[Update-1] My analysis on Prof. Mifsud and the bar talk with Trump goon Papadopoulos …
○ Mifsud Offering Alu Tubes to Papadopoulos?
How lucky for the Mueller investigation, the target guy sits next to a Five Eyes spy master … the former Australian FM of Iraq War fame!
- “George Papadopoulos spoke to high commissioner Alexander Downer at London bar in May 2016, catalyzing FBI investigation, The New York Times reports.”
From the link in article in The Guardian:
Alexander Downer: from fishnet stockings to foreign envoy | The Guardian – April 2, 2014 |
During Downer’s tenure as foreign minister, Australia implemented a hardline crackdown on the arrival of asylum seekers by boat, and strongly backed the US after the 2001 terrorist attacks. Howard, who was in Washington at the time of the attacks, affirmed Australia’s solidarity with the US. Australia joined the war in Afghanistan and later the invasion of Iraq.
In the days before the US-led intervention in Iraq in March 2003, Downer left little room for doubt about the existence of weapons of mass destruction. He told parliament he refused to be remembered as a foreign minister who turning his back on “such evil”.
“The question today is less whether Saddam is guilty of trying to hide his weapons of mass destruction – we know he is. Or why this matters to Australia – we know it does. The real question today is what we – the international community – are going to do about it,” Downer said.
Despite the ultimate inability to find the claimed weapons of mass destruction, Downer continued to defend the invasion on the grounds it had removed “the world’s most brutal dictator” and led to a “big improvement on pre-2003 Iraq”.
More below the fold …
Australia and the Threat of Global Terrorism – A Test of Resolve The Hon. Alexander Downer, MP - April 13, 2004
On the morning of September 12th 2001, after sitting up most of the night transfixed by the horror unfolding in New York and Washington, a colleague of mine was confronted by his sleepy-eyed young son. The boy had overheard conversations and television snippets in the dead of night and wanted to know whether something terrible had happened or whether he had just had a “bad dream.” Now, two and a half years on, the numbness and incredulity of that September are gone. Over following months we witnessed the gruelling task of the World Trade Centre rubble and its human contents being collected and removed and taken away like so much of our comfort and security.
We in Australia have since endured the shock, brutality and grief of Bali. We have seen the carnage in Istanbul, in Riyadh and in Madrid. We have seen military action in Afghanistan. We have seen the liberation of Iraq and continue to see terrorist attacks against international forces determined to bring stability. I think as a people we have realised that this is no “bad dream.” We realise that this is not a string of unrelated, tragic events.
But I think many Australians are still uncertain and understandably worried about these events. This is not surprising – the campaign waged by the terrorists is unlike any we have had to face before. And it is designed to foster fear, division and self-doubt.
How can we fight a war against a tactic? Who is our enemy? Why do they attack us? How do we know whether we are winning or losing? The sad truth is that 9/11 did change the world we live in. We are engaged in a war to protect the very civilisation we have worked so hard to create – a civilisation founded on democracy, personal liberty, the rule of law, religious freedom and tolerance.
Iraq War and Humanitarian Dimensions: How secret report was leaked to the press in 2003
A POLICE REPORT shows a secret document critical of the Iraq war was passed around the office of then-Foreign Minister Alexander Downer before being used in 2003 to publicly attack its author.
It was discussed by two advisers to the minister before being sent to Mr Downer. For the first time those advisers are named publicly.
Two days after their discussion the secret document’s contents were used by a journalist to attack the author, Andrew Wilkie, now an independent MP but formerly a war critic in an intelligence agency.
But the Australian Federal Police police report has a critical gap between the document’s official journey and its arrival soon after in the hands of the journalist.
The new detail is the latest episode in the 13-year history of one of the nation’s biggest intelligence breaches.
It relates to a secret document prepared by Mr Wilkie, who had been an intelligence analyst who quit the Office of National Assessment in protest over Australia joining the Iraq invasion.
I would imagine from this new insight, the Steele dossier doesn’t play a role of importance as it was said to be the basis for the original FBI push for a FISA warrant. How convenient of the NY Times to come forward with this story from reputable unnamed sources??
