In 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy overcame Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, Senator Hubert Humphrey, and Senator Stuart Symington to win the Democratic Presidential nomination, despite being Roman Catholic in religion, and offered “a new generation” of leadership, after President Dwight D. Eisenhower.
In 1976, former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter overcame Senator Frank Church, Senator Birch Bayh, Governor Jerry Brown, and Congressman Morris Udall to win the Democratic Presidential nomination, despite being the first Southerner since 1848, and offered “a new generation” of leadership, after President Gerald Ford.
In 1992, Arkansas Governor Bill Clinton overcame former Senator Paul Tsongas, Senator Tom Harkin, Senator Bob Kerrey, and former Governor Jerry Brown to win the Democratic Presidential nomination, despite revelation of a sex scandal, and offered “a new generation” of leadership, after President George H. W. Bush.
In 2008, Senator Barack Obama overcame Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator Joe Biden, Senator Chris Dodd and Governor Bill Richardson to win the Democratic Presidential nomination, despite being African American, and offered “a new generation” of leadership, after President George W. Bush.
In 2016, former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, despite his outstanding record as Baltimore Mayor and Maryland Governor, has gained no traction against Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and even Socialist Bernie Sanders, all much older than him, and despite O’Malley offering “a new generation of leadership”, instead of going “backward” a generation in age from President Barack Obama.
The question is why O’Malley has gained no substantial support, despite his charisma and good looks, often seen as equivalent to how JFK, Carter, Clinton and Obama came across as being, before being elected President of the United States.
The concern is that the Republicans may nominate a candidate who is much younger than the Democratic nominee, someone such as Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, or Rand Paul. History tell us that most often, the younger nominee wins over the older nominee opponent, as with Kennedy and Richard Nixon, Carter and Gerald Ford, Clinton and George H. W. Bush, and Obama and Hillary Clinton.
The Democrats, in theory, have a “bench” of potential younger candidates in the future, including New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, Minnesota Amy Klobuchar, and Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, along with the potential of new senators and governors who might be elected in 2016 and beyond. But for right now, O’Malley is the Democratic “bench”, and he has failed to stir any support, very frustrating to him and anyone who is worried about the “old timers” who are the top three Democratic nominees for the Presidency this time around.
Ronald writes, “The question is why [former Maryland governor Martin] O’Malley has gained no substantial support, despite his charisma and good looks, often seen as equivalent to how JFK, Carter, Clinton and Obama came across as being, before being elected President of the United States.”
Those presidential winners won their first elections as party-pickup victors. 1960 and 2008 were non-incumbent years, under Republican presidents Dwight Eisenhower and George W. Bush, which resulted in Democratic pickups for John Kennedy and Barack Obama. 1976 and 1992 were incumbent years in which Republican presidents Gerald Ford and George Bush became unseated by their Democratic challengers, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton.
I think “when” to run is important. I don’t think it was any coincidence that George W. Bush ran in 2000 and now, for 2016, it’s Jeb Bush. Chris Christie said no to 2012 but is saying yes to 2016; even though he was respected in 2012.
I think the narrative changes. The incumbent White House, with two consecutive terms, apparently has many looking toward the opposition party.
D, that may be true, but the issue is more that “old timers” win over youth, unlike the past cases!
Media is playing a role. When they talk about the Democratic candidates, the only ones they mention are Hillary, Bernie, and Biden, even though Biden hasn’t declared yet.
Things like name recognition, popularity, etc. are factors. Maybe the debates could give him a boost.
Boehner is resigning. http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/speaker-the-house-john-boehner-resign-next-month
Pragmatic Progressive, Boehner leaving may lead to the extreme right wing taking over, a true disaster if it happens!
I’m no Boehner lover but I dread that he’s just handed over the keys to the crazies of the GOP
Definitely agree. The is not good news. As the saying goes, the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t know.
Exactly what I am saying, the Tea Party whackos may now destroy the GOP entirely!
Possible candidates: http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2015/09/25/3705591/speaker-candidates-after-john-boehner/
If any of these candidates listed in the article, other than Kevin McCarthy, is selected as GOP Speaker, we “ain’t seen nothing yet”!
I hear that Eddie Munster, aka Paul Ryan, is another candidate for the position.
