For three years I have dedicated my life to combating ‘the stupid’, by which I mean, for example, the asinine pronouncements of people like Clifford May, who famously declared that everyone in Washington DC knew that Valerie Wilson was employed by the CIA. This stuff isn’t really ‘stupid’, it’s deadly serious and it is perpetrated by people that know full well that what they are saying is not true.
And as I sat down each day to combat ‘the stupid’ (alway supplied copiously by both the media and the administration) I was always able to look around and find allies on the left of me and allies on the right. But now things are different. Now it is the Clintons and their allies that are perpetrating ‘the stupid’. And this is a whole new ball of wax. Former allies (including former front-pagers at this blog) have gone off the deep end and betrayed everything I thought we held in common, which is a dedication to the truth.
And, frankly, I find the whole atmosphere somewhat exhausting. It’s an emotional drain. It’s a disappointment. There is even a small element of disillusionment and a tinge of embarrassment. No one likes to be associated with intellectually dishonest people. Yet, here we are. And it is a matter of leadership.
The Clintons are leading their allies and advocates down the wrong path. It’s a path to oblivion. It’s not so much about policy, although that forms a part. It’s a matter of credibility. Once you lose your credibility among those that have standards in such things, there is no getting it back. And no place is more unforgiving than the Blogosphere. Once you embark on a path of making intellectually dishonest arguments you will almost immediately find it necessary to start censoring your comment section, banning people, and closing threads. And every pro-Clinton blog began doing that no later than the Potomac primaries. That was the point where the Clintons’ case became intellectually dishonest.
At this point, there isn’t much left to say to the Clintons and their advocates other than to reiterate that they are being dishonest. And at some point one tires of making the same arguments over and over again to a group of people that simply refuse to play the game according to rules as the Blogosphere has always understood the rules.
I have my ideological reasons for opposing the Clintons and they haven’t changed. But we are no longer having an ideological debate. We’re now having the same kind of idiotic debate that we waged against the people that supported Scooter Libby during l’ffaire Plame. We tell the truth and the other side makes shit up, and we try to get the media to be a fair referee.
I actually enjoyed going into combat each day against the advocates of the outing of Valerie Wilson, but I do not enjoy this. I am tired of pointing out that my former friends are liars. Very tired.
And whatever noble reasons that some people might have for supporting Clinton, the Clintons have turned their advocates into liars.
BRAVO Booman, the reason I come to your place is because of the honesty….THANKS!
Good for you Booman.
Don’t tell me you’re letting their psychological warfare get to you?
They know they’re outnumbered. It’s asymmetric warfare, and that allows them to do the most outrageous and wrong things they otherwise couldn’t justify to themselves.
They’re using its own reality-basedness against the rest of the blogosphere.
I wouldn’t take it all so seriously if I were you. It’ll be over soon and we’ll be refocused on a common goal, and maybe then people will be able to forgive and forget some of the terrible things that have been said on both sides. At least I hope so.
I don’t think many expected this level of dishonesty and hostility coming from the Clinton camp – including her online supporters.
No kidding. I knew it would be for us, and I knew it would be nasty, but even I’ve been astonished at the depths to which they’ve sunk. Some things I thought would be off-limits, even for a Clinton.
Notion disabused.
I’d suggest you consider a second possibility.
These people were never your friends to begin with.
There are people who sit in the Democratic party and espouse ostensibly democratic principles whose agenda is simply to control the party, not support it.
I believe strongly that there are always forces seeking to control us one way or another at every level – by controlling what we’re taught in school, by controlling what we read in the papers, by controlling publishing houses and book reviewers, and of course, controlling the mainstream media.
Why wouldn’t these people take the next step, and attempt to control the blogosphere, or at least influential enclaves in it?
To me, this election is a gift. It is one of those moments where we can clearly see who our true allies are. There’s nothing worse than thinking you can count on someone only to find they’re just looking for a chance to stab you in the back and take your place.
I know it’s disheartening, BooMan. That’s how I felt when I first started discussing the Kennedy assassination online. I thought I had lots of friends and allies in pursuit of the truth. But then I saw ostensible conspiracists being as dishonest as the lone nutters and I felt very alone. But that was a good period too, in that I finally found who was really looking for the truth, and who was looking to lead us anywhere but.
I lost two friends in this campaign, people whose company and companionship I had enjoyed. But when they started lying about Obama, and contorting what I thought were shared principles to defend Clinton, that’s when I made a clean break. I have some wonderful people in my life and way too little time to spend with them. I suddenly realized I didn’t want to spend one more minute with people who could defend such dishonesty. I too seek only truth. I have less and less patience for people who want to travel any other path.
