[mandaladon]

But I do know what an analyst should not do: he should not use terms like “never” and “no chance” when applied to Mr. Cain’s chances of winning the nomination, as many analysts have.....................Cain's got his opponents going nuts.

[Jeff Head]

In the end, the only endorsement that will matter in terms of his winning office is the endorsement of the coters. If enough vote for him, he will win and take office.

What the politically connected/insiders/ are having a difficult time with is the fact that the people like and trust this man. That is what is fueling his campaign. As long as the people continue to do that...they will not be able to deflect or stop him.

Despite inexperience as a politician (which many of us count as a positive), people know he has been very successful as a hands on businessman with large companies. They also know he is plain spoken and a moral man, as in traditional morals. They trust him to get in there and use those qualities to solve problems for Americans.

Again, as long as enough of us retain that trust...they will not be able to stop him.

[Paperdoll]

Yeah, and now the NYT has fallen into the habit of making up it’s own news, fashioned out of pure wishful fairy gauze!

Herman Cain has never been a quitter. The stupid media says no, and Mr. Cain will come back with a strong YES every time! Go Herman Cain!

[sodpoodle]

From Wiki on Nate Silver (and he was Pablano at KOS)

The accuracy of his November 2008 presidential election predictions—he correctly predicted the winner of 49 of the 50 states—won Silver further attention and commendation. The only state he missed was Indiana, which went for Barack Obama by 0.9%. He also correctly predicted the winner of all 35 Senate races that year.
___________________________________________________
We should keep an eye on him;)

[Sir Lurks Alot]

Vote “Cain For President” and get your next large Godfathers pizza for only $9.99!!

[Lady Lucky]

He has begun to get a fair amount of media coverage, but the tenor of it has been fairly skeptical.

He's gotten a fair amount of worship at FR too, and I'm fairly skeptical. However, he's better than Romney. Joe Isuzu is too.

[TADSLOS]

Outlier = Leading From The Front.

[ASA Vet]

Herman Cain

born December 13, 1945 in Memphis, TN (Meets the Jus Soli Requirement)

Parents were
Luther Cain Jr., born March 16, 1925 in TN, died March 29, 1982 in Atlanta, GA
Lenora Davis, born July 27, 1925 in GA, died August 20, 2005 in Atlanta, GA

Both parents were US Citizens at the time of his birth (Meets the Jus Sanguinis Requirement)

Herman Cain is a NATURAL BORN CITIZEN

Barry Soetoro aka Barack Hussein Obama ISN'T!

Click on the cane.

[FourPeas]

The fact that Mr. Cain has made it this far with such apparently weak fundamentals — we’re less than 10 weeks away from the Iowa caucuses — is itself remarkable. It implies that there is either something fundamentally unusual about this year’s Republican nomination process, or perhaps that some sort of “new normal” has been established and that the old rules of how you win a nomination no longer carry as much weight.

Hmmm, one of the "experts" may just be on to something. All the combined so-called wisdom of the "experts" can't seem to fathom that Barry and his ilk have put us over the edge when it comes to The Ruling Class.

[Bringbackthedraft]

Herman Cain, the Georgia businessman “who has never held elected office”,...................................Seems like this is the standard boiler plate start off sentence of the MSM, they who set the standard with an “experienced community organizer”, who by the way has held an elective office and found himself above his pay grade.

[Longbow1969]

Silver is a liberal, but his polling analysis is often pretty good. This is a pretty fair article I think, especially considering that Silver probably hates everything Cain represents.

Saying that, I think the odds are very slim that Cain wins the nomination. And if he did, I think Hussein would easily defeat him in Nov 2012. I still think the only person who can realistically stop Romney the chameleon from getting the nomination is probably Perry. If Perry can’t recover then the next best shot against Mitt would be Newt, but I have little confidence in him as a national candidate. All in all, the more I see of our candidates the weaker this field appears. It amazes me that in an election cycle with a president struggling so badly that a better crop of candidates didn’t want to run against him.

[Thom Pain]

Given that thousands of people with experience in elective office have damn near destroyed this once great nation I'm more than willing to take a chance on someone with talent and intelligence with no experience in office but who is a genuine PATRIOT!

[ziravan]

This is the first Tea Party Presidential election. That explains everything the pundits can’t figure out about Cain.

[Brookhaven]

I’m working on a project that tries to assign grades to each of the Republican candidates in a wide variety of categories.

I once created a program to predict the NFL draft. It assigned grades to various players according to their skills and sutibilty for each team's needs.

It produced wonderful mock drafts that were actually featured on several high-profile draft websites. It only had one shortcomming: It was never right.

Some things just can't be quantified down to a formula. Politics is one of them.

[Pan_Yan]

Apparently the full court press is on at the New York Times, Here is their article hit piece from this morning:

As Cain Promotes His Management Skills, Ex-Aides Tell of Campaign in Chaos

[haroldeveryman]

“Herman Cain, the Georgia businessman who has never held elected office”

Both of these qualifications are more impressive than anything Obama ever did before he was elected by a landslide by the American boobacracy in 2008.

And just to be fair to Cain, the NY Times should have mentioned that he also has been a Federal Reserve bank chairman.

By the way I can think of a couple of pretty good presidents who had never held public office prior to the presidency: George Washington and Dwight Eisenhower.

[fightinJAG]

But then there are the nonpolling factors, some of which can be objectively measured and some of which cannot, but which would generally point toward Mr. Cain as being a second- or third-tier candidate. Mr. Cain has no endorsements from Republican members of Congress or Republican governors, and very few from officials in key early voting states. He has raised very little money. He has not hired well-known names for his campaign staff. He does not have traditional credentials. He has run for elected office just once before. He has begun to get a fair amount of media coverage, but the tenor of it has been fairly skeptical. His campaign commercials have been … interesting.

I read all of Silver's analysis and it's thoughtful as far as it goes. However, he is suffering from being blinded by "the way it's always been done."

IOW, try as he might, he continues to hold fast to his old definition of "fundamentals." For example, none of things he mentions above as indicators presently mean a hill of beans in the wake of the political earthquake that was caused by the Tea Party and, more broadly, the grassroots discovery that it can support candidates of its choice directly (i.e., bypassing the old party apparatus and endorsement system completely).

Few in professional political analysis, including what are commonly called the party "elites," seem to have actually appreciated the shifts that have occurred under their feet.

The grassroots no longer needs ANYONE to do whatever it wants. Candidates can raise money directly -- I could see a candidate making it without ever having done a traditional rubber chicken dinner! Candidates can use new media and web ads to go directly and inexpensively to voters. And voters can make ads and pass them around, potentially to millions, on the internet.

IOW, to talk about "ground games" and endorsements is pretty much an historical anachronism, and will be more so as the first fully Tea Party/new media election gets going.

Cain is being dismissed because he's not using the Pony Express to get his message out. Meanwhile, he's figured out that the telegraph has been invented.

[Paperdoll]

Anyone who still reads that rag and believes it is forever lost in the murky sea of lies and deceptions.