Not much or many on the national stage at the moment according a new FoxNews poll.
What they do like is Planned Parenthood, and by a wide margin. Favorable 57% and unfavorable 32%; net favorable +25. 95% have heard of PP and only 5% have no opinion. This is excellent news. More federal funding of PP would be a rational decision. Expand health services and at a low cost.
The ACA isn’t as well liked as PP. Favorable 50% and unfavorable 47%, net favorable +3. Only 1% has never heard of it and only 2% have no opinion on it. Where the ACA falls down is on the strongly favorable vs. unfavorable ratio. 25% to 36% for a net unfavorable of 10%.
Unless there’s somebody living under a rock that FoxNews pollsters couldn’t find, everybody has heard of Trump and 98% have an opinion. 44% favorable (?!) and 53% unfavorable for a net unfavorable of 9%. (Look out incoming rRump tweet: FoxNews losers putting out FakeNews. I’m doing great.) Strongly favorable 30%, unfavorable 47%, for a net unfavorable of 17%.
Mike Pence is doing better. 95% have heard of him (might be a high for a new VP). 6% have no opinion. Favorable 47% and unfavorable 43% for a net favorable of 4%. Net “strongly” 1% unfavorable. (This might give the GOP congress the impetus to impeach tRump.)
Paul Ryan got a 91% name recognition (might be a high for a Speaker of the House, but he also had that losing VP run in ’12; so, who knows.) 37% favorable and 47% unfavorable for a net unfavorable of 10% (sheet that’s worse than Donnie’s; might need to rethink a Ryan coup). Net “strongly” unfavorable 18%.
Poor Mitch McConnell. 22% have never heard of him and 13% have no opinion. Of those that do, favorable is 20% and unfavorable 44%. Strongly favorable 3% and strongly unfavorable 31%.
Warren leads most of her colleagues, but she is only slightly ahead of McConnnell on that name ID thingy at 81%. No opinion at 10%. Favorable 39% and unfavorable 31% for a net favorable of 8% (twice as good as Pence’s). Strongly net zero (24/24).
Nancy Pelosi is seriously not doing well. Net unfavorable of 17% and net strongly unfavorable of 23%. (Chuckie needs to find himself more of thoseTV cameras. 30% have never heard of him and 14% have no opinion.)
That’s about it — oh, wait one more. Oh, nevermind.
======
Sidenotes:
John McCain: Rand Paul `Is Now Working for Vladimir Putin’. McCain and his sidekick remain nuts. (To avoid any misinterpretation, I don’t think much of Rand Paul either even if he’s slightly less crazy than his GOP colleagues.)
Wasn’t there some big news about a tax return being made public yesterday? Expected it would merit some discussion here if no reason other that it put some sunshine on why Trump wants to get rid of the AMT.
A note from 2008 worth remembering: SF Gate McCain strategist also lobbied for dictators
Charlie Black just got luckier and managed to avoid being seen as a bottom feeder.
Found this interesting tidbit about Charlie Black.
“Longtime political junkies know that Charlie Black was among a handful of angry young rightwingers who remade the Republican Party after the debacle of Richard Nixon’s resignation. Along with Roger Stone, Terry Dolan, Lee Atwater, Karl Rove and George Bush Jr., he is one of the inventors of today’s GOP attack machine, a style of media-driven slash and burn politics that can be traced to the establishment by Black, Stone and Dolan in 1975 of a political action committee that raised millions from conservatives using deceptive direct-mail advertising and spent the money on TV ads that slimed Democrats.”
http://www.alternet.org/story/89835/10_things_you_should_know_about_mccain_advisor_charlie_black
Adam Chodorow adequately covers it in The Sliver of Trump’s Tax Return That MSNBC Obtained Tells Us Almost Nothing About His Finances. Demand More.
Unfortunately legitimate questions and considerations were drowned out by Rachel Maddow Turned a Scoop on Donald Trump’s Taxes Into a Cynical, Self-Defeating Spectacle. Not only not a hardball expose but a softball that team tRump was able to hit. sheesh If liberals get any lamer, they might as well throw in the towel for the next few decades. (I’m assuming USians will still be around then and in high numbers.
NBC News — Clinton Ally Says Smoke, But No Fire: No Russia-Trump Collusion
Sort of more than a “Clinton ally” — the dude was set to become CIA Director and is as nutso as all (or may almost all) have been.
A different tune from when he was a Hillary shill:
FWIW — considering that the speaker is a liar:
But he’s sticking with Putin-Russia did it. At least as long as it’s useful for him.