I’m so grateful you are here. So often I feel angry about something I read in the media or online, but then I come here and see you’ve already articulated my anger, the arguments I would have made, and I relax, knowing that the bad information is already being countered. That’s so valuable, Booman.
Take a break from some of this. It’s a holiday weekend, after all. And there is so much to talk about. There’s this hilarious cartoon I saw, not online, of a man hunched over his computer and his wife calling him to bed. “One more minute,” the man says. “There’s something WRONG on the Internet!”
We all know the feeling. But there will ALWAYS be something wrong on the Internet.
I spent five years combatting disinformation online about the assassinations of the sixties. But there will always be more of the bad guys than the good guys, because they know what’s at stake and will dedicate enormous resources to protect that. It’s important to get your breaks from this now and then. Change the subject. Talk about what you want and stop letting them put you in rebuttal mode. Advance the conversation in directions that interest YOU. Otherwise you’ll burn out, and we’ll all lose a mighty ally here.
Go out and have a beer somewhere away from all computers. 😉 Regenerate for a bit.
I didn’t want to go here, but I think I had better.
These people were never your friends to begin with.
This is certainly a possibility for some of the people BooMan is talking about. But in one case, I seriously doubt it.
Why? Because I knew, personally, one of the people he’s talking about. As in used to eat lunch with them, ride the bus with them, have conversations with them in meatspace rather than online. I wouldn’t say I knew them well, but I knew them better than perhaps 99% of the people I know from purely online activities.
Now granted this was back when Bill Clinton was President, and many things can change in the course of a few years. I know I have. The person I knew back then was cordial, funny even, a pleasure to talk to, genuinely decent people. I don’t remember us talking politics back then, but back then there didn’t seem to be the need. I was politically apathetic, and I had no idea what my friend thought about politics. We lost contact well before the 2000 elections.
Looking back, I don’t suppose I should be surprised that my friend ended up in Camp Clinton. What surprises me is that this friend of mine should so vitrolic toward Obama. I don’t think that would ever have happened back in the day.
That’s the real problem I have with this long campaign. It has torn apart friendships, created bitterness within the party and caused rifts that could take a very long time to heal. As I’ve said before, cuts and bruises heal, broken bones knit, but a word spoken can never be unspoken, and in spite of the old dictum about sticks and stones, words can be the cruelest weapons of all, because they wounds they inflict take so long to heal. And that’s all we really have here on the Tubes, is words.
“Words, words… they’re all we have to go on.”
…And it’s just not quite enough to foster a sense of basic decency and compassion, which is why the internets get as ugly as a California freeway at rush hour – we’re all in our own private zones and no one else seems quite as human as we are.
What you’re describing is worse, though – extreme political affiliations breaking down real-life friendships. I’m sorry for you, Booman, and everyone else who’s had that happen.
(Right now, I am having an easier time with my conservative Christian relatives in Texas than with staunch HRC supporters. What is wrong in this picture?)
Well, I don’t doubt that a lot of Clinton supporters–frontpagers anyway–are engaging on some level in willfully lying, although in certain cases perhaps lying first to themselves then spreading it outward (is that what we call “intellectual dishonesty?”), but I have to believe that they just have the blinders on and follow the big picture that Hillary and her coterie are a such pains to draw for them.
I’m a big fan of Bartcop. But these days his page is in a state of seething cognitive dissonance as he clings stubbornly to the notion that Hillary has been the victim of the greatest media smear campaign of all time, while Obama has been sitting pretty as their anointed darling. To him, the Rev Wright business was just a minor roadbump compared to what Clinton has had to deal with, and the other stuff like Bittergate apparently never happened.
He, and thousands or hnudreds of thousands like him, are enraged at the perceived unfairness against Hillary, and for my part, I think it’s a 100% honest misperception. I don’t understand it, but I do realize that there are aspects of this campaign such as sexism in the media that haven’t hit my radar very strongly (I don’t live in America so I don’t get the same media saturation). I read Hillary’s remarks since the beginning about being the victim of a “boy’s club” and I tended to discard it as whining, as by comparison I never once heard Obama complain about the hurdles he’s had to jump.
