Somewhat strangely, the contemptuous hatred so many Republicans feel for the president lacks the classism they heaped on Bill “Bubba” Clinton. Yes, there is often a racial tinge to Obama-hate that feels even nastier than their contempt for backwater Arkansas, but it basically evens out. With Bill and Hillary Clinton, they were obsessed with TrooperGate and the White House travel office, and Whitewater, and Vince Foster’s suicide, and with Obama they talk about his birth certificate, his religion, and his secret plan to Europeanize the country. But, look at how Republicans treat Clinton now that he’s been out of office for 13 years. He’s seen as a moderate who they could negotiate with.
How will they treat Obama thirteen years after he leaves office?
Still with fear and contempt.
How will they treat Obama thirteen years after he leaves office?
Pray that we live long enough to find out.
Let us pray.
AHHHH ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha !!!!
Gotta go work now.
Stay safe, me little droogies.
The ol’ Ultraviolence’ll take care of y’all.
One way or another.
Bet on it.
AHHHH ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha !!!!
Later…if there is one, of course.
AHHHH ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha !!!!
AG
The last thing they want is for another one of the “other class” to aspire to the Presidency. I don’t know if I expect him to get any better treatment than he has received up to this point. At least not from the general population of Republicans.
The question you pose is an interesting one. I know a lot of Republicans and Republican supporters around here who despised Clinton. But the loathing many of them seemed to have for him pales in comparison to the absolutely visceral hatred they have for Barack Obama. He represents every hidden fear and dread that washes over them in their nightmares when they turn out the light at night to go to bed. He is the devil incarnate, wrapped in every possible lie and deception that they can muster in the reptilian portions of their brain. He has become a demonic caricature of their darkest insecurities.
I wonder if time will be able to blunt something so deeply seared into their emotions.
It may be worse. He won’t have the shield of his position and his defenders will be busy fighting the political battles that come after him.
Also, Obama will still have that skin color of his. For too many of his critics, that is an unsolvable problem.
Ironically, the “Muslim Socialist” is much less Liberal than Bill Clinton, not that he was very Liberal except in contrast to Reagan and Bush.
Clinton was more liberal than Obama? How do you figure that?
The racism was always there, but each time it surfaces like this I think more people become aware of what is going on. They make choices and I think younger generations become more liberal because of it. Pres Obama has touched the hearts and minds of many youngsters right now. I think they do and will appreciate him.
As far as the Republican party, it seems inevitable they will have a serious realignment so I can’t imagine how they might react in 13 yrs. I was just reading Michael Gerson’s piece in WaPo where he is talking about how the Internet has changed grassroots organizing and dissemination of information. He points out that the Tea Party was able to go around the RNC and establishment GOPers because of it and are able to dominate the choice of candidates as well as influence or set legislation/policy.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/michael-gerson-a-republican-party-in-upheaval/2013/11/04/ee7d
49d6-4585-11e3-b6f8-3782ff6cb769_story.html
“….Tea party primary challenges, and the fear of them, encourage a harsher ideological tone among sitting Republican legislators, undermining their general-election appeal to independents, minorities and young people. And maximal tea party legislative strategies, as we’ve just seen, can be ruinous. Yet within an ideological bubble, success is defined differently — in purity, combativeness and the acclaim of the faithful. As the public standing of the GOP recently reached its lowest point ever, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) told a cheering tea party audience, “Look, the Democrats are feeling the heat.” It is one thing to engage in Pickett’s Charge; another to describe it as a victory…..”
Gerson doesn’t talk about this, but to me, Pres Obama embraced this technological change and has used it to win elections, strengthen the Democratic Party and support his legislative agenda.
I think you’re right about that backlash. Rational people can see that Obama is a pretty obviously a good human being, especially by politician standards. I have never wavered in that assessment despite my vigorous disagreement (from the left), sometimes of a moral rather than merely policy-disagreement character, with much of his political philosophy. So the reaction of almost any sane person to the ugly, very personal hatred of Obama on the right is always going to be “WTF is wrong with these people?”
When he’s dead, certainly, they’ll treat him like Lincoln and Dr. King, trying to prove he was a conservative. Hopefully in 13 years we’ll have public health insurance and they’ll say it started when Obama got the idea from Republicans (documenting it with all the statements of Democrats who believe this). As they plot to cut its funding. But I think they’ll hate him as long as he lives (may it be a long time!) and the racism will continue to be palpable, though subtextual.
Every time a glacier melts the Teahats need to blame Al Gore for inventing the internet.
Yeah, Mike, I remember that.
That’s why I left Ohio.
Thirteen years from now, a large proportion of the people who hate Obama the most will be dead.
Maybe from gun shot wounds from their drunken buddies. The most rabid Teabaggers are under fifty, maybe under forty.
