It’s an insult to Michael Moore to do this but he’s the best fit I can come up with as someone who might have resembled Trump during the 2008 election. Like Trump, Moore had increased his profile and won over the hearts of a lot of people by standing up to the sitting U.S. president and criticizing him with intemperate language. Like Trump, Moore was primarily an entertainer, and he excelled at self-promotion.
So, imagine, if you will, that Michael Moore had decided to run for president in 2008. To make this a little easier to envision, I want you to also pretend that Barack Obama never existed. The race was between the 2004 Democratic veep candidate John Edwards, the former First Lady and senator from New York, Hillary Clinton, and Michael Moore.
Now imagine that Moore had simply run away with the early primaries and caucuses, and he’d done so by being outrageous and flaunting conventions about how a candidate is supposed to act. Additionally, imagine that he was unmercifully criticizing Edwards, Kerry, and Clinton for having voted for the war and was blasting every major Democrat and Democratic institution for being weak and feckless and corrupt.
Now, imagine the panic and resentment in the Democratic establishment as they realized that the base of the party agreed with Moore and was willing to say “fuck it, at least this guy has the balls to fight the Republicans.”
Reasonable people would point out that Michael Moore had super high unfavorables and little appeal to moderates or independents. They’d note that he didn’t have the requisite experience to be the president and that his temperament was suspect.
It’s obviously not a perfect thought experiment because Michael Moore wouldn’t have advocated torture or received endorsements from organizations as loathsome as the Ku Klux Klan. He wouldn’t have held rallies where he encouraged his supporters to beat on protestors.
But that’s not the point. The point isn’t to denigrate Michael Moore. I just want you to try to put yourselves in the Republicans’ shoes.
What would have happened to the Democratic Party back in 2008 if Michael Moore was the likely Democratic nominee and Democratic lawmakers and thought-leaders were coming out of the woodwork to say that they would never vote for him under any circumstances?
No matter how much Moore captured the imagination and the energy of the anti-Bush left, he would have been slaughtered in those circumstances. And that’s because the Democrats can’t win national elections if they’re that badly split.
The left-wing blogosphere came into being because the Democratic Party and the media had been useless in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq. We were incredibly pissed off with our elected officials and the whole left-wing establishment.
But we didn’t follow the first person to come along with a little fame and a little charisma and think we could fix the Democratic Party that way. We wanted to blow everything up and start over, but what we actually did was far more practical.
Looking back, it worked until it worked.
Once Obama was elected, the blogosphere splintered into two main factions. One wanted to go to work with the president and the Congress we had helped elect, and the other wanted to continue screaming about tearing the whole thing down.
So, we had our split, too. But we waited to win, and win everywhere, before we lost our shit.
We were incredibly pissed off with our elected officials and the whole left-wing establishment.
I’m not sure I’d call anything “left-wing establishment.” Center-left, maybe.
There was recognition after the war that we had to get to work and work effectively together. Kos spoke about electing more and better Democrats. There was a sense that we had to take whatever gains we could get and keep working for more.
I’m not sure why, following Obama’s election, so many lost sight of this fact, thinking we could just expect to get everything we wanted all at once. Politics has never worked like that. Revolutions happen occasionally but they’re typically followed soon after by counter-revolutions. Lasting change evolves over time.
I don’t believe people expected to get everything they wanted all at once. One of their major concerns was that the “financial wizards” who had caused the economic meltdown of 2008 maintained their power.
Why do people keep saying this when it’s objectively false? The issues aren’t incrementalism, per se, but the neoliberalism and its poisonous worldview. You don’t think that Obama being influenced by the worldview of Larry Summers, Tim Geithner, and Peter Orszag had anything to do with what he saw as the main problem during the 2008 meltdown, and his response to the housing crisis? Rightly, wrongly, the banks came first. It’s not because there’s a secret cabal among these Rubinite proteges to conspire and purposefully fuck over homeowners, but because of their worldview that’s the result you get: fat banks, underwater mortgages, fucked over homeowners (who turn into fucked over homeless as their homes are foreclosed upon). Ah but don’t you worry! TARP set aside money to be used to help these homeowners, HAMP. How does HAMP help? Well it allowed for mortgage modifications…at the banks’ behest, of course. And so, because you trust the banks and their worldview, HAMP ends up hurting people more than it helps, turning what was supposed to be relief into a predatory scheme all in itself.
^THAT is the signature thread that’s weaved into almost any criticism I have of Obama.
To add more to that specific issue, we know this is true because they fucking told us.
Steve Waldman documented the atrocities in a meeting with Treasury in summer 2010 (emphasis mine):
The New Yorker peice in ’09 describes why we lost in ’10.
Summers et al fucked up: they greatly underestimated the size of the stimulus they needed.
They did this because they were scared of the political risk of a Trillion dollar stimulus package. They failed utterly to comprehend the political risk of a stagnant economy, and we have been paying the price for their misjudgment since.
We didn’t “lose our shit”. Our leaders fucked up, and as a result people voted GOP in ’10.
I don’t agree. The economy sucks because we STILL have not dealt with the rot within the system (setting aside neoliberalism writ large for a second). They haven’t dealt with housing. Hillary Clinton’s housing policies were substantially better than Barack Obama’s in 2008. It was the best argument in her favor, quite frankly. Rather than helping homeowners, his Treasury Department (the but but but Congress arguments fail here, which is why it’s usually ignored) made it explicit policy to help banks, period. If homeowners are helped as a result, that’s just great, but we’re concerned about banks.
Are you kidding? We lost in 2010 because of a Black president who was demonized from the git-go. And because of “death panels” and the right wing wurlitzer. If there is a fault to be had, it’s that we (you and I and Obama’s team) didn’t sell health care with enough vigor. We assumed that the American people would see the wisdom, compassion, and need for health care (however imperfect).
As for the housing crisis and the banks and the stimulus, if my memory serves, there was a lot of hemming and hawing about “moral hazard.” No one could figure out how to make whole those folks who were under water because either they took out mortgages bigger than they could afford or mortgages they were scammed into, while at the same time not punishing those who continued to make their payments.
Setting aside corporate sponsorship, the Tea Party arose as a populist revolt against bailing out regular folks stuck in bad mortgages. It was a toxic political idea.
Well, it’s moved a long way from that, wouldn’t you say? Once it tasted its strength. It’s in a nullification death spiral because they have NO PLAN how to fix the economy for their benefit. Their own leaders just make things WORSE wherever they have control of a state.
Dems DO have a plan to use proven tools, but nooooooooooo. We’re too scared to budge from the familiar.
Moral hazard
Joe Nocera: Bankrupt Housing Policy
Why? Because of the neoliberal worldview: banks are the institutions that matter.
Dems always have a Senator in a back pocket to see that we don’t have nice things.
Sigh.
From the very beginning, the left underestimated the Tea Party’s potency, and they still do it despite the political losses.
They think the outrage at bailing out irresponsible borrowers was just manufactured and that it could have been easily ignored.
It took the form of not merely exhorting the president’s economic team to do the right thing (which was reasonable), but of totally failing to organize anything to counter the more powerful political force.
It’s tiresome and only modestly more reality-based than the incessant criticism that “the stimulus is too small.”
Some discussion from liberal economists of the make up of Obama’s stimulus plan and how/why it was weaker than it should have been…http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2010/08/tax-cuts-and-the-stimulus-package.html
Durbin’s remark from the Senate floor, April 27th, 2009.
The roll call on the Durbin amendment, April 30th, 2009.
Democrats voting against: Baucus (MT), Bennet (CO), Byrd (WV), Carper (DE), Dorgan (ND), Johnson (SD), Landrieu (LA), Lincoln (AR), Ben Nelson (NE), Pryor (AR), Specter (PA), Tester (MT).
Democrats not voting: Kennedy (MA), Rockefeller (WV).
Democrats had 59 votes, wound up getting 45.
But maybe if Obama had eaten his Cheerios, Delaware, South Dakota and Nebraska wouldn’t have been hostile to this legislation.
Pony and rainbow talk is very tiresome.
Here is a question for you. Do you think Lyndon Johnson would have accepted only 45 dem votes? Or would he have browbeat them sensuously. Maybe he would, but O had the American people behind him to get what he wanted at that time. It was an opportunity lost or at best less than optimum.
Johnson had a Congress and a national economic circumstance very advantaged to him during his work to pass the Great Society programs. He also had the sentimental advantage of carrying on the work of the assassinated President. The country wasn’t in major economic turmoil, the Democrats had massive Congressional majorities and truly moderate Republicans to work with, and it still took mighty legislative lifts for Johnson to pass most, but not all, of his proposals.
When President Johnson did go through national turmoil, his resultant failures to win support from the people and Congress chased him from office. He was a masterful political operator, but Lyndon would have been psychologically mutilated by the incredibly adverse dynamics and challenges President Obama faced.
But the idea is you need to work your issues. I doubt O did much of that, at all.
You’re conflating an economic argument and a political one, and there are multiple tiers of political argument all by themselves (some of which are tied to the economic one).
From an economic standpoint, Barack Obama’s Treasury Secretary found that helping homeowners was economically bad for the reasons of “Moral Hazard”. That is the argument which carried the day. Whether Obama believes this economically or not remains to be seen, but if we judge by his policies I think it’s clear who won the argument in that brain trust.
In Congress, from one facet of the political argument, “Banks frankly own the place” as Dick Durbin pleasantly and honestly articulated. Don’t you dare think your political masters are going to stand for that.
The more potent political argument is that people are/were pissed off at the banks. Donald Trump is showing what a fraud the strength of the Tea Party movement has been. He’s channeling much of the same sentiments you’d see among an average person who ID’d with the Tea Party early on. The True Believers and Movement Tea Party People — the CPAC people — don’t hold nearly the amount of clout in the heads of the rank and file.
From a political standpoint in strength in Congress, if the argument was “if we help underwater homeowners then we’ll be wiped out in 2010”, then those arguments were also a failure. We do what we have to do with the power we have. If we’re thrown out, that’s democracy.
your last point is a good one.
And people will haggle over it. If Congress had only done this one thing differently the 2010 elections would have turned out differently, or things could have been even worse, or none if it hinged on one piece of legislation or even anything rational.
That’s all speculative.
What’s not speculative is that the administration says one thing when they believe they have a shot at passing something, and another when they know they don’t and have to rationalize not trying or not putting any capital into a losing effort.
For Obama, the moral hazard argument was a political hurricane blowing in his face, not simply an opinion of Tim Geithner.
There is no defense for the size of the stimulus that is reality based. Larry Summers was arguing for more 12 months after it was enacted. Romer knew it wasn’t big enough.
Arguing whether more was possible is a different argument, and more reasonable. But if in January of 2009 the administration had told the House and the Senate that if more was not done unemployment would have been 9.8 on election day in 2010 (instead of peaking around 8.5, which was the highest Summers ever thought it would get) and then declining the discussion would have been different.
