Maybe Kasich has better polling that what the public is seeing https://t.co/x1ySiev3Iv
— Dana Houle (@DanaHoule) September 19, 2016
I hope Kay sees this in the morning, because I’m really curious about her perspective from home base. At Politico, “Kasich camp bashes Priebus, warns of national GOP ‘wipeout'”:
Ohio Gov. John Kasich’s war with the national Republican Party exploded into the open Sunday night, when his top adviser thrashed GOP leader Reince Priebus and hinted that the presidential election may be out of reach for Donald Trump.
The statement, issued on official campaign letterhead, followed remarks by Priebus earlier Sunday suggesting the party might block the Ohio governor from running for president again because he has refused to support Trump.
“Thankfully, there are still leaders in this country who put principles before politics,” said John Weaver, Kasich’s adviser, adding, “The idea of a greater purpose beyond oneself may be alien to political party bosses like Reince Priebus, but it is at the center of everything Governor Kasich does.”…
Kasich’s statement was a stunning act of open hostility between the national Republican Party and the governor in perhaps the most crucial swing state — and at a sensitive moment in the election. Trump has risen in national polls and inched closer to Hillary Clinton in swing states. He’s even passed her in Ohio, perhaps his strongest chance to capture a state that Mitt Romney lost in 2012.
RNC spokesman Sean Spicer shrugged off the Kasich camp’s statement. “We are totally focused on winning back the White House and maintaining our majorities in the House and Senate,” Spicer said.
But another national GOP strategist, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Kasich may end up getting punished by Republican voters for breaking his word to support the party’s nominee — which he made along with other rivals last fall. In fact, the party also makes its lists and resources available to campaigns based on similar agreements, and Kasich was a beneficiary of those lists…
@alexburnsNYT But Kasich has tons of leverage over Preibus, seeing how he controls GOP operations in a critical state this year.
— Kevin M. Kruse (@KevinMKruse) September 19, 2016
RNC Chairman: Party could penalize former GOP candidates who don’t endorse Donald Trump https://t.co/Aj3srNcoon
— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) September 18, 2016
RYAN: Jesus, Reince is lying like crazy for you. Shame on him.
TRUMP: Yeah, so much more dignified to crawl around ducking cameras like you— Owen Ellickson (@onlxn) September 18, 2016
And if Trump loses, I bet there are a lot of Republicans who want to penalize Priebus https://t.co/VQDXeTmSuZ
— Dan Pfeiffer (@danpfeiffer) September 18, 2016
Major Major Major Major
In case anybody’s curious, by way of learning a new programming language I did some basic text mining on this site. Here’s a rudimentary sentiment analysis based on a thousand or so posts. (That’s #related words/post).
Richard sure is positive!
dr. luba
Perhaps Kasich is seeing polls that actually polled the under 50 demographic?
Ruckus
@efgoldman:
No. Just normal blog stuff, arguments, misunderstandings, name calling, you know just a bit of normal 4th grade crap.
Ruckus
@dr. luba:
Perhaps Kasich is seeing his career taking a nose dive and being buried under the offal that is the Trump campaign.
Anne Laurie
@Major Major Major Major: I have no idea how to interpret your graph, except it seems to be telling me Hillary has written more posts than Cole, which seems wrong (even if you’re only using the past x-weeks of postings).
Is your program just picking out those random words — anger, anticipation, disgust? Or is it supposed to be ‘comprehending’ what our word choices indicate about our emotional status?
Anne Laurie
@efgoldman: Welcome back! Don’t think you’ve missed much in this internet community. And the “real world” stuff, meh, Donald Trump remains a bloviating arsehole — no surprise there.
Major Major Major Major
@Anne Laurie: It’s the number of words tied to those sentiments, on average per post, using the NRC Word-Emotion Association Lexicon. So Richard uses lots of ‘positive’ words, Tim is just plain emotional, etc.
NR
Clinton losing millennial support nationally and in key states.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Hillary Clinton is the worst major-party presidential candidate in at least 50 years.
