton Machine and what have they been doing to help or make worse the economic problems we face today. This article was posted elsewhere by Marie (thanks again).
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/28/hillary-clinton-wall-street-bailout
>>who is behind that Clinton Machine
for anyone who doesn’t read dkos, there’s good discussion over there today
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/1/30/1477278/-The-Clintons-Really-Are-Out-Of-Our-League
which is based on this article
http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2016/01/30/clinton-system-donor-machine-2016-election/
Committed Democrat that I am, I’m staying off blogs like DKOS and Salon these days cause as an uncommitted Bernie or Hillary supporter, the Hillary hate there just turns me off. Indeed, I also am switching away from a lot of my favorite MSNBC shows as I really am overdosed on Presidential politics. A bad sign that indicates it’s the haters who will show up to vote in the primaries and in November.
We really do need to do something about our elections and it will have to come from the grassroots cause the monied folk and the media like it this way. Why would they not?
Curious take on things. The Clintons belong lock, stock and barrel to ‘the monied folk and the media’. That’s their source of power and only reality. Not the slobs who might vote for them.
Yeah, well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.
Well, maybe it’s an pointed fact by now. Read the recommended articles and then separate fact from opinion. They are a corporation and media conglomerate of their own.
Look, I’ve read the articles. Point me to a single fact that proves Hillary Clinton “belongs to the moneyed interests”, whoever/whatever they are. So she takes campaign contributions from Wall Street? She’s going to need that money to stay afloat on the sewage spouted by the right. If Sanders gets the nod, good luck to him, without financial support from “moneyed interests” he may sink like a rock under the deluge of right wing crap. The system we have requires presidential aspirants to raise boatloads of cash. That’s the way it is, currently.
The articles also go into some detail about the Clintons net worth. According to the Washington Post, their money came mainly from book sales, (24 published by my count; one advance was 8 million), investments, and speaking fees. I do wish she hadn’t take money from Wall Street for those speeches. Her relationship with Wall Street is more cozy that I would like; Sanders has a better record there. But is she “in their pockets”? I see no proof of that.
If Sanders gets the nod, good luck to him, without financial support from “moneyed interests” he may sink like a rock under the deluge of right wing crap. The system we have requires presidential aspirants to raise boatloads of cash. That’s the way it is, currently.
Oh, is that right? Then how’d this happen:
Yeah I saw that , and thats great. And I repeat, if he wants to fight the repubs. with one hand tied behind his back, good luck to him, he’ll need it.
Don’t all those “little people” chipping in an average of $27 each know that they don’t count? Can’t make a difference when with a single phone call Clinton can pick up a $20 million check?
And some people around here view those mega-checks as more meaningful than all those tiny contributions. Even though as a percentage of wealth and income, $27 is a much bigger financial stretch and commitment than a million from a billionaire.
People on either side of the Democratic Party primary battle should avoid getting carried away with the characterizations re. campaign financing here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/29/us/politics/bernie-sanders-is-democrats-top-beneficiary-of-outside
-spending-like-it-or-not.html?_r=0
“DES MOINES — As he swung through Iowa this week, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont rarely passed up a chance to bash the rising tide of money in politics, a system he said on Tuesday was “corrupt and undermining American democracy.”
At many of these stops, he was accompanied by members of National Nurses United, a seven-year-old union, fanning out from a bright-red bus in matching red scrubs to corral potential Sanders votes.
But the union is not just busing nurses into Iowa. The union’s “super PAC” has spent close to $1 million on ads and other support for Mr. Sanders, the Democratic presidential candidate who has inspired liberal voters with his calls to eradicate such outside groups. In fact, more super PAC money has been spent so far in express support of Mr. Sanders than for either of his Democratic rivals, including Hillary Clinton, according to Federal Election Commission records.
“I do appreciate the irony,” said RoseAnn DeMoro, the executive director of National Nurses United. “All things being equal, we would rather not be doing this. On the other hand, we want to see Bernie as president.”
Ooo! Working class women have collectively organized and spent a whopping $1 million in support of a candidate that speaks for them. How much is in Hillary’s SuperPac? Twenty million last time I checked. But that might not include the $6 million that Soros dumped into the pile.
You come up with the most ridiculous false equivalences.
