I have made a variety of arguments about this presidential election, some from the fall or spring, some going back two or more years.
Among them, that Hillary Clinton was so popular with Democrats and the Democratic power structure that she could not be denied the nomination.
That Hillary Clinton was capable of (although by no means certain to) win a Goldwater/McGovern-like landslide by appealing to elements of her husband’s winning coalition without surrendering much of Obama’s winning coalition.
That Democrats would grumble, but they would ultimately rally behind her in roughly the same numbers as they did for Obama. And that black voters would mobilize to preserve Obama’s legacy.
That the Republican Party was hopelessly fractured and dysfunctional, and incapable of nominating a viable candidate or rallying behind a contentious one.
These weren’t predictions based on what I wanted to be true. They were my observations as an analyst.
They meant that I didn’t see a primary challenge to Clinton as an actual threat, but as more of a lobbying campaign. In Sanders’ case, it was a lobbying effort I supported so long as it didn’t take itself too seriously and raise false hopes, cause needless division, or advance meritless conspiracy theories.
They meant that I simply did not believe anyone who said that Clinton was too unpopular to win, or to possibly win in epic fashion.
They meant that I did not agree that this or that constituency of the Democratic Party would sit out the election if Clinton were nominated.
They meant that I knew that the center-right was ripe for the picking and that Clinton was positioned very well to fill up bushel after bushel of soft Republicans.
People who wanted the party to move left ideologically had my sympathy and even my agreement up to a point. But I never thought a narrow victory based on more left-wing rhetoric and promises would yield as much progressive change as a landslide caused by the utter collapse of the Republican Party. And, in any case, the Republicans were in desperate need of a thorough beating, since modest beatings had taught them all the wrong lessons. And, they’d earned it and deserved it, and ought to get it.
It’s too early to say I was right about a lot of this. I’d just invite you to peruse a few headlines this morning and decide for yourself whether you’ve gotten better predictive advice from other sources.
This is why we read you, Martin. Your analytical skill in the political arena is excellent. I’m honestly not sure why you don’t get more notoriety. Seems to me you ought to be a regular on MSNBC at a minimum. I’d rather hear your take than Ezra’s or Nate’s or pretty much anyone else’s.
I agree with every word of this, except the word “surrounding” in the first paragraph which I think is supposed to be “surrendering.” But trivial typos aside, this is all correct and you deserve a victory lap as much as anyone.
I actually think it’s great when you take a second to crow over getting these things right. In a perfect world, methodologically, it wouldn’t be necessary, but there’s so much fractured logic and magical thinking in politics right now that the benefits of disciplined rationality need to be emphasized and demonstrated like this.
Gloating in August has often come to tears, especially for Democrats.
Clinton’s performance depends on how far she digs into the GOP base that still has not gone “I’ll never vote for a Democrat” and how much she can hold the Democratic base that now thinks “I’ll never again vote for a Democrat.”
I don’t think we can make predictions of what those two sentiments will look like in November because they depend on events between now and then and not just on sentiment.
I don’t think this contingent is/was very big and a lot in this group are against even President Obama’s policies so weren’t likely to vote for any Democrat that won the nomination anyway. I also have a hard time calling them “the base”
I agree about the size of the contingent and calling them ‘the base,’ but not about objections to Obama’s policies. I object to many of his policies, as do most of the Democrats I know well (we’re a fairly critical group of people who pretend we’re immune to political crushes) but we’d all vote for Jim Webb over Donald Trump in a heartbeat.
Also, it’s hard for me to imagine that for every vote Clinton loses due to, say, mass-casualty drone strikes or interventionist hawkishness or Wall Street cuddling, she doesn’t gain a vote due to mass-casualty drone strikes or interventionist hawkishness or Wall Street cuddling.
Trump is jerking around on the Long Tail of politics, leaving the fat part of the political bell curve to Clinton. She will build the foundation of her electoral victory on the sturdiest spot in the center.
Curious, what do you think the two idies will pull, nationally?
No idea, really. I’ll defer to fladem on that. But I strongly supported Sanders, and feel even more ‘meh’ about Stein than I do about Clinton. The Libertarian candidates are both ex-governors, right? Is this the first time a third party has run candidates with actual governing experience on that scale? But they’re Libertarians, and tantrumboys are already being catered to by Trump, so I don’t see much room there.
If this contingent is not big, then they cannot be made scapegoats for a failed election, even a failed election downticket that still elects Clinton President.
Not thinking the contingent is big is not being willing to bend policy to gain the support that might marginally turn a winning election into a wave election. How many different fractional percent voters can one write off while pursuing some Republicans who might never vote for Clinton?
Where exactly is the center and mainstream now? It seems to me that is more tolerant of economic non-performance and warmongering than ever if Clinton’s gauging of the center is correct.
Not pursuing polcies of peace and prosperity and actually delivering them will make it all that much harder to be “Stronger together”. There are specific reasons that some former Democrats argue they will never vote for a Democrat again. Most of those are experiences of bait-and-switch on policy as they perceive it. Others are fed up with the chronic corruption of the Democratic party that leads it to defeat. Others are tired of the mealy-mouthed answers of Democrats trying to play both sides against the middle. Lots of Republicans are way more tolerant of these defects among the politicians (poster boy Paul Ryan) in their party. Their break with Trump is a unique event. Where do they go if they don’t go to Clinton? Johnson? Stein? some other group will little chance to create even a presence in the electoral college?
Where they will go is leaving the top line blank and voting all of the Republican ticket that they have voted before plus new blood that is close to their image of Republicans. Clinton’s wooing allows them to fill in the top line without changing their downticket choices.
Anything’s possible. But barring something big and unexpected, it’s hard to see how this race changes much. The notion of Trump as unhinged has taken root. Everything he says and does is seen through that filter. He lacks the temperament to change anyone’s mind. He remains obviously uneducated on the issues. He offers no specifics. His rhetoric is grandiose but empty. He’s interesting to listen to only when he rages and rails, and those are precisely the behaviors that lead people to feel him unpresidential.
“…would yield as much progressive change as a landslide…” Uh, huh. Will I still be looking for that change in 2018 when TTP and such have been passed for the donor class? (If those go down, I will absolutely shut up about sincerity.) Will she have stopped lauding balanced budgets and pay-go and deploring deficits? Will DNC selected/elected legislators?
Trump is as mapable as a loose helium balloon. She is lucky in her opponent, as I have said.
I asked Boo for specifics about ‘progressive change,’ but I’ve never said what mine are, in terms of ‘what would make me happy about a Clinton administration.’ What’s on your list, other’n the defeat of TPP?
I’ve posted on the stupid deficit hysteria.
Would like to see human-resources treated as the infrastructure they actually are. Just as impt as roads and bridges.