Teabags cheered the news. http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/religious-right-cheers-boehner-resignation-2016-gop-showcase
HAHA, no, as Ryan has said, the Speakership is a job for someone who does NOT have young children, as Ryan does, so he will not take the Speakership!
Boehner expected to face a challenge to his leadership and may have calculated that he would lose. Rather than face that humiliation, he can gain respect as a unifier protecting party harmony, while lining up lobbying work that will make him very, very rich.
His seat in the Cincinnati area is a safe GOP seat.
The angry GOP base can scratch a notch on its barrel.
Boehner cut a deal with Pelosi to fund the federal government (and of course the criminal enterprise operating under the name of Planned Parenthood) before resigning.
No such deal has been made.
Boehner’s demise started with the Cromnibus bill, which taught conservatives 3 lessons.
1. Corporatism is King – Money talks and activists walk. That is the sad lesson from a $1.1 trillion spending bill that included huge payoffs to Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Citibank, and corporations that use taxpayer subsidized loans to invest overseas. Meanwhile, House leaders did nothing to stop President Obama’s executive amnesty other than offer up a show vote on a separate piece of legislation that had no chance of even being voted on in the Senate.
2. Republican Leaders Want To Cave On Amnesty – Not only did Republican leaders not even allow a vote on an amendment to defund Obama’s amnesty, even though they included plenty of other restrictions on federal spending in the omnibus, but they even included more than a billion in spending on programs to clean up Obama’s last amnesty, including $948 million for the Department of Health and Human Service’s unaccompanied children program and $260 million for the State to Department to spend on Central American countries.
3. Republican Leaders Lie – Not only did Republican leaders lie about Congress’s ability to defund the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services office, the agency in charge of implementing Obama’s amnesty, but they also lied to Rep. Marlin Stutzman (R-IN) in order to get his vote on an early procedural matter, and they falsely claimed that Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Mike Lee (R-UT) empowered Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) to sneak more Obama nominees past the Senate.
Hopefully Mitch McConnell is next. Now that said, the establishment will probably force in another “Boehner” type Speaker.
Head shaking! 🙁
Goodbye John. Don’t let the door hit you in the backside on the way out. John Boehner is the single biggest disappointment and failure to conservative causes in my lifetime. I am thrilled to see him go. Tonight I will be dancing in the streets.
Compromise is fine. But waving a white flag at the first sign of battle is not.
John Boehner was the Republican equivalent of the French army. He spent his career compromising before the fight even began. Worse, he defined compromise as giving President Barack Obama virtually everything he wanted.
Compromise is when one party wants a 25 percent tax hike and the other party wants a 25 percent tax cut … and you compromise on “no change.†No one gets what they want.
But if Obama wants a 25 percent tax increase in the middle of a devastating recession and the GOP would like a tax cut, it’s not “compromise†to accept a 20 percent tax increase. That was Boehner’s strategy. That is Boehner’s “record of accomplishment.†He thinks giving Obama 90 percent of whatever he wants – even after a massive, historic GOP landslide – is compromise. He thinks that’s leadership.
Conservatives understand that’s the perfect combination of weakness, incompetence, apology, retreat and cowardice.
Republicans won in a massive, historic landslide last November. Boehner was handed total and complete victory. He had all the leverage in the world. What did he do with it?
NOTHING. Zero. Zip. Nada.
Can anyone name a victory for the GOP? Can anyone name a partial victory? Can anyone name something Obama wanted that he hasn’t gotten since losing in that historic landslide? Obama not only came out of a humiliating landslide defeat and repudiation smelling like a rose; he not only got everything he wanted since that historic loss; Boehner couldn’t even find a way to slow him down. Obama is a lame-duck landslide loser and yet with Boehner as his chief opponent, Obama’s agenda is accelerating, not slowing. That says it all.
Boehner understood the political reality that shutting down the government to defund Planned Parenthood was not going to end well for the Republican Party. Without Boehner to at least try to argue reality to his own caucus, all bets are off for the future.
LOL! Cruz is saying Boehner left to help Obama. http://www.politicususa.com/2015/09/25/ted-cruz-accuses-john-boehner-leaving-office-president-obama.html
Pragmatic? Remember during the last shutdown everyone said that it was going to damage Republicans in the 2012 midterm elections? Well how did that go? I believe Republicans won in a landslide if I am not mistaken.
