The Return Of The Wicked Webb

Silly me.  I've been grousing that maybe Bernie would do something colossally stupid and pull a 3rd party Ralph Nader stunt, when all this time I should have been keeping an eye on former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb as the agent of rodent fornication.

When Jim Webb quit the Democratic presidential race on Oct. 20 amid low poll numbers and a minimal debate presence, the former Virginia senator left open the possibility he'd return for a White House run in a different political guise. Now he appears to be edging closer to making good on it.

On Saturday morning, Webb used Twitter and his Facebook page to attack Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton for her handling of Libya during her time as secretary of state.

The lengthy condemnation on Facebook, which said, among other things that "Clinton should be called to account for her inept leadership that brought about the chaos in Libya," came just days before the end of the year, which his team had previously told CNN would be reasonable time for them to make a decision about an independent bid.

Since dropping out of the race for the Democratic nomination, Webb has continued to maintain his Webb2016 website, which he has updated with posts about the possibilities of an independent run. On Twitter, he and his fans have been promoting a #WebbNation hashtag.

A run by Webb, who often manages his own social media accounts and has also used them recently to promote a petition in favor of his run and to deliver kudos to Bernie Sanders in his battles with the Democratic National Committee ("nothing more than an arm for the Clinton campaign," Webb tweeted), could further complicate the already unpredictable 2016 election.

While observers typically have analyzed the prospect of a third-party or independent run by Republican front-runner Donald Trump — or even one from Sanders — Webb could still alter the dynamics of the race even with his smaller profile.

A recent CNN poll, for instance, forecast tight races between Clinton and several Republican contenders in hypothetical match-ups for the general election. Webb's campaign has told Bloomberg it would concentrate on mobilizing voters in the ideological middle, along with people who have become dissatisfied with politics.

In a tight race, even a small base of support could make him a factor. Ralph Nader, for instance, famously won only small percentages of the vote in many states in the 2000 presidential election, yet that arguably helped tip the Electoral College vote to then-Texas Governor George W. Bush, denying Democratic Vice President Al Gore, the winner of the popular vote, the presidency.

Unlike Trump's whining about going third party, Webb is already out of the race.  For him to start attacking Clinton like this after departing the field is bad from, but to do so while using assaults lifted from the GOP playbook makes it clear he's trying to hand the country over to the Republicans and that he expects something in return.

No, this is truly odious, and it's too bad Jim Webb is ending his career like this.

Trumpenstein's Monster

The ultimate 2016 nightmare scenario for the GOP involving Donald Trump isn't him staying in the GOP hunt, but coming in as a third party candidate with his own billions to spend.

Donald Trump says the chances that he will launch a third-party White House run will “absolutely” increase if the Republican National Committee is unfair to him during the 2016 primary season. 

“The RNC has not been supportive. They were always supportive when I was a contributor. I was their fair-haired boy,” the business mogul told The Hill in a 40-minute interview from his Manhattan office at Trump Tower on Wednesday. “The RNC has been, I think, very foolish.”

Pressed on whether he would run as a third-party candidate if he fails to clinch the GOP nomination, Trump said that “so many people want me to, if I don’t win.” 

“I’ll have to see how I’m being treated by the Republicans,” Trump said. “Absolutely, if they’re not fair, that would be a factor.” 

RNC Chairman Reince Priebus called Trump earlier this month asking him to tone down his controversial rhetoric. More recently, the RNC rebuked him for saying that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is not a war hero. Trump didn’t apologize but has since said that the 2008 Republican presidential nominee is a war hero. 

Trump told The Hill that the GOP establishment in Washington dislikes him because he’s not part of the political class. 

“I’m not in the gang. I’m not in the group where the group does whatever it’s supposed to do,” he said. “I want to do what’s right for the country — not what’s good for special interest groups that contribute, not what’s good for the lobbyists and the donors.”

Voter anger at the government, especially among Republicans, is so high right now that Trump as a third party candidate would be a nuclear meltdown a 2000 Nader run raised to the power of Trump's fortune.  So yes, I fully expect the GOP and the RNC to suddenly start being a whole hell of a lot nicer to the guy in the coming months.

Trump's not going anywhere.  That suits me just fine.

Darth Nader Strikes Back

It wouldn't be a Democratic presidential primary season without Ralph Nader showing up to depress the vote at best and at worst commit outright sabotage the Democrats in favor of the GOP like he did in 2000.  It seems 2016 will be no different. 

"I have always preferred the ink-and-paper, written letter method of communicating with elected officials,” writes Ralph Nader, consumer advocate and former presidential candidate, who has been writing letters to American politicians, with some success, for more than 50 years.

But he’s been disappointed with the last two administrations. “Rhetoric by both Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama would have you think that these presidents encourage and support citizens sharing their opinions with their commander in chief,” he writes in a new collection of his correspondences, Return to Sender: Unanswered Letters to the President, 2001-2015. But “once delivered to the White House, my letters could not penetrate the multi-layered White House bubble.” Perhaps, Nader says, if presidents these days didn’t spending so much time raising money, waging unnecessary wars and taking photo ops with sports stars, they might find more time to engage with a concerned citizenry.