The policy misdiagnosis led to a political disaster.
Obama isn’t an economist – I always think he deserves a bit of a pass on that – but it was a disaster.
You can’t find an economist center left who doesn’t think it was way too small.
The position is indefensible.
There were many compromises in the stimulus to get it passed. One third was lower taxes. Infrastructure spending was much less than it could have been. And states laid off a LOT of people and forced layoffs at the federal level too. The result was called “governing.” In many ways it did the trick. As Obama said, it pulled us (slowly) out of the ditch. If growth has been slow since, then it is because, regardless of the efforts of the Federal Reserve, the House of Representatives won’t do the necessary stimulative spending. Even now. In fact, they instituted the sequester, surely a factor in retarding growth.
About the moral hazard — just think Rick Santelli, who probably was the initial spokesperson for the Tea Party.
Based on data that did not exist by the best experts at Obama’s disposal, something ought to have been different?
You think he deserves a pass? That’s very generous of you.
Even with the data they had, smart people thought the stimulus needed to be bigger. They didn’t have the votes or anywhere near the votes.
They also didn’t have the capacity to spend it efficiently, so it would have been a lot more money that you would have hoped because of diminishing returns.
The data did exist. Romer knew it, and as a Great Depression Historian she knew that the danger was underestimating, not overstating.
This is the single most important paragraph written on the Financial Crisis – and it makes clear the data was there.
The result was a political catastrophe. If you got in front of politicians who were up for re-election and told them this is what the economy will be in 2010 will look like – you don’t think their instinct for self-preservation would have kicked in?
There is no certain answer – but the political possibility was informed by the policy analysis.
Yep, Larry Summers spiked it.
Larry Summers! Now there’s a gem. He just wrote an article for Foreign Affairs about global secular stagnation. I think he is submitting his resume. First he gives us a tour de force of economic numbers and names of other noble economists. Then he decides near the end we just need more demand. He plays to his audience, really.
Yes, the man has discovered the function of “demand” on a consumer economy.
I’m reading this and am willing to consider it. I’m aware that there was this policy fight withing the Administration and Romer did not prevail.
I discuss elsewhere in the thread the incredible urgency of the moment; I think that tipped the policy analysis. It was quickly understood that Congress would never have passed Romer’s proposal, so whether it should been the prevailing analysis was irrelevent. The Republicans made the country bleed nearly two million additional jobs before they provided the votes for the stimulus package favored by Summers and others. Doesn’t mean that Summers et al. were right on policy; it just reflects the political reality.
Regarding statements made by Summers and other Administration officials that the government response was sufficient, they were politically damaging. I think some did enter into prideful defenses of their analyses. It’s likely another part of it was a highly imperfect way of dealing with a political reality. If the Administration had gone forth with a strong public message that “we did a bad job on the stimulus,” that would have been an incredible political loser, and it certainly wouldn’t have gained a single Republican vote for an additional major stimulus. Republican Senators were about to lose their jobs over the first stimulus vote.
Ponies and rainbows.
I did not know that Stiglitz, whose more-progressive-than-thou reputation as an economist has often been used to flagellate the Obama Administration, came up with a recommended stimulus amount relatively close to what the Administration proposed. It was also worthwhile to be reminded that each and every economist needed to adjust their prescriptive targets for the optimal stimulus package as the crisis quickly escalated at a scale no economist accurately predicted in the fall, or even at the onset of winter.
I would like the harsher critics of Obama to read this piece and respond. I have some ideas about how they might. I wish they would surprise me sometimes.
All you can do is make the full factual case, Martin. People will deal with it or not.
The personal animus contained in the critiques are becoming bewilderingly harsh. The contested POTUS primary is understood to me as part of the motivations. I fail to comprehend it in full, though.
Ah, well, no one’s getting caned on the Senate floor or killed in a duel. Perspective.
What is there to respond to? I’ve read all these pieces; I read them in real time. I remember the fights like they happened yesterday. I also defended the administration’s political maneuvers with respect to the stimulus (when it was happening) only because I thought they’d get more by going in low — not that it would be around what they would get, or that it would be soooo much in tax cuts. I expected bait and switches, and instead I feel like the tax cuts kept becoming a larger portion of the stimulus. As time went on it’s clear that what many of the people to my left were arguing were correct, which is that “we only have one shot at this, and they’re blowing it on something that’s too small and too many tax cuts.”
I thought — at the time — that they’d get a second try if this was determined to be too small. I was wrong. I was also 20 years old. People with significantly more political experience should have easily seen how it would go.
The level of unified Republican Congressional opposition was not foreseeable early on. A minority Party refusing to respond to such great economic crisis had never happened before in the history of our country. Yes, in February it was very bad, but not so bad that they couldn’t get through a huge, but suboptimal, stimulus. The audaciousness of intentionally sabotaging the economy and attempting to derive political advantage for doing so is without precedent in the U.S. that I can think of.
I don’t agree. The signs were there very early on. The administration wanted ~80 votes (LOL). Whether they set a bad expectations game or were simply naive is debatable, but that’s the vote total I frequently saw. The stimulus passed the Senate in February 2009, with painstaking effort to get Snowe and Collins on board — Specter would change parties only months later.
After the stimulus fight, I knew. You’re saying one month wasn’t “early on” enough?
They worked to successfully get Specter’s vote even before he switched Parties. They pretty much needed it.
Why would it have been knowable that even Collins and Snowe would immediately become ungettable votes afterwards? This level of opposition had never happened before, much less at a time of great peril. So yeah, the opposition wasn’t entirely knowable in a way that I believe should be allowed to verify each and every attack on Obama and his team re. strategy.
I wrote a letter to the editor of my college newspaper (a right-wing rag if there ever was one) at the end of August 2009. I declared that reform has had enough debate, the time for voting on stuff and ending this sham of “stop shoving this down our throats!” was over, knowing full well what the dithering was about: killing the bill completely.
I’d say it should have been known by April when Specter switched parties.
Personally, I hold Max Baucus as the main enemy in this fight, however.
If it’s the ACA fight you’re associating with Baucus here, I agree with you.
Read what I wrote again and you’ll see that it is precisely consistent with what you’re citing.
What you deliberately cut off was the next several paragraphs that explained why anything more than a trillion wasn’t discussed.
What’s also not even considered are the merits of what Orzag and Summers were saying.
Summers was arguing that there would be nasty (political) consequences to blowing a budget hole that big, and that was certainly true even at the number they agreed on.
Orzag was arguing that money above the level being discussed would be very inefficient because of capacity and diminishing returns, which was true.
That doesn’t mean they concerns should have carried the day, but they raised real issues that deserved consideration.
And, again, they had no help from the Republicans and a bunch of deficit hawks in their own party who were being asked to fall on their swords for the good of the country.
For you and the other hairsplitters (limited to economic issues because that can be mushed up more easily than most of the other items on my list that are being avoided), a large number of the comments and responses boil down to:
C: Obama’s team couldn’t have known that the stimulus was too small
R: It was known — references usually included
C: Not widely known and bloggers didn’t know
R: Blogger did too know
and back and forth. Totally missing the forest in favor of traipsing through weeds. (Sheesh — not even acknowledgement that a politician can be known by the company she/he keeps.) History education seems to have been lost on those claiming “it couldn’t be known”
That was candidate FDR speaking. The candidate that DEMs have since claimed didn’t run as a liberal but some sort of DINO. The company he kept was known in ’32. (Frances Perkins alone was enough reason to vote for him knowing that she would lead to better.) It was known that he wasn’t part of Tammany Hall.
In turn:
1. I DID say I am inclined to give Obama a pass on this – and it is precisely because Summers spiked the data. I spent a good deal of time in ’09 and ’10 defending Obama on this at openleft and elsewhere.
You can argue that even IF the stimulus package had been large enough the damage would have been as bad – but I don’t think that argument is right.
2. I cut-off the quote because of copyright.
The policy screw up informed the political discussion – and you seem to fight this conclusion. Summers dramatically missed how bad it was going to get, and as a result the entire discussion was unreal.
I will repeat: do you REALLY think Senators up for re-election wouldn’t have responded differently if they were given an accurate picture of how bad things would get. And Romer KNEW it – and in a paragraph I did not quote in that piece history suggested that the risk was in doing too little, not too much.
Had they correctly understood the risk, they would have realized from the get-go the risk they were running wasn’t political, but economic.
It was the defining mistake of the first term, and absolutely cost us the House (or at least reduced the chance of holding it)
The “shovel ready projects” had an answer in the 1960 debate between Galbraith and Heller – if you can find projects you cut taxes enough to make sure the stimulus is big enough (Heller won that argument).
Summers himself realized he was wrong 12 months later – and suddenly all of the shovel ready arguments went out the window – but by then unemployment was 2 full points above where he thought it would go and the Administration’s credibility had been hurt.
More broadly, there is a longer discussion to be had about cyclical versus structural decline, and the problem of hysteresis.
In the end, this isn’t about Democrats losing their shit. This is about very real policy differences.
Summer’s behavior was a part of the reason he did not get the Fed Chairmanship, imo. There were many others, but that was fresh.
and you’re assuming that a higher stimulus, say an extra $400 billion, would have improved the political situation for the Democrats in 2010.
It may have helped in some ways. But I don’t think it would have helped quickly enough to do much. What people were pissed about in 2010 was job loss, deficits, and bailouts and health care reform. Things like HAMP cut both ways on that, helping some people stay in homes, but also angering and motivating people who weren’t getting any help with their mortgage but whose mortgages were nonetheless underwater or, at a minimum, their property values were in the toilet.
If it was like ObamaCare, the angry had more political power than those who stood to benefit.
The deficit scolds were the ones who were most organized, so a bigger deficit wasn’t clearly going to help there even if it reduced or mitigated the job loss quicker.
Basically, the only way 2010 could not have been a disaster is if the Democrats had been much less concerned with achieving shit and more concerned with cultivating their political position. What they were doing was unpopular and required a massive all-hands-on-deck sales job. We got a lot of bitching and second guessing instead.
You know what might have made a difference to the equation in 2010? Some perp walks.
Exactly
From the ’10 exit poll
Of the 35 percent who think Wall Street is to blame for our economic problems, 57 percent voted Republican — the party that does nothing but carry water for Wall Street.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/4/12/1376828/-Left-flank-critique-of-Hillary-Clinton-On-Wall-Stre
et-ties
I would count the Blue Dogs more a problem than the others you mentioned. They, like Obama, were preprogrammed to disapprove the stimulus no matter what was said in my view. Obama has never impressed me with his economic knowledge (in fact saying a government is like a household only shows how little he knows.). Larry Summers plays to his audience. See, for example, his latest resume in Foreign Affairs.