Is The New York Times trying to recover from their reluctance to publish the Steele dossier story last fall due to lack of credibility? Great stuff by Seth Abramson … see my diary of a month ago – A Friend Called Seth Abramson.
○ Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia By ERIC LICHTBLAU and STEVEN LEE MYERS | OCT. 31, 2016 |
○ FBI granted FISA warrant to monitor fmr. Trump adviser Carter Page | The Atlantic – April 2017 |
Just published a new article in The Guardian about Alexander Downer … fits well in the land of Tony Blair et all!
Alexander Downer: the gaffe-prone conservative and unlikely anti-Trump hero
He is the current champion of anti-Trump supporters and American liberals, but Alexander Downer’s elevation to international hero may prove more than amusing for many Australians.
A former foreign affairs minister in the conservative Howard government, Downer, known privately for his sense of humour, became best known for agreeing to pose for a photo wearing a pair of fishnet stockings and high heels for a charity promotion in 1996.
A staunch supporter of the Iraq war, Downer pushed for Australia’s involvement, delivering a speech to parliament in February 2003 that called for Australia to act.
“I cannot in conscience ignore the record of Saddam Hussein, [a] ruthless tyrant who tries still – in the face of concerted international pressure – to retain and develop the most evil of weapons,” he said. “As the foreign minister of our great country, I will not be remembered for turning my back on such evil and allowing the spectre of Saddam to haunt future generations.”
Three years later, Downer was forced to give evidence at an inquiry investigating who knew what about AWB’s involvement in the Iraq “oil for food” scandal. He denied any knowledge of AWB’s activities.
Downer remains the shortest-serving Liberal leader in the party’s history, holding the leadership for less than a year between May 1994 and January 1995, after a series of gaffes torpedoed his chances to become prime minister.
The most serious of which came when he joked that the Liberals’ new domestic violence policy should be called “the things that batter”, a poorly chosen riff on the party’s then slogan, “the things that matter”.
His tenure at Australia House expires in March, when George Brandis, the former Australian attorney general, will take up residence.
BIG SECRET: “Trump aide told Australian diplomat Russia had dirt on Clinton”
But Downer’s boozy night out at the Kensington Wine Rooms with one of Donald Trump’s campaign advisers has ensured his place in one of the most intriguing chapters of US political history.
Exactly my thought! Downer pulling out his hair …Trump, now his hero president. Well, Putin was a bigger enemy at the time, Ukraine, Poland and the Baltic States you know.
Where was Sir Andrew Wood, the spymaster of Moscow fame under Yeltsin and employed by Christopher Steele. Boozing in another London Bar in Kensington?
[Update-1] Short memory @seabe?
○ Steele Dossier Looks More Credible Than Ever by BooMan on Oct 26th, 2017
As recently as Oct. 26th – Will Mueller Drop a Bomb Before Thanksgiving?
- But it’s her opinion that the reason we’re seeing the Republicans ramp up their attacks on the FBI and the Steele Dossier is because they know something is coming down soon and it’s not going to be good.
…
But something has changed this week, and it could be nothing more than the timing of the disclosure that the Clinton campaign indirectly funded the investigation that led to the Steele Dossier. But it could also signal that the Trump administration knows that something is coming down on them soon and that they need to change over from cooperating and legitimizing the investigation to undermining the independence of its conclusions.
○ British Intelligence Delivers Another ‘Dodgy Dossier’ by Oui @BooMan on Jan. 12, 2017
Stop bullshitting fellow bloggers with shallow posts please.
○ NATO and Soros Crossed Russia’s Red Line in Europe
Same as analysis on the credibility of Louise Mensch here @BooMan!
Your diaries are trash.
What kind of hacktastic shit is this? Who said the Steele dossier played a major role at all in providing intel for FISA? Almost anyone who’s anyone said this from the beginning. It’s hacks like Byron York and other right wingers (good company, bro) pushing these absurd lines of attack. It’s why Marcy Wheeler has said that the dossier is completely irrelevant (and it is, as far as Mueller is concerned).