Stop bribing school districts with federal sweeteners to privatize public education. Uniform federal accountability legislation for private schools, since states seem unwilling to hold them to any standards at all, including professional teachers.
Environment…where to begin?
FIRE sector….where to begin?
Foreign policy…very nervous.
And index a NEW minimum wage to inflation if we get our majorities.
Curious, what are yours?
I just wrote a whole thing about my leftie fantasies, but that’s not the question I asked! (I’ll just mention in passing that the word ‘guillotine’ was in there.)
I suspect (I suspect we all suspect) that the One Crisis to Rule Them All is climate change. I mean, everything else fades into almost irrelevance beside that, except maybe securing loose nukes? But I have no idea what progress would look like. I don’t even know what to hope for, in terms of a center-left (if we get one) administration.
In terms of foreign policy, I prefer the steely resolve it takes to watch terrors unfold and live with the knowledge that we did nothing, to the steely resolve it takes to charge to the rescue, make things worse, and feel like at least we tried.
But in terms of what would please me in a Clinton administration? Making serious mouth-noises about the public option/medicare for all. Making a strong argument for charging the same for public school for grades 13-16 as 9-12. Mentioning UBI as an eventual goal, while doing nothing to work toward it. Calling taxes ‘patriot fees’ or ‘homeland dues.’ Not increasing the military budget. Decreasing the number of troops deployed overseas. Stopping killing children with drones. Working seriously with unions to increase the percentage of unionized workers. Taxing hedge fund money, increasing the top marginal rate at least slightly, and supercharging the Born On Third Base, aka Estate, Tax. Strengthening Dodd-Frank. At least 50% of cabinet positions going to women. Nominating youngish liberal women to the Supreme Court. A teacher-centered Department of Education (because in my experience, teachers are student-centered, so give ’em what they need and get the fuck out of the way). And while I’m dreaming, a focus on families stuck in extreme poverty.
You forgot “Making the political argument strong enough that this list of policies is no longer seen as ‘dreaming’.”
The care with which Democrats have taken not to move the Overton window of political debate is something that has driven progressives nuts. Most times this frustration has been expressed in terms of failure to use the “bully pulpit”. Or the tolerance of massive breaks of convention by the Republicans that have moved the Overton window to the right.
But I get it, actually doing the platform and fulfilling the verbal promises would be your agenda.
A good list btw.
“I’ll never again vote for a Democrat.”
How big is that base? It’s impossible to say until the election is actually held, but hard campaign preference polling > soft opinion polling in the interim.
In one of the linked articles it compares democratic support for Clinton to republican support for Trump. Clinton polls 92% from likely voters whom are democrats.
So assuming what some posters here call the ‘base’ are actually democratic voters, and assuming every single one will never come around and vote for Clinton (both absurd assumptions IMO), it’s somewhere under 8% of likely democratic voters. And as the article states, that is within the margin of normal democratic crossover voters.
.
Depending on how that 8% are distributed geographically, they can make a difference in a number of downticket races at the margin.
What the 2000 election taught us is that protecting the margin and keeping it wide makes a race too clear (not too close) to steal. Running up margins is one form of election protection.
Absolutely agree; but again this points to my point re: soft polling versus candidate preference. I’ve reiterated my belief that pretty much any opinion poll is basically worthless. PPP is particularly guilty of fielding these kinds of fluff polls.
Polls create narratives by what questions are asked. New stories drive poll questions. What drives news stories?
Individual polls are worthless. Comparison of aggregations of polls to previous elections have some value, but in atypical election years they too might turn out to be worthless. Except to drive certain narratives.
What you call fluff polls generally have low sample sizes and poorly constructed questions. Moreover, it is quite possible that voters of different candidates do not have uniform openness to talking to polling companies.
I don’t think we know how many pissed of Democratic voters there are this year (progressive or otherwise). Therefore, thinking that any segment of them is expendible is a mistake–if not for the Presidential election, for the downticket races needed to enact policy at the federal and state levels.
Many cynics among the disgruntled Democrats have argued that “giving the old college try” version of failure in 2010 and 2014 was motivated by the desire not to be pushed into more progressive policies but to gain a “grand bargain” that united the country in bipartisanship. Aside from incompetence, this was one of the driving forces in wanting Debbie Wasserman-Schultz out of the DNC–the top-down manipulation of what were and were not acceptable candidates, issues, and criticisms of the Obama administration.
Some of those might vote for downticket candidates that they know and on impulse in the voting booth also vote for Clinton. No need to cut off that impulse by being gratuitously insulting or thinking that their votes don’t matter. In some states they matter at the margins more that party pols admit.
Those predictions were all commonplace, no? (Perhaps except for the one about the Republican inability to rally behind a contentious candidate, which I don’t recall.)
The only risky prediction here is that the collapse of the Republican Party will yield progressive change.
I hope you’re right, though I’d love to see specifics about ‘progressive change.’ If you’re arguing that Republican collapse will yield moderate entrenchment of previously-won progressive victories and serious entrenchment of the Democratic establishment … that’s not exactly oracular.
Booman has always said that progressives need to be more comfortable governing and being the establishment. That those 2 things can help us reach our long term goals.
What President Clinton can do will depend largely on the size of her victory and the Congress that comes with her. If we can get a pretty solid Democratic Congress we might get a lot done.
I think immigration reform and infrastructure need to be some of the top tier priorities but there are so many it’s hard to say what we’ll be able to get through Congress.
Yes, but preemptively excusing the lack of progressive achievements due to ‘the size of her victory’ or ‘can’t get it through Congress’ isn’t actually an excuse. It’s just a way of saying that the collapse of the Republican party is either not ‘utter’ or won’t, in fact, lead to progressive change.
I suspect that Boo is (and this is daring) edging closer to expecting an actual landslide that gives Clinton a majority/supermajority. And then we will see real change in a progressivey direction. And when that happens, I hereby vow that I’ll sing humble songs of praise in the comments and send him $200 even if I can’t afford it at the time!
And I’ve been wondering about something. Can you think of examples of political movements in the past, oh, 50 years, that became comfortable being the establishment and then instituted real change?. (Where ‘real change’ is something like ‘shifting power away from previously-dominant locations and groups to previously non-dominant locations and groups’.)
On the flip side of any potential majority/supermajority which might possibly occur, I am trying to envision just how extreme the response is going to be among the Trump-ster crowd if we actually start legislating nothing more than just a continuation of the center-left agenda, not to mention some actual lefty stuff. I expect something like this might just be what it takes to actually get them out in the streets with their guns, Gadsden flags and a head full of very public and raged filled grievances against everyone who is not like them.
