Five Ring Circus Or Five Rings of Hell?

Nate Silver lays out potential Republican Presidential candidates amongst the various ideological interest groups within the party:

Geez, that's an ugly group.  I don't really know anything about Susana Martinez, other than that she is the governor of New Mexico, but it scares me that of this group, Romney, Bush and Kasich are probably the least objectionable to me (but that is still very objectionable).  As far as I'm concerned, you can throw out the Tea Party and Christian Conservative circles and our nation would be a better place.  The only good thing I can say about Rand Paul is that he would be most likely to oppose fucking up foreign countries, torture and ridiculously wasteful and pointless domestic surveillance.  Christie is a corrupt, thuggish jackass, Ryan isn't running, and Rubio and Jindal are useless.  As I said, Jeb, Willard and the only governor I currently have are probably the best candidates on this chart. 

Unfortunately, I don't think we'll have much of a better choice on the other side.  I dread a Clinton candidacy, and while I enjoy Joe Biden as Vice President, I'm not really sure I'd like him in charge of everything.  Jim Webb is intriguing, but is somewhat of a bull in a china shop.  I think Martin O'Malley might not be too bad, but I don't think there is any way he'll be able to take down Hillary.  Bernie Sanders is entertaining, but doesn't stand a chance of winning the nomination, and would make George McGovern's 1972 campaign look extremely successful in the heartland.  Elizabeth Warren says a lot of the right things about Wall Street and Main Street, but I don't think she really has the heart to do the fundraising that would be necessary to mount a challenge to the Clinton juggernaut, and the attacks she'd face from Wall Street and the Chamber of Commerce would be ridiculously ugly out here in flyover land.

The options for 2016 remind me that I really do like President Obama, and despite some of his missteps, right now, I'd vote for him over any of the potential 2016 candidates mentioned above.  That may not be the most ringing endorsement, but it does illustrate how I feel about the current President and his potential successors.  I'm sure I'll have more to say about the candidates in the next two years, and I may come to like one or more of them, but right now, I think there's a real possibility I'll be voting third-party or not voting at all, especially if the choices are Bush vs. Clinton or Romney vs. Clinton.