A lot of people are linking to this Taylor Marsh freak out over the RBC results for Michigan yesterday, where Taylor unloads with some frosty rhetoric:
Could you be more out of touch? Seriously. Have you not talked to any Hillary Clinton supporters, read their emails in your inbox?
For 4 lousy delegates? How small are you people? Could you not understand what was swirling enough to allow Clinton her due in Michigan? Four lousy delegates?
You have no idea what you’ve done. The fury you have unleashed. Your arrogance is topped only by your ignorance and the sheer stupidity of this “compromise,” which sends a message that you just don’t get it. Oh, and by the way, you’ve also likely just thrown the 2008 election.
Look, it is not my job to walk Taylor Marsh and the rest of the Hillary supporters back from the brink, and I am glad, because it wasn’t me whipping them into a froth for the last few months when it was clear to anyone with more than a 6th grade education that the math simply was not there for Clinton. I can, however, take a moment to ask Taylor and others why they think things played out the way they did:
Was it because the RBC was stacked with Clinton haters?
No, in fact Clinton loyalists outnumbered Obama supporters on the committee.
Was it because the RBC wanted to sabotage the Democratic chances in November?
No, I find that highly implausible.
Was it because they are all insane?
After watching the way Democrats run elections, I am open to discussion on this count.
Regardless, the reason the Michigan compromise was agreed to by 19 of RBC was because of how god damned outrageous the original Clinton proposal was. Taylor and others think that four delegates were “stolen” or that they were “hijacked” because they are operating from the completely flawed premise that the election counted. It didn’t. In fact, Sen. Levin had to point that out to Ickes partially through the hearings (“You are calling for full recognition of a flawed primary,” etc.).
The election did not count. There were no legitimate delegates to “steal.” And I am not just trying to throw Hillary’s words back in her face when she herself said it would not count, that was the consensus opinion of the DNC (who agreed to hear to the dispute yesterday- had they felt it did count they would have seated the delegates as is), the Michigan Democratic party, which worked for months to arrange a “real” election or caucus, and all the candidates, who took their names off the ballot. There was, according to all parties except for the Clinton campaign, no election (and even then, the Clinton position “evolved.” It was only after they needed the delegates from Michigan did they decide the contest was somehow legit and “counted.”).
Once you realize the consensus view on the Michigan beauty contest, that it was not a legitimate election and did not provide a fair reflection of voters intent, you realize how truly brazen the Clinton proposal was- they went in demanding that they receive every delegate that Hillary “received” in the beauty contest, and that none should go to Obama:
Clinton’s camp insisted Obama shouldn’t get any pledged delegates in Michigan since he chose not to put his name on the ballot, and she should get 73 pledged delegates with 55 uncommitted. Obama’s team insisted the only fair solution was to split the pledged delegates in half between the two campaigns, with 64 each.
Seriously. That was their position.
They were asserting that not one person in the great state of Michigan would vote for Obama, and all the delegates were for Hillary. Despite all the talk about heavy African-American turnout for Obama in this election, the Clinton position before the RBC was that not one single precinct in Detroit would have gone for Sen. Obama. Not one vote in all the big Michigan university towns.
That was honestly their position.
It was absurd, it was outrageous, and to try to pretend that “fair reflection” somehow required that this was truly the intent of the Michigan electorate is the height of Clintonian bullshit. Of all the things they have asserted this campaign, this was the tops. This was, by a wide margin, the most absurd thing they have claimed.
What the Clinton campaign wanted was more net delegates than they would have had from 3-4 Pennsylvania and Ohio’s combined. That is why the committee had enough votes to seat it 50-50. That is why they instead they voted to seat the delegates they way they did- to reflect what they felt was a fair assessment, and they felt it was a compromise with the Clinton campaign. That is why the Michigan Democratic party was the one who offered the compromise- they knew the Clinton offer was bullshit, and the Michigan Democratic party would be held accountable to their voters if they let the Clinton “plan” pass.
And in return, they were accused of “vote-stealing,” and “hijacking” votes by the Clinton surrogates. What happened yesterday was not that the Clinton campaign was robbed of 4 delegates by the DNC, but what happened was an attempt to steal dozens of delegates by the Clinton campaign was stopped.
So please cut the crap. Clinton didn’t get screwed- what happened is that the RBC and the Michigan Democratic Party stopped the Clinton campaign from screwing Michigan voters by stealing every delegate and pretending it was a “fair reflection” of the voters. The Obama campaign won’t mention this because they are trying to be magnanimous and trying to win the support of irate Clinton voters. I have no such obligation.
rob!
i love this:
…the sense of bloated self-importance, the sense its all about me, me, ME. x500 and you have all the people who showed up at the RBC meeting with “Denver!” placards.
i’ll be visiting Taylor Marsh’s site the day Obama is sworn in, to see if she has any inkling how insignificant she is to this process. to see if it has sunk in AT ALL.
i won’t hold my breath, tho.
El Cid
I think it was Donna Brazile (RBC committee member, right) who said today on the talky-talk show that the reason the Obama team did not support granting the HRC campaign the delegates exactly as they wanted were (a) it would not be fair to the Michigan voters who wanted to support Obama or who stayed home after they were told it would not count, and (b) doing so would serve to publicly ‘legitimize’ the procedure that did occur, which even the RBC had gotten all parties to agree was not an actual primary.
JasonF
It’s actually worse than you lay out in the post. At one point last week, Ickes was floating the following proposal:
Senator Clinton gets the 73 delegates that correspond to her share of the Michigan vote. The remaining 55 delegates then get split between Senator Obama and Senator Clinton.
In what may be the only sign that the Clinton campaign hasn’t gone completely and utterly insane, they quickly backed away from this proposal.
johninpt
John, you’ve got to stop looking for logic from these nutjobs. You’re never going to find it.
El Cid
Let’s not forget though — caucuses don’t count anymore since they are peculiarly structured so as not to favor the HRC campaign, but taking this view somehow is not disrespecting the franchisement of caucus-state citizens, even though citizens who live in states which uses caucuses didn’t choose that themselves.
In addition since apparently now the popular vote count is to be used as a metric to sway the opinions of the ‘super’ delegates, also, f*** you everyone who lives in a caucus state, because now it’s your fault that your state party or government chose a caucus procedure which doesn’t register a popular vote count.
Ted
This post will get GOS-crashed.
JubJub
completely true–clinton supporters were going to be 100% enraged at anything less that 100% of the delegates, so it was lose-lose for Obama in terms of a civil compromise going in. thing is, obama’s campaign has been pussy-footing around the misleading “popular vote” argument clinton’s team has been pushing 24/7 for weeks, and it’s only made it harder to bring this back around.
some people think clinton needs to campaign double-time to help obama in the general–i’m starting to think that the less her name and voice is in the news after the convention, the better.
KC
Great points, John, but I think Dems coming close to losing the election already. There are way too many supporters on both sides who are so entangled in this thing that nearly any words from either side are seen as slights. I’ve been reading a lot of comments on blogs today, and it just seems lots of people are angry about lots of things. Some arguments have merit, some don’t, but everyone is pissed. It’s enough to make one give up, and a lot of Dems might.
Thomas Smith
“Folks, do not give up.
“Later today, in Puerto Rico, there will be a record turnout of well over 1 million voters and Hillary Clinton will win Puerto Rico by a large margin”
“We are in the majority and we are pissed!!
BOOYAH!!”
-Taylor Marsh commentor
“In the Puerto Rico primary, Clinton swept Obama in every major demographic group, including groups Obama generally wins, such as younger voters and higher-income voters, according to CNN’s exit polls.
“CNN estimated turnout to be between 325,000 and 425,000.”
-cnn
http://edition.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/06/01/puerto.rico/index.html
El Cid
Despite me being angry at the recent bullcrap, I actually don’t think it will be that hard to bring Democrats back together behind Obama.
Will there be some hard-core candidate backers who due to their close personal involvement simply cannot bring themselves to vote for the one they’ve fought so hard against?
Yes.
And will there be a few assorted nutjobs keeping up their bullsh*t about how Obama just isn’t qualified and is an “inadequate black male” or they think maybe he’s a Mooozlim or they don’t quite like his church?
Yes.
But things will chill, this is that moment when all the battles raging for months are coming together, and it’s all or nothing time now, and that’s just how it is, and most people who aren’t closely and directly and personally involved will mostly forget this sort of fervor and will go back to thinking about who they want in November, a Democrat or a Republican in office.
dreggas
there are a lot more people who don’t read blogs or comment on them than there are people who read and comment on them. We’re a small subset of the larger population…elite if you will.
rishathra
My daddy done told me a good deal is one where everyone is happy and gets what they want, or nobody does.
Clinton’s not happy about Michgan. Obama’s not happy about Michigan.
Sounds like a good deal to me.
Splitting Image
“I think it was Donna Brazile (RBC committee member, right) who said today on the talky-talk show that the reason the Obama team did not support granting the HRC campaign the delegates exactly as they wanted were (a) it would not be fair to the Michigan voters who wanted to support Obama or who stayed home after they were told it would not count, and (b) doing so would serve to publicly ‘legitimize’ the procedure that did occur, which even the RBC had gotten all parties to agree was not an actual primary.”
Exactly. The numbers (69-59) don’t appear to have been actually pulled out of a hat, but making it look as though they were has underscored the point about how badly the primary was run. If they used the original numbers, even giving Obama the uncommitted vote and calling it done, they would have made it look on paper as though the primary was on the up and up.
This way carries some political risks, but at least there is some recognition of the fact that Michigan was mishandled and needs to be done better next time.
The whole process needs to be done better next time.
horatius
Well. To hell with Clinton supporters who don’t care if they perpetuate Repuglican misrule. The ones who truly care about this country will vote for the democrats. There’s no point in even engaging them. The ones who come to terms with it will. The others won’t Anything we do will only worsen the outcome. I believe a period of blog-silence is what we need.
KC
Despite my worries, you make a good point here. Just a few months ago, my Republican father-in-law was frothing at the mouth over McCain. To listen to him, you would have thought the Republican party was done for, over, with McCain as the nominee. However, McCain went on to sooth some wounds, make some nice gestures, and now my father-in-law is alright with him. So, hopefully the raw feelings all around abate, and Democrats can move forward.
theturtlemoves
I honestly can’t understand how people can believe the crap coming out of the Clinton campaign. This popular vote thing just shouldn’t pass the smell test for any rational human being, yet they quote it as gospel and are willing to fight to the death to defend it. Maybe it is because I was raised by religious parents who nevertheless taught me to question things. These people don’t question. They don’t think. They are exactly like the visitors to the Creation Museum that they likely make fun of with absolutely no sense of irony. The stupid, it doesn’t just burn; it sears the flesh from bone and leaves a smoking pile of ash.
sam
I think it is great the Obama supporters didn’t show up on one hand, but it would have been really funny to see how trully small this insane group is relative to the army that would have shown up
nightjar
You’re catching on to the sausage making politpalooza of Democratic politics, John.
“Fair reflection” to the Clintonites sounds like it may have come from the old Duma elections of the Soviet Union, where they were asked to raise their hands for dah to the only candidate for Premier. Anybody not raising their hand was drug outside and shot and the vote became unanimous.
speculative historical reference.
Just Some Fuckhead
I had the same thought.
Bob In Pacifica
Who invented Taylor Marsh? Seriously. Who invented Taylor Marsh? Who paid for her self-published book? Who paid for ad “sex advice column” in the L.A. Weekly? Who paid for her radio show?
The woman is a creation of someone. I’ve seen this movie before, but it was a lot more enjoyable.
jake
I love how Mademoiselle Swampthing assumes that only HRC devotees sent e-mails.
Seriously, fuck these people. We’re closing in on eight years of leaders who re-work or ignore the rules and then snicker about it, howl like a gibbon when they don’t get their way and, my least favorite, scream “DO WHAT WE TELL YOU OR YOU’LL BE SORRY!” and all the while they’ve been supported by an endless succession of progressively vapid, spiteful and unbalanced wankstains who somehow think their dear leader gives a flaming half fuck about them. I can’t decide which meltdown I’ll enjoy more. The Bushakke crowd or the Hillsterics.
Sure, Hillary is no Bush when it comes to policy but I look at her behavior and think I do NOT want to go there. This woman now has a huge neon What If hanging over her head. What If she decides putting conservative judges on the SC or bowing down to our corporate overlords or keeping the soldiers in Iraq for another four years will help get her Term 2? I don’t know. I thought I knew, now I don’t know and I don’t want to find out.
Warren Terra
There are a number of reasons to doubt the 73 Clinton – 55 Uncommitted split that the Hillosphere believes is so inviolate.