Things could certainly get ugly. They will not go quietly into the night, weeping into their hankies like many of the dejected Romney voters.
the Conservative Movement which they still call themselves for some reason
at some point you have to stop being a movement to get change and actually get the change
that’s an awfully worded sentence but I can’t think of a better way to put it
The Republican Party dominates in Congress and local level primarily because we let them, which is of course a bigger conversation than we’re having right now any way.
From which dominant group did they transfer power, and to which non-dominant group?
The Conservative Moment strikes me as more of method by which the already-existing-establishment maintained power. They pretended they cared about god, guns, and gays to get Movement votes and stay in charge. But in fact, they were establishment all along, and no real power changed hands.
When I think about recent-ish political movements that implemented real and lasting change, there’s the feminist movement and the civil rights movement. Both made inroads into the ‘establishment’ but they certainly didn’t become comfortable there and then make real change.
I’m muddling my point. Not sure exactly what I’m saying. I guess just that my intuition tells me that there are two ways to fight off a zombie invasion:
I think that, while #1 is a longshot, there is a certain logical error in #2.
from the liberal power base or if you prefer FDR Dems.
LOL to your last point
but there are always more choices even if we don’t see them all right now
You are the man. I’m going to drop you some coin right now. You deserve it.
Pretty on-track, I’d say. I’d disagree with one thing – Hillary’s coalition is not Obama’s plus Bill’s. She’s not getting the big elements from Bill’s coalition missing in Obama’s – poor and rural whites. Instead, she’s drawing college educated and female white voters who were absent in both coalitions. Female voters have been Democratic for decades, but she’s getting a lot more of them than usual. White college-educated voters have always been Republican and winning them could have revolutionary implications.
But still, impressive foresight so far. I’m hoping it proves accurate through November and we don’t see the disaffected Republicans return to their party.
We need to do our share, Boo. Toomey has to go.
Predictions are like assholes. Everybody has one.
Some people make a career out of making predictions. What that really means is that they stay solidly in the middle of all possibilities. If they are lucky enough to be in the public eye when they make a couple of good predictions…and egocentric enough/hustler enough to try to make serious money out of those predictions…then they can a have a long career during which they are right some of the time and wrong some of the time. Once their reputation as some kind of seer is established the mistakes are forgotten and the responsibilities of of pundithood are thrust upon them again and again and again.
So it goes.
However ..in as volatile a scene as is this year’s political situation? I would be very careful if I were Booman regarding crowing about the accuracy of my predictions. HRC’s luggage is circling above her head like a flight of Foobirds. If the Foo shits…even only one…you damned well wear it.
This election is too early to call, no matter how loudly the mass media’s Mighty Wurlitzer might be playing the anti-Trump/pro-HRC song.
Bet on it? No. Rather…do not bet on it unless you have some really solid inside information. This election could turn on things like a trip up a flight of stairs, a mob rat fingering Trump, a debate failure from either opponent, a national disaster of some kind or any one of a multitude of other things.
Watch.
The fat lady ain’t sung yet. She’s not even sure which song she’ll be told to sing. Not yet. Not really.
Watch.
AG
Oh come on Arthur. Martin deserves to toot his own horn. He’s often right about things well in advance of anyone else. There’s no one else around right now that I’m aware of who reaches his level of consistency or insight. Al Giordano is similarly brilliant (and more lefty activist and thus would perhaps be more your cup of tea — though, honestly, it’s hard to tell what you’d not find reason to disparage) but he’s not blogging regularly anymore. I recommend his occasional tweets but that’s all you’ll get from old Al these days.
he has a newsletter but I think you have to pay
That’s too bad. Narco News was once something of a go-to for me until a few years ago. Giordano’s work was solid, and some of his other writers did some fantastic work as well.
You write:
Here?
On this formerly “progessive” blog?
You’re right.
Aside from TarheelDem, Marie3, Oui, karl pearson, Ludovici, Indianadem, The Voice In The Wilderness and very damned few others, no one is stepping very far from the disastrous neoliberal center in which this country lingers like a weakened giant.
But on the website Counterpunch I find numerous people every day who I would not only not disparage but actively support if they were on this site.
I’m not a kneejerk anything, Parallax…including a kneejerk disparager. I just call it like I see it.
AG
Unfortunately very true, Arthur. I’ve counted the same names. Everyone else is content to be a Country Club Republican.
Indeed.
AG
heh! Except they do so without the benefit being a CC member.
As I was on my way out the door of a job (my choice), I stopped by the office of a colleague and said, “They don’t pay you enough to be a Republican.” Seriously, unless one is in the local top 5% (or heading for it) of income earners, one isn’t among the CC set. Regardless of how often one gets invited to play golf with a CC member.
Some of us just have a different perspective on how transformation happens. I think we all tend to want mostly the same thing. Some just expect it to happen all at once or pretty quickly while others are content to just keep putting one foot in front of another.
But putting one foot in front of another on a treadmill is just empty motion. You do not get anywhere…except eventually you get tired and the treadmill throws you off because you can no longer keep up with its constantly accelerating requirements.
That’s just about where we are now, Parallax. Things aren’t getting better, they’re just getting more difficult. This motion that we have seen towards non-PermaGov candidates like Trump and Sanders (supposedly non-PermaGov, anyway) is a sign that people are waking up to their position on the PermaGov treadmill, and they are not liking it one bit. They are working their asses off but only the .01% are profiting from their labors. Something’s got to give, and soon. Do you really think that HRC…bought and sold by Goldman Sachs and the rest of the hustlers…is going to change things here? I don’t. On the evidence of her financial supporters if for no other reason. She cannot reform this system because she is a product of it, and trapped in her own position.
Something is going to give, eventually.
Give or break.
Watch.
AG
That’s not what I see. I see LGBT rights having moved forward enormously over the last eight years. As a divorce attorney, I see the ACA in action and consider it a huge advance forward over what existed before, which was just an empty racket where health insurance was supposed to be. It’s less than perfect but a necessary first step.
Things get better and worse constantly but if we keep pushing forward, we can get more better than worse. It’s a lot of work but the true complacency comes from cynicism that discounts steps in the right direction.
The trouble with your vision, Arthur, is simply that there aren’t enough people who agree with it. If you’re in the minority you don’t get your way in a democracy. So you have to work to shift hearts and minds. Or you can complain about it and do nothing. I can’t help but think of Occupy which made a lot of noise but had no accomplishments because coming to consensus about the point of it all was just a total bummer. So let’s just yell and shout and complain.
Do we have time to be “nice?” To continue to be patient while yet another Permanent Government candidate ascends to the White House and speaks out of both sides of her mouth for her entire term of office?