But whatever. I don’t know about Armando and Jerome and some of the other prominent bloggers in the Clinton camp, I really don’t know if they’re lying or not since for one thing I don’t know them, but I can’t point to anyone I know who still supports Hillary and accuse them of lying. Of ignoring certain facts, yes, but as a matter of discounting them as irrelevant, not out of malice or intent to deceive.
My two bits.
I feel there’s a bit of both. Surely many of them understand what the party’s rules were re Michigan and Florida. They are trying to defend something indefensible.
I can see on other points they have a strong belief that, while apparently ungrounded in reality, is nonetheless nonfalsifiable. Was Clinton truly the victim of discrimination? I say not much, they say a ton. It’s possible they’re right and I’m wrong.
But when they try to defend her attempt to use Michigan’s election results, when Obama wasn’t on the ballot at the request of the early states, and when all the other candidates respected that request and withdrew their names? That’s just indefensible. They aren’t THAT stupid. That’s where the dishonesty comes in.
“He, and thousands or hnudreds of thousands like him, are enraged at the perceived unfairness against Hillary, and for my part, I think it’s a 100% honest misperception.”
Yes — it consists of such elements as not seeing the big picture, not placing thingscin proportion, forefronting people and things as SYMBOLS for things that are important instead of what they concretely are, interpreting unfamiliar situations and events through stock narratives that are ideologically kosher, etc., not being able to step back and see how ridiculously unlikely the narrative you are telling yourself really is. All kinds of ways of not perceiving what is actually going on. Obviously muchmore could be said about this, and should be said, because mass consciousness and mass manipulation and demagoguery was one of the leading characteristics of the 20th century, and many of our friends seem tnot to have emerged from the ’90s.
The sociology of knowledge, the dynamics of knowledge — the Internet has introduced dramatic changes in all this, but many people abuse it (not necessarily knowlingly) rather than make use of its tremendous powers for truth.
Hate to sound paranoid, but behind it all there are people and forces knowlingly directing this farce. Hillary herself is probably more of a stooge than a leader. The fact that she so readily joined up with Doug Cole’s “Family” at the very height of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” suggests an astonishing degree of underlying naivete and suggestibility in the area of the spirit.
The Family” works through small mind-control cells, and Hillary belongs to one. This is known, people just don’t know where to “put” that knowledge, it is too weird for them to process.
Here’s the dope. See what y’all think.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/4/6/12121/96107/86/491127
Yes, but I’d suggest that if “The Family” is functioning as some kind of unit of mind control, and let’s face it, Taylor Marsh functions as some kind of mind control of ignorant minds, I’d suggest that Rev. Cole isn’t the big mind behind this.
Probably not, but he is a very important link from that “big mind” into the soft spiritual underbelly of the American psyche.
But you have raised an interesting question. Just who is “Mr. Big”? Not that I expect a precise answer, or even that there really is a specific “Mr. Big.” Undoubtedly it is a circle, or more likely several loosely linked as well as competing circles, with nevertheless similar agendas.
These agendas necessarily include a mental/spiritual component that tries to obtain adherents.
Another such group, even though of a rather different kind, was/is the masonic/fascist P2 group in Italy headed by Licio Gelli.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_Due
Of course, those guys were doing political control through terror. “Strategy of tension.” But what they have in common is, they too are functioning as covert political instruments of what we might call, for want of a better term, “Mr. Big.”
Correction: The Kos diary linked above doesNOT say that Hillary is a member of a cell, but rather, that she is active in The Family (also known as “The FEllowship”) and is known to have had close relationships with people (particularly women) who WERE members of cells.
Offering help to diarist Dogemperor, who admittedly finds it hard to be concise, commenter Biscobosco summarizes what the diarist said about “cell churches” as follows:
A “cell church” is a group of six to twelve people plus a “shepherd” or “leader” (who is quite frequently in a “cell” of leaders with a “shepherd” over them, and so on and so on till you get to the leader of the entire group).
It’s a setup like AmWay (essentially a religious pyramid scheme); there is also, typically, a lot of “big brotherism” (define big brotherism here) that goes on within cells and among shepherds to their “flock”.
The tactic (based on a history I’ve done ) appears to have been invented so that “cuckoo congregations”(define this term here) could be set up in other churches to target other members for conversion – with the goal of everyone eventually being in a “cell”.
The cell church tactic has been adapted to infiltrating political groups. It’s also become very popular in neopentecostal dominionist megachurches, and in Southern Baptist churches — as a management tool for growing megachurches very quickly and keeping an “iron fist” of control over memberships that can stretch into the tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands, in the case of Yoido Full Gospel in South Korea).
