No Rest For The Weary-- 2016 Is Right Around The Corner

Remember when quintessential Conservative Consensus Villager Mark Halperin was banned from his little perch on Morning Joe for calling President Obama "a dick" a few months ago? How long did that last? Weeks? Days? Hours?" He was on this week slurring "the left wing Freak Show" for trying to hold Marco Rubio to some kind of rational standard for a U.S. senator. Halperin, who was introduced as the Beltway's #1 most pathetic hack by Salon last year, is "the world's laziest dispenser of conventional wisdom... shallow and predictable. He’s still both fixated solely on the horse race and also uniquely bad at analyzing the horse race. Halperin spent 2011 gearing up for the presidential elections by parroting transparently lame spin from Sarah Palin and Donald Trump, insisting that Palin was really going to run for president and taking Trump’s farcical vanity “campaign” seriously as anything other than a time-wasting stunt. He still takes Mark Penn seriously as a wise campaign sage and not an amoral grifter."

Yes, the election cycle is finally over. And a new one has started, Blue America just launched our first ActBlue page for the next round, Senate2014 and we're doing our best to identify Democratic primary targets by watching carefully which Members support corrupt New Dem Joe Crowley over progressive icon Barbara Lee in next week's party battle for House Caucus Vice Chair. But Villagers like Halperin are already concerning themselves with 2016 and the big presidential race. Yesterday another couple of them, Jim Vanehei and Mike Allen declared the Republican race in full swing and identified the 18 front-runners.

Rubio, who's spending as much time in Iowa as Chuck Grassley, Bobby Jindal-- the first presidential wannabe to eviscerate Romney, and Paul Ryan, whose policies cost the Republicans 2012, have all but declared. Others looking for support are New Jersey rotund loudmouth Chris Christie-- who gets blamed by a lot of lo-info Republicans for Romney's loss (so, basically, most of their grassroots)-- Jeb Bush (time for another one yet?); Rick Santorum, for those who though Romney lost because he was too liberal; Rand Paul, for the crazies; Michele Bachmann, who almost makes Rand Paul look sane; Mike Pence, in case full-blown fascism comes back into vogue; Texas Governor Rick Perry who's well on the way to kicking performance impairing drug addiction; Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker; Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval; South Dakota Senator John Thune, for those who feel the GOP hasn't been whitebread enough; Ohio Senator Bob Portman (see John Thune); Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell, the forced vaginal ultra sound guy, you know, for the Republicans who think Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock were unfairly targeted; and some GOP ladies, New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez, New Hampshire Senator Kelly Ayotte, who already knows she's probably toast in her own state; and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley because... because... because, why the hell not? And what happened to Jim DeMint? Doesn't he want to be president? Or is he still just gunning for Miss McConnell's job as head of the Republican Senate minority?

One serious note though, all things being equal-- they never are, of course-- if the Democrats don't nominate a woman and the Republicans do, the Republicans will win the White House. Time has come today, as the immortal Chambers Brothers always said.

Plenty of attractive Republican candidates waddling around