The Next President of the US

God, I hope your wrong, but I fear you might be right. We’ll see.

I dunno. He seems kind of like this year’s Guiliani to me.

I think you could be right. The strategy is to have a candidate who will at least come very close to winning and Perry can do that. He’s scary enough to make a lot of disaffected Democrats go to the polls and vote for Obama, and he has the “strong leader” vibe that lots of idiots seem to think is a good quality for a President. Perry also has strong connections to the malefactors of great wealth, especially in the oil/intelligence nexus in Texas, and that means that they can actually let him win, knowing he is not so crazy that he’ll sell them out.

Not a chance if the rumors persist. http://www.fitsnews.com/2011/07/29/is-rick-perry-gay/

I never really believed the Republicans would actually nominate a woman, and they’re certainly not eager to nominate a mormon. Perry has neither weakness. Also, I think he is mostly fake religious for the rubes. I saw a quote somewhere from him back in 2001 where he admitted his faith doesn’t really inform his politics very much. I’d tag him as a high social dominator cross authoritarian in Altemeyer’s parlance, whereas Bachmann appears to be a genuine true believer.

I can well see his path to the nomination.

1 thing that the Bush 43 & Obama eras have sadly shown me, that’s only a minority of voters, vote based on actual policy.

Most seem to be either
-Team D or R, Dear Leader water carriers, or
-clueless “low informed voters” that think the Dear Leader is cool (or less nerdy) personally. Eg “I’d like to have a beer with cowboy Bush 43”, or “yo Obama has Jay-Z on his iPod, sonn!, or “Bill Clinton played the sax on Arsenio show!”

*smh*

Is it this bad in other OECD nations? We USians be the OECD’s worst in non-policy based voting.

DanieldeGroot, it doesn’t really matter if Perry is a true believer or not. He will act exactly the way a true believer would, just as W did. Reagan (or at least Nancy) could be very dismissive about the kooks in his party in private, but he sure as hell didn’t backstab them or take them for granted.

He’s said to be less intelligent than Bush, so he’s a shoe-in.

Yes. “All hat, no cattle” will be the campaign slogan that will shoo him in.

I think more likely Obama. Perry’s going to put his foot in it, I think. He is likely to say The Wrong Thing when the cameras are rolling–he is just too crazy. 2016, though…that one scares me. And of course the health care mandates will kick in in 2014, just in time to send another shock through the economy.

The Combined Corvids of North America thank the government of the United States for this rich gift of food.

…I wonder when it becomes The Greater Depression?

You may be right. I think, however, that the big Pub money won’t go in hardcore for Romney. He’s barely to the right of Obama.

That alone is a reason worth voting for Romney. If a Democratic President who won with strong majorities in both Houses Congress (by comparison the Republicans haven’t had 59 Senate seats since 1923) is barely to the right of a Republican candidate who’s taking his second crack at navigating an unbelievably right-wing pool of voters in the GOP primaries, then seriously, why not vote for Romney? I can’t imagine he could do any worse.

I think, when considering candidates, the rulers behind the curtain are looking for obedience and predictability. Much like when someone goes to a dog pound to get a dog. It seems Romney would win this nomination.

I think, when considering candidates, the rulers behind the curtain are looking for obedience and predictability… It seems Romney would win this nomination.

I think that Big Money money may be thrown to a candidate like Bachmann, someone unelectable, to insure that President Bipartisan wins a 2nd term.

(I think Perry fulfills StewartM’s “unelectable” criteria as well.)

These two speculations seem to lay out the question well. It’s probably unnecessary to note the (appropriate) cynicism that lies behind these most rational opinions.

2012 will be the first election, which is completely after the politics of the New Deal. In the political division of the New Deal, the mass of people voted their economic interests (in an increasingly simple-minded way as time went on, but still), so broad indicators of economic conditions in February of the Presidential election year were a pretty good predictor. The Federal Reserve, at least since Arthur Burns, would dutifully help out the Republican, if that was feasible. And, the Party nominations were a fairly orderly process of selecting among the senior, powerful politicians, who could marshal some configuration of the Party’s traditional coalition.

Now, we’re are living the politics of plutocratic oligarchy, in which economic conditions are dictated by the runaway predation of the oligarchy, and so pretty awful. It isn’t even feasible to vote for your economic interests, unless, of course, you are so unfathomably wealthy, that the political parties will notice your contributions to the Billion Dollar Campaign, in which case, voting is superfluous.