That capacity to spend really makes no sense. I can show you any number of bridges and roads where I live that need work. NO that is not a good argument. Capacity is limited by your workforce and we had thirty million out of work then and still have over twenty million if you include those who gave up.
It was both the size and the structure. Once locked into a structure that primarily rescued the banks and stockbrokers, more of that would have done no good.
And notice, the QE that has recapitalized our banks has advantaged the same set of players.
You are really saying there was no imagination about…..anything.
2010 exit poll:
Most important issue:
Economy 63
Health Care 18
How worried are you about the direction of the nations economy:
Very worried: 49%
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/special/politics/election-results-2010/exit-poll/#issues
Nope. In the summer of ’09 Congress had their recess and DEM House and Senate members were shocked to get an earful from their constituents about jobs and the economy. They informed Obama of this when they got back to DC and he brushed off that constituency anger. Completely confident that things would be just fine by Nov 2010.
Perhaps that was the chance to drive through another stimulus measure. Another opportunity lost. But I do think O was very conscious of the backlash against him and the hatred against him. Very tough environment. But he and his admin did not seem to react at all. Koch won.
In reality it’s kind of nonsense – critics of Obama from the left have nothing – and I mean nothing – to do with what happened post ’09.
We lost in ’10 because O didn’t enact a large enough stimulus package, and the economy didn’t recover fast enough. Period.
We didn’t “lose our shit” unless you believe FDL matters – and they surely didn’t. And we hung together well enough to win in ’12 – a greatly underestimated win lost in talk about demographics.
Sanders v Clinton is an extreme example. Clinton is not someone anyone with a brain and to the left of anything trusts. You may argue she is more electable than Bernie, but she is the last gasp of en ideology that doesn’t have an answer.
Thomas Edsall described the numbers that matter – and those numbers and what they represent are what is driving the Sanders v Clinton fight. It is about serious things, and a result the players are not talking about their privates.
Trump has little to do with ideology and everything to do with celebrity in the age of social media. Social Media rewards the outlandish (and kitty pictures). It is that image that kills the “establishment” more than anything. Trump is a like a piece of art reflecting his audience, and many in the audience are appalled at the ugliness of the image.
He will in short order be adopted by the right, his VP pick will be designed to appear to the people at the National Review, and the Party will more or less put it together.
The general will be a contest of hate: Do Democrats hate Trump more than Republicans hate Clinton?
Can’t wait.
On FB my family has in the past week talked about my grandfather, who was a delegate at the GOP Convention in ’64 (and ’60, ’68, and ’76). He was part of the Rhodes delegation, and my aunt has been posting about his support for Scranton, and the attempt by some in the Ohio delegation to find a way to stop Goldwater. The similarities are stunning – who Goldwater in ’64 was has been sanitized greatly.
I still think the chance is better than 50-50 that they stop him.
There’ll be plenty of hate all around. If Bernie rallies and gains the nomination, the Republican candidate and the conservative movement will take a flamethrower to him and make plenty of voters hate him. It’s what animates them, and they have skill at it. Sanders is more of a tabula rasa for them; god knows what gargoyle image they’ll make of him personally, but they will.
Let’s face it, much of the reason you have such a strong animus against Hillary is because she’s been personally and politically demagogued for 24 years. You might dislike her even without Bullshit Mountain and her responses to the Mountain, some of which have been counterproductive, but your opposition wouldn’t have that bite. They did that to you.
We’ll win anyway.
As I mentioned elsewhere, my reasons are based in policy.
It is pretty easy to see you can’t process that fact.
So resort to the “well it’s just part of the right wing noise machine”
In point of fact, most of the substantive policy argument I have made you simply ignore.
Iraq – nothing
Welfare Reform – nothing
You don’t begin to even offer a defense.
Honestly, your defense leaves you tied up in nots – as this response indicates.
You claim this is personal, but when shown the very real evidence, you have no response.
The policies moved forward by Hillary in her campaign are better than your incomplete summary of her record. We have forced her to move left from what was already a very liberal voting record by Clinton in the Senate. In refusing to accept her campaign, your position makes it more likely that our movement might forfeit the gains we have made by allowing corrosive cynicism to let her off the hook if she is elected President.
I’ve made a more substantial statement in response to one of your other posts.
I don’t think many people lost sight of that fact. The split Boo is talking about seems, to me anyway, to largely exist among a subset of the blogosphere — a small group within a very small group within the larger Democratic Party.
If you read the polls, Dems generally like both Hillary and Bernie. Their numbers are perfectly normal by historical standards. And they despise Trump, which is why I laugh at the talking heads banging on about Trump grabbing indies and Dems in the general. He’s almost comically unpopular with both.
The Republicans’ numbers, on the other hand, are not normal. Trump is tearing their coalition apart.
We haven’t lost our shit, but the GOPers have.
Millennials, or America’s youth born between 1982 and 2000, now number 83.1 million and represent more than one quarter of the nation’s population. Their size exceeds that of the 75.4 million baby boomers, according to new U.S. Census Bureau estimates released today. Overall, millennials are more diverse than the generations that preceded them, with 44.2 percent being part of a minority race or ethnic group (that is, a group other than non-Hispanic, single-race white).
What a lame fictionalized analogy. But this takes the cake:
Because it’s historically totally inaccurate. But it does explain why you’ve been hostile towards Sanders and his supporters.
Nobody on the left that helped elect Obama wanted to tear the whole thing down either before or after he was elected.
Did the blogosphere split? Not soon. Very few were dismayed from the moment Obama began announcing his cabinet. Most followed the order from Obama which was shut up, I’ve got this. Yeah, just what those that voted for him wanted — a cabinet and administration filled with GWB holdovers and Clinton retreads and like minded neoliberalcons.
What they also wanted:
A WH COS that refers to DEM critics as “fucking retards.”
Billions of dollars funneled to Wall Sta and corporations and a pittance throw the way of homeowners if they could jump through all the hoops.
No legal actions at the largest bank and securities fraudsters.
More revenues and profits for health insurance companies and PHarma.
Surge in Afghanistan, expansion of the drone strike program, destruction of Libya, funneling of arms to Syrian “freedom fighters” (aka various al Qaeda splinter groups, arms sales to KSA to destroy Yemen, support for a coup in Ukraine …
A DOE that advocates for the creation of more (privately operated) charter schools and reduce public schools.
More offshore oil leases, Solyndra, more terristrial gas and oil leases (yeah a fracking boom).
Lip service to global climate change. (Worse undermined Copenhagen COP.)
Keystone, TPP, and the Grand Bargain.
More immigrant deportations than under GWB.
The only thing that DEM bloggers were really up in arms about has been net neutrality, but not to worry, President Clinton will protect it (the same way the first President Clinton protected small and independent media companies).
What’s odd to me is that the above is what so many Democrats wanted. Wish they would have told me that back in 2007-08 because I didn’t want any of that and IMO none of it contributed to making a healthy and vibrant economy. Of course none of that figured into DEMs losing the House in ’10 and Senate in ’14. It must be the DFHs that caused DEMs lose; DFHs that just won’t get in line for more neolliberalcons.
I want Booman to tell me again how Obama is playing 11th dimensional chess to secretly torpedo the TPP.
Hope, belief, trust over clear evidence leads to many faulty interpretations and constructions like the Creation Museum. The good thing about reality is that it’s still there when one stops believing.
Unbelievably offensive metaphor here.
Congratulations for this particularly nasty invention in your recent lengthy series of provocations. This one is so great that you got the response you want, apparently. Our attempted truce doesn’t mean you get to say any intentionally offensive thing you like without drawing a request for more reasonable online behavior.
Fuck off! Is that clear enough for you because you sure haven’t gotten any of my other less not nice requests that you refrain from responding to my comments with your invective and sketchy “facts?”
I have no interest in anything you have to offer and act accordingly by ignoring your comments. Unless they are direct attacks on me and even then I don’t like to respond because I prefer not to sink down to your level, but this is my subthread and apparently you just had to jump in and piss on it.
Fuck off!
If we’re both going to remain at the Frog Pond, this isn’t an acceptable response, or an acceptable set of unilateral demands. I don’t want to leave, and don’t believe I should be made to do so, absent the blog host calling for it. Nor do I believe you should leave, but our relationship as it stands hurts everyone’s enjoyment of the Pond, including yours and mine.
I’m not going to accept what I see as abusive statements while simultaneously being told to comply with terms of my participation on the comments threads which are entirely determined by you.
I’m attempting to show more care in my participation here. I’ll continue to do so, but that isn’t equivalent to leaving myself and others defenseless in the face of extreme hostility.
An olive branch is something I’m willing and interested in offering, but when linked with a set of imbalanced demands, the branch will be thrown away with the next provocation. Let’s think it over, on behalf of the Pond at first, then on behalf of ourselves.
Or how Hillary will totes torpedo TPP et al after several yrs of promoting them. Little tweaks will make it all better and Republicans will help her out.
Neglected to include in the list, the covert USG support for the coup in Honduras. The assassination of Berta Cáceres made me very sad. (Clinton’s BFF might have done a little happy dance.)
One thing is very clear: bloggers know very little about economics.
Your right: to say that we “lost our shit” is to ascribe far too much importance to the rather unimportant goings on in blogsphere.
Bloggers know a whole lot more than the man in the street who thinks the route to prosperity is to cut government spending and balance the budget. In the extreme, to pay off the national debt. They scream about the USA becoming Greece, unable to pay bonds or the interest on bonds. They think banks only lend their own money not depositors money.
I don’t know about that.
I didn’t hear many shooting from the roof-tops the stimulus is too small.
Markos was for a balanced budget.
You’re kidding?
Did Booman? Markos? Kevin Drum?
About the only voice among the bloggers I read at the time that knew it were at openleft. Paul Rosenberg wrote a couple of pieces that were, in retrospect, the best things written in the blogsphere in 2009.
I don’t remember anything on the FP at dailykos: that would imply the FPer’s there understood economics (and with the exception of MB they really don’t).
Will concede that there wasn’t enough noise from bloggers (too invested in Obama), but it wasn’t absent. However, outside blogland people were very angry and vocal about to their Reps during the summer of ’09 recess. Many of those DEM reps returned to DC shellshocked that their little world wasn’t anything like what actual people were living.
The person that best told it as it was was Kevin Baker, Harper’s July 2009 in Barack Hoover Obama – The best and the brightest blow it again.
Didn’t matter how many times I posted the link to that article, few even bothered click on the link. The bulk of the attention in the left blogosphere got it exactly wrong. They were all about 1) defending Obama (a kneejerk leftover response from the ’90s when defending a Clinton was a 24/7 job and left little time to look at all the crap legislation that the supported — one reason to go with Obama in ’08 was because as Biden said, “He’s clean.”) and 2) want a really big health care deal. On the latter, first it was screaming for single payer; when that was taken off the table, it was “a public option” (a rather naive idea at best). Meanwhile, people were hurting and seeing nothing out of the new administration that was responsive to their needs anytime soon.