At least a third of the Tea Party contingent whose hatred of Obama is visceral rather than strategic will have aged out of the planet by then. They will no longer dominate the GOP, even if the GOP hasn’t splintered. The plutocrats will have largely let go of that tool, and, looking to libertarians as their anchor in the rising generations, will depend less on a populist cover. They will exercise control of the Republican apparatus a little more openly.
So the real question is, how will the 1% prefer to have their dupes think of Obama at that point? They’ll want them to remember that, in contrast to the new Democratic boogeyman of the day, he was a guy who respected big business, trusted Wall Street insiders with the fiscal and monetary reins. Also, his election was a great testament to the goodness of the American electorate, which in November of 2007 shed every last vestige of racism.
All of which,they’ll tell David Gregory, makes the current crypto-Communist donkey all the more ludicrous when she tries to instigate class war, and when she has the audacity to do what Obama never did – namely, to play the race card. Obama wasn’t perfect, but why oh why don’t they make Democrats like him anymore? It will be a tune to which, despite his dotage, Dave will still be able to dance.
Democrats do the same thing — “why oh why don’t they make Republicans like xxx anymore?” I may long for the days to politicians like Frank Church, George McGovern, etc., but can’t think of single Republican politician in the last forty plus years that I miss.
It’s not so much missing a specific person, it’s about missing Republicans who are willing to govern when they have power. Right now they have power and they are trying to burn the house down with it instead of governing.
Don’t miss the governing by Republicans when they had power either. Republicans since perhaps Teddy Roosevelt have had only bad ideas and only when the opposition put up a fight were those bad policies avoided or watered down enough that they were only half bad. No opposition to GWB from 2001-2006 and look at what we got.
And even including Teddy Roosevelt. He left the party for a damn good reason, and Taft/Roosevelt had their own challengers within the party from Bob La Follette.
so you’re saying you prefer what we have now?
That doesn’t make any sense. Conservatives/Republicans will have power in our government in one form or another, I’d rather have some that will work to move the country forward or at the very least pay the bills than a bunch of idiots that only want to destroy the government from the inside.
The key words here are “out of office”. Bill Clinton might be a powerful figure, but he’s no longer President. Which is why the hyperbole about Obama is so familiar to me: while the racism element wasn’t there, they did the same thing to “Slick Willie”, too, and they would have gone there if they could. They all but painted him as a white n****r, anyway.
After Obama is safely ensconced in whatever projects he involves himself in after he leaves office, he will no longer be a target for their anger. But just wait if (or the inevitable when as some seem to think) Hillary gets in office, and all the ugliness about her husband will come back, and why she “forgave him”.
That we already had a “Clinton” in the White House might be the best reason not to have another one. The mudslinging will not stop, and the partisan press will not stop enabling it. It’s their town after all, as Queen Sally said.
I think they will sling mud with the same relish against President Schweitzer or President H. Clinton, or President Warren or President Brown or President Emanuel (that dirty Jew! You know he conspires with the bankers, don’t you) or President (fill in the blank) (D). To them the (D) stands for Devil and the (R) for Righteous.
Retired President Obama will be lionized by the media as one of the last “reasonable” Democrats who supported bipartisanship and dialogue unlike the many disreputable politicians who have followed him. The fact that millions hated him and those surviving still hate him will be brushed under the carpet and reduced to a footnote of history, just as MLK and JFK are now honored through gritted teeth and smiling hypocrisy. David Gregory will say he always knew Obama would be a great President and feel entirely vindicated by the outcome… The marketing people will rebrand the GOP as the originators of emancipation, social welfare and Obamacare (now renamed Romneycare). The plutocrats will still be in charge, just the stooges will change.
Bill C. may have started out as a white trash Bubba (in haters’ perceptions, anyway – nobody who goes to Oxford is white trash), but he made a lot of people rich, and he himself got rich. That, to evangelicals, is a sign of favor from God. Of course they love him now.
Obama, on the other hand, will still be black in 13 years. Uppity, too, I’ll bet.
Started the WaPo blog post. What a bunch of fourth-class muck-dripping hooey! Might ask why the 2010 candidate for governor lost, given the fact that he made a point of distancing himself both from President Obama and from the ACA.
The GOP hated the Clintons because he beat Poppy Bush, interrupting their plans for the permanent Republican majority.
But you have to look at the institutions that were behind that hatred. Richard Mellon Scaife and his Arkansas Project were in the field as Clinton gained momentum for the general election. They were slamming bimbos into the media as fast that they could find/invent them. What was it about the Clintons that provoked that sort of rational terror? And how much money did they spend to research the dirt the could find, invent the dirt they couldn’t find, and buy the coverage of their spin?
Likewise with the birther controversy and racist imagery that still circulates about Obama. Who is financing the preparation of all this stuff? Because it hit certain predictable racist/sexual themes.
