When has a party had a worse set of presidential primary candidates than Rep 2012?

[QuantumPion]

lol what? Kerry? Dukakis? Mondale? McGovern? Those last three were like the biggest blowout elections in history for the republicans.

 

[QuantumPion]

Nixon v McGovern: 520 to 17
Reagen v Carter: 489 to 49
Reagan v. Mondale: 525 to 13
Bush v. Dukakis: 426 to 111

 

[Ausm]

lol what? Kerry? Dukakis? Mondale? McGovern? Those last three were like the biggest blowout elections in history for the republicans.

Not as badly as McSame was wiped out by our current POTUS.

 

[QuantumPion]

Not as badly as McSame was wiped out by our current POTUS.

Um no? Obama did win concisely but it was not a blowout by any means.
Obama v. McCain: 365 to 173 (53% to 46% popular vote).

Your post is laughably wrong and I find it amusing how you chose to believe what you want to believe instead of spending half a second to check Wikipedia.

 

[Craig234]

Romney seems OK. Maybe because he's a RINO

If by 'ok' you mean free of any principle except pursuing power to serve the rich.

Romney might be the best example around of why 'looking' presidential is dangerous when confused with beign a good candidate.

What in his positions recommends him for the presidency? Not a thing it appears.

Like the rest of them, the little bit he's done right, he opposes now - his support for healthcare in Massachussetts that wasn't a great plan but was something.

Just like Perry running away from his supporting vaccines for girls and his telling his party not to be heartless.

Like Gingrich running away from his 'humane' comment about creating a non-citizen option for illegal immigrant families after 25 years, and saying that his doing a commercial with Pelose to say that he agrees on global climate change was 'the worst mistake he's made in recent times' (a show did a segment on why he qualified that, talking about previous mistakes like getting a blowjob in a car as his kids walked by).

If by 'ok' you mean that Romney doesn't run around saying the voting age is 21 (Perry this week), that's not a lot.

 

[micrometers]

this one is easily the worst I know of. Easily. 2008 was actually interesting I felt. Huckabee, McCain, Guiliani, and Romney all are legitimate candidates. Now only ROmney is left and he's being beaten by a parade of joke candidates. First Cain now GIngrich.

The closest might be...I dunno, 1996 Republicans?

 

[Craig234]

lol what? Kerry? Dukakis? Mondale? McGovern? Those last three were like the biggest blowout elections in history for the republicans.

Blowout elections have almost nothing to do with the quality of the candidates being discussed in this thread.

Kennedy had the closest popular vote margin in history IIRC and it doesn't mean he's not a great president, Nixon and Reagan each broke records and it doesn't mean they were.

 

[Ausm]

Um no? Obama did win concisely but it was not a blowout by any means.
Obama v. McCain: 365 to 173 (53% to 46% popular vote).

Your post is laughably wrong and I find it amusing how you chose to believe what you want to believe instead of spending half a second to check Wikipedia.

Sorry, Peon looks like you can't take a joke?

 

[GuitarDaddy]

Dems couldn't seem to manage to find a candidate to beat GWB in both 2000 and 2004.. pretty pathetic if you ask me.

I agree with 2004, but the dems did beat GWB in 2000. Katherine Harris, Florida vote rigging and the backstabbing SCOTUS stole the election for GWB in 2000

 

[Craig234]

this one is easily the worst I know of. Easily. 2008 was actually interesting I felt. Huckabee, McCain, Guiliani, and Romney all are legitimate candidates. Now only ROmney is left and he's being beaten by a parade of joke candidates. First Cain now GIngrich.

The closest might be...I dunno, 1996 Republicans?

Man - Cain is 999, 999, 999, but G9i11u9l11i9a11n9i11 was 9/11 9/11 9/11.

1996 Republicans is a good pick, but I don't think Bob Dole is as bad as the current slate.

When you say first Cain - I think you left out about a bunch, like 'first Trump, and Bachmann, and Perry', et al. 'Undecided or someone not running' have long been #1.

