If Presidential Candidates Were Sailors...

You won't find many cat sailing presidents like JFK <img src="<>/cool.gif" alt="cool" title="cool" height="15" width="15" />

Not sailing related but IMHO it cant get better than this anyway (Make sure you turn the sound on):
https://twitter.com/i/videos/tweet/704896063438774272

Yeah. It's ofcourse throwing a bone in the doghouse; but who the f... is this Trump-person??????

For us here in Europe, its unimaginably that this moron collects so many votes.

Can you really imagine him as acting president??????

Is it really though? We have a clown leading the polls as well (the white haired idiot).

Nice to see you folks have it all figured out,LOL

Dutch News ( if you care )

touché

Seriously though, I'm interested in the pro-animal PvdD party. Do these people eat animals or don't eat animals or do they party like animals?

Well, they started as a one-chambermember party who's only interest was defending animal interests. But now they have extended their scope to a sort of nature-party (saving the world).
That looks nice ofcourse, but they tend to make a religion of that.

Our problem here in Holland is indeed that we have so much small political partys that the actual formed government after the election often is infact a mess.
Moreover because the Representatives and the Senate mostly have different partys distribution.

So, I'm intrigued by your political system in which it always turns out to the battle between Democrats and Republicans.

Compared to my country this process in the US of the formation of a new government looks more simple and straight forward.
But IMHO, what is happening now with these two candidates, shows me an unexpected downside of this sytem.

While the US political process is technically

open

(there are other political parties such as Libertarian, Federalist, socialist, Tea-party, etc), the actual means to conduct the selection process is pretty much closed to all but the two major political parties (Republican & Democrat).

There are requirements to get on the election ballot which can be parlayed to get people promoted, but the electoral college system tends to align with one of the two parties.

If I recall my grade-school civics correctly, the electoral college actually elects the President. These

delegates

are selected to represent the voters of that particular state (although they could remain undecided or cast a vote in opposition to the popular vote)

I think there was a brush-up in the Bush/Gore presidential in 2008? election having to do with the electoral college because the popular vote was so close in numbers. There was another president earlier (Taft?) elected by the college contrary to the popular vote tabulation...

You politicos correct my fuzzy memory please....

Bah. yeah. Your choice is a really small choice of candidates and a dysfunctional government or a wide choice of candidates and a dysfunctional government.

IMHO, our biggest problem is that it takes a ton of money to get elected and then those that are elected act in favor of those that gave them money (otherwise, they don't get the money and don't get elected next time).

Freewill

of the people in the modern democracy is somewhat of an illusion - and then sometimes the freewill of the people can be pretty shocking. I'm not sure which is worse sometimes. We can depend on the people with the money to act in their own best interest...

as Tip O'Neill said... all politics is local.

Most people are only concerned with the things that affect them directly. Therefore they are focused more on the local issues (like fire protection or local security) than something more complex or futuristic (say, the collapse of social security)

We (as a broad-stroke generalization) may

hate

a particular POTUS but we respect the institution/office. Seems we also seem to like our locally elected representatives (who serve in Congress, which we somehow

hate

)... very confusing sometimes...

Back to the original question....

Clinton would most likely sail a pirate ship. You don't know where she is, she'd lie about it anyways even if she told you. Chances are she'll blow up. The logs would be deleted. Clearly. Bill would be caught banging everything on board. Everything.

Trump, I'm not sure, is there an equivilent to a clown car in the sailing world? He's floating around where ever there are cameras to pay attention to his stupidity. The boat is equipped with the loudest stereo ever. Surfers like it since even when moored it makes a wake just from the BS spewing over the speakers.

Rubio, Noah's Ark, that butt clown thinks he was sent by god anyways. He's just sailing in circles, hoping to get noticed. Counter clockwise circles for some reason.

Sanders would be on a pink Sunfish, with unicorns, rainbows, and a menorah shooting free sh!t into the air. His course is set on La La Land.

Cruz is sailing a Viking ship. When he comes over the horizon, nothing good is coming. He's from a strange land, so nothing he says even makes sense anyways. Chances are the dragging the dock as it is still tied to the boat, but he did remove his beach wheels.... Jake.

