Jeb Bush’s White House bid may not be doomed, but he clearly isn’t winning.
Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination seems to be in trouble. To start with there’s been a bunch of negative coverage about his campaign recently, which certainly isn’t helping matters. Furthermore Bush is reshuffling his staff this week, which is usually a sign that a candidate thinks they aren’t winning.
But does all this mean that Jeb Bush is losing? For one thing it’s always hard to tell what’s going on during this “invisible primary” part of presidential campaign cycle. But it’s pretty clear that Bush isn’t running away with the nomination the way his brother was at this point in 2000 presidential cycle. In fact he’s far from being in the lead when it comes to endorsements among New Hampshire Republican power brokers.
Jonathan Bernstein argued that all this is good evidence that Bush’s strategy for the nomination just isn’t working. As he put it:
According to Byron York’s reporting in the Washington Examiner, Bush’s camp simply believed this would be 1999 all over again. Republican politicians, campaign and governing professionals, formal party officials and staff, donors and activists, and party-aligned media and interest groups, faced with a rare lack of a natural front-runner, would rapidly rally around the tried-and-trusted Bush banner. By the time of his official announcement, which is scheduled for next week, Jeb was supposed to be the consensus candidate.
I think that’s exactly right. Hillary Clinton clearly is doing a great job steam rolling her opposition, hence why two of the three declared candidates running against her the Democratic nomination aren’t even Democrats! Compare that to Bush who is facing a much bigger field that is full of strong candidates.
This doesn’t mean that Bush has necessarily lost the nomination, but it’s clear that his strategy isn’t working, at least so far. All of which means we could be in for a long drawn out nomination battle on the Republican side.
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Photo by M. Spencer Green/AP
Politicians are like dirty diapers. They need to be changed frequently and for the same reason.
I’m looking at Bush AND Clinton…