The Political Parties are tribalist herds, assembled around simple slogans and themes of fear and resentment. Politicians — especially on the Right, which is much further along in this rapid evolution — are celebrity spokes-models, personally uninterested in power or policy. Their principle ambitions are celebrity, attention to their own narcissism and easy money; their principle qualifications center on their photogenic willingness to say anything and do anything, to stir the passions of an electorate, which, at base, is deeply angry, frustrated, ignorant and depressed.

Perry is well-fitted to this new model of Republican politics. He looks good on television. He’s a vicious, ignorant narcissist, completely uninterested in actual power or policy. He’s a very good fit to motivate the confederate party of racist reactionaries, who constitute the core tribe of the Fox News Republican electorate.

Not being a billionaire myself, I’m not sure how worried the billionaire class might be, about the whole competence-of-the-President issue. I presume that there is a split in the oligarchy, a factional division among the Whigs and the Tories, as it were. One gets a definite impression that GWB was the oil guy, backed by a Big Oil/military-industrial complex Presidential Party, but at least some elements of that oligarchic faith lost confidence in Shrub, toward the end. I’ve read that Perry has been receiving attention and support from Rumsfeld and some of the ol’ neocon and Texas oil gang, but that may just be the dead-enders, who never saw any dangerous (to the oligarchy) shortcomings in Bush.

Obama is clearly a Finance guy, who did cultivate a slice of the Republican elite, who were frightened by Bush, on the competence issue. Gates at Defense, Bernanke re-appointed Fed Chair — really the whole Bush’s Third Term theme — has been about selling the Oligarchy on the concept of Obama as a more competent Bush.

Obama’s biggest selling point, though, was his capacity to channel the potential of the financial crisis to turn into a liberal moment, and transform it into less than nothingness. The great fear of the oligarchs — particularly the Financial oligarchs, who would understand this better than the Oil and Military-Industrial Complex oligarchs — was surely that 2008 might become 1932: that is, that financial and economic collapse might provoke a liberal moment in politics, of mass political movements promoting populist and progressive reform. Is that danger past? I believe it is. So, I suspect that our Galtian Overlords feel the danger has passed as well.

I don’t think Perry, personally, cares at all about becoming President. He just wants to be in the cast of the Presidential Campaign Reality Show, and he’s a practiced and convenient shepherd for the confederate tribe. Perry does not have a Presidential Party of professional consultants and office-seekers behind him, as far as I can tell. Without the professional consultants and PR people, he produces a never-ending string of gaffes, any one of which could be marshalled by our corporate news media, to sink his candidacy in a ready-made “Dean Scream” moment. That vulnerability, however, may work to his advantage. For the oligarchs in power at the Media-industrial complex, it makes him seem controllable.

The confederate party has been a factor in the dynamics of American politics since roughly 1830, when the slaveowner oligarchs of Greater South Carolina (who had been expanding their plantation cotton agriculture across the Deep South for a generation), decided to manufacture a distinctive Southern patriotism, peculiarly devoted to defending their interests. But, they were never well-suited to defending the interests of the larger northern, commercial and industrial business oligarchy. Revulsion against the confederate party is deep-seated in American politics; even with the census shifts, Obama voters will have to be deeply depressed, for a confederate party candidate to win.

When I add it all up, Perry just does not seem a likely Republican nominee, or winning Presidential candidate. The only reason to nominate him is to make it easy for Obama to win re-election. If Obama appears to have screwed the pooch on his own election, the safer course is Romney. Romney, personally, wants to be President, and is backed by a Presidential Party of people, who want office and power. And, Romney, with the credentials of a Rich White Business Guy with ties to the Northeast and the mountain West, is going to be appealing to the class of corporate and financial executives. Romney promises “competence” without even a hint of Obama’s socialist drivel.

Celsius 233, thank you.

As far as I can tell, Perry is a genuine Christian Dominionist. That’s a reason to choose Obama over Perry, if it comes down to it. Romney is not, and the choice is less clear-cut. Generally, I’d say Obama is the better choice, largely because he is not strongly allied with the nationalist and militarist faction of the Republicans, but neither choice strikes me as especially positive.