If you go here:
http://www.spitfirelist.com/Books/undergrnd.pdf
you’ll find a book called THE NAZIS GO UNDERGROUND by Curt Reiss, written in 1944. It talks about Nazi plans for them to survive after they lose the war (they knew long before 1944 that they were going to lose, they just wanted to lose to the guys they were doing business with before the war (during the war if you count Prescott and the Dulleses) and not the Russians, who’d line them up against the wall and shoot them.
Anyway, I point you to the book because the first chapter goes into the Nazis and cells, and how they actually lifted this organizing tactic from the Bolsheviks back in the day.
Interesting background. You can see the same deliberate organizational setups in the rightie whities who blow up federal buildings. Someone says that The Family uses this? Funny, I don’t remember the old ladies at my old United Methodist congregations organizing in a cellular manner. They organized the old-fashioned way, with pyrex dishes and that green jello and marshmallow stuff.
It’s also an opportunity for these Clinton bloggers to make money or become more well known.
I wonder if Armando, for instance, is getting far more attention now that he is in the pro-Hillary camp. I get the impression he just wandered into the pro-Clinton camp by the fact that he happened to be blogging for Jeralyn when the campaign heated up. All the hits and notoriety would make one not want to give up the pro-Clinton blogging. It might even be such a suble influence (Armando being a hero to baby boomer suburban women) that Armando doesn’t even recognize that he craves the fame and attention and therefore is putting his finger on the pro-Hillary side of the scale.
I used to be an avid reader of TalkLeft, but the site has changed almost overnight. The I.Q. of the average reader at TalkLeft dropped a good 25 points. Like Armando said, it stopped being a blog about issues and races and simply become a meeting ground for conservative Democrats to complain to the “Left” about how they were screwing the party. I would have never picked TalkLeft to be that place a year ago. But that’s the case.
Oops. Like Booman said, not Armando said.
When I was younger there was a coffee shop down on the Jersey Shore, maybe Long Branch, called, damn, I can’t remember the name now, but I think the name came from that Dylan song that goes “don’t follow leaders, watch the parking meters.” Oh yeah, they called it “The Inkwell.” “Get sick, get well, hangin’ ’round the inkwell.” Anyway, it’s the leaders part that rang a bell.
What in Armando’s history makes Armando’s opinion on anything more important than my dog’s opinion?
Now I haven’t been following the blogosphere roster as closely as others, but “Armando” who used to be over at dkos is now “Big Tent Democrat” over at TalkLeft, is that right? And from what I gathered before I was excommunicated/banned from TalkLeft BTD is supposed to be pro-Obama, heh heh heh.
Now I don’t know anything about Armando’s background, but he’s in the perfect place to be a propaganda asset for someone or something.
Someone said when trying to figure out who’s doing the dirty work for, say, an “agency,” they tend to fall into one of three categories. There’s the agent, who’s officially employed (like, say, Larry Johnson used to be). Then there’s the asset. Someone who isn’t on the payroll, but has similar interests with the agency. Like say an oil exec in South America or an arms dealer or a drug smuggler. Or someone writing opinion pieces for WaPo or the NYT. And then there are assholes.
This “agent/asset/asshole” principle applies to all sorts of situations. Even blogs.
you’re assuming an absolute reality where facts can be determined to some kind of standard free of interpretation. With supporters of each candidate having mostly withdrawn to their own separate communities and pulled up the drawbridges, it underlines how consensual our reality and our “facts” really are as they diverge wholesale in this situation.
Those communities are pressing a nonstop alternate version of reality where Obama gave Hillary the finger, played 99 Problems at a rally, wants to privatize Social Security, isn’t promising universal health care, has no policy positions he hasn’t cribbed off Hillary, took bribes from Rezko, is a gaffe-prone empty suit, and so on. Basically, they’re brainwashing themselves with a whole intricate and self-reinforcing alternate narrative. It’s fascinating to have watched it evolve actually.
That isn’t to say some of these people haven’t pissed me off to an extreme at some points. I also think there are some very sophisticated provocateurs among the commenters who’ve seeded their communities with memes that keep resentments boiling and emotions high. They’re constantly reinforcing the skew put on the “facts” in order to splinter the liberal blogosphere as much as possible and as permanently as possible. If I fault the people you’re condemning for anything, it’s for not stamping that out when they know better – letting it fester and do what may be permanent damage because it aids their short-term candidate goals.