Yes, Marie.
Precisely.
From your Greenwald link.
I posted a piece here in early March titled Life In PostFactual America. It didn’t garner much attention, but this “He asaid/She said/Nobody is saying anything true/Big Lie” routine is precisely what I was trying to emphasize.
The two major parties, the upstart Trumpists (Who are decidedly not “Republicans.”), the media and the PLC …the Professional Lying Corps, also laughingly known as “The Intelligence Community,” as if a posse of serial liars could possibly form a community other than a Community of Thieves…have now become so totally lie-ridden that the population of the U.S. is beginning to disbelieve anything said by anyone in a position of power.
This is very dangerous ground. It is the kind of thing that can topple a culture.
The Washington Post recently put up a paywall…except when it suits them to take it down to promote particularly egregious lies, apparently. I refuse to pay for being lied at anymore, so I will not pay the WAPO liars. (The NY TImes provides enough of that foolishness…same lies, different syntax, basically.)
Anyway, when I click on WAPO aricles off of a news aggregator…again, unless WAPO is trying to fan the flames of a particular set of lies for whatever reasons their controllers believe will help their PermaGov aims…I get a wonderful little sign from them.
Here it is:
This tickles me every time I get it.
Unless you consider “great journalism” to be the barefaced propagation of SpookWorld lies, this is beyond silly.
In fact…if you care about truth, it borders on the criminal.
So it goes in PostFactual America.
The truth may still live somewhere out there, but where, exactly?
In the cracks between the lies, I suppose.
Will the truths of the various matters ever surface?
I really don’t know, anymore.
I used to think so.
Now I am not so sure.
Even the so-called “truth-tellers”…whistleblowers…are successfully being painted as liars.
The best that I can manage now is to continue to consider Gandhi’s approach.
Or Martin Luther King’s idea.
We shall see.
Sooner rather than later, I’m thinking.
Watch.
AG
The Gandhi quote rings a lot truer to me, more useful and inspiring, than the quote from Dr King, brilliantly worded metaphor though it is.
I think King needed to offer some hope and positivity to his people in a troubled time, but ultimately I don’t think it’s true. I can’t match the imagery, but history to me seems more akin to a repeating roller coaster ride where civilization is riding high for a while then dips down, sometimes abruptly, over years rather than centuries. It may last a long time on a low level before more enlightened voices help resurrect it.
I fear we’re headed towards the latter scenario where sudden change over just years or a few decades takes us into a dizzying downfall. 20-30 years from now, if I’m still around, given current trends I expect to see the USofA either broken up into regions ruled by authoritarian law, or the landscape of the country a devasted wasteland as those few still alive continue to try to recover from WW3.
But, hey, enough of my cheerful happy talk. And it’s still possible we have enough time left to save ourselves.
Warren is the likely successor to Sanders.
But the last Mass number I saw for her wasn’t that good. Perhaps the hard to describe likability factor extends to Bernie in a way it does not to her. Perhaps it is misogyny.
Having seen both in a small group setting I have to say she is a better speaker than he is.
But you never really know about candidates until they start campaigned.
But you never really know about candidates until they start campaigned.
And maybe not even then if one observes through thick partisan lenses. Haven’t seen any acknowledgment from you that you checked out the fake Hillary and fake Trump debate, but doesn’t hurt to post the link again for those that haven’t seen it: What If Trump And Hillary Swapped Genders? Reenactment Of Debates With Genders Switched ‘Shocks’ Liberal Audience.
For those that haven’t checked out my “never mind” in the diary:
Bernie Sanders name recognition 97% and no opinion 4%. Favorable 61% and unfavorable 32% (29% net favorable). Strongly favorable 33% and unfavorable 20% (net favorable 13%).
What does Bernie have that Warren doesn’t? Breadth of knowledge about governmental operations. Warren has depth in a major issue and it’s consistent with where Sanders stands on that issue even as he doesn’t possess that depth. But get her outside that issue, and she’s wobbly. As would any circa 1970 liberal Republican (and remained a Republican for many years after that) would be today if they only recently became a politician.
If someone had asked me in 1992 what positions Hillary as a politician in her own right would take on economic, FP, and military matters, I sure wouldn’t have projected a neoliberal, Cold War warrior, and military hawk. Even if I’d known then what could have been knowable in ’92, the odds for such a shift wouldn’t have seemed low. But the ease with which she made the shift and effort to hide some that has to mean that the seeds were there all along. It’s why I never fully trust a Republican that switches. Not difficult to switch and embrace liberal social issues on equality/equal rights, ethics, and morality. Before the southification of the GOP, on social issues there wasn’t much difference between a liberal Republican and liberal Democrat. The wardrobe doesn’t require much remodeling for that change.
