It didn’t seem plausible six months ago, but there’s a real chance it could come down to Donald Trump versus Bernie Sanders; a billionaire developer versus an open socialist who has never worked outside Government and who honeymooned in the Soviet Union.
The really fun part is the billionaire is passionately supported by working class Americans, while the socialist Democrat is just as passionately supported by wealthy and upper class elitists (or at least their children). Kind of ironic, that.
Trump is still going to be leading in the polls after the debate. He did nothing to hurt himself last night. On the other hand, his only serious competitors, Rubio and Cruz, beat on each other.
On the other side, Bernie is surging. Hillary is collapsing, and if she escapes indictment it will only be because of the massive corruption of the Justice Department under Barack Obama.
OTOH, to paraphrase Ted Cruz’s favorite movie, “Never go in against a Clinton when the presidency is on the line”!
Trump versus Bernie; there’s a whole lot more difference there than a Clinton-Bush election would have provided, n’est-ce pas?
“Never go in against a Clinton when the presidency is on the line”
Aren’t you supposed to laugh maniacally after saying that?
@ Craig Smith: Yes. Right before you keel over dead.
I thought Rubio, Christie, and Cruz were excellent debaters last night. I could see all three of them as CIC. Trump was better but still at times too general in his answers. It will boil down to those four individuals. My man is Rubio, with Christie in second place. While I admire the majority of Cruz’s positions, he talks like a televangelist and seems phony to me. I was with two Democrats watching the debate last night, and they thought the same thing. Both of them (liberals) said Rubio and Christie were fantastic in their arguments.
This is not a year for conventional wisdom, but I will still offer the concept that Bernie is not going to set the fly-over country on fire.
I suspect that the Hag will get her coronation once the primaries begin to pile up delegates.
Who would be a Trump veep? Could Kasich manage to step up and carry Ohio? He is a fairly good Capitol Hill tactician.
Trump forced Obama on the birth certificate and he has wounded Cruz with the citizenship flak, so I suspect he has some fireworks stored for Hillary. Do you suppose that Trump is building up a warehouse full of innuendoes concerning Hillary’s possible health problems?
I keep saying this is a rerun of ’68.
I still think that Mr. Biden will be the Democrat appointee (by the time Mrs. Clinton is asked to bow out, it will of course be too late to run him through the usual nomination spectacle — he’ll simply be begged by the DNC to “Please save us!”).
@formwiz: I was born in ’69, but from everything I’ve read I think you are on the money. I kind of wonder if in 2023, after 7 years of President Trump, the Democrats will undergo the sort of Out-with-the-Establishment revolution that’s blazing through the Republican camps now.
Trump v Sanders… can we have a do-over?
Given the heartburn Trump is causing the powers-that-be, I can’t help but like him. But as CIC? That’s a wild card – taking an epic flyer.
Of course, given the mess we’re in after a couple of decades of rule by Ivy League politicians, perhaps Trump won’t be any worse.
People who think Trump can change Washington and the political culture, however, will be disappointed.
Reagan was a gifted and skillful a politician but he was little more than a speed bump when it came to slowing the metastasis of Big Government progressivism.
(Yes, Trump is a Wharton graduate but he’s not a career politician.)
@KCRob: My honeymoon period with Cruz is over after the revelation of the loan he received from Goldman-Sachs. I did some digging, and found out that his wife is pretty high up in Goldman-Sachs. I don’t know about you, but as far as political strings, that’s a freaking piano wire.
Sean L,
Maybe I am misinformed, but I believe that Cruz made a margin loan on his substantial assets through his brokerage account at Goldman Sachs. That is not technically a Goldman Sachs loan. Margin loans are secured by the personal account assets of the borrower which are held by the maker of the loan. Margin loans are part and parcel of the whole investment world process.
Mrs. Cruz is an investment banker of some repute. I believe she is on leave from Goldman Sachs where she was an investment manager.
I understand the Bernie Sanders pitchforks and torches campaign against banks and Wall Street. I understand the disaffection many people felt for the whole TARP fiasco. I also understand that Goldman Sachs was “picked” to survive when Lehman Brothers was allowed to sink.
Just yesterday, Goldman Sachs agreed to cough up about $5 Billion for its shady handling of mortgage-backed securities in the pre-2008 financial crisis years. JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup have already forked over billions of dollars in settlements.
But remember that while the banks were the rats which created the whole house of cards with their three card monte derivatives scheme, what they were hiding was the cheese created by the social justice acrobats at Freddie Mac. It was the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston which strong-armed the banks into making the market shaking number of unsecured, bad mortgages to a demographic identified and favored by the government for affirmative action in home ownership.
In 1999, Ted Cruz began his government employment at the Federal Trade Commission and then as an associate deputy attorney general at the DoJ, then as Solicitor General of Texas (2003-2008), adjunct professor of law in Austin and then was elected to the Senate in 2012. Also, it should be noted, he clerked for Chief Justice, William Rehnquist in 1996.
It would be disingenuous to see Cruz as an outsider to the government establishment. He has been deeply involved in the heart of government establishment for his 20 year career.
Ted Cruz espouses basic conservative principles. The issue is whether you believe him to be genuine or not. Making a margin loan or having an investment banker wife does not disqualify him if you trust him.
Only in a world where the dead don’t vote and the company that counts the votes isn’t based in Israel.
Last I heard, the vote counting was done by a Spanish firm.