Ask the burned children of drone attacks. Ask the millions…literally…of children in the U.S. who are being discarded left and right in decrepit, understaffed, bureaucratically crippled inner city and working class neighborhood schools. Ask the thousands of young adluts who went completely crazy while trying to understand the cultural dissonance between what they were told was happening and the plain-to-be-seen contrary evidence in every facet of life. Ask the guilt-ridden military suicides. Ask the nutcase suicide shooters and bombers.
Do we have much time left before the whole mountain of bullshit falls on our heads and the heads of our children? I think not. The buck has to stop somewhere. As far as I am concerned, it stops with me. Only individuals can begin to change things, Parallax. One mind at a time if need be.
AG
Hard to overstate how blindered and clueless that is.
Occupy’s success was monumental, momentous, highly consequential, and — relative to normal historical timeframes — practically instantaneous.
Oh, how quickly they forget:
Just prior to Occupy bursting onto the scene and into the national consciousness, can you really not remember what dominated our discourse, which the pathetic Corporate Media could not ever pimp enough for their satisfaction?
A completely pretend, bogus “debt crisis”; Erskine-Bowles; “Fix-the-Debt”; CUT(!!!) SocSec and Medicare; and on and on and on.
Only aware folks within the 99% were cognizant of that disparity. If you mentioned “income inequality” or “student debt crisis” to anyone in the Corporate Media, the most likely response would have been something along the lines of “Huh? Excuse me? Whut? What are you talking about? No! “Debt crisis”! “Entitlements”! Yeeaahh, that’s it. That’s the ticket!”
Occupy changed all that!
Which was the core goal, and an accomplishment most political movements can only dream of — especially the lightning speed (relatively speaking) at which it succeeded.
And while little continues directly under the “Occupy” banner, numerous outgrowths of the movement (e.g., Strike Debt) continue doing excellent and consequential work on a daily basis.
And of course, Sanders campaign is a another clear outgrowth of Occupy as well, and kudos on him for recognizing and seizing the moment and the opportunity created by Occupy, and running with it. I personally have a number of friends made in the course of the local incarnation of Occupy who segued right into organizing Helena for Bernie and Montanans for Bernie (and he won here!).
No, it would be hard to overstate just how ignorant that tired “Occupy accomplished nothing” talking point is.
Bang on!
Before Occupy, there was almost no discussion of income inequality outside of perhaps some Marxian and anarchist academic and blogging circles, and much of that included cumbersome language (bourgeoisie, proletariat, lumpenproletariat, etc.) that by this century had become antiquated and easily tuned out. By coming up with a simpler metaphor (99% v 1%), Occupy gave a mass audience something simple, catchy, and actually not far off the mark. Mainstream politicians and parties here and across the globe now address income inequality (and every once in a while act on it). I agree that Sanders’ Presidential nomination run would have been inconceivable without the preceding Occupy movement. The number of down-ballot and local political candidates and officeholders who themselves were inspired by Occupy is difficult to calculate, but is surely there. We will only have a full view of what Occupy set forth perhaps next decade. And think of other social movements that are extant in the wake of Occupy: BLM comes most easily to mind. Those movements too will resonate over the years to come. So yeah, if we’re measuring “success” in terms of an immediate full-scale revolution, then yeah, Occupy failed. An examination of the facts on the ground at the time (or what I might also refer to as the material conditions) would suggest that a full-scale revolution without the cultivation of any sort of long-term leftist infrastructure and some serious planning (and a willingness to wait for the moment when the social order as we know it was just about to collapse) would have badly backfired (study left-wing terror groups of the 1970s is you’re not convinced). If we’re talking in terms of setting the stage for some tangible reforms and the beginning of a return of leftist ideas to the mainstream, then Occupy (along with the Indignados and others across the planet) succeeded. There are dark clouds on the horizon, to be sure (the rise of right-wing nationalism is but one source of immediate concern), but we have much cause for hope in the wake of Occupy.
Arthur, with all due respect, I’ve seen Booman’s predications come to fruition several times. I have never once seen one of yours come to fruition.
I think I’m going with our hots on this one.
July of last year…I predicted that Trump would win the nomination. I also predicted that painting him as a clown would not work, at least until after he won the nomination and even then maybe not.
The Trump Problem. You Cannot Laugh A Clown Offstage.
The Reaction Is Upon Us And Its Name Is Trump
I also knew where Sanders was headed around the same time..
You Think Bernie’s Gonna Save Us? Think Again.
I called Cuba as far back as 2010.
My Take On Cuba circa 2010-Right On Schedule
And…this election is turning on one main point…the accelerating rot of the Permanent Government. I have been calling out that topic since the PermaGov’s poodle media obediently “ARRRGHed” Howard Dean out of contention in January, 2004 and before that, when Perot was non-personed out of contention by the poodle press in 1992.
So..there are a few predictions upon which you can cogitate if you so desire.
Or not.
Your choice.
No skin off my teeth either way.
AG
To be fair, Booman and AG each batted 500 as far as the 2016 nominations go. One difference, as far as I’m aware, is that AG didn’t hang out on nominally rightwing sites pushing his “prediction.” Preferring to describe (albeit a more impressionistic analysis than a cold, CW selected fact analysis) to liberals why Trump isn’t considered a joke among those on the other side. The best analysts/analyses incorporate both perspectives and offer a synthesis. Nate Silver does well with the former until he doesn’t, but an astute observer would have done just as well in nailing the elections that Nate did.
Booman made no predictions. He wrote down his observations, his impressions. That’s sort of what you do, too, AG, when you relate what you’ve seen and heard in upstate New York, for example.
What bullshit!!!
Here is the title of the piece:
Things Going Pretty Much as I Predicted
Duh!!!
AG
AG, I have no interest in arguing or having a pissing match. I will simply note that Booman also wrote the following in the text that followed that headline:
“These weren’t predictions based on what I wanted to be true. They were my observations as an analyst.”
As I wrote before, he had made observations.
YMMV.
You write:
You don’t?
Great!!!
Over and out…
AG
You write:
Wordplay. Nothing more. He headlined them as “predictions.” I take them as such.
Predictions based on what one wants to be true are not…strictly speaking…”predictions.”
They are propaganda.
Booman now has a job. He is a propagandist for the mainstream DemRat party…the DNC, Hillary Clinton (at present, anyway), etc. Is he a willing propagandist? A believer? I am no longer sure, one way or another. When he started this blog, his blog image was of a Rovian-looking frog all trussed up and ready for the gallows.
It still is. Only now he is quite obviously working for…and thus supporting…the very people who have inherited the mantle of worldwide, miltarily supported economic imperialism from the Bush family neocons. The neoliberal Clinton/Obama axis.
I do not support these people. Bad karma and all that. What goes around comes around. The chickens coming home to roost. You know…
So I fight them whenever and wherever I can.
I have another job. I am a musician, and one way or another I work at that job many hours every day. On my downtime? Sometimes I try to make some sense of all of this in public.