In addition to some of those that were mentioned above, one that gets overlooked in these later days of heightened divisions and ill-feeling between Clinton and Obama supporters is that in January a lot of Democrats liked both candidates. Indeed, my understanding is that the polls still show a lot of Democrats liking both candidates.
So when these people walked into the polling booth liking both Obama and Clinton, some of them in that order of preference, they saw their choices, and then voted for the person they liked who was available to them: Clinton. Had Obama been on the ballot, some difficult-to-determine portion of the people who voted Clinton would have instead have voted Obama. It is quite possible that this number is larger than the number of “uncommitted” voters who, given a choice restricted to Clinton and Obama, would have voted for Clinton.
But, of course, we all know this outrage exists not because of its purported reasons but because the outrage justifies itself. If Clinton doesn’t reign in her more extreme supporters soon the Clinton name will be mud for a long time to come.
sunny
It’s called “catapulting the propaganda”. If it’s repeated enough and no one will, or be allowed to, refute it the meme catchtes on and Obama can be smeared with “he stole the Dem primary” going into the general.
Mylegacy
I read the Taylor Marsh blog earlier and my head almost started going around in circles! I was spitting mad, and I was a Hillary supporter!
If Obama, or Edwards, or whomever, had run their campaign such that at the end their supporters thought that their candidate was more important than the party – more important than stopping the “right” from destroying the Supreme Court for the next generation or two – more important than ending endless war and endless lies and endless corruption… then I would have had them drawn and quartered.
Neither Mrs Clinton nor Mr. Obama are anywhere as near important as individuals as is the party winning this election this fall. For Hillary to have – her fault or not – her supporters put out such hate, and vile spewings, shows how far off course her campaign has gone. Hillary be gone.
El Cid
Just in case anyone’s thinking differently, it’s probably a good thing for most of our sanity that each and every primary and caucus aren’t scrutinized in this level of detail, because I’m pretty sure that your average election is pretty poorly designed and run.
As the party and proto-Cabinet supporters begin to be regularly seen publicly with Barack Obama and openly able to back him as the nominee, a huge perceptual shift will likely occur in which he goes from being “Barack Obama, individual competing for the nomination” to being literally seen and repeatedly heard as the Democratic candidate.
Now, things might have been different had the close runner up been some truly liberal, seriously transformative candidate, in which case the entire establishment would likely be united to say YOO LOSS GO HOM.
But since these are both mainstream liberal to centrist candidates (and I don’t think anyone outside the DLC sees it as the only avenue of mainstream liberal / centrist politics, that’s their particular lunacy), the ability to reach out and bring previous supporters of other candidates back in doesn’t seem too hard.
(Can you imagine had it been HRC in front and, say, Dennis Kucinich close behind? The rancor and calls to get out supposedly falling on Clinton these past few months would be nothing, a pleasant spring breeze, compared to the united arrogant establishment Category 5 hurricane screaming at Kucinich to ‘STOP TARE AMERKA ‘PART WIF U ULTRA XTREMIZM’.)
TheFountainHead
Here’s my biggest worry at the moment, and that is that at this point the hardcore Hillary Clinton supporters have been whipped into such a frenzy of anti-Obama sentiment (as opposed to pro-Hillary sentiment) that even SHE can not get them back in “party-line” at this point. I’m willing to accept the theory that this will not go to Denver and that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid DO have the power to tell Hillary it’s over and to even ensure that she campaigns like MAD for Obama (to not do so would be political suicide for Hillary, I think). What I am not so confident of is Hillary and Bill’s ability to get her supporters behind Obama, or at the very least, get them to fume in silence. I mean, can she get Lanny Davis to support Obama? Can she get the Taylor Marshes and what’s left of her core fund-raisers to support them, or are they likely to turn on her at the very suggestion of it? Are we going to be subjected to six months of former Hillary enthusiasts getting in front of cameras and microphones and declaring Obama “illegitimate” and proclaiming “doom for Democrats” because they didn’t nominate her? That would be a serious problem for us, period. I realize this is coming off as a concern troll-ish post, I didn’t mean it to be, but I just see so much venom directed at Obama from Hillary’s supporters that I simply have a hard time seeing them shutting up, even at Hillary’s directive. It’s going to come down to how much influence Hillary herself still has, and how much these people are willing to put their feelings before their issues.
theturtlemoves
sunny, after I wrote that I came to a similar conclusion. Hillary gets on national news and says she’s won the popular vote, without even mentioning all the electoral gymnastics required to make that statement even vaguely true. People who get their news entirely from TV or newspapers only hear Hillary saying that she’s winning the popular vote and unless some talking head then points out how this is utter bullshit, they can merrily believe she’s telling the truth. And thus, Iraq really had WMDs and Yes, Virginia, there really is a Santa Claus.
jake
Swampthing has a life?
AlphaFactor
I think you summed it up pretty good. We are so screwed.
slippytoad
By the way, someone tell Taylor Marsh that Ronald McDonald called and wants his hairdo back.
Jeff
Why doesn’t Taylor Marsh take a look at it from the opposite view… She says it’s “4 lousy delegates.” Well, I say… exactly. WTF would 4 lousy delegates do for Clinton? Absolutely nothing.
The only thing it would do is in her mind, and perhaps the minds of Taylor Marsh and other supporters, is secure the idea that it was a “legitimate” election with a “legitimate” result, and that therefore, the popular vote count should be included (without any votes for Obama, of course).
She should take her own damn advice.. It’s, in her own words, “4 lousy delegates”. They would change absolutely nothing.
Elvis Elvisberg
Thanks for taking the time to do this. It’s worth rebutting the craziest charges flying around.
And VDS, fuck off. Sexism is always bad, but when it’s not even funny, it’s unconscionable.
Laertes
The best part is those videos that Marsh links, as if they bolster her case. Where does she get the idea that video of Clinton supporters acting like jackasses makes her side look good?
nightjar
jake Says:
Swampthing has a life?
Warren Terra
Slippytoad, you suffer from a serious lack of ambition. This is a woman with some of the most absurd and risible opinions on the Internet, a forum that doesn’t exactly lack for mockable writings, and you resort to a gradeschool insult about her personal appearance?
Brachiator
Clinton would never have been able to pull the crap that she did had the pledge that she and the other candidates signed not to compete or participate in illegitimate primaries included a hefty fine or penalty, such as the forfeit of delegates in addition to the one half reduction already provided for.
the poor man's gary larson
What you say:
What they hear:
It’d be funnier if your average anti-Hillary thread could get to 20 comments without someone actually using one of those terms, but hey.
DougJ
Have you guys seen the “Young Hillary Clinton” video?
Just Some Fuckhead
Hehe. Wasn’t that cool?
nightjar
Damn, we’ve lost a clear ant-Iraq war voice. General Bill Odom has passed away. R.I.P General.
evie
If these four delegates didn’t “unleash the fury,” it would have been some other abomination. The reality is that their esteemed leader has told them to feel outraged, so they feel outraged. Anger is the only emotion Clinton is able to inspire in others, and so it’s the only one she attempts.
Well, Mission Accomplished.
It’ll be interesting to see what Clinton decides to do. My guess is she’ll keep a dog whistle in place that tells her supporters not to board the Democratic train to November, but to keep up the hope for Clinton to come back in 2012. However, I don’t want to underestimate the political skills of Obama either. Perhaps he’ll be able to come up with something she really wants to give her a reason to help.
Either way, while I’m sure there are a lot of Taylor Marshes in the world, there are not a lot compared to the number of reasonable people who want to see a Democrat in office next year. Their bluster surely brings Clinton a measure of comfort during what must be a painful time, but it’s not going to turn the general election.
El Cid
DougJ: My favorite part is when she mentions “my husband” and the teacher replies “you don’t have a husband, you’re only 10”, and she responds, “I’m sorry, I’m exhausted from this race.”
Peter Johnson
I’m an Obama supporter, but I’m concerned about what this is doing to the party. If the people of Michigan and Floria are angry about being disenfranchised, rightly or wrongly, then we lose those states. And with that new video of Michelle Obama saying “get whitey”, the election becomes all but unwinnable. That’s what I’m worried about.
Let’s keep our eye on the big picture. And that’s beating McCain. If even an Obama supporter like me can see the wisdom in possibly awarding the nomination to Hillary, if that’s what it takes, then so should all of you.
DougJ
El Cid: I liked the Connect 4 part the best.
PeakVT
Fixed.
Let’s remember this huge mess isn’t an actual election for public office; it is (or should be) an internal party process for determining the party’s nominee. (And this mess will continue as long as the USA has a federal system and the state parties are mostly independent of the national one and candidates have their own sources of funding.)
limbaugh's pilonidal cyst
I voted “uncommitted” in the Michigan primary because the candidate I would have voted for, Barack H. Obama, decided to follow the rules and chose not to place his name on the ballot in an unsanctioned primary. I voted as I did because that was the only way I could show that I was voting for “someone” other than HRC, although I couldn’t indicate who that was because his name wasn’t on the ballot.
As for the Hillary’s “disenfranchised” voters, Josh Marshall raises a good point, that because it was known to the Democratic voters in Michigan that this primary wasn’t supposed to count it’s possible that a lot of people who might have voted for a candidate other than Clinton simply stayed home rather than show up and vote “uncommitted”. Aren’t these voters the most “disenfranchised” voters of all?
I sure as hell don’t hear Taylor Marsh and her ilk hyperventilating on their behalf.
Delia
I’ve been amazed at this 4 lousy delegates meme. Big Tent Democrat was ranting on about it yesterday. Exactly the same as Taylor. “We would all have been able to come together and unite behind Obama if only he’d given up those four lousy delegates.”
Which is, of course, the biggest load of bull excrement to come out of the Clinton campaign in at least a week. Does anyone in their right mind really believe that if Obama’s camp had given her four more Michigan delegates (and kept the other fifty-five, of course) that they wouldn’t be screaming bloody murder about the injustice of it all?
There’s no winning an argument with a sociopath. You just have manage the tantrums.
El Cid
Peter Johnson: I had been skeptical, but now I am convinced of the threat the video poses for the entire Democratic slate.
nightjar
Funny AND
GREAT NEWS FOR HILLARY!!!!
dreggas
Kinda like the scene in life of Brian where he tells them to fuck off and they all look up and the one guy says “How shall we fuck off oh lord?”
Krista
That’s one thing that absolutely blows my mind. Her campaign, and many of her supporters, were claiming that Clinton should have been granted at least half of the “uncommitted” delegates.
Um, Clinton’s name WAS on the ballot. So, if the people who selected “Uncommitted” had wanted to vote for Clinton, wouldn’t they have selected “Clinton”, and not “Uncommitted”?
In what universe does “Uncommmitted” somehow translate into “I really wanted to vote for Clinton, and her name was on the ballot, but that just seemed too obvious.”?
johninpt
Gee, for a self-proclaimed “Obama supporter” you sure have Hillary’s bogus talking points down pat. Just sayin’.
Laertes
Yes, the four delegates “unleashed the fury” alright. I’m sure that had the RBC ruled precisely as they did, but with a four delegate adjustment, the Clinton camp would have walked away entirely satisfied and all their supporters would have felt they’d been dealt fairly. All the venom would end, they’d accept the result gracefully, and we’d all be one big happy family again.
A shame, really. With that small adjustment, all this drama could have been over. A big missed opportunity, that.
TC
Ah, all you people are just jealous of Hillary.
Peter Johnson
Gee, for a self-proclaimed “Obama supporter” you sure have Hillary’s bogus talking points down pat. Just sayin’.
I’m a maxed out Obama donor, I have an Obama sign in my yard, my car is plastered with Obama stickers, and I’ve been phone banking for him for weeks. But it’s not about what I want, it’s about who got the majority of the popular vote and who can beat John McCain. Why do you insist on making yourself bigger than the electoral process? Can’t you see that you’re tearing the party apart.
dreggas
Oh give me an f’ing break. That is horse shit. There’s no wisdom in awarding Clinton anything more than stable cleaner and this concern trolling about a video rumored to exist that has yet to surface when it would have been even remotely useful for HRC is horse shit too.
Delia
This is, indeed, concerning. But I thought that at concern troll school they taught you not to actually use the word, “concern” in your posts.
Funny video, though. Good touch there.
TheFountainHead
Mesthinks Peter Johnson is spoofing us. En guarde!
dmsilev
“The fury you have unleashed”, huh? Why do I suddenly have flashbacks to a whole slew of James Bond movies, with the gloating villain describing his Nefarious Plot just one reel before Bond brings the whole thing crashing down?
