Democratic Presidential Candidate Poll [Spring/Summer 2013]

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Regardless of your political views or party membership, please feel free to discuss who you would like the Democratic Party's presidential nominee for 2016 to be. Why would you vote for who you would?


Click here for the Republican Party poll.

 

Are any of the above actually reasonable candidates? Did you just pull those names at random? If you're going to do a poll like this at least do some homework first....

 

>Implying I haven't.

A couple of the people; Bernie Sanders, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi; haven't expressed any interest in running in 2016. However, it's still a long way off and anything can happen.

 

I'd agree that for both parties the candidate could be a surprise, but Bloomberg is an independent, Chris Matthews is a tv host? and Michelle Obama?

Anyway I'd have to vote for Biden because he has a sweet 81 Trans Am.

 

Bloomberg could easily join the Democratic Party, he's quite popular among Democrats. Chris Matthews was sort of a joke, but I'm sure some people would love to have him run.

A lot of people are actually expecting Michelle Obama to run in 2016. I even have a bet with my uncle Jonathan over whether or not she'll be our next president. If she does become president in the next four years, then I'll take my uncle to a ice hockey game. If she doesn't become president in the next four years, he'll take me to an ice hockey game.

 

Seriously? Why would anyone think she's a qualified candidate for the most important political post in the world?

For me, if I was a conservative, I'd look at that list of candidates and salivate.

 

How about Governor Martin O'Malley? He has expressed interest. After that, my pick would be Cuomo. (Although it almost certainly will be Biden - and I think THAT would be a mistake.

 

Can't really vote on this poll because the only people on it who are even remotely likely to run are Hillary Clinton, Andrew Cuomo, Michael Bloomberg and Dennis Kucinich. Only the first 3 have anything resembling a chance of winning anything, Clinton being the far and away frontrunner. The rest of the list is just silly. I mean come on. Al Gore?

For the record, I'd put good money on Joe Biden NOT running. He just won't. I'll gladly eat my hat in 2015 if I'm wrong.

 

DR - I hope you're right. No offense to Joe, but if he was ever going to be considered presidential material, he would have been nominated in one of the four or five previous times that he went after the nomination. Furthermore, in 2016 Biden will be 74. You're just too damn old to be president then. One of the things I wasn't thrilled about when McCain ran was he was 72, so naturally I'm not happy about the prospects of someone who is 74.

I'm still not all in on Hillary running. I certainly can't rule it out as a possibility, and I am convinced that the reason these Benghazi hearings are still going on is to try and get Hillary caught up in some type of scandal. What they don't realize is that Hillary has had her fair share of scandals long before this, and much bigger than this. Unless they find out that she knowingly caused the deaths of those Americans through her own inaction (and I seriously doubt there's a realistic shot at that) then she can eat a mini-scandal like this for breakfast.

 

I'm fighting the urge to link every 'Diamond' Joe Biden clip the Onion has done.



Plus that AMA Uncle Joe did was hilarious, the Real Joe Biden even asked a question.

 

It will be Clinton against Ryan in 2016.

 

Hillary will run and she will win. Not what I WANT to see happening, but it's what I see nonetheless. She will capture the women, the blacks, the mexicans, the atheists, .... Pretty well every voting block but the staunch christians and white males. Maybe she loses the military because of BenGhazi, but I doubt it.

 

Hilary is having serious health trouble and she is dealing with an image problem on top of that. She stands at the center of the only scandal with any teeth in it to occur on Obama's watch. Every opponent she faces in the primary will use the spectre of Benghazi as a bludgeon to weaken her legitimacy. Her accomplishments as secretary of State are not particularly impressive, and Obama's shadow has not been good to her. She may not run. Even if she does run, she won't win. Republicans tend to give the nod to the guy who came in second last time, but democrats don't share that tradition.

Biden will probably run, and will probably win if he does. He's OLD for a democratic candidate, but he's still likeable and healthy, and his tendency to gaffe is part of his charm. He's still my favorite* for the Democratic nod. America's view of the Obama administration is still overwhelmingly positive, particularly within the democratic base, and Biden would get to run on Obama's coat tails in a way that no other democratic candidate could. Incumbency is also a near-insurmountable advantage in a primary, particularly when the incumbent VP was part of a hugely successful presidential administration.

Most of the folks on your list won't run, and would have no legitimate chance of winning even if they did. There's still time for a lesser known governor or a young senator or diplomat to step forward, so the field is far from set.

