This just in from investors.com’s Andrew Malcolm: in case you’ve been wondering why it took so long, the 2016 Presidential campaign has begun:
We were going to post a fictitious tweet today, poking fun at America’s modern penchant for perpetual presidential campaigns. It would have said something facetious like, with only 1,454 days left until the 2016 presidential election, Paul Ryan will soon make his first trip of the new cycle to meet Iowa voters.
After all, it has been a whole six days since the 2012 presidential race ended.
But then we read this exciting piece of news: Florida Sen. Marco Rubio really is going to Iowa this week for a fundraiser.
No joke.
Go to the link to read the rest.
The Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz also notes that the race is already on, even thought the horses aren’t officially on the track yet:
Presidential politics never really takes a break these days, so the circling contenders and their gurus are already focused on 2016. For Republicans, the search for a nominee who can break their two-election losing streak will be fueled by a broader ideological war for the soul of the party. For Democrats, the question in the wake of Barack Obama’s resounding reelection is far simpler: will Hillary Clinton run, and can anyone derail her if she does?
Let’s start with the GOP. In the ideological warfare about to consume the party, the right wing clearly has the upper hand. Conservatives, their resentment heightened by Mitt Romney’s last-minute lurch to the middle, will argue that both Romney and John McCain had too much moderate baggage to offer voters a stark contrast with Obama’s liberalism. They will have considerable advantages in disseminating this argument: the money, mojo, and media machine that power the party are embedded on the right, as are the grassroots activists who keep knocking off more centrist lawmakers.
That will pose a huge challenge for any center-right candidates.
Kurtz looks at various candidates and then says the obvious about one of the party’s most colorful, bigger-than-life political figures, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie:
Another moderate aspirant, Chris Christie, seemed to start his 2016 run at the Tampa convention, where his keynote speech was mainly about himself. His hard-charging persona can be compelling (when he doesn’t veer into bullying), an antidote to all those cautious, poll-tested candidates. But the governor has had his setbacks in New Jersey, and his full-fledged embrace of Obama after Hurricane Sandy may especially alienate serious partisans. “The perception that he was an October surprise that many Republicans didn’t enjoy could hurt him,” says a party warhorse. Another pointed to Christie’s weight, saying, “You can’t be that out of shape in the modern era.”
But wait! Aren’t fat-heads out of shape, too?
There’s no shortage of those in either party.
And what about political figures over the years that were health-weight challenge including President Grover Cleveland?. The quote from the GOPer in Kurtz’s piece confirms it: the demonization of perceived threats to partisans who favor one candidate or another has now begun, and demonization means another political race is all but officially on.
Kurtz looks at the possible Dem candidates, then concludes:
For all the talk of a new Democratic majority—by 2016, Obama’s party will have held the White House for 16 of 24 years—the pendulum can swing in unexpected ways. Voters rarely give one party three consecutive terms in the executive mansion. What’s more, second-term presidencies often run out of gas, and the Democrats could be viewed as having exhausted their agenda. If that happens, then four years from now we could be talking about a Republican ascendancy—and an ideological war among Democrats for the soul of their party.
And that’s the point:
1. Our political campaigns don’t really ever cease.
2. Partisans who dream of their party running the government or dominating the political culture for decades are usually sorely disappointed. A political maven of one era (Karl Rove during the Bush years) is a living, breathing political punch line and perceived political failure in another era (Karl Rove on election night).
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.