I just took a little Google screenshot to illustrate a point. Check out the times: February 26th and 9 hours ago.
That’s all the time that separates Lindsey Graham joking at the Washington press club foundation dinner on Thursday night that “If you kill Ted Cruz on the floor of the Senate, and the trial was in the Senate, nobody could convict you,” and declaring on CBS last night that “we may be in a position where we have to rally around Ted Cruz as the only way to stop Donald Trump.”
I doubt this juxtaposition can be improved upon as an object lesson on the agony Republicans are experiencing.
But let’s see what we can do.
How about this?
“I don’t remember anything like this in my lifetime of effectively 30 years in Republican Party politics,” said Bruce Haynes, a GOP operative in Washington. “People don’t know what to do. They call me in tears and say, ‘I can’t vote for him because he’s a liar, a cheat and a racist and yet everything I’ve ever cared for in politics is on the line and could be lost if I don’t vote for him.’”
“It’s an impossible choice.”
Poor babies. Let’s cue the Simon & Garfunkel:
Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon
Going to the candidates debate
Laugh about it, shout about when you got to choose
Every way you look at it, you lose
Where have you gone John Boehner?
A nation turns its lonely eyes to you
No one cares what a lowly House backbencher thinks, particular one who is retiring in disgust, but let’s see what Scott Rigell says anyway:
Hours before the polls closed, he released an open letter on a Virginia conservative blog promising not to vote for Trump but not endorsing any other candidate.
“My love for our country eclipses my loyalty to our party,” said Rigell, “and to live with a clear conscience I will not support a nominee so lacking in the judgment, temperament and character needed to be our nation’s commander-in-chief.”
His Virginia district voted for Donald Drumpf in large numbers.
In another sign of the health of the party, the chairwoman of the Republican Governors Association, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez, would not commit to supporting Trump if he is the nominee. On the other hand, as recently as December, Gov. Martinez was reportedly drunk and fending off police who wanted to enter her hotel room to get her guests to stop throwing bottles off the balcony. So, you know, maybe no one actually wants her support.
What Trump did have last night was the support of a former head of the Republican Governors Association, the slowly deflating and visibly addled Chris Christie of New Jersey.
Of course, Christie had good reason to be in Palm Beach dining with The Donald at Marjorie Merriweather Post’s terrific Mar-a-Lago estate. He’s not welcome back home.
Six New Jersey newspapers say Gov. Chris Christie should resign over his endorsement of Donald Trump. They add that if Christie refuses to quit, New Jersey citizens should initiate a recall effort.
The papers on Wednesday ran brutal editorials saying they are fed up with everything from Christie’s famous sarcasm to “his long neglect of the state to pursue his own selfish agenda.” They add that they are “disgusted with his endorsement of Donald Trump after he spent months on the campaign trail trashing him.”
The New Hampshire Union Leader, which endorsed Chris Christie before Christie endorsed a guy who’s not sure the Klan is all bad, says that the New Jersey governor told them that he would never endorse Herr Trump. They’re not impressed.
Watching Christie kiss the Donald’s ring this weekend — and make excuses for the man Christie himself had said was unfit for the presidency — demonstrated how wrong we were. Rather than standing up to the bully, Christie bent his knee. In doing so, he rejected the very principles of his campaign that attracted our support.
Or, as Jennifer Rubin put it, “[Christie] has gone from someone admired for his political talent to the object of derision as an errand boy for someone who espouses fascistic ideas…”
Yes, pretty much. But it’s hard to indict a man when that man is the Attorney General of the United States. And, really, you can get the FBI and the prosecutors to back off while you’re an active candidate for the presidency, but since he’s dropped out he’s like a 1960’s kid who just graduated and lost his college deferment. Christie’s probably angling for any hope to avoid the hoosegow. “I don’t want to be your running mate, Mr. Trump, just put me in charge of the Department of Justice so I can go all Robert Bork on some muthaf*ckers.”
Do I kid? Yes, not really.
Politico’s Mike Allen believes it’s a bit loopy to think the Republicans can solve their KKK problem by denying Trump the nomination at the Cleveland convention:
The GOP establishment is now ONE for 15 in this cycle (and the one is liberal Minnesota, Marco Rubio’s sole win). After his Super Tuesday romp, Trump has a 90%-plus chance of winning the nomination. He has more delegates than Cruz and Rubio COMBINED, 10 wins, and big leads in upcoming states. Talk of a brokered convention seems nuts: Imagine the blowback from Trump and his followers if they were denied by a bunch of stuffy rich white dudes behind closed doors.