Major Major Major Major
@NR: It must be super embarrassing that your guy lost to her!
Major Major Major Major
@Anne Laurie: Don’t worry, you have by far the most posts :P
It’s all the posts from June and July, I think.
Anne Laurie
@Major Major Major Major: And I’m really guarded / flat affect. Well, fair enough…
NR
@Major Major Major Major: I’m sure it will be a huge comfort throughout the Trump administration that at least Hillary beat Bernie Sanders. That’s going to make everything so much better.
Bruuuuce
@NR:
Except for the lying, thieving, con man she’s running against. And most of his Republican predecessors back to Nixon
Suzanne
@Ruckus: Wrong! This blog gets nasty—it’s much more like 7th grade crap.
Kasich is trying to save the last shreds of credibility he has left. I said, back when there were 17 of them, that the Repukes would be stupid not to nominate Kasich. I think he would have been a formidable opponent.
Calming Influence
Kasich was the “sane” candidate during the Republican primaries, and from where he stood he couldn’t have reached center/right with a high powered rifle. Fuck is wrong with these assholes?
Jesse
@NR: @NR: Still waiting for an explanation of why all of your posts are rooting for Trump, yet you claim not to support him.
All you do is post things celebrating Trump’s rising chances to win. You’re more dilligent and dedicated about that than the self-reported Trump supporters are.
What’s wrong with you?
NR
@Jesse:
Pointing out that Hillary is losing to Trump is not rooting for him.
Calming Influence
@NR: Oh My God! That shows I might not be supporting the right candidate! I don’t want to be wrong, so tell me: should I support Trump?
No really, NR, put up or shut up — who do you want me to vote for?
Calming Influence
@Anne Laurie: Anne Laurie is “guarded/flat affect”.
That’s funny.
RK
Why jump on NR? Hillary admitted herself she’s wanting as a candidate.
Jesse
@RK: Because she doesn’t follow up the admission of her flaws with an infomercial for her opponent?
Tegdirb
NR is wanting as a commentator.
Calming Influence
@RK: Oh, fuck you too. What is your point? That the election result is uncertain 7 weeks out? Brilliant. Fucking genius. We all bow to your bulging cerebral cortex. You must dine on nothing but fish.
NR
Point of reference: In 2012, Obama got 60% of the millennial vote and beat Romney by 23. Hillary is getting around 35% and beating Trump by single digits.
It looks like you guys’ brilliant strategy of shitting all over young voters for six months and laughing snidely about “participation trophies” is really paying dividends, isn’t it?
Jesse
@NR: The vast majority of every comment you post is some cherry-picked news item that shows Trump’s chances improving. You’re awfully eager to dance on Clinton’s grave for a guy who’s “just pointing out” or “just asking questions.”
You may believe we would have been better off with Sanders as the nominee, but you can’t prove that because there is literally no factual information to back up that position. Sanders lost to the woman you’re insisting is going to lose to Trump.
You see a difference between you and Trump’s supporters. I can see no such difference. But you think what you’re doing is sane and sensible.
What’s wrong with you?
Jesse
@NR: See, here it is again.
“Trump will win and a lot of actual people will actually suffer, but the important part is that I’ll be able to mock people for mocking other people!”
What’s wrong with you?
RK
@Calming Influence:
Upset about something?
Amir Khalid
@RK:
Here’s the difference between Hillary and everyone else who ran for President in 2016: She’s all substance. Everyone else is all show. With an entirely rational American electorate, that should be enough. But she’s up against a lying mendacious bigot, a practiced showman who appeals to the all-too-many bigots in America, and who for some reason has (ETA: mostly) been getting an easier ride than he deserves from the mainstream media. She’s also up against a lazy media that thinks it’s too much hard work to examine what each candidate offers in terms of policy and ability to execute; and that reckons, rightly or not, that the public would be bored by dreary policy analysis anyway.
i wouldn’t want Hillary to try to compete with Donald at showboating. It’s not her strength, It wouldn’t win her that many votes, and it wouldn’t make her a better president.
seaboogie
@Major Major Major Major:
So when you follow blogs and such on your ‘phone’ device in portrait mode, you get an abbreviation of the blog name, which can sometimes amuse me (because silly things amuse me). Talkingpoints Memo becomes ” Talking poi…emo” I think that’s my fave, but there are many and several like this.
cokane
@NR: historically, third parties have almost always polled better than they did on election day. many of their supporters end up simply not voting or breaking for a major candidate on election day
Calming Influence
@RK:
.