Funniest Tweets in response to his resignation so far. http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/09/25/1424831/-The-funniest-tweets-so-far-in-response-to-John-Boehner-s-resignation
Obama’s going to need to get a good supply of ink for his veto pen. 😉
Odd that boehner suddenly resigned after meeting with the Pope. Definetly one of those things that makes you go hmmmmm.
Boehner was tearful for much of the Pope’s speech to Congress. A commentator said he thought that if it were Boehner and Biden without the far right T-party control of the house compromises could have been had. I think Boehner has finally decided to stop drinking the Tea.
Southern Liberal. If you go by the number of veto you can see that Obama hardy had any opposition. He only issued 4 vetoes, was overridden 0 times in 7 yrs. Bush issued 12, overridden 4 times in 8 yrs, Clinton 37 vetoes, overridden 2 times in 8 yrs, Bush Senior 44 vetoes, overridden 1 time in 4 yrs, Reagan 78 vetoes. overridden 9 times in 8 yrs Carter 31 vetoes was overridden 2 times in 4 yrs and Ford issued 66 vetoes and was overridden 12 times in just 3 yrs! Talk about opposition from Congress and no one complained that there was no compromise back then, or that Congress didn’t allow the President to govern and all the BS we are hearing now. Obama has no idea what it’s like to have a real opposition. http://www.senate.gov/reference/Legislation/Vetoes/vetoCounts.htm
LOL! Republican Crazies are on steroids! Jindal wants to fire the entire House!
http://www.politicususa.com/2015/09/25/bobby-jindal-time-fire-dc.html
The GOTea is imploding! Lovin’ it! 🙂
The Speaker of the House is third in line to the presidency. By title and by the Constitution, the speaker needs to have at least a modicum of statesmanship. Another reason for why we should dread a Teabagger getting that position.
Actually, the Speaker is second in line behind the Vice President.
Kevin McCarthy is not a Teabagger, but he is also an unknown quantity, although he seems like a pleasant fellow.
But never has one become Speaker with almost no real accomplishments, and such little time in Congress, with the exception of Henry Clay, who was Speaker as a freshman in 1811, but that was Henry Clay, not an ordinary politician, but rather the greatest figure in the history of Congress!
This was too funny to pass up! 🙂
http://upload.democraticunderground.com/imgs/2015/150925-suggestions-for-new-speaker-of-the-house.jpg
The circus continues. Kim Davis has come out of the Republican closet!
http://www.rawstory.com/2015/09/kentucky-clerk-kim-davis-switches-to-republican-party/
I see that the auto-defined “tolerant’ side of the political aisle loves to throw around the word “tea-bagger”(a man that squats on top of a womens face and lowers his genitals into her mouth during sex, known as “tea-bagging”) to somehow disqualify those who oppose their political agenda. A “word” that was used even by the man sitting in the White House. Those who use this “word” come across as a) intolerant, b) vulgar, c) authoritarian, d) un-civilized, e) classless, f) un-dignified, g) mean-spirited (as the left loves to say to anyone who disagrees with them), h) contemptuous, i) immature, and finally j) obsessed with certain sex act
Thus, I find it appropriate that the current President and the left in general love to use that “word” and should continue doing so. Never in the history of American politics has the use of one single “word” by a political sector and a sitting President been so revealing of those who use it.
Ariel, I do not use that term, and I have never heard President Obama use that term.
Clearly, some people use that term, and I do not approve of it, but compared to what the right wing, particularly the so called “religious right” has used as appropriate terms for the President, one should not throw stones at glass houses!
In other words, hypocrisy reigns on the right wing of politics and Christianity big time, and this includes many Orthodox Jews as well, who should be ashamed of the language they use!