It’d be willfully blind to ingore the necessity of having team players out there seeding the blogs with memes and talking points, but let’s remember the effect Clinton herself is having by seeding these points from on high. Well-meaning followers take up imo a far greater percentage of those disseminating these memes across the blogs because they are, as you say, holed up in their insular communities and brainwashing themselves–and accusing us of the same thing.
But it’s the resentments and nasty emotions that you mention that alarm me more than anything. I can dig Al Giordano’s take on it as being a Chicken Little Obama supporter but I think we’re really looking at the possibility of permanent damage now. What’s passed up to this point I think will fade away, ie, the experience meme, the elitist image, even the Rev Wright will be impervious to resurrection attempts in the GE.
But what Clinton is doing in FL and MI right now goes well beyond any of these prior attacks, goes beyond poisoning the well even. If she gets people there (and her supporters elsewhere) hooked on the idea that Obama and the DNC are trying to disenfranchise voters, steal their votes ala Florida 2000; if that idea takes hold, I don’t see any way we roll back the damage that will cause among democratic voters in November–there just isn’t the time to get the job done.
That is what bothers me the most about Clinton’s campaign at this point. She is NOT going to be the nominee, and I can’t see any incentive for her to be VP either unless she figures she and Bill and steamroll Obama when they take office and continually undermine and shift his policies–and they’d no doubt try to, which is the main reason why Obama would be nuts to put her on the ticket. And they know he’s too smart for that, hell if I can see it then I’m sure everyone in both campaigns can too–so what does that leave?
I’m back to Plan 2012 as the most likely explanation. This is scorched-earth taken to levels we couldn’t dream of a month ago. Well, it never occurred to me, anyway.
I caught a provocateur over at Salon a few weeks ago. It was an honor to bag that one. It disappeared, undoubtedly to be replaced as another “angry Hillary supporter” in nanoseconds.
The bottom line is that H. Clinton is intentionally trying to destroy the Democratic Party’s chances of having a President.
And you have to understand why.
In politics in America since, say, 1963, you have two kinds of Presidents: the Republicans who violate laws and the meek Democrats who follow them in office, don’t ask the questions, don’t do the right investigations and are eventually replaced by more criminal Republicans.
Nixon’s removal was pretty much, as one right-winger (Colodny, I think) wrote, a silent coup, probably because he was trying to gather up too much personal power at the expense of those who really hold the power. He needed to be removed. But his removal and the public anger produced solidly Democratic majorities in Congress, and those majorities actually did some investigating of “rogue agencies” for a few years.
Then it was back to the samo samo for 12 years. Things began boiling up again, so arose the need for a Democrat who could be counted on not to investigate Iran-contra, the drug war, the S&L scam, BCCI and dozens of other criminal liabilities. (When there is the need for a meek Dem, it is not hard to put in a third-party candidate to drain off much-needed votes.) That same Democrat (Bill) signed off on all the major legislation wanted by the ruling elite (trade bills, deregulation of banking, megamergers of the media, etc.) while providing hours of national entertainment with his wandering penis.
Which begat eight years of the most horrendous President in history, the psychotic, torturous, murdering bastard who now resides in the White House.
But he and his party are so hated now and recognized as being so bad for the average citizen that it appears that there is no way to win this year’s race. What to do, what to do? That black guy in the lead even says he’ll investigate to see if crimes were committed. Can’t have that. What to do, what to do?
Perhaps there is some way to divide the party… What to do, what to do?
Very powerful analysis of the current situation and I love the phrase “with his wandering penis.” Bill Clinton comes out looking like some clever clown who turns the office of the presidency into a national farce and kind of seriously impairs the chance of another democrat succeeding him.
I agree completely with your position and If I was Obama, I would be extra cautious now and in the future.
blogosphere was one of Rove’s assignements I believe. Thus concern trolls were born.
Thanks for keeping at it, booman. I can understand why it’s exhausting and demoralizing.
Most of the people I know personally who are Hillary supporters are middle-aged to older women who do not follow politics closely, but are excited to see a woman candidate. They are also clear that they do not want to see McCain elected in the Fall. Given the opportunity, I think they can adjust to supporting Obama in the general. I don’t think Hillary or her blogging spin-meisters are doing my friends any favors by dragging out this race.
Even Ezra Klein, who has been pretty neutral up til now, now says:
How would you handle it if Republicans decided to join Booman Tribune en masse, dominating diaries with their talking points and drowning out your existing membership?
