For those of us who are going through the process of trying to reconcile ourselves to the “inevitability” of a Clinton family takeover of the Democratic Party, it seems that Lincoln Chafee wants to make the process as painful as possible by refusing to let us forget why we put all our sweat and tears into Obama’s campaign eight years ago.
Chafee, a former Republican and former senator, announced he was forming an exploratory committee last week. Chafee’s been differentiating himself from fellow Democratic primary contenders by taking sharp jabs at Clinton, willing to be more critical than would-be challengers former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley or former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb over her vote in Congress to authorize the war in Iraq.
“That was a moment where the premise for going to Iraq was so false that there were weapons of mass destruction; she didn’t do her homework. We live with the ramifications,” Chafee told CNN’s “State of the Union” over the weekend. “You may say that’s 12 years ago — that’s a big motivator for me running. If you show a lack of judgment, lack of doing homework then, what can we expect in the future?”
He’s right, of course, which is why picking at the scab is so irritating.
It’s even irritating to complain about it being irritating.
Iran offers her a way to repair some of this damage.
Nevermind that she’d have troops on the ground in Syria right now if she were already president.
Only if the generals fold like cheap suits as they did for GWB. As they wouldn’t for Bill Clinton, do have to question if Hillary’s sucking up to the MIC since then will allow her “better” treatment from them.
Well, I think we can be sure that Jeb! will not be bringin’ the Great Iraq “Mistake” up too much, ha-ha. Hard to see how any 2016 Repub does. They all seem to be desperate for more Iraq action today, so how to castigate getting into the bog in the first place? Criticising “conservative” military adventures is not on the agenda.
But yes, Hillary will surely have some re-litigating of the past to handle–the relevant time period being over 20 years now! But I have to wonder how big a slice of the American electorate can be made to care much any more.
The past (and what can be learned from it) just doesn’t seem to animate our fellow citizens much. Instead, they love gobbling down the pieties about “I’m lookin’ forward, not back!” “The past is the past”, etc. The kick-off of the whole catastrophic 21st century, the Stolen Election of 2000, might as well be an event of the Civil War, given the general public’s lack of interest/concern about it. Anyway, Hillary will have plenty of answers for her terrible Iraq vote, just as Kerry did. What that vote portends is another issue…
But (phony Dem) Chaffee’s decision to run on Hillary’s bad judgment seems just another avenue to deflate Dem voters, which is the whole Hillary problem in a nutshell.
Our MSM gives us a steady, relentless diet of here and now, as do most of the popular news aggregation sites on the web. Our popular historians do a lousy job of telling us the truth, selling exceptionalism and other charming flag-waving stories to make us feel better about our country’s past.
And our best political leaders would also rather not talk about certain unfortunate things in the past — might get them into third rail territory — so instead they invoke Satchel Paige. No wonder Americans have so little interest in and knowledge of the past.
Looks like economic inequality issues will be dominant this cycle — unless the Obama admin blunders again wrt Russia.
Did Linc actually muster up the courage to finally declare himself a Dem? Last I heard of him, he was still clinging to that phony Independent nonsense.
Except for a couple of his positions, if Clinton had a public policy record like Chafee’s I’d be more inclined to support her. A couple were admirable positions:
He doesn’t quibble or parse his position on abortion rights.
He voted against the GWB tax cuts and IWR. Scores an “F” from the NRA.
Do like this:
The poor Hondurans are suffering greatly from the most recent US interference in their country.
If we were fact based, we’d acknowledge that the Clinton family took over the Democratic Party in 1993 and it was only a mini-revolt after the 2004 election that reduced their hold on the party. After 2008 the Clintons and their co-horts wormed their way back into positions of power and their restoration was complete shortly after the 2012 election. Democratic candidates for federal office in the 2014 election were guided by the restoration DNC. But it will work better in 2016.
Chafee has the charisma of a wet noodle. However, on the big issues — based on his Senate voting record and public statements, he’s enlightened compared to Hillary. But that doesn’t matter to Democrats who range from happy to depressingly accepting that anointing a legacy presidential candidate is the way to go.
You can’t be serious. This guy is trying to get accountability. What is the whining about, Boo? You don’t like accountability? They should do whatever, and no one ever calls them on it?
Chafee has more political courage than others. I’m warming to him.
The new rules for Democrats and liberals is “thou shall not criticize a Clinton” and “thou shall smite anyone that dares to hold a Clinton accountable for anything they’ve done in the past, present, or future.”