How do you draw that conclusion? Downer is clearly an Australian pol in the Blair fold (and a bit of a nutter as well). Like Blair etal, he boosts his creds by hanging out in conservative circles.
And this is merely what ‘officials’ (as passed to the NYT) want the public to buy into as the scramble to protect their butts:
As yet the timeline on all of this is far too incomplete to draw solid conclusions. We don’t know when the FBI initiated an investigation (or opened a file) into alleged Russian interference in the election. Comey has only said “July 2016.” (Recall that Fusion GPS similarly used a murky timeline as to when it was hired for an oppo project on Trump by an undefined Democratic funding source. They publicly paired “after Trump secured the nomination” with “Steele hired in June 2016” to give the impression that the two were linked within days of each other. We now know that Fusion GPS approached Perkins Coie in “early March of 2016.” Yet only cites “April 2016” as when it formally engaged Fusion GPS. Any precise date (other than June 2016) for the hiring of Steele? And how did they come to hire Steele at all?) While not precise, what we can add to the timeline is this:
So, the official Australia to US notice came after DNC docs were published by Wikileaks. Specifically July 22, 2016. (That was more than a month after the DNC/Crowdstrike alleged that “the Russians” had hacked its system and Guccifer 2.0 had posted some allegedly pilfered DNC emails. On July 25, 2016 the FBI announced that it would investigate the “hack.”
So, when did the FBI begin seeking FISA warrants on Trump campaign officials? “Summer 2016” isn’t anywhere near precise enough. (Can we dismiss the possibility that earlier sting operations weren’t done? Was the DJT, jr Trump Tower meeting a Fusion sting?)
Until the DNC/Crowdstrike June 14/15, 2016 announcement was there any suspicion/speculation of a Trump-Russian election collusion? (It wasn’t in the DNC 12/15 oppo file on Trump, but at that time, team Clinton was trying to smear Sanders as a Russia-Putin flunkie.) What were Republicans — including Trump — seeking on Clinton during the first half of 2016? Her deleted emails from 2009-2013 (a futile effort (they were offline years before the existence of her server was known and if not destroyed, stored in an impenetrable vault) spearheaded by Peter W Smith who likely whispered from his crazy mouth to Trump’s crazy ear (how many years did he spend asking someone to find Obama’s Kenyan birth certificate?)) And secret stuff on the Clinton foundation (the record keeping at the foundation may have been so poor that there wasn’t anything to be found).
So, let’s look at a portion of that timeline:
Early March 2016 – sales pitch from Fusion GPS to Perkins Coie
March 29, 2016 – Manafort joined the Trump campaign as convention manager. (Freakout by the anti-Russia Ukie faction in Democratic circles.)
April 16, 2016 – Manafort laid out a vision for the campaign.
May 19, 2016 – Manafort promoted to campaign manager. (Taking over from the rag-tag, inexperienced team and collection of nutters that had surrounded Trump.)
Interesting that Fusion didn’t make the sale until after Trump hired Manafort. How soon after that did we begin hearing about Manafort’s ‘dirty Ukraine money?’
How many cooks were stirring the broth? Coordinated or semi-autonomous?
Excellent overview – thanks!
The Ukrainian link has not gotten the coverage needed all along. But the SBU and the flunkies from Lviv are protected
by John McCaine et all in the Intelligence establishment of US Congress, Pentagon and CIA at Langley.
Didn’t/doesn’t need McCain (who is now irrelevant) to 1) deflect from Ukraine and 2) make that unsupported leap from Ukraine to Russia-Putin. You know better than most that Clinton/Obama was crawling with anti-Russian, pro-Ukrainian billionaires and/or nazis. (Hunter Biden was one that needed protection.) Why so little attention to Tony Podesta who ended up as collateral damage for the Resistance (headed up by John Podesta) opening this can of worms? So far Tony has only had to close his shop, but that doesn’t mean that Mueller isn’t circling around. (I’d welcome a real investigation of all of this by a competent and uncontaminated investigative team. Unfortunately, Mueller (and probably most on the team) were too compromised prior to the assignment. There’s enough dirt to bury both sides (including Trump and it has nothing to do with Russia interference in the election), but alas, there are no longer any Archibald Cox’s to appoint.)