You don’t like it?
Feel free.
I do.
Later…
AG
The only thing the GOP will learn from this is that it’s paramount that the next presidential candidate return to dog whistles.
The GOP doesn’t disagree with him on lots of stuff, they’re only mortified because he makes em look bad in public. Driftglass labels this Republican Detachment Disorder.
For example, Kasich. He’s as evil, authoritarian and misogynistic as Trump, he just masks it better.
That’s true, unless Trump’s act finally unmasks the GOP for what it is. Most likely I think we return to the prior status quo with guys like Ryan passing as moderate, the press pumping it’s “both sides are to blame” narratives — at least until demographics finally overtake the old paradigm and sweep the Republican party as we know it aside.
“Hillary Clinton was so popular with Democrats…” All fifty-five percent!
back when he wrote it, it was closer to 80-90%
popularity doesn’t always turn into votes
I still think HRC could have lost the nom, and that you committed an unforgivable tranagression in your refusal to do anything but shove her inevitability down any throat you could.
But we’ve been through all that before.
Excuse me? Did Booman cast your primary ballot for you after stealing it?
MNPundit is correct. The inevitability crap was going on two years ago. Boo’s just been part of the chorus Inside the Beltway who’ve been chanting this.
Sanders did pull down 45%, which should suggest that inevitability shouldn’t be confused unanimity. Party insiders have been planning for her to be the next President since 2008, and chair-throwing stories, coin flips, Bernie so black and all the other little games on the margin were actually necessary to hold off the progressive wing of the party.
Progressives’ sense of history suggests that Clinton will shovel out the same mix of half-stepping progressivism and corporate obedience that neoliberals have given us over the last 25 years with nods to feminism and a little extra spicy foreign war or three. (The US is bombing Libya again.)
We caucused, but the MN Dems did away with that in the future.
“These weren’t predictions based on what I wanted to be true. They were my observations as an analyst.”
That’s pretty much how I’ve read everything you’ve written for quite a while now. But then I guess I’m part of whatever tribe you get dismissed into when convenient, so of course I’d say that, right?
Hang in there, man.
A couple of days ago, a commenter here said that Booman was part of a grouping that included Henry Kissinger and Robert McNamara.
I was referring to this particular example, but it wasn’t directed at me so I don’t take it personally. Indeed when I caricature myself it often comes close to this description.
The conflations have been particularly extraordinary this cycle.
As was predictable, we see a claim lodged on this very thread that the prohibitive favorite to win the Presidency, likely in a landslide, is a lousy candidate. Clinton is a flawed candidate and will be an imperfect President, but outside the email drama there’s been very little to criticize about her campaign, up to and including her ability to maintain support from Democratic Party voters while under substantial challenge.
I particularly like the ‘she only got 55% of the voters in the primaries!’, as though every single one of the 45% will not vote for her.
‘OMG, I hate her and voted for Sanders, so that means every Sanders voter hates her as much as I’
She’s polling at 92% with like voters who are democrats.
.
Something I’d be very interested to read from you, Booman, is your assessment of the importance and consequences of GOP worthies and everyday voters marking their ballots for Hillary Clinton. Would this be a one-off, with those folks voting down-ballot for Republicans and then returning to the GOP fold in 2018? If crossover Republicans stayed Democratic, what would the consequences be for the Democratic Party? There is a current of thought well-represented here that holds that the influence of incoming Republicans will cause Democratic Party objectives to mimic GOP objectives. The basis for this argument has never been clear to me. And if you look at the converse situation–blue dog Democrats switching to the GOP after the 1994 election, say–what you see is that it was the defectors who had to adapt, not the party receiving the defectors.
I think there have been studies where minorities* who enter a group tend to take on the other opinions of the group not the other way around. So I never got how this was going to pull the Democrats right, more likely they would stay the same or continue their move to the left.
*minorities in this case mean a small group when compared to a larger group
Yes, let’s root for the possible only as long as it doesn’t seriously challenge the inevitable of the elites remaining in control.
If HRC was so “predictable,” how was it that with 100% name ID, oodles of money, and 95% of the institutional Democratic Party (including the AA institutions in southern states that dominated the early primaries), a 74 year old, Democratic-Socialist, with single-digit name ID, no PACs and no big money, (and after a HRC sweep of the south), manage to remain a contender until the end of the primary season? If Bernie had been 64 years old would the primary dynamics have been the same?
wrt “predicting” that HRC would win the nomination, one would have needed but one data-point. Sticking with that one data-point, one could also have “predicted” the GOP nominee which technically you didn’t do. What that leaves out is that elections in a democracy should be a process and not reinforcement for what prognosticators concluded in advance and then worked the refs to make it come true.
Predictions serve little to no useful purpose unless they include a guide to avoiding bad outcomes and increasing the odds for good outcomes. IOW, projections instead of predictions. In late 2002, it was easy to project that GWB would get a second term unless his invasion/occupation of Iraq quickly turned into a complete debacle (of course, the invasion of Iraq was a projection with only a 99% probability at that time based on the IWR vote, one that I would gladly have liked to be wrong on), and the economy took another mega-downturn (not likely with the GWB deficit spending which could be projected to increase with his war). If by 2004 both were so-so, another so-so Democratic nominee wouldn’t have much of a chance. Thus, the only variable that Democratic primary voters had any control over was the nominee. Again in late 2002, Kerry was so-so and therefore, for those that really wanted to turn GWB into a one-termer, he wouldn’t do at all. I lost that argument (not that there was a “predictable” winner in the pack, only one with better odds than Kerry) and GWB got his second term.
However, once Kerry had the nomination sewn up, I shut up. Not because I doubted that he would lose. But because other than the IWR I didn’t have many quarrels with Kerry and again, I would have been pleased to be wrong.
Those that crow about winning when the win requires embracing what is wrong in the opposing party lack the moral/ethical standards that they claimed to espouse. And the country and the lives of ordinary people are depreciated as a consequence of winning. If I’d been a Teddy Roosevelt Republican, I would have been horrified to see the later invasion of Dixiecrats into the party. (Not that I would have remained a Republican after 1928.)
Marie3, apropos your comment about 1928, if you ever find yourself in eastern Iowa, you’d probably be interested to visit the Herbert Hoover presidential museum & library. I was there a year ago. The stuff about Hoover’s work to alleviate wartime hunger in Europe was fascinating; I had known only the barest outline beforehand. But it’s the part of the museum dealing with the New Deal era that’s really interesting, in a weird way, of course. If you take the exhibit at face value, you would conclude that every one of FDR’s successes involved ripping off one of Hoover’s ideas. Of course, Hoover was deadset against projects like the WPA, so the museum exhibit came off as surreal.