NR
@cokane: 538 talked about this a few weeks ago. Long story short, we’re already well past the point in the election where third parties usually start to see their support fall off. It’s not happening this time. Johnson and Stein are both holding steady.
seaboogie
@Tegdirb:
NR stands for Not Relevant. Little known fact that should be obvious.
Calming Influence
@NR: Yeah, keep holding on to that Johnson.
Anne Laurie
@Calming Influence: Actually, now I’m guessing the machine doesn’t “read” words inside embedded tweets (or maybe even inside blockquotes). Since I don’t usually add a lot of my own words when I post a string of other peoples’ tweets (because I assume you guys are smart enough to follow the arguments without my help), the machine would not have many “emotional” words to read in my June/July posts…
But I find the ‘flat affect’ idea amusing, irregardless.
cokane
@NR: meh, i’m sure johnson will do better than any 3rd party guy since Perot, but i’ll still take the under on 7.7% popular vote. you grossly overstate what’s in that 538 article, as Enten does plenty of hedging.
RK
@Calming Influence:
You’re upset with your period key?
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Jesse: For NR, it’s “Nach Trump, uns”.
Calming Influence
@Anne Laurie: Yeah, your “flat affect” is much like my “calming influence”…
Calming Influence
@RK:
NR
@cokane: Maybe. But we definitely can’t assume that. We’ve never had two major-party candidates who were as disliked as Clinton and Trump. Johnson and Stein may very well keep their votes.
Amir Khalid
@NR:
Jill Stein is polling nationally within the margin of error. Johnson said that if he didn’t get into the first debate his campaign was toast. Neither of them made the 15% national polling average, which is the qualifying mark for the first debate. So they can hold steady all they like, but their campaigns are toast, and from here on out they’re only likely to leak support to the major-party candidates..
cokane
@NR: Let me add that you’re not really digging into the data from that article very well. A lot of those 3rd party candidates polled a ~4% support. There isn’t much room to go down there. Think about it. If you drop from 4 to 3, as the trend shows, you’ve lost 25% of your supporters. This is in line with what I meant originally.
Obviously their support isn’t going to vanish on election day. But any candidate who loses 1/3 to 1/4 of their supporters… that’s never insignificant.
NR
@Amir Khalid: I doubt we’ll see them rise, but I also doubt we’ll see them fall much. And that spells big trouble for Hillary, since their support is largest in the youngest age groups.
Amir Khalid
@NR:
See cokane #44.
amk
The resident mccain/trump troll has never been proven right since 2006.
? Martin
Kasich is pushing back because he wants to run in 2020 and right now you have to run proto-fascist campaign to win the primaries. With Priebus and more GOPs jumping in with Trump, it’s looking more and more like the Trump voting base is going to be the GOP base in 2020, even if he loses. Someone has to try and reverse that and give influential people in the party a different message to back. If that doesn’t happen, he’s done with politics.
It’s notable that Cruz has completely checked out. I’m guessing he’s okay running in Trump’s wake after all.
jacy
I always feel better about the polling when I go and play with the interactive features on the NYT Interactive Site.
Currently the 10 most competitive states are Florida, Ohio, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, Wisconsin, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, and New Hampshire. (Meaning PA is LESS competitive than AZ!) All Hillary has to do is win Colorado, Wisconsin, and New Hampshire and she’s president. Meaning Trump can win FL, Ohio, Nevada, North Carolina, and Iowa, and still fall short. It’s just not going to happen. No complacency here, but certainly no panic.