People are willing to be patient, but only if they can see that help is on the way sometime soon. They saw nothing, and that left a huge opening for the teabaggers, many of whom were responding to the same factors and were easy to mislead to a faux solution.
OMG Too much deja vu, isn’t it? Great article.
“We had summoned a great engineer to solve our problems for us; now we sat back comfortably and confidently to watch the problems being solved,” the journalist Anne O’Hare McCormick wrote of Hoover’s inauguration in March 1929, in words that might easily have been used in January 2009. “Almost with the air of giving genius its chance, we waited for the performance to begin.”
Hoover won with 58% of the vote.
Barely a few months into Obama’s administration and the similarities to Hoover were completely recognizable. A few months in — July ’09 — when there was time to make a dramatic course correction. If lefty bloggers weren’t interested in the facts, there was no chance that DEM DC pols would even hear about them.
At dKos they wouldn’t even look at the serious impediments beyond the insurance/drug companies and GOP to implementing single payer. Impediments that could have been reduced by focusing on fixing those first before moving on to some large national program fix. They fiddled over some dream healthcare program while the Kochs, Becks, Santellis, Armeys were ginning up a tea party movement. A movement that didn’t among those that joined it become large enough and focused on elections until early 2010.
Worth reading for that sentence alone.
And that.
The money quote. but please, people, as Marie has said, read the whole thing.
Did Booman? Markos? Kevin Drum?
Probably not, but if they had, I wouldn’t have bothered to read what they wrote because they don’t know much about economics.
OTOH, Duncan Black does and he, in his extremely terse style, was quite vocal about the Obama admin flubs during the period under discussion — 2/09 through 6/10 — that set up what the ’10 midterms would look like.
Obama’s Price is Right Negotiating Strategy?
If Nate Silver knew and blogged about it. I think it was very widely known. A dumb argument imo, because a $300 billion more or something isn’t gonna do much difference.
A lot of Senators — including Kent Conrad! — were angry so much of it was tax cuts.
Great piece. Thank you.
This is the money part:
“
10:15 PM JAN 9, 2009
Obama’s Price is Right Negotiating Strategy?
By NATE SILVER
So it turns out that the Senate Democrats are not entirely happy about the Obama administration’s proposal to spend “only” $800 billion or so on the economic stimulus package, about $300 billion of which would be devoted to tax cuts. Not just any Senate Democrats are angry, moreover, but a series of VIPs who either hold either very prominent public positions (Harry Reid), command a great deal of respect on the Hill (Tom Harkin), are thought to be very close to Obama (Kent Conrad), or all of the above (John Kerry).
My question is: can Obama really be entirely surprised that this is happening?
Before you answer, consider who we haven’t heard very much from the past couple of days. We haven’t heard very much from Mitch McConnell. And we haven’t heard very much from the Blue Dogs. Nobody seems (publicly) to be taking the position that the $800 billion is too much, at least provided that it comes with $300 billion of tax cuts.
Now consider what Obama told CNBC the other day:
Obama also confirmed that he plans to lay out a roughly $775 billion economic stimulus plan on Thursday but indicated that the amount could grow once it gets taken up by Congress.
“We’ve seen ranges from $800 (billion) to $1.3 trillion,” he said. “And our attitude was that given the legislative process, if we start towards the low end of that, we’ll see how it develops.”
Obama isn’t picking these numbers out on accident. This range — $800 billion to $1.3 trillion — is most likely the range of outcomes that his administration considers acceptable. He says that “given the legislative process”, he’s deliberately chosen a number on the lower end of that range.
What does this mean? It means he wants the Senate Democrats to do his dirty work for him. All of the sudden, the administration, which is about to spend at least $800 billion, gets to play the role of the fiscally prudent tightwads, negotiating against the Senate Democrats. This has at least two benefits. One, it requires less of the administration’s political capital to sell the package. And two, it completely co-opts the conservative opposition. Unless you’re Paul Krugman or Greg Mankiw, you probably don’t really have any idea whether $300 billion or $800 billion or $1.2 trillion is the right amount to spend; the numbers are too large, the scope of the stimulus too unprecedented, to provide for any absolute frame of reference. So the frame of reference is relative rather than absolute. If you’re Mitch McConnell or Mary Landireu or Bob Corker and you see that John Kerry thinks that $800 billion is too little — well then, `gal darn it, this Obama fella must be doing something right.
Imagine instead that Obama had started out at $1.3 trillion, assuming that the conservatives in the Senate would negotiate him down. Then we have some big, old-fashioned brouhaha about economic philosophy, with Obama and the Senate Democrats lining up against the Blue Dogs and the Republicans. This strikes me as a considerably more dangerous negotiation, because while the Senate Democrats can set the ceiling if Obama starts too low, there is nobody really there to set the floor if he starts too high — the Republicans have no real imperative to compromise on any stimulus. Public sentiment, moreover, which now favors the stimulus, might easily have turned against it if there was some sticker shock on the initial price tag, and once public sentiment turns against something like this, it can be hard to put back into the bottle.
I call this a Price is Right negotiating strategy. When bidding on an item on The Price is Right, you want to come as close as possible to the item’s price without going over”
They misjudged the risk: they very dearly nearly needed it to be too big, not too small.
And after getting Dem capitulations on the size of tax cuts and other things, not a single Republican voted for it.
This is untrue. We didn’t have 60 Senators yet; we needed Republican votes. We needed to negotiate under extremely adverse circumstances to gain those votes from Senators Collins, Snowe and Specter. The vote was so toxic for Specter that he joined the Democratic Caucus in quick order in a failed attempt to save his political bacon; he lost his job for that vote. In essence, so did Snowe; she retired rather than face re-election. It was almost literally the last vote the President got from Congressional Republicans on anything.
I was incorrect in another post on this thread about the date when the stimulus passed; it passed in mid-Feburary. It does little to change my larger point there. The gushing wound the economy was suffering disallowed the President and Reid from attempting to negotiate the ideal stimulus package. It would have required months of negotiations we simply did not have.
The Republicans were willing to let the country go into a second Great Depression so that they could destroy the first African-American President and the liberal/progressive enterprise generally. This was observable at the time, but Obama critics have flushed this fact down the memory hole.
In the House, where it originated.
And this is where the defense collapses.
IF you start by understanding that unless your stimulus package was large enough you will be looking at close to 10% unemployment in Oct of 10, you would have understood that this was literally a fight to the death.
You would have realized that you had to reconciliation to pass much of it: because there would be political hell to pay 2 years later if you didn’t.
The Obama people misjudged the situation.
American history shows that unemployment can go much higher than 10%. Yes, there were analytical misjudgments within the Administration; they were part of the problem. I don’t think that turns Obama into a horrible person or President, the unfortunately frequent claim.
Additionally, I don’t believe the analytical misjudgments were the biggest controlling factor. The Republicans were intent on making the American people revisit 1932-33. That constrained options. The stimulus was far from the only thing which needed to be jammed through at the time. Little to none of what needed to be accomplished could be done through reconciliation in the Senate.
“American history shows that unemployment can go much higher than 10%.”
But not without political consequences. It destroyed the Republican party during the Hoover administration and it destroyed the Democratic party during the Carter administration.
It is apparent that we have lost touch with the political moment that was a very cruel and frightening reality in the first months of 2009. It was simple for Nate Silver, who is an electoral numbers guy and not a public policy or political analyst, to have made his claims here.
Judgments of the size and shape of the economic stimulus package are legion. These always fail to account for what was equally, perhaps even more, important: the tremendous and urgent need to pass a stimulus bill very quickly. Silver had no way of knowing that a few days after he wrote this piece, the leading Republicans in Congress met with Luntz and Gingrich to form an unified plan inside and outside Capitol Hill to oppose President Obama and Congressional Democrats on everything. The nearly seditious effects of this “no negotiations” strategy were felt very quickly.
Look at the reality of the situation, for God’s sake. We were losing 750,000 to 800,000 jobs a month for the first months of Barack’s Presidency.
How long did it take after Silver’s piece for Reid and the Administration to scrape together the Republican votes necessary to pass the stimulus? More than two months. Two months of pure agony and panic for Americans. 20%+ unemployment was a possibility if the government dithered for too long.
Are we supposed to be angry that, in order to speedily get the votes from the Senators from Maine we needed to pass any stimulus whatsoever, that Reid and Obama conceded a portion of their initial bargaining position? Negotiating for the best package until July was unacceptable.
It’s also important to remember that this wasn’t the only thing the President and Democrats needed to accomplish. Dodd/Frank and other policy negotiations were taking place during this time, and there was extreme urgency in accomplishing the passing of those laws as well. While the stimulus was Job 1A, there were other absolutely legitimate and pressing demands we were making of the new President and Congress during that time. Having negotiation oxygen largely sucked up by the stimulus negotiations was becoming unacceptable as well.
Just a curiosity driven by you suggesting the Rs would never have approved a larger stimulus. I tend to agree on that. Their mission was and is to defeat an AA President and any democrat for that matter. But why is 60 votes necessary? That seems to be a rule or convention of the senate but not required by the constitution. In the midst of a depression why not pull all the stops? Perhaps the real answer is managing the Blue Dogs?
Answer to why Reid and his caucus didn’t vote to eliminate the filibuster entirely in 2009: it’s been valuable for Reid and his caucus to have the filibuster in 2015 and 2016.
How? When Obama holds the veto pen?
It’s best that the President not be forced to wear out that veto pen. That would create a much more adversarial political climate for this year’s election.
There’s also a number of Senate procedures that don’t lead to a Presidential signature or veto. Cloture, for example.
also Reid didn’t have the votes to do it in 2009 anyway, he barely had it in 2012 when he made the minor adjustment that he made then
BINGO!
Late to the party, but thanks for that. As the kidz used to say: “Word.”
I held my nose and voted for Obama in 08 with big misgivings. I probably knew more about him than most and went in with eyes wide open. Yet from the get-go, he exceeded my worst concerns and expectations.
I would estimate, however, that it’s a tiny fraction of the so-called “left” in the USA – and yes, we can be very vocal online – who truly “saw the light” and the truth and reality of who Obama IS, who he’s in bed with, and WHAT, exactly, he has done.
From the start, when he appointed Rahm, the gig was up. I knew exactly what was coming, and appointing HRC as SoS just sealed the deal.
All the caterwauling about the Tea Party and Congressional obstructionism just gave COVER to what ObamaCo wanted and did.
Yeah, I’m thoroughly tired of and disgusted with do-nothing GOP operatives constantly (daily/hourly/every minute) blaming Obama for nonsensical trivial racist bullshit and hype. But THAT, imo, is the COVER that ObamaCo desired, wanted and was GIVEN to go forward with their corporatist NeoLib agenda… all while telling the D-rubes: gosh, golly, gee whiz, we really woulda liked to do more, but oh dear, lookit at those Tea Partiers. Whatever could we doooooo?????
