Election 2016 roundup: feat. Ben Carson rap songs

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• Fiorina and Christie believe more money is needed toward drug treatment but oppose marijuana legalization, and Jeb talked to the Huffington Post about seeing his daughter in jail during her struggles with addiction. A recent heroin epidemic has made drug addiction a salient issue, particularly in early primary state New Hampshire.
• Donald Trump’s upcoming appearance on Saturday Night Live is drawing significant protests from Latino organizations due to his immigration positions. One group is even offering a $5,000 reward to anyone in the studio who manages to call him a racist on air. The likelihood of this happening is probably minuscule given that NBC will be on alert for it, but a live show is a live show.
• Can you guess which Democratic candidate just withdrew from the race? What about if I said he’s a Harvard professor running solely on campaign finance reform and his initials are LL? Lawrence Lessig dropped out after saying the Democratic Party conspired to keep him out of the next debate. He kind of has a point, it doesn’t take a Harvard degree to see that his candidacy was mostly a stunt anyway.

Democratic candidate breakdown:

Hillary Clinton: Things have been going pretty dandy for HRC these days, some recent polls have had her up big in early primary states (though some of the polls’ methodologies have been questionable), her Benghazi testimony didn’t hurt her and she turned some in-artfully worded comments from the Sanders campaign into a rallying cry for feminists and women voters.

Bernie Sanders: In the tough position of needing to change course and start pushing against Clinton in order to draw more support after initially stating that he would not run a negative campaign. He is now saying the investigation is valid into Clinton’s emails while she was Secretary of State.

In better news for Bernie, he now has a fundraising pact with the Democratic National Committee as he moves to connect with more mainstream Democratic donors. He also filed a bill to take marijuana off the federal list of prohibited controlled substances, but would still leave states to decide on whether to legalize the drug.

Others: Martin O’Malley is now the only one left. He is probably hoping for some sort of bronze medal before he drops out.

Republican candidate breakdown:

Donald Trump: Cracks in The Donald’s campaign are beginning to show through. Ben Carson has overtaken him in a number of polls, his boasts about self-funding turned out to be about getting spurned by well-heeled donors and an inadvertently posted SNL promo had Trump calling Carson “a complete and total loser.”

This is the version that was supposed to be published:

Ben Carson: Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. The reigning Republican poll leader has been dealing with an onslaught of media scrutiny recently, including a speech where Carson claimed the Great Pyramids of Giza were constructed not for pharaohs’ tombs, but to store grain for the biblical figure Joseph.

His campaign Thursday also dropped the hottest track of the fall, combining Christian Republican rapper Aspiring Mogul lyrics with Carson speeches.

This is the first of two songs aimed at young black voters in a $150,000 ad buy on radio stations in Miami, Atlanta, Birmingham, Jackson, Memphis, Little Rock, Houston and Detroit.

Jeb Bush: Nooooooot good. “Death spiral” has become a regular phrase in stories involving Jeb, but he did try to relate to The Youths by telling them to email him (the hottest technology of The Youths).

Jeb asks kids at education event to email him at jeb@jeb.org. "Try it when you get home. I promise I'll respond to you."

— Benjy Sarlin (@BenjySarlin) November 4, 2015

This went exactly as you would expect on the Internet. But we also learned that Jeb! (or his campaign) replies within a minute.

Rand Paul: Think the most on-brand Republican candidate took a break from himself to have fun on Halloween?

Rand Paul has no chill.

Others: Gawker made a compelling case that if Jeb! tanks, Marv Bush should take his place.

Comedian Aziz Ansari impersonated Bobby Jindal on the Tonight Show.

Leading the Louisiana governor to post the most impenetrable tweet of the entire campaign season.

.@AzizAnsari great impression on @JimmyFallon. Still think your best work was Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle though. Am I right @KalPenn?

— Gov. Bobby Jindal (@BobbyJindal) November 5, 2015

Aziz was not in any of the Harold and Kumar movies. Was Bobby Jindal making a joke? Did he not know that? Why did he tag Kal Penn (Kumar in those movies)? Did he think Aziz did a bad impression and was trying to imply he did the impression because there are too few actors of Indian descent?

Penn’s response was funny for tagging Nikki Haley, the other Indian-American governor. Jindal’s follow-up provided no answers.

Quote(s) of the week:

President George H. W. Bush likes to call people “iron-ass.”

“Just iron-ass,” H.W. Bush on George W. Bush’s vice president, Dick Cheney.

“I’ve concluded that Lynne Cheney is a lot of the eminence grise here — iron-ass, tough as nails, driving,” Bush said about Dick Cheney’s wife.

“I don’t like what he did, and I think it hurt the president having his iron-ass view of everything,” he said about Donald Rumsfeld, George W. Bush’s secretary of defense (and a longtime political rival of the elder Bush).

@NickNiedz

state@dailytarheel.com