Romney in 2016 looks plausible. More than anyone else he is the architect of Obamacare, and it makes a certain amount of sense that he will oversee its implementation and failure.

I think it will most likely be (in order):

Obama
Romney
Perry

Perry has a lot of very conservative baggage. Not a problem with the base, but a problem with the moneyed interests that want to win.

If Romney can survive and get the nomination, look for a very moderate guy to re-emerge. Because that’s who he basically is.

Right now Obama is favored, but if the economy slows down – a 50/50 likely-hood – then he will lose.

Bachmann/ Perry in 2012 — ’cause Bush/Cheny didn’t do enough.

I’m basically with Bruce Wilder.

a) Perry is just a puppet, to show: ‘We’ -whoever that is, can place an even worse candidate than the one ‘we’ have given you.
So be happy with what you got.

b) On the other hand, even if he wins, he has just a playground behind the whitehouse, where Michelle currently plants her vegetables, or bury the shit of the whitehouse-pet-du jour.

On the other hand, there is still room to the downside.
Sort of a tiny test-vector to explore the ground of what is possible.

Because the ‘elite’ seemingly is dumbing down in lockstep with the general populace, this is somehow open to debate.

The sheer fact that someone like Perry is even considered to have presidential stature, besides all those other clowns (Bachmann, Palin, etc, whats the difference?) tells us what?

That the suprematists check out, how far they can go:
i) give them a believer in creationism (no agnostics allowed; smells of thinking) and some city-upon-the hill-junk.
ii) give them an AGW-denier
iii) give them a wallstreet puppet
iv) deny them social secruity
v) let them pay for senseless wars
vi) deprive them of their jobs
vii) let them kill themselves
viii) whatever

Basically they do not care.
Geniuses, just playin.

Nowadays those clowns ponder the idea that they could form their own billionaire nation states somewhere far out.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2024761/Atlas-Shrugged-Silicon-Valley-billionaire-reveals-plan-launch-floating-start-country-coast-San-Francisco.html?printingPage=true

With great respect for Ian and many others here… I simply think we all lose by discussing this merde.

All I have to say to anyone when politics comes up in person is – If you are even considering an R or D criminal party candidates for so much as dog catcher, you are part of the problem.

We have to so NO as many ways as possible in both words and action… and let this campaign go while figuring out what we can do that matters.

Whatever your threshold might be for “treason”, is there any question that turning the treasury and policy making over to Wall Street, which is basically a foreign entity, is treasonous?

This (Perry) scenario can only be played out if Obama runs again…however, there are emerging suggestions that he may pack it in before the 2012 elections (see John Ellis piece in today’s BI:
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-obama-collapse-accelerates-2011-8), which certainly would invite a HRC run in the primaries. Any early weaknesses shown by Obama preceding an “I won’t run for re-election” announcement in primaries or state caucuses would be the catalyst to push Clinton to the top of the ticket, and Perry (or any other Repub douchebag) would be immediate toast in the general election.

I’d take the current odds on Hillary Clinton becoming our next president. To me that’s the bet that the odds are least reflective of reality becoz damn near everyone thinks that Obama actually wants to oversee the mess that he helped create for another 4 years … or that the self-obsessed narcissist who graduated near the top of his class at harvard law school is too stupid to understand the situation that he’d be putting himself into.

Z

just thinking:

Orwell and Huxley both projected societies, where ‘democracy’ was so dysfunctional that its universal scope was questioned at its core.

Where does the right and duty to resistance start?
Where does it end?

Some yeras ago I thought that the critical threshold is 80%.
Well above constitution-altering majorities, (two third in most cases).

But I am not sure of that anymore either.
What if You are the last man standing?
Is your destiny per definition the mental asylum?

Obviously only time will tell.
And hindsight of the survivors is your only ally in this case.

In a next step, this tells us, what ‘material’ the core of a human being consists of.

Sounds a lot like Breivik, does’nt it?
(I)
To escape this relativism, I rely on science, critical thinking , critique of language and reflection of my inborn follies.
(II)
To escape this relativism I believe in the literal word of god, in god-given authority, the redemption of all my weaknesses by this benevolent supreme being, and reject anything, which stands against this. As a true believer, my god appreciates me, and I will live in eternity near the light after the rapture.

