DBWI: No Predator Administration?

Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura were two actors-turned Governors around the same time. Ventura from 1999-2005 and Schwarzenegger from 2003-2009. They had also both been in the films Predator and The Running Man.

At a Minnesota campaign event, Schwarzenegger joked that if they'd formed a ticket they'd be the Running Men. A journalist proceeded to report that Arnold was pushing for a "Unity Ticket" with the third-party governor, and eventually a poll showed that a Predator Ticket would handily win an election that the GOP was otherwise expecting to lose. Ventura, opposing the two parties, was resistant, but a deal was struck in which he'd run with Arnold in exchange for the GOP supporting a slate of Independence Party candidates for House and Senate in Minnesota. When November came, the Predators didn't quite landslide but it was a good-sized win.

So let's say the constitution hadn't been amended to allow Arnold to run and somebody else (McCain?) had been nominee. Might we have seen a McCain-Lieberman unity ticket?



jesse-ventura-arnold-schwarzenegger.jpg


Arnold and Jesse at the inaugural ball​
 
Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura were two actors-turned Governors around the same time. Ventura from 1999-2005 and Schwarzenegger from 2003-2009. They had also both been in the films Predator and The Running Man.

At a Minnesota campaign event, Schwarzenegger joked that if they'd formed a ticket they'd be the Running Men. A journalist proceeded to report that Arnold was pushing for a "Unity Ticket" with the third-party governor, and eventually a poll showed that a Predator Ticket would handily win an election that the GOP was otherwise expecting to lose. Ventura, opposing the two parties, was resistant, but a deal was struck in which he'd run with Arnold in exchange for the GOP supporting a slate of Independence Party candidates for House and Senate in Minnesota. When November came, the Predators didn't quite landslide but it was a good-sized win.

So let's say the constitution hadn't been amended to allow Arnold to run and somebody else (McCain?) had been nominee. Might we have seen a McCain-Lieberman unity ticket?



jesse-ventura-arnold-schwarzenegger.jpg


Arnold and Jesse at the inaugural ball​

Arnold was a great movie star but not a Great President. Still, his two terms were a mostly welcome change of pace from George W. Bush (2001-2005), and John Kerry (2005-2009).
 
Arnold was a great movie star but not a Great President. Still, his two terms were a mostly welcome change of pace from George W. Bush (2001-2005), and John Kerry (2005-2009).

Ironically Kerry sealed his own defeat in 2008 in two ways - refusing to take on the banks and proposing what became the 28th Amendment, which is what allowed Schwarzenegger to run.
 
Ironically Kerry sealed his own defeat in 2008 in two ways - refusing to take on the banks and proposing what became the 28th Amendment, which is what allowed Schwarzenegger to run.

He probably would still have lost due to the poor economy and his inability to accomplish anything with a Republican Congress. But he would've lost more narrowly.

What are your opinions on Schwarzenegger's handling of the economic crisis?
 
He probably would still have lost due to the poor economy and his inability to accomplish anything with a Republican Congress. But he would've lost more narrowly.

What are your opinions on Schwarzenegger's handling of the economic crisis?

He had his good points and his bad points. He wisely made all the higher-ups at the bailed-out banks walk away from their jobs, exchanging that for immunity from prosecution. But at the same time, he had a chance to pass a real jobs bill and he screwed it up. That right there was the reason Jon Stewart got elected in 2016.
 
He had his good points and his bad points. He wisely made all the higher-ups at the bailed-out banks walk away from their jobs, exchanging that for immunity from prosecution. But at the same time, he had a chance to pass a real jobs bill and he screwed it up. That right there was the reason Jon Stewart got elected in 2016.


I think the lack of a jobs bill is a bit overstated. Maybe it explained how rough the 2010 midterms were for him, but he still won 2012 handily and the economy had already picked up by 2016.

Plus it isn't as if there weren't stimulus and relief measures:
  1. Schwarzenegger took the lead on the Wyden-Bennett Healthy Americans Act, which pretty much guaranteed salary increases over the next couple of years for 70% of Americans who no longer were receiving insurance from their employer and increased the tax deduction for health insurance. With the introduction of price transparency, insurance rates for most people went down for most people.
  2. The establishment of the National Permanent Fund in 2010 meant that come 2011 checks were going out to every household, paid for via oil and gas companies, the carbon tariff, domestic carbon tax, and domestic resource extraction and grazing fees. Not that the energy companies minded the new taxes considering Arnie offset it reducing the corporate rate and telling the EPA and Interior Departments to help out with shifting to fracking ASAP (which helped a lot with the blue collar-types). Although the coal miners hated him for it, given how fracking killed coal. But hey, natural gas is cheaper and sooo much cleaner than coal.

Senator Stewart's campaign was kind of all over the place. Well his 2013 NJ Special election probably had to do with jobs. Stewart was basically known for four things in the Senate: Promoting Blue Collar Work, taking care of Veterans, taking care of 9/11 first responders, and supporting teachers. So when we saw Senators Stewart and Brown opposed TPP and TTIP, called for infrastructure and rural broadband, raising the minimum wage to $15, expanding the EITC, bringing back the WPA, lowering the retirement age for blue collar workers, etc it had a certain appeal compared to the more academic Treasury Secretary and Solicitor General Tom Campbell. It really stung when Stewart and Brown talked to the miners who were put out of work because of the Citizen's Dividend - which Campbell of course was the face of.

The map was kind of weird, given how Campbell picked a former Democrat Governor turned HHS Secretary for his running mate. I think Stewart might have picked up TN alongside the other interior south states if not for him. The election on the whole was paper-thin.
 
How and when did the Constitution get amended?

It was a Republican proposal taken up by Kerry, hoping it would help him politically in 2008. Ultimately it backfired. Though I think pretty much any half way competent Republican would've won in 2008 regardless.
 
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