Do the Democrats have to run Obama at the next POTUS Election?
With the next election less than two years away with the Republican candidates all deciding in the next few months whether or not to join in the fun and fiesta, something did occur to me.
Could the democrats run someone other than Obama? Over the last few decades, it appears that if you are the POTUS, you run in the next election. Is there a process for removing the incumbent and running with somebody new?
In the land of the blind, the one-arm man is king.
The Dems could but it almost never happens. Johnson was very unpopular and stepped aside when he read the writing on the wall and Carter nearly lost to the least of the Kennedies. Obama is extremely likely to run without any major opposition.
Basically the incumbent has to be a real stiff to get serious opposition. See Carter. I do not foresee an issue for Obama.
The short answer is yes. I cannot think of anyone else with a chance of winning. Clinton? Maybe.
"I won't kill for money, and I won't marry for it. Other than that, I'm open to just about anything."
-Jim Rockford
As to the question as to whether there's a process for removing the incumbent, definitely there is. The incumbent President has to be nominated by his party at the nominating convention. He doesn't remain Party Leader until he resigns. I can't think of any cases in the 20th or 21st Centuries where a sitting president wasn't re-nominated, but I think it happened with some frequency in the 19th.
No party is REQUIRED to run the encumbent but...
...oh my...are they really that blind? Obama has no chance of winning the general election. Hillary Clinton has no chance either. But I think they will run him. And she recently stated that she now has no desire to be president and that the secretary of state's job is exausting, so I don't think she will try for the job.
All flames gracefully accepted. It's just my opinion and I could be wrong.
Actually Obama has a fair chance of winning re-election if the economy improves by then and Libya goes OK. It is not as if the Republicans have any great candidates. There will be a rift in the party caused by the Tea-Baggers that will drive the Repub far enough to the right to hurt their chances.
Romney is the front runner currently. He is not all that inspiring. Palin is maybe the best known but she is losing respect even with the mainstream Republicans at a steady rate. They need someone to step up and seize the nomination or they could lose to Obama with ease.
I say re-animate Barry Goldwater with some of that green stuff in Herbert West's syringe...I hope he hasn't been dead too long for it to work.
Exactly. There is no reason for the Democratic Party to not keep Obama. For the Republicans to win they'll have to find someone who can at least pretend to be vaguely centrist, and I don't even know who that might be. They way things are going, they could end up nominating a Palin/Bachmann ticket, which will do most of Obama's re-election work for him.Originally posted by What Exit?
A big problem with choosing a Republican candidate right now is that to get the party nomination they'll have to appeal to the Religious Right, which appears to be getting further and further out of step with what will attract the moderates and independents. My prediction is that a candidate who caters to such people will be nominated and will lose. In another four years, as a matter of survival, the ties between the GOP and the Religious Right will be weakened again and a socially moderate, fiscally conservative Republican will win the White House.
Thanks, Iowa?
I have hopes the Theo-Cons trash the Republican chances in 2012 but if the economy does go the wrong way, it greatly increases the chances a very socially right-wing Repub becomes President. It could be worse then Bush is my great fear. I mean Palin is just one example. It could be a largely unknown tea-bagger whose history is a cipher but does not come off as dumb as Palin and so sways the restless middle.
Hannity says that Newt Gingritch is going to run..did I spell that right? Or left?
I'm afraid you are all probably right...uh...I mean left. It looks like the damn religious right, of which I am a damn member, is going to cost the republicans the election AGAIN (hell, I don't even vote for us..I stopped when we started shooting doctors) and then, for another four years we will have a Not Really Black but Racist Muslim Extremist bent on destroying our country as not really president since he was not born here. But Michelle is still HOT. So you can all relax, even we know we are going to implode and Obama is going to win again. But I still want to see his real birth certificate and his school records. I's sure he attended harvard using an exchange student program (probably from kenya) under a different name.
Let me get my bib and napkin.
You're a member of the religious right?
How does that work?
I think I am...you see, this is the real story. I was raised in the Catholic Church. You know, the one where all the guys who run things misinterpreted the thing about not sowing your seed on the rocks, but instead making sure it went into fertile ground. Well, as it turned out, most of them could not tell an alter boy's ass from fertile ground. They were quick to find an alter boys ass but unable to find fertile ground with both hands an a map.
