Today was the last day that you could submit signatures to appear on the ballot in the Virginia primaries. It’s not an easy process. You need to collect 10,000 valid signatures, including at least 400 from each of Virginia’s eleven congressional districts. Rick Perry tried, but failed, to get 10,000. Newt Gingrich submitted over 11,000, but must now pray that enough of them are from actual voters to get him over the hump. Ron Paul and Mitt Romney had no trouble and were certified. Jon Huntsman, Michele Bachmann, Rick Santorum, and whoever else is pretending to run for president, didn’t even submit any signatures. In other words, in one of the swingiest of swing-states, we could see a ballot featuring only Romney and Paul. In any case, it will have no more than three candidates to choose from.
May I submit that you can’t seriously hope to be the leader of the free world if you can’t even get your crap together to get your name on the ballot? No one should take you seriously in Iowa if we know you’re not even going to be on the ballot in Virginia. This would be a good opportunity for the media to start ignoring everything Santorum, Perry, Bachmann, and Hunstman have to say.
Look at this comedy:
Jerry Kilgore, former attorney general and chairman of Perry’s campaign in Virginia, said in an interview Friday night he did not know how many signatures were submitted. He said he was disappointed, but that qualifying for the Virginia ballot is a “daunting task.”
“Hopefully, he will do better in other states,’’ he said. “He can focus on other states.”
Yes, candidates can focus on campaigning in states where they will actually appear on the ballot. That is very good advice.
We have a crazy electoral system. But you have to be able to master it to have any hope of mastering the federal government. Consider the fact that the Clintons screwed up their campaign by not understanding how delegates were allocated until it was too late. And they ran the government for eight years and basically created the process set up by their DNC. It’s not a simple thing to run a presidential campaign. It takes a lot of brain power. You’ve got Rick Perry failing to qualify for the ballot in Virginia and Mitt Romney operating with one office and three staffers in all of South Carolina. These people are amateurs, and they’ve going to get their heads handed to them.
No matter what else can be said for or against Obama’s performance as president – and that’s taken up a good chunk of the political blogosphere for four years – it should not be forgotten that his leadership of his 2008 campaign set the gold standard for presidential campaigns in the modern era. He’s really, really good at this.
That, as much as the incompetence of the Republican field, leaves me optimistic about the ultimate outcome of the presidential race next year. More in doubt, to my mind, is what happens with Congress. Six months ago it seemed unlikely the Dems would have either chamber in 2013. But if the Republicans keep shooting themselves in their outsized dicks, things could be very different.
And I’d argue that the incredible discipline and brains behind his campaign foretold that his presidency would be much the same.
I like to critique President Clinton, but he really did run a very clean and competent administration. There was very little corruption even if we had to put up with dirtbags like Lanny Davis and Dick Morris. But Obama’s administration is almost virginal in its purity. There’s no hint of corruption. Every once in a while, we get a royal screw up like that whole fiasco surrounding Shirley Sherrod. But they are extremely disciplined overall.
You can disagree with decisions they make, but you can’t deny that they have a very high batting average for executing what they decide to do.
I can’t imagine them doing anything that would be the equivalent of Rick Perry failing to qualify for the Virginia ballot.
Don’t disagree. I don’t always think their strategic choices have paid off, but the actual administration has been very clean. Even Hillary Clinton, who (by contrast) ran a terrible campaign, has done surprisingly well running State. Though I don’t always agree with the policies, the execution has been solid.
The two caveats: I think WH messaging has not always been good – but of course that requires media cooperation, too. And when you speak of “corruption” you’re referencing the illegal kind. The legal stuff – like packing the WH economic team with crony capitalists – is, I would argue, on the wrong side of many peoples’ smell test. But that’s how the DC game is played right now, and they’ve done it well.
Don’t tell Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Fox News, but Obama’s hiring decisions are straight from the Saul Alinsky playbook.
I once heard a veteran organizer argue that Alinsky’s greatest contribution to organizing was the notion of not organizing around a charismatic leader, but organizing around a “charismatic collective of leaders”. (Note: Alinsky didn’t invent this; he observed it, wrote about it, and institutionalized it.)
Some examples from Pres. Obama:
*Persuading many of the top people from Dick Gephardt and Tom Daschle’s staffs to work for the newly-elected junior senator from Illinois.
*Hiring Jeffrey Berman, the Democratic Party’s premiere delegate counter (which, among other examples, is how Obama lost the Nevada primary vote but won the Nevada delegate race).
*Making his former opponents into key leaders of his administration (e.g., Biden, Clinton).
but, you point this out, BooMan, at the basic incompetence to run an actual campaign, and folks wanna jump down your throat.
I remember Senator Barack Obama saying, look how I run my campaign.
I loved that clip of Hillary saying that it would be over February 5th..
and then, when February 5th came and went and it was NOT OVER..
they didn’t have a plan B.
hee hee hee hee
I remember working the Nevada caucuses in January ’08. After spending the whole election day dealing with what appeared to be minor voter fraud by the Clinton campaign, I drove back to my district’s HQ to find out we had “lost” the primary. Because Clinton got more votes. The general mood was near-despondent. It felt like a death in the family. But as we found out to our ecstatic surprise in some dive bar later that evening, we had actually won because we picked up (I think) 13 delegates to their 12.
That’s an anecdotal sign of how much confusion there was over the process at that point. But I was just a low-level staffer. The people up top should’ve known better. And at least one side did, and that side won the nomination.
Well, apart from Gingrich, Paul, and Romney, all of them will have dropped out by Virginia, so no biggie (except for Newt).
Yes we do have a crazy electoral system. And yes one must be able to master it to have any hope of mastering the federal government. The primaries and the actual presidential campaign are sort of a litmus test. an audition for the presidency. If a candidate is good enough to put together a campaign staff and system that can get that candidate nominated by one of the two major political parties, then he or she is a good enough executive to be able to run the country.
