We have a very convoluted system for electing our president, and particularly so within our party nominating contests. In some places we have caucuses that are followed by county and state conventions where delegates are selected to the two parties’ respective national conventions. In other places, we have primaries where delegates appear directly on the ballot. In these cases, it’s not just a matter of getting the candidate’s name on the ballot, you also have to field enough delegates to take advantage of the support you get from the voters. In Alabama, at least, Jeb Bush couldn’t meet this basic test.
One data point promoted by the Bush team as a show of organizational strength: Bush already is on the ballot in 13 states. But Ohio Governor John Kasich isn’t far behind, with his name on the ballot in nine states. First-term U.S. Senator Ted Cruz’s team said they’ve put his name on ballots in 17 states and territories.
In Alabama, one of the Bush campaign’s top targets in March, Bush has endorsements from a member of Congress, a handful of state legislators and statewide officials. Yet, in contrast with Donald Trump or Marco Rubio, Bush wasn’t able to find a full slate of delegates to run on the ballot by Friday’s deadline.
“It’s been hard to recruit people to run because of how his numbers have gone,” said Chris Brown, an Alabama Republican strategist who worked for the Florida Republican Party when Bush was governor.
This obviously undermines Jeb’s main arguments for his own candidacy. He’s supposed to be competent and experienced. His team is supposed to know what it is doing and have a shot at matching the team the Clintons will bring to the general election contest. He’s supposed to have enough establishment support and resources to not have to worry about things like ballot access that can be a real challenge to cash-strapped and little-known candidates.
And, yet, even in a deep red state where he’s got significant establishment support, he couldn’t accomplish the simple job of finding a couple of handfuls of people to serve as his delegates.
It’s almost sad, really.
Jeb$ whole campaign has had a haphazard, scattershot feel to it. He’s come across as unmotivated, sullen, and bitter since Day One. And when his expected rise to the top, via nepotism and legacy didn’t happen, heads started rolling and wallets snapped shut.
Jeb never presented himself as a viable candidate. No wonder people aren’t risking anything to get him registered and to back him up. And this should send a bright neon sign message to voters everywhere that Jeb isn’t capable of running his own affairs, much less our country.
Give it up, Jebbie!
even his off hand comments are a disaster. there was one a couple days ago -wow! now must find it and link here.
There’s just so much klunk from him. I think he’s already managed more gaffes than all the major candidates combined in a typical presidential campaign.
I think the media just liked the story of another Bush v Clinton battle, else they would have laughed him off stage early.
It’s been said else where and needs to be repeated…Bush League.
Speaking of … :
There’s something truly fascinating to me about Jeb Bush. It emerges through every single story: this funny sort of half-assed entitlement; this combination of arrogance, certainty, and ineptitude.
It’s like the backup guys in a high-school gang, when extracted and talked to one on one: they helped beat the guy up or whatever, but they don’t seem to have any clear identity or opinions besides a desire to support the main guy’s’s position.
There’s an impatient, “Of course I’m right” sneer with which Jeb expresses his core beliefs, which is contrasted with his obvious inability to do anything on his own (and his obvious lack of charisma and leadership) even though you can tell he’s been wearing the most expensive suits and watches and eating the best food in the best restaurants around the world all his life. It’s a wonderful illustration of nepotistic entitlement; he makes W. look like some kind of visionary rebel in comparison.
Different generations. Chronologically only seven years separate the two brothers. but their lived experiences were very different. Conservative elitism came later to GWB and is all Jeb? has ever known. GWB couldn’t avoid all of the 1960s and the “good boy” Jeb? was just old enough that he could reject it. In some ways Jeb? was a precursor to the “lean right” impulse of the late Boomers and Gen X.
Love Jeb? instead of Jeb!
the exclamation point seemed so inappropriate to me a few months ago that I couldn’t help but change it.
The exclamation point didn’t help Lamar!!! any, either.
Doubt I ever knew that, but lots of little details went right past most of us in the pre-internet age.
It is amazing. The basic feeling he conveys is “loser.” Also, simpleton. No one could make W. look visionary, but the rebel part perhaps explains why W. at least seemed like a more substantial (if no more competent) person.
Yeah. I’ve posted before and I can hardly beleive it but “W was the smart brother.”
Not smarter; just more devious and clever and hanging out with fundies as a messenger from his daddy’s campaigns, he learned how to work the crowd.
I am starting to wonder about the 2000 primary campaign, though. W did not have a really tough campaign. He had only one major opponent (McCain) and that opponent was somewhat out of step with the Republican mainstream. Basically most of the potential opponents were scared off by his huge warchest.
Jeb did start with a huge warchest, and if a) most of the other folks had not entered, like they stayed out in 2000 and b) he didn’t cram his foot in his mouth so often he’d probably be in a pretty decent position. Jeb is certainly a weak campaigner with his propensity to gaffe. But knuckleheaded stuff like this is his staff’s responsibility. I’m starting to think maybe the W machine wasn’t all that great, it just managed to do an adequate job in a much weaker field.
The fundie and bagger groups (neither of whom the GOP and do without and still win) are trashing the GOP brand. All of them bow their heads in praise of St. Ronnie, but their notions of St. Ronnie differ. They have become divergent belief sects. The gulf was narrow enough in 2000 for GWB to straddle and ‘lil bro leaned to the right of him. Fifteen years later it’s now so wide that Jeb? can’t even get a toehold in the cliffs on the right side.
Objectively, Jeb? and his team aren’t less, and may be more, able at the game than Romney and his team were. Differences:
Team Jeb? expected his name to carry him further and therefore, didn’t have to begin his public quest as early as Romney did.
Overestimated the GOP base tolerance for a Presidential dynasty.
