There is no driving opinion I have today, rather, some random predictions which have collected subtly, like a few light snowfalls in early winter.
Fred Thompson will go nowhere, and the reason you'll hear for this, with an accompanying small measure of astonishment given the degree to which the other Republican candidates don't fit the classical (since Reagan, anyway) model of a Republican standard-bearer, and the degree to which Thompson seems to, is that he really doesn't look and sound like he wants it.
Joe Biden will come on with important voting blocks, like the unionized workforces of several of America's largest corporations - the automakers, airlines, etc - with positions such as the one he recently gave voice to at the AARP debate in Iowa, that corporations who choose to cut or renege on, as has become vogue, employee pension plans, lose the ability to however pay out CEO and executive bonuses and to generally compensate them handsomely in the midst of such a cut to employees. As Biden said, "You'll change their minds real quickly." I tend to agree.
Tom Tancredo?
Oh, and to not single him out, Dennis Kucinich?
I believe Barak is smart but too green in the eyes of many to win now, and I don't think he will. In 2012 or 2016?, perhaps very different. I know there was a similar charge about John Kennedy. Mind you, that was the closest election in American history since 1916. He won by a scant 112,827 votes among 69,000,000 cast (0.16%). Barak is good, and no disrespect to him, but at this point, this similar time, I don't think he is on par with Kennedy in many respects, one of them, that Kennedy had been in Congress for 14 years by the time he ran for the presidency.
Hillary? Verrry interesting candidate and woman. She engenders sooo much negative reaction among many people I consider to be sober and undogmatic, not to mention among those of the dogmatic right. But the rub to all of that, her quixotic strength, is, like her husband but different, her ability to speak extemporaneously rather than from notes, and given the opportunity, to change people's minds. And that makes her, in a word, competitive. And I expect her to stay that way.
Rudy will faulter. And it disturbs me on some level to predict, because that outcome increases the likelihood the republican nominee will be Romney. See subsequent prediction.
Romney scares me, like out of a Stephen King novel. He appears as the guy who will say or do anything to sit behind the desk in the Oval Office. This is IndependentCaucus.com, but that doesn't mean I don't have views, and my view, in short, is ABR - Anyone But Romney.
The top 3 republican candidates for the presidency are Romney, Rudy and Fred, and I have predicted the demise of each in this little predictive post. So, who wins the nomination? I am going to say, that when all the convention balloons have settled on the floor, that the nominee will be Huckabee or McCain.
Of the democrats? In the same way, I think it will be Hillary or Biden, and I also think they are the best, most prepared and able democrats for the presidency in the field, and both hold the advantage over the eventual republican nominee.
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