[Iv]

Trump lowered the bar so much that most people think they can do a better job than the current president, and are probably right.

What they miss is that running as a republican is very different than running as a democrat (as I guess most tech people would want to). Zuckberg would beat Trump in the democratic primaries, no question about that. But he won't be in front of Trump, he would be in front of many experiences politicians who actually have a clue about how one manages a country.

[pen2l]

> Zuckberg would beat Trump in the democratic primaries, no question about that.

So, where is this all coming from -- that Zuckerberg wants to run for president? I'll bet my house and every last penny I own, he does not want to be president, he will never run for president.

Oh, and he would never win. He's an insanely smart dude, but he hasn't got the charisma to win presidency.

(I do think that a lot of people on HN should run for some higher office in gov't, particularly tptacek and rayiner).

[aaron-lebo]

It's very possible that a lot of his current rhetoric and actions are part of PR and image control for Facebook as a brand and even a genuine desire to extend his horizons.

However, some of his actions are distinctly political.

http://people.com/politics/facebook-mark-zuckerberg-team-202...

He hired "Joel Benenson, a former top adviser and longtime pollster to President Barack Obama and the chief strategist of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign", and prior to that he hired "David Plouffe, campaign manager for Obama’s 2008 presidential run".

Your statement is exactly what I'm talking about. I'm not sure Zuckerberg is actually "insanely smart". He's similar intelligence to a lot of people on HN, but people conflate power and success with visionary ability. Maybe he is that, or maybe he's just a relatively smart guy with lots of connections, a very favorable background, and the same hangups, limitations, biases, and delusions as everyone else.

[jonny_eh]

> He's an insanely smart dude

That's why I agree with you that he wouldn't run for president.

[StevePerkins]

In all fairness, the prior President was a one-term Senator, who pretty much started running for President just 18 months into that one term.

The actual merits of Trump or Obama notwithstanding, it's been three election cycles now since without traditional career politician in the White House. I'm not sure I can fault tech billionaires for thinking that this might be a real emerging trend, rather than just a pair of consecutive flukes.

[mehwoot]

Obama was a community organiser in 1985, 22 years before the presidental election. He had already made political speeches in college previous to that (where he majored in political science). After that he was a civil rights attorney, and his first elected position was to the Illinois senate in 1996, 8 years before he was elected to the United States Senate.

That is 100% traditional career politician in almost every way, it's just he was good enough to do it faster than most people.

[StevePerkins]

From state legislator to launching an (ultimately successful!) Presidential campaign in a year-and-a-half? We'll have to agree to disagree.

Either way, if anything in U.S. politics is non-controversial... it should be the observation that three Presidential cycles in a row have been won by upstarts, whose credentials are strikingly out of place alongside their peers of the past century. That's not arguing equivalence, but ignoring all commonality is absurd.

Maybe it's attributable to being "good", or "lucky", or "racist", or some other factors of sheer coincidence. Or maybe it's a symptom of fundamental social or media shift, and signifies a new norm.

[CalChris]

George W Bush was not an upstart by any definition of the word. To be sure, he had no particular claim to talent but then his father had been President and his grandfather had been Senator.

[StevePerkins]

He's also outside the range that I just said.

As old as this might make one feel, George W. Bush's last victory was four election cycles ago.

[eropple]

And he'd been a governor.

[CalChris]

FWIW Texas is a weak governor system. Pretty much the only thing the governor does is throw the switch during executions which W did with abandon.

The Roman Republic had a concept, the New Man. W was not a New Man nor was his father. Neither were upstarts.

[0xbear]

If you feel like you can do a better job of winning an election against a Clinton and the entirety of mainstream media, you should run in 2020. Against Trump, naturally, so we confirm the hypothesis.

[komali2]

Trump was not opposed by mainstream media, he was enabled by it.

[0xbear]

It boggles the mind that some people think that utter and complete feathering and tarring of Trump in the runup to the election can even be interpreted as any kind of "enablement".

My point was, the dude is not as clueless as the media and pundits portray him, and he did accomplish the impossible more than once in his life, most recently in the 2016 election.

[ZoeZoeBee]

Trump was opposed by mainstream media, and he capitalized off it.

[sheepmullet]

> What they miss is that running as a republican is very different than running as a democrat

Yeah the republican primaries are more fair and balanced - we all saw what happened to Bernie in the democratic primaries.

[whyenot]

> we all saw what happened to Bernie in the democratic primaries

I don't know what you saw, but I saw Clinton winning 55% of the vote.

[CalChris]

I voted for Bernie in the CA primary. Hillary won the Democratic primary pretty handily. Actually, I was surprised by how well Bernie did. In November, I voted for Hillary.

[eropple]

Which, as somebody who voted for Hillary the whole way through, I really appreciate. I wish that the fact-free narratives that came up hadn't helped convince a number of other Bernie supporters not to do the sane thing.

[mhh__]

I have my doubts that Bernie would have won the primaries even if he was the one being helped. He ended up losing by 3.7e6 votes.