Been fighting these rank-and-file “liberal” Republicans that call themselves Democrats, liberals, and progressives my whole adult life. At every important opportunity to do the right thing, they easily succumb to whatever wrong thing TPTB propose. Damn it was lonely for those like me during the Gulf War. A not small proportion weren’t as ready for the sequel — but it wasn’t clear to me that it was because they’d learned anything and opposed George’s great adventure or they opposed it because they loathed George. Still George had his majority (and half the Democratic Senators, three of whom Democrats viewed as suitable for promotion to POTUS).
Well I guess someone you would consider a liberal Republican or so-called Democrat, one Barney Frank, is out there on the book tour saying he made a mistake in 1991 not voting for the Gulf War authorization. He thought it would turn out the way he saw junior conduct the second war.
Yet he’s inclined to hold accountable countries that unjustly invade another, provided it’s on a Get In, Get Out Quickly (and probably multi-national force) basis. I think there’s room for authentic liberal Dems and liberals of any party to honorably hold that position in a given situation.
HuffPo:
Oh, Bernie, don’t be naive. Democratic and Republican voters have long been suckers for “sweet nothings” from their preferred politicians. What they do ranges from irrelevant to something the suckers rationalize.
Which 7 Democrats Just Voted to Repeal the Estate Tax that passed in the House by 240 to 179.
Oddly enough there were three Republicans that didn’t toe the party line: David Jolly (FL-13), Walter Jones (NC-03), and Scott Rigell (VA-02). Always fewer Republicans that don’t get in line than Democrats happy to join the GOP (except at election time).
I would be more willing to forgive Clinton’s mistake on Iraq if she hadn’t continued to demonstrate a propensity for favoring military answers to problems, criticizing Obama for his willingness to negotiate with Iran during the primaries, and arguing for intervening in Libya and Syria since then. Obviously I would vote for her over any Republican candidate, but she does make me nervous.
Some here did know, but for the benefit of those that didn’t or were suckered —
MOA The Richard Engel Kidnapping Fake – MoA Scooped MSM By 28 Month Beware NYTimes reports — some are flat out government propaganda, some are poorly sourced and written to conform to corporate bias, and some aren’t half-bad. The NYTimes and WaPo frequently publish poorly sourced, undocumented articles, but didn’t stop them from attacking Rolling Stone for its one major lapse in adequate reporting.
Engel should be drummed out as quickly as Brian Williams was. But NBC will probably give him the same treatment that Fox gives Bill O’Reilly.
I thought Greenwald really wasn’t questioning Engel’s story so much as he was questioning the NBC suits and their want of more war.
What does the linked article have to do with Greenwald? Cited sources were the NYTimes, NBC, HuffPo, and Daily Beast.
Faked news, videos and staged reports from Syria by Oui on March 9th, 2012
Includes BBC Interview: A Syrian British Hero, Danny Abdel Dayem
○ Leaked Email: Pentagon Admits Plan To Direct Terror Attacks Inside Syria
○ How Avaaz Foundation [George Soros] Is Sponsoring Fake War Propaganda From Syria
b’s post focuses on current back peddling by the NBC, NYTimes, and HuffPo. Still not acknowledging the full truth, but confirming that others weren’t wearing tin-foil hats a few years ago.
As I recall, the antiwar Democratic left forgave George McGovern in 1972 for voting for the Tonkin Gulf Resolution in 1964. It was hardly brought up in the primaries, iirc, and not at all in the general. McG got a huge break, of course, when the favorite Ed Muskie’s campaign melted down in the snows of NH.
As for legacy or dynasty candidates, would the liberal left be barking up this tree so often if, say, Michelle Obama had signaled an interest in one day running for higher office? Doubt it.
What a fatuous false equivalence. What was George McGovern’s personal experience up until 1964 and his knowledge of the USG and historical events during his lifetime until 1964? Doubtful that he like practically all Americans at that time had no knowledge of all the post WWII covert USG actions around the world including the Iranian coup and that the USG picked up in Vietnam when the French were defeated and fled.
What was the touchstone he was supposed to have had to question the veracity of the administration’s claim to having been attacked? Not even the false claim on the attack of the Maine was well documented and accepted at that time.
How long did it take McGovern to learn of the monumental LBJ/US military lie? The betrayal of trust that the USG seemed to have earned. Less than four years and without historical antecedents to guide him.
