Tagged: Wayne Messam

Upcoming Democratic Party debates, who’s in (and a recap of my predictions)

The field for the next debate this Thursday on Sept 12th is baked. Following is my original prediction with the actual results color coded – names in green made the next debates, red did not, red strikethrough didn’t make the cut and dropped out of the running.

  1. Folks who will move on to the next round and totally deserve it (i.e. no duh)
    • Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Julian Castro, Kamala Harris, Marianne Williamson
  2. Folks that will move on but really don’t need to be there (i.e. wasted spot)
    • Andrew Yang, Cory Booker
  3. Folks that deserve to move on but probably won’t (i.e. damn shame)
    • Amy Klobuchar, John Hickenlooper, John Delaney, Steve Bullock, Michael Bennet
  4. Folks on the cusp (i.e. hmmmmm)
    • Pete Buttigieg, Jay Inslee, Tim Ryan, Kirsten Gillibrand
  5. Folks who won’t make it, and who won’t be missed (i.e. good riddance!)
    • Bill de Blasio, Beto O’Rourke, Tulsi Gabbard

Frankly, I am pretty surprised this thing largely went the way I thought it would. The biggest surprised to me is that Beto made the cut. And while I am surprised that Marianne Williamson didn’t make it, I am also a little heartened. Seeing sanity prevail and logically cutting people with no prior governing experience and crackpot ideas is wonderful. She added to the conversation, so glad she was there, but it is her time.

There are 3 other intrepid souls running not listed above. Joe Sestak and Tom Steyer took advantage of everyone being distracted by summer vacations to do a stealth entrance to the race. Because that is the best way to run a presidential campaign, on stealth. The third, of course, is my man Wayne Messam. I think at this point he is investing nothing in the race so there is really no cost to staying in or dropping out.

Democratic Debate 2 (or rounds 3 and 4, depending on how you are doing your math) recap

2 debates in and it is still damn early in this process. The best way I have heard this described is that the fist primary election (the Iowa caucus) is after the Superbowl and the NFL pre-season hasn’t even started. And the convention is almost 6 months after Iowa!

However, I tried to make the point earlier, but it well made here as well… we just don’t know how this is going to play out…

Regarding John Delaney, Steve Bullock, John Hickenlooper, and some others who are still a far cry from double digits in polls, remember this: In January 1972, South Dakota Senator George McGovern’s support was around 3 percent, which means he was within the margin of error of zero. Six months later he clinched the nomination.

This election is one of the most consequential I have ever taken part in and it is important to stay engaged in the process.

TL;DR – Looking at the results of 20 people brawling (debating??) for 6 hours, I have bucketized the debate candidates into 5 categories:

  1. Folks who will move on to the next round and totally deserve it (i.e. no duh)
    • Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Joe Biden, Julian Castro, Kamala Harris, Marianne Williamson

  2. Folks that will move on but really don’t need to be there (i.e. wasted spot)
    • Andrew Yang, Cory Booker

  3. Folks that deserve to move on but probably won’t (i.e. damn shame)
    • Amy Klobuchar, John Hickenlooper, John Delaney, Steve Bullock, Michael Bennet

  4. Folks on the cusp (i.e. hmmmmm)
    • Pete Buttigieg, Jay Inslee, Tim Ryan, Kirsten Gillibrand

  5. Folks who won’t make it, and who won’t be missed (i.e. good riddance!)
    • Bill de Blasio, Beto O’Rourke, Tulsi Gabbard

Anyways, some thoughts…
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Presidential candidate 404 pages, round 3 of 3

Continued from rounds 1 and 2 of my review of the 404 pages for the candidates for president (you know, the aspects of this race that really matter)… here is the rest of the bunch.

Marianne Williamson
https://www.marianne2020.com/hateistheanswer
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I am Spartacus… I mean Wayne Messam

All of this makes me wonder… since Wayne Messam clearly hasn’t spent a bit of effort getting his campaign for president website indexed properly in Google, is it possible for me to stuff my site with content and keywords and get listed higher on the search result for people looking for him?

I’ll be honest, my knowledge of SEO is basic. I have never spent any more effort than utilizing the rudimentary tools that WordPress provides. As little as this is, it is still clearly more than what Wayne Messam is utilizing, so being the internet renegade that I am, I am going to give it a try.

The search for Wayne Messam’s campaign for president website

Pop quiz: Can anyone identify the black bald candidate for president who isn’t Cory Booker? If you can, you are likely a resident of Miramar, FL, the town which Wayne Messam is mayor of (not to be confused with Miramar Naval Air Station, the setting for the movie Top Gun in Southern California).

Quiz #2:

Can you name the other 2 current Mayors running for president?

Pete Buttigieg, South Bend, IN
Bill de Blasio, New York, NY

How about the 3 former mayors?

Cory Booker, former mayor of Newark
Julián Castro, former mayor of San Antonio
John Hickenlooper, former mayor of Denver

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As I discussed in the previous post, while Wayne Messam does have a presence on the internet (via various social media and news outlets), he has invested very little in search engine optimization (SEO) leaving his actual campaign website almost completely unfindable.

Googling “Wayne Messam“, “Wayne Messam for President“, “Wayne Messam for President website” all did not turn up his campaign website. It did turn up his “Wayne Messam 2020 presidential campaign” Wikipedia page, which did (finally!) have a link to his official website, WayneForAmerica.com… whiiich is a broken link.
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Presidential candidate 404 pages, round 2 of 3 – folks who don’t have much of a chance

Continuing from my previous post, I pulled the 404 pages for 4 more of the Democratic nominees. This lot is challenged – they are polling so poorly and raised so little money that they didn’t make the first debate. However, “down” does not mean “out.” For those of you who have already written off (say) Steve Bullock, remember that history has shown us that there are MANY examples of upsets that could never have been predicted this early on…

  • Despite facing much higher profile adversaries than himself, getting stomped in Iowa then having his affair with Gennifer Flowers exposed, Bill Clinton he still went on to win in 1992
    • As an aside, just like Stormy Daniels is such a great pornstar name, Gennifer Flower is definitely a great “mistress name”
  • In 2008 Barack Obama stumbled in his early debate and didn’t seem capable of knocking Hillary Clinton off her status as the presumptive nominee and yet still ended up winning
  • And really… 3 years ago, Donald Trump riding down his gold escalator was the biggest joke of all – to think that he could knock off Jeb Bush was craziness at the time

Don’t get me wrong, these guys’ chances aren’t good, but it’s not zero. In any case, roughly in order their likeliness (IMHO), here are the 404 pages for the 4 candidates least likely to get the nomination:

Steve Bullock Continue reading →

Democratic field, a visualization redux

It seems like the Democratic field is baked in and with the debates looming, figured I’d update this view from about 4 months back.