Perhaps if Nader hadn't screwed the country in 2000 and cost Al Gore the state of Florida and the White House, we wouldn't need to have this conversation at all.  Here's just a taste of how much of a condescending asshole Nader has been to President Obama in particular:

Dear President Obama,

Little did your school boy chums in Hawaii know, watching you race up and down the basketball court, how prescient they were when they nicknamed you “Barry O’Bomber.”

Little did your fellow Harvard Law Review editors, who elected you to lead that venerable journal, ever imagine that you could be a president who chronically violates the Constitution, federal statutes, international treaties and the separation of power at depths equal to or beyond the George W. Bush regime.

Nor would many of the voters who elected you in 2008 have conceived that your foreign policy would rely so much on brute military force at the expense of systemically waging peace. Certainly, voters who knew your background as a child of Third World countries, a community organizer, a scholar of constitutional law and a critic of the Bush/Cheney years, never would have expected you to favor the giant warfare state so pleasing to the military-industrial complex.

Now, as if having learned nothing from the devastating and costly aftermaths of the military invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, you’re beating the combustible drums to attack Syria—a country that is no threat to the U.S. and is embroiled in complex civil wars under a brutal regime.

This time, however, you may have pushed for too many acts of war. Public opinion and sizable numbers of members of both parties in Congress are opposed. These lawmakers oppose bombing Syria in spite of your corralling the cowardly leaders of both parties in the Congress.

Never forget that Nader's 97,000 votes in Florida, most taken from Gore, when George W. Bush won the state by just over 500 votes is the reason George W. Bush was elected we ended up in Iraq, Afghanistan, and oh yeah the worst recession in 80 years.

So when this asshole starts running off at the mouth, remember he's why we got Dubya in the first place.

Is Maine's Eliot Cutler The New Ralph Nader?

It sure looks like it.  The latest PPP poll finds incumbent Tea Party Republican Gov. Paul LePage only getting 42% of the vote.  But that might be enough as Democrat Mike Michaud has 43%, and independent Cutler has 11% of the vote, enough to spoil the race and keep LePage in power.

Public Policy Polling’s newest survey of the Maine Governor’s race continues to find a tight contest with Mike Michaud at 43% to 42% for Paul LePage. Eliot Cutler trails in a distant third at 11%. We attribute the closeness of the race to a continued split among progressive-leaning voters. Without Cutler’s presence in the race, his supporters would overwhelmingly choose Michaud over LePage; in a two way matchup between Michaud and LePage, Michaud’s lead would be 50/46.

The good news is Cutler's progressive supporters are realizing that if he stays in the race, LePage is going to win again.  They're starting to turn to Michaud:

Cutler is becoming a less viable candidate as we get closer to Election Day. When PPP started polling in this contest in January of 2013, Cutler was at 26%. By August of last year, he had dropped down to 18%, then to 14% this April, and now he’s at his lowest level of support yet at 11%. Cutler is in a distant third place even with independents, despite being an independent. 

53% of Cutler’s supporters say they would pick Michaud in a head to head contest, compared to only 32% who say they would vote for LePage. The support he’s pulling from Michaud could be enough to reelect LePage in this razor thin contest. 

Paul LePage is one of the most unpopular governors in the country, and most voters in Maine want to replace him. Given the closeness of the race right now, they will need to unify around one of the two candidates challenging LePage. This poll is further confirmation that Michaud is the only candidate with the support necessary to defeat LePage in November.

So that's good.  Mainers are starting to realize that Cutler's taking enough support from Michaud to give LePage the possible win, and they're moving to Michaud.  Hopefully this trend will continue, because LePage really is one of the worst Tea Party governors in the country right now and he has to go.

For that to happen, Cutler can't be allowed to Nader this one into the GOP column.

The Ghost Of Losers Past

Guess which former presidential candidate thinks America needs a Rand Paul versus Elizabeth Warren race in 2016 that could potentially unite the left and right towards a new era of libertarian utopia and that President Obama needs to be impeached immediately?

That’s the premise of the new book “Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State” by longtime political activist and five-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader, who contends that such a left-right alliance is not just the stuff of imagination but is actually emerging.

“On Capitol Hill, I'm seeing more and more in Congress, left and right,” Nader told “The Fine Print.” “It was a vote in the House over a year ago over the NSA snooping, it almost broke through … so we're beginning to see formulations that once they click together, they're unstoppable.”
  

Oh goody.  And Rand Paul?

But Nader qualified that the success of his envisioned left-right alliance is dependent on strong leaders. He said Sen. Rand Paul, son of Ron Paul, has the potential to be a leader for the alliance, but added that he thinks the Kentucky Republican has certain shortcomings as a leader.

“He’s a mixed bag, you know, he's evolving. He's broadening his issues that he's talking about and they’re beginning to resonate,” Nader said. “On the other hand … he has problems dealing with people.”

Paul’s “problems” aside, Nader predicted that he will be “the one to beat” in 2016 in a Republican contest that is also likely to also include Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida. He also made it clear what he does not want to see in 2016: A Jeb Bush - Hillary Clinton matchup.

