President in 2009 - CALL IT

[Mr T]

It will be a democrat.

He/She wont do to bad of a job but will still suck just like the last 20 years have. Might even get re-elected due to republicans not wanting to give the people a good candidate.

Both the Reps and the Dems suck cock.

Quit giving us choices between two cleaned up white dudes. Give me a drunk irish immigrant with his running mate being a grizzled old korean.

[Terry in Crapchester]

Bill Richarson

From what I've seen of Hillary (and I purposefully haven't been paying too much attention to her), she strikes me as one who deals with issues after the fact. She tests the waters to see where to stand on issues - like she's trying to decide which stance would help her presidency campaign more, not that she actually has any convictions on such issues. Granted most politicans do that, but it seems so much more obvious with her.

Obama is interesting, but he just doesn't have the experience yet. I would like to see him get a few more years under his belt before attempting a presidential run, but I think a VP run is quite possible for him now.

Edwards might also have a decent shot.

I'm guessing that out of these four, if any two link up together, they will win the Democratic ticket.

I like Richardson, but he's got two strikes against him.

Strike One is the fact that, like Obama, he could encounter racial prejudice should he decide to run. I'd like to think America is better than that. Apparently, and unfortunately, that doesn't appear to be the case.

Strike Two, which is potentially even costlier, is that he is at a severe disadvantage with respect to fundraising by not having declared yet. That's the main reason why people declare so early these days.

Having said that, I think Richardson is a very good bet for the #2 slot no matter who the Democratic nominee is. By not being in the race he hasn't had the opportunity to earn the enmity of any of the others. And Richardson being on the ticket may make the difference as to whether the Democrats take New Mexico. Even though New Mexico is a small state, that may take on added importance if the race is projected to be close.

But I don't think you'll see anyone team up with him prematurely. That's the tactic of someone desperate to hang on, not a front-runner. See Jerry Brown in '92 for an example.

From a pragmatic standpoint, Edwards is the best bet for the Democrats. Hillary is electoral poison in red-state America, and is likely to awaken a lion that will probably sleep through '08 otherwise. Obama doesn't yet have enough experience, and sadly, his race appears to be a negative factor for him. Edwards' campaign in '04 appears, in hindsight, to actually have been a campaign for the Vice-Presidency (recall that he was the candidate who wouldn't say anything negative about any of the others), but he wants the top spot this time.

[Dog]

Would the social conservative right wing actually pull together and vote for Rudy or would they stay home? If Rudy wins the primary, I'd expect a social conservative to run as a third party candidate which would divide the vote and give the presidency to the Democrats.

If it came down to Hillary vs. Rudy, the turnout could be terrible, especially among the extreme wing of the rupublican party.

Gore has the most support of the democrats, but keeps saying he's not interested. Why run, he's got it made already. He can influence public policy wihout the hassle of holding office....and he's making tons more money.

Its too much of a crapshoot on both sides right now, and there's plenty of time for any of the candidates to shove their foots in their mouths.

I'm going out on a limb and picking John Edwards. He has the charisma that Clinton had that helped with the southern women voters. He has not completely sold the democrats yet, but he does seem far more moderate than a Hillary - less polarizing at least.

[Terry in Crapchester]

I'm guessing that would entail a pretty significant pay cut for him.

http://www.nbc.com/Law_&_Order/bios/bios_fred.shtml

[rozy]

Starting to hear some rumors that Fred Thompson is considering throwing his hat in the ring. If he does, I'd say he'd wrap up the Republican nomination without too much trouble. He would also stomp the raw fuck out of any Democratic contender.

Freaking tease...

The wipeouts those debates would be would make the Cheney-Lieberman debate look like a sudden death overtime game by comparison.

[BSmack]

Starting to hear some rumors that Fred Thompson is considering throwing his hat in the ring. If he does, I'd say he'd wrap up the Republican nomination without too much trouble. He would also stomp the raw fuck out of any Democratic contender.