What’s not easy to change is one’s primary orientation: workers or owners and the boureoisie necessary for them to remain the owners. Of course the degree of ambitiousness can over-ride any primary orientation.
Bernie persona and story is unique in many ways. Bernie is the lifetime activist, Warren is a professor.
Bernie has been saying the same damn thing for 40 years. Warren’s focus has been narrower – perhaps because that is what Academia demands.
I am beginning to think Bernie is going to wind up being pushed to run again.
Both I suspect will be pushed to run in 2020. But Bernie will be, what, 78? Sorry, but that would concern me.
Warren I like, but not sure how she plays to the WWC in MA, and would need to hear more from her about FP, about which she’s been rather quiet. I do not want another liberal interventionist/neocon-symp as Hillary was.
My wife thought all primary season he was just too old.
And then in September she decided he wasn’t.
78 is pretty old though.
Arbitrarily it is too old. Bernie forced voters to objectively consider his wisdom, ability to quickly integrate new information and changes, and his physical and mental stamina. On those measures he surpassed the slightly younger DT and HRC. It’s also difficult to dismiss the quality of John Paul Stevens continuing work on the Supreme Court until he retired at age ninety plus (and subsequently hasn’t been as silent as Justice Thomas has always been).
That said, one of the highest measures of leadership is doing what one can when one has power and then stepping aside for someone younger to carry the work forward. If not for the 22nd Amendment, several Presidents would have run for at least a third term.
Sanders is currently doing what needs to be done, but he definitely needs others to step up and join the battle. Unfortunately, the purging and co-opting of traditional social democrats by the party over more than two decades has left an almost empty bench.
If Warren is not the successor to Bernie it is not obvious to me who is.
Gin and Tacos had a piece from Shaun King. King isn’t exactly the most reliable guy, but he said this:
If economic populism ins’t the answer, I don’t know what it is either. For some reason I found it oddly reassuring to read someone who actually admitted they didn’t know how to fix the cluster fuck we find ourselves in.
Christ we have open Senate Seats in the very places we lost on ’16, and the electorate will not be as friendly.
Doom is not certain, but the Democratic really really really needs the republicans to screw up.
Because it is so completely lost.
Always better, ultimately, to know the stark truth, depressing as it is currently. I believe in living in Truth.
In addition to getting away from the Wall St crowd and their campaign donations and getting more in tune with Main St, Dems could also start speaking up about GOP voter suppression occurring massively in many states. So far — typical for modern Dems — only a few voices meekly and politely expressing their concern. Not nearly enough.
Also Dems need to do better outreach and public education, going especially into the inner cities and other minority areas, to impress on those people the importance of voting not just in presidential years but in midterm years, and for local/state offices. Explain to them why this is important and how their very right to vote is at stake.
Make the same appeals to the youth on campuses everywhere. Get registered to vote and get involved.
Dems also need to stop endorsing or enabling our wars of aggression or regime change. We need to be in opposition to, not leading the charge for, the neocons and the Deep Staters who drive want amounts to a largely unelected War Party in DC.
Dump all the stupid PC attitude, from the WH and Congress to the campaign trail and the campuses with their absurd liberal “micro aggression” speech codes. We look ridiculous, as with Obama or Hillary dancing around carefully not to call it radical Islamic terrorism. It is just that, and we look weak tiptoeing carefully around it.
My 2 cents. Worth trying anyway. Even as I suspect this country is likely headed for a major breakup, civil war style, in the next 4 years.
Sigh. I agree with you.
But…
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/progressives-tom-perez-dnc-transition-committee_us_58cab459e4b0e
c9d29d9695f
How old was Konrad Adenauer?
America is obsessed with youth. Europe is smarter.
The list of American obsessions is long.
Age as a consideration for a POTUS is short-hand for not wanting an absentee President and having the office run by unidentifiable and unaccountable people that haven’t been chosen by the voters. Who was in charge of the Wilson and Reagan Oval offices? Wisdom is a late stage human development (beginning in the fifth decade) but it bypasses most. (McCain is still a fool.)
A problem for Americans is that “being President” is the goal of almost all people who run for the office. Not the mark of a wise man or woman but an adolescent. That’s why their campaign “to do as POTUS” ends up looking/sounding like boilerplate nice things that will appeal to some demographic or faction. Nothing they have a personal investment in seeing through to accomplishment. tRump is running with the rightwing wishbook. A load of crap that synergistically will end up worse the than deficit sum of its parts.