 

[etrigan420]

Nixon v McGovern: 520 to 17
Reagen v Carter: 489 to 49
Reagan v. Mondale: 525 to 13
Bush v. Dukakis: 426 to 111

You are not reading the thread topic correctly...or not understanding it.

I sense a GOP sponsored presidential run in your future.

I'll give you a hint: "Primary".

zsdersw has a good point with his mentioning of the '04 Democratic candidates, but none of those candidates were ever even *close* to being considered front runners like the current batch of looney tunes.

It's like musical chairs, and the winner gets to be the King (or Queen) of the Dipshits.

 

[QuantumPion]

Blowout elections have almost nothing to do with the quality of the candidates being discussed in this thread.

Kennedy had the closest popular vote margin in history IIRC and it doesn't mean he's not a great president, Nixon and Reagan each broke records and it doesn't mean they were.

Yes they do. Blowout elections show the losing candidate was not just unpopular, but so bad that even the ideologues don't vote for them.

You want an examples of bad Democrat primary candidates? How about freaking John Edwards. Or Dennis Kucinich. Howard Dean. Wesley Clark. How about AL SHARPTON? lol.

 

[QuantumPion]

You are not reading the thread topic correctly...or not understanding it.

I sense a GOP sponsored presidential run in your future.

I'll give you a hint: "Primary".

zsdersw has a good point with his mentioning of the '04 Democratic candidates, but none of those candidates were ever even *close* to being considered front runners like the current batch of looney tunes.

It's like musical chairs, and the winner gets to be the King (or Queen) of the Dipshits.

My point is if a supposedly super unpopular evil republican like Nixon can win every single state except Massachusetts, that means the liberal candidate must have been pretty crappy to lose California, New York, Illinois, Wisconsin, etc. And if the liberal presidential candidate was that bad, his opponents in the primaries must have been even worse!

 

[QuantumPion]

Also just because a popular sitting governor like Perry sucks at debates and may never be a serious contender doesn't mean he is on the same level as Al Sharpton/Jesse Jackson/John Edwards/etc.

 

[QuantumPion]

Sorry, Peon looks like you can't take a joke?

How was that a joke? Did anyone else think he was kidding?

 

[Oyeve]

This party and the last and the one before that just proves that the President of the US of A means absolutely shit. I mean really, shit.

 

[Craig234]

Yes they do. Blowout elections show the losing candidate was not just unpopular, but so bad that even the ideologues don't vote for them.

You want an examples of bad Democrat primary candidates? How about freaking John Edwards. Or Dennis Kucinich. Howard Dean. Wesley Clark. How about AL SHARPTON? lol.

No, it doesn't. You're falling into the trap of thinking your ideological opposition makes all or most Democrats 'bad candidates', so you'll just put out the list and pretend it's a point.

In my OP, I said give your reasons. You didn't. I can see why.

Every candidate you named IMO is better than most or all of the current field, I'd argue.

John Edwards: very good candidate running on our growing inequality, his sex life another issue.

Dennis Kucinich: a bit Ron Paul-like, but with better positions generally. A very good leader for 'honesty in politics', fighting corruption.

Howard Dean: IMO one of the best candidates in recent years. A front runner until the media constantly repeating an enthusiastic yell bogglingly killed him in the polls.

He had a nice successful background as governor, a very good success politically as DNC chairman, and many good positions he argues better than any of the current GOP field.

Wesley Clark: not the best candidate, I think he stands up to the best of the current GOP.

Al Sharpton: perhaps the weakest of the bunch, he still compares better than most of the current GOP field. Strong civil rights/inequality moral issues, passion for justice, got his own tv show showing while he has issues he can do better than a lot of the current GOP. Imagine Bachmann or Perry with a talk show. There was a time he seemed among the worst - like an ambulance chaser for bad civil rights cases, like Tawana Brawley - but that's not nearly as bad as most of the current GOP list. He'd fit in that group at worst.