SRW1
What’s Kasich got to loose? If Trump wins, Kasich’s national ambitions are toast anyway, and if Trump goes down, it’s Kasich versus Cruz for the rooster spot on the remains of the dumpster fire. With Reince’s mutilated political body rotting nearby in the sun..
jacy
@? Martin:
At some point the drunken Republican frat party is going to end, and somebody has to start cleaning up the vomit and broken furniture while the rest of them try desperately to erase the pictures on their phones and find their pants. I guess Kasich has volunteered.
SRW1
[Deleted for double posting]
Botsplainer
Reince is a gutless little weasel who, once he decided to go all in for Trump, had to go scorched earth. If Trump wins, he gets to be a Gauleiter of something and will be a useful functionary in an important (yet noncritical) function of the Reich. If Trump loses, he’s fucked.
He even has a name that sounds kind of like he needed to be in the dock at Nuremburg.
On a happy note, I awoke to putting my hand in a big pile of dog vomit on the bed, and lo, to my wonder, there was dog diarrhea dribbled on the floor everywhere and my bedroom smelled like I flushed dog toilet. I had to strip the bed and toss it in the washer and have done one run with the carpet cleaner, and it’s now only 4 am.
So I got that going for me, which is nice.
Anne Laurie
@Botsplainer: So hit yourself on the head with a hammer, and you’ll know exactly how KellyAnne Conway feels almost every morning for the past six weeks!
Botsplainer
@NR:
Er, no. My recollection was that the Berners needed to dial it way the fuck back on the accusations of rigging, fraud and corporatist whore stuff, particularly as Bernie was never going to win either a primary or a general.
This is why I say fuck Bernie Sanders.
Botsplainer
@Anne Laurie:
He’s feeling puny while knowing I’m upset with him.
seaboogie
@Botsplainer: How is the pup?
Botsplainer
@seaboogie:
He’s now sleeping peacefully on the couch as the washing machine spins. He’ll have a nice restful Monday, it appears.
Kathleen
In 2014, in the height of Tea Party “popularity” in the GOP, Kasich’s campaign ads featured him talking about his parents who were killed when he was young and the moral values they instilled in him and the importance of kindness. I thought to myself at the time that Kasich must be reading some tea leaves other Republicans were ignoring and he was positioning himself for “the long game” in which he emerged as a winning Presidential candidate (perhaps 2020). About a year later I was at a workshop which discussed the anti gerrymandering legislation which was being proposed and a couple of panelists (one of whom was a former journalist) said that Ohio business leaders were concerned about the Tea Party’s influence. So perhaps a new trend has been slowly developing in Ohio for a couple of years.
Shalimar
@NR: Hillary Clinton is disliked in large part because Republicans changed their political strategy in 1992 (ed: The Arkansas Project and Gingrich Revolution) to basically shitting all over the room and telling everyone that it really stinks in here. What is she really disliked for that isn’t a product of having dozens of Republican operatives over the last few decades devoting their entire lives to making up negative stories about her and feeding them to reporters? What the fuck is wrong with you that you can’t see this?
Botsplainer
@Kathleen:
He is more likely holding for 2024. He’ll be elder statesman, probably a senator.
seaboogie
@Botsplainer: Purging from both ends for the pup is either exhausting, and/or satisfying. On your end of the effluvia, just exhausting. Just put a full enveloping waterproof mattress pad on my new mattress, plus another waterproof one that is like a fitted sheet. Old kitty is re-installed on our bed with fresh pee-pads, and I am golden! New mattress will survive come what may!
sukabi
@Anne Laurie: KellyAnne KNEW what she was getting into…she’d better be smart enough to have gotten paid up front, otherwise she screwed herself.
And even if she’s that smart, she’s without a moral center…
?BillinGlendaleCA
@jacy: Or, they could just burn the place down, collect the insurance money and move to a new place.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Botsplainer: Ain’t dogs* wonderful?
*I have two, been there done that.
Shalimar
@? Martin: Rumors are going around that Cruz is going to wreck any potential budget deal, so he will be seeking the spotlight during election season. Another government shutdown should do wonders for rehabilitating Cruz’s image with members of the base who are mad at him for his convention speech, while damaging Republican chances in all those 2016 races he doesn’t care about anyway.
