Yes it is, in fact, the election cycle actually never ends.  The day after the election, the next one begins.

Presidential term is 4 years
Senate term is 6 years
Congressional term is 2 years

I think that there is also a setup so that only some of them are up for election at the same time, so that you don't risk ending up with a congress full of people who don't understand how it works.  Imagine if somehow you had all new people and no one knew the rules - pretty crazy.

The 2 year congress term is particularly problematic from a corruption perspective.  They have to spend nearly all of their time fund raising for the next election, so they are inherently open to being influenced by someone with a willingness to donate to the campaign fund.  It doesn't help that if they don't spend the money on the campaign, they can keep it - tax free.

My education was in chemical engineering and I am more of a business man, so don't be surprised if you see errors in how the offices are setup.


 

Rubio Strengths - as they related to IA
- He is Hispanic
- He isn't Trump
- He is not from Texas or NY
- Follows the party line on topics
- Dresses professionally

Weakness
- He is actually really mean to other Hispanics.  As soon as you move away from his background, you wonder why anyone who is Hispanic would vote for him.
- He is stuck in the cold war era of holding a grudge against Cuba, and a lot of Americans think this policy is ridiculous and counter productive
- Foolish tax ideas
- His team is not nearly as organized as other teams

Chris Christie Stengths
- He is a good at running a campaign
- He says the right things
- Has good financial backing
- He is good at "strong - arm" tactics

Weakness
- No one believes him
- He is from New Jersey, possibly an even more politically corrupt state than NY
- New Jersey has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the US, and is known for trampling on peoples rights, and wiping out businesses just for fun.

 

Rand Paul - Strengths in IA
- Conservative, but very much appeals to moderates and the political center of the US
- Solid tax plan
- Does not say crazy things
- His father is Rand Paul, who is well known in US politics and had (has) a strong following
- Rand Paul surprised everyone in past elections with his organizing skills in IA, really pulled off a stealth campaign.
- Electable in the general election

Weakness
- Lacks funding because wall street does not like him
- Does not have extremists views, so he does not appeal to those with extremist positions.
- Professional, but might not be flashy enough

Clinton Strengths
- Tireless campaigner
- Very strong political ties both domestically and internationally
- Most likely, she would be very effective at what she sets out to do, no matter if you like it or not.
- Strongly tied to Bloomberg and the NY financial markets, so well backed by money and media
- She is a woman, and really expects most women to vote for her, no matter of their political affiliation.
- She has the "super delegates" already tied up, so Sanders would need to win by an astronomical amount in the primaries, and then could still loose the party nomination
- Very strong ties to the pro-Israel lobby, so she can use this to her advantage on most candidates and political opposition.

Weakness
- She is a former Senator from NY, never a good think in middle America
- She doesn't really relate well to the average person
- Her positions tend to be very extreme, you either really agree with her, or you really disagree.  She will have a hard time appealing to moderates.

I am not really sure how significant the past issues of email servers and the Benghazi incident really are among Dem voters. A few ex Marines that I know are really upset at these incidents, but they probably didn't like her for other reasons already.

Bernie Sanders Strengths in IA
- He is not Clinton
- The financial markets hate him
- His policies are aimed straight toward people in the 17  - 30 year old range, who are a really disenfranchised group in the US.
- He is Jewish, so he does not have to worry about being attacked the the pro-Israel lobby.  Nonetheless, he keeps this to a moderate level, so his religion is not hurting him like being Mormon hurt Romney.
- Very well planned out campaign, and he is good at working as an under dog role.
- Draws from voter distrust that Clinton was the "obvious party choice".
- He is much more likely to respect the rights of the individual than Clinton, although not perfectly, at least better.

Weakness
- Age / old while guy problem with connecting with voters
- Wall street really hates him.  They hate him so much, that Bloomberg is considering to enter the Presidential race as an independent party, for the sole reason of making sure that he does not become President.
- Kind of a wild spender with very expensive ideas.  In the end, it won't matter, because the Senate and Congress are pretty conservative right now, so many of the ideas won't go through.
- Bill Clinton can still pull a crowd into a campaign, both primaries and general election.  Sanders needs to be very careful to not attack Clinton in the primary, or risk loosing the largest party fund raiser support.
- Biden wants to have a major role under Clinton in the next Presidency, either chief of staff, or VP.  If Sanders does extremely well in the primary, but not enough to win the nomination, it will be very hard to not give him the VP slot.  For that reason, Biden will be anti - Sanders.
- Obama wants to be nominated to the UN or Supreme court, and Clinton will do this in exchange for support. 

And - just to keep life exciting, the people of IA have learned to have some "fun" with this over burdening election process and the polls.

They take great pride in pulling jokes on pollsters by telling them different viewpoints and opinions, week to week, just to mess them up and see what the latest poll results show.

Right now, the election simulations show that in the Trump vs. Cruz portion in IA, the winner will be determined by how much it snows.

That is why I suggest to people that they don't get too excited about it all.

Why, oh why! Why can't we give them 120 days to bloviate and then VOTE already?

I am tired of the Trump, Clinton, Cruz, Sanders, O'Malley, Rubio, bullshite. None of them will ever do half of what they promise, and when called on it they will say they were misquoted.

 

Google is your friend.

I kinda thought so, given your overly simplistic commentaries on the candidates. I found it amusing that you wrote:

 

about Chris Christie. He does not say the right things, such as when he told someone critical of his recent handling of a storm in New Jersey, in areas previously damaged by Sandy, "What do you want me to do, go in there with a mop?"

You also wrote that nobody believes him (Christie). Now, if a guy always says the right things, who in their right mind wouldn't believe him?