Whatever happened to Kerry’s irrefutable evidence that Russia shot down MH-17? (Difficult to know how high the stupid went in the Obama administration. Perhaps it was only Obama’s astute and conservative instincts that led him to pull back from Syria and confronting Russia on MH-17. Neither Clinton nor Trump have such instincts.)
There is no substantiation offered to support the claim made here that Mueller has failed to assemble “a competent and uncontaminated investigative team”. Nor are facts brought to the table to back up the claim that “Mueller (and probably most on the team) were too compromised prior to the assignment.”
Where is your “substantiation” to the contrary? In the Washingtoon Post?
Please!!!
AG
Predictably, you have nothing.
Predictably, your position on this issue enables Trump.
Tell us more.
Ellsberg was called a commie stooge back then by the same guardians of protecting TPTB that today call those like him and me Russian-Putin stooges. History will again be kinder to the truth-tellers.
Is this true? I read one of Zuckerman’s editorials in US News and World Report in which he gave statistics about Desert Storm which claimed that the US dropped more bomb tonnage on Iraq than all sides dropped in every theater in WW II combined. More than the Blitz, the American bombing of Japan, the allied bombing of France and Germany including Dresden. That’s a LOT of bombs.
But I understand if you don’t consider Cheney to be a human being.
○ Edwin E. Moise – Limited War: The Stereotypes
The NBC evening news February 4, 1991, less than three weeks after the bombing began, stated that Iraq had already taken, through air attack, a worse pounding than was inflicted on Germany in the whole of World War II. The New York Times said that the tonnage of bombs that had been dropped on the Iraqis was “generally believed to be more than was used in all of World War II.” (John Kifner, “From Bombs to Burgers, Supplies in Persian Gulf Dwarf Past Moves,” The New York Times, February 4, 1991, p. 1.) Forbes published a photo of a B-52 with the caption “By mid-February more explosives dropped than in all of WWII.” (Subrata N. Chakravarty, “Shell-shocked?”, Forbes, February 18, 1991, p. 43.) An article in the Air Force Journal of Logistics later said that the US “expended more bombs in six weeks in the Persian Gulf War than during any single year in Vietnam.” (William Head, “Air Power in the Persian Gulf: An Initial Search for the Right Lessons”, Air Force Journal of Logistics, Winter 1992, p. 11.)
These statements should have been rejected as false.
Stats from the article: 88,500 tons of aerial ordnance during the First Gulf War.
This made possible a comparison with the 1,613,000 tons of air munitions the US used in the European Theater of World War II, (Carl Berger, ed., The United States Air Force in Southeast Asia, 1961-1973, rev. ed. (Washington: Office of Air Force History, 1984), p. 368. Alternate figures using slightly different categories show the US having dropped 1,462,000 tons of bombs in the European Theater, of which slightly less than half–between 600,000 and 700,000 tons–fell on Germany itself. United States Strategic Bombing Survey, Overall Report (European War), September 30, 1945, pp. 2, 7.) and with the more than 6,715,000 tons the US used in Indochina.
Kissinger and Nixon – the Christmas bombing raid above Hanoi in 1972 …
○ North Vietnam, 1972: The Christmas bombing of Hanoi
○ Vietnam War casualties
Thanks for real numbers, Oui.
I neglected to include my observation of Papadopoulos, but Andrew Kaczynski tweeted the same thing:
Have the anti-Trumpers lived their whole lives under a rock and never encountered low level bullshitters trying to making themselves sound important? Maybe they should go hang out at a bar sometime where they’re in plenty of supply.
GG’s comment on Kaczynski’s tweet:
The “twitter brigrade” either didn’t read the Mueller’s charges of Papadopoulos or has serious reading comprehension deficits.
“The “twitter brigrade” either didn’t read the Mueller’s charges of Papadopoulos or has serious reading comprehension deficits.”