In fact he says he will actively try to sabotage Hillary Clinton in 2016, and wants President Obama impeached immediately.

When it comes to the current president, Nader said that Obama has violated the Constitution on several occasions and should be impeached.

"Oh, most definitely," Nader said when asked if Congress should bring forward articles of impeachment against Obama. "The reason why Congress doesn't want to do it is because it's advocated its own responsibility under the Constitution."

Nader said the president's use of military force in Libya has been his most "egregious violation of the Constitution."

So, you ready for President Rand Paul?  Ralph Nader is.  And the last time he meddled we got Dubya instead of Al Gore.  How'd that work out for you 14 years later?

Last Call For Running Against Obama

I'm not a huge Hillary Clinton fan and voted for Barack Obama in the 2008 primary in a state where he lost by 20+ points. I like 2016 speculation in January 2014 even less.  But if Brian Schweitzer of Montana thinks he has a chance in hell running in 2016 as the anti-Obama, he can go straight to hell and take his hopes with him.

Brian Schweitzer, the former two-term Democratic governor of Montana, is rarely speechless. Once he gets going on a topic, he’s almost impossible to stop. As he builds up steam, he’ll slap his knee to emphasize his points. He’ll slap your knee to emphasize his points. Good luck getting a word in edgewise for that follow-up question. 

But at the moment, Schweitzer is rubbing his chin, looking up at the ceiling, searching – unsuccessfully – for just the right words. The question was simple enough: Is there a single thing President Obama has done that you consider a positive achievement? 

Finally, he spoke. 

“My mother, God rest her soul, told me ‘Brian, if you can’t think of something nice to say about something change the subject,’” he said.
But he couldn’t help himself, slamming Obama’s record on civil liberties (the NSA revelations were “un-effing-believable”), his competency (“They just haven’t been very good at running things”), and above all, Obamacare (“It will collapse on its own weight”). 

Eventually, he paused to acknowledge Obama’s historic role as the first black president. But by that standard, Obama’s usefulness ended the day he took the oath of office.

So your plan to win in 2016 is to alienate the Democrats who voted for Barack Obama.  Twice.

Please take your Big Sky country boy act back to Helena, bro.  We're not interested.  If you can't be half-assed to come up with one thing this President did that you liked, I've got a name for you.

Republican.

Steve M makes a similar point about who Schweitzer is playing to:

But what makes this whole package hard to sell is the fact that Schweitzer is making the attack so personal and ad hominem. Do you know what Barack Obama's job approval rating is among Democrats right now? It's 75% according to a December poll from CNN, 78%according to a December CBS poll. It sure seems as if there's disillusionment among Democratic voters, but a lot of Democrats are clearly still loyal, while others are no worse than ambivalent -- they're frustrated and disappointed, maybe, but they're still essentially on Obama's side, even if a lot of what he does (or fails to do) is maddening.

Jamelle Bouie has more:

If Schweitzer is an unlikely choice for the Democratic nomination, it has less to do with his low national profile, and everything to do with his pronounced Obama-skepticism. Black voters have their concerns with the Obama administration, but the president is held in high esteem. Which is to say that, if you’re going to distance yourself from the administration, you have to do so without without attacking Obama as a figure. Otherwise, you’ve alienated African Americans and crippled your bid for the nomination.

Good luck winning the primaries running as a red state white guy who can't think of one nice thing to say about President Obama.  The good news?  Watch carefully who backs Schweitzer from the "left".  It's a dead giveaway they're no friends of Democrats, liberals, or you.  Allahpundit over at Hot Air is hoping Schweitzer can cause as much damage to Democrats as possible, for example.

After all, Ralph Nader has his day in the sun too, and look where that got us.

Last Call For The Nadering Nabobs Of Negativity

Ralph Nader can't quit trying to win it for the GOP.

“I’m going to find at least ten enlightened billionaires or multibillionaires and I’m going to have a criteria. Have they spoken out about where they think the country is going? And are they worried about it? And have they done things reflecting some sort of civic enlightenment and courage? And are they able to communicate? Obviously, they have the money. And I’m going to encourage them to run.”

His target is to make sure Hillary doesn't get into the White House.

“We really need a dynasty now? We’ve had twelve years of the Bushes, what — do you want eight more years of the Clintons? Do we really want a redux here or do we want fresh energy and refresh redirection?” Of his specific criticisms of Clinton, Nader says the former Secretary of State “never saw a weapons system she didn’t like, never challenged the Pentagon when she was on the Senate Armed Services Committee.”

Nader would like to see Sen. Barbara Boxer run, but assumes “she’s not willing to take the next step.”

“They’re all deferring to Hillary and, let me tell you, anyone who thinks Hillary will have cakewalk three and a half years from the next presidential election better look back at 2008 and see if that was a cakewalk. She’s going to have competitors.”

Barbara Boxer?  Sure, she's pretty anti-Pentagon, but there needs to be more.  Which is why Nader keeps screwing things up.  He ran against Al Gore and we got Dubya as a result, remember?  And he sure prevented useless, bloody, expensive wars, didn't he?

Nope.  I'll never forgive the guy for Florida 2000.  Ever.  Show yourself out, Ralph.  Don't come back.