You can find a lot of musings about 2016 all over the damn place. It's probably true, though, that one of the problems with Hillary Clinton is that she has enough political baggage to fill up a truck and that's never helpful.[1]
While Bill Maher was pinging on the number of candidates who have "waited their turn" and he used Obama as the guy who didn't wait his turn and won, there are other examples of politicians who didn't wait their turn and won: Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
The outlier here, of course, is Reagan and Bush the Elder. Reagan waited his turn, but between nearly 20% inflation, a second gas crisis and the Iranian hostage crisis, even Rick Santorum would have been able to beat President Carter.[2] Bush was on his was to losing, but between an inept campaign by the Democrats, a lousy debate performance by Dukakis and the race-baiting of Bush, he turned it around.
In late 1991, it seems from the polling that Bush I was going to win in a walk. The "next turn" Democrats, like Anthony Cuomo, sat it out, figuring that they'd let some poor schmuck get buried and then come in in `96. Didn't work that way.
In 2000, there really wasn't a "next guy" for the GOP, other than Danny Quayle, and nobody was crazy enough for that.[3] And so George W. Bush won the Republican nomination[4] and the election.[5]
So yes, I think Maher is onto something. But it doesn't seem to matter. The GOP candidates for 2016, this far out, appear to be all of the same inhabitants of the 2012 Klown Kar, including Mitt Romney, and with a couple of quasi-new clowns. The Democrats seem to be, so far, Clinton and maybe Biden. Biden, well, you can just write off all but about ten states if he runs, for Shotgun Joe isn't exactly popular.
But, Jesus, why are we even talking about the intrigues in the American Political Whorehouse, now?
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[1] "Politicians are like a box of chocolates: Democrats are mostly soft and gooey and Republicans are mostly nuts."
[2] OK, maybe not Santorum.
[3] Unrepentant Nazi sympathizer Pat Buchanan might have also had a claim. Both men were interested, but pulled out before the primaries began.
[4] Like his father, his campaign used race-baiting as a tool.
[5] As for his campaign's successful theft of the two general election, let's not go there.
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The political élite are talking about 2016 to make soft-core Democrats forget there's an important election in seven months. To our political class, midterm Congressional elections are when government returns to its rightful owners.
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