?BillinGlendaleCA
And for a bit of culture this morning, I submit: Good Vibrations and Sloop John B.
Botsplainer
@seaboogie:
I figure I’m just going to have breakfast and go to the gym. Hard boiled eggs are cooling now. He’s expecting breakfast, but I think I need to fast him this morning.
Poopyman
@seaboogie:
That is perhaps an unintentional … unfortunate? … turn of phrase.
Got up at 3:30 to close the windows for the thunderstorms, so here we go! An early, sleepy start to the week, which will end in Orlando with the start of a week of training/conference.
Shalimar
@NR: If your neighbor ran over your foot with his car, it would spell big trouble for Hillary in your eyes. You be you.
Kay
I think it’s about this:
Priebus doesn’t mean it, but he had to say something because the trade deal is more than Trump- Republicans in Congress passed Fast Track. Fast Track passed because of majority GOP support. They don’t want to talk about it right now and Kasich isn’t just talking about it- he went to DC and met with Obama.
Trump must be furious but it’s more than Trump- it’s basically the whole GOP Congress. The fact is, they backed TPP. Now they all have to pretend they oppose it.
OTOH, before anyone gets too excited about Kasich’s bipartisan wonderfulness, I don’t think Kasich would have done it if the Senate race between Portman and Strickland was close. Kasich is not actually screwing Portman, because the OH Senate race is not close and Portman will win anyway.
Here’s Breitbart on the betrayal of Trump by Kasich.
Kay
Just so everyone’s clear, however you feel about the TPP, Trump has no idea what he’s talking about there, either.
I don’t think he could list the countries involved in TPP, let alone describe what’s in it. TPP is to a certain extent a renegotiation of NAFTA so Trump would have to understand how the two deals interact to have or give an informed opinion and Trump just isn’t very bright. TPP will have some effect on the auto industry (“rules of origin” refers to where components- parts- in an automobile are made) but the major focus of TPP is NOT manufacturing. Trump is just wrong- it’s not about manufacturing.
Republicans in Congress have two problems with TPP. Business backs TPP but maybe more importantly TPP actually will be very beneficial to agricultural interests. Other countries DO have trade barriers to exclude US ag products. Republicans dominate in ag states and ag is big business.
cckids
@Botsplainer: Amen to that. Those months of whining, accusing and generally lumping Hillary and all Democrats into the “no different from Trump” category couldn’t possibly have affected the attitudes of young voters, right? If only the vast influence of commenters at the Balloon-Juice blog hadn’t been so, SO mean to their poor fragile egos.
I am very tired of NR’s breath-holding, foot-stomping tantrums about the treatment of the Bernie-bros. So untethered to reality.
Kay
Here’s a great question for the debate.
Trump has made trade a centerpiece of his campaign. Ask him how the TPP intersects with NAFTA re: Mexico and Canada.
Hillary Clinton could answer that question and Donald Trump can’t. Clinton could answer it right now, no preparation.
You could start dumber- ask Trump to list the countries involved in TPP. One of Trump’s national security people said last week that China was in TPP and China isn’t in TPP. I don’t know why they can’t do to Trump what they did to Johnson. Just ask him simple questions. He can’t answer them. He’s a moron.
debbie
@Kay:
And yet Ohio teamsters have endorsed Trump. Clearly, facts are irrelevant.
Ohio Mom
Geez. I’ve liked the idea that the end of Kasich’s time as my governor is in sight. Now I am reminded that I will soon have to start dreading that he’ll be a strong contender for the next presidential race.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@NR:
You’re also ignoring the press has been actively enabling Trump by keeping any opponent he attacks from fighting back. If you payed attention to the GOP primary you will see they did it to Jeb and Rubio, It didn’t work on Cruz because he is to much of an asshole to care. This would be problem to almost any Democrat, even Obama.