Yeah, let’s read the charging document. Comprehend this, you peculiarly quarrelsome person:
“…13. On or about April 25, 2016, defendant PAPADOPOULOS emailed a senior
policy advisor for the Campaign (the “Senior Policy Advisor”): “The Russian government has an
open invitation by Putin for Mr. Trump to meet him when he is ready []. The advantage of being
in London is that these governments tend to speak a bit more openly in ‘ neutral’ cities.”
PAPADOPOULOS Learns that the Russians Have “Dirt ” on Clinton
14. On or about April 26, 2016, defendant PAPADOPOULOS met the Professor for
breakfast at a London hotel. During this meeting, the Professor told defendant
PAPADOPOULOS that he had just returned from a trip to Moscow where he had met with highlevel
Russian government officials. The Professor told defendant PAPADOPOULOS that on
that trip he (the Professor) learned that the Russians had obtained “dirt” on then-candidate
Clinton. The Professor told defendant PAPADOPOULOS, as defendant PAPADOPOULOS later described to the FBI, that “They [the Russians] have dirt on her”; “the Russians had emails of Clinton”; “they have thousands of emails.”
15. Following that conversation, defendant PAPADOPOULOS continued to
correspond with Campaign officials, and continued to communicate with the Professor and the
Russian MFA Connection, in an effort to arrange a meeting between the Campaign and the
Russian government.”
Another noticeable part of this post, in addition to this significant unforced error, is that you reference “anti-Trumpers” as people you oppose. Yes, it’s been apparent for some time that you’re not sincerely anti-Trump; you spend much of your time here these days defending him and his associates with elaborate tales in which you jam in shit-talking and Whataboutisms. This may be one of the reasons why so many of us in this progressive community view you with great suspicion these dayskl.
You write:
Translation:
A perfect example of the new McCarthyism. This is all you have, JoeCentristfield.
Weak.
You want to make your arguments? Great. Feel free. But do not try to paint all of your opponents with the same McCarthyite brush. It just won’t work.
It is lame!!!
AG
The belligerent, broad-brushing community member doth protest too much, methinks.
LOL 🙂
Tres riche coming from a person that trolls my comments to drop turds on them. Very few of which I even bother to read much less respond to. Not worth my time to interact with those that aren’t honest debaters and feeding trolls isn’t my thing.
Stop being a relentless pest.
I offered a substantial factual rebuttal of a direct claim you made. In no way does that describe troll behavior. And you’ve failed to directly respond to the specific information in that rebuttal.
As I said, reading comprehension deficits. No friend of Putin, Masha Gessen nails it:
If Mueller had anywhere near the solid case against Papadopoulus that you seem to believe, why would he accept a plea for lying to the FBI? That would be like a DA claiming to have a suspect cold on murder one and settling for a jaywalking misdemeanor guilty plea.
Papadopoulos didn’t even pass Sessions (not the sharpest tack in the box) smell test.
Papadopolous is a cooperating witness. Cooperating witnesses are offered the opportunity to plea to charges less than what a prosecutor might be able to prove in a court of law. It encourages the lawbreaker to provide information which might help make cases against co-conspirators.
The link I shared upthread to the Papadopolous charging document isn’t working; here’s a link which should work. Let’s read from the outset:
“Pursuant to Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 11, the United States of America and the
defendant, GEORGE PAPADOPOULOS, stipulate and agree that the following facts are true
and accurate. These facts do not constitute all of the facts known to the parties concerning the
charged offense; they are being submitted to demonstrate that sufficient facts exist that the
defendant committed the offense to which he is pleading guilty.”
And from the conclusion:
“…35. On July 27, 2017, defendant PAPADOPOULOS was arrested upon his arrival at
Dulles International Airport. Following his arrest, defendant PAPADOPOULOS met with the
Government on numerous occasions to provide information and answer questions.”
You believe the story Sessions tells that he shut down Papadopoulos’ pursuit of Russian support? For heavens’ sake, there’s literally no evidence which has come forward to support that dubious claim and much evidence to refute it.