Another Republican actor? Hasn't this country suffered enough?

[Diego in Seattle]

If it came down to Hillary vs. Rudy, the turnout could be terrible, especially among the extreme wing of the rupublican party.

Not just wrong, but very wrong. The very reason why the dems should stay away from Senator Clinton is that she would rally the extreme right wingers to the polls.

[poptart]

If anyone would know about rallying to a pole it'd be you.

[Mike the Lab Rat]

Just read a piece in "Reason" magazine on John McCain. Here's a link to the web version.

The man is a libertarian's nightmare.

Excerpts from the article:

"To restore Americans’ faith in their political system, McCain and Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) sponsored a 2002 law that prohibits advocacy groups such as the National Rifle Association and the Sierra Club from paying for any radio or TV ad that mentions a federal candidate within two months of an election. As a result, active political participants (candidates and parties) and deep-pocketed media organizations can continue to attack and praise contenders, but independent groups may not (unless they form separate political action committees subject to federal contribution limits). Meanwhile, the McCain-Feingold bill tasked the Federal Election Commission with constantly re-interpreting the rules to close off new sources of financial support for political speech.

McCain’s fondness for government power doesn’t stop there. He pushed for the huge airline industry bailouts after September 11. He recently proposed legislation requiring every registered sex offender in the country to report all their active email accounts to law enforcement or face prison. He wants to federalize the oversight of professional boxing. He wants yet more vigor in fighting the War on Meth. He has been active in trying to shut down the “gun show loophole,” which allows private citizens to sell each other guns without conducting background checks. He has lauded Teddy Roosevelt’s fight against the “unrestricted individualism” of the businessman who “injures the future of all of us for his own temporary and immediate profit.”

If you’re beginning to detect a rigid sense of citizenship and a skeptical attitude toward individual choice, you are beginning to understand what kind of president John McCain actually would make, in contrast with the straight-talking maverick that journalists love to quote but rarely examine in depth. For years McCain has warned that a draft will be necessary if we don’t boost military pay, and he has long agitated for mandatory national service. “Those who claim their liberty but not their duty to the civilization that ensures it live a half-life, indulging their self-interest at the cost of their self-respect,” he wrote in The Washington Monthly in 2001. 'Sacrifice for a cause greater than self-interest, however, and you invest your life with the eminence of that cause. Americans did not fight and win World War II as discrete individuals.'"

"McCain’s attitude toward individuals who choose paths he deems inappropriate is somewhere between inflexible and hostile. Nowhere is that more evident than when he writes about his hero Teddy Roosevelt, a man whose racism (he was a Darwin-inspired eugenicist who believed “race purity must be maintained”) and megalomania (he declared before the 1916 presidential campaign that “it would be a mistake to nominate me unless the country has in its mood something of the heroic”) do not merit more than a couple paragraphs’ pause in McCain’s adulation of his expansionist accomplishments."

"Besides the damage done by his sudden turn to social conservatism, McCain’s stubborn and distinctly glum support of Bush’s widely despised troop surge in Iraq has brought into sharp focus the candidate’s concepts of when and how Washington should use the strongest military ever assembled, and whether the president should recognize any constraints from the co-equal branches of government. On these questions, the most militaristic presidential candidate since Ulysses S. Grant has provided a clear answer:If you think George W. Bush had an itchy trigger finger, you ain’t seen nothing yet."

"Regarding the U.S. president’s war-related prerogatives, McCain has a nearly unbroken record of deferring to them, from the moment he volunteered to testify against The New York Times in the Pentagon Papers case (even though his only expertise was in being a prisoner of war) to his rollover when Bush insisted that his ballyhooed anti-torture bill deny habeas corpus rights to War on Terror detainees and give the White House authority “to interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions.” McCain once wrote that Teddy Roosevelt “invented the modern presidency by liberally interpreting the constitutional authority of the office to redress the imbalance of power between the executive and legislative branches that had tilted decisively toward Congress.” This is the kind of president John McCain is aching to be."