I’m curious why you pick 1928 as a milestone. I was actually talking about the Progressive movement with a family member recently, and I’d had the impression that the ideological fork in the road, when the GOP chose not to go down the Progressive path, had come earlier when TR ran as the Bull Moose candidate.
Hillary Clinton agrees to debate schedule, Donald Trump breaks out in hives
Liberal Librarian
August 9, 2016
““`
The latest news is that Hillary Clinton has agreed to the presidential debate schedule for the fall. As of now, Donald Trump has not. Mrs. Clinton, being the alpha that she is, is challenging Trump to stop being a weenie and get in the ring with her. This is a challenge which I’m sure is making him flail his little hands about.
From tax returns to debates, Trump is trying to upend the accepted conventions of US presidential politics. Having lived a life of privilege, he thinks he doesn’t have to do the things every presidential candidate has done for the entirety of the Republic. He honestly thinks that the gameplan which won him the Republican nomination would work for the general election, assuming that the general electorate was as gullible and uneducated as his GOP base.
He is quickly finding out that not to be the case. The latest NBC/Survey Monkey poll has Sec. Clinton up 51% to 41%. Other polls have shown Trump pulling in support in the high 30s. This is not just a dumpster fire; this is a tsunami which is about to wash away the GOP.
Trump has built up a cult around himself as being the ultimate alpha. It’s a sham. The fact that he can be goaded so easily by criticism is evidence that he is far from a self-confident titan of industry, but a scared, insecure little boy with little boy hands who is washed in paranoia.
Yes, Booman, your accuracy has not gone unnoticed. Great job. Your predictions were also excellent in 2008 and 2012 as I recall.
BUT NOW: the next step beyond predicting what’s going to happen is devising a strategy to influence what’s going to happen (and the next step beyond that is convincing people in power to follow that strategy).
Here’s the “what’s going to happen” that needs to be changed: As they did in 2010 and 2014, 40 to 50 million people who vote in 2016 will fail to vote in 2018, resulting in a GOP congress, continued GOP dominance in the states, and gerrymandering after the 2020 census.
What could grassroots dems do to convince dems in power to address this, and how could they address it if they were inspired to behave rationally for a change?
not sure this is really in the laps of Dems that are in power, it’s more up to grassroots Dems to stay engaged (many do not) and not lose the plot (lose the big picture in the tactical day to day)
I think as a group progressives/liberals don’t do a good enough job mobilizing for off elections and we’ve left it to the GOP which really sucks.
As much as I’d wished you were wrong on so many of these things, can’t argue that you weren’t right. (Still liked you more when you were a little more pie-in-the-sky back in the good old days when you were enthusiastic. Ahh, 2006 and 2008. Good times.) Analysis. So discouraging. But good to know.
I visit this site because Martin’s views are generally sensible and I enjoy reading them. Several months ago I also enjoyed the back and forth in the community.
I’ve given up on the back and forth as a waste of time. I’m amazed I made it to the end of this thread.
It’s a joke.
that it is…this whole election has become a parody of the democratic process, imnho.
l never expected l’d see a fiasco such as this, and my expectations were not particularly sanguine at the onset.
Do you understand what happened? I don’t.
Anyway, I appreciate your work. Thanks.
Disagreement happened.
The people are the same.
I’ve been coming to this site for years. Especially the comments are worthwhile. But I’ve always been put off by your occasional bouts of gloating about how right you have been.
The main casualty of accurate predictions in the current political climate are wise policies that will indeed move the United States closer to peace, prosperity, and, now, sustainability.
Business as usual supports many self-destructive trends. Finding the political will collectively to actually address problems is said to require a major crisis or a bunch of policy makers who God retires. Few hold out hope for the electorate actually understanding and moving for real solutions to problems.
That is a very interesting perspective for a 240-year-old republican checks-and-balances constituency to come to. Some days, it looks like a failure of nerve. Others the distraction of the increase pressures of daily life. Others just laziness and looking for excuses. And on others a series of increasingly corrupt institutions whose actors have little reflection of what they are doing.
That said, I think at this point that BooMan might be correct that Trump will never be President. You don’t alienate your own party, the military, the deep state, the economic and financial elite and become President, even with the support of five media gazillionaires and other eccentric gazillionaires, not to mention your own money.
I think we are having a demonstration of exactly how Donald Trump conducted his business transactions to garner free media coverage plumping Trump.
I’m not sure the BooMan predicted Trump’s penchant for self-destruction but he did assert that he would not become President. And he did predict the crack-up of what seemed to be a dominating Republican Party (at least in the Congress and legislatures).
I’ve hung out here for a little over 10 years because of the way that Booman’s analysis provided a useful prompt to an unfolding civil discussion. IMO, that quality of Booman Tribune has not changed although there have been arrivals and departures over one hot issue or another.
The one prediction I’m waiting to come true is the one in the Booman Tribune logo — Karl Rove being frog-marched to prison for what he has done. And accountability for the war crimes of the past 13 years.
I suppose in the new political reality of progressive democrats we are giving up on justice as well. Sad.
For once, I would like a winning politician to surprise us by being better than the rap during the election. And a Congress to be more progressive that voters were led to believe. And as a result more popular. My parents talked about such a time often. I guess folks my age expected that sort of politics to continue and not have to be rebuilt with Sisyphean effort. After hitting close to bottom actually (but not yet experentially–the addictions continue) we look close to reaching the Clinton horizon again. Maybe in another 12 years back to the Carter horizon, and just maybe if the country is lucky the Kennedy-Johnson horizon. Did you notice how reactionary (in the analytical sense) this thinking is. And just maybe some day the FDR horizon and then the Revolution (isn’t that the progressive assumption). And then we can forget politics and go back, like Pippin, and tend our garden. Politics as social maintenance.
We accept stoically or willingly our slavery to the economic system but resist the impositions on consciousness that the times force on us as politics. And we retreat from civic life into a world delimited by family, cat, or canary. Except for those for whom politics correlates with career or those who find politics following them like a shade or those with a curiosity (which Trump is exploiting) to find out how the story turns out in the end.
Predictions are a recreation along the way with little actual practical value unless you get lucky in an electoral investment market.
Fascinating isn’t it.
It’s not the prediction but the analysis that is important. Most of the time Booman delivers. WaMo is lucky to have him around.
I’m not sure that anyone can ever forget politics in the Pippin (or any other) sense. It is always a tool to be abused by the wrong people. We can pretend to ignore it (midterms), but that always has a cost.
Beautiful piece of writing, TarHeel! Well thought and well said.
You write:
If the analysis leads one to support the wrong people…and/or if it is skewed by the practical, day-to-day business of making a living…then that analysis is wrong, Tarheel. WaMo is solidly centrist. Solidly pro-HRC. You want to see the Rove-level criminals punished? Don’t hold your breath if HRC is elected. She has made her promises in order to become president. Bet on it.