Hey, this is a pretty good read:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111th_United_States_Congress
I’d also recommend really considering why the conservative movement is completely losing its nut over the actions of multiple Federal agencies. Perhaps there are some meaningful regulatory improvements happening there that you don’t know about.
Wrong. Howard Dean. He was the of first person to declare that he was done with the bullshit of cowering to republicans and listening to fundamentalists. His presidential campaign failed, but what did we do? We put him in as head of the DNC and proceeded to build a 50 state organization that resulted in a god damn landslide by preparing to capitalize on the Bush collapse everywhere and empowered local parties. The establishment was not preparing for that. Their horizons and strategy were more small bore.
So basically we did follow that person and we DID fix the Democratic Party and then after 2008 Obama and the Dem establishment proceeded to wreck the infrastructure and now we have to build it up again.
This of course is in addition to what Marie said which is also correct though I thought the Libya action was a good idea at the time.
Correct. After the 2008 election, Obama handed over the DEM party to the Clinton cabal and they proceeded to repeat exactly what they had done from 1994 through 2004. They can’t even figure out how to position themselves consistently from one election to the next — ’14 run far to the right of Obama. ’16 gonna need some Obama approved cloaks, at least for certain folks in certain locations.
The big loser has been Howard Dean. I thought he was sensible enough not to act like a sycophant after being summarily dismissed and kicked in the rear. It makes me sad to see him these days groveling for a place in the expected Clinton administration as if he doesn’t know that Clinton played a role in excluding him from the Obama administration. Defeat leads some to do greater things and some to become shadows of their prior selves.
I got suckered into reluctantly supporting the Kosovo bombings. (Really didn’t have the spare time to do my homework on that one.) The Libyan proposal was far easier to evaluate and project the near to long term results. So, I didn’t blow that one.
Magical Thinking is when you believe that bombing strangers makes you safe
What the Clintonites and ObamaCo did to Howard Dean was appalling, and when that happened, I knew that we rubes were well and truly f*cked. Dean had created a very workable strategy – for the hoi polloi – so of course, the PTB on the so-called “Democratic” side of the aisle was having NONE of that. Go away, Howard Dean… and now we get Debbie Wasserman SUCKS.
Yeah: take a look at that, and tell me how DWS is somehow a better choice than Dean… and how, if things are working out so great for the small people that it’s all and solely the fault of R-Team obstructionism.
Say whut??? Tell me another fairy tale. It’s all by design, and I’m supposed to just “fall in line,” because this “is the best we can do.”
NO. THIS is what the PTB will DO for the people who, you know, actually WORK and PAY TAXES. This is all we’ll get, so STFU and eat your peas.
We need to be very careful to be historically accurate in our comments. Small flubs is fodder for groupies to attack both you and whatever you’ve said. Tim Kaine replaced Howard Dean as DNC chair. He was shoved out after the 2010 midterms and DWS was appointed. (Not that McAuliffe wasn’t pushed aside after the ’02 midterms and was retained to lead the way to further losses in ’04.)
Agree that the treatment of Howard Dean was appalling. (And he either wasn’t half the man we thought he was (and we weren’t under any illusions that he was a progressive; only that he could be persuaded on an issue by issue basis to shift left from the neoliberalcons) or being exiled from the policy/leadership ranks of the DEM party destroyed him. It’s embarrassing to me to see what he’s done since then that all has the stink of groveling to gain favor with the neoliberalcon PTB.)
And the result and one of the major failures on policy and appointments by President Obama in January 2009 …
○ Clinton promises to renew U.S. leadership
The AP article also linked to Booman Tribune – How the GOP Behaves. Riding high after election cycle 2008. Watch out for Trump in 2016 …
Do we expect HRC to perform better in the second bout as President? My answer is NO! Bill running his Foundation direct from the White House chambers? Royalty, Louis XIV, Fontainebleau, Versailles, poverty and hunger before the French Revolt and executions by guillotine?
And the Clinton hate just keeps on rolling.
Since I tend to take this stuff personally and its not good for my blood pressure, its a ridiculous waste of time that I could be using to sort my sock drawer and most of the “progressive” analysis I see is fucking green cheese, I think I’ll just stop coming here for a couple of weeks.
This is not a knock on you, Martin, but the comment section of your blog is becoming an anti-Hillary beacon for BernieBots.
Do what you gotta do — you know yourself best — but “taking these things personally” is entirely on you.
Also, you’re the only one who’s mentioned Hillary Clinton in this thread.
Sorry, my mistake, ctrl-f’d wrong on that one. I need coffee.
It’s really not.
There’s more anti-Obama sentiment in this thread than anything related to Hillary.
Yes, that’s more how I meant my “Who brought up Clinton besides yourself?”
From a different poster:
From you:
I save my blood pressure and time by scrolling past a number of the people posting here. Or, in some cases, skipping past some of Martin’s posts.
Case in point – I got through the comments in this thread pretty fast.
I have perceived the comments here as very anti-Hillary too. And as she “wraps herself around Obama” it has morphed into anti-Obama rhetoric too. Or Wasserman-Shultz or Tim Geithner or Larry Summers or Rahm. It’s endless. And bad for we Dems.
As Booman has often suggested, remember who is the core of the base of the Democratic party. I think I’m representing him correctly: African American women. The folks here who are the Bernie supporters are critics of the center-left of the party because it isn’t lefty enough.
We are no more a party of the far left than the Republicans are are a party of the far right. The two parties are, at their core, centrist — as are most Americans. It’s the problem the Republicans are having now — that the far right has taken over the insane asylum.
It sure isn’t bad to push to the left, to move the Overton window. Support for Bernie Sanders is a wonderful thing because it raises an important issue that Occupy Wall Street couldn’t effectively do for lack of leadership or perhaps a coherence of message. Bernie has crystalized that and we all should be grateful.
But the vitriol against Clinton or Obama isn’t necessary to make that point. Sanders doesn’t do it. Why should the bloggers here? Isn’t it better to state your positive case for Bernie than to put down with long lists of the perceived short-comings of others like Obama, both Clintons, and others who have served in government?
I know that when I read the threads here I see the Clinton supporters (as much as I can perceive that) being respectful, whereas I think I read the Bernie supporters as disrespectful and dismissive to Clinton. It’s a drag.
What’s wrong with being galled by the fact of a force-fed nomination of a woman who only ascended to prominence in the first place by being the wife of a former (disgraced, impeached) President? It’s discouraging, and why shouldn’t it be? The facts of her record, from her pathological tendency to lie to … what else is there really? What has she done on her own? When did she ever display anything like good judgment or political courage? No one seems to like her. Everyone defends her on principle alone, essentially saying, yes she’s a shitty politician, but she’s “our” shitty politician. so if you don’t like her, sit down and shut up.
Not going to shut up about it. She’s a crappy politician and a terrible choice to lead the Democratic Party, much less the country now or ever. Better than the alternative? So what? Nothing to be proud of.
You prove my point.
And you proved Neal’s point. Some of us never lapse into being fanboys/fangirls, Bushies, dittoheads, groupies, etc. That policies, behaviors and character are what we evaluate and not any perceived affinity or “like” for political/celebrity personalities. People that you and we have no personal, real life contact with.
If DEM X does Y and GOP X does Y, some of us evaluate their behavior by the exact same standards and the D and R are irrelevant. It’s not hate for DEM X or GOP X. We don’t know them. Maybe in personal and individual settings, they are perfectly nice, etc. people, but that’s irrelevant to evaluating Y.
Marie3, that’s just not nice. Are you supposing I’m a dittohead or groupie? That I’m not evaluation policies, behaviors and character because I’m asking for civility? So you think I don’t personally know my elected representatives? I do.
I guess you’re saying I’m not critical. But sure I am. I just don’t let it become the be-all and end-all of every post I make here.
As far as your second paragraph, I guess my advanced degree isn’t good enough to understand what it is you’re trying to say there.
Oh, and being called “Hillary haters” is nice?
Those are examples of words used to label those that are known to have succumbed to cults of personality and by doing so, depreciate their objective and critical thinking abilities. Are quick to kill the messenger that offer rational critiques of the one on the pedestal and respond with “Obama hater,” “Hillary hater,” and offer up irrelevant and spurious facts or rationales to reject the message and convince themselves that the messenger is stupid, etc.
I’m under no illusion that those under a spell can hear a critique. (Being “not nice” to Scientologists and Jehovah Witnesses is the most effective way to get rid of them. Otherwise, they exploit the human impulse/training to be polite to being their sales pitch.) Thus, accept that those invested in Obama, Clinton, or whoever can only hear critiques of neoliberalism and US militarism as an attack on the persons of Obams, etc. and not the policy. Explains why partisan DEMs had no difficulty hearing and accepting the critiques of similar actions based on similar policies when it was Bush/Cheney as the central actors.
I don’t think I ever said “Hillary-hater”. Where did you see that?
In so many words you did.
Your advanced degree is shit, especially if you think it’s not. Whatever you learned to get your advanced degree, you failed to learn never to mention it. If you’re good, you don’t need an “advanced degree” to prove it. That’s the point, old boy. Never mention it. You’re not as nice as you think you are.
Are you a dittohead, or groupie? You brought it up. Are you civil? No one’s questioning that. Do you know your elected representatives? Tell me about them. How’ they doin’?
I agree with you, but I think it is best to let these arguments be right now and cut them all some slack. The Sanders wing of the party has lost and they have not reconciled itself to it yet.
When the dust settles, each will do what they think is best in the short term and nothing we say or do will change it.
It will be more interesting to see if, in the longer term, they actually sit down with themselves and figure out why their movement failed to move the Democratic party.
“It will be more interesting to see if, in the longer term, they actually sit down with themselves and figure out why their movement failed to move the Democratic party. “
Condescending remark. Let’s hope longer term is not later than November.
I’m sorry if it seems condescending. I consider the short term November, this election cycle. I have no idea what the supporters of Sanders will do. I would guess that a chunk will stay home, a chunk will hold their nose and vote for Hillary, and a chunk will decide that Sanders and Trump are on the same page on campaign financing and trade and will move to Trump.
I doubt very much if anything I say will make any difference to any of them. They will make up their own minds.
The longer term is for next time. At some point (2024? 28?) the Sanders wing of the party will try again. What should they do differently? Why didn’t the message resonate with minorities? Why didn’t it win over women? Bernie has the same slice of the Democratic party he had from the start. Why?
I believe the Democratic Party has been moved by the primary campaign. There is evidence to show that. The proof will be in the policies, if we win in November. If Hillary wins the nomination, the Sanders supporters can ensure that her leftward moves during the last year will be held if they do their part to support the Democratic Party ticket. I’m optimistic we would do so; bitter feelings during the 2008 primary were felt as well.