As a trusted user, I would rate these people as mega trolls and they would be removed, at least temporarily, from the pond. The Boo Man has a cadre of dedicated posters who think generally the same way he does. They can provide valuable assistance in the task of policing the blog allowing the Boo Man more time to the complex and time consuming tasks of maintaining the Tribune.
We would obliterate them with fact-based argumentation – it’s fairly easy when the facts are on your side. Some of us actually like a good fight…
They could drown you out easily.
That’s what’s happening at MyDD.
I notice Booman himself had no better answer than the two of you.
I’m tired too.
yes, but we need you and BooMan to keep on going….with all your good works.
As much as I love reading the BooMan Tribune, it is truly unique, and I check it several times a day, you must take care of yourself first and foremost. Everything else must take a back seat to your health.
Take a hiatus. Do something totally relaxing, away from computers. Go to the beach. Take a lo-o-o-o-ng hike in the woods w/ Rex or Spike or whatever your dog’s name is. Mountain climb. All I’m obviously recommending is some physical release to re-charge the ol’ batteries.
Hiking or camping is great because it removes so much of the day to day noise and complexity. Only have to focus on the basics.
As Lisa says, Boo Man, take a break over the coming holiday. Get away from the blog and the blogosphere, do something different, try not to worry about things.
We need you fresh and sharp, and, above all, we need you present. Beware of burnout! This condition comes more swiftly when friends and associates go the opposite way and condemn where they once praised us. It happens, people get confused and go off the narrow path of truth and honor. Sometimes, self seeking is involved; other times they just get mixed up.
The answer is to hunker down, to persist in the great cause of progressism, to keep using logic and critical thinking. HRC is showing her truth self, her incredible desire to win at almost any cost, her willingness to persist in falsehood and propaganda.
I don’t think the electorate will forget about her obvious deceptions re Tuzla, her original stand on NAFTA, her deplorable position on MI and FLA. The effect, I am sure will be cumulative and devastating to both her reputation and her future political career.
The wheels of justice grind slowly but they grind exceedingly fine. I think HRC is going to learn this old judicial principle first hand, but, in typical fashion she will blame somebody else. When it comes to whine, she is quite skilled.
So buck up old friend, you are doing fine. You have lost some friends and colleagues but you have gained many new comrades. They (we) will always guard your back and the cause, the cause of truth and justice is sublime.
Heartbreak hotel sits sadly on a street called Betrayal.
OMG yes!!! I am so tired of this all and now we have people here in Texas starting a campaign(lame) to run someone for state party chair at the convention which will only cause more grief this campaign season. I am at the point I want to just say the hell with it all and walk away. That is one reason I have been concentrating on the senate and congressional races and GLBT issues.
relax, and imagine yourself hanging out somewhere that looks like this:
or maybe this island:
Somewhere far, far away from American politics… 😉
is the best suggestion in this thread. 🙂
I’m full of good suggestions today. 🙂
I heartily agree with the sentiments and the pictures. We just got back two days ago from Ravello on the Amalfi Coast. Two weeks with no internet and just let your body recover.
As to Hillary, she and her supporters are going through the tough phase of a marital break-up. They look back and see what could have been, and how easy it would have been last fall to avoid the mistakes that have brought her to this pass, and they they want to do it all over again. That’s what’s driving the FL and MI stuff. Of course, the past can’t be re-run. It’s over for her. She was so close, and she muffed it. The fact that she muffed it says alot about her potential presidency. She doesn’t have the right stuff.
Ooh, I’d love to see your pictures. Two weeks with no internet sounds like heaven right now.
And like any marital breakup, I just wish the Hillary campaign would stop fanning the flames of anger with her supporters…
aside: this is a fatigue – the constant talk of a joint ticket.
CNN reporting Clinton and Obama in talks for her to be VP
following this, Team of Rivals
and this from The Field I can’t imagine Obama would invalidate the entire rationale of his candidacy and stoop to bribery or blackmail.
AND if they’re in talks, why make it public? Think of the outrage of rejection – whatever the outcome, either for Clinton or for Obama’s supporters.
Dumb, dumb all around.
Let’s hope that’s just a leak from the Clinton camp. I think that’s her secondary purpose for staying in. If she can’t bully her way to the top, does anyone doubt that she wouldn’t jump at the chance of making history as the first woman VP?
It would be a disastrous move for Obama as she would drag him to defeat. We would be playing right into the Rush’s hands as the right wingers know their only hope for McCain is to have HRC on the ticket so they can capitalize on all the old and new contempt that people feel for the Clintons.