Likely Obama would do better verses Trump. Obama has spent his entire life being the target of racists assholes backup up by the majority and still succeeding. Then again Obama isn’t runing. Hilary also has a huge advantage against Trump that no other Democrat has that she is woman and she does “look at this jerk” really well. She won her senate seat when Republican candidate lost it and started trying to physically bully her, Trump is really prone to that. Of course that all depends on the moderator not spending the entire debate trolling her like at the Commander and Chief Townhall, but it sounds like even the press got that was beyond the pale.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Kay: Trumps protectionism should be a thing of horror to everyone right and left. Offsouring is so integrated in the economy now that the kind of trade war Trump wants would just start another recession. A lot of stuff we simply can’t do here because there aren’t enough people.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Also, anyone still pinning for the Bern, do please keep in mind Sanders was never really subjected to the kind of mud slinging that goes on in a presidential election. We can be sure Sanders have his own questionable that it would be irresponsible for the press not to speculate about too. Personally I don’t see him as that good at deflecting cheep shots so he would be doing that much better now.
dww44
@Calming Influence: I love this comment and am gonna share at the appropriate time with my SO and brother-in-law, who probably would have voted for Kasich if he’d gotten the nomination cause like so many other folks they dislike Hillary Clinton. However, they both are voting for her in November.
Bobby Thomson
@debbie:
Fixed.
Hey, everyone, stop feeding the ratfucker.
chopper
@Bruuuuce:
yeah but those guys don’t count because reaSHUT UP I HATE CLINTON SO MUCH
chopper
@Amir Khalid:
right. trump isn’t doing as well as he is because hilz is a bad candidate. trump is doing as well as he is because America is chock full of racist braindead hicks. trump would still be in the 40s even if we put O up for a third term.
Exurban Mom
From here in Ohio, I wouldn’t say that Kasich is wildly popular. More like “popular enough to win an election.” and “seen as a sane Republican, unlike others we could mention.” Portman is seen in a similar light. Strickland is turning out to be a terrible campaigner–my suspicion is he’s not aging well and has lost a step or three–so Portman is going to retain his seat. Trump is all hair and no cattle. Our Dem strongholds get that. We’ve had several key surrogates come through our union-strong areas in the Mahoning valley recently for Hillary. Hillary’s team knows what they are doing and I feel fairly confident Ohio will go blue in November.
Joel
@NR: win or lose, I think we can all agree that you should eat a bowl of dicks.
artem1s
@Ruckus:
Hopefully Kasich is seeing bad numbers for Portman. Polling in Ohio is notoriously unreliable because landline household tend to be rural or affluent suburbs. the Blue parts of the state are usually more POC, urban dwelling progressives and a couple counties dominated by liberal leaning college towns (Athens and Oberlin). Ohio is one of those states Mitt and Karl thought they had in the bag because they had been polling almost exclusively white, rural communities. Ohio is almost completely dependent on GOTV in NE OH. But lately Columbus and the even Cincy have turned a little more blue. OBA relied heavily on early voting to lock in the urban areas and it worked, bigly. that has been the case so far for Hillz campaign. they have more office in Cleveland than I have seen in any other campaign. registration ends in about 20 days and absentee ballots will go out about then too. a lot of effort is going into locking down likely Dems. Hopefully it will work.
Gelfling 545
@NR: I fail to follow your logic. Millenials, etc. did not turn out in the primary in sufficient numbers to nominate Sanders, therefore they’d turn out for him in the general? Really? And even if (doubtfully) so, at the cost pof how many other groups?
Ruckus
@artem1s:
Lived in Gahanna for a decade, not that long ago. It was turning blue then. I fear it has a way to go but seeing it turn blue this year would be great.
liberal
@Jesse: of course there’s such information: Sanders polled better than H against Republicans.
You can argue that Sanders negatives would have increased with time, but “no factual information” is laughable.
J R in WV
@NR:
Who is “we” in your posts? You and who else? You use the word a lot, which was probably advice from a “how to win friends and influence enemies” lecture you attended once.
But you never mention anyone else, and you continuously denigrate Balloon-Juice, so we B-J folk can’t be part of YOUR we.