Somebody should tell Ms. Marsh that (a) the Bond villain schemes always fail and (b) the henchmen (ie her) have a very low survival rate.
-dms
Warren Terra
Krista, the actual argument is actually fairly reasonable, as far as it goes. The argument is that we can surmise that some of the “uncommitted” voters may have preferred Edwards, or Richardson, or someone else not on the ballot, but still preferred Clinton to Obama. There is no doubt that some of these people existed and voted for “uncommitted”.
Note, however, the “as far as it goes” – because this argument, while within its constraints unexceptionable, ignores those voters who picked Clinton because she was on the ballot and was acceptable to them even though given the choice they’d have preferred Obama; 30,000 voters who wrote in a candidate and whose ballots have never been examined; a large (possibly huge) number of people who didn’t show up to the polls, because they’d been told the race didn’t count or because their candidate was not on the ballot; and independent voters and discontent Republicans (and some few Kossack Democrats messing with the Republicans by voting Romney) who opted to cast Republican ballots that would go towards choosing actual delegates.
Sleeper
Fixed.
Doonhamer
Praiseworthy spoofing of a concern troll, Peter. Well done. And funny video too.
dreggas
Gotta be snark. since the popular vote meme is and has been proven to be horse shit too.
Peter Johnson
How is seating only half the delegates from Florida and Michigan different from counting each slave as 3/5 in the electoral process in pre-Civil War in America? It’s worse, in fact since one half is less than three fifths.
So that’s what it comes down to under Obama’s arithmetic: the people of Florida and Michigan count less than slaves did. You’d think an African-American would have more sensitivity to this.
nightjar
peterj spoofalicious!
Warren Terra
Johninpt, dreggas, if you click the link you’ll see that Peter Johnson is pulling a fast one. He is spoofing a concern troll so accurately that if you don’t click the link you can easily believe that he actually is one. And regrettably he chose to extend the performance in his response to Johninpt.
Given his username, I think he may forgive me if I say that in doing so, while the link was funny, he was being a bit of a prick.
KC
Question I have is what would be the result if the majority of super delegates went to Clinton rather than Obama and she won? Would everyone support that decision? I’m getting so tired of the primary, that I would probably go along with it. Yeah, it would mean a major shift in, well, everything, but I think at the end of the day the I’d go along with it. I really just want to see the Republicans out of the WH.
Peter Johnson
What KC said.
theturtlemoves
Might want to watch the linked video. The post is spoof-tastic.
JGabriel
Y’all need to go and read Digby’s ‘Photo Finish’ post. Clinton’s die-hard supporters will be lashing out in anger and disappointment for the next few days/weeks.
Much as I disagree with their point of view, we’re going to want their votes in the fall. Pouring salt in the wounds doesn’t help us get to that goal.
Or, as Digby says:
.
dr. bloor
Peter, if you’re going to be spoofing Clinton concern trolls, you can’t demonstrate any accurate grasp of math in your posts.
Jake
Let’s all remember that at one point, Team Clinton argued that the MI primary was legitimate because the Obama campaign encouraged its supporters to vote uncommitted. It was just like his name was on the ballot. This contradicts their position this weekend you say? Well, the Clintons have always had an interesting relationship with the truth.
Concerning Taylor Marsh’s latest diatribe, let me go out on a limb here and suggest that the same fury would have been unleashed regardless of the votes at the meeting. Had they gotten everything they wanted, but with 1/2 votes, they would have found some comment by Obama to blow up over. These folks are just looking for something, anything, to go nonlinear over because they know they’ve lost.
And I second the idea that we’re talking about a very small portion of the electorate who will carry such sentiments to November.
Krista
Ugh. In retrospect, after all of this, wouldn’t it have been easier to give Michigan a re-vote, with all of the applicable names on the ballot?
Laertes
“Question I have is what would be the result if the majority of super delegates went to Clinton rather than Obama and she won? Would everyone support that decision?”
Yes.
This has been SA2SQ.
Biggie
What can’t people like Taylor Marsh get it through their heads that some people in Michigan didn’t vote because WE WERE TOLD OUR VOTES WOULDN’T REALLY COUNT. I wanted to vote for John Edwards, but Marsh really seems to think I should have (and would have) gone to cast a worthless vote for “uncommitted”. I don’t have the time for that shit. These people need to get serious. It’s embarrassing to see adults act with such willful ignorance.
dreggas
KC Says:
Question I have is what would be the result if the majority of super delegates went to Clinton rather than Obama and she won? Would everyone support that decision? I’m getting so tired of the primary, that I would probably go along with it. Yeah, it would mean a major shift in, well, everything, but I think at the end of the day the I’d go along with it. I really just want to see the Republicans out of the WH.
After everything that has gone on fuhget about it. If the supers were that stupid I would probably have to go back to being unaffiliated.
KC
Peter Johnson,
That in no way means I think Obama should give up or agree with the popular vote argument of the Clinton campaign. I just think if the super delegates make a decision in favor of Clinton, I’m going to ride it out.
Warren Terra
Oh, and every time this 3/5 of a person meme is invoked a puppy dies.
African-Americans in the Slave states weren’t counted as 3/5 of a person; they were counted as negative 3/5 of a person. Counting the African-Americans in the Slave states as full people for the purpose of apportioning representatives would only have increased the ability of the slaveowners to accumulate political power and use it to oppress them. After all, the African-Americans were not allowed to vote.
Laertes
They really DO believe the shit they’re spewing.
They live in an echo chamber. You can believe absolutely anything if everyone you talk to believes it.
Anything.
On a scale of 1 to the nuttiest thing anyone’s ever believed just because everyone they listen to claims to believe it, “Hillary Clinton should get every single Michigan delegate” rates one and a half.
Sleeper
I think that at this point, it would be far more difficult for a Clinton nomination to be seen as legitimate, than an Obama nomination, simply because the meme has taken hold that he’s the nominee. Assuming some insanely improbably pitch for the angels takes place and Clinton manages to convince 90% of the supers to vote for her, and she wins the nomination within the rules, it would still be seen as poisoned fruit. Not to mention the fact that she starts off a GE campaign 20 million in the hole, plus or minus. As happens every year, the party has decided (if only just barely) on a candidate, and it’s Barack Obama.
Of course the whitey video tomorrow morning will probably change all that. Or something.
dreggas
I can respect the constituency, I just can’t respect many of its members who have behaved as bad or even worse than the mouth breathing republican jackasses we’re supposed to be fighting against.
El Cid
Growing up, I listened to the tales my parents told me of the Michigan and Florida Democratic Primary Voters having to work in the fields, picking cotton and tobacco and saving what little money they could to send their children to school.
Yet they persevered, and endured the lash and the lack of civil rights because they knew, they just knew that deep in their hearts they’d have the chance for their state to move the date of the primary around in violation of the party rules and one campaign would then make a pseudo-civil rights struggle argument out of their journey.
theturtlemoves
I believe that’s what Andy Kaufman would have called commitment to the bit. Like actually reading the entirety of The Great Gatsby to people who paid for a comedy show. Pretty annoying at the time, but kind of impressive in retrospect.
Sleeper
As happens every four years, is of course what I meant type. But I’m an idiot, so. These things happen.
nightjar
The Michigan legislature wouldn’t authorize it due to cost( and the fact it’s controlled by the wingnuts) and CLinton wouldn’t agree to a caucus run by the DNC. So no revote.
Peter Johnson
African-Americans in the Slave states weren’t counted as 3/5 of a person; they were counted as negative 3/5 of a person.
So you’re suggesting that we should count the delegates from Michigan and Florida as negative delegates? What would that even mean?
Peter Johnson
Of course the whitey video tomorrow morning will probably change all that. Or something.
Just to be clear, I don’t have a problem with black people talking about “getting whitey”. That’s not the point. The point is a lot of voters do have a problem with that.
theturtlemoves
I’m all for counting Florida and Michigan delegates as negative three fifths. Since Hillary got more of them, that means she gets more votes subtracted, the total number needed for the nomination goes down and Obama was the official nominee two weeks ago. Or something. Brilliant!
Warren Terra
I’m not an expert, but from memory this turns out to be a very complicated question:
1) People in Michigan were allowed to vote in either party’s Primary, but not in both. In a re-vote, state law said that those who’d voted in the Republican primary could not vote in a later Democratic primary – although some considerable number would have voted in a meaningful, contested Democratic primary in preference to voting in the Republican primary.
2) Several options were presented for how to re-vote: full primary, mail-in primary, drop-box “firehouse caucus” (basically a primary with fewer polling stations), full caucus. Under a combination of state law and DNC rules, some of these weren’t actually legal or permissible. Funding sources were unclear. Both sides wanted to get the type of revote that favored their candidate, and both had reasons to block a revote (no revote could be as good for Clinton as their maximal interpretation of the existing result, and the Clinton camp found the continuing and unresolved alleged injustice to Michigan to be a useful talking point; for Obama’s campaign, any revote might be a legitimate, if smaller, Obama loss). The debates on all of these issues were not really capable of resolution on any meaningful timeframe, especially given the problems indicated in my first point.
Peter Johnson
By the way, someone tell Taylor Marsh that Ronald McDonald called and wants his hairdo back.
Yeah, right. Tell me you wouldn’t hit that.
TheFountainHead
Peter Johnson is giving us a profile in spoofing, folks, I hope we’re all taking notes!
evie
Krista – yes, so much better to spend $20M on a re-vote than to have to fight over four delegates. The state was just cheap.
Jake
It might have been easier, but it would have been way more painful for certain. Can you imagine having a MI re-do primary a month (or two?) from now? Can you imagine several weeks of non-stop nonsense, dedicated to one state, with actually nothing significant riding on it, but everyone pretending otherwise?
I can, because this is what happened in PA. No thanks. Been there, done that. We need an end to the stupid.
Just Some Fuckhead
It’s really not worth the read but it does accidentally provide insight into HRC supporters (like Digby) who can’t acknowledge their own culpability in the hostile environment in which we now find ourselves. And Digby only helps inflame tensions by insisting poor widdle Hillary was picked on by folks insisting she quit the race when it was mathematically impossible for her to win.
Just for the record, Digby is right that Jesse Jackson didn’t drop out before the ’88 convention, but Jesse Jackson also didn’t continually attempt to change the nominating rules in the middle of the game and strongarm superdelegates with bullshit metrics and otherwise threaten a floor fight.
Nope, unlike HRC Jesse Jackson showed a lot of class in his losing effort. That’s the takeaway here.
The Other Steve
But if Hillary Clinton wanted things to be fair, she wouldn’t win!
Don’t you understand!? Because the RBC didn’t allow Clinton to cheat, they robbed her! She was robbed of the nomination she so richly deserves!
TheFountainHead
I would tell you how, even, but I don’t want to abuse you of the notion that I’m a wicked sexist pig.
Warren Terra
Of course, while you were writing that comment Peter switched concern troll characters and seeded the thread with a misogynist comment that can be hung around all of our necks.
evie
PJ — some of your comments I get, and some are too close to what people are actually saying. Like 9:27. It’s freaky.
Davebo
I wouldn’t hit that. But at least you know she isn’t two faced.
if she was, she wouldn’t wear that one
Is that sexist?
KC
JGabriel pointed to this Digby post and I think there’s a lot of truth in it. As I pointed out above, my father-in-law loathed McCain when he became the Republican nominee, but is now going along for the ride, though not happily. Passions can fade once the anger dies down and at this point, the election is in the hands of the super delegates. If they choose Clinton, I know I’ll be perturbed, but in the end I’ll get over it. Both campaigns have done and said stupid things, supporters of each candidate have done and said stupid things, Obama is not the end-all be-all of poltics, and Clinton and some of her staff clearly have entitlement issues. But whatever the super delegates decide, I think we have to go with it. I won’t support a backdoor campaign to undermine the candidacy of either candidate. If a campaign, Clinton’s or Obama’s, tries to go to the convention after a decision has been made, I think Dems need to shut them down.
Peter Johnson
Of course, while you were writing that comment Peter switched concern troll characters and seeded the thread with a misogynist comment that can be hung around all of our necks.
How was what I said misogynist? Crude, maybe, but not misogynist.
tom.a
Someone should point out to Clinton that the MI decision WAS NOT ABOUT HER, it was about MI and MI got what they wanted.
TheFountainHead
Where I come from that’s called a back-handed compliment.
nightjar
He left a tell with the video. If you didn’t run it you were toasted spoof bread.
