This is what Americans *don't* want in their president

boing
21

Here in closed primary land, it is a well known tactic. Register as the opposite of your true leanings, then in the primary election,vote for the person least likely to win the general direction.

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22

I’ve always found the term “non-partisan” interesting in terms of active politicians who are members of political parties. They are /by definition/ partisan. A non-partisan would be either independent or not running at all.

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23

How’s that working out down there?

Isn’t everyone elected there whoever ends up on the ballot with an ® next to their name anyway?

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24

The cynical and paranoid side of me wonders if doing just that this election will change the political slant of my email spam.

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25

LOLOL and/or HaHaHaHa

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26

Huh. No mention of “Atheist”, which I always understood to be the #1 thing Americans would refuse to vote for in a presidential race.

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27

Atheists? You mean the group that Pew says is the second most-hated demo in the US just slightly less reviled than rapists?

I don’t see an atheist being elected president until such a time as all or most candidates are atheists and the sane, thinking, religious people don’t have a reasonable choice besides an atheist, because the christians running would be the kind of people who promise to kickoff armageddon by inciting a nuclear war.

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28

The crazies’ roles are to pull the dialog far right (or left). That makes the not-quite-crazies seem like reasonable people we’d might want to have in office. I think this performance is well organized and rehearsed by both major parties hoping we’ll buy a ticket to their show.

29

There are a lot of other categories that weren’t on there, such as Muslim, non-religious, Mormon, Jewish, no military experience, lawyer, no business experience, white, etc., which would also get some percentage of respondents being uncomfortable with them. (And of course the results aren’t broken out by party, so it’s hard to tell how many of the people who’d be uncomfortable with a Tea Party leader are Democrats, Independents/Other, or Republicans. Probably most of the people uncomfortable with Tea Party leaders aren’t Republican.)

30

Obviously they considered those qualities so unlikely for a potential candidate that they didn’t bother to poll for that - along with “is an axe murderer,” “has the head of a dog,” “can fly,” etc.

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31

I’d rather not have either one, but since we’re not going to get a Libertarian or a Green as President, and Clinton’s going to be the Democratic candidate This Time For Sure, I’m more concerned about having no Bushes.

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32

Who are these crazies pulling the Dems to the far left?

I guess we’ll see what Sanders manages to achieve. But it didn’t seem like Kuchinich managed anything, and I can’t think of any other recent candidates who’d count as left.

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33

Not sure how serious a guide to election day this is. First term senators are listed as the fourth least-popular, but voters have handed them the presidency many times. Against an old senator they always win the election. People would agree inexperience is bad, but then they want a fresh face anyway.

34

So “Leader In The Tea Party” is even less desirable than “no college degree” ?

So the President can be stupid, but not that stupid.

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35

This is kind of meaningless if you don’t control for political affiliation.
Democrats would HATE a leader in the tea party.
Republicans would dislike a gay candidate.

However, a leader in the tea party would have a decent chance of doing well in the Republican primary and a gay candidate could do very well in the Democratic primary. When it comes to the general election, this chart is going to matter very little.

36

Especially when it comes to corporate lobby groups such as ALEC.

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37

Wanting them to have experience is, presumably, counteracted by having actual experience of them.

38

This must truly be a turning point in American history if “Evangelical Christian” is really a bigger dealbreaker than “homosexual.”

It’s been fun watching all the GOP candidates squirm on the issue of marriage equality over the last few weeks. For the most part, everyone in the running has seen the writing on the wall and realizes that full legal recognition for same-sex unions is not only inevitable but likely imminent.

Depending on how the current case before the Supreme Court unfolds the issue could be settled once and for all in a matter of weeks. Anyone with with enough political savvy to win elected office realizes that being on the wrong side of this issue in 2015 is going to haunt their legacy as much as being on the wrong side of interracial marriage in 1967.

However, GOP candidates also know that many of their key supporters and donors are so far behind the times that it’s not safe to publicly embrace basic civil rights yet. So we have people like Ted Cruz making hilariously wishy-washy statements along the lines of “I’d go to a gay wedding if I was invited, but I wouldn’t enjoy it.”

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39

That’s what chgoliz meant by “win”: what Americans MOST don’t want in their president.

You can’t have a political career in this country without publicly believing in magic.

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40

Which is precisely the problem with Clinton. The fact that the outcome is predictable indicates the Democratic nomination process is fundamentally broken. We’re not talking about dog-catcher here. This is for the presidency. The Democrats should be able to field more than one candidate, but people don’t want to step on Clinton’s toes for a version of realpolitik that leaves me completely happy with the decision I made years ago to never become a registered member of any political party, and utterly disgusted with what passes for open and fair elections. It’s not even Clinton’s fault, the irony of it being that the Citizen’s United decision that supposedly freed her enemies now powers her campaign.

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