I can understand your frustration and while there's a part of me that thinks he has a snowballs chance in hell of winning, one need only look at our current president to see how a long-shot can win. Remember that when Obama won the likely candidate was either Jon Edwards or Hillary Clinton. Jon Edwards imploded and it was a battle to the finish for Obama/Clinton. Honestly, I would guess that even Bernie knows he has a very slim chance of a victory but a very real chance of impacting the course of the national dialog and therefore future policy. But it could happen. Thing is, you're young and many of us have seen this go down before via Nader, Forbes, Perot, Ron P Etc. It could happen tho...
There is a possibility of another economic downturn before the next election. That's the ace in the hole that catapulted Obama, and I think something similar would need to take place for a long shot to win again. Sanders doesn't have the personal appeal of Obama, however, so I'm not sure that it's a great parallel. We have, however, seen six years of robust stock market growth, and sustained home price increases (without any concomitant increase in wages), so we're ripe for a correction. If it's bad people will want to reject the status quo.
That's what catapulted Obama to victory over McCain, first he needed to beat Hillary though and that was more about "change" from the old guard to the new.
Both, I would argue. McCain and Clinton were viewed, correctly, at the time as agents of status quo. Obama was a wild card with lofty goals and promises of a new direction, some of which I think he's been successful at, while others disappointing. It would be wild if another economic calamity defeated Mrs. Clinton.
I hope we don't have another. Who do you think will be the GOP nominee? I recognize that this is 100% conjecture, but humor me. Is there anyone on the right that you'd even consider voting for? I'd consider Romney if he stuck to being the guy he was in MA. Pretty moderate really. I'm not a Hillary fan.
This is an unsettling thing to think, but the least evil to me on the right is bush. Never thought I'd say that after the 2001-2009 years, but I think Jeb is more HW than W. I would vote Rick Snyder if he entered, but just yesterday he said an emphatic no.
How is age selling MI as an economic success story? What are his talking points? Do you agree?
So is he at all trying to get the Democratic nomination? Or just running as an independent?
In that case, the double standard lies in the Atlantic's reporting of O'Malley. These are Maryland's "proportionate" districts: Granted, and this is conjecture, I imagine that the politicians in Maryland were under political pressure to gerrymander because the Republicans do it so much. They control more state legislatures than Democrats, so Democrats in Maryland "did what they had to" to wrest one more House seat for themselves. It's deplorable but the reality of pressures and forces inherent to our government.
You are correct. It became one of the worst cases in the country because of it. At least one of the districts was done for no reason by a democrat, but the rest were more or less "playing the game." All of our borders are wonky as hell. It's been addressed a few times to being fixed, and probably will in the next few years. We will see.