So, the Gulf of Tonkin attack was the first USG big lie. Then Nixon added more lies. Then Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. Sure, a whole bunch of DEM pols and other observers took the John Dean position that they couldn’t believe that GWB/Cheney would like about something as monumental as taking the country to war. But they were idiots. If someone like me, without benefit of any assistance, and any high level intelligence information or an exhaustive body of knowledge could figure out that Iraq had no WMD, then they had a duty to figure it out as well. They have no freaking excuse for their dereliction of duty and the $4 trillion dollars and innumerable deaths and destruction their failure cost. I think I’m done voting for people with such huge blemishes on their careers in areas that I view as extremely important not to get wrong.
Clinton couldn’t even be bothered to read the classified NIE report. Sen. Bob Graham who did read it urged his colleagues to do the same because that’s how he knew that it was a bunch of poppycock.
Has a VP nominee on a losing ticket ever come back four years later to win the nomination? Can’t think of one that has succeeded even in eight years. One did so in twelve years but did a few other things in between like being twice elected as a governor.
You asked and answered your own hypothetical. Without a single relevant fact cited. IMHO Michelle Obama has earned a good grade as FLOTUS. Not an Eleanor Roosevelt level grade, but I’d probably rank her above all of them since then, but either a lot or a small amount compared to two or three. If she were to run for the Senate from Illinois, not that she’s ever expressed any interest in holding public office in her own right, that would be up to the people of Illinois and not me to decide. Just as it was up to the people of Ill. to elect a high profile carpetbagger again. Had Clinton attempted to do so in CA, I would not have supported her. Nor would I support Michelle Obama for POTUS.
One correction: The incumbent VP and also VP nominee on the losing 1980 ticket did secure the 1984 Democratic nomination for POTUS. And lost in a landslide.
One expansion: The VP nominee running with an unelected, incumbent POTUS (not elected VP either) on the losing ticket was nominated for POTUS two decades later. He too lost.
McGovern was just a bomber pilot in WW2 so obviously knew little about these war things. In 1961 he was named director of Kennedy’s Food for Peace Program, and in 1962 he was elected US Senator, so he knew little about how govt works and the people operating the levers of power. You betcha.
In 1963 he was one of the first senators to speak on the floor cautioning against deeper US military involvement in VN, And the day after he voted for the GoTR, he gave a speech worrying about whether it would lead to just such military involvement. So no indications there he would have been skeptical about what Lyndon was cooking up.
Wayne Morse and Ernie Gruening probably were just a lot smarter, maybe genius level, well beyond mere mortal George.
Actually, later at some point, to his credit, McG didn’t trot out any lame excuses of the type you conjure up, but instead owned up to making a big mistake on the vote — I believe he called it the biggest mistake of his political career. And maybe the primary voters forgave him for owing up to it, or because he was the antiwar candidate and they were going to ride his horse despite his imperfections.
So my point about McG stands. As does the point about Michelle which you’ve failed to rebut. Undoubtedly she will go down as one of the more popular FL’s, but what was her degree of difficulty score compared to Hillary’s or even ER? The latter two were respectively involved in policy formation (for a while), and human rights advocacy. Far more in the public spotlight on hot button issues than Michelle, who, if I’m not forgetting something, has taken as her main cause childhood nutrition/health. Nice, but hardly controversial.
If she does run for higher office (unlikely), she would be getting roughly the same stature-enhancing boost from her husband that Hillary got when she ran the first time. And from IL senator, after a term or less, then a run for the presidency — well, she’d again be tracking Hillary’s rise. But few on the left would be carping about legacies and dynasties, I would submit.
Well its that whole thing she has to out first lady first ladies because she’s black and if you recall Republicans have in fact made her children nutrition efforts controversial here and there. Also Remember the debacle when she was going to speak in Oklahoma I think but too many people hated her?
Right, but with the exception of the 20-25% crazies and racists on the far right and a few Fox Noose hosts, objectively her undertakings as FL have been well in the safe, noncontroversial range of typical FL endeavors.
I don’t criticize her for that, just saying she set out probably to do things that weren’t going to upset people. Sorta the way her husband has governed.
Starting with your question about Michelle Obama, whatever makes you think that a hypothetical warrants a rebuttal? Unlike you, I don’t know what a certain majority of Democratic/liberal voters would do if she were to run for the Senate and if successful, later the presidency. I can state that I wouldn’t be pleased to see either Obama or Clinton as newbie candidates for political office running for the Senate on my CA ballot. Far too many relevant other variables would come into play before I could state with any sort of confidence as to how under such a hypothetical scenario I would vote in that primary or a subsequent general election.
