Dick Morris is comically wrong about everything. He’s probably the wrongest man in America, and considering that Bill Kristol and Karl Rove also live here, that’s an accomplishment.
Now, I’m reluctant to open up avenues for Clinton bashing, as I’ve seen too much of that recently and much of it is unhinged and disturbingly reinforcing.
But I am willing to say one thing here, which is that the only reason Dick Morris has been able to plague us with his wrongness is because he’s the person Bill Clinton turned to to right his listing ship after the 1994 midterms. The word “triangulation” seems to have originated with Morris, so as effective as it might have been in the short term, you can’t separate that aspect of the Clinton legacy from Morris.
And, of course, his toe-sucking exploits with a call girl on the eve of the 1996 Democratic National Convention provided some very unwelcome headlines.
I judge politicians heavily be the people they surround themselves with, and I’ve never really gotten over the trust that was placed in Dick Morris during Clinton’s administration.
So, Morris can go to the National Enquirer and write whatever slime he wants to about Hillary. No one takes him seriously, so it won’t matter.
But someone once did take him seriously, and I still have a problem with that.
Morris is an assh*le and sleaze, but he hasn’t worked for Bill Clinton for two decades. There will be people voting in this election who weren’t even born when Clinton fired Morris.
Booman, you are far from the worst when it comes to rehashing ancient Clinton history. But I’m starting to wonder if there is any statute of limitations for Clinton mistakes, or if Democrats are determined to continue to complain about them for another decade, until Hillary’s second term is over?
Maybe I am a grudge holder, but I’m a grudge holder who has my eyes open about the choices.
To say that I am grumpy about my choices would be a severe understatement, but I’ll have no difficulty making the choice.
Glad to hear this. I thought Hillary’s speech yesterday was outstanding. I think/hope she will be a better president than many seem to expect her to be — at least, and unlike Obama, she won’t be burdened with excessively high expectations from the people who voted for her!
I have always respected your views and I have learned a great deal from your posts during the primaries this year.
I once taught history. There is no statue of limitations. It is important to know what people thought, felt and did in the past. Most folks don’t go through a personality or brain transplant, although I have in my lifetime seem some remarkable turnarounds. I seriously doubt the Clintons would qualify. I, quite honestly, don’t see any changes in their values, approach, goals, ambition or greed.
“Morris is an assh*le and sleaze”
Ah, for those more innocent times, when “sucking the toes of a call girl” was just about the most pervy thing one could do with a prostitute.
That was before Vitter’s antics became public, of course.
No matter who we are we ALL make mistakes. It is a shame that the Democratic Party has members that would attack other Democratic Party members.
Here in this post all Booman is doing is refreshing a view of history for those to young to know about Dick. But there are numerous others that way to easily seem to forget the very important historical warning of “A house divided, can not stand” It hods true still today.
. . . about everything” is one of the (or maybe just “the”) most reliable rightwing career paths in existence.
Well, considering that HRC is an enemy of the wrongest man in America (one of…I still think Kristol has a shot at the title), it can’t be a bad thing.
The association with Morris was long-standing.
A political strategist who advised Clinton on and off since 1978, he devised the ‘triangulation’ policy that helped the president win reelection in 1996. Clinton initially hid Morris’s role from his White House staff, referring to him by the code name “Charlie.” He is the author of a 1998 book on his White House experience:
Until he was thrown under the bus — it’s as if he and David Brock switched sides at the same time and both retained all their spots.
You write;
PermaGov 101.
AG
FYI:
Adam Jentleson@AJentleson
Louisiana: 47% of those eligible for Medicaid expansion already enrolled…in first 11 HOURS.
Yup, just goes to show what a failure and sellout ripoff that Obamacare is, all right.
Very smart to use the food stamp roles to qualify people quickly.
Rahm Emanuel.
?
Considering what he’s done in Chicago, it was questionable of Obama to place him in the position he got placed in.
This article discusses Rahm’s current problems with his past good friend, the Illinois Republican anti-union governor, Bruce Rauner. What’s interesting is that Erskine Bowles is mentioned in the article, as well. Trump was a big contributor ($50,000) to Rahm’s first mayoral election.
“At a January breakfast with Realtors, Rauner recalled that he scheduled a late 1990s meeting with a young Emanuel as a favor to Erskine Bowles, former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton. Bowles had asked Rauner to give Emanuel advice, but the young politico had the chutzpah to ask to be Rauner’s partner at GTCR Golder Rauner.”
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-rahm-emanuel-bruce-rauner-donald-trump-comparis
on-met-0603-20160602-story.html
Good point.
Dick M and Rahm are two points in favor of the argument that Clinton was the best Republican president since Eisenhower.
Please do a post for Muhammad Ali.
This issue, the Clinton cluelessness about hiring morally questionable and sleazy people – like Morris, Penn, Davis – is actually my biggest concern about Hillary. I don’t get how they can be so smart about so much and not see these people for what they are.
Regardless, I will, happily, work for Hillary once she is nominated and I will vote for her in the fall.
The White Entitlement of Some Sanders Supporters
If you’re young, white and privileged, you don’t expect to lose. When you do, it must be because you got cheated. Blacks know better.
At first I tried to ignore the conversation and thought they were Trump supporters (“Killary” is usually a right-wing thing). But once it became clear that these guys were Sanders supporters, I had to jump in. For years, these guys had been “my people.” I have been a fan of Sanders long before his presidential run and have made many friends due to our mutual admiration of his policies. Surely, I’d be able to have a civil, rational conversation with these guys, right?
When, I chimed in it was evident that we were speaking different languages. We agreed on most of the substantive policy issues, and I told them how I even interned for Sanders about a decade ago. We should have been able to see eye to eye, but we could not. The main source of their frustration was merely the fact that they had lost. The fact that she is ahead in the popular vote, has won more primaries and caucuses, and has earned more delegates was to them a minor nuisance. They had their absurd talking points and were unwilling to deviate into reality.
The more I reflected on them, the more I realized the key point: They felt entitled to win, and a defeat meant that someone must have cheated or that their opinions did not matter, which of course couldn’t be true. They preferred to suspend reality and fabricate injustices rather than concede that Sanders has lost fair and square.
Essentially, we disagreed on what America supposedly promised or owed us. They felt success was promised to them. The entitlement to believe that you should always win allowed them to overlook how the system in many ways has always been unjustly rigged in their favor because they’re white. I brought up race during our conversation and how I’m very aware of how a system can be rigged against you. These guys acknowledged my point, but it was obvious that this reality did not factor much into their thinking. They felt aggrieved and cheated, and that was all that mattered.
They could not understand the perspectives of blacks, Latinos and other minorities in America who are regularly treated as threats to society before their voices can be heard. We are often silenced before we even have the chance to win. And as a result, we know that losing is a reality we will confront and that success can be a difficult and long process that may only show its face in the lives of our children or grandchildren who have more opportunities because we’ve spent a lifetime fighting for positive change.
These guys could not understand this struggle. They wanted immediate success and gratification, and they were not used to things not going their way. The issues and the lives of others had become irrelevant. All they wanted was for me to agree that they had been unjustly cheated, and that “Killary” and the DNC had rigged everything against them. I could not agree, so I had to walk away.