As it turns out, driving an iconic Silicon Valley heritage corporation into the ground and then running a spectacularly incompetent GOP campaign for Senate that loses during a Republican wave election doesn\u2019t rally voters to support your candidacy for President of the United States. So Carly Fiorina is out, along with Chris Christie (too Yankee) and Rand Paul (too glibertarian and too weird) and\u2026who\u2019s left at this point? Kasich (too unknown, too occasionally not nuts), Carson (too hopelessly unqualified and weird), Gilmore (one term as governor which ended in 2001 and you\u2019re going to run for the White House NOW?), Bush (too Bush), and of course the Glimmer Twins, the beautiful duo, Trump and Cruz. \u00a0A hairdo like an onion loaf and a face like a fist. One tabloid star who thinks the White House is an entry-level job and has not the faintest idea how politics works, and one God-bothering Texan \u00a0who is universally reviled by his elected peers and has not the faintest relationship with the truth.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Normally, this would be a layup for the Democrats, especially with the economy in not utterly ghastly condition and gas prices creeping down. \u00a0But on that side, it\u2019s either a seventy-something self-described socialist who gets the kids fired up with things that are patently impossible to pass, or\u2026Hillary. \u00a0I feel better about Hillary than I did eight years ago, but not much – I do think she learned from some of her mistakes (although with Mark Penn supposedly in the mix again, I think the ones she didn\u2019t learn from will be more telling) and I think she has one big advantage (if you can call it that): she has been the most reviled, hated, slandered, and thoroughly put-upon woman in politics for the last twenty-five years, and it won\u2019t make a difference if her enemies double-dog hate her, everything is pretty much out there already. The downside is that the Washington press has never liked her (or her husband), which is a big part of what helped Obama along, and the fact that\u2026she\u2019s been around for a quarter-century, which is how an old Jewish dude from Vermont can suddenly be au courant<\/em> with the youth vote.<\/p>\n My big fear, as always, is that like Occupy Wall Street, Bernie will bring out a tidal wave of youth support\u2026and when he doesn\u2019t win the nomination, the wave breaks and his followers go back to whatever they were doing instead of getting behind Hillary. Look, this isn\u2019t like the old days. The worst candidate the Democrats can put up is still better than the best one the GOP can offer, because if the GOP wins, they have the White House and Congress and there is no safety catch on the United States of Alabama. And a lot of people are saying \u201cwell with a GOP Congress Hillary won\u2019t be able to get any more through than Bernie!\u201d It\u2019s not about that anymore. \u00a0It\u2019s not about bringing around the progressive Jerusalem. It\u2019s about keeping the Confederates from working their will. \u00a0At this point, we\u2019re voting for a Democrat to be the finger in the dike, preventing the redneck flood. You can\u2019t expect any more. That\u2019s all they can be, until redistricting and demographics and hopefully the long slow arc of the universe bend things back around toward a vision of politics that isn\u2019t grounded in Dixie in 1968.<\/p>\n So all I want out of a Democratic nominee is simple. I don\u2019t care about the student loan stuff, because they can\u2019t pass it. \u00a0I\u2019m not interested in single-payer health care, because they can\u2019t pass it. \u00a0I care about the Supreme Court and the veto pen, and that\u2019s all I can care about. I need one thing and one thing only out of a Democratic candidate for President: victory in November, because the alternatives are too horrifying to contemplate.<\/p>\n So whoever, fine. Clinton, Sanders, I honestly don\u2019t care which one gets it. As long as they fucking win<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n ETA: did I forget Marco Rubio? Maybe, but as one Twitter wag put it, he failed his Turing test. In a world where anti-immigration sentiment is the driving force of the GOP primary electorate, Rubio fucked up by going along with the GOP\u2019s postmortem in 2013 and trying to actually accomplish something on the immigration front. Bad mistake. You can\u2019t really do that when a huge chunk of your base is voting solely on the basis of \u201cwho will shit on brown people the most\u201d and if you don\u2019t believe me, watch the numbers come in on March 1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As it turns out, driving an iconic Silicon Valley heritage corporation into the ground and then running a spectacularly incompetent GOP campaign for Senate that loses during a Republican wave election doesn\u2019t rally voters to support your candidacy for President of the United States. So Carly Fiorina is out, along with Chris Christie (too Yankee) … <\/p>\n