TheFountainHead
I know, which is why it was pitch-perfect spoofing!
theturtlemoves
This is one of the other things I’ve hated about this campaign, the complete degradation of the English language. What he said was childish, obnoxious, and even pretty sexist, but it wasn’t misogynist. If we don’t hold back some words for the the real nasty shit, we no longer have a means to express genuine outrage over horrible statements or acts. The continuum shifts and the words that should be reserved for truly evil acts get thrown out there when someone says something merely stupid and pretty soon we don’t have any words left for the evil stuff. If “I’d hit that” is misogynist, what the fuck is honor killing? Really, really misogynist?
Warren Terra
OK, sexist, not misogynist. I concede the point.
I guess I’m just trigger-happy because I still feel guilty for not objecting when a recent Balloon-Juice thread was a lengthy exchange of comments about black bars. If you read the thread, you’ll likely recall.
Peter Johnson
What’s truly misogynist is the way that Obama supporters are talking about Hillary. I’ve heard everything from “nag” to “had” to “bitch”. There’s supposed to be an Michelle Obama video about that too, according to some of the commenters on Ben Smith’s blog.
Ninerdave
theturtlemoves
No, I remember the black bar thread well. The original comment that started that off was, again, sexist, crude, and not terribly creative, but it wasn’t misogynist. I think it is dangerous to concede that word to the Taylor Marshes of the world, the same fuckheads who liken a debate to a “verbal gang-rape”. All it does is make real misogyny look like less of a problem because so many people have cried wolf with it so much for so long.
Sorry, my background is at least partially in linguistics, so I get a little worked up over precise use of language…
Krista
No need to be snotty. I was just throwing the question out there, as I’m not particularly familiar with your country’s rather complicated processes for selecting delegates. It just seemed like all of this drama over the Michigan delegates has been going on for a very long time, and has done a lot of damage to the Democratic party. So I was wondering if, in retrospect, it might not have been better for there to have been a re-vote, to put the question to bed.
tomjones
Just for the record, according to exit polls, if Edwards and Obama had both been on the MI ballot, then Clinton would have won with a 46% plurality of the vote, while Obama would’ve snagged 35%.
Put that in your popular vote pipe and smoke it.
theturtlemoves
And while I’m typing our evening spoof posts and proves my point. Calling Hillary a bitch for acting like, you know, kind of a bitch, probably isn’t the most productive use of language, but it just isn’t the same thing as the real misogyny suffered by women in the Arab world or girls getting circumcised in Africa. Having some loud-mouthed jackass on a blog call you a bitch is a hell of a lot less traumatic than being killed for talking to the Jewish kid from the neighboring village. It’s the lack of perspective in the Western world that drives me crazy.
Somebody being denied the most powerful job in the world because they ran a shitty campaign and lost fair and square doesn’t make Hillary a victim. It make her second place and still, I believe, a senator and a millionaire.
carsick
This is why I didn’t officially become a democrat until 2004 despite voting for the democratic presidential nominee for nearly three decades. The republicans conceded a gimee this year (and they tried in 2004 too) and some democrat thinks bringing a knife into a sanctioned wrestling match is the best way to win. Then, to compound the problem, others join in to justify why bringing the knife should be within the rules even though the rules state “No Knives.”
And then, just to twist the knife in further, they claim their wrestler should have a knife because the love that wrestler sooo much but the other wrestler shouldn’t have a knife because they don’t think that’s fair in a wrestling match.
Warren Terra
Also for the record, the exit polls were of people who showed up to the polls.
That is, people who showed up knowing that their votes would not be used to select delegates, and that if they didn’t support Clinton (or Dodd or Gravel, or maybe Kucinich iirc) there was little point in showing up.
Also note that your numbers imply a performance for Edwards that rather oustrips most of his contemporaneous showings.
Poblano’s famous demographic model, which is flawed but at least as meaningful as an exit poll, suggests Obama could have carried Michigan.
TheFountainHead
carsick, I’m not sure I followed your post. Democrats are bad but Republican’s are worse? Or Republicans are bad but Democrats are just as bad? Help me, I’m lost and I don’t have a knife in the fight.
jake
Yay! Peter Hugh Johnson has eluded The Anti-Spoof Patrol and gained access to the Internons!
“Had” is an insult? Is it short for “Haddock”? As in “Dead as a …”
Speaking of fish, time to run this again.
jake
Talking with Hillsterics.
TheFountainHead
Nothing like a little fish slapping at 11:15 on a Sunday night…
Just Some Fuckhead
That would have split up the 128 delegates, 59 HRC, 45 Obama. Of course, Edwards endorsed Obama so a good portion of the remaining 24 delegates would have gone to Obama. Assuming 70% like happened in FL, 17 more for Obama, 7 more for Clinton. End result, 66 HRC, 62 Obama.
Those motherfuckers cheated Obama out of three delegates. I’m voting for McCain! Of course, I didn’t verify any of the numbers or recheck any of the math but I’m still outraged enough to vote for McCain. My fury has been unleashed.
DougJ
I don’t mean this as a real put down or anything, but you should lighten up a little when you’re around these parts. This isn’t Cafe Stradda.
No offense meant.
KC
I had this concern in another thread, but I noticed it’s taking hold now. I just checked my email, but saw an aol poll that showed a majority of people believe Hillary is ahead in the popular vote. Where are Obama’s people on this? Are they not going to challenge this? Can they challenge this? Boy, talk about undercutting a win. I realize Obama is pretty much the nominee, but the super delegates have not decided yet.
The Other Steve
I just read Digby’s piece, and it’s pretty clear she has her head in the sand.
The problem with Hillary is that since February she’s been saying “Don’t worry about losing elections! I’m going to get the Superdelegates to overrule them all.”
Over and over and over, that’s been her claim.
That’s why people are pissed.
Comparing this to Jesse Jackson is completely fucking obtuse.
theturtlemoves
Sorry. I went into lit-crit mode for a while there. That damn English degree comes back screaming from the depths of my psyche sometimes.
Peter Johnson
Nothing like a little fish slapping at 11:15 on a Sunday night…
Who’s sexist now?
Corner Stone
Republican. Why don’t you line up now to vote for GWB a frackin *third* time?
Tell me again why anyone would listen to anything you had to say about *democracy*?
Fucking scumbag.
TheFountainHead
The number of Monty Python skits that dovetail nicely with Hillary for President should be a huge warning sign to the SDs.
DougJ
No problem. There’s a lot of ex-grad students here and it happens to all of us sometimes.
Grover StL
Question for Mr. Peter Johnson- is Larry Johnson your dad, son, brother or what? your posts reek of his site.
TheFountainHead
All fish slapping was totally consensual, geeez!
KRK
The primary process allows each individual state party to decide (within parameters set by the national party) how it will select and apportion the number of delegates allocated to that state for the national convention. The state parties in Michigan and Florida got sanctioned by the national party last fall because the mechanisms they chose for choosing delegates fell outside the approved parameters. Yesterday a committee of the national party heard petitions from the state parties from Florida and Michigan to modify the sanctions. The committee approved the state parties’ petitions. That is all.
In other news, apparently the U.S. has been operating floating prison ships in international waters to detain suspected terrorists away from prying eyes.
carsick
the FountainHead,
As Will Rogers said, “I belong to no organized party. I am a Democrat.”
But don’t confuse governing with campaigning. A campaign’s policy particulars rarely reach all the way to the deciding undecideds as much as gut impressions do. Plus, Randers (and I’ll assume you’re one with the FountainHead name) don’t know how to build coalitions at all so I can see why the concept confuses you.
nightjar
Your much too nice Krista. Our elections in general are royally screwed up, with fifty states doing their own thing, and wingnuts specializing in throwing monkey wrenches in every one they can. It’s a wonder we don’t have permanent civil war.
bostondreams
Ask, and ye shall receive:
John Brown Discusses Taylor Marsh!
It’s actually quite the read. She threatened to sue.
theturtlemoves
See, now that isn’t even fiscally responsible. You’d think a Republican administration could have at least outsourced that to the pirates that are hitting cargo ships off the coast of Somalia lately. This is yet another sign that they’ve lost touch with their conservative roots.
TheFountainHead
If I confused governing for campaigning I’d be voting for Hillary Clinton.
And simply because I believe there are characters and situations created by Rand in her books that are worth learning from doesn’t mean I lack the cognitive ability to asses the differences between the defining principles of the disparate parties. How’s the Republican coalition building going these days?
Warren Terra
In the spirit of the recent Youtube links, I’d like to point out that the Clinton partisans’ arguments are impeccable, and we’re just a bunch of toff elitists for trying to dispute them. The Clinton camp, in other words, is just like the instructor in this video.
Also from that video, I predict bad consequences if we let ourselves be bullied into coddling the Hillosphere.
KRK
KC, I honestly can’t tell if you’re here just to foment angst or you’re really that worked up about something so completely out of your control. The Obama campaign has proven itself to be more savvy and have better timing than just about any national Democratic campaign in a long time. Your concerns about how they should be controlling their message aren’t doing anybody any good. You can control how you talk about the popular vote nonsense with people whose paths you cross. Otherwise, you just have to let it go. If you can’t do that, at least try to keep from dragging other people down with you, or the fomenting angst possibility starts to seem more plausible.
At some point in the future — unknowable exactly when, but long before November — the question of the popular vote in the Democratic primary is going to be 99.4% irrelevant. (As opposed to 93% irrelevant, like it is now.)
zzyzx
Krista – a large part of the problem is that MI (like WA) doesn’t have party registration. How do you decide who gets to vote in the revote then?
demimondian
By the way, for those of you who don’t keep a scorecard, Peter Johnson is a _nom de plume_ of one of our most distinguished trolls. (Not me, by the way. I don’t have any pseudos except demi.) And tonight’s performance was one of his best.
Loved the video, peterj. That was just priceless…
Jim
I wonder how happy the Clintonistas will be after their petulance elects McCain, and McCain replaces a couple of liberal SC justices with more Scalia, Roberts Alito types, Roe v. Wade is tossed out and half the states ban abortion. Naderites caused Iraq, Clintonistas will cause the end of legal abortion in many states. There is no end to the eternal stupidity of people.
demimondian
Speak for yourself. I’d still be a grad student, except my department realized that there was a foolproof way to get rid of me — they granted me a degree.
It was awful. One day, I was a permanent student, next day, somebody said, “Congratulations, Dr. Mondian,” and I was a post doc at a major research institution across the country. I never even knew what hit me.
demimondian
The farce is strong in this one. Very strong indeed.
Kevin
Speaking of flsh slapping
TheFountainHead
Warren Terra, bravo to that clip. It fairly well sums up the last four months in an entirely frightening manner.
KC
As I’ve been saying, I’m going to go along with what the superdelegates do, no matter who gets it. I’m just annoyed that Obama’s people aren’t responding more vigorously to this popular vote meme, possibly because I actually had a friend (Obama supporter no less) say to me yesterday Clinton was ahead in the popular vote. Then today when I see an aol poll indicating it’s taking more of a hold, I can’t help but be a little baffled by the lack of response. I know Obama has to play nice, I understand that, and I realize Dems need to come together as a party. However, at the end of the day, to let this set and take hold is a bit self-destructive, right? I dunno. Either way, I’m ready for this damn primary to end.
KRK
The fact that each state decides the process for selecting its delegates during primary season is a feature, not a bug. Why should Democrats in Utah be burdened with the expense and complexity of a process tailor-made for California?
People are only up in arms about the process because they want everything to be easily digestible. It’s the mindset that thinks the solution is a national primary or winner-take-all primaries (either of which would ensure that no future Barack Obama ever has a chance), just to get it over with. It’s also the mindset that whined about all the precincts not being reported by the time they had to go to bed. How a given state’s Democratic party decides to choose its delegates, and the speed with which they count the ballots, is the business of nobody but the voters in that state, and not even all of them.
Simply condensing the calendar would have eliminated much of the drawn-out unpleasantness of this primary season.
carsick
the FountainHead
I get most of your post but this part confused me:
“If I confused governing for campaigning I’d be voting for Hillary Clinton.”
Her campaign seemed to spend an awfully large upfront monetary advantage on poor decision making and even worse consultants that gained her second place. I hope my government does better with less waste.
TheFountainHead
Meaning: If I confused campaigning for governing I’d be pretty idiotic, and therefore a Hillary Clinton supporter. It was snark. Apparently I missed the mark. Or you did.
namekarB
Gosh Paul, I understand your feelings but I think this can be rather succinctly put forth.
The Michigan Democratic Party came up with a solution that they themselves concluded was the best compromise for Michigan Democrats. The RBC merely agreed to adopt the proposal of Michigan Democrats. Clinton fought for the Michigan delegates to be seated and so they will be.