It doesn’t make sense to smear your opponent so that he’ll put you on the ticket. No, I suspect that this recurring nightmare about Clinton forcing herself onto the ticket is just more steaming propaganda out of her camp (Stephanopulos was floating this turd around yesterday) to make her supporters angrier in this news cycle.
And when asked, from Obama through Pelosi down, people say, “Oh sure, she’ll make a great Veep,” but they don’t want her anywhere near a camera during the fall campaign. All those hard-working white Americans who voted against the black man would be voting against her, and bringing along lots of others who hate her and her politics.
I think the VP talk is a calculated campaign by the Clintons. It has the effect of legitimizing her continued campaign – “see? There’s a reason for her to keep going. She can still be on the ticket!” Of course, she doesn’t want to be the VP any more than Obama wants her as his VP. She just wants to hold onto her soapbox to vomit trash onto the audience a few seconds longer. And of course, the media faithfully reports everything the Clintons tell them to report, exactly as the Clintons tell them to report it.
Obama’s at a distinct disadvantage here. As an underdog anti-establishment candidate, he has to follow the rules if he wants to be seen as legitimate. He’s won, but he loses that victory if he starts breaking rules to fight Clinton. Clinton, on the other hand, has nothing left to lose. She’s lost the primary, her reputation is in tatters, her only remaining political allies are the fast-fading bastions of old power and money. Like the action movie villain who sees that his evil plan has failed, she’s willing to do absolutely anything to deny Obama a victory.
And the fact that Clinton’s willing to do that should tell you everything you need to know about anyone who still supports her, or claims she was the better candidate. They’re not our friends. They’re not our allies. They’re not progressives. They’re another expression of the authoritarian cancer.
Top 10:
Hillary Clinton-Why it went so wrong: – The Swamp
No: 2, “The original sin for Hillary was the sin of pride,” said Ross Baker, a politics professor at Rutgers University.
Still is, pride will not let her depart…but pride goeth before the fall
this time around. She is trying to position herself for the next go at it by being the “inevitable candidate” again by being VP. It will be a major disappointment to have her on the ticket. In fact it would be very hard to vote for Barak with her on the ticket. But this is about more than either of them. This is about the future of our country. I do believe strongly that most folks don’t even take into consideration the Supreme Court being at risk here. We cannot as Americans stand for another neocon/dimmwit in the White House.
the stupid???????????
the stupid is on both sides.
i only have time this morning for one example
your diary Obamas New Coalition from 4/18
you claim Obama offers us universal health care….i asked then as i ask now where did he ever offer that?
when you say “we tell the truth and the other side makes shit up” i shake my head….i cant stand either one of these candidates or the way they ran their campaign and i think both sides make shit up….maybe hating both sides gives me more perspective.
i would love to see a woman be president….just not this woman…i would love to see an african american man be president , just not this african american man…..if i put aside all the crap from both sides id pick her….she is just smarter in my opinion….that doesnt make me stupid….im not a low information voter….im not a racist….im not going to withold my vote for president if i dont get my way…the supreme court is at stake….i want to win in november……most democrats want to win in november….most democrats have tuned all the crazies out by now and are going about their business waiting for the dust to settle….its only the fringy bloggies who are suffering here…everyone else is trying to figure out how to put gas in the tank AND get enough beer for the holiday weekend.
The truth is that all three Dems have offered a version of “kinda universal healthcare.” Unless the campaign devolves into gunplay at some point either Obama or Clinton will be back in the Senate come January, helping with whatever healthcare plan the Dems offer.
Whoever is sitting in what chair, there will be a problem. Our national economic situation will probably reveal itself as being far worse than it even looks now, which is as good a reason as any for Republicans to fight it (our governor here in California, for all his talk about healthcare for everyone, is proposing huge cuts into children’s medical programs). There are problems with every program that includes private healthcare corporations–to mandate, i.e., force anyone to buy a product from a private company, where you have no say as a stockholder, makes it taxation without representation. The simplest solution is a government-run single-payer, which is cheaper and more efficient and avoids this constitutional mess.
I’d love to see a woman as President. Boxer, not Feinstein. Not even Olympia Snowe.
Anna,
that is SO true.
In any case, take it easy, Booman, maybe you or someone else be designated to leave us a few open threads over the weekend and leave the hard analysis (which I love but must be incredibly exhausting) for next week.
A walk in the woods, a day at the beach, some free time with a friend or loved one wandering the neighborhood. Something cheap and distracting.
You often write about realignment.