If Sessions really spoke for the campaign by claiming that he shut down Papadopoulos’ explorations of Russian assistance in that March 2016 meeting of Trump campaign staff, why does the charging document state “…After several weeks of further communications regarding a potential “off the record” meeting with Russian officials, on or about August 15, 2016, the Campaign Supervisor told defendant PAPADOPOULOS that “I would encourage you” and another foreign policy advisor to the Campaign to “make the trip{], if it is feasible”?
At the end of the charging document, Papadopolous signs a statement which includes the following: “…The preceding statement is a summary, made for the purpose of providing the Court with a factual basis for my guilty plea to the charge against me. It does not include all of the facts known to me regarding this offense. I make this statement knowingly and voluntarily and because I am, in fact, guilty of the crime charged.”
Marie…you write:
“Low level bullshitters.” That is where all high level bullshitters begin!!! Trump included. The ones with talent and luck (plus maybe a small nest egg as well…one definition of “luck”) rise to the top of the bullshitter ranks…also known worldwide as politicians and/or corporate types/bosses.
For example…let’s look at Trump.
Much has been written about his privileged upbringing. I’ve got news for all of the people who think that he was born with a silver spoon up his royal ass. He was the son of a second-rate Brooklyn/Queens real estate hustler, a man who made his money in the post-WW II boom years building garages for new G.I. Bill-funded suburbanites, and his father was the son of an immigrant who ran saloons (also known as brothels) during the West Coast Gold Rush. I cannot imagine how many sons of the nouveau riche got substantial amounts of start-up money in the post-WW II NYC area. Hundreds? Thousands, maybe. They had no seat at the tables of the truly wealthy. None of them. Trump out-worked, out-hustled, out-cheated and out-self promoted them all.
The above is not an “appreciation” of Trump; it is simply a clear-eyed assessment of his talents. In The Art of War, Sun Tzu states “Know your enemy.” Why? Because if you do not know…and accurately assess…your enemy, you are bound to get your ass kicked. Ass-kicking is what Trump has been doing all of his life. Deal wid it. He is really good at it. People have dismissed him as just another cheap hustler all of his life, including the so-called “smart” progressive left. He is not. He is a brilliant hustler who possesses in his arsenal of hustles perhaps the best dumb act that the U.S. has ever seen from a national politician. Maybe Lincoln was his only rival in that department. Early Lincoln, anyway.
Underestimate him at your own risk…at the risk of the rest of us as well. And while I am at it…do not over-estimate the talents of his pursuers. There is not a soul amongst them who can match Trump’s lifelong won/lost record. Not Mueller, not anyone in the F.B.I. and probably no one in the intelligence services as well.
Game on.
Still!!!
Bet on it.
Later…
AG
No, Trump doesn’t know his enemies. It was daddy’s cash that bought the attorneys and accountants that bailed him out of his early financial debacles. Daddy’s cash also meant that he started mid-way on the hustler ladder.
He knows those like himself, the nouveau riche and aspiring nouveau riche. He knows how to appeal to them, much like Maddoff did. Check out the details on how he turned Mar-a-Lago into a cash spigot for himself. A big pile of green is all it takes to get in with Trump/Trump properties. People that I refer to as “more bucks than brains” (Del Webb upscale retirement communities are crawling with such people and they’re only in single digits multi-millionaire class but they’re Trumpsters.) No mystery why he’s been a magnet for dirty money from wherever.
NBC turned him into a celebrity — one that can’t sing, can’t act, can’t dance, and barely speaks English. In electoral politics, the value of celebrity can’t be quantified. But how often does a celebrity that runs for political office lose? (Why do you think so much effort over the decades went into making Hillary a celebrity? Unfortunately for her, the more she’s seen, the less attractive she becomes to voters.)
