Quote Originally Posted by TitoFan View Post
This is where I see it another way. It isn't (and has never been) about "manufacturing" candidates. That's precisely the recipe to come up with an artificial, fake fascimile of what a Presidential candidate should be. Sort of like a Miss America beauty pageant. Better the natural, uncoached, un-liposuctioned, un-surgically altered woman... than the manufactured Barbie doll that has been preparing for the occasion with a slew of helpers.

I refuse to believe that somewhere within the 330 million people in the United States (minus the obvious qualification requirements)... there isn't at least a handful of decent, intelligent, decisive, wise, driven, personable, leader-type individuals who could be perfectly capable of developing a following. Nowadays exposure is easier than ever, thanks to the blessing (sometimes curse) of social media.

Yes... I realize that this is a process. No one is going to jump into the POTUS seat without first having scaled the necessary career progression. Although there are a few precedents of past Presidents without much of a prior political career. Others have come from prior careers that no one could have foreseen. My point is... it's not impossible.

Hollywood has produced its share of movies on this topic... one of the better ones being "The Candidate," a 50-year old movie with Robert Redford in the starring role.

If you're right and it is, in fact, impossible... then that's a pretty damning statement on the American public and the political system in general.

Well... that's the reason why Trump could possibly be elected in 2024. The reason he got elected in 2016, IMO, was a perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances. I remember thinking (and probably stating it on this forum) that 2016 was a historically unfortunate choice between Trump and the tremendously unlikeable and untrustworthy Hillary Clinton. And here comes the bombastic narcissist... bouncing all over the debate stages and promising shit that resonated with the masses... like "draining the swamp." A huge portion of the American public swallowed all that shit up like newborn puppies at their mother's teat.

The "radical, bullshit media" may have always existed... but definitely grew bolder and much more visible once Trump took over the Presidency. Of course CNN and Fox News have been for a long time at opposite ends of the spectrum. But once Trump became President, these opposite ends grew infinitely more distant from each other.



I'm also sure there are a bunch of people who would make exceptional candidates out there but the thing is they're not running. Exceptional potential candidates are constantly being scouted by both parties. They're offered a clear run at Governor or Senator in their home state with a glide path to a presidential campaign to try and get them to run. Very few decide to run and the ones that do often turn out to be duds as far as getting elected goes.

I looked and there's only one president who didn't have years of being a regular politician or military service before being elected prez and that's Trump. There were three generals who went straight to prez. Eisenhower was the last. Other than that everybody has had years of political office. Trump however brought a couple of well qualified individuals/gigantic egos out of the woodwork in 2020. The guy who built Starbucks and Michael Bloomberg. Both of them were poison with the voters. Even then Bloomberg had been New York mayor.

In the 2024 election you have an incumbent, which means it's impossible to remove him without a primary that would tear the party apart and result in a lot of incumbent fans staying at home on election day if the incumbent lost the primary or a lot of challenger fans staying at home if the incumbent beat the challenger. Currently Biden does have challengers but they're fringe/looney people. Kennedy is polling well but that's down to his name. Once people hear he's an antivax nutcase he'll become irrelevant. (That's what would normally happen, anything might be possible in this fucked up social media age.)

Here's that explained a little:

https://wapo.st/3Nug9gp



On the other side you have basically a cult and a bunch of cult followers who are going to vote for their leader no matter what. So unless health intervenes this is the contest we have.



I think Fox News basically went nuts when Obama got elected. It was overtly conservative before that but itbecame horrific under Obama. There was no shitty horrible racist angle of attack they wouldn't use. Trump just amped up the crazy. You mean MNBC rather than CNN right? They're the lefties. CNN have tried to play it down the middle and that's left them a poor third place in cable news because the market wants to hear what it wants to hear. CNN just sacked their chief political correspondent recently because he said this, which strikes me as uncontroversial:



https://twitter.com/JohnJHarwood/sta...18081378213891