The Grand Panjandrum
With HRC’s victory in the Puerto Rico primary she can rightfully, and with a very high degree certainty, say that Barack Obama cannot win Puerto Rico in the GE. So FINALLY the Clintonistas have a great moral victory. Booyah! That, and $1.95 will get you a cup of coffee.
Y’all gotta quite the Chicken Little routine, and dreggas is on the money here:
More than 110 million people will vote in the GE. The political blogosphere (including commenters who do not themselves blog) is less than 5% of that number. Go take a peak at the latest shit storm on the blogoshpere then ask a small sample of your friends, co-workers and family about those same issues over the next couple of days. Most of them will give you a blank stare or nod and explain they don’t give a shit.
BTW anybody see Kyle Busch take the checkered flag at Dover today? That boy can drive.
theturtlemoves
The problem is that this runs smack against the desire of the states in the drawn-out primary process to each have their little day in the sun, with all the news coverage and money that multiple national campaign apparatuses (or is it apparati?) can bring to a local economy.
I grew up in South Dakota. I honestly don’t remember ever seeing a national campaign of any kind ever setting foot there until this year. We had some serious outside money spent when the Republicans took out Daschle in favor of that walking haircut John Thune, but presidential candidates never bothered because despite electing lots of democrats to congress (they still have Tim Johnson and Stephanie Herseth-Whatever her married hyphen is I can’t remember), it has always voted Republican for president. Now they’ve got Hillary saying stupid shit to the editorial board of the Argus Leader and “apologizing” for it at some Mini-Mart in Brandon or wherever the hell she was. That’s big business in a state with less people than some blocks in Boston or NYC.
Just Some Fuckhead
She selflessly set aside her own ambition to fight for the recognition of a primary contest that was flawed, invalid and doesn’t represent the will or intent of the people.
The State Of Michigan and the Rules And Bylaws Committee reciprocated by recognizing a flawed and invalid contest with a delegate allocation to each candidate that doesn’t represent the will or intent of the voters.
All things good and beautiful flow from the Sun Queen.
rob!
one of the saddest spectacles i’ve found about Hillary’s campaign has been her/its flagrant abuse of her more desperate and/or sad supporters.
i mean, clearly, the kind of people who showed up at the RBC meeting dressed in “No Vote No Peace” shirts or people who say they’ll vote for McCain just to spite the Democratic Party are deeply, deeply troubled people.
these are people–mostly older women, it seems–who probably have been the victims of sexism in their lives, and instead of having the first viable female presidential candidate try and lift them up and be an example of what can be achieved, she’s telling these people to be bitter, to be angry, to be utterly convinced that Everyone Is Out To Get Them, and It’ll Never Get Any Better.
imagine how celebratory her campaign could be–she came the closest any woman has ever come to being The President–but instead its all about yelling and screaming and feeling agrieved and turning every alleged slight into a Sexist Attack.
what a wonderful legacy, Mrs. Clinton.
theturtlemoves
Yes she can.
KC
Anyone know if there are any concerns about Obama losing South Dakota or Montana? In some ways, I wish he would have campaigned a bit harder to the end. Then again, this will all be over soon.
Mary
KC, you’re harshing my mellow. Srsly.
KC
Well, I’ve been bored today.
rob!
Montana’s a slam dunk (a real one, not a George Tenet one) for Obama, but i think SD is almost even.
Warren Terra
I don’t think I’m much better informed than you, but this post from Nicholas Beaudrot suggests that Montana is fairly safe and that South Dakota is more of a battleground, but one Obama is taking seriously.
Also note that Obama has the enthusiastic backing of Daschle and his contacts in South Dakota. Most of the big Democrats in Montana appear not to have endorsed, including populists Jon Tester and Brian Schweitzer. Those few Montana superdelegates who have endorsed are DNC members, all for Obama.
Mary
Here, relax and watch some nice music videos.
Emma Pollack – Acid Test
Duffy – Mercy
nightjar
I was referring to elections, not necessarily primaries. But the difference is not that great.
For state offices, I would agree. For federal offices, what happens in California affects me in New Mexico. Elections are not complicated or puzzling events, they are in this country, or should be, a simple concept of one person, one vote from a list of candidates. And whatever it takes to best achieve that result should be a paramount concern for all of us. Although there is no perfect election, our patchwork of differing mechanisms for 50 states causes way to much loss of representation and too much opportunity for mischief by dominant parties in individual states. States rights is OK for some things, but not for federal elections.
There is a valid point to be made against certain methods of primaries, such as caucuses– for not being accessible or desirable for some to participate. That’s why I’m for mail in elections, like Oregon has, as the rule for the entire process countrywide. The more participation the better, as well as the integrity of the process.
Rick Taylor
Nope. That’s the job of the staff at Talk Left. BTD replies to an Obama supporter:
theturtlemoves
Daschle is still pretty popular among SD dems. And pretty much every other superdelegate in the state, including the senior Senator and SoDaks only House member have endorsed Obama. That can’t hurt, but Hillary has been in there gunning pretty hard for quite a while. I’d like to think my home state sees through the BS, but South Dakota Democrats are still South Dakotan, so are about as conservative as you can get and still have the (D) after your name.
Kevin
Chortle.
I think that BTD and Jeralyn should take some of their own advice.
nightjar
Sounds like BTD has declared himself King and Lord master of his own little banana republic over at little Talkleftania.
Jess
Very interesting! (and quite amusing…)
cbear
Only 8 hours and 24 minutes left until the debut of the “Kill Whitey” tape. I imagine the natives are getting restless over at NoQuarter.
Warren Terra
Pup Tent Democrat:
What’s really funny is the idea that Ezra Klein, who’s done about as little to take sides as has any blogger who’s endorsed in these primaries, has been consistently measured of tone, and has gone out of his way to praise Clinton when he can and to discourage criticism of her gaffes, has been particularly incendiary.
I could name any number of Obama supporters more likely to inadvertently inspire lasting ill-feeling among irredentist supporters of Clinton, including myself and most commenters here. And I’m just talking about snark and reasoned criticism of Clinton, things I find perfectly inoffensive that are nonetheless sharper of elbow than you’re likely to see from Ezra.
I read the front page at the GOS, but I have no real recollection of anything distinctive Meteor Blades has said. I suspect PTD just doesn’t have the gumption to call out the GOS himself.
Fulcanelli
Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail…
If Larry Johnson, Fox News or any Hillary supporter had a video of Michelle Obama saying racist stuff why would they wait to launch it? Wait for what? A full moon? With the blood lust in the air, especially at NQ and elsewhere, if it’s true, it would be out there already. Next…
The Taming of the Shrew…
Has anyone seen even one post on a pro Hillary blog posing the idea that if Hillary wins the nomination she’s gonna need Obama’s supporters to win the GE without the home team pulling a train like a pack of drunken Hell’s Angels on the reasoned post writer? I haven’t. Bad craziness…
And that’s a monumentially, historically dumb move on their part and the blog hosts like Taylor Marsh, Jerilyn Meritt (this woman’s a Lawyer?) and others should know better. Obama’s got well over 17 million legitimate votes, only Goddess knows how much money in his warchest (the FEC can’t keep up) and a well-oiled fundraising machine that would respond to his “bite me Hillary” like a shot of Nitrous in a big block Chevelle.
Hillary’s over 20 million in the hole.
Now who’s in a better position to split off and run as an independent…
Careful what you ask for ladies.
wasabi gasp
I look forward to looping archive footage of Hillary supporters working the monkey bars.
theturtlemoves
After one of the posts yesterday, the image that popped immediately into my mind when I read this was John Cleese in a dress with a white wig on, drilling with the rest of the old granny gang in some desert camp. A group of grannies closely affiliated with the People’s Front of Judea.
Big E
RE: “Oh, and by the way, you’ve also likely just thrown the 2008 election.”
fine, vote against your own interests, when your friend loses their kid in Iraq or Iran, give em a big hug and tell them proudly that you really showed Obama what’s up. I am so tired of this ” I’ll vote for McCain” shit..
mannemalon
This is the result of a delicate situation. When you have people this delusional, desperate and power hungry, you have to beat the hell out of them. You can’t leave “room for grace” and all that other nice stuff. For them, that’s just breathing room. The problem is, in this unique dynamic, these people need to become part your team. So you can’t just crush them like you would a different entity in this type of situation. So they get bold. They overvalue their level of importance. And when their leader lacks true leadership, honor and class, this is the result. A bunch of children totally over inflating their sense of importance and power.
These people are a joke.
Martin
Rick Taylor
Yup. This is what he was replying to.
See it was entirely unreasonable for Ezra to right this when it’s the responsibility of Obama to right things, not her. See the link in my earlier post if you want details.
Honestly, Ezra Klein, Josh Marshall, now perhaps Atrios, it’s surprising to see how many blogs have been painted as being gaga for Obama.
Rick Taylor
Actually, last I looked, Taylor Marsh has said she’ll vote for the Democratic nominee, including if he’s Obama. It’s just going to be hard for her to persuade the people at her site, they’re really mad. . .
This is an odd dynamic of people like Taylor Marsh, BTD, and Jeralyn. They’ll vote for the Democratic nominee, but they don’t get the disconnect how they’re inflaming the sentiment that’s hurting the party. It’s weird. I quoted an example from BTD above, where he describes himself as trying to support Obama, and says it’s people like Ezra Klein and Meteor Blades who are the problem.
rachel
Booman is worried that this is the “Michelle Obama rants on whitey” vid that Larry Johnson’s been muttering about… And that his old friend Larry has gone around the twist.
pseudonymous in nc
The TalkLeft line that takes the cake? That Michigan’s votes should count in full, except for the 30,000 Obama write-ins, because they — and, one presumes, only they — were ‘against the rules’.
Emptywheel (an actual MI resident, as opposed to someone bused in from NY) says all that’s necessary: MI was a grand clusterfuck, and the decision made on Saturday endorses that position. Mostly, it ensures that MI’s delegates can spend the next two months searching in vain for Denver hotel rooms.
(Obama’s Colorado team might be well-served in organising some kind of room-share / couch-surf arrangement.)
KRK
I thought I saw a blurb a month or more back that said Dean was making sure that rooms were reserved for MI and FL delegations.
pseudonymous in nc
On Digby’s post, since comments over there are bust:
I’m not sure what point she’s trying to make. That going to the convention is part of modern politics, at least, if you go back twenty years? Except the reason it’s not happened in the last twenty years is that in those three examples, the nominee lost. Duh.
Anyway, I’m disappointed in Digby for skating around the logical conclusion of her pre-Ohio comments about ‘Reagan Democrats’ with respect to the Clinton campaign’s endgame. She has a point when talking about sexist media narratives, but the biggest bullshit media narrative of all has been the one perpetuating the race.
We’ll have to wait till November to see whether the plus of having competitive primaries in states that hadn’t seen one in ages — excitement, engagement, registration and organising — is outweighed by the Clintonistas’ turds in the punchbowl.
cbear
I found this little gem over at NoQuarter.
And, yes, the last line was bolded by the author.
Gun, meet foot.
Conservatively Liberal
If that is Agent Flobee’s evidence, he is going to get laughed off of the air in minutes. That is just too stupid.
NR
The sad thing is, if what’s written there is accurate, there are going to be people out there who do believe that Michelle Obama is saying “whitey.”
Rick Taylor
There are still people who think Obama gave Hillary the finger.
KC
I’m just sick of this whole primary. Some supporters on both sides have really gone off the deep end. The comments on Larry Johnson’s blog are truly beyond belief. You’d think Obama was some kind of renegade monster who didn’t win a single contest and was handed the nomination from on high. And Hillary didn’t have a single supporter at the DNC or something. It’s absolutely nuts.
NR
No, no. Nothing is too stupid. There are people out there who still think that Obama was flipping Hillary off when he was scratching his face, for crying out loud.
NR
Whoops, Rick Taylor beat me to the punch.
Conservatively Liberal
Yes, but I comfort myself with the fact that the ones who will are the same people who wouldn’t vote for Obama anyways. You would have to want to hear her say that to think it is what she says.
Also, these people are probably the same types that thought buying a pet rock was a good investment.
Warren Terra
The alleged video does remind me of a song my father used to sing, the first few lines of which I recall and will reproduce below. My Google-Fu is too weak to learn more about the song, which, FAIR WARNING, is quite vulgar.
In the song, the first two syllables of each line are spoken and repeated twice, and then the full line is spoken. Then repeat the procedure for the next line, etcetera.
Anyhow, the first couple of lines of the song:
I’ve forgotten the rest; if I recall, there were six lines, in rhymed pairs.
The point of the song is of course that the vulgarity is a matter of the parsing and the interpretation of the listener. And “Why’d he”, unlike the syllable pairs in the song, seems unlikely to be intended to carry a double meaning.