If Trump were half as skilled as you claim, he would have at a minimum matched GWB’s percentage of the popular vote (47.9%). His 46.1% wasn’t even as good as Romney’s. Like GWB running in an electoral cycle after two WH terms for the opposition, he had the wind at his back and unlike Dukakis, made use of it. (Which is why I will always place Dukakis as a worse Dem nominee/campaign than Hillary. In 2016, ordinary Democratic voters underestimated the power of that variable, but team Clinton didn’t; hence, the effort to saddle the GOP with a “pied-piper” (Dukakis-like) nominee. They miscalculated because Trump lacked that Dukakis (and in ’92 GHWB) loser quality, wimpy. (The MSM saddled Gore with the wimp label throughout most of the 2000 campaign. He only, and barely, broke free of it by the convention, but he struggled to maintain that new position through the debates.)
But but it was Bernie that weakened her. and Jill Stein stabbed her in the back by running against another woman when she knew she couldn’t win. Obviously Stein was working for Trump and Bernie was a Russian agent. He even honeymooned in Russia! It was her turn and her enemies stole it from her! Because the were white sexist pigs! Couldn’t have been any other reason for not falling on the ground and worshiping her.
Perhaps too harsh because the “it’s MY turn” and/or “it’s HIS/HER turn” has become almost commonplace in presidential elections. Even if not articulated by a candidate and/or his political party elites, voters perceive it because such candidates don’t generate natural enthusiasm among the party base.
Either one (MY or HIS/HER turn) is almost always is good enough to win the nomination. However, candidates and parties do try to deep-six both for the general election, particularly MY.
McCain – Definitely a “it’s MY turn” nominee. Dole’s ’96 position — let him have it because this one is a loser for us.
Clinton – Also a “it’s MY turn” candidate. The rarity is that voters were able to say no to her.
2012 – Romney. Both? It was there but not as pronounced as it had been for Dole and McCain, but they didn’t have anyone better and it was a long shot election for the GOP nominee anyway.
2016 – Remember Jeb? “His turn?”
— Clinton. Concerted party effort pushed “Her turn.” In part to erase her ’08 “MY turn,” but the meta-message they were going for was a unified party and she’s the one with broad and deep support. Echoes of “I like IKE” and “Nixon’s the One,” but overlooked was that those were a general election slogans and the shelf life of slogans is generally short. “I’m with HER” for eighteen months? Didn’t help that the spontaneous rejoinder from Sanders’ supporters was “He’s with us.” As I pointed out back in Aug/Sept 2015, Trump’s “Make America Great, Again” was a much stronger slogan (even as I personally loathed it). Yet, in real time, I failed to analyze and articulate what it was about Clinton’s slogan (which I also loathed) that made me feel that it was problematical. What I now suspect is that it reinforced “it’s MY turn” perception* and “MY turn” candidates lose general elections.
*It was simpler to call ’08 Democratic primary and general election (nearly a gimme) after the IA caucuses by looking at the differences between Obama’s and Clinton’s by the frequency of their use of two little words, you and I, in stump speeches. Obama made little use of I and used you a lot. Clinton was the opposite. Guess she neglected to note the 2006 Time “Person of the Year.”
You are probably right that I was/am too harsh. My motto has always been “Enemies exist to be crushed.” I don’t turn the other cheek and I don’t weep for my fallen enemies nor submit to my victorious enemies.
In ’68 are you referring to Nixon or Humphrey? Both were retreads.
Some surprising (to me) election results:
United States presidential election in California, 1968 and United States presidential election in Illinois, 1968
I’m not surprised that Wallace did better in Illinois than California but am surprised that Nixon did better in California than Illinois. Also surprised that the differences weren’t larger.
“Enemies exist to be crushed.”
Is that a mid-western sentiment? In electoral politics this is only the second time that I’ve encountered (an Ohio man). (Woefully pathetic population sample.) Or maybe it just doesn’t float around in CA.
Perhaps in the midwest, HHH was viewed as a retread in ’68 but only for those that recalled his short ’60 primary run. But that was back when presidential primaries were different and hopeless favorite sons could win in a state as Brown did in CA that year. He and the DP had much bigger problems than that.