Academia’s “publish or perish” injunction for advancement facilitates a narrow focus and that doesn’t leave much time for more wide-ranging inquiries, study, and interests. However, most self-select their focus before hitting the publication imperative. Bankruptcy and middle-class personal finance was what interested Warren by the time (or before) she graduated from law school or shortly thereafter. She was a law school lecturer right after graduation and a tenured professor within five years.
This is not a criticism of Warren, depth knowledge and expertise, or even generally academia. It’s merely a recognition of the limitations of politicians that don’t also develop well-grounded breadth over many years. Look at some of the M.D.s in Congress (and now one as HUD Secretary). Dumb as a sack of rocks on history, law, and public policy.
Sanders didn’t start off with the assets that most politicians are graced with. All he had were smarts, principles, and a desire to do good for others. No natural charisma and whatever he developed of that was through his work and not though professional makeovers of his speech, appearance, acting, and memorizing policy papers. A polite mensch that blew away Martin O’Malley that superficially had all those qualities that Bernie lacks and usually is enough to make one a contender. Authenticity and honor without all those appealing visual trappings rarely sells itself, particularly on the left. In this moment in the US (and UK) it does.
Unfortunately, fake authenticity sold better with Republican primary voters and selective general election voters than it did with Democratic primary voters. And if my conclusion that authenticity is today of increased value, then Bernie wouldn’t have a 29% net favorable while the new POTUS is 13% net unfavorable.
I still think Bernie would have blown away Trump.
Bernie is indignant. Warren is a scold. Misogyny? I don’t think so, but maybe. She reminds me of my 3rd grade teacher, the one who would pick me out of my seat by the ears. Maybe she reminds other people similarly. It doesn’t help that every picture I see has her scowling and/or wagging her finger with an angry look. While Bernie, even when angry looks … grandfatherly.
So, Grandpa (who gets mad sometimes) vs Mrs. Grundy. Unfair, but fact.
I tipped your comment because I get your point, but it is misogynist. I’ve only seen Warren dressing down (what you call scolding) those with power and wealth and that deserve to be cut down many pegs.
Would be interesting to see a male enacting Warren — some words, vocal tone/quality, and gestures — and if you’d have the same response. I could be wrong, but I expect your response wouldn’t be like that of the audience to the male Hillary and female Trump debate. A male Warren would hold up well. She’s really kind, empathic, and polite towards ordinary people. Not warm and fuzzy, but genuine.
I see her picture often on news sights. Angry face, pointing finger. No text, just the picture. That’s the image the public sees. I think it’s a hit job. Especially since the press is controlled by the very people she is scolding. So, you never see her smiling as you sometimes see Bernie.
You think?:
I think it’s a hit job.
And hit jobs exploit our unconscious perceptions of what we’ve learned as “normal.” A smile is perceived as friendly/positive. A placid/neutral facial expression isn’t perceived the same way on a man and woman. A serious expression is a positive for a man — control, authoritative — for a woman there it’s negative — arrogant, unfriendly, or worse. This stuff is all cataloged and it’s easy to capture a picture of the target in a moment that conforms to whatever the media wants to project about the person.
Sexism is like racism. It’s embedded in cultures and none of us are completely immune to its effects. The best we can do is challenge our perceptions of a woman or POC when our instantaneous response is negative. With a very imperfect imagination put a white man in the exact same role and ask if the response would be the same.
So, my answer to your question is all of the above. However, less so than fifty years ago and not all negative perceptions of women and POC are based on sexism and racism. That’s why the female Trump and male Hillary experiment is so eye opening.
I instantly think “female Trump equals Sarah Palin”.
But you are probably referring to an experiment I’m not aware of.
“male Hillary = Mitt Romney”?
wrt the experiment, Mino brought it to our attention in a comment and I re-posted it in another comment thread. Perhaps too subtle to get much attention, but as there’s nothing to add to it, a stand-alone diary didn’t seem appropriate. Plus, too many here couldn’t handle it and would attack the messenger.
Here it is:
What If Trump And Hillary Swapped Genders? Reenactment Of Debates With Genders Switched ‘Shocks’ Liberal Audience.
Read and watch.
FASCINATING! I sent the link to my sister and my daughter.