Obviously, Mike Allen missed the part about where there’s blowback if your candidate needs time to research whether he should disavow the support of the former Grand Wizard of the Louisiana Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
And, so…
Cruz and Rubio camps are no longer pretending they can win this nomination before Cleveland. Both camps pushing convention scenarios.
— Chuck Todd (@chucktodd) March 2, 2016
…to the convention they’ll go.
Where things should get quite fun…
“I cannot support Donald Trump,” Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse wrote in a long Facebook post Saturday night. “If Donald Trump ends up as the GOP nominee, conservatives will need to find a third option.” At least four House members have followed suit, stating publicly they will not support Trump no matter what.
While American history is replete with presidential nominees who’ve been less than welcomed by their party’s power brokers, never in recent memory have so many prominent politicians vowed not to support a candidate who’s increasingly a lock to top their ticket.
“There is someone now leading the pack who could destroy the party and lose an election that should be ours,” said former Minnesota Sen. Norm Coleman.
And now it is time to cue the Don McLean:
I was a lonely teenage broncin’ buck
With a pink carnation and a pick up truck
But I knew that I was out of luck
The day the music died
Under the circumstances, it seems strangely appropriate that Don McLean was recently charged with “domestic violence assault, domestic violence terrorizing, domestic violence criminal threatening, criminal restraint, criminal mischief and obstructing the report of a crime.”
And the kids don’t want to see his act?
Yes, seems right.
Seems the Regressive Party doesn’t even know how or where they want to regress to.
A glob of rotting putrid decay would be an upgrade.
Not that I’ve looked for it, but I haven’t yet seen an analysis of why exactly Trump appears to be unacceptable to the GOP “establishment” (allowing that many of those posturing about his unacceptability will come home eventually). I don’t quite get it. I wonder if it’s a matter of Trump is not a party creation like Rubio is so just for that reason it’s easier to disavow him?
Because they think he’ll be a disaster in November. If it looks like he can win, he’ll suddenly become a conservative in good standing and they’ll all rally around him.
It seems more complicated that that. I’m aware some polling shows Rubio as a better general election candidate (or did), but I think a lot of that is just Rubio is unknown. I find that argument terribly dumb. Rubio is an absolute nothing, not even a joke. Hillary would stomp him like Rick Lazio or Trey Gowdy.
Rubio is the next empty suit the power brokers running the GOtP want to front for them,
Reagan worked out very well in that role, Bush Jr not as well, but did get them alot they wanted. Rubio was the next suit when Jeb? tanked.
It’s not just the 2016 election that institutional Republicans and their bag men are frightened about. In fact, that’s less than the half of it.
It’s the elections in 2018, 2020 and beyond where they run into a tsunami wave which has run a couple of miles inland. If you’re a Senator or Governor who needs votes from non-whites and women in future elections (and all of them do to one degree or another), you have to think long and hard about how badly you will be damaged in pursuing those voters if you campaign for Trump.
The Donald’s cartoonishly racist and misogynistic campaign is broadcasting far and wide; even low-information voters know about it, and will know more. Electoral opponents to Senators, Governors and other GOP incumbents and candidates will run simple info campaigns informing those voters that Senator X or Governor Y campaigned for Trump.
And now the Republican establishment is sending out open, desperate messaging about two dozen options about how they might reach a brokered convention. Yes, Trump and his supporters will react well if they walk into the convention with a strong plurality or majority of delegates only to be rudely denied the nomination.
Turn out the lights, the Party’s over…
My guess is that they see him as a traitor. How dare a rich man claim that he supports the peasants? How dare he draw attention to the games the Establishment has played, and their complete inability or unwillingness to keep their word to the people? The GOP has survived entirely on party unity, and Trump has blown that right out of the water.
An end to neocon war policy and a trade war to disrupt the current multinational corporate global system…
no wonder they consider him a traitor!
That could be part of it, the idea that he has hurt party unity.
because he’s unfit to be president. they’ve carried out a bait and switch on their base for decades – who they actually run was acceptable, or willing to let the gop leaders run the show [dubya].
Please let Trump get to the convention with 49% of the delegates and then have the power brokers engineer a coup d’etat to give the nomination to someone else. I’m thinking they hate Cruz, Rubio has shown himself to be a washout, and so on…I guess it’s going to have to be Mitt again in 2016! I hear he still has those binders full of women.