Discounted the GOP base revulsion for another bland, superficial, flip-flopper loser.
Overestimated the power of big money in the absence of an authentic Jeb? voter base.
The canonization of Reagan is such total bullshit anyway. I was around back then and he was a laughable figure whose popularity was extremely low for all eight years (except in certain quarters, obviously, as with Nixon) and who left the country in a dismal state.
It’s based, obviously, on the profound cynicism with which they methodically advance their ideas, getting low-income rural voters to worry about “too much federal spending,” etc.
If you’d told me back then that they’d be naming airports after Reagan, I’d have laughed.
Very slick GOP marketing campaign. That the DEM party didn’t bother to answer. If we’re honest with ourselves, worse than that on the part of the Democratic Party and elites because reverence for all things Clinton has been pushed just as hard for more than two decades. As icons for their respective political party’s principles, both come up very short, but Reagan less so, in part because he didn’t trash the GOP “conservative” base.
Absolutely! Even the most doctrinaire conservatives seem to have grudgingly acknowledged that Clinton was a beloved figure.
If you compare Clinton’s approval ratings over 8 years to Reagan’s, the contrast is incredible…not to mention, of course, the sunny state of affairs as Clinton left office.
It was different back then, though. The way the totally cynical and empty Whitewater”/”Lewinsky thing worked to create an impression of an “unethical” presidency was remarkable (especially since, as has been pointed out many times, it mainly held sway in the beltway/David Broder/Cokie Roberts arena). But it prevented Gore from allowing Clinton to campaign for him, which was an unbelievably stupid mistake (that Obama didn’t repeat).
I’m going to have to disagree. Among the respective party’s political bases, doubt there was much difference in Reagan’s and Clinton’s stature as “beloved” and if there was, Reagan wins on that one.
Moving outside the bases, Reagan was far more popular than Clinton. Carter and Mondale weren’t weaker opponents than GHWB and Dole. In the 1980 three way, Reagan did break through 50% of the vote and over 58% in his re-election. One factor in those interim approval numbers is the effectiveness and power of the Congressional opposition. Democrats in the 1980s did a reasonably decent job and Republicans in the 1990s tossed out a lot of red meat but mostly served their corporate masters.
Whitewater didn’t hurt Bill Clinton because he was never vulnerable on that score, but the WH pushback on it left a residue of doubt. That doubt was then shoved into the Lewsinsky issue and his lies about it. Partisan DEMs have always misread the public opinion of that. Which was that “no, we’re not going to impeach a guy for an affair,” but we disapprove of such behavior and had we known of it in 1992, we would have re-elected GHWB.
If today’s Republicans objectively considered Reagan’s record in office, they would push him off his pedestal. But partisan Democrats are equally, if not more so, deaf, dumb, and blind as to both Clinton’s records. One is dead. The other won’t go away.
it’s not sad at all.
it’s funny as all phuck.
Goes down the global gurgler with the first serious test. Serves them all right. Bad luck for the Saudis.
The Saudis will do fine with almost any of the POTUS aspirants.
Thanks for the “almost”
Just a tiny hedge in the event we elect Jill Stein.
I may be voting for her. It won’t be the first time I voted for a Green or a Libertarian or a Socialist Worker’s party candidate. Lots of races in Illinois where both candidates smell like a backed up sewer.
Would be a first for me. But I never make my general election decisions until the nominations are complete and I’ve had a good look at all the candidates on my ballot.
Of course. But i never like to leave blanks on ballot. I would have voted Green for Senator in 2014, but Dirbin and Madigan contrived to get the party off the ballot. So I voted Libertarian instead although I thought he was a racist jerk. No way was he going to beat Durbin or Oberweis. In fact, I didn’t think dirbin could lose, either. I didn’t vote for him for two reasons, both biggies in my mind. #1 when there was talk of closing our postal facility and our union approached his office, they got the brush off, saying they couldn’t get involved in something so small. (Tammy Duckworth OTOH pledged to support us and backed it up with her vote in the House) #2 his vote supporting fast track of TPP.
Now with electronic voting, I guess it doesn’t matter about blanks. In the still of the night, I fear that it doesn’t matter at all how any of us vote seeing as how it’s so easy to “fix” the machines. I fear democracy died in 2000.
I apologize for the typos.
All that fucking money, and he couldn’t even get his slates filed on a Super Tuesday state.
This is why money is overrated. Because so much is wasted on things that do not matter. There was a great NYT piece yesterday on the decline in the importance of political advertising was well. So much money funneled into commercials with zero net marginal benefit. It is interesting to think about what a modern campaign would look like. It would almost certainly be thinner and focused on micro-targeting.
What do you think of Sanders’ campaign? Not Sanders the man, Sanders the Senator, Sanders the candidate, but strictly the campaign strategy and use of money.
Tad Devine. I knew him from the ’92 Kerrey campaign – a good guy – but an establishment DC type who will run a DC based campaign.
He manages Sanders campaign.
I am not convinced that his grass roots organization is all that good. Here in NH – a house with 4 Democrats – we have heard not a whip from him. At this point in ’84, for example, the Hart campaign had knocked on everyone’s door. People show up to his rallies – and they volunteer – but I have yet to see the campaign do traditional grass roots work.
So on nuts and bolts I am yet to be sold that he knows what he is doing.
But it is still very early.
Thank you.
Money isn’t overrated. It’s how it’s used that makes the difference.
IMO, micro-targeting is creepy. Slice and dice the electorate enough and the whole will be as elusive as those real estate credit default swaps.
jeb?…the epitome of empty suit.
caveat emptor, indeed.
Although I doubt if I would vote for Republican Governor of Virginia (I have enough trouble with the Democratic governor), I have to say that Gilmore is absolutely correct in this statement.