After you sweep up the middle of the room the dirt in the corners becomes apparent.
Leave the room for a while: it will still be there when you return.
(We’re going to the beach.)
After you sweep up the middle of the room the dirt in the corners becomes apparent.
That is so on point and wise!
Not much to say except … hang in there because it will be over soon.
I know that doesn’t help with the former friends part.
Your jousting against stupidity is much appreciated. That said, don’t let it kill you. Take a break, get some sleep, have a few beers, go to the beach. Whatever works, just step away from the keyboard for a bit.
This can be looked at as a positive result of Clinton having stayed in the race: her provoking those among us who are not truth-orientated into exposing themselves.
Here is a New Yorker piece to cheer you up, in case you have not seen it yet. (In my opinion, it treats the Republicans too gently, but if the author did not, he would not have been able to get the interviews he did.)
The Fall of Conservatism
I knew from the outset that this primary would reveal a lot of things, but it still doesn’t make that process any easier. Divining who your real allies and friends are isn’t difficult; it’s the knowledge you gain after the dust settles. And it can be hurtful. I know the feeling. Still…
The behavior of some people during this too-long primary has frankly, been rather unsurprising. Sometimes, unsettling.
But don’t focus on that–focus on the fact that you’ve likely met other people who are passionate and smart and from whom you’ve learned something.
I am far more hopeful than I’ve been even a year ago, when I was feeling rather burned out about politics (more locally, but getting rolled by this stupid admin didn’t help) and was only too happy to throw myself into work. And I’ve had to check my own assumptions. But mostly, I know that I’ve never experienced anything like this primary election before in my life, and I’m going to try to soak it all in. I’ve visited new places and met great folks along the way.
Most of all, dear Booman, is to be kind to yourself. I know you know this, but we all need to be reminded of it.
And I’m gonna remind you of something else: You are a damn good man. You are intelligent, insightful, passionate. You are fair. You do not tolerate any -isms on your blog.
Honestly, you could cash out and not give a damn about anything, but you choose not to.
So. Get out of that chair and do something fun. Go run. Walk. Eat something decadent. Get your drink on. Put up a whole bunch of Open Threads if need be. We’ll understand.
Go take care of yourself. :<)
I’m headed here as soon as the polls close in Montana and South Dakota.
outstanding choice, and as it’s italy, l’m betting the wine and food will be excellent.
def. something to look forward to.
Oh…speaking of eating something decadent…wow.
You know, Mr. AP and I don’t take up much room…!!! :<)
You want to meet us in Lugano, Lago D’Orta, Lago Maggiore, or Milano?
Oh, don’t tempt me.
When (roughly) are you leaving, again? :<)
you are waving a very enticing carrot.
Booman, as you must know by now that you and I have lost a very good friend to this political endeavorment. What is so sad in all of this is that we were blind sighted by the thing that is with whom that friend was accompanying and that is all I will say. Not that they honestly believe in what they believe in, but how they project to others and that is the telling aspect of it all.
I am saying this without coming outright and naming names and saying things that is fruitless after-all, we can not bring back the past. We have to look towards the future and do that which is most promising for us as our own conscience tells us we must do. We after all have to look ourselves in the mirror in the morning or at sometime during the day. I want to respect myself after-all. That is not beholding to others for what I see. I have done some good things for said good friends and that I will not brag about but only remember the hard times we all have had and that we have helped others out. That is my only salvation. Respect is ours to only enjoy, in both directions, and never look back on those horrible times. It is easier for me to believe in this matter this way. I will not hold a grudge but I will not go back to where I once was and say it is now time to pick up the pieces and be friends again, for that I was betrayed will never be forgotten, just walk away….is all I can say….that is how I will weather this whole matter. Life is way to short to worry about one simple thing when there are way tooooo many problems to be solved for now and in the future. No matter when Obama wins, we must, as a nation hold his feet to the fire and make him perform as he said he would. I expect great things to come out of this. I could be wrong for I do not have a crystal ball, but I do expect great things, just the same.
Yes get away for a while…that is what I haves had to do for my own mental health sake; otherwise, I would be writing to you from and closest funny farm….;o)
Jut take a short break and enjoy yourself to the fullest, for the worst is yet to come and we need all hands on board to batter the firestorm that is yet to come. We all will need a good/strong stomach for that one! Hugs, Booman. Know that, as a long time witness to your fairness and good faith, you are the very best of the best online.
Heard on the radio: This is no longer a campaign.
It’s a mini-series.