If a convention coup happened, it would only vomit up Cruz or Rubio as the nominee
A terrifically, badly damaged Cruz or Rubio.
Well, we would get to see just how many of the 1%ers are Republicans, cause the 99%ers would go fishing.
There’s actually a rule that a nominee has to have delegates from 8 states. They could change it, sure, but given how much support the Establishment has given Rubio they’ll pick him over Mitt unless he has some horrible flameout before. Mitt’s still dreaming about coming in on his White Horse, of course, but that’s just him and a few allies.
I still think after it’s all said and done, after the shock wears off and these people realize that they have lost out to their crazy base, that almost all of them will pick up their oar and start rowing the Trump boat. Right now it’s so easy for them to have these very public freakouts. But when faced with the actual choice of walking away from their tribe, they will choose to take their chances and stay. Because leaving would inevitably result in a permanent label as a traitor.And if there is one thing that will get you ostracized in a Party of authoritarians, it is disloyalty to the Dear Leader.
Yup. They can’t without admitting how things got to this point. They’d have to admit their own complicity. And one thing you can be sure of about the Party of Personal Responsibility – nothing is ever, ever their fault. This is a party in complete moral collapse.
It has been for quite some time.
The question is whether there is a bottom to “conservative” moral collapse?
I’m thinking the reavers from “Serenity” as their bottom.
Given that the reavers were actually victims of Alliance malfeasance, I would say the powers behind the Alliance were the bottom.
I agree; but there are a fair number of establishment voters who agree with the leadership on this and they will be very demoralized. In addition, months of the Establishment attacking Trump in the primary will provide a lot of ammo for us in the fall.
It would be hard for many of them to walk back their remarks. Erickson has come out in favor of schism over unification behind the Donald.
Consistency is not their strong suit. We all know the conservative memory hole is always just an arms length away. 😉
I heard that Miss Lindsay thang on the radio last night, and I had almost as good of a belly laugh as I did over the KKKarl Rove melt-down that his plans for stealing the Ohio vote for Mittens didn’t work out.
Yes, yes, pass the popcorn, indeed.
I don’t have a tv, but I heard on the radio about Lardass Beta Bully now simpering behind Der Fuhrer. I could only stand about 30 seconds of the simpering pundits making blathering noises of “surprise” about NJ’s biggest prostitute sucking on Trump. Like? Whut? You’re really surprised about that.
I’m sure old washed out Huckabee is sitting in his corner somewhere sobbing his lying eyes out that he couldn’t be the Beta Male sucking on Trump LIVE on network teebee.
What a cavalcade of liars, cheats, carney barkers, con men, dopes and freaks.
And then Miss Lindsay crying her lying eyes out over having to dance wid de debbil to endorse lower than pond scum lying disgusting Canadian Cuban dominionist Cruz, whom abso-effen-lutely everyone whose anyone simply loathes, hates and reviles.
Pass the popcorn!!!!!
Also, agree with Booman, I immediately thought Christie must be trying to further delay some kind of indictment. It’s obvious he wants to be on the ticket.
What a suppurating sack of you know what.
I’m way more scared of Cruz than of Trump, both electorally and in terms of policy. My hope is that there is a convention fight but Trump pulls ahead in the end
I feel that way, as well. I dislike Trump immensely, but Cruz and Rubio, imo, are in some ways much worse. And quite honestly the whole GOP is just as screamingly racist as Trump bellows out. All Trump has done is to shout out loud what they ALL think and want. I don’t like it, but it’s true.
When the GOP whiiiines about political correctness, that’s really all that it means: that they can’t say out loud their racist sentiments and ugly names for minorities.
Yeah, I don’t see a down side to the racism and misogyny for Rep elites at all. Stock and trade.
What terrifies their elites is the economic populism,
and the anti-militarism, imo.
And the loose cannon factor. It might shoot them. If they actually cared about damaging the US, they would never have behaved as they have towards governing with Obama.
Yes, exactly. The 1% hates and loathes and FEARS the Donald’s passing stabs at populism. I question whether Trump will ever actually DO anything about the crap he talks about. But he is TALKING out loud about these issues.
Plus the anti-military stuff. Yeah, baby, that’s a long knife being twisted in where the MIC don’t want it. This from the tribe that has be reliably propagandized to vote against their own interests for decades, but now they aren’t so happy about it.