Jeb is paddling a beat up canoe, just outside of Midland Texas. There's no water, which is actually lucky since it'd sink in a matter of minutes anyways.

This is one scary election cycle. No matter who wins, we lose.

Boat equivalent of a clown car is a McGregor.

Haha! Win!

+1! Sanders on a pink sunfish and Trump on a McGregor. That's gold.

Never under-estimate your opponent......

Staying with the theme and the spin that comes with political elections... yes that is MacGregor, the rest is heavily exagerated.

After last night's debate Trump would claim he has the biggest boat.

lol! Those definitely are not 18 foot seas and it certainly isn't 50 mph breeze. 😉

Marketing at its best.

Jake, while I agree with what you stated here;

Trump is using his own money, not any donors, etc.
You knew that, right?

Our system is co corrupt- if Billary were a Repo- she would already have been tried and in jail. But because she's a Demo-
with the intelligence of our voting public- she'll probably win.
4-8 more years-
of striving for mediocrity.

And- to stay in the theme-
Billary would be sailing a Wave. (Lacks performance, very forgiving hulls, Sunfish style rigging, etc.)
Ted would be on a N20 with flight control (precise skippering)
and Donald would be on a SC22. (It's going to be great)
Marco would be on a H18magnum. (Solid, with the wings to taunt others boats from)
Bernie would be on a Sunfish (Well, it's a sailboat- and the only one everyone should have; or course- it'll be free!)

And it kills me when those from other countries think by getting their slive of the media- they act as if they no amnything about a candidate overseas.
TonyF18- would be sailing 2-up, with Bernie on his Sunfish!

Don't kill yourself Todd.

In this time of internet we, I, can read in fact all the same media which you have in the US. Not media slives.

It's only the slang:

they no amnything

which I have difficulty with to understand. And ofcourse the endless number of abbreviations like TLC, BS, etc.
(I recently detected a special site for that: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=calling+bs )

But what I do miss, is the actual physical US-environment, people talking in the street, buildings, actual US-living. So the interpretation and validation of all this US media news is tricky for me. Hence my posts.

Todd, you are an outspoken right-wing man on a forum which has probably a majority of Demos. So I guess each election time is a hard(ish) time for you.

Cheer up.

Todd, you are an outspoken right-wing man on a forum which has probably a majority of Demos. So I guess each election time is a hard(ish) time for you.

I believe you are way off about the majority. It would be interesting to know how you determined your assertion.

That's an interesting issue, you mention here Rick.

Must confess it was an assumption, based on intuition combined with reading the forumposts for almost 7 years.
You say,I'm way off, so that makes me really wonder about the actual division.

Don't dare to ask, but a poll on this forum would be interesting.
Though it would be totally wrong. (Politics, but also religion and everything regarding sex are touchy subjects).

I'm quite sure that at least regarding these last matters, there is a difference in openness between the Netherlands and the US.

Agree with Rick, this is a very right leaning forum. The demographic here is old, white and male, not much diversity, old white guys tend be very republican or whatever Trump is.

That's kinda hard to assess though, isn't it? The right tends to shout a lot louder, with a good bit more anger, and it makes them seem like there are more of them.

And Trump? Authoritarian. I've been reading a good bit of political science research on how Authoritarianism has been on the rise in the US. Historically speaking, when you bring together a series of social changes (health care, LBGT rights, etc.) and physical threats (terrorism) you see a rise in authoritarianism. The physical threat aspect can make people that don't naturally lean toward authoritarian to trend strongly in that direction. There are several examples of it in history around the world. Since the democratic party redefined itself as a party of social change back in the 70's, most of the authoritarianist shuffled toward the republican side and they're starting to define that group now that they've been ignited by the recent factors I listed above. The fear mongering trend has also given rise to that group as well. There's a bit of irony in that when Cruz and Rubio (and Fox News) do anything like fear mongering, they're actually inciting people toward an authoritarian figure like Trump.

Agree point one! Point two, I'm going sailing, this potential reality is making me anxious.