Who will win the US 2016 Presidency?

Yeah, I agree. It is pretty bad right now. I used to blame a lot of it on the 24 hour news cycle and how it is hard to sustain "news" for that period of time. I still think that is part of it but is certainly not all of it. The breaking news thing cracks me up. I don't even give a second glance when that banner is on my screen anymore.

If their actual beliefs were beside the point, then you'd have no reason to make those wildly inaccurate guesses in the first place, let alone use them as an excuse to launch into one of your 3-4 boilerplate rants.

And it's not beside the point, because "the point" was not that only fundamentalists can think certain things: it was that your comically oversensitive fear of Puritanism has already led you to erroneous conclusions in the past, and an even moderately self-aware person would see this and conclude that mayyyyybe they don't have a totally level head on the topic.

Yeah, that's not what I was talking about re: "wishcasting." I was saying that none of your political advice or predictions seem to be anything more than "Here's Stuff I Would Like to See Happen." So either you have the ridiculous good fortune of believing all sorts of things that are also politically savvy, or else you're just projecting your own desires onto your so-called analysis.

No points for guessing which I think it is.

I always feel like a bit of an outsider when talking about American politics, but I feel like I've read and learnt quite a lot about it, so I'll just respond to the following misconception:

Reagan's philosophy or, to put it more accurately, the political movement he led during the end of the '70s and during the '80s is actually still the most important foundation of the main ideas of the republican party today.

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Reagan however toyed with ideas such as partial amnesty for illegals - and merely suggesting that would make him a "RINO" in the hardline GOP and Tea Party

Barry Goldwater (aka "Mr Conservative") would also be a commie by those those groups' standards since he wasn't against abortion or gay marriage.

Basically the Republican party's becoming more and more of a bastion of extremists; and moderates are getting pushed out of the party - at the rate it's going it's eventually going to disintegrate into another 3rd party if anything.

Like Rubio and Schwarzenegger?

According to the statistics you showed us a couple of posts earlier (I haven't checked if they are factually correct), the amount of "extreme republicans" seems pretty invariable to me: 16% in 2000 compared to 17% in 2012. I think you're talking more in terms of your own perception (possibly through various media, etc.), instead of in terms of actual facts.

Right:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...e0e_story.html

http://www.bluegrasspundit.com/2010/...-party-is.html

The chart showed a much lower amount in moderates in the Republican party (especially compared to in the Democratic Party and with Independents) - the extremists aren't growing, so much as the non-extremists are getting ostracized for not being extreme enough.

Looking back at 2000 is what's striking - at that time moderates in the Democratic party actually surpassed die-hard liberals; while die hard conservatives were double that of moderates and liberals combined in the Republican party.

This proves how insignificant these marginalities are in the grand scheme of things then, right? Since both are generally seen as very popular republicans...

I see what you mean. If those numbers of yours are actually correct, that might indeed form a problem during the republican pre-elections (and as a result perhaps in the general elections).

Then again, I don't really know how those are held exactly, so I don't understand what impact it actually might have.

Who's able to vote during the pre-elections?

On one hand yeah, on another hand Michelle Bachmann (one of the hardliners calling Rubio a RINO) isn't exactly an insignificant figure - she was a state governor and was considered as a possible presidential candidate.

Clinton is gonna breeze through the primaries, unless there's a surprise candidate like Barack Obama was. But I honestly can't see her beating Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio, they would both do well enough with the Hispanic vote.Also I wouldn't hold your breath for such a huge black vote turn out this time for the democrats. The primaries for the Republicans should be interesting, and as long as a more foundation conservative goes through, it should be a win.

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Anything's possible. I seriously doubt anyone's going to want another Bush in the White House though.

I'm curious why you think the Democrats are poised to lose.

I'm gonna guess that this is something you've just heard other people say a lot and are repeating uncritically. Because if you looked into it, you'd realize there are two big problems with it:

1) Reagan himself wouldn't like Reagan's immigration policies today, because they didn't work. They didn't fix the problem. So opposing the same sort of thing today isn't an ideological shift; it's a simple ability to learn from experience.

2) For all the talk of immigration, it doesn't seem to influence the party much in national elections. Bush was a moderate on immigration and won twice with significant base support. They nominated McCain next, who was also a moderate on the issue. Romney was less so, but he was nowhere near a hardliner, and he'd previously been far more liberal than either, a fact which primary voters still didn't hold against him.

The idea that something like immigration is enough to push someone out of the party is nonsense. It's not even enough to stop them from ascending to the head of the party.

He also got creamed. So maybe you should decide if you're arguing that a) they're moving to the right or b) that it's bad for their electoral chances. Because invoking Goldwater at an example necessarily undermines one of the two.

Both of these claims are wrong. She was a Congresswoman, not a Governor, and she wasn't a possible candidate--she actually ran. And she didn't get anywhere, either.

I don't think there'll be another surprise like that, but I do think there's a 10% chance that people are fed up with the political dynasty vibe and that we're underestimating the possible backlash to it. Which is why O'Malley's flirting with the idea of running. It's worthwhile for him to be the Hillary alternative just in case that happens.

Also worth noting that while Clinton has lots of strengths, pure campaigning doesn't seem to be one of them.

Yeah, one of the biggest questions is whether or not Democrats will be able to turn out a lot of the voters that Obama turned out. I'm pretty skeptical that they can.

That said, I'm less sure than you are of the outcome. I would make Republicans slight favorites, but not significant ones. They have lots on their side this cycle, but several things working against them, too.

I have become very disenchanted and will more than likely abstain from voting again. However there are a couple of issues that keep me voting republican when I vote, and I think they have a pretty good shot at the White House.

The main reason I think this is the state of health care. It will be a big talking point again and it will be something that the Republicans can definitively point to and say I told you so. All of their talking points have basically come true. This was supposed to be something that helped the middle class and it hasn't in the least. It hasn't been affordable for those who don't have health care as promised. It also has drastically changed what many companies are offering their employees. Another thing that was promised would not happen.

The Democrat counter to this will be it wasn't the exact plan they wanted. That is a hard soap box to stand on when you have allowed the publicly known name of the bill to be after the president, and you also spent two years cramming the thing through before mid-terms.

I really feel like it could be a game changer for those on the fence.

Main reason he got creamed is for suggesting the use of nukes in the Vietnam War and Cold War.

That's not the "main reason" he lost by a mind-boggling 23 points; you don't lose by that much on one issue. Besides, the timing doesn't jibe with that narrative: in the primary, Rockefeller was already leading substantially in California when it happened and hammered him for it, and Goldwater still managed to come back.

I think a party of having a lack of figures really does hurt the party. The party will have one central figure come primaries, while the Republicans have the most diverse group of individuals, politically and ethnically perhaps ever. This will draw in a huge mass of voters to the party. And the democrats just don't have the 2008 or even the 2012 hype anymore, as I mentioned before the voter turnout, especially among minorities, will be much lower for the party.

I'm curious... could you maybe elaborate on the diversity comment? (I mean beyond obvious stuff like Rubio's being hispanic.) It could just be that as a long time Democratic voter (at least in Presidential elections) I'm blind to some of the differences that are obvious to Republican voters, but I haven't noticed much diversity on the Republican side. On foreign policy, for example, I get the sense that almost all of the candidates will be fighting very hard over maybe a few degrees of difference -- in "daylight" between them and Israel, or toughness on Iran.

I believe Mrs Clinton will be our next President-

Please no, I got enough bombs from one Clinton family member. But whoever wins, he/she will share "democracy"with rest of the world.

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