It’s disappointing that your response here failed to recognize the meaning of the lead to my post. I was trying to point out that supporters of Clinton should avoid getting carried away with claims that Sanders and his supporters would not raise enough money to compete. It also acts as a rebuke to Sanders supporters who wish to believe that Bernie could compete solely with individual donations. The news story points out that Bernie’s candidacy is well supported by many SuperPACs, even if his campaign is not running its own SuperPAC.
As a fellow Sanders supporter, I would have expected you to be happy about the prospect that Sanders and his supporters will have enough money to compete.
Sorry — that’s $8 million from Soros for Clinton PACs, and through 12/31/15 the total receipts for Hillary’s Pac is $41 million. As only $5 million was spent in 2015, expect to see it flood the airwaves in the next few months.
So, looks as if we have dueling unions. And Clinton is ahead on dollars in this battle as well.
Seeing how she has nothing remotely exciting or new to say, and with Bernie baying at her from the left, I wonder if money thrown at the pet media saying the same ole thing will have rhat much of an effect, really, unless she
A. Goes massively negative on Bernie just to try whip up her base (could backfire badly) and get people talking about how badass she is. Might work, big bet though…
B. She convincingly fakes left and tries to pick up Bernie’s voters who would like a safer bet (and maybe want to make history with a woman president).
B. Would make an ideal outcome for lefties obviouies, but she’s going to have to be quite the athlete to outflank Bernie from further left. Vanishingly improbable, iow.
If she takes road A, she will lose a lot of folks who hope that having a woman as president mimit lead to kinder, gentler politics in some fuzzy general way. Riiight… Her SecState record makes a mockery of this naivete.
If she makes to the Presidency, America might realise (as with Obama’s election with racism), just how ready the country really is for a woman, even one like her, a battle-axe if there ever was one.
Yeah, there are many Kos articles that I can’t read right now because I want to still like Bernie when all this is over, and remembering that the hate mongers don’t represent him as a person was becoming exhausting.
I read the nybooks.com article, skimmed it because its nothing more than one long list of millions and billions and more billions going through Clinton accounts, foundation or whatever. The filth in Kazachstan is a delicacy to make anyone vomit. Disgusting. How can the Clintons not be corrupt?
Scum buckets. But some one will chime in with “but they are our sum buckets, so the rules don’t count. Only winning counts”.
The Daily Kos diary is definitely worth reading and see at least some of the comments.
Take it to its logical next step. Every DC DEM pol and all the DEM party elites know all of this and something near 99% are “Ready for Hillary.” And they will be hard pressed not to do her bidding should she win it all. So, they have sold us out right along with the Clintons.
Different from the 1990s when there was Congressional Democratic opposition to some of what Bill wanted. But that stuff was on GOP Christmas lists; so, their public personal attacks on Clinton gave both Republicans and Clinton cover for advancing the GOP agenda. If voters were rational, Republicans would embrace Hillary and Democrats would suggest she take a long walk on a short pier.
Thank for these very interesting links. I have talked before about Bill Clinton being a creature of Al From and the DLC becoming the Clinton Machine. I thought they were just Republican-lite adopting Republican economic policies but you show they actually became what they were trying to adopt by outdoing the House of Bush at their own game. They traded places with the Bush family. Why would you need Jeb(?) when you have Hillary?
Billmon:
Bush’s unfavorability of 53% is in his own party! [likely caucus goers).
Hillary Clinton’s is 17%. (Bill is just 11%). Favorable is basically the same as Bernie.
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/elections/presidential/caucus/2016/01/30/clinton-keeps-s
lim-edge-over-sanders-latest-iowa-poll/79537020/
I time the collapse from the time that he said he couldn’t think of a better foreign policy adviser than his brother, W. Although Republicans will go on the attack defending W, privately I haven’t met one, from old school conservative to out and out Tea Party member that thinks W’s foreign policy was good. Although some are actually to the right!
Could be. But are voters so naive, stupid, or lame that they would expect Jeb? to enter the WH without the Bush family FP team?
It’s politics, you have to pretend to be shiny and new.
I do think people expected the Bush team (Bush League?) but not W. Many Presidents left office unpopular, but I never heard of one before leaving with crowds on the Mall chanting, “Nah! Nah! Goodbye!”
