Ben Carson: Bungling Surgeon

There Is No ‘Blue Wall’

 

I guess we'll find out, but I think nominating someone the other side hates more than you love is a bad idea in a world where turnout is everything. Nothing motivates Republican voters like fear, and Clinton makes one hell of a bogeywoman.

 

It's actually pretty startling how bereft of fresh faces that party is. Her "inevitability" has basically caused the party to stagnate as far as developing talent. Say what you will about the GOP field, at least people know who the hell these guys are.

 

There's a good opinion piece from the ny times about how the democrats have basically skipped a generation.

People my age, I'm 45, are basically invisible while it is people in their 60s and older and people in their 20s and 30s who are doing all the hard work with the progressive movement.

At the local level, at least in my parts, that's terribly true. There's a huge generational hole about to hit democrats. Well, you are already starting to see it.

Pretty remarkable actually.

 

This sounds about right. I think Rubio has a decent chance, and I think Jeb still will make a push. I still believe it will come down to those two.

 

With the Democrats having lost 900 state legislature seats over the course of the Obama Era, they don't appear to have much of a bench for the future, either.

 

I have seen no indication at any level that Jeb Bush will be a factor in this race.

 

He improved a bit in the last debate. I just think when things get serious he will be seen as a more viable candidate. I could be very wrong.

 

Far and away, Clinton remains the candidate Democratic primary voters think has the best chance of winning a general election - 76 percent say she does.

But which Republican presidential candidate would be the most challenging for the Democratic nominee? At this point, Democratic primary voters say it's Donald Trump: 31 percent say he would be the most difficult Republican for a Democratic nominee to beat. Ben Carson (15 percent) is a distant second, followed by Marco Rubio (13 percent) and Jeb Bush (13 percent).

Both Clinton and Sanders supporters view Trump as the Republican that poses the most difficult challenge.

Poll: Hillary Clinton bests Sanders as the Democrats' "change" candidate

 

The Dem bench was wiped out under Obama. Dems have lost Senators, members of Congress, Governors, state legislators, and other state wide office holders, which all form the stepping stones of a political career.

But, Mark Schmitt puts the blame on Bill Clinton.

Why? Because he wasn't liberal enough, of course:

Our generation — the triangulation generation — devised anti-crime policies and welfare reform, got nervous at the mere mention of same-sex marriage, was taught that government should work through market mechanisms, rather than act as a countervailing force, and learned to govern through inoffensive gestures like tax credits.

The Democratic Party, as an institution, had little meaning for this generation. It was not ideologically coherent — extremely conservative Southerners were still Democrats well into the Clinton years — and the party’s operatives did little to make it meaningful to young people. The idea that by the mid-2000s, young people would identify as “Fighting Dems” and embrace Mr. Dean’s “50-state strategy” to expand the party would seem really surprising to us in the 1990s.
...
Mark Schmitt is director of the political reform program at New America, an independent think tank in Washington.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/12/o...generation-of-democrats.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

 

The ONLY thing Jeb! has going for him is money. He's an absolute dud in just about every other way.