AG
If the analysis leads one to support the wrong people, one is not critically reading the analysis. In the back and forth there is too much representative worrying about all the other sheep being suckered by that funny sheep with the hairy gray paws. The comments might lead others astray; the main articles might lead others astray.
We have low information voters because of the cost of getting accurate and wise information about politics of any sort. Part of it is deliberate misinformation but part of it is just conflicting constructions of what is important. In the large things and the small.
Good analysis tells us another place to look for information. For example, looking for how the Senate Committee chairs from the Democratic majority shaped the Affordable Care Act has been very helpful in seeing how other policies get made in Congress and paying attention to the seniority rankings on key committees. It is significant that Sanders is positioned to chair the Senate Budget Committee if Democrats take back the Senate. It is also helpful to note that the House committees are much more fluid in how committee chairs are selected. That was a helpful antidote to Presidential fixation.
Certainly in running for President, Hillary Clinton has made promises. They are platform promises; stump speech promises; and individual face-to-face promises to all sorts of people for all sorts of support. Focusing on big donors is important to note but, they can be crossed after the election too and certainly can be crossed after the second term election is in the bag. There are risks to that, but politicians tend to understand where their best interest exists.
Employers who encourage or tolerate groupthink soon cease to be employers. What Booman brings to WaMo is an understanding of the geographically diverse opinions af a number of thoughtful and cranky people who passionately interested in the success of progressive or New Deal Democrat approaches to domestic policy and to more successful approaches to foreign policy and national security. If there has been any convergence in some of the diversity of comments on this site, it is the usual election year hopes and fears that are driving it. Outside of then, we tend to be all over the lot in opinions about strategy and tactics and persons and more tightly aligned on values and direction.
But elections make lefties, progressives, and Democrats crazy in predictable ways. You can probably sort out what those are for those three subgroups that fall in and out of coalitions.
The Rove-level criminals will not be punished because the politicians over the last 15 years have convince the voters that the US, being exceptional, doesn’t commit war crimes….ever. A doctrine of original innocence. And they have set up the anxiety about shame as a matter of treason so that no politician dare come close to holding US war criminals accountaable. Even is it comes out that the chair of the American Psychological Association’s ethics committee was contracted to consult on how to do torture at Guantanamo and connected the CIA to Mitchell and Jessen, who designed the interrogation program based on reverse engineering the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape (SERE) program. That had the effect of implementing the Chinese/North Korean torture regime from the Korean War and other documented torture techniques since as standard practices at Guantanamo — limited only by the requirements to leave no physical marks or end in death. In spite of this, prisoners died or were murdered. Until the public understands this story, there will be insufficient outrage and as long as the xenophobia level is kept high, outrage will be seen as treasonous. That’s the informational box that human rights advocates are in on getting accountability. And that is a field of punji stake pits for politicians. Change the information environment and that might change, but for now “support the troops” and don’t ask where their PTSD came from; some from an environment of seemingly endless terror and some from witnessing or committing unspeakable acts.
Get a whole Congress interested in this issue (and also the role of the Saudis in 9/11) and you might see a President stick their neck out. But in a polarized environment, forget it.
The practical day-to-day business of maaking a living has become more complicated for folks younger than us, AG. They have to build and manage their reputations more deliberately and with more intense attention than ever. And those controlling the compensation for their gigs are more demanding than ever and quicker to cut them loose. The temmptation toward sycophantic behavior is more intense. And that involves the temptation toward corporationspeak as well. Especially for those working with words and data. It is easy to drift into that frame without noticing it just through the day-to-day transactions with workplaces. It is also easy to notice the drift and overcorrect, putting one’s gig in jeopardy. In this environment, I am not quick to second-guess how other folks make those decisions. The capitulation of institutions, however, is a different matter. It is clear to all now that AARP, NPR, and several environmental organizations have sacrificed their missions to please their donors.
One presumes that subscribers interests and the board of directors’s vision in a creative tension dynamically drive WaMo’s institutional take on politics, society, and government. A wider subscriber base broadens that view; a narrower one narrows that view. And most of those directions are chosen half-consciously and not well thought out because of time pressure in practical life. My sense is that right now they are positioned in what they think is a survivable if not profitable niche position in the inside-the-Beltway group of political publications. Their impact on politics comes from us reading and transforming the aggregation of elected officials. Their impact on policy comes from the inside-the-Beltway crowd reading and changing policy direction in more progressive ways based on what they read as reports from the wider society or reports from within the Beltway. And then there are those of their readers who read it for entertainment and writing style. for which there will be little impact except on other publications.
You write:
I’ll believe it when:
1-I see it.
and
2-He gets something done.
Yeah. Right. Like Clinton I and Obama did? Please!!!
Once again: Yeah. Right. Like Bezos and Ziuckerberg? Like Tom Watson, the inventor of groupthink at IBM 50+ years ago? C’mon, Tarheel…you know better. The media is groupthink…subdivisions thereof. How’re they doing?
Are you good with that, Tarheel? I’m not. And I truly believe that if a major pol stood up and told it like it is…like Trump has tentatively done regarding our trade and World Cop problems…that pol would win and win big. Trump has some kind of personality disorder that would probably make him a very bad president, but that “blurt it out” thing of his has had some very interesting and useful results. It’s like he occasionally self-produces some sort of truth serum, and it is that stuff that has made his success. he’s quick on the trigger. Sometimes too quick. You’ved heard about the fastest trigger finger in the old west? No Toes Dawson? Like that. (Eternal thanks to William Burroughs for that one.)
I am sorry, Tarheel…you cannot have it both ways. Groupthink either succeeds…which it is doing…or it doesn’t. Corporationspeak is groupspeak, and it ain’t just AARP and PBS who are profiting from this tendency. Not by a long shot.
I presume nothing, Tarheel. Nothing except what I have seen with my own eyes. As above, so below. Exactly who are the members of that board of directors, and what messages do they receive from poeple who might be other than what they seem? High-level media influence/control by intelligence services is a fact. You’ are familiar with Operation Mockingbird, right? Big-time spooks run that area and have done so since the late ’40s/early ’50s. Smaller spooks? They have their place in the media control area, too. Do you really think that any media organization with even a barely appreciable audience…an audience that includes movers and shakers, academics, etc…has not felt the spook control tentacles? Once again…please!!! They are nothing if not thorough.
I proved beyond a shadow of a doubt on dKos just before the July 4th massacre that there were groups of people posting as one poster or another. Timelines of of organized Newspeak bullshit that were impossible for one human being to produce were provable, and that was when dKos was much smaller and less influential than it has become now. Why not WaMo too?