Martin
No shit. And she was the one driving the bus there. And we’re supposed to clean up after these assholes that rant and rave about how Obama is racist? Sorry, that’s just not possible. I can’t tell you how many ‘Wright shows bad judgement’ arguments against Obama, yet it was Clinton that spent 3 decades and had a kid with the guy who needs to be blown by interns while his wife is in the building. I mean, if we’re gonna fault our candidates for the failings of the people around them, then lets apply that measure evenly, shall we? But no. That’d just make me sexist.
Sorry, if Clinton won the nomination, nobody would be required to fix my attitude about her but me.
NR
I expect we’ll see versions with subtitles saying “Whitey” pop up on Youtube pretty quickly. And it’s well known that subtitles can make people “hear” things that aren’t actually said. Every low-information voter that watches that video is a vote we lose in November.
You know the saying: A lie can make it halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on.
Chuck Butcher
Let me see if I can be real clear, freedom of association means that Political Parties are not under the finger of government. It is further the case that within DNC rules the State Parties OWN their Primary elections. It is exactly not one iota the business of anybody else. Am I real damn clear?
The FL legisilature did not force the Florida Democratic Party into a date, they would only finance that date. That is the exact end of their leverage. Some states treat the Primary as the private business of Parties and will not finance them, thus caucuses. Your opinion of caucuses is immaterial unless you’re willing to finance the Primary.
I’m about goddamed sick and tired of the absolute ignorance of the system passed off as righteous fucking indignation. I have posted this information on this site, my site and about a dozen others and the for shit MSM actually made a half-assed pass at explaining it. It’s too boring and too process and law oriented for most people to pay any attention to.
State Parties are elected to look out for the interests of the Party. That is their goddamed job, keeping control of the process and once the Primaries are over, helping the party candidates. Sure we do registration drives and propaganda and all the Democrats are good, like us lots, join us stuff – our damned job is to maintain the machinery. If you want to change the machinery your State has a Party and that State Party has a County Party that would love your help.
Yes our vote by mail is a wonderful thing and the State government finances it and last year we were gearing up for caucusing because the Legislature wanted to move to Feb 5 and DNC said no. VBM put our ballots out ahead of 2/5 so we had to stare down our Leg and prepare to caucus if they were stupid like FL/MI. DPO kept control of its election. There’s no publicity for it, we don’t get big kudos, it isn’t in our interest to embarrass our Dem Legislators.
We did have to spend scarce resources to build the plan, unlike FL/MI we were not about to cede our election.
now you know
Thomas Smith
Yer fat. Heh.
I’m voting fer someone else. Is Johm MCain still running?
Thomas Smith
I don really like negros or broads or old farts.
But I understand this is historic electon, negro woman and aarp.
Who to choose? The negro the female person or the really old guy?
Personaly i’d vote fer that guy with the cute hair but he isn runnin.
Thomas Smith
Grammar corection “how is I am said, misogynist”.
HTH
Thomas Smith
I alwuys thought digby was a dude, now i know why I get wood reading.
TenguPhule
Yes.
Politics is like making sausage.
It’s a dirty job and the closer you look at it the worse it gets.
Thomas Smith
Fukina yeah, callin som bitcha bitch is not like afgahnistan or some shit were bitches gotta weare fukin luggage over there head an shit or get there clitorususs cut off. An dont get me started on the jews…
Steve V
The “whitey” thing is just like that Jimi Hendrix song where he said “excuse me while I kiss this guy” but the prudish listeners of the day imagined it instead to be the nonsensical, “excuse me while I kiss the sky.”
Warren Terra
Well, this troll is new to me and is both crude and unamusing.
This sort of person is why the internet can’t have nice things.
Thomas Smith
I too once gave him head in the back seat of a limo. His build was lean and muscular with no excess body fat altho it was noted that he had a family history of cancer. His mother died of ovarian cancer and a grandfather of prostate cancer.
Did you go with the meth or the crack?
Conservatively Liberal
How about this story?
One time my wife, daughter and myself were camping at Mill Creek in California (redwoods area), and I had the tunes cranked up in the Mustang, with the hatch open. I was listening to Extreme’s Pornograffitti cd, and one of the songs is “Get The Funk Out”. If you have ever heard the song, the chorus is
If you don’t like,
What you see here
Get the funk out
With the backing vocals at this point saying:
Get the funk out, get the funk out
The park ranger showed up and asked us not to ‘play songs like that’. I asked her to clarify what she meant, and she said that another camper complained the song said
If you don’t like,
What you see here
Get the fuck out
Get the fuck out, get the fuck out
I showed her the cd case and the song name. I even put the song on so she could hear it (turned down, of course!), and she apologized and told us to ‘carry on’. She thought it was pretty funny, and said that she would explain it to the complaining camper. It was mid-afternoon, so there was no noise restrictions at the time.
Some people…
pseudonymous in nc
I’m still unconvinced by universal VBM. There’s virtually no recent history of in-person vote fraud in the UK (as with the US) but its recent expansion of postal voting threw up a number of cases in which the ‘head’ of a household or local honcho commandeered all the ballots and filled them in. In Northern Ireland, they decided to restrict access to postal ballots to those unable to vote in person; and in areas of England with large Muslim populations, you do still have older men who take it upon themselves to cast the women’s votes.
(You can easily imagine Radical Cleric Dobson telling his followers to ‘supervise’ the women and children when they vote.)
If there’s a way to expand VBM that safeguards secrecy, I’d like to know about it. That said, it would banish idiot exit polls from the cabloids forever, and prevent the election night calling of states before the votes are counted, which can’t be a bad thing.
Mike D.
A few months ago at Political Flesh Feast they were discussing “Great Purges in GOS History” and filling in a little backstory on BTD’s major malfunctions, and someone wondered why Ezra Klein never got booted. The consensus was that he was a total marshmallow whose recurring theme was “The official narrative of the day raises a few questions in my mind, but upon reflection, I’ve answered them to my satisfaction and I really have to stick up for the current self-elected warlord and his/her number one underling.” This gets eight hundred responses, Ezra’s tough but fair cred is polished, and life goes on.
Half an hour later Klein materialized (the first rule of PFF) and politely wielded a balsa-wood club in defense of his bedrock principles, at which point he was buried in specific examples.
Maybe he’s changed since early this year, but the idea of Klein striding into neutral territory and preaching anything unto the multitudes with the result that they all become suicidal fanatics is… peculiar, frankly. I’d say queer, because it’s more precise, but I hate the sound of exploding brains and the screech of trains of thought locking their brakes in indignation. Let’s just say peculiar.
Conservatively Liberal
TS is obviously enjoying exhibiting his linguistic masturbatory talents for all to admire. It is a wonder someone like himself is able to express himself as well as he does, especially when you take into consideration that his family tree has no branches on it.
Keeping the talent ‘all in the family’, so to say.
/yawn
Conservatively Liberal
Here in Oregon, if you mark another ballot for someone and the state finds out about it, you are hamburger. One guy whose wife was in the hospital did so for her (at her request), and the state ran him through hell over it.
If any guy tried to lord it over any women with their ballots and votes, if they got pissed they could make his life really miserable.
Real fast. They don’t screw around with ballot violations in Oregon. I like that.
John Samford
Nobody here has read the rule book. There are NO DELEGATES until the Convention is ‘Called to Order. ‘Pledged’ doesn’t mean pledged either. The Rules say a Delegate cannot be forced to vote against their conscience.
A pledged delegate is one that represents their state party, while a super delegate is one tha represents the national party. If a “pledged” delegate wants to switch and vote for a different candidate, it is allowed, although unusual on the first ballot.
Billery and Ohhhh…..BAMA both know this, which is why Ohhhh….BAMA is trying to pressure Billery into quiting. Billery thinks that she can win at the convention. Ohhh…BAMA thinks so to, otherwise he wouldn’t be trying to force her out of the race.
The Convention is protected by the 1st amendment, so anything goes there. Arm twisting, bribery, blackmail are all protected speech if done at a political convention. Billery is the master at dirty politics, which is why Ohhhh….BAMA doesn’t want to go to the Convention with issues unresolved. Plus Shrillery still has those files full of dirt they had the FBI put together while she was Mrs. President.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_House_FBI_files_controversy
Most of those people are still around. And given the choice between voting for Billery and the media finding out their mistress is only 10 years old, well…. that pink tent suit is looking better by the minute.
No, if this Primary goes to the Convention, Ohhhh…BAMA is puppy chow. Both parties know this so Billery won’t quit and Ohhh.BAMA is trying to turn up the heat to the point where she will quit. This will get interesting.
But the left shouldn’t lose heart. The Dems have an ace in the hole. McCain is the best Democrat running.
When it comes doewn to nut-cuttin time, the choices are a half-black marxist, trailer trash in a pink tent suit and a tired old war horse with one hoof in the grave.
God save the Republic.
I’m not a troll, I just stumbled across this site and didn’t see anything illuminating enough to make me bookmark it.
If you want to argue a point I hang out at ITM as typos_R-us and would be more then happy to debate anyone on anything.
Thomas Smith
Now need to fear the new. Its only new, not scary.
We can have nice things and be educational and be amusing.
RC
“So please cut the crap. Clinton didn’t get screwed- what happened is that the RBC and the Michigan Democratic Party stopped the Clinton campaign from screwing Michigan voters by stealing every delegate and pretending it was a “fair reflection” of the voters. The Obama campaign won’t mention this because they are trying to be magnanimous and trying to win the support of irate Clinton voters.”
Oh come on. Obama pulled out of Michigan so why should he get delegates when he wasn’t running there? This issue has nothing to do with the will of the voters, because if it did then Obama supporters would be willing to concede and back Hillary when she has been ahead in the popular, vote. We all know the delegate system is less democratic than the popular vote totals. All this means is Obama does something = good, Hillary does something = bad.
Obama is no more rnning for president for the good of the voters than Hillary is, he is doing it for his own lust for power and to make lots of money. He isn’t the Messiah, he’s just a naughty boy.
Obama and his supporters have used just as much negative campaigning and dirty tactics as Hillary has. Obama wants to be president and will screw over anyone and anything to get there, just like Hillary. He’s already admitted he will drop all his progressive agenda if it is too politically difficult to do, so his supporters will likely get nothing from him, though they may well have got nothign from Hillary as well.
Remember the Ferengi Rule of Acquisition, the bigger the smile the sharper the knife. Obama smirks even more than Dubya did, I wouldn’t have thought that was possible. Why is Obama always smirking at this audience? Because just like Dubya he’s fooled people into thinking he’s compassionate and not just in it for himself and a new set of cronies.
Thomas Smith
Dude, i didn’t really bother to read your post so forgive me if I’m talking about something else entirely, but anecdotes are cool and i got ’em. You ever camped in west virginia? I’m sure john will back me up on this, there’s always some asshole with crappy speakers out on the hood of his car playing Lynard Skynard at full distortion. Now I dont mind Lynard Skynard that much, its just every fucking weekend the same goddamn bestof album played over and over. Maybe there in California you all call in the gaye law, in WVa we pump a few .22s in that direction and crank up the AC/DC.
Koz
Somewhere over the rainbow, after Obama has won the nomination, I’m hoping that some of his fans can explain in complete thoughts what they’re hoping to get out of his Presidency. From what I see here (and elsewhere), Obama supporters have almost as much intellectual sophistication as New Kids on The Block groupies.
rachel
It’s called a Mondegreen.
Thomas Smith
Thats like some serious Lord of the Rings geeky shit. Materializing in
the first rule of pfff!
I’ll bet you actually know exactly what you mean by all that stuff and kinda find me ignorant fer not knowin’.
Well son, thets why yer candidate ain’t gonna win.
Conservatively Liberal
I see that we have an influx of the intellectually challenged here this am. Someone had to guide them here because you know that they are not intelligent enough to find this place on their own. Boy have they got a bit of learning ahead of them…lol
Try harder kids, we have seen plenty of trolls here that were absolutely shit for nothing in skill and they still were better than the weak-assed tea you kids pour. I will give you another chance, but if I don’t respond then you know that it was a massive fail.
/yawn
Thomas Smith
You minx, using my initials to fool me into not responding while you.. well…
Well, you know where i am.
Sleeper
Ask the Michigan Democratic Party, they’re the ones who suggested it.
The Michigan primary was not validated on Saturday. Rather, the Michigan Dems proposed a compromise slate of delegates, the 69/59 solution, in order to best mollify Obama supporters and Clinton supporters in their state. In other words, given the vote from January, polling info, and with some give and take from both sides in the state, they made the numbers up. It was entirely their right to do so, and their proposal didn’t match either Obama’s or Clinton’s proposals. (Clinton’s people wanted some of the uncommitted delegates at one point. Explain that one.)