Got a re-ply from my sister. She thinks it’s utter nonsense. But she’s still a diehard
ClintonHillary fan. Hard to strike that because, like my wife, she still hate’s Bill’s sexcapades. My daughter (maybe it’s the generation) just shrugged at that and said “That’s men”.Interesting. While I don’t respect cheaters, adultery isn’t a capital offense. It’s private and almost always hurtful to at least one person. None of our business. (And it’s hardly limited to men.)
What didn’t play with me was Hillary ‘wronged woman’/victim act. Covering up Bill’s dalliances had long been part of her job. Either accept it and keep your mouth shut or get out.
It’s the public policies that both Clintons have advocated for and supported that I loath. But I’m one of those weirdos that wants those we hire for public office to serve the people.
Sorry for all the typos. I need a bigger monitor (or better eyes).
P.S. I like the female Trump better than the real Trump. Don’t know what that means.
Male Hillary was the same dickhead I’ve seen in a thousand business meetings.
Don’t know what it means
Donning a layperson hat, I would say that you prefer an obnoxious woman over an obnoxious man. But it could also mean that you find tRump especially obnoxious.
Putting on my experimental psych hat suggests that more experiments are necessary. Obnoxious generic man v. obnoxious generic woman. Obnoxious generic man v. obnoxious attractive man. This all gets very complicated very quickly because the are several variables in play and each experiment has to run with a single variation which is why few such experiments are tackled.
What this one experiment highlighted is that HRC’s style and speech is less appealing than tRump’s style and speech and it’s independent of their gender. And Democrats are too biased and therefore, couldn’t see it in real time.
Something else that it suggests to me is that Hillary supporters strongly objected to Bernie’s broad gesticulations and not so well modulated vocal intonations. Many Bernie supporters heard that and longed to see him polish up his act. What both couldn’t see is that Bernie’s style communicated a higher level of authenticity and that is ultimately a superior quality for the general public not hobbled by liberal biases.
It seemed to me that the woman was righteously indignant and the smarmy man was lying. But during the real debate I thought Trump was rude and Clinton smarmily lying. However, the male Clinton seemed more so. Is it sexist? Maybe. I tolerate a woman interrupting a man but not a man interrupting a woman even if I dislike the woman? The man should control himself (a belief I was fully indoctrinated in, men should be polite and never show emotion) but a woman can lose control (i.e. “she’s only a woman”)? A disquieting thought. The real Trump came across to me as a rude loudmouth. The female Trump as more of a Joan of Arc.
An audience variable. Men and women don’t always respond the same way to the same stimulus. Men may be harsher critics of other men and women harsher critics of other women. Although based on voting behavior, men weren’t exceptionally critical of tRump. However, HRC didn’t get her expected vote among women; so, perhaps she lost some women in the debates.
What struck me about the real debates is that in the GOP primaries I could see that tRump was obnoxious and ignorant and effective but in the general election debate I could only see tRump’s obnoxiousness and ignorance and not any effectiveness. My responses to the real Hillary and male “Hillary” was about the same. The difference for me is that I was able to see the effectiveness of the female “tRump” that I was blind to in the real debate.
I noticed a problem with the enactment of male Hillary. The smile of female Hillary had a touch of knowledgeable superiority, for better or worse. The smile of male Hillary was… well, a clueless, social smile, undermining any projection of authority. Hopeless for a presidential debate!
There will be many rationalizations of this performance. The DNC may pick up on wrong ones, as ever.
The actors did their best to replicate the gestures, vocal qualities, and facial expressions. That excerpt didn’t include the various moments in the original debate when HRC wasn’t speaking and exhibited the expression you recall. So, I didn’t see the “clueless, social smile” that you perceived from the male “Hillary.”
NYU plans to film more debate excerpt reenactments in a studio; so, maybe what you saw will be more obvious another one of the enactments.
Arrghhh! re-read your post and feel like an idiot. My only excuse is that I got up 5 minutes ago and am just drinking my coffee now (I don’t have an intravenous nozzle). I stick by the Trump/Palin metaphor though. Lots of commonality, but in the end brainless twit Palin was defeated but macho brainless twit Trump was elected.
BTW, I like the idea of Mrs. Caldwell (the 3rd grade teacher) picking up Jamie Dimon by the ears.
Yes. It is a hit job. It’s a hit job conducted by the same media that are producing hit job after hit job on Donald Trump. She threatens the Permanent Government the same way that Trump does. Trump is getting much more of the hit job attention now because he is in a position of real power.
That’s the way it works.
That’s the way it has worked since at least the Kennedy/Nixon campaign.