I can’t prove this, but I can certainly see the tendencies. PBS tendencies. Weak, Newspeak tendencies. Neoliberal tendencies. thedy are now as centrist as is Time Magazine. They are just smaller and a little more subtle about it.
From The Washington Monthly, 8/10/16, 2:40PM EDT
Like dat.
Give me a break!!!
AG
You’re a smart guy, Boo, but in fairness, you wound up pretty off on the midterms this far out — and closer in, as I recall — four years ago. I don’t mean that bash you — predictions can go haywire (and many of mine have). I agree with a lot of the mechanics you’ve talked about in terms of the GOP crack-up and all that stuff, but I don’t think it matters nearly as much at the voter level as (I think) you do here.
Things are going roughly as I expected, which is somewhere between 2008 and 2012. I’m happy to be wrong and watch a landslide in November, of course, but I don’t think it’s in the cards. Demographically, economically, looking at the polling data — I don’t see it.
Beyond that, it’s disturbing to me that this subhuman will no doubt carry at least 40% of the vote. And probably more like 44-45%. And he will likely lose by no more than about 8 points.
That’s 40-45% of the country that, should the “When fascism comes to America…” scenario come into play, would be on the side of fascism.
I’m not going to pretend to respect Trump voters. I’ve never really respected them. But at this point, I’m not going to pretend to respect third-party voters and the whole “#NeverTrump voting for Johnson” lot.
The choice is binary. People can hate her. I don’t particularly care for Hillary. I’d have preferred Brown or Warren or whomever. But it’s not about party or ideology at this point — and it hasn’t been for quite some time for me.
This man is manifestly dangerous. And politically he and his ilk need to be nuked from orbit, and the earth salted thereafter.
The idea you saw the energy behind the Sanders effort is a joke.
Saying Clinton was going to win and taking for it is about as worthless a prediction as I can think of.
And your patronizing attitude towards Sanders people was pathetic.
I didn’t get caught up in the primary back and forth so can you tell me if it was difficult to find a website or forum that catered to Sanders supporters?
Is this really any different from the 2008 primary cycle?
in Olympic women’s Real Football.
The utterly astonishing turning point (that poor Hope Solo, premier keeper in women’s football, now has to live with being on near-continuous replay loop) was when she turned a routine save on a free kick into a Colombia goal, letting the ball slip first through her hands, then between her legs into the goal. I wouldn’t have believed it possible if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes (again and again and again and . . . ). A more uncharacteristic lapse by a usually-rock-solid performer would be nearly impossible to imagine.
Hard to fault her much for the second Colombia goal, though: a near-perfect free kick from near the right corner, bending into the goal just behind her and just under the crossbar. If she had done everything perfectly, her attempt to punch it over the crossbar might have had a chance, but I think she slightly miss-timed her leap, and the ball slipped by just over her reach.
Gutsy, tenacious performance from Colombia.
U.S. seemed a bit flat (beyond just Solo), especially in first half after Colombia goal on Solo miscue. Even with the tie, they won their group, and they were already through to the quarterfinals. Can’t help wondering if that knowledge took some edge off their motivation and/or focus.
Good goals though by Crystal Dunn and Mallory Pugh (youngest U.S. Olympic goal-scorer ever at, I think, age 18 — the future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades!).
Did anyone predict that Donald Trump would suggest that Clinton be assassinated? I figured that he would violate a lot of social norms, but that’s a pretty big one.
To put it mildly.
His campaign can try to spin that all they want; watching the audience behind him as he said it, listening to the vocal reaction, you could tell they got — and got a huuuuuuuuuuuuge charge out of — the allusion to “Second Amendment remedies”, and understood exactly what that implied.
So now I’m linking to John Podhoretz:
Crikey, these are strange days. Oh, and this:
This is the most entertaining campaign ever. Bye, bye GOP.
OT, sort of, but came across this juxtaposition today:
When Hillary launched and said she was going with a 50 state strategy, I was willing to mend fences with her, after her poorly executed, poorly designed campaign stops in 2007 and 2008. I had been subjected to hours of unnecessary waiting for an insincere 3 questions interactive session after she had made her bid for the local news stories television coverage. Fool me once, shame on me…
Then we got this: https:/www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EN9a27gves&feature=youtu.be
Which leads to this: https:
http://www.hillaryclinton.com/RampUp
I’m voting for her, after being a 2008 delegate for her at the 2008 Nevada caucus because Trump is trying to blackmail America with his “It’s all about ME, my wonderful self” destiny with nastiness, not out of any fondness for Hillary. The bloom is off that rose.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kCUIzs8i9EU
The defunding of Common Dreams.
Common Dreams: Killing the Messenger
This is a disturbing action, not unlike what has happened to AARP, NPR, and several environmental groups.
Progressives are useful ss long as they line up pad the vote for their own demise. When they seek real power…forget that…when they expect to have their loyalty rewarded in policy, money talks. And the withdrawal of money as social control swears.
The corruption of US politics is now nigh complete and irreversible.
All we can do in November is put the least worst elected officials into power in hopes that the current trend toward greater corruption might be reversed.
One thing we should watch is increasing demands for a certain kind of Democratic party discipline of opinion among what were free-wheeling Democratic blogs. That would be politically catastrophic but would reduce the heartburn of the political establishment. Some really fine blogs succumbed in the last two cycles. This really worries me because no one can talk openly about this when it is happening.
Fool me once …
Where was the left in the aftermath of the 2000 election (a time based marker because that’s how processes roll)?
Dead. Kaput. Fini. How and why? Because we were ill-informed and believed that the Democratic Party was still a force for good. Whereas, it had morphed into the Clinton Party that detests the left and likes formulations from the right (for those with sketchy principles and no vision appropriating from others is how they get something to sell for their own self-aggrandizement). The big “success” that year for the Dem party was installing Hillary as a senator from a big and important state.
Gore was shell-shocked. He’d been such a good Boy Scout or so he thought. The DNC boys — Rendell and McAuliffe — were tasked with finishing him off.
But that’s not woke up liberals. It was the seeming ineptness of the Democratic Party in electoral politics. Cemented with the 2002 midterms. That’s when lefty internet sites began to take off. The seeming fecklessness of the DNC continued through the next election cycle as liberals (with a considerable amount of infighting) began pushing that damn rock up the hill.
Appropriating that energy and money made “their” agenda much easier. They didn’t do that good a job in hiding that agenda, but liberals are naive and refused to see what was going on right under their noses. Inadvertently, the enthusiasm on the left ended up interfering with the agenda. But that bit of luck wasn’t capitalized on as a slavish devotion to all things Obama set in.
The left restricts itself to two choices: capitulate to TPTB or be marginalized and made to disappear as was done several times in the past. The Clinton Party doesn’t need us any more than Nixon did.