So, when I went to college the first time (Psychology degree) i studied a lot of religious history. And I discovered that there is a lot of motivation to lie about stuff to make money, As some leader of the Knights Templar once said "we have profited greatly over the years by this fiction of Jesus Christ." I point to the sale of "indulgences" in the middle ages. You can never tell if your loved one went to heaven, hell, or purgatory, If in purgatory, and if you bought enough indulgancese, you might just buy the loved one out of it and into heaven. So silly, yet so effective.
So I embraced atheism. And until about a year ago, I was an athest, or so I thought. Several years ago, I met a man who was a conservative christian but did not judge others. That in itself would normally disqualify him from claiming that status, IMHO. I now questions whether he is really a conservative christian since he is pro choice because he feels that it's none of his business and that God gave us free will so that we could choose to sin and far be it from him to get in anyone's way on that score. After many philosophical discussions, I discoved that, even as an athiest, especially as an athest, I sought God more than ever for I have always sought to protect the innocent from the wolves out there. I have always prized innocence since, in my life, i have seen so little of it. You see, I had only rejected the Catholic Image of God the Dammer To Hell of all who dare approach him. but until this man helped me see that, i could not move on and develop a more mature view of God. I think he's either a petulant child who finds it amusing to flit willy nilly throughout the infinity of space, creating universes that he knows will eventually produce life and loving every suffering minute of it or something much bigger and more etherial. Perhaps scientists have overlooked the obvious question. they seek to understand the laws of physicsl but they never ask themselves why those laws exist. Something must be causing them to exist. So no matter how many questions they answer, eventually, one will have to have faith in something. Might as well call it god cause I ain't gonna worship allah...he has a bad track record with me.
So you tell me. I don't like Obama one bit. He has set race relations in this country back 50 years and I regret voting for him. yea..I voted for the bastard. He fooled me completely. And he is a socialist. The russians and the UK already proved that socialism does not work. And we are about to prove that democracy does not work.
so judge me as you will. I care not what you think.
Just send BBQ sauce.
Let me get my Bib and Napkin. I am just a humble, large, and angry cat. And I'm going to murder this kid who keeps strangling me and eat him. And sleep well that night.
As to the chemical bag thing, If you are not TOTALLY familiar with the writings, experiments, and studies of B. F. Skinner, you would not understand that reference. Skinner is very much misquoted and misunderstood because people feel that accepting his conclusions would somehow lower the dignity of the human condition. I can't imagine anything that would lower it more than humans themselves have already.
go ahead and ban me know...you know you want to.
God's existence, in my view, has nothing to do with whether or not there is life after death. I don't beleive there is. I do believe that abortion, the hotbed issue, is murder. But I have no problems with many "crimes" that are currently designated as murder. Sometimes it is better to murder a child in the womb than to allow it to enter the world unwanted and with no chance to live a decent life.
I talk to God daily and thank him for the many things he has provide me with, but I don't ask him for anything. That's not the Jesuit way and I was trained by Jesuits. Jesuits accept God as their lord and master, but feel that it sounds too much like bargaining with Him to ask for salvation in exchange for faith. If they end up in hell ( I dont' believe in hell) they assume there is a job there that needs doing.
You are an odd duck, PixieBob. Even for a cat.
I have no special powers and I am mad about it. I deserve some.
Care to make it interesting?: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/...d.php?t=598342
I already admitted that he will win...read above.
Have you looked into Herman Cain yet? He seems to have some good ideas from what I've seen and he supports the Fair Tax.http://www.hermancain.com/
Welcome to Mellophant.
We started with nothing and we still have most of it left.
look...the government will never allow a fair tax to be enacted. A really fair tax would be a federal sales tax because then drug dealers, black marketeers, and waitresses would have to pay taxes too.
The problem is this: if consumers had to pay for the government only from a federal sales tax, that would mean that, at the point of retail sale, they would actually realize just how much the federal government takes and we'd have armed a fully organized armed revolution in about a week.
But the Fair Tax is an embedded tax. It is included in the price of goods the price you see is the price you pay. And prices will not go up for goods because it replaces the taxes that manufactures already pay and pass on to you in the price you pay. All that changes is the ability of corporations to manipulate the tax code to their advantage. And politicians ability to extort campaign contributions from corporations for tax breaks.
