ridiculously how Americans are agitating for Oprah as the best chance to save us from Trump...just goes to show the sad state of affairs in US. Oprah and Trump are two sides of the same coin.
If the field is fractured, a surprisingly small group of fans can push a highly disliked candidate to the top of the heap, and once that happens, the inexorable logic of the electoral system can make it difficult to reverse. (I'm thinking here of Trump, of course, but Clinton is almost as good an example.)
http://news.gallup.com/poll/203198/presidential-approval-rat...
My point is, if popularity 2+ years before the election was any guide, then we would probably be talking about how weird it is to have a third President Bush right now (I still remember headlines from 2016 about "Bush surges to 2016 GOP frontrunner"). A year later and Jeb was an embarrassing fizzle.
I have. More specifically, I've seen a bunch of posts criticizing the criticism of her potential candidacy, basically for ruining the good vibes from after her speech. This might be another filter-bubble effect, too. I know a lot of people who are a certain kind of progressive activist.
I think some sort of ranked voting system would be better.
Isn't perfect, but then again, what is?
If 20% cast a ranked vote for a more centrist or extreme 3rd party candidate you know which way you have to lean your policies within your comfort zone to do what you meant to without tanking your approval rating.
So you can end up with the winner of the election going to the candidate with the fewest votes, which has happened more than once:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...
I hate these self prophesying stories. You can hardly not respond to this nonsense, but responding to it doesn't seem to help either.
Several people in my social media circles almost immediately after the speech, before any media traction from it.
Since then, several more, often reposting/sharing/retweeting others outside my circles.
I think part of why it still has some life, is that it is so outlandish to even think about (like Trump) - its great click bait.
It's actually not uncommon even in normal times for a bried “so and so for President” thing to pop up after a particular speech or event that has large viewership in which someone has a performance which resonates with a segment of the population.
While I’m mildly concerned about it, I’d be cautious to give it much weight unless it doesn't fade in a couple of weeks.