I don’t know if I’m a typical democrat, but I’ve gone from “please, god, don’t let her win” in '08, to thinking she’d be a good choice. I think she’s done a good job as SoS. The age thing does make me a bit nervous, though.
Admittedly, part of my resistance in '08 was this crazy “your turn” monarchy we seemed to be turning into (Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton, really?). I wanted a fresh voice in there.
Not sure who else is really an option for 16. Warren might emerge as a party leader in her first term, but I just don’t see her as presidential caliber.
All he needs is a few terms in Congress and we have the real-world version of Matt Santos, who was based on Barack Obama! The circle is complete!
Clay
1784
Oh yeah. Maybe that’s what I mean. My memory is bad lately.
Your memory…HAH!..what was I going to say…
Reagan was 69 ,shy of 70 by a few weeks, when he was inaugurated. Hillary would be the second oldest President at inauguration should she be elected in 2016.
I don’t buy the narrative that he’s a solid guy who’s just not a natural candidate. It doesn’t explain his transition from the guy who ran against Kennedy (gay rights! right to choose!), to the guy who’s running for President. It also doesn’t explain his willing participation in a long series of clearly demonstrable race-baiting lies as part of this campaign.
I think he comes off as an opportunistic dick. I don’t think the real-him is any less dickish. It’s just who he is.
I didn’t start hating him until he let the extremists become his puppeteer.
jeffd
1789
You are not going from mayor of a medium small city to president. I like the guy but his future is murky, gonna be hard to get a Democratic Hispanic elected to a suitable statewide office (senator, governor) in Texas in the near future.
If I had to bet I’d put money on Andrew Cuomo or Hillary Clinton. I wouldn’t put down much tho.
I don’t either. I think all those things that the article lists as “it’s not”, it’s those too.
But I also think their point about Romney missing the “regular guy” gene is right on. If you sat down at a bar and started pouring out your problems to Mitt, he’d run down everything you were doing wrong with your life and give you a 10-point plan to fix it, but he wouldn’t just be a pal and commiserate with you. When that kind of empathy is missing, it’s obvious and it can’t really be taught, I don’t think. It’s one of those things you either have or you don’t.
Rightbug
1792
Yeah, while I agree that Mitt’s real problem is that he’s Mitt, I don’t agree with that article’s spin that the problem with Mitt is that he a bad campaigner. He is but his problem is that he in unlikable.
I saw this coming even during the primary process as it was something we saw with him in 2004. He never got out of the primary process then but, tellingly, all of the other Republican candidates in that primary grew to hate him. It was the only thing they could all agree on. McCain refused to consider Romney as VP even for a second. And these were his fellow Republicans.
He meant San Antonio mayor Julian Castro. San Antonio is not “medium small”, it is the 7th-largest city by population in the United States, and the fastest-growing city of any in the top ten.
The real problem for Romney in the debates is that more exposure is probably just going to make his likeability problem worse. I don’t think the substance of the debates is going to matter much at all (if it ever does…).
Indeed, San Antonio has a larger population than, say, the state of Alaska.
Rightbug
1796
What’s the story with Cuomo? I’ve been away from New York politics long enough that I only have vague impressions. There was a great article about him after gay marriage passed, detailing how he pulled together support from both sides of the aisle and made sure he had the votes he needed before making the push. The article gave me a ton of admiration for him but that’s about the only thing I know about him.
I loved his father. Mario was governor when I was growing up in New York and I had the pleasure of meeting him towards the end of his run. He was an incredible and inspirational speaker and is someone who really shaped my political beliefs.
Rightbug
1797
Romney’s folks are already setting the expectations as low as humanly possible so that, as long and he doesn’t start shouting racial epithets, they can declare it a win:
LMN8R
1798
I thought this was a good summary of what’s wrong with the underpinning’s of Romney’s campaign:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/wp/2012/09/20/what-romney-doesnt-understand-about-personal-responsibility/
His “47%” comments are so much more important than simply insulting half the country. It’s that he cannot comprehend just how huge the amount of responsibility the poor already have, and how they’re totally, cognitively exhausted because of it. They already have so many things to think about every day, so many important choices they have to make every single second of every single day, that removing even more security blankets will make things that much more impossible.
It’s why Romney’s privileged background is so much more important than his “likability”. I don’t give a crap that he’s lucky enough to be in the position he’s in, and I don’t dislike him for it. It’s the fact that he hasn’t even tried to understand what it’s like to be in that position in the first place.
In the end, it leads to him directly advocating policies that will only shovel more responsibility onto the poor, making them even more cognitively overloaded.
Campaigns don’t have the power to set expectations. The media and pundits do that. They can try to influence them, sure, but putting out ham-handedly obvious expectation-lowering memos isn’t gonna do it.
Telefrog
1800
Oh lordy!
While Governor Romney has the issues and the facts on his side, President Obama enters these contests with a significant advantage on a number of fronts.
But what must President Obama overcome? His record. Based on the campaign he’s run so far, it’s clear that President Obama will use his ample rhetorical gifts and debating experience to one end: attacking Mitt Romney. Since he won’t – and can’t – talk about his record, he’ll talk about Mitt Romney. We fully expect a 90-minute attack ad aimed at tearing down his opponent. If President Obama is as negative as we expect, he will have missed an opportunity to let the American people know his vision for the next four years and the policies he’d pursue. That’s not an opportunity Mitt Romney will pass up. He will talk about the big choice in this election – the choice between President Obama’s government-centric vision and Mitt Romney’s vision for an opportunity society with more jobs, higher take-home pay, a better-educated workforce, and millions of Americans lifted out of poverty into the middle class.
I cannot roll my eyes enough.