Obama’s handwritten letter. http://www.scribd.com/doc/187525139/President-Obama-s-response
The President of the United States, allegedly one of the smartest people to grace our country, sat down to write a hand-written letter to a political dissenter and used the most charged, rude, dirty term possible while claiming he’d never do anything but treat this “tea-bagger†with the utmost respect. His own lofty self-concept survives contact with all conflicting facts, even when they come from his own pen. Obama is so thoroughly surrounded by people who refer to Tea Partiers as “tea-baggers†nonchalantly that it slipped out without him even thinking about it. And, finally, no matter what the reason, the letter’s certainly emblematic of Obama’s utter inability to actually appeal to people who disagree with him despite fancying himself quite the bridge-builder.
Ariel, I am surprised by this letter, and disapprove of the use of the term.
However, I will, while not defending Obama, point out to you that he has received more negative commentary than any modern President including Richard Nixon, and much of it based on other than his policies in office.
And it still “slays” me that ObamaCare is so much like RomneyCare and like the plan devised in 1993 by Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole in response to HillaryCare, so the hypocrisy and the bitter personal attacks can lead to vitriol on the other side which is regrettable!
As you know, personal attacks have always been part of our political history since the days of the Revolution. I do not agree with them, but there they are. And both sides whether they be Federalist-Republicans, Democrats-Republicans, have always engaged in personal attacks and will continue to do so in the future unfortunately.
The Donald got booed when he picked on Aquaboy!
http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/conservatives-boo-donald-trump-criticizing-marco-rubio
They’re called Teabaggers because a) they refer to themselves as the “Tea Party” and b) they’ve been spotted in photos and videos wearing hats with tea bags hanging down.
Leia is correct. That’s precisely why they are called Teabaggers.
Exactly! Calling them Teabaggers has nothing to do with Ariel’s complaint about it being sexual.
Also, their side is the ones who first used the term.
http://crooksandliars.com/david-neiwert/enough-whining-teabaggers-actually-i
Exactly as that article says! They’ve been spotted at their rallies with signs, T-shirts, etc. saying, “Tea Bag the Liberal Dems Before They Tea Bag You.†It’s a gimmick, not a slur.
They call anyone they disagree with names: Socialist, Fascist, Tyrant, ‘DemocRat party,’ Evil, Unpatriotic, etc, etc, etc. As the Professor said, hypocrisy reigns on the right.
Our usage of the term is not out of disrespect but out of frustration at their ignorant ways.
I always wonder why liberal tolerance extends to Marxists, transsexuals, and Islamic radicals – but not to conservatives or Christians?
Ariel, the key word is HYPOCRISY, in capital letters!
If the Christian or Republican is not bigoted, misogynistic, or racist, liberals/progressives can get along with them.
Also, liberals/progressives are not tolerant of Islamic radicals nor Communists.
Pragmatic speaks the truth.
If conservatives vote for Ben Carson, are they still guilty of being a racist, considering the way leftist hurled that accusation at conservatives when they said that Obama was a very bad choice because of his ideology and his acquaintances?
If conservatives vote for Carly Fiorina, are they still guilty of a war on women, given that this woman has broken through the glass ceiling, overcome a deadly disease, and still come out fighting?
Another logic puzzle for leftist: “People who say thugs is a racist expression are making the false assumption that all thugs are black.” How do leftist rationalize this?
I know that leftist Democrats evince concern for human rights. But when Iran hangs homosexuals and China leads the world in the number of executions without due process and Saudi Arabia stones women for being raped and Lebanon exercises apartheid against Palestinians, the only country singled out for opprobrium by the left is Israel, which extends human rights to all of the above. Please clarify.
Topping the latest GOTea poll: A very very rich man with a narcissistic personality disorder and a former physician who cannot understand science, U.S. history, and economics. Republicans, you really take the prize for choosing the worst possible, most ill-prepared, least capable candidates for president of the USA.
http://onpolitics.usatoday.com/2015/09/27/poll-donald-trump-and-ben-carson-now-neck-and-neck/
Oh so true Former Republican! In contrast, Democrats are offering excellent, qualified candidates.
Nutty things like this are why nobody in the clown car is suitable to be president.
http://www.forwardprogressives.com/ted-cruz-brags-willingness-kill-irans-ayatollah-if-elected-president-video/
Amen to that Southern Liberal!
Cruz and his supporters may think that’s funny but it’s not. It’s dangerous rhetoric that could provoke a war.
Jeb had a Romney moment. http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2015/09/28/3706318/jeb-bush-economic-sabotage/