Boo-yah! That’s what the 1% don’t like. I don’t think they care about any of the rest of it, including whether Trump enjoys being endorsed by David Duke. The 1% doesn’t give a stuff about that crap. Doesn’t affect them, so whatever…
Max Boot is one of the most offensively unapologetic military imperialists on Earth. He’s the sort of guy who probably uses the descriptive slang “wogs” while in a quiet room with his preferred racist elite company.
Get a load of this guy issuing threats the day before the music died:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2016/02/29/trump-tests-republicans-max-boot/81123934/
“This is, in general, a moment of testing for Republicans. It is a character test. Do you believe in the open and inclusive party of Ronald Reagan? Or do you want a bigoted and extremist party in the image of Donald Trump? I have been a Republican my entire life, but I will never support Trump. If voters nominate him, they will confirm everything bad that Democrats have ever said about the GOP. A Trump nomination will splinter the party, sully its good name — and increase the risk that a dangerous demagogue will assume the most powerful position in the world.”
Interestingly, in his lengthy bill of indictment the neocon’s favorite demagogue avoids invoking Trump’s statements about W. Bush’s failing to defend us from 9/11 and lying us into war. That’s because even Republicans have lost their taste for the military adventures Max Boot so enthusiastically propagandized for.
So, now Boot can enjoy the straitjacket, blindfold and gag he deserves.
BTW, if we have any doubt what the foreign policy of the “moderate” savior of the GOP would be, the postscript to Boot’s opinion piece clarifies things:
Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an unpaid foreign policy adviser to Marco Rubio.
This movement can’t splinter and blow into the wind quickly enough.
Just for the record, neocons like Boot were making noises about supporting Clinton in 2014. Well before Trump. They like her because she’s a hawk. Trump is just convenient cover.
Then why doesn’t Boot say a single word in approval of Clinton in his opinion piece? Instead he’s casting around in desperation for any acceptable Republican alternative.
What insufferable horse hockey. Maybe your view of Clinton is a little distorted.
Be in denial all you want:
The Next Act of the Neocons: Are Neocons Getting Ready to Ally With Hillary Clinton?
Boot and Kagan are mentioned.
Yeah, didn’t Kagan declare just the other day? Vote for Hillary!
Huh. July 5th, 2014. A big pile of supposition. Literally nothing from Hillary. A few excommunicated neocons looking in the windows of power wistfully.
Pretty wankerrific writing there.
Fast forward to this week. Max Boot says not a word in support of Hillary, even as he works his way through the Kubler-Ross model in public. Kagan, hilariously, does call upon Hillary as the only plausible candidate to support their failed ideology.
Has Hillary returned Robert Kagan’s phone calls?
Look, the team that Hillary actually is publicly working with bothers me plenty. Her debate statement about Kissinger was preposterously tone deaf for a Democratic Party debate.
But BooMan already covered this stuff a month ago. Our disrespect for Kissinger is not shared by the general public, and it certainly doesn’t hurt her in the general election.
Our movement has more work to do to influence the American public on issues of foreign policy and war. Hillary’s somewhat hawkish instincts in response to foreign policy challenges will not be a major problem for her prospects in the general election. Americans remain unpleasantly and counterproductively supportive of using our military to solve problems.
All Republican POTUS candidates other than Trump are far, far to Clinton’s right on State Department and military policies, and Trump has famously called for a huge Defense Department buildup and genocidal use of our military to defeat ISIS. He’s not to Hillary’s left on that general issue at all.
I agree with you about Cruz and Rubio be policywise more scary than Trump … although who knows?
However, with regards to Cruz … dude, the man is ugly. He couldn’t get elected on the basis of that alone. Yeah, yeah, yeah policy … issues … commander in chief … SCOTUS … … … This is the US of A. If you aren’t at least photo neutral you don’t get elected when people can see your pictures.
I agree. They won’t be able to get behind Cruz either.
On policy I tend to agree; but electorally Cruz and Rubio’s abortion stands are apparently lethal in focus group testing. Raise the issue that they support forced birth for raped women and their support plummets. Their tax plans won’t help them either. Trump doesn’t have the abortion problem, and his appeal to racists and NAFTA victim creates the possibility of compensating gains Cruz and Rubio don’t have.
Whole lotta kickin’ and screamin’ goin’ on. True Conservatives think Der Trumper is a Trojan horse lib’rul. Professional Repub pols can’t support a non-politician who’s never run for anything and owes no one. The last rational “moderates” and suburbanite stooges fear an overt racist, while happily being cogs in a racist party, go figure.