In ’68, Nixon wasn’t foisted on GOP primary voters by the party. GOP elites threw every opponent they could drum up at him. No sense or perception of Nixon claiming “it’s my turn” or the party claiming that “it’s his turn.” He was the original “comeback kid.” Not since the 19th century has there been another GE loser that later won. iirc only one bottom of a ticket loser that later won the nomination and general election. (Didn’t dissuade many other loser VP nominees from trying.)
On ’68, very similar results (except for the pure racist vote) in CA and IL:
CA
Nixon: 47.82%
HHH: 44.74%
Wallace: 6.72%
P&F and McCarthy/Gregory (write-in): 0.71
IL
Nixon: 47.08%
HHH: 44.15%
Wallace: 8.46%
A whopping additional 0.74% for Nixon in CA (his home state) is underwhelming. He carried CA in ’60 but by 0.65% and lost IL by a mere 0.12%. So, why doing better in CA than IL in both elections looks like a normal pattern to me.
No, it’s personal. I’m not a turn the other cheek guy.
I was born into a basement flat in a bad neighborhood. Don’t know about you, but I theorize you were middle class from a Liberal family, although I recognize it could have been a Conservative family that you rebelled against.
Retreads in the sense that they had run before (in the primaries). Not implying they were backed by an inner elite.
I had had the impression that Nixon was hated more on the West Coast than in the Midwest, but your comment re Nixon as native son is spot on. And yes, I always considered California more tolerant of diversity than Illinois. But then, some of the most vicious wingnuts are Californians.
Thank goodness for a stupid candidate like Trump running a dumb campaign and hiring incompetent people like Papadopoulos. What an idiot!! Being in London, by definition a spy nest, with high security and video tracking of every move in Kensington of all places! The moment Papdopoulos showed up in the Trump campaign he was a marked man and all his communication from London with any foreigner – Moscow as highest priority – would be handled by GCHQ and the raw intelligence shared with Five Eyes partners and Israel’s Mossad. No FISA warrant needed, just a few months later any personality in the campaign team could be picked for an official court action for surveillance for US citizens. It would only be tricky because of the dimension of a political campaign.
○ US foreign intelligence court did not deny any surveillance requests last year | The Guardian – April 30, 2016 |
Papadopoulos was just smart or savvy enough to parlay a volunteer ‘foreign policy’ position on the Carson campaign (easy to forget that Carson and his campaign was even stupider and dumber than Trump’s) into the same position on Trump’s. But not smart enough to know how to protect that lucky break — “Trump ’16 campaign foreign policy adviser” — for future use. Tried to play the big shot for which he had no experience, contacts, etc. and that attracted other similar scofflaws instead of doing nothing more than handing out campaign business cards. Turned the luck of being in the right place at the right time into forever being a campaign and government pariah.
it
Oddly, the incompetence and disorganization of the Trump campaign prevented the incompetence of Papadopoulus to do serious damage. Nobody of any importance would waste time meeting with a “who?” Imagine such a guy with a campaign paycheck and checkbook — woo-hoo.
A good observation from b:
Perhaps none? Now that the Steele dossier is partially shaping up as a cover for Fusion GPS, could it also have been prepared as a cover for other persons/entities?
Better from Tyler Durden (who often enough is a decent analyst of MSM reporting)*: As Dossier Scandal Looms, The New York Times Struggles To Save Its Collusion Tale
*Skip the ZeroHedge comments as they’re on the level of the bottom of the wannabe CPAC barrel. Not any evidence that they even begin to comprehend Durden’s better posts. Oh well, guess Durden is responsible for having attracted his gaggle of dumb shit readers.
No, we’re only looking for Russians …
○ Chuck Johnson’s Narrowed Scope of What a Russian Is Excludes Known Conspirators in Operation
From my earlier diary …
○ Ukraine: Andrew Auernheimer, alias ‘Weev’ – Jan. 2017
No, we won’t be investigation collusion or hacking by Ukrainians or Israel’s bot brigades.
…
○ Congressional investigators find irregularities in FBI’s handling of Clinton email case | The Hill |
○ Trump World’s Counter-Collusion Narrative Is Beginning to Crumble | Vanity Fair |