I can state that it would be rare for me to prefer legacy candidate over a decent non-legacy candidate for local, state, and federal office below the presidential level. One problem is how difficult it is for a decent non-legacy candidate to get on the ballot when a legacy candidate in competing because legacy candidates can more easily dominate within the party apparatus and raise large donations from the wealthy class to initiate their run for office. So, voters end up with a choice between the legacy and dreadful to nothing. Second, legacies generally pale significantly in comparison with a first-rate original. Third, time allows the public to evaluate the real and important legacy of the original. If found substantially wanting, a legacy candidate similar to or a pale imitation of the original is unacceptable.
I’ve already stated that IMO ER was the most admirable FLOTUS ever. That she didn’t shy away from many controversial issues if it was the right thing to do. The heat she took for that in real time was considerable. Yet, nothing she ever did was to fulfill any personal ambition to be elected to high pubic office in her own right. When asked to do so and practically guaranteed to win, she always respectfully declined.
Disagree as to the relative importance of child nutrition at this time considering the obesity epidemic in this country. And it has been controversial. However, as it hasn’t been a lifelong interest/issue/passion for Michelle Obama, more like an issue chosen by her from a list of issues prepared by political consultants, it doesn’t confer political creds to her resume. You have omitted in your hypothetical, an important personal difference between Michelle Obama and Hillary Clinton. Michelle was never politically ambitious for her husband much less herself. She neither encouraged nor dissuaded her husband from his ambitions, but did express doubts that he’d succeed. She has been a supportive wife, but not actively engaged in charting his political future. Clinton was touting Bill for President way back in 1972 before they were married. She was an integral political partner to Bill at every step in his career. How soon before 1998 or if she and he wanted to and recognized that she could ride his coattails into office is unknown, but it’s more likely than not that it was present much earlier than 1998.
Could Michelle Obama now run for and win political office in her own right? Sure. Voters in both parties are enthusiastic and quickly supportive of any candidate with high name recognition that runs for office. Even when there’s zero other reasons to support the candidacy. Voters are essentially lazy and stupid and that’s encouraged by media that that is also essentially lazy. Why clog our minds with governance and important policy issues when aging movie action-hero Schwarzenegger can be covered? Davis was only reasonably competent with a dull personality.
WRT to your first points —
Morse and Gruening may have been a lot smarter than McG or maybe they had the advantage of having been around a lot more government and other blocks and were well into their “wisdom” years/stage of cognitive development (seems to begin around age 50 +/- 6 if it develops at all and for most people it never does) than McG by 1964. Thus, you never seem to factor in age, formal education, professional experience and accomplishments, and government positions and elective office positions and time in those positions in your comparisons.
Education and experience are sufficient to evaluate assertions and proposals that contain obvious or clear enough antecedents, but wisdom is required to evaluate assertions and proposals that contain, at best, vague or murky antecedents. Compare:
Gruening – born 1887, Harvard Med 1912; Journalist 1912-34; USG 1933-38; AK Terr Gov (appointed) 1939-53; Senator 1959-69
Wayne Morse: born 1900, 1931 Dean – Univ Oregon School of Law; federal commissions during FDR administration; Senator 1945-69 (GOP 44-52; IND 52-55; DEM 55-69).
George McGovern born 1922; 1943-45 US Army; 1945-53 college/graduate studies history and religion and history college professor; 1953-56 built SD Democratic Party won House seat in 1956 (’57-60), lost 1960 Senate race, ’61-63 first director Food for Peace program, Senator 1963-81.
Both Gruening and Morse had been by 1964 in positions where they would have been able perceive duplicitous claims, proposals, and actions by administrations and government officials. McG had but a few years as an academic historian, less than six years in federal elective office, and his political orientation and biases to guide him. But at the age of 42, he almost got to the right answer and did so quickly enough after that. That’s not evidence of an inferior mind.
There’s nothing wrong with cutting a politician (or anyone in a professional position) some slack for not knowing then what was extremely difficult to figure out in real time given their place and time as long as they get to the correct place reasonably quickly after that. Lincoln wasn’t an abolitionist in 1860, but that is forgiven by his 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. FDR wasn’t a progressive in 1932 (Eleanor was), but in 1933 he began surrounding himself with progressives. Most prominent and influential was Frances Perkins, but she was one of many. (It’s possible that FDR’s greatest talent was hiring the best minds for the times. Lincoln seemed to share that talent, but the number he had to appoint was much smaller than was required of FDR.)
