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Monday, June 1, 2015

Does Jeb Bush Realize the Goal of Elections is to Get a Majority of Votes?

    As he and his family are about as close as you get in American politics to literal royalty, I sometimes wonder if he thins that he's waiting to be crowned King. He certainly is doing a good job of taking unpopular positions.

    We know he can't stop the lovefest with his brother's policies, including the Iraq war.

    http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2015/06/if-you-think-george-w-bushs-foreign.html

    Interestingly, his brother's people don't seen so enamored of Jeb-so he's not even winning popularity among them.

    http://linkis.com/politicalwire.com/20/63U1Y

    Kind of sad to see Jeb embrace W while W's people refuse to emrace Jeb. Now he's jumping on another part of his older brother's legacy: a plan to cut social security benefits.

    "Jeb Bush grabbed one of the third rails of American politics on Friday, declaring that the retirement age for Social Security should be raised and "in relatively short order."

      "I think we need to raise the retirement age, not for people that are already nearing, receiving Social Security, or already on it, but raise it gradually, over a long period of time for people that are just entering the system," Bush said. "And I think we need to do that in relatively short order."

    "Bush made the comments at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics at Saint Anselm College in Manchester—the same venue that potential presidential rival, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, outlined an entitlement-reform package of his own earlier this week that also included raising the Social Security retirement age."

    http://www.nationaljournal.com/2016-elections/2016-jeb-bush-social-security-retirement-age-20150417

     Ok, so W wanted to privateize it and Jeb wants to make people work longer to get it-but this is still a cut in benefits that is regressive as the rich tend to live longer than the poor. 

     P.S. My assumption in my analysis of electoral politics for 2016, is that the 2 candidates will be Jeb and Hillary. 

     The media is trying to make heavy weather over the antics of Rand Paul on bulk spying-playing him off against either his fellow GOPer from Kentucky, Mitch McConnell, or the newly launched candidate Lindsay Graham. I think this is mostly much ado about nothing-neither Rand or Graham stand a chance of winning the primary nomination. 

    I think that Paul's antics were just theatrics to get him in the spotlight. In the short term they will but he's not going to win as he doesn't have the right stance on the issues to be a Republican nominee in 2016. 

    LIke it or not, it's about the party not personalities. I do think that what happened in the Senate is a win for some rollback of the Patriot Act which I think is a good thing. 

   http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/06/01/morning-plum-in-desperate-bid-to-save-bulk-spying-mitch-mcconnell-badly-miscalculates/

   But Rand's showboating has no effect on this-they new scaled down bill was going to pass anyway. 

   Meanwhile with the Dems there's all the excitement over Bernie Sanders and Marvin O'Malley. There's very dubious comparison of O'Malley and Obama in 2008

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2015/06/01/martin-omalley-tests-a-generational-argument-against-hillary-clinton/

    With Sanders we keep hearing that he talks about the big issues that Hillary wont discuss but we know her position on many issues. As Greg Sargent himself concedes there's a tendency to overstate differences among Democrats-and Bernie is a Democrat essentially even if he calls himself a socialist-otherwise why is he running in the Democratic primary?

   I think it offends a lot of people to feel like the outcome is predetermined but that doesn't mean it is an unfair process just that people have made up their minds. There is very little doubt that we Dems have chosen Hillary. The chances of another 2008 are so slim because we don't have another candidate on the level of Obama-who had already made a name for himself after his great 2004 convention speech. 

   http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-hillary-clinton-steamroller-rumbles-to-life/

   Jeb is arguably less of a lock but in my mind he is-I see Scott Walker as probably his best challenger; there is the case that Jeb is not so electable even if he's the moderate. Still I think that Walker's shtick won''t work on a national stage. 

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