I’m interested in how Trump quells this unprecedented refusenikism. He seems to have mishandled the KKK affair—these white supremacists expect the candidate they support to renounce their endorsements, so Trump’s hesitation to do so is strange. That’s become the first dog-shit smear on the Guccis that he can’t easily wipe off.
As for his next move, does he whip up even more anger against the professional pol losers like Graham and the whole Repub senate coterie? Enrage the rubes that the GOoPer elites don’t respect their judgment? Or does he try to build some bridges and stop the establishment heavy artillery? And can that even be done, or are the elected professional losers really serious about a Rubes v. Elites GOoPer civil war?
BREAKING NEWS MUST CREDIT TRUMP! Footage this morning from Republican National Committee headquarters:
<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”https://www.youtube.com/embed/K6cJo_gD8TU” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>
Schaudenfreudriffic!
Ah, damn, let me try that again. Reince Preibus driving away from RNC headquarters this morning:
That’s better.
Just reading an article at CNN about the Republican freakout, and I saw this:
I, for one, find that assertion quite hilarious. As my mentor Carl Sagan was so fond of saying, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”.
I laughed.
Shucks, they got Latinos like Cruz and Rubio to run on the platform of ethnically cleansing Latinos from the country. Isn’t that enough?
It wasn’t enough. Even adding Ben ‘Grain Pyramids” Carson the teenage stabber wasn’t enough.
Cubans. They always had preferential treatment. First, just show up and you’re legal. Later, just arrive wet and you’re legal.
I hadn’t considered.
It’s indeed striking in that light that the most anti-immigrant “hispanic” demagogues are the Cuban-Americans Cruz and Rubio.
They talked about it a lot after elections and made sure the media knew about how much they knew it was an issue. They did a whole report on it and everything. What more do you want?
Heh, that’s right! And it got about as much attention as the one titled “Bin Laden Determined To Strike In U.S..
I laughed again.
Obviously, Mike Allen missed the part about where there’s blowback if your candidate needs time to research whether he should disavow the support of the former Grand Wizard of the Louisiana Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.
The same Mike Allen whose father was a big wheel in the John Birch Society? Haha!!
Well, gosh, I did not know that about Mike Allen. Thanks for pointing me towards The Google to get a snootful of crazy racism from Gary Allen.
It would be irresponsible not to speculate.
Gee, this, this, eleventy billion times this:
http://crooksandliars.com/2016/03/fox-s-five-defend-donald-trump-s-refusal
Please, please proceed, FOX News.
Interestingly, Murdoch has made a voyage on his view of Trump. He was making disparaging statements about Trump’s statements on immigrants and his campaign last year, but now he’s calling for the conservative movement to unite so they can slay the real dragon, Hillary.
Rupert, your moral clarity is outstanding. Go ahead and flush your media brand much further down the Breitbart toilet. Your audience is literally dying every day.
ha ha… Rupert Murdoch makes other corruptions look clean. When Murdoch, via his wingman Jabba the Ailes, refused to have bleeding Megyn Kelly removed from that one debate, wouldn’t back down to Trump – I said: this’ll be the last time Murdoch does that. Trump will win this pissing contest.
Et voila. Not that I’m some prescient super brain. It was totes obvs who is large and in charge.
Another schadenfreude moment watching Murdoch FOLD, and bend down to kiss Trump’s heiny. Love it!
Pass the popcorn!
An awesome piece in the NYT this morning from Thomas Edsall.
Why Trump. Because a good number of people really don’t think they have another option.
This captures the moment as well as anything:
EJ Dionne has said basically the same thing.
Of course, Clinton has no plan or idea to reverse any of this, and her link to Wall Street is one Trump is going to make an issue of everyday. In general the Clinton people are in denial about the last 20 years: they just don’t get it. And they have no real plan to address it.
Trump is going to hit Clinton over the head on the Wall Street money, and Clinton had no defense. Of course, Trump has his ow problems.
But Clinton people are basically clueless about the size of the political liability her ties create. they also generally say things like “Things are OK”.
Which is why at some point there is going to be a Warren boomlet for VP.
Actually, Clinton has three proposals to increase income going to labor: minimum wage increases, incentives for more unionization, and canning the fake charity tax loophole that lets Romney pay less than 10% income tax (his released returns were doctored to pay extra).
