Chad’s Morning Brief: Jeb Bush is Tired of the Tone of the 2016 Election and Less Than 100 Days Before Iowa Votes

Things haven't been going the way Jeb Bush wanted and he isn't very happy about it. The Chad Hasty Show airs 8:30-11am on 790AM KFYO.

Bush Could Be Doing Other Things

Things aren't going well for Jeb Bush. His polling numbers continue to sink lower, reporters are asking him if he is going to drop out, and he just had to cut staff salaries. It's not pretty for Team Bush right now.

In South Carolina, Bush let loose on the current state of the Republican race according to the New York Times.

Mr. Bush made the remarks at a town hall in South Carolina, where, according to a report by CNN, he seemed fired up about taking on the person who has overshadowed him during the campaign, Donald J. Trump, who is leading most Republican polls so far.

“If this election is about how we’re going to fight to get nothing done,” Mr. Bush said, then “I don’t want any part of it. I don’t want to be elected president to sit around and see gridlock just become so dominant that people literally are in decline in their lives. That is not my motivation.”

He added, “I’ve got a lot of really cool things I could do other than sit around, being miserable, listening to people demonize me and me feeling compelled to demonize them. That is a joke. Elect Trump if you want that.”

The rise of Mr. Trump in the Republican contest has confounded Mr. Bush, his family, and his supporters, who had built a battleship-sized campaign operation that was theoretically geared toward a general election.

Bush should probably be careful with this. Not many people are clamoring for Jeb to be the nominee. However, there are a lot of supporters who are vocal about Donald Trump, Ben Carson, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz.

It should surprise no one that Bush is confounded about Trump. Bush is part of the Washington establishment that isn't hearing... or caring about what voters want. Voters are tired of the same old politics and politicians. I think the same can be said for Democrats as well which is why you see huge crowds attending rallies for Bernie Sanders.

At this point in the race Trump, Carson, Rubio, and Cruz all have a better chance at the GOP nomination than Bush, and he knows it.

Less Than 100 Days

Remember how EVERYONE in the media has been saying that the election is far away? As the Des Moines Register points out, Iowa is now less than 100 days away.

Iowa is just 100 days from stepping up to the plate to take the first crack at voting for the next leader of the free world.
There are plenty of opportunities for shake-ups before Feb. 1. In the space of one week, each party will have marquee Iowa events to showcase its candidates: the Democrats’ Jefferson-Jackson Dinner, which proved to be the turning point for Barack Obama eight years ago, is this weekend; the GOP’s “Growth and Opportunity Party” is next weekend.

The biggest reality check is how much can change in 100 days. A hundred days ago, almost universal Democratic preoccupation focused on Hillary Clinton as the eventual nominee. Two “oh, please” candidates — liberal fist-shaker Bernie Sanders and mad-dog conservative Donald Trump — were on the rise, but their staying power was very much in doubt.

On the Republican side, neighboring Gov. Scott Walker was a brand new candidate and the front-runner in Iowa. Big-state Gov. Rick Perry was still confident that his old-school strategy of Pizza Ranch meet-and-greets would carry him across the finish line in Iowa. The Jeb Bush campaign, second in national polling after Trump, was still considered an unstoppable national juggernaut.

In the space of four days this week, Democrats lost three choices for president: Vice President Joe Biden opted against running, and former Virginia U.S. Sen. Jim Webb and former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee both bowed out.

To forecast what will happen in the next 100 days, look at who has the most millions in the campaign bank account, who polling shows has room to grow, who’s reeling in the most influential endorsements and who’s the subject of conventional wisdom chatter, politics watchers say.

Or, “if you really want to know who is going to win, take a look at prediction markets,” said Thomas Rietz, a finance professor at the University of Iowa and organizer of the Iowa Electronic Markets.

One market, Pivit, was predicting that Ben Carson would win the GOP Iowa caucuses long before the news broke late this week that the retired doctor had cracked the Trump ceiling and burst into front-runner status. On Friday, Pivit increased Carson’s odds of winning the caucuses to 40 percent, followed by Ted Cruz (19 percent), Marco Rubio (16 percent) and Trump (15 percent).

Iowa is most famous for winnowing the field, not for picking the eventual winner.

As of Friday, the real-money exchange PredictWise thinks Rubio has the best probability of snagging the GOP nomination (32 percent), followed by Bush (21 percent) and Trump (18 percent). On the Democratic side, Clinton is favored to win the nomination (89 percent to Sanders’ 11 percent chance).

Less than 100 days before things start getting really real for these candidates. Can Trump hold on? Will it be a Rubio-Cruz race to the finish? Those questions will begin to be answered soon.