 

[Craig234]

Also just because a popular sitting governor like Perry sucks at debates and may never be a serious contender doesn't mean he is on the same level as Al Sharpton/Jesse Jackson/John Edwards/etc.

The fact you think Perry - an incoherent immoral sellout who lies badly - remember his sayin he'd never take a federal bailout check and cashed one for billions the same day which, along with pushing the school budget one day later into the next fiscal year allowed him to claim a 'balanced budget' for the campaign year - is 'better than' Edwards who eloquently argued a platform for the economic improvement of Americans says that you're a fringe poster who there isn't much useful to discuss with on this topic.

 

[Don Vito Corleone]

Also just because a popular sitting governor like Perry sucks at debates and may never be a serious contender doesn't mean he is on the same level as Al Sharpton/Jesse Jackson/John Edwards/etc.

This is a completely hollow argument. I agree that Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson were essentially novelty candidates (though Jackson actually got some traction in 1988, due in no small part to a weak Democratic slate and widespread frustration among the working poor with Reagan), but John Edwards, as he appeared in 2004, was absolutely a viable candidate, and a more compelling one that that dunderhead Perry. I for one always found Edwards sleazy, and knowing what we know now he would have been disastrous had he become President or VP, but he was a legitimate and, to many, appealing candidate. Saying otherwise is like saying that Nixon (who obviously won election twice) was a bad candidate because we now know he was a liar, a criminal, and a paranoid, anti-Semitic nut.

Similarly, I think Dean was a great candidate and probably would have been a good President. His overexuberance after losing Iowa was (like Perry's brain fart on the debate stage) one of those post-CNN moments that is really harmful to a candidate, but that doesn't mean he wasn't worthwhile on his own merits. Frankly I think it's likely Dean would be a better President than President Obama, and certainly better than any of the GOP's current Island of Misfit Toys, er, I mean, respected Presidential candidates.

 

[brencat]

Every candidate you named IMO is better than most or all of the current field, I'd argue.

John Edwards: very good candidate running on our growing inequality, his sex life another issue.

You can't be serious. The epitome of hypocrisy... $400 haircuts, outright lying, made his money as an ambulance chasing attorney. And the affair and coverup by his assistant destroyed his credibility as a man of character and spoke to his narcissism.

Dennis Kucinich: a bit Ron Paul-like, but with better positions generally. A very good leader for 'honesty in politics', fighting corruption.

Don't know enough about him except his hot wife, but I also didn't particularly like his waffling and what I thought were weak kneed answers/excuses for the Iranian regime's brutal crackdown on its own people during the uprising. Strikes me as another sissy pants liberal with no spine.

Howard Dean: IMO one of the best candidates in recent years. A front runner until the media constantly repeating an enthusiastic yell bogglingly killed him in the polls.

He had a nice successful background as governor, a very good success politically as DNC chairman, and many good positions he argues better than any of the current GOP field.

A total loose cannon but I agree at least he can think quick on his feet and is good in debates.

Wesley Clark: not the best candidate, I think he stands up to the best of the current GOP.

Wesley who?

Al Sharpton: perhaps the weakest of the bunch, he still compares better than most of the current GOP field. Strong civil rights/inequality moral issues, passion for justice, got his own tv show showing while he has issues he can do better than a lot of the current GOP. Imagine Bachmann or Perry with a talk show. There was a time he seemed among the worst - like an ambulance chaser for bad civil rights cases, like Tawana Brawley - but that's not nearly as bad as most of the current GOP list. He'd fit in that group at worst.

Another HORRID individual. A race baiter too. White man = bad, Black Man = good. Regardless of the heinousness of the crime, always injustice in the punishment. Human garbage of the worst kind, you've got to be kidding me.

 

[cybrsage]

If by 'ok' you mean that Romney doesn't run around saying the voting age is 21 (Perry this week), that's not a lot.

Or worse, saying there are 57 states. No one that dull would ever be elected President...