Here’s the hit job photo (c/o the NY Times) that awakened me with a jolt 17 years ago:
Like a hawk on a mouse.
It was a Sunday. I had taken my son to Aikido practice…I studied with the same teacher at the time…and had recently returned from a a very busy month in Japan. So busy that I had lost all track of the primary campaign. When I left, Dean seemed to be doing very well. When I saw this featured photo I realized that his days were numbered as a viable candidate. (The whole “Aaaaargh!!!” hit came a short later.) I was so shaken by this realization that when my instructor came out to the car where I was sitting…a very perceptive man…he immediately asked me if I was alright.
I have never believed the mass media reporting on politics since. I got fooled a little by Obama’s hype…it was really good…but got over that fairly rapidly.
Never again.
Ever.
Not so long as they are owned by Big Corp., anyway.
And that will probably be forever.
Later…
ASG
Make that Dean thing 12 years ago. I’m a little dysnumeric. Sorry.
AG
I screwed up this morning too.
Glenn – Key Democratic Officials Now Warning Base Not to Expect Evidence of Trump/Russia Collusion
If a big lie succeeds, it’s subsequent public revelation that it was a lie doesn’t do much damage to the lying winner. Cost Nixon nothing decades later to admit that he knew Jerry Voorhees wasn’t a communist. JFK’s 1960 “missile gap?” Close to zilch. Hoover’s Cointelpro?” It’s still the J. Edgar Hoover FBI building. John Foster Dulles still gets Washington Dulles International Airport and Dulles, VA. Allen Dulles, a bas relief at Langley. Bush and Shrub knowingly advanced lies to get their wars on. Only temporary damage to the latter. Etc.
The Russophobe stories seem to be dwindling, losing strength of late, although someone who keeps track will need to tell me about the hysterical Rachel Maddow — whose show I no longer regularly watch — and whether she’s still trying to report more alleged Putin/Russia subterfuge activity in our country, in her patented, cutesy, connect-the-dot way.
Re the missile gap, I wouldn’t put that story into that bunch. Complicated, but as i understand, Kennedy had to consider two sets of competing, contradictory data. Not surprisingly in an election year, he chose to believe the set (Gaither Report from 1957 and Air Force report from 1959 which dramatically overinflated Soviet missile potential) which favored him politically, over the set, provided by the Ike admin, which he not unreasonably believed was politically biased and understated to cover a less than adequate US position.
He turned out to be wrong, as the IC finally showed with actual evidence, but only later in 1961, and turning out to be wrong does not make you a liar.
Had it been at the time of the campaign a clear-cut case on the facts of the alleged gap, Nixon had 4 chances in the debates alone to easily exploit it and thereby probably win the election on that point. DIdn’t happen though, and it didn’t happen presumably because Nixon was well aware of the Gaither and AF reports, as well as testimony to that effect during recent senate hearings.
You sure that JFK didn’t know that at a minimum he was exaggerating? I left out a few other big lies for the reason that accepting bad data as the truth isn’t a knowing lie by the principle actor and in those cases it isn’t clear that it wasn’t the former. (It’s still a big lie.) However, how much more accountability is there for a knowing big lie compared to a “bad data” big lie? Doesn’t seem like much if any for winners (that I describe as having gotten what they wanted from the big lie).
The consequences for big lies by losers is less well established. Mostly because losing makes any lie irrelevant, and therefore, they don’t get thorough subsequent reviews. (John Edwards is an exception but that was a personal matter and one that doesn’t get much empathy.)
Regardless of what Nixon knew or didn’t know, once JFK seized on that, Nixon was in a bind. He was running for the still popular Ike’s third term. He couldn’t vary well agree with JFK and say that his boss was weak on national defense. But both were and were running as Cold War warriors and on that issue the voter decision was split.
I think JFK knew nothing was definitive given the differing studies, and thus not surprisingly went with the set that favored him politically, even if it turned out to be exaggerated.
Note here, these studies (pre-IC later investigation) were all basically gross guesstimates, even the CIA’s, of Soviet strength. Prior to 1960, the estimates were based on Possibility of strength in the near future; this was then changed to a standard of Probability. Still, regardless, there was a fair amount of guess work involved until late 61 and extensive U-2 flights revealed the actual situation.
As for Nixon supposedly being in a bind in discussing it, I’m not sure to what extent he could have revealed numbers, but he could have asserted forcefully what Dulles had briefed him and Kennedy about as to the lack of a gap and excellent US relative position, then challenged JFK to call The Honorable Allen Dulles, Our Head of CIA, a liar.