Gonna trot out Card Check again?
I didn’t bring it up, you did. How exactly are Specter, Pryor, and Lincoln going to stop any of these proposals?
They won’t. The GOP House will make sure they never see the light of day.
All the better, no?
Pretty weak tea if you ask me. Like fladem said, Clinton’s people don’t get it. They think the 1990’s were great, the Republicans got to power and screwed everything up. In reality, neoliberalism has been an abysmal failure over that time period, and the only thing masking it has been asset and stock market bubbles. The system itself is broken.
Meanwhile I see Bill Clinton was skirting the spirit of “no campaigning near polling places” in MA. This is who they are.
In turn:
*Minimum will help at the edges.
*The unionization stuff will not help at all – but is window dressing designed to placate people. When labor’s power erodes, unions became very difficult to join. Sounds good at a DC cocktail party.
*How does the Charity loophole address any of this at all? How does that help someone get more pay?
Your response shows Clinton really has no agenda around this other than the basic neo-liberal prescription:
*Free Trade
*Improve access to training
So you’re basically saying you don’t want steps to improve union strength because unions are currently weak? o-kay…
Less money for the wealthy means more for everybody else. There’s also an association between low taxes for the wealthy and low wages. Apparently management grifts more aggressively when they get to keep more.
Median Family income peaked in 1999.
And this is your agenda to reverse the stagnation?
Seriously?
Do you honestly believe this will do anything measurable?
I am all for unions. But the reforms proposed will do little to increase participation. And unions themselves have far less bargaining power than the once had, because globalization means the company will simply move the jobs elsewhere.
Minimum wage – all for it. Doesn’t effect 90% of those who work.
Eliminate the charitable deduction: all for it. Won’t do shit.
The problem is that the forces of globalization and automation will simply overwhelm this pathetic agenda, and most people know it.
These proposals are best intentions liberalism. They give people a sense that they are “helping”
But in the real world they aren’t close to enough, and everyone – including you – knows it.
Minimum wage increases are much more likely to be enacted at the municipal or state levels, if Rep don’t get an overarching law against it through Congress.
Clinton opposes the TPP. That creates problems for your theory that she’s learned nothing.
She’s running a campaign which is substantially more populist and to the left of her record in the Senate, when her voting record was the 11th most liberal in the Senate three years in a row.
Here’s her campaign plank on helping working people increase their incomes:
https:/www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/plan-raise-american-incomes
And her labor plank:
https:/www.hillaryclinton.com/issues/labor
You can decide you don’t trust her to do what she’s campaigning on, but mischaracterizing her campaign and distorting her lengthy history strikes me as unfair and ineffective as a persuasion strategy.
Democratic Party voters approved Hillary at extremely high levels when the campaign began, and they approve of her at extremely high levels now.
She’s going to be running against a guy who says that the Federal minimum wage is too high. A guy who hates Unions and is refusing to recognize the vote of his workers at his Las Vegas casino/hotel to unionize and is refusing to negotiate with them. A guy who talks generalized populist but has a campaign tax proposal which sharply lowers overall tax rates for ultrawealthy people, corporations and finance chiefs.
A guy whose repellant racism and sexism is becoming world-famous. A guy who will turn out voters in droves, voters who will enjoy the chance to repudiate him and his George Wallace Lite campaign.
That is leading with your chin. She was for TPP, then against it. The recent emails show she was publicly opposed to trade legislation will privately lobbying for it.
The damage has already been done: the deal with China (in ’99, negotiated by Bill) basically has hammered american wages (by some estimates it lowered worker take home pay by 2500 a year)
The Clintons are for free trade. Period. And always have been.
I read your link – mostly vague nonsense.
Best intentions liberalism.
Invest in infrastructure – doesn’t say how much, and it won’t happen unless the dems take the House and Senate. But fine – Obama would do the same thing.
Corporate Tax Reform – what she means he is cutting the corporate income tax and pretending she isn’t by claiming she is closing loopholes. This is neo-liberalism writ large,
Her college plan basically is a better rate on student loans – great – won’t stop wage stagnation and is pretty pathetic as an agenda when many kids start life 100K in debt.
There is nothing here on close to the scale that will address the issue of stagnating wage growth. Stuff that would help if she could get it enacted, but mostly window dressing.
Try to bring yourself in understanding, or at least accepting, the reality of a couple of outcomes.
