Now that we basically have our two major candidates, let’s do a retrospective look at some of the political candidates our system was able to produce, reject, or approve over this election cycle. Let’s start with Republicans.
In early 2015, the prevailing wisdom was that Hillary Clinton was going to be the Democratic nominee. She looked like a strong candidate but one with a low ceiling; she had great name recognition and experience, but also was (and is) tied to the Obama administration, especially its foreign policy. I’d argue she’s appeared even weaker over the course of the primaries than she did in 2015 as big swaths of Democrats have shown hesitation to embrace her candidacy. Given this situation, Republicans should have been able to come up with candidates that played well against Hillary; what they got is someone who (as of May 2016), isn’t very competitive. If only there had been someone else to pick from!
Wikipedia counts 17 Republican candidates. We won’t spend lots of time on all of them, but it’s worth seeing some of the candidates that were rejected. Continue reading Your Candidate Sucks: Democracy Troubles