Yeah, as of now I am thinking I will vote for the person who will be the best for America symbolically since all of them will fuck us over one way or another. Out of the realistic candidates, I think Obama has that title for more than one reason.

New Iowa polls: Obama, Huckabee tied or leading
The Quad-City Times has a new poll of Iowa showing Democrat Barack Obama and Republican Mike Huckabee leading their respective fields by 9 percentage points each.

Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Edwards were tied for second place behind Obama at 24% each. Mitt Romney was in second place with 22% on the Republican side and no one else was in double digits.

Another new Iowa poll by the online political newsletter Hotline shows Huckabee up 13 points over Romney, 36% to 23%, and Obama and Clinton tied at 27% .

What happens if she loses? What looked like a shoo-in, now looks like a campaign ready to implode.

P.S. - Anyone else notice that up until a few weeks ago every pic of Hillary had her smiling or looking real confident - ie: favorable image. Lately they all seem to look really bad. Did the liberal media jump off her bandwagon or are they just hedging their bets?

Not a chance, I would not count her out. The Clitons have a long history of dirty tricks in their bag.

History repeatedly suggests nothing of this presidential campaign is relevant until after the Super Bowl. Giuliani and Hilary are front runners. That traditionally is irrelevant after January which is why current presidential campaign discussions are extraneous.

More relevant is Mitchell’s report on baseball – lessons that apply well beyond baseball – lesson more appropriate than current presidential contenders.

This is so depressing.
For all that I detest the "leader of the free world" line, the US presidency is still the most important election on Earth. And here we are, about a year out from the poll, not waxing enthusiastic about how wonderful the candidates are and how hard it will be to choose which of these great people should be president, but instead, sifting through the chaff trying to find one that doesn't seem like a total loser. Inexperience is bad. Too much experience is bad. Idealism is bad. Lack of ideals is bad. Firm opinions are bad. Having no opinions is bad.

Darn it, America. 300 million people and this is the best crop of potential leaders you can scrape up? The last candidate who I thought was worthy of the post was Gore, and that was probably because I didn't look closely enough to see his shortcomings.

unfortunately the best and brightest won't go anywhere near the realm of politics. those that won't sell their souls for a vote won't make it past the state office level. national politics is a theater reserved for only the most self-impressed attention whores now.

I hate to tell you but for many of us this has been the situation for the last 3 election cycles (to include this one). Who is the best of the bad choices is becoming a common theme. I think the media frenzy and the power of the internet has contributed to the current environment.

Does Bush's unpopularity have anything to do with it? What was the presidential race like after Nixon?

the race was like this before bush was even elected.

I think it started with the Bush Sr.s reelection. ITs been a downhill ride ever since.

Strange that Clinton got us out of a loser's war in Somalia before it became "Mission Accomplished", conducted a complete solution to the Balkan without a "Mission Accomplished" fiasco by getting Milosevic to negotiate himself out of a job, solve the Haiti situation without war, solve the N Korean problem (a solution that George Jr destroyed by using wacko rationalisms), moved the Oslo Accords to its closest solution (to only have the Norwegian foreign minister accurately predict that George Jr would subvert the Oslo Accords), turned a massive debt into a surplus (to only have the scumbag president destroy both a surplus and created massive debts), empowered the computer industry by forcing open the last mile (1996 Federal Communication Act that finally forced the telco to provide a 1981 technology - DSL, et al), did not threaten war over non-events such as a silly spy plane, addressing gays in the military issue (only to discover so many of us are that wacko extremist as to hate gays), took massive risk to stop a nuclear war between Pakistan and India that (we now know) was only hours from happening, stopped terrorist attacks on LAX, Toronto, Egypt, Jordan, and NYC Times Square by empowering the little people to find and stop those possible and known attacks, and ... well at what point do we ignore all those accomplishments because 3000 people did not die in so many falling buildings.

The scumbag president was all but told those attacks were coming. When Clinton got the same vague warnings, he reacted - did not sit in a child's chair for 15 minutes doing nothing as Americans were dying.

The presidency went downhill when wacko extremist got the president they wanted. Only two presidents in 100 years deserve every four letter curse word. Nixon and George Jr.

Dear god – taking to the one who encourages this wacko president – even every living president was critical of the “Mission Accomplished” war. At what point does it finally become obvious what constitutes a bad president?

The presidency went radically downhill when extremists took power – extremists who especially and still support one who does as religious extremists recommend. George Jr even creates a war by only consulting Cheney and god. He would even advocate attacking Iran when he knew six months previously that Iran had no nuclear weapons program. We should call that only equal to any other president? Where must one go to find a president so bad? Nixon is the only other ‘as bad’ president. None - even Gerald Ford - come that close.

well that was a nice dissertation on your opinion of Bush, but the rest of us were talking about the candidates available to us, not what an idiot GWB is - We all figured that one out long ago. Try adding something to the current conversation

Since, IMHO, the major problem is that candidates are "bought", maybe some wealth redistribution would be good. If the middle class had more wealth, we could buy candidates who would then do things that would benefit us. As it is, the wealthy folks buy the candidates who then do things that benefit them.

This thread was about the current candidates, but then it took a jog into past elections. You posted that "it's been a downhill ride" since Bush Sr. tw did a good job pointing out specific successes of the Clinton presidency to counter your opinion. However, he misses the point slightly, because I think the conversation was about the elections of the past, not the presidents of the past.

I remember the race between Bush, Ross Perot, and Clinton. It was the most interesting and exciting presidential race I can recall. A lot of people were very excited by Ross Perot. The democrats were more excited about Clinton than I've ever seen them, and the republicans were happy with Bush. All three men were strong candidates. It was nothing like this election of duds.

Ross Perot ended up taking votes away from Bush Sr., so Clinton would win. This understandably pissed off the Right, but they would get their payback later, when Nader took votes from Gore, so Bush Jr. would win. Karma or something.

Anyway, the candidates today don't really appeal to me. I haven't liked a candidate since Clinton ran against Dole. I voted for Gore in the next election, but only because I agreed more closely with his politics and hated Bush, not because I thought Gore was a strong leader. I'll probably end up doing the same thing in this election. I'm leaning towards Obama, but that's mostly because I'm leaning away from everyone else.

I was not endorsing any president at all. Certainly not Bush Sr who only got in because of Reagan. I was specifically talking candidates, not presidents. Perhaps that was not clearly articulated.