Haven’t seen their exchange in the debates lately, but I don’t recall that issue as one that was particularly hotly debated.
I meant a bind for campaign rhetoric. Conceding to JFK that a missile gap had materialized during Ike’s tenure would mean that the boss or both he and the boss had been asleep at the wheel. Forcefully challenging the missile gap notion would have made him appear weak on national defense. Politically what JFK did (which is a reason why I tend not to ascribe it solely to bad data) was what Nixon and the GOP had been doing to Democrats since ’45. That, of course, would mean that they were all conscious of the game being played when at most they were only semi-conscious of that and semi-nuts.
Forget campaign rhetoric: what was important was the 4 debates. Nixon failed to aggressively challenge the notion. Why? Not because it would make him look weak (?!?) but perhaps because he knew the various studies were in disagreement and Kennedy would just forcefully challenge him back with the above-mentioned govt studies; stalemate. In any case, Ike himself failed to clearly and specifically report on the in-house intel study, and instead just casually brushed aside suggestions of a MG. Typical grandfatherly Ike, but politically it left an opening for Kennedy.
And yes, what JFK did politically — what I would call smart politics in a tough situation — was a nifty turning of the tables on what Goopers had been doing to Dems and Truman. The crucial difference being Kennedy had actual info from credible sources; not sure Goopers post-45 were doing anything more than just making it up.
Neither you nor I were adults in 1960. As such we see and hear differently and draw inferences, conclusions, and opinions with a different tool box.
An example — in 1952 Nixon’s “Checkers speech” got him a pass with a majority. When young people watched it less than two decades later, they found it laughable that anyone could have fallen for it.
Did Reagan believe his “Welfare Queen?”. If he did or didn’t, he could point to a Readers Digest (his favorite publication) article that sensationally claimed it was. It was a lie, but one woman that fraudulently received AFDC payments was found. It’s like the effectively non-existent voter fraud the GOP harps on and in the guise of preventing it, enacts legislation to disenfranchise AA voters.
Personally, I don’t care what politicians believe on matters that can be rationally and objectively ascertained. Colin Powell appearing before the nation and UN with all his “evidence” and belief that Saddam had WMD didn’t make it true. It was a performance in cherry picking data that supported his belief. And people who believed Powell were no better because the publicly available evidence in real time via the internet was sufficient to conclude that there were no WMDs that posed a threat to the US — and the case wasn’t even close.
I don’t defend any politician that accepts a single report on major issues that if wrong has serious consequences. Inflating/overestimating the enemy’s capacity goes back at least to McClellan in the US. So, this is one area where officeholders should be skeptical and cautious.
JFK had the nonexistent missile gap and Richard Nixon had his secret plan to end the War.
I don’t know why people who follow politics find it so hard to understand that in politics lying works on a fairly regular basis.
Again, the difference: JFK had actual govt studies-based info to use against Nixon, including one presidential commission study (Gaither) ordered up by the Ike admin. He didn’t make it up out of whole cloth by, say, ordering a campaign aide to start a false rumor about a secret Pentagon study finding a stark MG favoring the Soviets and leak it to the press. That’s something a Nixon or LBJ would do, however — make up a wild totally baseless charge (like his opponent being gay or having relations and children out of wedlock with his black maid) and make the other poor guy deny it.
Nixon of course just made it up, as he often did. There has been no credible indication in the years since 1968 that he had an actual plan; au contraire, the post-election insider stories confirm he had no plan. A flat-out lie, asserting something he knew was false in order to deceive and gain advantage.
Pat Buchanan admitted on CSPAN there was no secret plan.
I defer to your better knowledge on JFK.
Nixon sticks out because he appended secret to his plan. WJC in ’92 and it was assumed that a plan had been formulated. It stunned many after his election that he had no plan at all. But this is getting away from my original comment on big lies. (Wouldn’t put GHWB’s “read my lips, no new taxes” in the big lie category. I was a campaign pledge and he may have suffered consequences for breaking it. I say “may,” because WJC ran on increasing taxes in ’92.)
Policy promises are something different in my book, since circumstances may change.
I think Bush probably meant the no new taxes pledged at the time.
Clinton 92 reference unclear. Tax pledge stuff?
Misleading as it suggests an across-the-board hike. No way would he pull a Mondale. BC did run on hiking the rate for upper income families (above $200k), but specifically pledged to seek a tax cut for the middle class.
At least comes close to a big lie — he had to know it was an easy, cynical, typical cheap pol effort to directly promise the moon to the masses on a matter he knew or should have known he might not be able to deliver, given all his years of experience in govt and politics, and a massive misleading given it was uttered so prominently and colorfully during his convention acceptance speech.