OTOH, there’s nothing right about cutting a person slack for a gross error that a person of substance and ethics would never commit. IOW – when authentically tested, they failed spectacularly. Can a lifelong good person ever come back to that place if she/he tossed that aside in favor of her/his greedy ambition? That was a question in 1968 for opponents of the Vietnam War. There were two tipping points that allowed anti-war voters to favor HHH. First, his opponent was known to be a vile man. Second, HHH wouldn’t have back off the Paris Peace Talks initiated by LBJ. Sadly, HHH never really came back to being the good man he’d once been.
No Democratic politician has an excuse for voting for the IWR in 2002. None. Zippo. Nada. At least publicly Kerry let it be known that he was conflicted — a choice between doing the right thing and what he perceived as the right thing for his personal political ambitions. Clinton and Edwards were gun-ho. Subsequently, Clinton has evidenced the same advocacy for military solutions to non-US problems. Hardly an authentic HR advocate. History will not be kind to the R2P contingency. They are essentially no different from the neo-cons spouting “Freedom” was their battle cries. (See the Adam Curtis’ “The Trap -” for a decent primer on this.)
Clinton’s history, actions, and continuing affiliations far more than her words (except for her Freudian slips) reveal her true political positions and character. For example, once there was nothing further for her to gain from her long association with Peter and Marian Wright Edelman and they objected to the Clintons’ rightwing welfare “reform,” she didn’t hesitate to throw them under the bus. While it’s common for a spouse to trash the other woman or man, it’s not evidence of maturity or decency. (“I’m not sitting here some little woman standing by my man like Tammy Wynette,” Hillary famously told Steve Kroft in that 1992 interview. Ah, but she had been and continued to do so for many of same reasons that other women do, but less excuse for doing so as for her it wasn’t a choice between struggling and barely making it financially for herself and child and putting up with a scoundrel to house, clothe, and feed oneself and one’s children.)
McGovern – great statesman, thanks for your comments on him downthread – was anti-VN war; anti-war is a different issue, i.e. Quaker, pacifist, Gandhi position.
Is this what Obama got as the concession to let Corker/GOP save face on their Iran hissy fit>
Lawmakers Unveil Secretly Negotiated Deal To Fast-Track Free Trade
Totally depressing that Obama is as adamant about getting this POS done as Clinton was on deregulating banks and commodity trading.
One of the few good (knowledgeable and hard-working) Senators is not a happy camper with the process on TPP by the administration. Mark Lippman at dKos has the video in Sherrod Brown Rips US Trade Rep Froman in Epic Rant at Senate Hearing on TPP Fast Track Today-Video
i’ve believed for a long time that Obama intends to leave us with TPP as a parting shit sandwich.
One of the actual things he had on his to-do list. Just like all the deregulation crap Clinton had on his. Everything else is window dressing to lull the natives into a sense of complacency that Democratic administrations are there to serve us. At least the LBGT community is getting some of what they are entitled to out of this one.
At Capital City Fruit in Norwalk, Iowa “All my grandparents, you know, came over here and you know my grandfather went to work in lace mill in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and worked there until he retired at 65. He started there when he was a teenager and just kept going,” Clinton said.
Buzzfeed fact check
Why would someone running for POTUS a) not know where his grandparents were born or b) know but lie about it at a campaign appearance? Where anyone’s grandparents were born is of no to little importance, but to lie about three of them being immigrants (and the fourth was a child who immigrated with his parents) to suggest first hand, family personal experience with being immigrants is weird.
I am led to believe that Hillary Clinton will eventually implode. Not that I want this to happen, but I keep thinking when is the other shoe going to drop. And here we will be with another Democratic candidate who won’t be able to whip a weak Republican opponent. It will be 2000 all over again.
It’ll be more like a 1,001 whopper cuts and she’ll be praying that her opponent makes 1,002 as GHBush did in 1992. Although there is reason to be concerned that the campaign pace required in a close contest could exceed her capacity.
Good for him. Force that issue.
HRC told me to vote for someone else if that mattered to me so I’ll do so.
I have already written that I don’t trust Clinton when it comes to foreign policy. there is nothing that the President has done foreign-policy wise that Clinton would have done better. WORSE? yes. BETTER? hell no.
I’ll give Linc credit for getting out of the fascist party, belated though it was, and for some of his policy stances. But he’ll still be Sheriff Linc Appleyard in my book until he starts to show some game on other than the already well-trod and debated terrain like the Iraq vote.
For instance, if he has a surprisingly enlightened attitude about the looming crisis with Russia, or about systematically dismantling our many foreign military bases, or about splintering the CIA into a thousand pieces and casting it to the winds while calling for all their documents, say, on the Kennedy assassination to be released at once, then I will have found a new political friend.