Hillary came out in opposition to the Keystone XL pipeline last year. She was ridiculed by people who think the worst of her at all times, even those who also opposed the pipeline.
The Keystone XL pipeline is now dead. That is a reality, it is not something that President Obama will sell us out on tomorrow because he’s a corporatist neocon. He killed it; it’s dead.
The strong favorite to win the Dem POTUS nomination, someone viewed by millions as the sort of Democrat who would support the Keystone project, a Secretary of State whose Department was not helpful in the campaign to defeat Keystone, she came out against it.
That was enormously helpful to our campaign. She didn’t lead on the campaign? No shit. That’s why her opposition was so important; even someone like Hillary who many people viewed as a neocon came out against the project. She helped kill it. Her opposition was enormously well-timed, and was an important element in the winning campaign.
The same concept exists re. the TPP. Only in this case she’s coming out in opposition to the President she served in his Cabinet. In the case of Keystone, President Obama was publicly neutral on the project.
So here’s what we have: Hillary opposes the TPP, stepping away from the President on a very major issue. Your response? “The Clintons are for free trade. Period.”
She’s helping you get what you want, and you give her the back of your hand. How does this thickheaded response work for you? How does it help us hold Hillary to her position?
Me, I reward politicians who improve their policy positions, particularly on very important policies. I agree we’ll have to work hard to push Hillary and Congress on this issue. I see your method as remarkably unhelpful to that effort.
Actually, there is a lawsuit against the US from the TransCanada folks, using those ISDS courts that we install in all our trade agreements to help corporations. Ironic, no?
Another reason why Hillary joining the opposition to TPP and its trade courts is so valuable. Her opposition gives us much more leverage with our Congressional representatives.
You could probably sweep the pool in LV if they were dumb enough to start one on TPP not passing in the US if Hillary is the candidate.
Our only hope is that sanity prevails overseas.
er, becomes President, I meant.
If TPP were a done deal, it would have passed already.
I can’t think of a better strategy to help get TPP passed than those who oppose it pissing and moaning like a bunch of disempowered sad sacks, “Hillary’s going to do it! We can’t stop her and Congress!”
The same crowd did the same pissing and moaning about Keystone. The crowd was wrong. Even that doesn’t change things. Very TEA Party of the crowd to be unresponsive to actual outcomes and objective facts.
I don’t believe her on TPP for a second.
Just as I didn’t believe Obama and Clinton on Nafta in 2008.
I plain flat do not believe her commitment. Have you read the last e-mail release?
That should disabuse you of any expectation.
Not a bit. We’ve been down THAT road a number of times.
yes, absolutely. most commenters here have no idea the great abyss of non support with some hostility mixed in there is out there for Clinton – the Clintons she/ they are completely out of touch and ppl see that. I expect a lot of ppl will stay home, not vote for Trump, but it doesn’t matter, Clinton will still lose to him.
Errol, I don’t know any other way to bring you and others to some reality here:
http://www.pollingreport.com/hrc.htm
Hillary’s favorable polling nationwide with registered Democrats right now is around 80%. That’s really high.
The intensity of dislike for Hillary among some of the 20% is also really high, as evidenced here. But she’s running a campaign, and has a record, which superdupermajorities of Democrats find respectful and more than acceptable.
Her favorable polling with Democrats is much, much higher than Trump’s favorables with Republicans. Their Party and movement is splintering as we speak.
We have been effective, and will be effective, in pushing Hillary and the Democratic Party into better policy positions by staying in the tent and lending our shoulders to the task. Despairing that Hillary is rotten and will always be rotten will remain singularly ineffective as an organizing strategy.
Here are her favorables among the general public:
http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/hillary-clinton-favorable-rating
And the GOP hasn’t even started yet.
She is popular among the Dem rank and file. Bernie is too for the most part.
But in exit polling she has very real problems about honesty. You saw in the exits yesterday in MA, for example.
Her disapproval polling among independents is the strongest argument against her general election viability. That absolutely causes me concern.
But the Republicans are either going to put up an opponent whose disapprovals among independents are meaningfully higher than Hillary’s, or they will deny that unpopular candidate the nomination at their Convention and shatter their Party and movement.
“And the GOP hasn’t even started yet.”
Have you been locked in a vault since 1992? The strongest argument for remaining sanguine about Hillary’s disapproval polling among independents is that the GOP’s never stopped their preposterously venomous Bullshit Mountain campaign against her. This inoculates her to a significant degree against her disapprovals rising significantly. She has near 100% name recognition; almost everyone has extremely well-developed views of Hillary. Very few will be moved by more ridiculous bullshit.