You make exactly one factual point – that HRC is the wife of WJC who was impeached. The entire rest of your post is the sort of subjective opinion commonly expressed on right-wing blogs and by people like Rush Limbaugh – I think of myself as a Democrat with opinions pretty much diametrically opposed.
Well, my standard challenge then. Say something, anything, to prove your belief in Hillary. What’s so great about her? Surely, it should be easy to say something, anything about how terrific she is. How does she inspire you? But no one, not one of her supporters is able to make that statement well. Most simply defer. She represents the past of the party, and it’s a past that has failed over and over again now for 25 years. And her main argument, your main argument is that she will persist that past further into the future until…what? How many more statehouses can the Democrats lose? How many more seats in the House? How many more centrist judges will she appoint to federal courts to ensure favors for corporations over people?
Go ahead, liken my criticisms to her critics on the right. Doesn’t change the fact that you can’t say a single thing to rebut the glaring fault of her nomination: no one likes her. Especially Democrats. Have you actually listened to them defend her? They don’t praise her, they insult those that doubt her. You may not be able to tell the difference, but heaping scorn on those of us opposed is not the same as making any kind of case, factual or otherwise, in Clinton’s favor.
I can give a shot at this. I think she works very hard at the jobs she has undertaken. I think she has gained the admiration of colleagues in the Senate. I think she served admirably as Sect of State, though I didn’t always agree with her policy stances. I think she has a genuine understanding of people’s connectedness to one another and of government’s role in creating a better society for all people. I think she exhibits pragmatic solutions to difficult problems, nuanced solutions to complex issues. I think she has seen what it is to be president more than any other candidate running for office and understanding the realities of the job.
I am not so articulate, so I will refer you to something I came across at Kos:
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/2/23/1489746/-Why-I-a-male-millennial-and-person-of-color-am-vo
ting-for-Hillary-Clinton
She has a very long history in politics BTW, was on the Senate Watergate committee staff, has a history of working on children’s issues that goes way way back.
another linkie
https:/medium.com@suneilkamath/why-i-a-male-millennial-and-person-of-color-am-voting-for-hillary-c
linton-94eacabb76c6#.jnuo3c3mg
You’re articulate enough.
I’m voting for her if she gets the nomination and hope she gets better as she goes along. I’ll check the link when I have a chance.
Maybe she should pull out her references in re forcing Nixon to resign (rather than Kissinger as a mentor, e.g.) going forward. She’s probably got a raft of great stuff underneath the layers and years of cruft. She could be the next FDR, I have no doubt. As much as I dislike the act she’s decided to play so far this election, there’s likewise no doubt she’s the biggest badass Democrat ever. I just want to hear her, see her, feel her start to act like it. Like you did just there.
Do you have some backup for that?
Asking Kissinger for his opinions occasionally is not the same thing as being “mentored” by him, many foreign policy professionals do that.
She mentioned in one debate being complimented by Kissinger for her management performance at State. What is wrong with that, please?
Two of my older brothers served in Viet Nam. Most nights we went to bed afraid they would be killed. And I look back on that and, still, wonder what was that for? Preventing the expanse of communism we were told. It mattered to my parents; that I understood. But I never understood why they were destroying our family with fear in favor of stopping something that was so far away, and something they were convinced was so wrong that it surely couldn’t be a threat to us.
Our families, our generations back then in the 60s and early 70s, lived that fear day after day. You seem not to have an idea of the toll that war took on us, prolonged by Nixon and Kissinger. They could have stopped it sooner. They didn’t.
That’s what’s wrong with your defense of Kissinger and Hillary’s gratuitous citing him as one of her mentors. Don’t deny she made a point of claiming credit for Kissinger’s endorsement. You don’t care, but how can I trust her?
That is your spin. Claiming to have received a compliment from him is not “citing him as one of her mentors.” Asking his opinion, something many foreign policy professionals do, is not being “mentored.”
And, BTW, part of effective politics is talking to unappealing people, I find holier-than-thou attitudes unattractive.
I have not “defended” Kissinger, (or,indeed, expressed any opinion of him) all I did was point out that his opinions have been widely sought.
Asking that war criminal is akin to asking Cheney in my book,
I’m old enough to remember Kissinger’s crimes in Vietnam, Chile, Cambodia, East Timor,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/crimes-against-humanity-why-is-henry-kissinger-walking-around-free/5358
322
“But no one, not one of her supporters is able to make that statement well.”
You asked me to do this last week. I complied. You upgraded my comment. Yet here we are.
Sure it was pretty good, but it didn’t stick. What was it again?
Found in your comments ratings:
http://www.boomantribune.com/comments/2016/2/27/101632/507/93#93
Neal, the supermajority of Democratic Party voters, even a substantial portion of voters who support Sanders in the primary like me, simply do not agree with your views here of Hillary, Bill, and the Party. You’re deep into confirmation bias land here.
Center, what choice did that “supermajority” have?
You’re deep into self-delusion land here.
Even now, in the heat of the Democratic Party primary, polled Democratic Party voters who are asked if they approve or disapprove of Hillary answer “Approve” at a 75% to 80% level. It’s not a matter of electoral choice.
A substantial portion of the people who have voted or are preparing to voting for Sanders in the primary approve of Hillary overall. I am one of them. It is completely rational to hold these views simultaneously.
You’re right. I’ll have a Hillary sign on my lawn and a sticker on my bumper before long. Hate her logo though. than H-> thing is ugly.
In exit polls Clinton in a number of primaries struggled to break 50 on the question of being honest and trustworthy.
That is in a DEMOCRATIC electorate.
She has significant trust issues in the rank and file.
Primary voters do tend to be more aware of what has been going on. LOL
Please comment on the relationship, if any, between the statistic you mentioned and the other one: that Hillary Clinton has an 80% approval rating among Democrats.
The likeliest interpretation I have is that the two surveys are sampling radically different populations.
Hillary’s approvals are ridiculously poor with Republicans, and they are below water with Independents as well. They’re the ones who drag her overall approvals below 50%.
Nonstop attacks for 24 years; they’re a helluva drug.
This might be the difference between pragmatism and idealism. Why annoy people if there is no payoff? And if you are going to post, why not do so in a way that encourages people to actually take the trouble to read your posts?
Always working on that. I write here mostly to get stuff off my chest. I’m not a reporter and less interested in data (as a former programmer I know how data is manipulated) than revelation. Great line in song from Rent: “The opposite of war isn’t peace; it’s creation.” FWIW I read many of your comments.
At dailykos the Clinton people are accusing Jane Sanders of being a criminal.
Spare me you self-righteousness.
Nutpicking. Unimpressed now.
This is where you stumble onto the demographic split.
During Obama’s presidency Democrats are far more likely to self describe as liberal, and particularly this is true for under 40.
You are wrong – the party is clearly moving left.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/183686/democrats-shift-left.aspx
This is actually an interesting response, and a challenge to those taking a strident leftward stance re: Obama (and now, Clinton). The challenge is this; how are you going to produce democratic change if you can’t convince people who are largely aligned with your ideology?
Sort of works both ways, don’t you think? Or maybe you figure the “strident” left can be ignored?
My objections to Bernie are not based on ideology, I like Bernie’s ideology just fine. My objections are:
In threads like these, Mel Brooks is all I’ve got:
“The people are revolting!”
“Don’t get saucy with me, Bernaise”
The difference is that the left — even those of us who are convinced there’s a hidden majority for Sanders-type policies — realizes that lots of people don’t agree with us. We have no choice but to realize it.
The right thinks everyone in America thinks like them — at least everyone who matters, and has any common sense, and deserves a say.
That’s why they can be so furious that they didn’t get exactly everything they wanted from a GOP Congress. They neither know or care that significant majorities of the country DON’T want those policies.
Well, they are certainly getting a taste of getting what they want at the state level, no?
I’m looking to behave myself here, so the immoderate language used by others on this thread will not be returned personally and in kind. A few things I’d offer in response to the post and discussion:
The strong, hostile and condescending language that many on this thread are using in response to BooMan’s proposal is, I think, a minor representation of part of the larger point he makes at the end. These attacks on our blog host are from people who choose to remain in our congregation; the blogosphere has witnessed disagreements that split communities and caused many to leave their communities. Many of these scuffles come from our individual disagreements with the performance of our new President and the 111th Congress.
I look at the performance of Obama and his first Congress and see a remarkable list of laws passed along with an economic stimulus which was the largest passed in the history of the United States. I recognize that some economists called it insufficiently large and not ideally formulated to create full and prompt healing of the economy. I’m aware of the failures to properly install other worthwhile programs, enforce others which were installed, and regulate the bad actors who had the biggest hand in creating the crash, up to and including the moral hazard that comes from the difficulty in prosecuting individual criminal cases which lead to jail time for perpetrators. The flawed philosophies and personal arrogances of Geithner and others; all stipulated.
Where I leave many critics here is in my interpretations of recent outcomes and my search for the quickest way to have our more effective policies implemented. So, for example, I see the glass more than half full in my interpretations of the accomplishments of our President and the 111th Congress. In military and foreign policies, education and other regulations, health care administration, and in the largely successful responses to great government crises, the performances of the President and that Congress can be measured in real, measurable policy outcomes which were much more successful than the policies of recent Presidents and Congresses.
In reading through the commentaries of many others here, I do not see agreements that those real, factual policy improvements are stipulated. When I see what I view as an abandonment of facts, and see those representations expressed in a hostile way, my trust and my desire to organize with these members of our community falls away.
This is a familiar sentiment of mine here, but I ask again for a consideration of this point, because you can see here I’m in agreement with many of the larger points of the most strident here. I get the point of bargaining for what we want, but the people who we are trying to influence are much more likely to be influenced by critics when those critics have organized themselves and their community well, and when their descriptions of history reflect a reasonable interpretation of past and current outcomes.
This is important, not just in what our leaders hear when we offer individual critiques within our group, but it determines how well we organize our group into action. So, when we have differing views on policy and historical outcomes, and when we fail to respect each other in ways that cause us to distrust working with each other, our organizing is splintered and less effective; sometimes it’s even ineffective. In most cases, we are as responsible as our elected officials and appointed officials for the performances of our governments. If our governments have failed in some way, it’s usually on us.
When we see the remarkable recovery from the worst financial crash since 1929 and the worst military and diplomatic failures in centuries, and react to those remarkable performance by saying that the people who led those recoveries are entirely servants of the money class and the military-industrial complex, and offer extremely harsh personal assessments of the best leaders we have, we are showing that we do not want to govern; we are showing that we prefer to stand outside and throw rocks.