Clinton did not have 4 of her MI delegates stolen from her, as she was not supposed to get any in the first place. No one was.
It never fails to amaze me that one of the most single-minded and (dare I say) fanatically loyal political movements in modern history is constantly attributing their own worst trait, unthinking and uncritical allegiance, to their rivals. When it was all over for Clinton, the candidate I supported (after Edwards), I accepted it and decided I’d support Obama as best I can. Every Obama supporter I’ve met says they’d support the nominee, whoever it is. But I know two Clinton fans who swear up and down to vote McCain, all while insisting they’re so vehemently against Obama because he won’t stick up for Democratic principles.
I was excited at the thought of a Clinton presidency just a few months ago. Really. I’ll still vote for her if she claws her way to victory in Denver, but I’ll need a few stiff drinks afterwards, I think. My feelings on her are summed up in a Hunter Thompson quote about another Democratic hack from his era:
I followed Clinton around for a while this primary season, and I’m hoping to never have to vote for her again.
Thomas Smith
You got a problem with NKOTB, shithead? I may be new around here, but i can tell you that we take our Lou Perlman pretty fucking seriously. You want to step outside with that “over the rainbow” shit I’ll… I’ll
oh crap the lyrics i was gonna busta move onyou are Nsync, fuck, do NKONTB have any recognizable songs? Jeebus you are so gaye for even mentioning them…
KRK
Al Giordano is reporting that Ben Smith is reporting that Clinton has started calling her advance staff back to New York and letting them know that their jobs are ending.
Humphrey will always get credit from me for firing a shot across the bow at the 1948 convention with his minority position civil rights speech and pissing off the Dixiecrats.
Thomas Smith
Oh my god i so know what you are saying, who are these lameos without any intellectual brains and stuff? Someone had to lead them here because the sweet sweet young tender tasty sandwiches that are here for the eating could not have been found on their own.
Its, like, we’ve seen trolls before and we know not to respond because we are like superhuman educated people who know better than, like weak-assed skills and tea nad stuff.
Who are these people? Its so yawny.
Sleeper
I won’t pretend to be an expert on Humphrey, but from what I’ve read, being a good soldier and embracing Johnson’s war really destroyed his legacy and to many invalidated all the good he’d accomplished.
Actually, now that I think about it, there are some interesting parallels with Humphrey and McCain, ideological differences aside.
RC
“It never fails to amaze me that one of the most single-minded and (dare I say) fanatically loyal political movements in modern history is constantly attributing their own worst trait, unthinking and uncritical allegiance, to their rivals.”
Sleeper, in all honesty I wouldn’t have believed I would be on forums arguing for a second time against blind allegience, after the disaster of Bush. Obama seems to me like some kind of Bizarro George, and there are the same zombie like followers who can’t explain now, as they couldn’t then, what they see in them. I’m reminded of what Elaine said in the Bizarro jerry episode to George. “I’m sorry, we already have a George”.
We already had a Goerge who was a disaster, we don’t need a Bizarro George that hypnotises the Democrats while this time the Republicans can see through him. Of course the centrist bloggers like Cole and Sullivan are now hynotised by Bizarro George this time. In a year we’ll be getting the I’m sorry posts as they slowly regain their criticial faculties.
Maguire over at Just A Minute can see right through Obama, I got the messiah name from there. Instead of a Compassionate Conservative this time we have a Compassionate Liberal, and in both cases we have associations with shady financiers, Wall Street donations and cronies, and so on. And yet again we have an empty suit who when he isn’t reading from a teleprompter makes gaffe after gaffe which his supporters ignore and the other side makes fun of.
Before we had the ridicule of George not being smart enough to get a degree, this time we wonder how much affirmative action helped Bizarro George get his. And all the while Obama smirks at us from his podium, and must be thinking what suckers we are to fall for the same trick yet again.
bago
Regarding the prison ship story. You reporters really undermine their credibility when they misuse terms. In the story they call a zodiac an AAV and a support ship an AAV. Dumbasses. THIS is an AAV.
Amphibious means it can go on either water or land. A 400 foot long support vessel cannot go on land, and a zodiac is only amphibious for about ten feet. Anyone who knows what the word amphibian means should know that. Engage your fucking brains people!
Chuck Butcher
FYI, Oregon ain’t the UK. The US ain’t they UK, for one we still have our firearms, serfs we ain’t. I’m only kidding – a little..
The Republicans hate VBM. The incident of voter fraud in the US is vanishingly small, despite (R) nonsense. Machine fraud on the other hand… The reality is a large number of states are backdooring VBM with absentee ballots, silly really, but then this is the US. My wife will ask my political junkie self about candidates or issues – she also gets great glee from announcing she just canceled my vote. I’m not stupid enough to make something of it.
Most people that ignorant don’t vote anyhow. If we’re lucky, natural selection will take care of them. As you were told, the State of Oregon WILL kick your ass for interfering in a vote.
bago
And I undermine my own credibility when I switch perspective mid sentence like that.
Thomas Smith
Probably best not to stop with “I won’t pretend to be an expert…”
You could just read the wikipedia.
Humphrey’s legacy was “good soldier”.
Humphrey went on to have a short and lucrative public life.
Jeebus don’t the teach anything in pubic schools nowadays? Like, its just a quick google search away…
Nora Carrington
There are only about three people here who might be able to “hear” this, but James Fallows linked to a post by John Heilemann here:
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/05/heilemann_what_hillary_wants_a.html
The argument is that Clinton’s behavior becomes a lot more comprehensible if you accept (1) that she’s not crazy and (2) that she believes — on the basis of 30+ years of Democratic Party experience — that Obama can’t win. She may be wrong. As an Obama supporter I hope to hell she’s wrong. But it’s not a completely insane thing to think. He’s a powerful leader and a gifted politician but there’s no denying he also has a lot of negatives as well.
Heilemann doesn’t say this, but I believe Clinton thinks the DNC and the voters are about to nominate another McGovern. If you accept the premise, her mistrust of the caucus process and their results makes more sense because caucuses *do* privilege some portions of the Democratic electorate over others and ones that typically don’t reliably show up in November. Should she have run the race as it was dealt to her instead of pretending only the traditional swing states matter? Of course, and she deserved to lose the nomination on tactical grounds alone. But her misreading of the electorate for the primaries doesn’t mean she doesn’t know a thing or two about the electorate in the general. She and her husband and the DLC have won two national campaigns. Obama’s never won one. Give the woman her props. So suppose you think, along with pretty much everyone else, that 2008 is ours to lose, and that the public repudiation of the GOP brand and the ideas that go with it provide an opportunity that doesn’t come around very often (really, could anyone have imagined in 2000 that Bush would turn out to be *this* bad?). Suppose further that you believe in your bones that the Party you’ve devoted most of your adult life to, and the country that you love, is about to be delivered into the hands of McCain because your Party and the people who elected your husband to two terms as President and who sent him out the door with a 62% approval rating have forgotten the lessons the DLC tried to teach: that Democrats cannot win national elections with a progressive candidate. What would you do? Wouldn’t you do everything in your power, up to and including “triangulating,” making any remotely plausible argument, and asking your supporters to keep the faith just a little bit longer?
I think she’s wrong about the national electorate. I have to, I’m an Obama supporter because I think he cares more about the depredations our Constitution has been subject to these last eight years. But I don’t think her actions require psychopathology, mendacity, or stupidity to be explained. Just an error in judgment about the temperature of the public, the hunger for a new politics (lots of us are going to be sorely disappointed if we want Obama to get anything done besides give great speeches), and a willingness on the part of a whole lot of people to take some risks given how far to the edge of despair we’ve been pushed by the current Administration.
Thomas Smith
Whoa, that’s some cool shit. You probably know exactly what you are saying eh? Think anyone else does? To me its like madness mosquitoes splashing against my windowpain dude, I Got the Sienfeld referencebutjust barely and after that its twirly fantastic code word world. You and that other Lord of the Rings dude need to go back to playing DaD.
Chuck Butcher
RC manages quite the diatribe, you’d think he expects detailed plans in a campaign speech, from some candidate. Most audiences have beds at home so putting them to sleep in your rally is pretty silly. Then there is the aspect of MSM not covering Q&As and Obama is quite deatailed in his responses.
Since we’re involved in “campaign speech” which, um, pieces of fact and detail did you involve yourself in, RC? I note you provided all kinds of links, refs, and … rant.
Somebody is going to read here what they could read on Obama’s site? Why? Did you have something specific in mind that needed addressed? Or were you just a trolling along? Did you read somebody avoiding a particular question? What was it? You make an assumption that what you so eloquently presented will attain meaningfulness in the place of it’s lack of content exactly how? You really need to do better with this bunch of sharks.
All that flailing about and no statement about a suitable replacement? Truly weak. Your guy is content deprived because…because…well because I say so… Scary sruff.
Thomas Smith
These-
http://www.nettleden.com/
are underground bunkers people! Don’t let anyone fool you otherwise!
Sleeper
er. And how would that make one an expert?
Humphrey uncritically and enthusiasticaly embraced the Vietnam War in 1968 out of loyalty to his boss, at a time when the country was coming apart over the war, and his candidacy ushered Richard Nixon into the White House. There’s being a good soldier and being a political hack.
Maybe his career before and after that was admirable. Like I said I can’t say, I’ve yet to acquire the Wikipedia doctorate you yourself have attained.
Thomas Smith
See, thats what i think is good commenting, hes, chuck is on issues and understands meaning. To bad the rest of yo fucks cant comment so well as chuck about important issues on our election. this is important election we need to be informed andwe need to be informed.
Mike D.
No, that’s the second rule: only about a hundred losers and rejects read PFF, and maybe twice that number know that it even exists.
The first rule is that any sufficiently detailed exposition on an A-lister’s online history and conflicts of interest causes them to materialize and start complaining. This only works when it would be annoying, but when it does work, the unbelievers are converted with a quickness.
More and better goons, please. P.S. I think you meant to call yourself John Thomas. Thomas Smith sounds like you meant to call yourself after a British pharmacy but got confused.
Sleeper
Since their policy positions are extremely similar (center-left corporate-friendly Democrats with some lip service to environmentalism and helping the poor), what exactly do you see in Clinton? Most Clinton supporters, when asked that question, degenerate into specious rants about his character, imaginary bird-flipping, and stupid comments by Chris Matthews (but I repeat myself).
Since I was a Clinton supporter, and to me the two seemed the same on policy, I can tell you what put me off about her: voting for the war and more importantly, refusing to admit it was a mistake. Saber-rattling against an imaginary attack by a hypothetically nuclear Iran against Israel. Indulging and inflaming the Wright nonsense. And she had every advantage and she came in second to someone nobody had heard of a few years ago, and racked up 20-30 million dollars in debt doing it. How could I trust her with the keys to the party machine this fall? She blew it .
I, and I think most Obama supporters (going out on a limb here), think either candidate could probably win this fall. But Clinton supporters constantly insist that HBC, and only HBC, can defeat the mighty Republican juggernaut this year. Even after her shitty campaign that’s reduced her to clutching at straws and sending berserk protestors in to bleat support for John McCain. That’s being a zombie, to me. Clinton should follow Lieberman’s lead and found the America for Hillary Party, because at this point, her platform starts and ends with “I must be President.”
Thomas Smith
Sleeper Says:
Thomas Smith Says:
Probably best not to stop with “I won’t pretend to be an expert…”
You could just read the wikipedia.
er. And how would that make one an expert?
It wouldn’t. But it might be a start.
Humphrey uncritically and enthusiasticaly embraced the Vietnam War in 1968 out of loyalty to his boss, at a time when the country was coming apart over the war, and his candidacy ushered Richard Nixon into the White House. There’s being a good soldier and being a political hack.
I’m pretty sure Up thread i said, “Humphrey’s legacy was Good Soldier”, so are we disagreeing? I think we are agreeing, I just didnt notice it before, and possibly neither did you. Maybe we can just agree to get along, your Humphrey to my McCarthy?
Maybe his career before and after that was admirable. Like I said I can’t say, I’ve yet to acquire the Wikipedia doctorate you yourself have attained.
meh, the wikipedia thing is lacking in detail. You probably had to be there.
Sleeper
I should probably stop lurking at TalkLeft (they seem to have banned me for some reason), but one argument that comes up over and over and over again was that Obama (and Edwards) took their names off the ballot to pander to Iowa voters, who were supposedly enraged at Michigan’s actions. Is this even remotely true? Any Iowans here at Balloon Juice?