And boy-oh are the good ole boys messed up on the sexual thing. Still circulating the Hillary dominatrix photo and also a supposed nude photo of their second-favorite MILF, Obama’s mother. (And, yes, the good ole boy friend of my who sent these in an e-mail did get a comment about his strange sexual fantasies).
Republicans treat Bill Clinton as a moderate they could negotiate with because after he was taken down by the Congressional Democratic establishment, by the Gingrich Revolution, and by six-years of non-stop scandal-mongering and legal prosecution, he delivered on some of their wet-dreams: the end of welfare as we know it, NAFTA, financial services deregulation. And Clinton fooled himself into thinking that he had put stopgaps in each of those measures that would prevent the full catastrophe. It was negotiate or have nothing legislative at all. To Republicans, all Democrats who have power are socialists; after they not longer have power, they are moderates.
Thirteen years after President Obama leaves office is 2026 the 250th anniversary of the beginning of the American Revolution. Will there be a Republican Party around then? Or an Affordable Care Act in the form it now stands?
There is classism in the way that the haters frame President Obama. The rap on Obama is that he is upper-class and doesn’t understand the struggles of ordinary Americans. That his “socialism” is theoretical and underhanded in the same way that class traitor Roosevelt acted but without the legitimacy of actually being born into the American elite. There is definite classism in the narrative, which often get picked up by the far left as well in its “phony community organizer” narrative. Clinton was a climber; Obama is the “magic” Negro who just appeared at the top of the heap. Without the dignity of having been “born with a silver foot in his mouth.” Without having been born on third base. It is the failure to be able to integrate the narrative that leads to the intensity of the reaction. They know it’s not true and that makes them angrier.
But hate is a tactic for identifying, stirring up, and enlarging a certain kind of base. What was political tactic in 1993 and 2009 has become a magnificent obsession for the Republican Party communication class. And the more they find defeat, the more they double down with the same rhetoric.
But you have to look at the institutions that were behind that hatred. Richard Mellon Scaife and his Arkansas Project were in the field as Clinton gained momentum for the general election. They were slamming bimbos into the media as fast that they could find/invent them. What was it about the Clintons that provoked that sort of rational terror? And how much money did they spend to research the dirt the could find, invent the dirt they couldn’t find, and buy the coverage of their spin?
Which is interesting because Clinton was a corporate tool. Look at NAFTA, “welfare reform,” repeal of Glass-Steagall and all the other crap.
When did he become a corporate tool? Was he initiated into it at Georgetown? Yale? Oxford? As a prof at the University of Arkansas? Did he learn it from William Fulbright?
Are Democrats who are corporate tools more inspiring of enmity from conservative Republicans than those who are not? Competition for the same political donations?
It is interesting that NAFTA was pitched in a Nixon-goes-to-China kind of way for Clinton and the the other pieces were forced by the Republican Congress and Robert Rubin.
Some day long after we are gone, some historian might get to the right documents to puzzle this out.
Excellent analysis as always, TarHeelDem. Your take on Southern attitudes and politics always have the ring of truth. I suppose it comes from being born in the culture as is my knowledge of Northern blue collar white ethnics. People don’t always agree with me about Teabaggers but I was born with them. I grew up with them. I work with them. There but for the grace of God and a love of reading and thinking, go I.
PS. Can you send me the Hilary Dominatrix pictures? 🙂
I deleted the emails. But you should be able to Google them easy enough or find them on rightwing web sites. Trying to remember what magazine did them orginally when she was pursuing Hillarycare.
It was a joke, but thanks. I do appreciate it.
I always figured hatred for Bill Clinton resembled the hatred for Jimmy Carter, with both having genuine liking for people, including women and African Americans, that both treat their wives as equals and have close friends who are African American. And they have friends. It was fascinating in the Clinton impeachment event that interrogators had no concept that a person might do something because they like another person, not for personal gain (e.g. Clinton’s secretary).
Anyway, with Obama depends what he and Michelle do next. but the haters could come around if they see a personal benefit in coming around.
Part of the hatred of Carter and Clinton was their stance on social issues. They were “traitors to the Confederacy” said the “Hell No” folks that gathered around Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson.
yes. my point is it isn’t/ wasn’t just a stance; they live their equality, that’s infuriating. both have smart wives who are their equal intellectually and best friends who are black
All of that was a good thing in 1976 and 1992 and a bad thing in 1980 and 2000.
Strange that they are so different from each other. As a human being Carter is way ahead of his time
here he is with The Elders
http://www.theelders.org/
They will be saying “Obama was a better man to bargain with than this Latino/Democrat, we have to call President.”
Obama will inherit Jimmy Carter’s title of History’s Greatest Monster.
Obama will become a conservative, just like Martin Luther King.