Finally, I believe there are problems created by personal mythologies that crop up in the reporting of history. For example, we hear multiple people here expressing disappointment with Howard Dean. Some feel he became a sycophantic supporter of Democratic Party leaders who they disapprove of, because those leaders are seen to be insufficiently liberal. This interpretation requires us to shove aside some history. Howard Dean’s acts as Governor and policy planks as a Presidential candidate did not universally represent the left side of Party consensus on policy. Turning what was more likely agreements with the president and other leaders on policy into a personal interpretation of Dean’s actions appears overdetermined and assumes facts not in evidence.
Objectively three things can be said about the response to the financial crisis:
The recovery is remarkable. Virtually all of the gains have gone to the people who were bailed out. Most people are miserable, and their wages are lower than when Obama took office.
And this is where the split starts – with a diagnosis of reality. As Edsall documented well – things are very far from OK.
If not addressed worse is coming – and I don’t think Clinton will – because her ideology prevents her from understanding it.
Finally there is just the basic fact that Clinton is Clinton. See her statements on outsourcing (which are every bit as damaging as Romney’s 47%) and her lobbying for free trade while publicly opposing it.
It is not possible to disentangle the basic dis-trust she has earned from everyone on the left in the manner you suggest.
The Edsall piece shared here is one of the things that got me to reconsider the tone of my contributions here. Yes, even with an unemployment rate which has been cut in half, most Americans continue to experience mild to severe suffering or anxiety because of the imbalanced recovery. It is something that our Presidential and Congressional candidates must be extremely responsive to.
Here’s where we cleave:
“If not addressed worse is coming – and I don’t think Clinton will – because her ideology prevents her from understanding it.”
Hillary’s campaign, in both its policy planks and the issues she is choosing to emphasize on the trail, reflect leftward adjustments in her ideology.
“Finally there is just the basic fact that Clinton is Clinton.”
What more need be said? In this telling, there will be no consideration of the actual campaign Hillary is running.
“See her statements on outsourcing (which are every bit as damaging as Romney’s 47%) and her lobbying for free trade while publicly opposing it.”
These claims which stipulate facts not in evidence are being put to the test as we speak. If these claims were truly as damaging as Romney’s 47% statement, the Democratic party primary electorates would be smashing her to the ground right now. They are not. Perhaps this claim is worth reconsidering.
“It is not possible to disentangle the basic dis-trust she has earned from everyone on the left in the manner you suggest.”
Consistently, about 80% of Democrats approve of Hillary. That is a wholly disconnected reality from the claim here, unless it is decided that rank-and-file Democrats are not “on the left,” at which point I don’t know what to do for you.
In the end, here’s how the implications of these judgments read to me: I reserve the right to blame the Democratic Party primary electorates, which are leaning Hillary’s way so far, if the GOP POTUS candidate wins in November. It’ll be what you deserve. I wouldn’t care to defend Hillary from the Bullshit Mountain headed her way in the general election, because she’s horrible.
I do not know if that is what what is intended by people who make these claims. That’s how they read to me, based on what I’m observing in whole.
“I reserve the right to blame the Democratic Party primary electorates, which are leaning Hillary’s way so far….”
Why, how, when was it ever different in the history of democracy? Voters always blame other voters for electing buffoons and villains to positions of power that they perceive directly or indirectly to harm them. In terms of electorates, blame is usually assigned to the other party, but often, and not unfairly, to one’s own.
You seem to assign to the Democratic Party a purity it doesn’t have where it deserves to be above blame. They’re the better party, everyone here agrees. But we’ve got a lot of blame-worthy electorates and they should be blamed for preventing the rise of better politicians, for being ignorant and disengaged and generally stupid. Not saying they should not be allowed to vote, but when they vote badly, when they vote out of fear and ignorance, they should be blamed for being bad Democrats.
And so what, and what of it? They blame me for being gay, and that’s enough for them to blame the “electorate” of the Democratic Party of which I’m a part, though I’ve always voted in favor of policies that favor them, even though their bigotry against gays caused terrible suffering and death when they failed to vote for policies and politicians that could have lessened it. So what? That’s politics. Who’s worse? Well, anti-gay bigots are, obviously, and they deserve blame for their fear and bigotry. Damn right I reserve the right to blame them for being not just bad Democrats, but vile, hateful human beings. Being so-called Democrats doesn’t let them off the hook.
You’re clear enough about who the “they” is in your construct. African-Americans have significantly moved their positions on same-sex marriage and other LGBTQ issues, taking the guidance and leadership of our President. I hope it’s not lost on you that, as a body, they are not now your implacable enemy on this issue. The frightened white evangelicals have that role; they’re the ones who have always had the most impact on elections.
Regarding the discussion of who are and are not “bad Democrats,” the 80% approval figure for Hillary causes us to confront the fact that strong majorities of all ethnicities within the Democratic coalition approve of Hillary. You’ve got a lot of Party voter blocks to be displeased with.
35% of Americans say they’re Democrats. Roughly. Hillary’s favorability in general is only about what, 45%, on a good day? Two thirds of that are the 80% of Democrats you mention. Terrible. It’s just terrible.
Blacks poll worse than the general population on questions of gay rights. Glad Obama evolved on these issues, and that it’s persuaded some blacks to change their minds over the past couple of years. And, just want to mention, I have no doubt ending DADT and speaking for gay marriage were top priorities for Obama all along. Whatever else I may dislike about him, I’m proud of him, and Democrats, for the progress on gay rights he helped to make possible.
I trust Hillary will continue that progress.
“It is something that our Presidential and Congressional candidates must be extremely responsive to.”
I struggle to respond to this comment. There is nothing in Clinton’s agenda that will come close to reversing the trends that Edsall highlights.
I challenge you: if you care quantify how much of a difference what she is for amounts to. What she offers is not close to the scale of the problem.
She has lobbied for trade deals while publically opposing them. The GOP will be all over the hyhypocrisy.
As one report noted:
“Other emails show Clinton seeming to personally lobby her former Democratic colleagues in the Senate to support free trade agreements (FTAs) with Colombia, Panama and South Korea. She had previously told voters she would work to block the Colombian and South Korean pacts. “
http://www.ibtimes.com/hillary-clinton-emails-secret-negotiations-new-york-times-trade-bill-lobbying
-2315809
You actually trust a word she says on trade?
Hillary Clinton has significant problems with trust within the Democratic Party. In Iowa, MA, and NH about 50% thought she was honest and trustworthy.
Stop and think for a second. I know this is hard for you – but about half of Democrats in some states simply do not trust her.
A large portion of the Democratic Electorate, most of whom would vote for, her do NOT trust her.
Objectively, she has not been someone anyone left of center can rely on. The list is long:
Iraq
Syria – She criticized Obama after the fact for not becoming more aggressive.
Welfare reform, which she defended in 2008. This is the ultimate neo-liberal betrayal, and one that Peter Edelman, who she once worked for, has attacked as being incredible harmful to poor people.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/10/30/1442859/-Clinton-and-Welfare-Reform-or-does-anyone-actually
-care-about-the-poor
Glass Stegall
On Wall Street you can choose to trust her – but as a former prosecutor and a securities lawyer I can tell you the letter of the law is less important to the commitment to enforce the law.
There is ample evidence on the record to suggest that she does not mean what she says on Wall Street reform. Taking personal money from the firm most responsible for the financial crisis is a sign she really doesn’t believe the populist arguments about Wall Street.
Consistently, about 80% of Democrats approve of Hillary.
You hide behind her approval rating, and you ignore the policy based reasons – and I know you are struggling with this – that are leading people to oppose her.
“n the end, here’s how the implications of these judgments read to me: I reserve the right to blame the Democratic Party primary electorates, which are leaning Hillary’s way so far, if the GOP POTUS candidate wins in November. It’ll be what you deserve. I wouldn’t care to defend Hillary from the Bullshit Mountain headed her way in the general election, because she’s horrible.”
You are out of line. I am making policy arguments and arguments based on her past record. These are not about emotion – but based on facts.
The party is clearly moving left. More importantly, one of the key constituencies that any Democrat must win, the young have moved left. Clinton has struggled to connect at all with large segments of the Democratic electorate. They may approve of her, but their politics are not hers.
Rather than throwing your hands up in the air take a step and ask why are they moving left. Why does Clinton have so little appeal to the group.
For the last 10 years I have been part of the legal protection effort in Florida fighting voter suppression.
If you suggesting I have some duty to just shut up about my concerns I would ask why you think you are in any position to do so. I am a loyal Democrat, but I am not going to be quiet about a candidate who voted for the catastrophe that was the Iraq War.
You don’t have a duty to abandon critiques. She should and clearly is facing these critiques during the primary. I just note that this litany of critiques are completely unleavened by any consideration of her fuller record, and they sometimes, certainly not always, are expressed with what I experience as personal animus.
The refusal to accept her leftward moves on TPP and other issues is one of those areas. Essentially, what you’re claiming here is that “she’s lying.” That misses the mark, and is an extremely personal attack. The email article you link does not bring us to a conclusion on the TPP issue, for example.
The same “she’s lying” claim was entered by some about her opposition to Keystone. That the State Department had provided earlier approvals for the project was made less relevant by the fact that she came out against it in 2015, and irrelevant when President Obama subsequently killed it. Hillary helped kill the project, regardless of the carping she got from, ironically, many ardent pipeline opponents.
What you’re failing to take into account is that it is possible that TPP could get killed by Congress this year. Hillary coming out in opposition to the Partnership increases the chance of making that happen. I’m not predicting it will happen; I’m saying that the odds are increased and the possibility of getting Congress to reject it are also increased, either before or after the election.
As to whether Hillary is bringing the electorate she needs, all I can say is the primaries and caucuses are the test of that. Selecting portions of the electorate she’s doing less well with in those contests and deciding that her lack of success with those narrow blocs show she isn’t bringing the electorate she needs…well, I flatly disagree with that.
So if you want to have a policy discussion, then lets have it.
Defend Iraq. Defend Welfare Reform. I listed a good number of policy arguments.
I am profoundly skeptical of her on TPP. It runs against many prior statements she made on it, against her public previous opposition to trade agreements and her subsequent support of them, and her statements in the 2008 race.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/15/politics/45-times-secretary-clinton-pushed-the-trade-bill-she-now-oppo
ses/
It would be naive in the extreme to take them at face value – and that is a more than reasonable view of the record.
Can you cite evidence for the proposition she helped keystone, other than your own speculation. In the end, the price of oil killed keystone.
You very quickly retreat into the charge of personal animus – but it is pretty apparent you are uwilling to defend the record before is. I have in fact offered the fuller record, which you have seen fit not to address at all.
Stipulated that Sanders’ policy platform is better overall, and his history of public service makes him more trustworthy as a prospective President to hold to strong policies we would prefer.
I don’t care to defend Clinton on her Iraq vote and her support of the President’s 1996 agreement to reform welfare. She’s not running on extending either of those policies.
Her decisions about use of diplomacy and the military would be better by many multiples than the decisions that would be made by any of the GOP candidates, including Trump. Trump will not be able to credibly run to her left on the use of the military, given that he is campaigning on jacking up Defense spending and using the military to commit genocide in the Middle East.