This is a very common meme in American political discussion, and here you are, memeing it again.
But…wait a minute!!!
Which of the RatPublican candidates has assembled an organization that is plainly so much superior to those of his opposition that even though he refuses to play kissy-feely politics and stakes out positions that are not poll-driven but morality and logic-driven, he is showing signs of doing very well in at least the first two primaries and is in fact peaking at just about the perfect time ro give him a chance to go all the way?
UH oh!!!
Yup.
Ron Paul.
Hmmmmm…
Like you say:
and
You said it, brother. Not me. Glad to see that you are starting see the truth of the matter.
Later…
AG
This Republican primary is really shaping up to being something similar to the democratic primary of 1972. Is Ron Paul this year’s George McGovern? Both had highly enthused supporters who fought against enormous odds against an establishment candidate that the rank and file were not enthusiastic about. Both had strong organizations that were able to take advantage of establishment hubris and fly under the radar until it was too late to stop the momentum. Paul has the additional advantage of having butt-loads of cash to sustain a long march.
Can he do it? Maybe. Romney can’t break out of the 20’s 10 days out from Iowa, at this point, Paul is clearly the only rival with money and organization, and the only one that can pull in non-traditional primary voters to play mischief with what the money boys want.
Of course, this would be the best of all possible outcomes for the President.
MSNBC reports that Newt fell short too.
Yup – from WaPo:
Gingrich, Perry disqualified from Va. primary ballot
Obviously this is a massive liberal conspiracy because the Obama administration quakes in their boots at the prospect of a Newt-onian run.
Doesn’t Newt LIVE in Virginia?
Given how many 1990s Republican members of Congress have endorsed Gingrich for campaign, I’m beginning to think that to know Newt is to not want him anywhere near the levers of power….
is extremely fortunate to have nothing but dunces and demons lining up against him for 2012.
Stop worrying about 2012. Obama will win without having to work up a sweat and hopefully, some of the tea party whackos will be washed away in that tide.
What you should be worried about is whether Obama can hold on to the spine he has developed since being persuaded that vicious, moronic ideologues can’t be negotiated with. Perhaps he will then be able to provide some of the leadership he was elected for in 2008.
Couple of things-
I’m more concerned the GOP candidates are intellectually and philosophically incompetent, with selective morality– than whether or not they can figure out how the primary system works.
There’s no question many of the GOP candidates are amateurish, even oafish when one looks at Cain. The larger question is why the GOP and mainstream media saw the need for SIXTEEN painful, more or less pointless debates and focusing on Cain as if he were ever a legitimate candidate.
The whole thing is just one giant distraction from the obvious larger problems we have. Given the amount of tweeting during the debates, apparently the distraction worked.
If you want to argue Obama, the incumbent, has a much stronger political base/machine in place than GOP’ers like Gingrich and Perry– that’s a bit of a no brainer, don’t you think? I noticed you didn’t mention Obama has a massive amount of money to campaign with compared to the GOP candidates.
Yes, amateurs and clowns this time around.
But come the general election, the GOP professionals (whose livelihoods depend upon election performance) will be working on behalf of whichever amateur clown (or should that be clownish amateur?) gets nominated.
The pros who knew which lawyers & judges to hire in 2000.
The pros who knew how to make Willie Horton an issue in 1988.
The pros who figured out that anti-gay referenda would whip up their base enthusiasm in 2004.
The pros who figured out how to suppress Democratic voter turn-out just about every time.
So let’s not get too smug about what happens after Labor Day. At that point the ability to manipulate the media (and possibly the legal system) trumps the more detail-oriented nomination skillset.
Still, I say let’s enjoy their primary season for its sheer entertainment value.
you mean the pros who got their asses handed to them in 2008?
If not for Sarah Palin, and the quite visible economic collapse in September, 2008, it might have been too close to contemplate.
Any group that could get Reason and W into the White House, twice each, has to be treated with some respect for their skills (if not their values or decency).
Egads! I meant Reagan, not Reason.
Time to put away the keyboard for the day!
lol
wouldn’t the pros have been able to use both of those things to their advantage, because technically the economic collapse could have helped either candidate
Lest we forget, Virginia’s primary is on Super Tuesday.
Also up that day are caucuses in Alaska, Idaho and North Dakota. Any doubts that Ron Paul wins at least Alaska & Idaho?
I don’t know what the anti-Romney vote will be in Virginia, but it now appears to all be Paul’s.
That could have him winning 3 or 4 of the 10 Super Tuesday contests. Oh to see the Faux News headlines after that!
If Newt or Perry wins the intervening South Carolina and Florida primaries… well which media outlet won’t be promoting the general confusion that passes as the Rethug nomination battle?
More popcorn!
can we really call it Super Tuesday with only 4 contests? pretty weak for Super Tuesday 🙂
Also March 6 primaries in Georgia, Massachusetts, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee & Vermont.
At this point, no info on candidates failing to qualify for ballot. (Tho with this circus, one never knows.)
Still, if Ron Paul can win Alaska, Idaho & Virginia, it would be difficult for even the most biased media to ignore him. Popcorn.
it won’t stop them from trying, either way it’s good news for John McCain
Newt disqualified for Virginia ballot.
The only thing you can say is that failing to collect the signatures required to get on the primary ballot demonstrates that the Gingrich and Perry campaigns are a complete joke. But I agree with the comments pointing to the fact that the pros in the Republican Party managed to get Reagan and W elected and re-elected. Don’t think for a moment that 2012 is already decided. Very high unemployment and a lot of people nervous or actually hurting. Who will recall that Obama wasn’t responsible for the GFC?
You know what else is a “daunting task”? Being President of the USA.