2016 Election Starts Now: Iowa State Fair time

Aug 16, 2015 19:15

The 2016 Presidential Primaries  have reached one of its milestones- the Iowa State Fair.

The State Fair is where some of the best campaign moments are made.  It is indeed, the place where I ran into Mike Huckabee leaving the men's room.

It is where Fred Thompson took a drubbing for walking the Fair in his Gucci Loafers.  It is where Obama played bumper cars with his daughter, and Romney manned the grill.

So if you are looking for those moments, you got them.

Hillary wasn't going to take any chances by standing on the Public Forum SThat of course, was where Romney tried to face down hecklers and said Corporations were people.

It's not been a good week for Hillary who seems to be playing LBJ to Bernie Sanders's Eugene McCarthy.  For starters, she made that snapchat joke, which while funny, was also sort of damning.  Clinton seems to be on a downward spiral with no hope.  Some polls were even reporting Sanders was now beating here, and news cycles were dominated by rumors of Joe Biden, or even Al Gore throwing their hat in the ring.

So while Hillary with pork chop and fresh squeezed lemonade was everywhere on Sunday morning, and she celebrated the weekend with a high profile endorsement from long time ex-Senator Tom Harkin; it was still a rough week.

I was looking forward to the Soapbox of course, where unknowns get up and talk in front of a crowd of maybe twelve.  I only saw one name on the schedule that I did not recognize.  With so many name candidates this year, maybe there wasn't room for the random kooks and Quixotic nuts.  It was Mark Everson who was W Bush's IRS Commissioner who was the person I had never heard of.

In a normal year, the headline would have been Jeb Bush.

Jeb had a lot to answer for.  He did get on the soapbox, but that only meant he was open to having answer questions about his brother's decision to go war into Iraq.  More controversial of course was Jeb's decision to temporarily abandon his Paleo diet to have a  fried Snickers.

Still, this campaign isn't so much about you know, candidates and issues and those kind of things, as much as it is about Donald Trump.

Which is why all of the above is second fiddle to the real story-  Donald Trump giving free helicopter rides to kids.

Telling one kid "I'm Batman", the Iowa State Fair had told Trump he would not be allowed to give copter rides, he managed to do so anyway.

Trump managed to skip the soapbox (why should he do the soapbox when everyone is chasing him) but gained points for taking pictures with kids.  Trump hit the fair favorites- Bacon wrappred ribs and red velvet funnel cake.  Besides the Des Moines Register sponsors the soapbox, and Trump is at 'war' with them.

So Trump won the weekend.  But why not?  I like free helicopter rides.  It's something Montgomery Burns or Lex Luthor would do, and it's something that Donald Trump would do.

Why not?  We have talked about the Reality showsims of politics and why shouldn't we drive this to the logical conclusion.  This time four years ago, Tim Pawlenty was getting in front of everyone with an economic plan, and you see where that got him.

Enjoy the bread and circuses.

2016 election starts now

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