McCain is a lunatic and would be a menace to freedom if elected president.

[BSmack]

Shit eating...Go fuck yourself.

Oh, so Reagan didn't set back the cause of liberty? The hypocrisy that is the "war on drugs" alone should make you hate Reagan for life.

[Diego in Seattle]

The hypocrisy that is the "war on drugs" alone should make you hate Reagan for life.

I suppose it would...if he were responsible for it. Of course, he wasn't. Drug prohibition began long before the Reagan Administration and has continued long after or have you forgotten who made "Drug Czar" a cabinet level position?

Just say no to drugs, mvsged.

[Terry in Crapchester]

Starting to hear some rumors that Fred Thompson is considering throwing his hat in the ring. If he does, I'd say he'd wrap up the Republican nomination without too much trouble. He would also stomp the raw fuck out of any Democratic contender.

Another Republican actor? Hasn't this country suffered enough?

Shit eating liberal douchebag opens dicksucker...shit eating liberal douchebag begins lying. No real surprise.

Go fuck yourself.

Lighten up, Francis.

[BSmack]

The hypocrisy that is the "war on drugs" alone should make you hate Reagan for life.

I suppose it would...if he were responsible for it. Of course, he wasn't. Drug prohibition began long before the Reagan Administration and has continued long after or have you forgotten who made "Drug Czar" a cabinet level position?

Al true. But you are forgetting that Reagan was the one who made it hip to be anti drug again. During the Carter years, there was even serious talk of decriminalization. Since Reagan, anybody who even sounded like they might be soft on drugs was forced to overcompensate to the point where Bill Clinton even locked up his own brother rather than risk being called "soft on drugs".

Do you not remember? The atmosphere Reagan and his wife fostered was so pervasive that even RAPPERS were doing anti-drug raps. Thank God THAT has changed.

[Mike the Lab Rat]

That article was written by an ignorant dumbfuck.

Care to explain? Just curious.

As a subscriber to "Reason" for the last five or so years, I know their writers have pretty much never considered McCain as anything other than a militaristic/big government wolf in faux-libertarian garb.

[XXXL]

Graduated from Yale Law.......

[Mike the Lab Rat]

Their takes on Grant and Roosevelt are so completely ignorant that it destroys what little credibilty they might have.

Actually, it's just one author. And I'm not well-versed enough in Grant's or TR's presidencies to argue with either you or the author.

Grant a "militaristic" candidate?!? Evidently their only criteria is that he was a former military officer in which case there are just a few of them between Grant and McCain including Hayes, Garfield, Arthur, Benjamin Harrison, McKinley, T. Roosevelt (a curious ommission considering they were slandering him moments earlier), Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, LBJ (reserve officer), Nixon (reserve officer), Ford, Carter, Reagan (reserve officer), GHW Bush, GW Bush (National Guard officer)

If by "slandering" TR, you're referring to the author's reference to TR being a eugenicist, then no slander was committed. It's a well-established fact that Roosevelt supported the eugenics movement and there are quotes of his on record that show his hearty endorsement of eugenics. He wasn't an adherent of the Nazi "master race" type of racial purity, but he was definitely into the idea of sterilizing segments of society he felt were low IQ, criminal, etc.

As a subscriber to "Reason" for the last five or so years,

You should get your money back. It's pure garbage. They're just as freaking crazy as McCain.

Nope. They publish a wide range of articles expressing the spectrum of libertarian views, some of which are extreme, but most quite reasonable. The magazine's articles attack the stupidity of the drug war, eminent domain abuse, protectionism, the increasing intrusion and expansion of the federal government (including the Patriot Act)...all legitimate topics. Most of the conservatives I know who dislike the magazine (and Cato Institute) do so because even the most moderate libertarians (myself included) have been less than thrilled with the idiot in the White House and the damage he and his administration have wrought, largely with the tacit or open support of Congress.