When people are not taxed on their investments they will invest more and the economy grows. When the economy grows people have more money to spend. When people spend more money the government rakes in more tax revenue.
Welcome to Mellophant.
We started with nothing and we still have most of it left.
OH, I'm for that one too and it has no chance of passage either, IMNSHO. My first post merely indicated that I think the fairest tax of all would be a federal sales tax. The one you mention won't get far either because large corporations control congress and won't want to close their loopholes. I'd tell you why you can't bypass coroprations and go directly to the voters and how the voters also are controlled directly by a few very powerful entities, but it might tend to sow discord and promote a flame war and I'm trying not to be a troll now.
oh, may I enquire as to whether you are Jesus Glazer or a Glazer Safety Slug or neither. I am a large angry cat.
I've really liked the idea of the Fair Tax for a while now, though with how much infrastructure is built up over our current tax system I doubt it'll ever get off the ground. I've heard it claimed that it would unfairly tax the middle class as the wealthy don't spend a comparable percentage of their income on goods and services, or that it would fail to bring in the amount of revenue we receive now. While I can see the potential for a lot of under the table sales to avoid tax, I think the other issues with it could be worked out if real effort was put into it.
How does a Fair Tax work? And who is more likely to try and implement it Republican or Democrat?
I take that at the next Democrat meeting to discuss their candidate, then Obama will just be proposed unopposed to go forward, or do they have to have another candidate?
In the land of the blind, the one-arm man is king.
There is currently no other candidates for the Democrats (that would be treated seriously at least.)
Fair Tax will never be implemented without an armed revolution.
The idea is that instead of the various forms of tax we have now (personal income taxes, corporate income taxes, capital gains taxes, Social Security taxes, Medicare taxes, gift taxes, estate taxes, etc etc) there would be one tax, which would be at the point of purchase for personal use. Instead of buying something and then having sales tax dropped on top of the price as it is now, it would simply be one price. If something is being sold for $100, you pay $100 and a fourth of that is tax or something along those lines.
There are a lot of complications and possible abuses which would need to be worked out, but the largest issue is that we have so much infrastructure based around our current tax system that it's just never going to happen. All of those tax lawyers out there who are constantly complaining about how unfair taxes are? Well, they'd be out of a job if this system went into place, so they'd better stick with the "unfair" tax.
Still harping on a federal sales tax here. I want those drug dealers to pay their taxes.
Unfortunately, a federal sales tax would not be seen as a "progressive tax" (harder on the rich, easier on the less fortunate) and so would not be popular with democrats. But this tax would allow a lot of job cuts at the IRS since they would then only have to police the collection of the federal sales tax
As to The Goddess (meant sincerely) Zuul's comment, I'm afraid that 25% would never get it...more like 45% and daily consumer heart attacks. Hospital emergency rooms would be flooded and the healthcare system would sink...
Of course we would have to exempt food and prescription drugs from this tax on a federal level. Then we would have to re-distribute part of that percentage back to the states based on some Gerrymandered Political Badger Hunt. If there was a really good and politically workable solution, we'd already have it in place. The key phrase here is "politically workable". Hard to come up with ANYTHING that's politically workable.
Political Diversity is NOT our friend.
Last edited by PixieBob; 30 Mar 2011 at 10:41 AM.
To keep from derailing this thread further I have started a new Fair Tax thread here. http://www.mellophant.com/forums/sho...850#post200850
Welcome to Mellophant.
We started with nothing and we still have most of it left.
no, you are not Jesus Christ...he would look like a member of Hammas or Al-Kabang. And you're not ammunition either. You appear to be someone who knew a really good photographer who caught your esscense beautifully.
I think you must be a large angry cat like me, only with longer hair.
Not that I object to your other thread, but I don't think this one ever really had rails.
Thanks I took that picture. And sadly my hair is not that long anymore after my bout whit cancer last year. (But it's growing back). But I'm not a cat I'm a dog. If you like I could bite that kid who's choking you.
Welcome to Mellophant.
We started with nothing and we still have most of it left.
hey, that would really great...you can kill him and eat him for all I care.
to get real, I'm very sorry about your fight with cancer and am glad you won...hope you stay well, my friend.
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