I definitely think that whopper, or political lie, produced adverse consequences for him in 92 — his credibility generally, the disappointment/anger among Goopers, leading to only tepid support, or non-support, on election day.
When aren’t Republican pols cynical, cheap, etc.? They’re just better at it than Democrats. (GHWB only knows one thing about tax policy and that’s his belief that progressive taxation is evil and the GOP position is forever more tax cuts. He doesn’t have the legislative experience or interest to know more than that; so, while the public may view his “no new taxes” as a whopper, it’s not easy to put it in the lie category much less the big lie category.)
My point was GHWB was excoriated in ’92 for having backtracked from his no new taxes pledge but his opponent ran on increasing taxes. Regardless of WJC’s campaign rhetoric that it was limited to increasing taxes on high income earners, people know that the final bill is never that simple and that in some way they too may get hit. The 1993 tax bill (which better met the promise than most) included:
It would be simplistic to assess the ’92 election as hinging on that one issue. The single biggest issue that year was NAFTA which garnered 18.9% of the vote. GHWB was also pushing for a capital gains tax reduction — more for the haves — and thus reinforced his public policy orientation. (Clinton got that one done later, but he sure didn’t advocate for it in ’92.)
and all that got me is the same Heritage Foundation federal budget that I could have had for free from Jeb?, Cruz, Rubio, Kasich, Walker, Christie, Graham, Jindal, Perry, Fiorina, Huckabee, and the other faceless dolts.’ What hope is there when even the outsiders hand the keys to the insiders as soon as they get the car?
and get more of the same wars:
Yemen War is a FUBAR Mess
Makes a solid case in a few short paragraphs.
Trevor Timm at The Guardian – Everyone loves Bernie Sanders. Except, it seems, the Democratic party
Yeah, one would think if one weren’t a diehard Clinton/Obama/neoliberalcon. The DP junked FDR’s socialism decades ago and they aren’t going back even if it means continuing to be the minority party. As JK Galbraith and others have pointed out — given a choice between a fake Republican and a real Republican, voters go with the real thing.
This won’t surprise you…
“Gathered behind closed doors in a Denver hotel, 30 conservative Democrats plotted a potential path forward for their party – an effort to devise a strategy that might help them avoid total annihilation in red states across America.
Over a packed three-day schedule with a battery of presentations, the U.S. senators, former federal prosecutors, mayors and top Cabinet officials from the Obama administration in attendance talked about faith and religious voters, heard from a radio host about a medium typically reserved for conservatives and considered research suggesting that liberal priorities – like student loan debt – are just not a big deal.”
Read more here: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article138743333.html#storylink=cpy
fladem’s post on Perez’s DNC-packing with the usual suspects won’t either. Seen three photos of Ellison post-election and he is glum in every single one–even the staged “unity” ones. Guess he knew the real score.
Aren’t many really bad ideas left that they haven’t borrowed from the GOP.
Read somewhere that the Democratic Cold War 2.0 didn’t play well with younger people. They see it as a relic, and a stupid one, of the last century. Of course, if it’s repeated loudly and long enough it begins to sound contemporary.
Even I have to admit that Putin isn’t Stalin. Khrushchev IMHO, but not Stalin.
An election worth watching:
Montana U.S. House open seat. Special election to fill the seat vacated by Ryan Zinke.
Nominees chosen at party conventions. Amanda Curtis was a candidate and came in a strong second. Due to the brevity of the general election campaign, I can’t criticize the decision of the party. The GOP nominee, Gianforte, came very close to defeating the incumbent Democratic governor in 2016; so, he has name recognition. OTOH, tRump’s winning margin was 20.2% in the same election.
Rob Quist, the Democratic nominee, isn’t a politician, but he has name recognition and is a lifelong MT resident. (Gianforte is a transplant.) What may disquiet many here is that Quist backed Bernie in 2016. So, Gianforte has no choice but to run as a lackey of a guy with net 13% unfavorable rating and Quist is aligned with the net 20% favorable guy. (Would guess that tRump’s net favorable isn’t as bad in MT and Sanders isn’t as good as the national numbers, but MT was only a 55% for tRump state.)
NY Daily News by Shaun King, The Democratic Party seems to have no earthly idea why it is so damn unpopular
The DP plan? Better advertising. As if the only thing wrong with Battlefield Earth (2000) was the advert budget, number of opening screens, and the critics and media.