 

[PokerGuy]

The funny thing is that even the relatively weak slate of candidates is comprised of far better candidates than obummer.

 

[Craig234]

My point is if a supposedly super unpopular evil republican like Nixon can win every single state except Massachusetts, that means the liberal candidate must have been pretty crappy to lose California, New York, Illinois, Wisconsin, etc. And if the liberal presidential candidate was that bad, his opponents in the primaries must have been even worse!

You're being simplistic and it's a bad way to try to discuss candidates.

Were Dan Quayle and Sarah Palin reall 'better than every other possible VP nominee'?

No. They got it, but how good of candidates they were is another issue than their being selected.

McGovern I think looks quite good especially looking back at how he wasn't wanting to sponsor illegal uses of the FBI and CIA against citizens, lie about the Vietnam war while causing major new casualties and wanting to kill hundreds of thousands of civilians and use nuclear weapons, to order the replacement of democracy with a brurtal dictator over other countries, not to mention other corruption - McGovern losing badly doesn't mean he wasn't a better candidate than any of the current field (and if he'd done well it wouldn't prove he wasn't worse than them). The issues with how good of candidates they are can't be decided by the votes.

Your logic would say that Reagan was a TERRIBLE candidate since he lost the 1976 primary.

JFK was a TERRIBLE candidate because he not only wasn't nominated for president in 1956, he came in second in the nomination for vice president.

And Nixon - who you say was so great for his 1972 win - must have been bad since he lost in 1960, and then even lost a governor's race in 1962.

 

[Craig234]

You can't be serious. The epitome of hypocrisy... $400 haircuts

There's nothing hypocritical about it.

This is a common fallacy of people like you who hate the people who try to improve the economic situation for Americans.

If someone poor speaks out for helping workers you attack them for not being rich. If someone rich speaks out for helping workers you call them a hypoocrite.

JFK was a wealthy man, and he fought for the poor. It's not hypocrisy.

Now, you mention '$400 haircuts'. This shows you are a sucker for the manufactured propaganda of well-paid propaganda companies who market this stuff.

Someone checked and found that the monied marketing of this 'attack story' against Edwards had massive media repetition - I think thousands of times - but that around the same time a Republican nominee had a similarly overpriced 'makeup session' and it had almost no media coverage, despite being just as 'bad' a story about that candidate.

That's nothing more than marketing manipulation of suckers like you. What does it have to do with the candidate's policies? Nothing.

Chris Christy recently abused a state helicopter to fly to his son's hockey game - costing far more than the $400 figure - and it did get coverage, a small fraction of the Edwards haircut, but people like you don't hold him accountable the same way at all. He's still a darling for the presidency and the front-runner for the 2016 nomination. He's not alone - another NJ governor, Christine Todd Whitman won by criticizing another NJ for helicopter use and promised to sell it - and then was caught taking it to a hockey game.

But you don't hear 'Whitmann helicoptering to a hockey game' stories the way you do 'Edwards haircut' stories. Sucker.

outright lying

About sex and sex-related issues. Bad, but hardly new and not nearly as bad as lying about, say, policy corruption or war. Care to look at GOP candidates' lying?

made his money as an ambulance chasing attorney.

There's a nice cheap label to attack with, you nazi communist. Let's check Wiki:

In 1985, Edwards represented a five-year-old child born with cerebral palsy – a child whose mother's doctor did not choose to perform an immediate Caesarean delivery when a fetal monitor showed she was in distress... Winning this case established the North Carolina precedent of physician and hospital liability for failing to determine if the patient understood the risks of a particular procedure...

In 1993, Edwards began his own firm in Raleigh (now named Kirby & Holt) with a friend, David Kirby. He became known as the top plaintiffs' attorney in North Carolina. The biggest case of his legal career was a 1996 product liability lawsuit against Sta-Rite, the manufacturer of a defective pool drain cover. The case involved Valerie Lakey, a five-year-old girl who was disemboweled by the suction power of the pool drain pump when she sat on an open pool drain whose protective cover had been removed by other children at the pool, after the swim club had failed to install the cover properly. Despite 12 prior suits with similar claims, Sta-Rite continued to make and sell drain covers lacking warnings...