And you act as if a top 10,000 blog is deciding the next president of the US, which would be flattering, if it were true, and if you didn’t assert we are helping Trump out as hard as we can…
Who are you going to vote for? Really?
Stan
@SRW1: Correct.
Spider-Dan
I think almost any Democrat would be doing the-same-or-worse in this situation against Trump.
After Bernie made it his campaign strategy to convince Obama supporters – the same Obama that is still in favor of TPP, and took more Wall Street money than Hillary in ’08 – that Hillary is a uniquely corrupt candidate that embodies everything wrong with the system, he poisoned the well. His strategy did not work among people of color because they have enough life experience with real political enemies to know Hillary isn’t one, but among millennials it was incredibly effective. And now it’s not so much about the millennial vote (which should generally be considered a bonus and not a pillar), but about the media latching on to the minority of disaffected millennials as their required balance of “both candidates are terrible.”
It wouldn’t matter if the candidate were Biden, O’Malley, or a hypothetical third term of Obama; the well would still have been poisoned in the same manner. And if it had actually worked in the primary and Bernie had won, we’d be hearing now about how the Democrats are just as radical as the Republicans and have nominated a full-blown Socialist who has advocated for nationalizing phone and utility industries. The only candidate that MIGHT have survived it is Warren, because a) the “corrupt” angle would have been a harder sell, but more likely b) Bernie wouldn’t have entered a Dem primary with Warren in it, and if he had, he never would have gotten any traction in the first place as Warren is the-same-but-better version of Bernie.
Although I can’t say for certain that Warren wouldn’t also have poisoned the well. I hope not.
...now I try to be amused
@Kathleen:
I can see that. Somebody’s got to be the first post-Tea Party (and post-Trump) GOP candidate. (I thought Chris Christie was positioning himself for that role before he bent the knee for Trump.) Whoever it is, must be hoping the TP/Trump mania blows over before they’re too old to run.
Mel
Anyone who thinks that Kasich is highly “popular” with anyone but elderly, white middle class voters, the uninformed, and corporate toadies clearly needs a little dictionary refresher. He’s neither ” of the people”, nor particularly well-liked. He might have initially appealed to younger white working class voters as well, b/c of his faux, folksy-aw-shucks demeanor, but when he showed his true colors by attacking labor rights, some of that portion of his base got a rude wake up call (and pushed back hard).
I do agree with Kay that anything Kasich does at this point is to further his own agenda. He likes to appear to be “sane”, “rational”, “trustworthy”: it pacifies his voter base, and keeps the large body of uninformed or unengaged Ohio voters from openly rebelling by jumping ship to our side.
But Kasich has fangs and an agenda. Just take a look at his actual record on labor rights, equal rights, women’s rights, environmental policies, reproductive rights, etc. Kasich just works quietly behind the scenes, instead of screaming and Tweeting his agenda all over the place, unless there’s an opportunity to feed his public persona as “a moderate Republican”. Pulling wool over eyes, and whatnot. He’s figured out that he can get his way more easily by saying nothing; many voters here in Ohio can’t tell you a single thing that Kasich has done (or not done) while in office. It’s a case of the ugly truth hiding in plain sight. I have relatives and neighbors who are otherwise sane, oppose many of the policies that Kasich puts quietly into play, and complain loudly about how “terrible” Pence and Trump and Walker are with regards to policies regarding equal rights, workers’ rights, immigration, education, etc. But when you lay out Kasich’s history, they disbelieve the very facts, b/c “he’s so gentle and soft-spoken”, “but he says he speaks so highly of his wife and family”, “he really loves Ohio! He says so!”
grandpa john
@jacy: Yep I have found that site to be a good nerve tonic also
Anne Laurie
@Spider-Dan:
Nah, my favorite Senator is a nice Oklahoma girl now living among the Jill Steins of the Peoples’ Republic of the Upper-Class Boston Burbs. She knows from experience there’s no point in riling up those people, they’re more trouble than it’s worth even when they think they’re on your side.