* The candidate I think is most likely to win, not necessarily my favorite candidate.

 

It's the only scandal if you don't count the IRS scandal that just surfaced last week. And I don't know how scandalous either actually is. I think it is going to be very difficult to prove that through her action or inaction, Americans died in Benghazi. The only thing I've seen remotely scandalous is the e-mail they uncovered of how to try to spin the attack in the media after it happened. (But seriously, what administration wouldn't try and paint itself in the most favorable light possible when something like this happens?)

I saw a news piece last night that in the 8 years that Bush was in office, 54 US diplomats were killed overseas at or around US embassies. (To be fair they weren't all ambassadors.) Of those 54 deaths, only 3 resulted in a Congressional hearing, and all 3 were concluded in a day with no major fuss. To say this scandal seems politically motivated goes without saying.

I really don't know about the state of Hillary's health. I do know that since the 2008 campaign she has apparently started aging in dog years. It's the president that is supposed to look way older 8 years later due to the stress of that job. But Hillary just looks bad - but any health condition she may be suffuring from is unknown to me.

I agree that Biden appears to be in fine health. But 74 is still 74. Stuff happens at that age, and your health can start to decline very quickly. Given the demands of the presidency, I think it's asking a lot of anyone of that age to undertake something like that. He would be the oldest of any president we've ever had on election day. Reagan was 69 when he was elected, meaning he was younger than Biden will be when he won his second term.

This is certainly true. In fact, there are only two instances where the VP of a two-term president chose to run and lost the election. (And I'm talking the general election - never mind winning the primary.) There were a few cases like Dick Cheney in 2008, where the former VP did not run in the following election. But as for being the VP, running, and not winning, we have a list of 2. Richard Nixon was Eisenhower's VP, he ran in 1960 to replace Eisenhower, and lost to Kennedy, the other was Al Gore losing to George Bush in 2000. (I just looked it up, and apparently running the incumbent VP to replace the president is a relatively recent development. While there never was a loser prior to Nixon, there were more instances of the incumbent VP not running, than running and winning.) So yes, until proven otherwise, Biden is the favorite.

 

Can you cite this? I've been looking for something to back this up and I can't find it.

I am not sure that Benghazi would have caused any particular furor amongst the right had Susan Rice not gone on TV so soon afterwards and tried to spin the attack in a different direction than what it was. Whether she was ignorant, confused, misspoke, or deliberately attempted to obfuscate the issue, I believe it all started there.

 

The number was 64 not 54, you can look up the specifics on the global terrorism database or just google an article about it.

 

Yeah, I have looked it up, and I can't find anything to back up those assertions.


Mother Jones, which many people would ID as a biased source but which, in my limited experience, I've found as generally objective and factual, indicates here there were 64 attacks against embassies during GW Bush's presidency. (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/libya-consulate-embassy-attacks-obama-romney) There are a number of liberal blogs that site similar numbers, published around the same time as the above article (i.e., the 2012 Presidential elections), but they are certainly biased (in fact, one can find the same data written in the same paragraphical format re-posted on blog after blog) and don't do a good job of citing their research. (Of course, I can find a number of conservative blogs that basically say the same thing but spin it from a different direction). When I look at Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o...ts_of_terrorism_against_Americans#cite_note-2 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrorist_attacks_on_U.S._diplomatic_facilities ), which has more details of the attacks than Mother Jones does, I can find details of something like 12 attacks against embassies resulting in a handful of deaths of U.S. diplomatic personnel. In fact, by including an attack against a convoy in Gaza in 2003 (certainly not an attack on an actual embassy) which resulted in the deaths of 3 U.S. diplomatic personnel, do I end up with 6 U.S. diplomatic personnel killed from the time period of 2000 to 2009.

I strongly suspect there were a number of other attacks against other facilities; a single shot taken, or explosion nearby that did little damage, probably wouldn't make the international news, especially in some locations (Karachi, for instance, has reputation as being pretty restive, and though 4 attacks against the embassy over a period of 5 years were reported, I wouldn't be surprised if what was considered "news-worthy" there might be a little more than what might gain attention in, say, Paris). But I would think that that if there were other deaths, those would have been reported.

 

I recall that the news program cited a "University of Maryland study". But as for a link to the study in question, no I don't have it. Perhaps knowing the academic institution that conducted it will help you track it down.

 

My bad, posted as I was running out the door, read attacks when Aldeth said deaths.

 

How about Fast and Furious? Or the IRS targeting conservative groups?