All those midgets, who dare to rely on their own earthly, fallible reasoning, will rot in hell.
The final triumph will be ours, and we are blessed by god, because we believe in his supreme wisdom (with a little distraction by sin and the devil.)

Amen.

@groo, just have to say, as a general observation:

My comprehension of your syntactical style has been growing (and may I humourously point out the irony here of your occasional protest regarding the opacity of other commentors’ American-centric syntax). As a consequence, I’m not forced to re-read your posts to get what you’re saying, as much as I used to.

And I really am enjoying your input! Lots of good mind-tickling in there.

@Petro
thanks,

Words get used up by their endless repetition.

Arrange them differently, and eventually they sound exotic, harsh, offensive, although their intent is the same.

BUT: This is a surface effect. So beware!
(…deleted some longish text here…)

Very glad that You recognized that.

Shoes4Industry:

I think she is finished. For whatever reason.

The interesting thing to me is, that the democratic camp does not come up with a single alternative to Obama. there is not even an unsubstantial one.
Or did I miss something?

This camp is so ‘noble’ that it even cannot conceive of an alternative.

Who would be a democratic hope for the future?
Mister NO-ONE!

Not Hillary.
(besides of that: She is just a fake option, deeply entrenched in Arkansas corruption among other: Chelsea Clintons husband :..Marc was a Goldman Sachs investment banker, and, at the time of the marriage, an investment banker at 3G Capital Management)

Which brings me to another point:

A corruptable president is by miles preferable to an uncorruptable one by the PTB in the background.
(You eventually have to kill him, which is always unpleasant)

This is the base-option:
Anyone uncorruptable is not fit for presidency.

You can freely choose among the corruptable lot.
It does not matter who/she is.

(S)He just has to stage the fake surface of some sort of honesty.
Or whatever that translates to, nowadys.

Go through all the Senators and congressmen, and you find out that 90-95% are pure surface, with some spots of pseudo-opposition, which can be bought by a meager handful of Dollars, if needed.
Pretenders.
‘Opposition’ is just a business-model.

Who noticed, that 70-90% of the western political elite are lawyers?

Definitely. As for high corporate positions, it is not necessary to be a sociopath to succeed in these two professions, but it can’t hurt.

upon rereading my last post, I am afraid that only very very wellmeaning people decode that.
So I have some clarifications to make. As the circus moves on, I am probably lost on that.

Trying my best.

I think Perry could easily be the GOP nominee, but if he’s elected president it will only be with the clear, collusive help of the media. Obama is so far superior to him intellectually that this is the only way Perry can succeed– by them ignoring his obvious liabilities and focusing only on the incumbent.

My prediction is that with a strong opponent, Obama will win the popular vote but lose the Electoral College. In fact, I don’t see how it’s possible for him to win either Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, let alone Iowa or Indiana or Wisconsin. And he needs the big ones to win.

So get ready for the worst. And then sit back and watch the gasbags bubble over in excitement about the wonderful world of “politics.” They’ll be absolutely giddy.

i guess i don’t really care. i mean, what’s the difference? at this point? sure, Perry is a christianisnt fascist, but that’s really just a matter of degree, isn’t it?

yes, i’m glad we have a “liberal” preznit who ended DADT (sort of, some day, etc). but those kinds of Cadillac issues don’t really make much of a difference in my life; i’ve been out of the service for a long time and EDNA would’ve been much more useful. i could go on and on but i know most here know what i mean; passing and promoting various Beltway “liberal” favorite reforms mean nothing in this economy, in the face of these endless wars, in terms of what entitlement programs are being slashed, of how health “care” is going to be implemented…

yeah, it’s just really hard for me to care right now. i’m very seriously trying to set up an opportunity to live in another country, where political participation is still valid and useful. that’s not here. O isn’t “in charge” and whomever comes after him will be equally a puppet to unelected superrich powers, who are committed to raping what wealth is left in this country. so really, why follow the horse race? it’s not like it matters anymore, and if it did, the Video Poker Voting Machines would ensure that TPTB get the candidate of their choice, anyway.

CD: Iceland?

barrisj: Rather than “spend more time with my family,” a very lucrative TV contract, or a job as the “Goodwill Ambassador” for Goldman Sachs, or possibly the President of the World Bank. Obama’s made. He’s got nothing to worry about, and he’ll go to his grave believing we didn’t appreciate him sufficiently.

