Ah Yes, Sarah Palin, so irrelevant she runs for President in the Liberals Minds! O_O
Also, when George McGovern was President?
Good Times.....
Posted on 06/18/2015 7:25:47 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
If you want an idea about what to make of the overstuffed clown car of people running for the Republican presidential nomination next year, pick up a copy of Hunter S. Thompson’s vital book “Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72.” The most interesting part of it is not Thompson’s signature drug reference-laden prose but in how he described how George McGovern was the surprise winner of the Democratic nomination that year.
McGovern won, not by making splashy headlines, but by building organization and through a strategy that focused on what mattered -- convention delegates -- as opposed to what didn’t, a raw percentage of how voters broke. It’s the political party equivalent to pretending that a national poll rather than a count of who will win what Electoral College votes determines who wins the presidency.
The lesson: Strategy and organization win elections, bloviation creates headlines. This played out in 1972. It played out again in 2008, when strategy and organization propelled a young upstart senator from Illinois passed the presumed Democratic nominee. Hillary Clinton was inevitable until it came time to count convention delegates.
That year, on Super Tuesday, while everyone was reporting that Barack Obama was going to win Illinois with two-thirds of the vote, someone reporting from his campaign headquarters said that they didn’t care about that. They were focused on delegates, not percentage, because in the end the delegates would pick the nominee. A couple of weeks later, Clinton’s campaign was telling everyone that if they could win every Democratic delegate not assigned in caucuses and primaries (mostly party panjandrums) they could still squeak out a victory. It was a dream that was not to be.
Donald Trump this week told us that he is running for president. He is not running for president. He is as unserious a candidate for president as Ted Cruz, which makes him possibly the most prominent, unserious candidate for president ever. He is also every bit as big a clown as Ted Cruz, which also makes him the most prominent clown to ever run for president. Considering the candidacies of Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin in 2012, that’s a tall order.
To the point: Does anyone really think Trump plans to invest in the sorts of things that would make him a serious contender? Does anyone really think that Trump is about anything about drawing attention to himself so he can bloviate? This is a man who once got into a Twitter fight with Cher.
None of this is a state secret. Trump’s announcement was mostly hailed by late night comedians and gave the rest of us a momentary laugh, but not taken seriously. But the fact that our media has to pretend that profoundly unserious people are running for a profoundly serious office is why we have to endure this endless string of candidacies.
Which Republicans are investing in winning? It’s hard to say. Right now, the media are mostly concerned with who looks serious based on what they say and what institutional support they are lining up. The chattering class hasn’t settled on a frontrunner yet, but they are united in using the wrong metrics -- gut instinct, mostly -- in measuring. Who has the endorsement of whom, and who speaks to what demographic?
Again, shades of 2008 when Clinton lined up almost all the Democratic institutional support, assuming that the delegates would follow. The delegates followed strategy and organization and Clinton was left to say that next year she isn’t going to repeat the mistakes of 2008. The front running Republican is the campaign developing the most cohesive strategy to first win delegates and then votes in the Electoral College. The rest is bluster.
I voted for her.
Most likely written by a adjunct Prof. Or some wacked out kid looking for extra credit in his political sciences class.
Mt. Pleasant=Central Mich. University.
Ah Yes, Sarah Palin, so irrelevant she runs for President in the Liberals Minds! O_O
Also, when George McGovern was President?
Good Times.....
“Also, when George McGovern was President?” Huh? Help me out here ‘Lion!
Just analyzing the way this is written tells me it’s written by a stark raving clueless Liberal of massive ego, and chutzpah. Typical of the sort of Lib people can’t help but believe in. A liberal with condescension in his blood veins isn’t unusual, but one that bleeds it as much as this one is.
Ted Cruz Ping! Sarah lives in their heads, rent-free.
See? This screed, spewed out by Eric Baerren, proves you can ruin your entire future in journalism by writing one single article high on pot. Since he has clowns on his mind, he should join the circus. That would be one job where he can be stoned, stupid and earn a paycheck. Just don’t get on the high wire. Just because it is called the “high wire,” it is not a place you want to be stoned.
George Wallace was leading in delegates in April 1972 when he was shot. He still picked up all the delegates in the ensuing Maryland and Michigan primaries.
McGovern definitely didn’t have the most delegates in April 1972.
Sarah Palin ran in 2012? The best kept secret in the Western World. :-)
Trump and Cruz are so unserious that this guy feels compelled to waste a lot of time bashing them.
I think he's right about Trump[et], but Cruz???? Please. He's probably the MOST series candidate in the race.
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