It’s Trump who has never been through a general election campaign. The cap on his disapprovals is much less tested than Clinton’s.
Get back to me when they hit the airwaves with her taking money from Goldman Sachs.
They are perfectly willing to run angry populist against her all day long. Keying on distrust.
Oh, I agree they’ll try it. It will be effective for those who were going to vote against Clinton anyway.
The fact that the GOP nominee will be from the Wall Street class, and their candidate will be running on repealing the Dodd/Frank law that Hillary supports, will make it hilariously easy for Clinton to smack their attacks away. She’ll run very effective contrast response ads to their attacks.
Thanks. The idea that Clinton is somehow unvetted is patently ridiculous.
That’s a much, much bigger problem for Bernie.
Centerfield? It’s hopeless.
The sky is falling.
And nothing you can say or do or reason will convince these guys of anything except the 2nd coming of Herbert Hoover is right around the corner.
LOL
Or maybe not? Clinton Dem strategery?
“…they’re hoping to terrify the moderately conservative into voting for their candidate. Forget having any positive message that might attract disaffected “blue-collar Democrats,” meaning the white working class. The appeal is going to be to the center-right.
…the Democratic establishment is playing a cynical game, relying on that “firewall” of support while they court moderate Republicans in the Columbus suburbs by running against social democracy and amping up the fear factor. Because as the man from Uber (David Plouffe) says, “Hope and change, not so much. More like hate and castrate.”
(https:/www.jacobinmag.com/2016/03/democrats-working-class-blue-collar-clinton-trump)
Doubt they get Warren with that package.
Their marginal voter is middle class suburban women – and they win those votes on social issues and issues like pay equity, and by defending Medicare and Medicaid.
This has been the theory for about 30 years.
Yeah, that is how far Hillary has been pushed to the left.
LOL Saw this today on her line of attack…
“Trump fear and loathing is for the comfortably snooty.”
Senator Warren will campaign for Hillary. She’ll do it very effectively. If Hillary had run a campaign unacceptable to someone like Warren, I wouldn’t state that so confidently.
I read that article yesterday. I think the “hate and castrate” was an ironic reference to the sort of campaign expected from Trump. (Yes, I do understand the meaning of “castrate”. I think the idea was to rhyme.)
Warren would be nuts to play second banana to Clinton.
Good summary
Trump is the Double Down or Rolling Coal of Republican candidates.
He’s Yosemite Sam mudflaps.
Or truck nuts. Take your pick.
for the metaphor LOL
I enjoy Burnenko’s writing. Hamilton Nolan is among the other writers also doing good work over there.
Oh, now that’s a problem?
I’m glad to watch this crackup finally come to pass, but some of these people just need to fuck off and not come back until they’ve done some hard thinking about their own culpability in this.
Being a liar, a mega racist, a white supremacist, a cheater is only a problem when it’s someone who is not paying fealty to the 1% Overlords running the GOP.
Trump is all of the above, but he’s not beholden to, nor does he kowtow to, those billionaires.
They. Can’t. Stand. It.
I’ve invested heavily in popcorn futures.
Watching this part of this Flim Flam show is just so much fun.
Ive come around to the view that Trump represents authoritarianism (like Turkey or Hungary) which doesnt perfectly overlap with the True Conservatives and potentially does presage a realignment within the GOP since there are far fewer with the Dems.
We’ll be dealing with this for 40 years.
If the GOP establishment rejects Trump they are risking their already angry base members that voted for Trump not voting.
Unless that is Trump decides to go real rouge on the GOP and runs as a 3rd party candidate. I wonder how many of those that voted for Trump would follow Trump to a 3rd party?
It would not take very many GOP members to follow Trump to ruin the chances of any current GOP member winning.
What do you all think, Is there a chance Trump would go the 3rd party route?
I am sure there are much greater minds here then mine. I would enjoy seeing Booman start a thread about the chances of Trump doing this. To me it would be interesting to see the comments on this.
I’m supposed to believe that a billionaire who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth is going to be able to deliver a believable message that he’s the guy people should listen to when it comes to income inequality–a populist message?
That should have disqualified Franklin and Teddy Roosevelt, too?
FDR was paralyzed by polio. I expect this turn of events in early adulthood affected his outlook pretty significantly. Compassion counts for something.