Mark Dayton, editor of North Carolina Lawyers Weekly, would later call it "the most impressive legal performance I have ever seen." The jury awarded the family $25 million, the largest personal injury award in North Carolina history. The company settled for the $25 million while the jury was deliberating additional punitive damages, rather than risk losing an appeal. For their part in this case, Edwards and law partner David Kirby earned the Association of Trial Lawyers of America's national award for public service. The family said that they hired Edwards over other attorneys because he alone had offered to accept a smaller percentage as fee unless the award was unexpectedly high, while all of the other lawyers they spoke with said they required the full one-third fee. The size of the jury award was unprecedented, and Edwards did receive the standard one-third-plus-expenses fee typical of contingency cases. The family was so impressed with his intelligence and commitment that they volunteered for his Senate campaign the next year.

Yes, as he was chasing the ambulace of the child with cerebral palsy caused by medical error, the ambulance of the girl disemboweled by a pool product error, what a scumbag, those people did not deserve any justice! The fact he was very good at being an attorney - not to mention the reforms from the lawsuits preventing injuries to others - who cares?

What we need are the GOP candiates who are whores who want to take the money from the people who want to not be held accoutnable for mistakes, to make harming people profitable, and push de-regulation and cut off citizens access to the courts for compensation when wronged.

And the affair and coverup by his assistant destroyed his credibility as a man of character and spoke to his narcissism.

Yes, that's the big criticism - one that Gingrich, Cain and others can relate to. It's bad, but not by the comparison to the GOP field.

Don't know enough about him except his hot wife

That's a bit of a pathetic issue to bring up - hotness of candidates' wives?

, but I also didn't particularly like his waffling and what I thought were weak kneed answers/excuses for the Iranian regime's brutal crackdown on its own people during the uprising. Strikes me as another sissy pants liberal with no spine.

Not familiar with the issue. I might agree with you if you're correct, but I'd have to see how it compares to things like opposing Obama on his Libya policy.

A total loose cannon

Wrong. You showed nothing to back that up.

but I agree at least he can think quick on his feet and is good in debates.

Not that big a deal. A lot of bad candidates could do that, though many current GOP are bad at even debates.

What made him a good candidate was passionate support for helping the poor - something not only lacking with, but fought by ever current GOP candidate.

 

[Craig234]

This is a completely hollow argument. I agree that Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson were essentially novelty candidates (though Jackson actually got some traction in 1988, due in no small part to a weak Democratic slate and widespread frustration among the working poor with Reagan), but John Edwards, as he appeared in 2004, was absolutely a viable candidate, and a more compelling one that that dunderhead Perry. I for one always found Edwards sleazy, and knowing what we know now he would have been disastrous had he become President or VP, but he was a legitimate and, to many, appealing candidate. Saying otherwise is like saying that Nixon (who obviously won election twice) was a bad candidate because we now know he was a liar, a criminal, and a paranoid, anti-Semitic nut.

I would say those things made Nixon a bad candidate - we just didn't know it then.

Just as I'd say someone like Carter was shown right on a lot in hindsight, comparing his fiscal responsibility to Reagan, his not allowing corrupt foreign policy from Iran-Contra to sponsoring death squads in Central America, his support for a better energy policy for the country getting us off foreign oil, his not using the US military to protect Saddam, etc.

Similarly, I think Dean was a great candidate and probably would have been a good President. His overexuberance after losing Iowa was (like Perry's brain fart on the debate stage) one of those post-CNN moments that is really harmful to a candidate, but that doesn't mean he wasn't worthwhile on his own merits. Frankly I think it's likely Dean would be a better President than President Obama, and certainly better than any of the GOP's current Island of Misfit Toys, er, I mean, respected Presidential candidates.

I agree.