A Candidate Guide, Circa 2016

With the first-in-the-nation caucuses only days away, Iowa is once again in the national political spotlight.  It’s time for my quadrennial assessment of the remaining candidates (here's the 2012 version), in alphabetical order by party:

DEMOCRATS

Hillary Clinton
The good: She’s easily the most credentialed to be president.  The bad: There’s something unlikable about her quest for political power, even after reinventing herself as a senator and cabinet member.

Martin O’Malley
The former governor of Maryland seems smart and likable enough, but he definitely picked the wrong cycle to run for president.

Bernie Sanders
Every four years, it seems there’s a grandfatherly-looking candidate with an unusual message who sparks an interest with younger voters.  The last time, it was Republican-Libertarian Ron Paul.  This time, it’s Democratic-Socialist Bernie Sanders.

REPUBLICANS

Jeb Bush
All that PAC money, all that name legacy, and he’s seems to be getting no traction.  Maybe we have had enough of the Bush family in the White House.  He just doesn’t stand out in this field.

Chris Christie
Not the best bedside manner, but that’s a net good, it makes him look less Washington-insider.  He won’t do well in Iowa, but he could do well elsewhere.  Also: Must lose more weight, America doesn't elect unhealthy-looking presidents.

Ted Cruz
Take a ring-wing whack-job who’s disliked by his own party, and add support from Iowa’s own resident whack-job congressman, Steve King.  This is how you identify the Republicans’ potential Iowa caucus winner.  (Has it really been 2+ years since I wrote this?)

John Kasich
Probably the Republican candidate most appealing to independents, someone who seems to understand that governing is a compromise.  Unfortunately, that means it will be tough for him to win.

Rand Paul
Younger folks like him, but his mostly libertarian message isn't getting the traction it did when his father, Ron, ran in 2012.  Interestingly, he can partly thank Bernie Sanders for that.

Marco Rubio
Youth, intelligence, ethnicity, and likability are in his favor.  He could win the nomination, but if he goes too far to the right to do it (a la Mitt Romney), he’ll have a hard time being elected president.

Donald Trump
He’s the Frankenstein’s monster created by the Tea-Party Republicans, and now they can’t control him.  I still predict he’ll eventually ruin his reputation(?) along with the Republicans’ chances of winning.

Ben Carson, Carly Fiorina, Jim Gilmore, Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum
Thanks for visiting Iowa!  Now go home, and stop trying to make a career out of running for president.

Everything's Coming Up Roses

I traveled to Los Angeles over the New Year's holiday weekend, for a bucket list trip to attend the Rose Bowl and Tournament of Roses Parade in Pasadena.  With the Iowa Hawkeyes playing (Standford) in the bowl game, I figured I wouldn't have a better chance to go, along with 30,000 or so other Iowans (some of whom I knew and bumped into there).

My observations, in chronological order:

* The Santa Monica Pier, and surrounding city and beach, was a great place for us Midwestern tourists to gather.  Seeing the sunset over a beach on New Year's Eve isn't normal, but I could get used to it.

* Pasadena is a tree-filled, skyscraper-less suburb that could pass for a thousand other college towns anywhere in the America.  (Cal-Tech is at its center.)

* The parade exceeded my expectations.  The route is 5.5 miles long, so it isn't that hard to find a spot to watch as long as you aren't near the start.  Standing among the locals around the parade mid-point was perfect.  The colors, the music, the floats, the celebrities -- it was all very cool, and the two hours went by very fast.

* If you go to the parade, and then the game, there isn't a lot of transition time between the two.  Driving or shuttling to the game was almost impossible with the traffic, so most parade attendees made the 2+ miles walk.  Couple that with extremely tight security at the stadium gates, and it takes a while to get to your seat.

* The Rose Bowl Stadium experience was second-to-none.  Not sure there is any other 100,000-seat stadium in the world in such a park-like setting.  Factor in that I'd seen it on TV dozens of times on New Year's Day, but always in the cold and dark of an Iowa winter, when it looked like it was on another planet.  The game outcome may have been awful for Iowa football fans, but at least the Stanford band was entertaining.

* So many freeways, so many cars in LA.  And this was a holiday weekend.  Let's just say that Google maps and traffic came in very handy.

More Brutal Vikings (Not The Nordic Kind)

We interrupt our planned blog entry to bring you breaking news.....

As background, six years ago, I posted this account of what it's like to be a Minnesota Vikings football fan, and listed my Top 5 most brutal Vikings losses of all-time.  I now can add a new one that I'll label as 'tied for fifth':

T-5.  2016 Wild-Card playoff game at home versus the Seattle Seahawks.  In the third-coldest game at kickoff in NFL history, in a game the Vikings were not favored to win (mostly based on a big regular-season loss at home to the same team a month earlier), Minnesota trails 10-9 with under 30 seconds to go.  However, they've made a last minute drive deep into Seattle territory, and line up for a likely game-winning field goal of just 27 yards.  Their fine placekicker, Blair Walsh, had already kicked three other field goals in the difficult conditions, so as long as the snap and hold were good, this was going to be a big win.....and he shanked the kick way left.

There are those that would put this higher on my list (or theirs), but given the stakes of a Wild Card game versus a championship game, given they weren't favored to win anyway, and given that they'd still have to win two more playoff games (at least one and probably both on the road), I don't currently rate it higher.  If this young Vikings team goes no farther in the next couple of years, I could see it rising in my rankings.

Either way, brutal.