Hillary is running on increasing spending on a broad list of social welfare programs. Endlessly re-running the 1996 welfare reform fight, and the 1994 criminal justice reform bill which Sanders voted for, has forced her to defend her record in those areas, and she is doing so. Refusing to accept her platform in this and other areas is, I claim at a certain point, personal animus.
Refusing to accept her campaign is also profoundly weak. I absolutely expect Hillary to hold to her campaign promises if she is elected President. That gives us far more leverage to hold her to her word than this “She’s lying, what are you, naive?” business. Frankly, that sentiment would let her off the hook. We have to keep up the spirited fight, and your position encourages people to demobilize. No, thanks.
Even more dangerously, if a substantial portion of Democratic voters were to decide to continue with that business, it would slightly widen the extremely narrow possibility that one of the Republicans could take the Presidency. I find that unacceptable. I see almost no chance of that happening, though.
In part, my discussions here are meant to help us Sanders supporters who are most strident in beginning to form some perspective, and provide some reminders of the wide gulf between both of our candidates and all of the GOP candidates. It’s telling that, of all the harsh things which have been said at the Frog Pond and elsewhere about Hillary, the insult to her and the truth which provokes me most is “She’s a Republican.” It’s completely wrong, but if those who use that trope wish to drag down general election turnout, it’s an excellent strategy to do so.
Clinton coming out in opposition to Keystone even though her state Department had not been helpful in the fight created political space for the President to spike the project, secure in the knowledge that the likely Democratic Presidential nominee would not be sabotaging his decision. It also gave space for fence-sitters and moderates to join the list of pipeline opponents.
Hillary, even though she had a very liberal voting record in the Senate, even though her 100% name recognition insulates her from a sharp increase in her disapprovals moving forward, even though she has many millions of Americans who are very excited at the prospects of helping her gain the Presidency, is a flawed candidate, and would be a flawed President, like every single President in the history of our Republic. Sanders is also a flawed candidate who would be a flawed President.
I think left and right have been shattered by the economic fallout from 2008 and the way it was handled. Not by the Iraq War. All politics is LOCAL.
You seem to be unable to validate the pain that has rained on the 99%. Trump’s folks want to share it with the 1%. They are just including their own elite as targets these days.
Dems had their eyes opened to the full implications of neoliberalism when the US began to turn itself into a resource extraction economy. And I don’t mean just the oil.
Marie2 ans MNPundit have great lists above. And speaking for myself, I’ve never been too enamored of Sanders’ run precisely because he lacks the institutional allies at this point to help him get done most of what he’d like to see happen.
But that speaks to a larger point that’s only been alluded to, and that only in the mentions of Howard Dean’s DNC tenure:
Er, no, “we” – if by we you’re referring to – didn’t win, and win everywhere – far from it.
The US elected as POTUS a corporate centrist with some progressive social views and a worldview based on reality. And there was the matter of his historic advance of the perception of the glass ceilings all non-white people face in this country. It’s a vast improvement over what came before, and the lack of enthusiasm for HRC is a reflection of the fact that she’s NOT an improvement over what comes before. But as others have spelled out, Obama has surrounded himself from the getgo with establishment people and policies, and his previous career didn’t reflect that as clearly as, say, Bill Clinton in 1992, but as with Clinton, when you’ve been in the wilderness a long time, you believe what you need to believe. But Obama was not only predictable, but completely forthright in 2007-08 about how his administration would govern.
More importantly, though, the candidates for Congress – with the exception of a few outliers like Sherrod Brown and Jeff Merkley – have reflected the worldview of people like Steny Hoyer and Chuck Schumer. And the abandonment of Dean’s vision means the DNC has left locals to fend for themselves in much of the country. That’s where nobody can even plausibly claim that “we” ever won anything. And the losers – in the literal, not Trump-insult, sense of the world – who pick those candidates and prioritize those funds still dominate the Democratic establishment – c.f. DWS. Hillary is their dream candidate.
That she might actually get to become POTUS is much more a reflection of the Democratic establishment having cleared the field in advance of credible challengers – another symptom of the problem – and lucking into a likely completely unsuitable Republican nominee, than any actual public enthusiasm, anywhere, for Clinton’s vision. Even her primary dominance among African-Americans seems to be much more a reflection of pragmatism and her association with Obama that any real enthusiasm. I don’t even see enthusiasm among many of her ardent 2008 supporters these days.
A candidate like Hillary Clinton – an establishment figure who wins the nomination because “it’s his/her turn” usually loses elections – c.f. John Kerry, Bob Dole, Walter Mondale, etc. A victory for Hillary Clinton is historical luck combined with the fact that “we” have actually only won very little so far in the arenas that matter most.
Editing error – I lost a critical word. “…if by “we” you are referring to progressives….’
If the voluminous lists of bad outcomes and policy disappointments and failures were not paired with near maximum levels of personal animus, assumptions of bad faith from Obama/Hillary/the DNC/the other usual suspects, failure to account for political realities and great policy achievements and results, these discussions could be more productive.
Instead, my view is Obama/Hillary/the DNC/the other usual suspects are often characterized here as cartoonishly evil and malicious characters. It’s simply difficult to proceed with a rational discussion when we’re asked to concede these things and fought bitterly on more balanced factual and character summaries.
For example, the thing creating great anger right now, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz’s co-sponsorship of the bill which seeks to block the CPFB’s current regulations of payday lenders. Sure, it’s offensive. Absolutely, Hillary (and Bernie, for that matter), should be made to respond to questions about it.
But the discussion here and elsewhere centers on the need for Hillary to make the DNC unseat Debbie as the Chair now. To me, this fails on a couple of levels:
I’ll concede that there is a broadly held view that Hillary’s relationships with Debbie and other Committee members are being misused, causing her to take some political damage with a narrow swath of Democratic party activists. For those people, she will fail to receive the benefit of the doubt no matter what she does here.
But that’s my point: there is almost no action Hillary can take in response to Wasserman-Schultz’s apostasy that will win her support. Even if she were to come out in public opposition to the CPFB amendment proposed here, I believe people so vehemently opposed to Hillary would just respond “She’s lying.” This, despite the fact that Hillary’s campaign platform and statements have centered on the need to defend Dodd/Frank in whole, and go further to reform laws and increase regulatory action.
It’s difficult to have a productive conversation which avoids hurting feelings under these conditions.
Thank you.
You keep saying you want a rational discussion, but you in fact seldom offer anything substantive in response.
Frankly a disinterested reader would conclude you use “personal animus” as a method of ignoring the substantive record. You retreat into vague allegations when confronted with policy arguments instead of offering a real defense.
“And there was the matter of his historic advance of the perception of the glass ceilings all non-white people face in this country. It’s a vast improvement over what came before, and the lack of enthusiasm for HRC is a reflection of the fact that she’s NOT an improvement over what comes before.”
That’s an interesting and telling juxtaposition. You seem to forget that Clinton would be the first female POTUS. If nothing else, does that not break a glass ceiling all women face in this country, and so constitute an improvement over what came before?
I recall that feminists were once an important and valued progressive constituency. Apparently, no longer in some precincts.
I’d say they are taken for granted. And easy to throw under the bus when compromise is demanded.
Positively Pavlovian when the SC is mentioned, as they cannot really trust the other branches to preserve their legal access.
One might hope that in a reality-based community the aspirations of over 50% of the voting public would be given more consideration.
Here in Portland, Oregon, a peculiar custom has arisen in the last 15 years or so: the poetry post. People erect in the parking strip (area between curb and sidewalk) a post with an sort of display case attached at eye level and then put in said case a piece of poetry. I’ve got one myself.
An article about poetry posts
Imagine if pedestrians walking by stopped, read the poem, then got out a pen and defaced it, or wrote you fucking moron on it, or on the post. That sort of behavior would be the end of this peculiar but delightful custom.
To the best of my knowledge, Booman is under no obligation to provide this place for commentary. Amazingly, then, some commenters seem to think that abusing his gift–and yes, it is a gift–is their prerogative. The thing is, it would be trivial for Booman to block people who post abusive commentary. He chooses not to, for reasons of his own. Yet I expect his patience and tolerance are not infinite.
A post that starts with a title like “Why the Left Wasn’t Shattered By the Iraq War” and ends with “But we waited to win…before we lost our shit,” is meant to be provocative.
I just want to say that the poetry post might be the embodiment of every stereotype of white Portland. (Disclaimer, I love Portland).
I think it sounds delightful.
Well said.
I see the Dems as having two factions, yes. One side seems to not want to do anything but rail about everything that is not at this time utopian. The other side seems to recognize the need for pragmatism and practicing RealPolitik – the art of the possible.
One is forever wanting us to strive to attain a perfect citizen-oriented society, but I don’t see that society being possible. If for no other reason than the existence of the GOP. As long as the GOP is around (hopefully for not much longer!), obstructing and pandering to the 1%ers and multinationals, having some dream about some future time does no practical good in the hear and now or in the near future.
I tell right-to-lifers that if they don’t want women having abortions, then they should line up to adopt those babies – and if they won’t do even THAT, then to STFU. If those babies aren’t important enough for them to adopt them, then they HAVE no standing to talk about it. PUT UP OR SHUT UP.
Similarly, the progressives really push their agendas but don’t do anything practical to make them happen. One way I can see is in the roller coaster of Democratic voter turnout. Presidential years the turnout is like 130 million, and then 2 years later it is consistently 35-40 million people less. People just don’t show up! And they GIVE that off-year election to the Repugs, as surely as if they’d voted for the GOP.
It is CLEAR that if the turnout in off-year elections was at the level of Presidential year elections, the GOP would never EVER win the majority in Congress again.
Just as there are enough right-to-lifers to adopt unwanted babies to avert abortions, there are plenty of Progressives who could act as taxis on election day to help voters show up and vote.
I don’t hear ANYONE doing that.
So, by their normal passivity in every way but floods of empty talk, Progressives enable the GOP.
What would it be LIKE? If the Dems showed up even just three or five elections in a row with 130 million people? How many dickwad Repugs could be kept out of office? How many Citizen’s Uniteds could be overthrown? How many Kelo vs City of Lansings (eminent domain) could be overturned?
On the other hand real Democrats get in their in the mud with the McConnells of the world, the Cruzes and the Boehners. And then, when they do, the Progressives turn their noses up and – like Sanders – declare the Dems who do the fighting as sell-outs. That’s as bad as the GOP denying PTSD treatment and body armor to soldiers. The real Democrats are the soldiers that have kept the GOP at bay, at least somewhat. Why they HATE the people fighting the good fight and lambasting them, I have NO idea.
Like Sanders, the utopian Progressives sit on the sidelines and talk about what the world could BE instead of getting in there and fixing the world that IS.