To set things in a larger context, now that we can see Mr. Walsh and a number of the posters above have made complete fools of themselves on Libya, why should we take any of their other speculations seriously? I’ll grant they will do for humor of a rather cruel kind, watching people try to grapple with issues and ideas far out of their depth.

I’ve been saying this for a while: obama is going to back out of the election. He doesn’t want to run again.; he wants to cash out now. He’s done damn near everything he could do to hurt his re-election chances without making it too obvious. He just doesn’t want it make it transparent that he is cashing in for selling out 99% of the country for 4 years. So he’s got to ruin his re-election prospects in order to step down “honorably” and let someone else run. Again, this oval office gig hasn’t been emotionally rewarding enough for the self-enamored narcissist.

Some people think that he’s going to stay in the race to make sure that a republican wins the presidency. To which I say: I doubt that, but really what the hell could you put past him at this point? I mean, the mfer basically hijacked hope and damaged hundreds of millions of people just so that he could strut and preen on the world’s biggest stage and, in the process, add another order of magnitude to his wealth. And the dude was plenty rich already and had plenty of future earning power without selling out so many people.

But looking at his self-interest … and he sure is in tune with that … would he really want to live through the stress of throwing an election to an opponent that is probably going to need some help along the way? Does he want to go through the stress of walking the tight rope between desperately throwing an election … becoz he DOES NOT want to be president again … and trying not to make it too obvious?

Z

Alyosha,

Again, Obama does not want it to be transparent that he is going to cash out after 4 years of dutifully serving the plutocracy so of course he is going to continue going through the motions of running. It is expected that presidents run for a second term … the last one not to was Lyndon Johnson … instead of blatantly utilizing the office as a platform for future riches.

Put yourself in his shoes: What would I rather do, move on to a much more lucrative post-presidency career with higher pay, less hours, greater freedom and considerably less stress; or toil in the oval office for another 4 years, risk my popularity and future marketability, and sit in the hot seat as the deplorable policies that I helped effectuate play out during a period where this country is going to go through a hell of a lot of turmoil and pain?

His self-interest … which is damn near his only interest … is in cashing out after his first term. His challenge is to arrange the pieces on the board such that he has an “honorable” way out.

Z

“Put yourself in his shoes, and try to see the world from his viewpoint”

Exactly. Obama thinks he’s doing a great job. He’s done what he believes needed to be done: showered largesse upon the wealthy and powerful so they can let a few drops trickle down to the rest of us, protected the government’s ability to do what it wants without interference, taken steps to reduce the middle class’s standard of living to an “affordable” level, maintained our military dominance, and so on. So what if his approval numbers are dropping? He has his cabal of advisers feeding him lines like “the public says it wants bipartisanship!” and “tack rightward to win independents!” Meanwhile he maintains a solid core of supporters who will vote for him–literally–no matter what he does, so why not antipicate all Democrats acting like that?

Besides, any day now the economy will turn around. He’s reduced the deficit, lowered taxes, proposed free trade agreements–everything his neoliberal playbook says can cure economic woes. All he has to do, in his mind, is sit back and wait for it to work.

OFF Topic, but I am rather amused at all the self-congratulatory rubbish being offered up by Obama and his Nato stooges, after the apparent fall of the Ghadafi regime. So, once again, “humanitarian intervention” scores a win. Well, the formula is quite simple: choose a small country with NO air-defenses worth mentioning, an authoritarian government that has previously worked with “the West”, a “popular” uprising aided by Western security services, then…SEND IN THE DRONES! Followed by Nato fighter-bombers, and Bob’s yer uncle!
Now the tricky bit: how to install a “reliable” pro-West, “free-market” transition government that will quickly renegotiate various oil concessions in order to allow “reasonable profits” by the multinationals…and, of course, establish “internal security” with the aid of the above-mentioned Western services. Ah, freedom, ah, Democracy!

Amen, anon2525, though there are quite a few tributes posted by Canadians on “The Agonist” website…
http://agonist.org/20110822/jack_layton_canadian_opposition_leader_dies_aged_61

Cheers

nice, nice

Theocratic fascism?

Could be. Perry is the Dem. fascists wet dream, but his corporatist buddies, of course, wouldn’t give a damn, it’s win win for them either way.