In the early polling, before he and most of the others were in, he was the one to beat. Thus, difficult to posit a House of Bush collapse. He may be a dreadful campaigner, but so was his father and his brother was often laughable as well. By 1980, the only elective office that GHWB had ever held was a seat in the House. He was “likable enough” among party elders/elites, but not so much with voters. When there was serious competition, either for nominations or in general elections, he folded like a cheap suit. The difference between GWB and his father and brother was that he managed to nail down the fundies and could exhibit a higher energy level in public appearances (even if privately he was lazier than the other two).
Jeb? has competition. Has fallen way short for the fundie vote and crazy vote, and this time, most of the “sober” Republican voters can’t be found and the remainder have split among the bananas.
I don’t believe Bush wanted to win. He always looked like he was there out of family obligation. But then, I don’t believe most of the GOP candidates want to win. For them, the whole primary is mostly an ad for grifters. Cruz wants to win. A few of the others might not mind. But the majority are definitely not taking this seriously.
Don’t fool yourself. The Bush family is well informed as to the power and money that comes with a WH stint. They just didn’t calculate that another opportunity would come along for a Bush so soon after the disastrous GWB presidency and therefore, neglected to put Jeb? in the presidential training camp to overcome the Bush family lackluster persona.
They had to know that if Jeb was going to run, against Hillary was his best opportunity, as it weakened the family line argument. Maybe they’re just not as efficient as they used to be now that Papa Bush is older, but I’ve seen nothing to make me think Jeb wanted the job.
Agree that Hillary running again was the only factor that could open the door to another Bush run. Perhaps Bill was whispering in Poppy’s ear that Hillary was ready for retirement and enjoying all the blessing of being a key fixture in the CGI. Sounds like something Bill would do, and we all know that GHWB isn’t the sharpest knife in the block.
A conversation between brothers at the Bush family compound while watching the Republican convention this summer.
Dubya: You ran a lousy campaign, Jeb, or that could have been you giving the acceptance speech. Think of what could have been. Losing a presidential campaign really sucks, and it’s a bad mark on the family name.
Jeb: I didn’t lose, George. You did.
Dubya: I was two for two, bro. I’m the winner and you’re the loser.
Jeb: I lost because my name is Bush.
Dubya: Bullshit. Bush is great name — it’s the only reason I got elected in the first place.
Jeb: You’re right about that, George, but if you haven’t noticed things have changed.
Jeb turns off the TV and takes out a couple of rifles.
Jeb: Enough of this crap. Let’s go hunting. You and me.
Dubya: Hey, Jeb, what’s the look in your eye?
Yes, watching the Bush Crime Syndicate sort of implode is a thing of beauty. Not sure if it’s a joy forever, as there are other Bush’s lurking.
I read something in my local nooz rag today (too lazy to look it up). I think it was an editorial, where someone youngish (by the photo, so who knows if accurate and up to date) who complained about the Bush’s not being conservative enough. Both Poppy and W – not conservative enough. Ergo, fahgedaboud JEB!
There’s also some commentaries from “average citizens” on NPR this weekend (or things that I caught sort of halfway thru a story) who are complaining about the GOP not being “conservative” enough. So that’s why they’re all IN for Trump. And some of those radio voices have also stated flat out that the Bush’s aren’t conservative enough.
I think “conservative enough” means: a) building a humongoid wall across the Mexican border, b) kicking out every Muslim (even those born here) & not letting another one in, c) banning abortion completely and criminally indicting women who have them or doctors who perform them, d) making this a “Christian” nation where everyone has to go to christian churches or something. Or something like that. I think the blahs may have to move or something.
I’m not exaggerating by much. What these people think Trump is going to do to fulfill these demands is beyond my pay grade. Trump has been known to be pro-choice, and I don’t think he gives a rat’s patoot about attending church. And his touting of the Mexican yoooga wall is just false advertising.
If, somehow (shudder), Trump should win, I just figure these rubes are bound for yet more rage and anger because I figure Trump, albeit horrid, will probably ALSO end up not being “conservative enough.” I’m not kidding. I really don’t get what these people want anymore, other than Christian Talabangelical Sharia Law (also not kidding) with anyone who’s not white kicked to the curb. But hey, they all say that they are emphatically NOT racists or sexists. Go figure.
Trump might be serious about the wall. He’s in real estate. Maybe he owns a company he can give a no-bid contract to.
no, Trump’s not conservative enough, according to the talk radio I’ve heard, because the “makes deals” and will make deals with the dems/
Shouldn’t it be “Fall of the House of Bush”?
I’m assuming we’re going for Poe here.