 

If Obama, whose birthplace is still quite nebulous, can get elected - why should it matter where Cruz was born?

Harry, Congress is a bicameral legislature; it consists of the Senate and House of Representatives, When one says Congress, it means both Houses. There are 435 Representatives, 100 Senators and 6 non-voting members.

Trust me, they all understand how it works. That's the problem.

Of course people still don't believe he's born in the USA :'D

I'm sure he was born right next to Bruce Springsteen.

That was a deliberate poke at Harry who indicated that Cruz is "just barely a native born American".

Just checked out the Cruz thing.

Not sure why there's muddied waters. If he was entitled to US Citizenship from birth (seems he was) then it looks like that's fine, is that correct?

Yes he is as far as I can tell.

I was just poking a little fun at Cruz though, especially after the fuss over Obama.

We get a lot of women from mainland China coming to the us during their 8th month of pregnancy in order to give the kids citizenship and go on the dole.  It is kind of annoying.

The reason I say he was sort of "on the edge" is:
- He was born outside of the US
- His father was not a US citizen
- He kept his right to dual citizenship all the way up until he ran for President

His Mother's US citizenship passed the test.

I really don't care what religion someone is, nor what country they are from.  I do care about people using dual citizenship to avoid taxes and call themselves something at convenient moments.  In my mind, once a person is 18, they should make a decision on their single country citizenship.  I cannot understand how it is possible to pledge allegiance to more than one country.  This is especially true if you are a government representative.


 

Hi Fixrman,

I might have been too subtle about Christie and you missed the point:

He tries to portray to the mid west that he is pro rights of the individual, but everyone there knows that he isn't any better in this area than Clinton.  The laws in NJ reflect this.  It would not be much different than our own Gov here in CA trying to pretend that he supports individual rights and is honest - pretty similar.  Romney had the same problem, which is why we have Obama today.

There is no campaign that can make Christie a viable candidate that can pass the muster of the republican primary process and a general election. 

As far as cleaning up from after the storm and his "mop" comment, actually, it was probably more true than not.  Snow + rain + low elevations make floods, and NJ has all of that.


 

Fixrman, if you have a candidate that you feel is worth expanding on their credentials and a reason to vote for them, feel free. 

I am going to vote for Rand Paul, at least in the primary, as he is one of the few with a viable tax plan, concern about government privacy intrusion, and supports more rights of the individual than most of the others.   As a practical matter, who knows which candidates will still be on the ballot by the time the primary in CA rolls around.

 

I like Rand Paul (he's the only GOP candidate I *do* like). I may not agree with much of what he says but he is clearly intelligent, thoughtful and a person of integrity. He (as he should as a public servant) tends to put what he believes is right ahead of his personal religious beliefs (which is where the other GOP candidates tend to falter with regard to their religious beliefs and the 10th amendment/states' rights).

But I'm not sure I'd call his tax plan viable. He's published a balanced budget proposal, which is maybe what you mean, but he's proposing a flat income tax of (if I recall correctly) 10%, which is sheer insanity. It's a proposal that sits well with the Republican base (those to whom he's trying to appeal currently) but, aside from amplifying an already out of control wealth gap, would never fly during a general election. I'm sure he knows this and would drop it the instant he got the nomination. Not that he will, of course, sadly.

Here is a link to the Rand Paul tax plan.

https://randpaul.com/rand-pauls-fair-and-flat-tax-op-ed

For me, this is how it breaks down:

For my business, which is a small C Corp:
- the tax rate is 40%. 
- Compare this to what google, HP, and GE pay by playing tax games and moving production offshore - essentially 0%.
- The plan would have both my small company, and GE paying 14% - seems reasonable to me.
- 40% is such a high number, that it just isn't viable.

Personal Income
- Most workers pay 6.5% into social security (payroll tax) and the employer also pays in 6.5%.
- Since I am considered self-employed, I pay both sides (13%)
- On top of this, I pay income tax to the Federal government, plus others.  For better or worse, this number has not been all that much lately, but hopefully will rise by making more money
- If your income is $10 million in payroll / similar, the payroll tax only affects the first $100 - 200K, and people end up spending enormous effort to keep their income "appearing low" with deductions, foundations, trusts, etc.
- The Paul plan would make this "total" 14% for everyone.  Again, this is a reasonable number.

Romney got in trouble with his election over the tax issue.  He was complaining that lower income people paid very little income tax, but he would not acknowledge how much they pay in payroll tax. (he paid zero since he didn't take his income as payroll and it was defined as capital gains).

If instead of selling "hardware / software" products like I do currently, I worked for a hedge fund or stock broker, my income would be considered capital gains, so the tax rate is much lower, just because I work on wall street and sell the "right" product.  Seems unfair to tax one kind of income differently than another.  Like the saying, a dollar is a dollar.

Partnerships, LLCs, and similar structures
- More of less, these are just artificial tax constructions focused on one or two industries and complicates the tax code.
- In my simple mind, all we need are C corps and personal income categories, the rest of the versions can be eliminated.
- The accounting in a C corp is much more straight forward and "honest" than some of these strange LLC and partnership arrangements.  That is one reason I like them.

Personally, I think the ideal tax system is a retail sales tax (not VAT - which is perhaps the worst possible system), but that is really unlikely to happen.  The reason I like it, is that it removes the unfair competitive advantage that imports have over local production.

That's pretty much it.

No, thanks. There's already too much shite and stink flying around in the air. I'll let others froth at the mouth awhile; when it all settles down to four, we'll see where it all stands.

So it "suddenly" seems quite likely that Trump could get the Republican nomination. Wow! It'd be like us electing Boris for something serious. Eesh, I wish I knew where I'd like to emigrate to.