To me it sounds like the regs over at The Big Chill are trying to kill two birds with one stone, suggesting that Obama betrayed Michigan AND that he only did so well in Iowa because the Iowans were “punishing our Hillary.” And to me that sounds utterly ridiculous.
Anyone have firsthand knowledge to share on this?
Thomas Smith
And the call goes out, Argon, more cheezits.
Dude, I’m just goofing on you, don’t take it all personal and stuff. So yeah, you are a super a-list blogger geek and got all kinda super secret code words, that’s so cool, I’ll bet you get lots of chicks. Believe me I am so jelouse i cant even remember how to spell jealous.You are probably getting that sweet firedoglake pussy, eh? And maybe some of that wonkette action. Dude, you the man.
And don’t goof on my made-up nym, dumbass, it makes you look gradeschool.
KRK
I’m not an Iowan, but my understanding is this. Obama, Edwards, Richardson, and Obama took their names off the Michigan ballot in keeping with their understanding of the word “participate” in the pledge they all signed not to “campagin or participate” in states that jumped the line. Kucinich attempted to also take his name off the ballot, but his paperwork got messed up and the state wouldn’t take it off. Clinton stayed on, tried to brush it off when pressed in interviews in NH that it was no big deal since the votes wouldn’t count anyway. I believe Gravel was the only other candidate who stayed on the ballot.
Not only is Clinton’s spin disingenuous with respect to how things went down in ’08 (and how she and her delegates spoke of the issue last fall), but it ignores the fact that the precedent from past years is that the major candidates always take their names off the ballot when a state pulls shenanigans. Gore and Bradley pulled their names off the ballot in 2000 when Michigan tried the same thing it did this year.
So Obama didn’t do anything out of the ordinary. It was Clinton who broke with precedent, downplayed the significance of her choice when the first 4 states raised concerns, then immediately changed her tune once the first 4 states had voted.
KRK
Oops. That second Obama in my second sentence should be Biden.
KRK
(and “delegates” in my second paragraph parenthetical should be “surrogates”)
Turns out that in 1980 Michigan also held a rogue primary (it was having an open primary, which wasn’t allowed under the DNC rules at the time). Both Jimmy Carter and Ted Kennedy took their names off the ballot.
So taking one’s name off of the ballot is the historically correct thing to do as a major Democratic candidate. Not some pandering innovation made up by Obama’s staff.
Sleeper
Thanks for the reply. I know TL is melting down, and I’m afraid to even look at Hillaryis44. They’re in a parallel world, convinced that the Democratic Party, Reid and Pelosi and every Obama superdelegate are engaged in some massive conspiracy to lose the race on purpose in order to protect Reid and Pelosi’s power in Congress, oh, and to thwart the first woman president too. Some of these people are fucking crazy.
(On a sidenote: Three hours until the Kill Whitey video…heh…)
RC
“I Got the Sienfeld referencebutjust barely and after that its twirly fantastic code word world.” Nice expression. What I am saying is that Obama is just as big an idiot as Dubya was, and using the same tricks to get elected. Bush poked fun at Gore, Obama pokes fun at Hillary. Both try to make the election about anything else but real issues. Both are always smirking. Maybe it’s because I used to be a salesman but when I saw Dubya smirking like that I realised it’s the same smirk a Kirby salesman has before he goes into your house, or the way they look at you when you walk onto a used car lot.
And Obama has the same smirk, but people seem to think it’s the loving smile of the new messiah.
Chris Johnson
It’s rather depressing seeing the trolls out to play- it’s like seeing spam in your inbox and just KNOWING it’s somebody who’s flagrantly lying to you because they want something from you- your credit card number, bank account information, whatever- the point being that they have an agenda and a goal, and you can either be raw meat for them or acknowledge that you cannot believe ANYTHING they say.
We got a guy who’s filling up stadiums and consistently calling for people to get mobilized and involved and put in some civic effort, who’s raising silly, astonishing amounts of money and producing amazing turnout everywhere, plus he is in line with antiwar popular opinion, and we’re being told bluntly that we had better get behind the opponent who talks about obliterating Iran at the behest of Israel because she appeals to hardworking prejudiced white voters.
Because there isn’t REALLY a world where we’re getting this amount of turnout and fundraising and organizational skill behind a black dude- apparently the world is a much more bitter place and we’d better scale all this hope shit back before our dreams are shattered against how sick, hateful and racist our fellow Americans REALLY ARE.
Sorry, but fuck you VERY much.
It’s bad enough getting spam that baldly wants to lie to me to get its way, in my email inbox- I’m seriously fed up with getting it in my political discourse. Stop LYING to me shamelessly, without even the decency of attempting pretty lies.
I’m 13th gen, post-Boom, and my generation grew up being told we were horribly inherently racist when we didn’t really give a shit about any of that- but we were dutifully drilled with this notion that we were sooooo societally prejudiced against women, blacks etc. when in fact my generation was setting records for being able to be multicultural even in the midst of the political correctness minefields of the day.
Now I’m 40, and voting for Obama and his curious idea that America as a whole doesn’t have to be GOVERNED by racism and all those arbitrary ways to distract from a person’s actual message and value. I personally don’t give a shit if crackers in West Virginia think Obama is a shiftless negro (omitting the N-bomb, with some reservations). All I care about is, they don’t get to kill him, and they don’t get a veto over the rest of us who want him for the job. Those guys don’t have to cease to exist, but they have to play fair and they don’t get special value just for being unredeemable racists.
It pisses me off quite a bit that Baby Boom politicos, having lectured me all my life on how inherently societally prejudiced I am, now insist Obama shouldn’t get a fair shot at being elected president because we’re all supposedly still racist at heart, and will presumably all bail on the dude rather than support him. Like, “Whoops! I was about to vote for a nigger! Silly me!”
Well, fuck you Clintonista people for your low-assed opinion of me and the rest of the country, and shame on you. It’s called ‘projection’. And we don’t need you to go away, or be brainwashed into compliance- as Americans, you are entitled to differing opinions, and in fact you’re entitled to racist bullshit.
You’re just not allowed to DO anything about it, so get the hell out of the way. Grown-ups are working, and we have a big mess to clean up that you are only making worse.
RC
“Since their policy positions are extremely similar (center-left corporate-friendly Democrats with some lip service to environmentalism and helping the poor), what exactly do you see in Clinton?” Sleeper, I’m not a Clinton supporter, I just like politicians who are smart, can answer questions on issues, don’t smirk at me, and basically don’t piss on me and tell me it’s raining.
To me Obama just looks like a phony greedy politician who can’t believe people don’t see through him, and so can smirk at them openly. For some reason Dubya was like that, couldn’t believe his luck and the same disaster is likely to be repeated. Dubya was probably the worst qualified candidate in 50 years or more, and if people paid attention to that he would not have been even nominated. Obama is probably the second worst qualified in the last 50 years. He is however the second best smirker after Dubya.
And the funny thing is Obama admitted all this in his book, that the way to fool white people was to smile a lot and look happy, so they wouldn’t think he was a typical angry black man.
Maybe Dubya started all this by saying that a president didn’t have to be smart, as long as he hired smart people. Now the presidency seems to be about who would make the best figurehead while the smart ones in the background run everything. Even after all this time no one has any evidence *at all* that Obama has special policies, special ideas, or any reason to be president other than he smiles a lot. Maybe there’s karma here, after the Republicans nominating an idiot and thinking he was a genius, that it’s the turn of the Democrats to be suckered and for the Republicans to sit back and laugh.
Chris Johnson
RC-troll-san, if you are not a Clinton supporter, hate Obama, and hate republicans, why don’t you just shut up?
In my opinion, an attitude of relentless cynicism and loathing has actually harmed this country and given people like the Bush/Cheney crowd lots of rope to pursue abuses that would have astonished the most rock-ribbed Goldwater Republicans of the 1950s.
If you think a black man gets to act sullen in this country you’re crazy- NO politician gets anywhere without being able to engage with people in a friendly way, and I think it actually says great things about America that Obama can get a lot of traction simply by not having a chip on his shoulder and not being all pissed off. This is interpersonal relationships 101, ‘bonehead social behavior’ here, not some secret Negro plot to appease whitey.
Quit with the trolling or face intelligent discourse that will show you up…
bago
We can’t stop here! This is BAT COUNTRY!
Or in the case of TL, batty country.
SEXIST!
Sleeper
RC, apparently, does not like to see a black man smiling. That seems to be his entire argument against Obama.
There are a lot of significant criticisms one can make of Obama (I made them for months to my Obama-supporting friends), but comparing him to George W. Bush just makes you look stupid.
RC
“We got a guy who’s filling up stadiums and consistently calling for people to get mobilized and involved and put in some civic effort, who’s raising silly, astonishing amounts of money and producing amazing turnout everywhere, plus he is in line with antiwar popular opinion,” Yes we have and his name is George Bush. That’s exactly what he did, right down to the small donations. And he lifted his nonsense about post partisan politics and intending to clean up Washington straight out of Bush’s campaign speeches.
I’m not saying don’t vote for Bizarro George, it’s too late for that. I’m just laughing at all the suckers who got played by Bush’s tricks get screwed exactly the same way by Obama. I have no idea how anyone got fooled by Bush, and I have no idea how anyone is fooled by the same tricks with Obama.
Notorious P.A.T.
Oh yeah, Obama is the next W. One of them had to work and scratch and claw for everything he’s got, the other had everything handed to him on a silver platter and still squandered most of his golden opportunities. One didn’t want to invade Iraq, the other literally couldn’t wait for the bombs to fall and the punishment to begin. One got to where he is by way of community activism, the other by using his family’s connections and Nazi money to buy himself an oil business, then a baseball team, then a governorship. One seeks to bring people together, the other wants to carve the country into 50%+1. One has spent half his life immersed in different cultures and different points of view, the other can’t tell the difference between Sweden and Switzerland.
Should I go on, about all the many similarities between the two?
Sleeper
Wrong. Bush’s strength at fundraising was due to bundling, get donors to package together individual donations into $100,000 bricks of cash. Like bosses “encouraging” their employees to max out their donations to him. Obama’s fundraising is overwhelmingly from small donations from unique donors, not maxed out donations from a much smaller donor pool. This is another advantage he has over Clinton: lots of her donors couldn’t give her any more anyway. He doesn’t have that problem.
RC
“Since we’re involved in “campaign speech” which, um, pieces of fact and detail did you involve yourself in, RC? I note you provided all kinds of links, refs, and … rant.
Somebody is going to read here what they could read on Obama’s site? Why? Did you have something specific in mind that needed addressed? Or were you just a trolling along? Did you read somebody avoiding a particular question? What was it?”
Actually I have never read any Obama supporter talk about any issues at all. They just refer you to a web site, talk about how wonderful Obama is, and then say something nasty about Hillary. They can’t talk about issues because Obama never talks about issues, so they have nothing to say. He just smiles and smirks, talks about vague hope, and follows the Dubya plan.
A few years after Dubya was elected people started wondering if he broke his promises, but he didn’t make any. He just smirked, pretended you’d want to have a beer with him and that he was a country boy and not a rich spoiled aristocrat. Obama has made no promises to do anything, even with Iraq he backtracked on all his promises. He was only lucky his original speech on Iraq looked good in retrospect. He is the new prophet, needs no policies, just believe in him. Bizarro George.
Thomas Smith
That’s some weird psychodelic conversation you got goin on down here in john’s holler RC. Can’t fer the life of me see how yo can compair obamy to GW, but then you got your way of lookin at things and i got mine. Seein you don think much of them boys Obamy, Gore an Bush, but you got a hardon fer thet Hillary eh? She’s a hot one aint she, She’ll put the bulgin in yer overalls eh?
Course I wouldn’t vote fer her, seein as how she’s a woman and all.Woman got no place in the exeucative office.
Thomas Smith
My granmammy, bless her soul, alays used to say, “Be A cynical bastard Thomas. Cynicism will serve you well.”
And she was right. Course that was back in them Goldwater republican years, Things might changed up nowadays, what with yer video games and yer internets.
Chris Johnson
It is certainly effective social behavior to postulate some crazy thing and then maintain the charade in a deadpan way, ideally with the support of others (hard luck RC!)
For instance, if you were to insist the sky was made of nitrogen. Everybody knows we breathe nitrogen. Oxygen is actually bad for you, it’s for plants to breathe! That’s why the air is mostly nitrogen and there’s only trace amounts of oxygen. You can get killed in a garage with an idling car putting too much oxygen into the air! Everybody knows combustion produces Carbon-Oxygen, known as Carbon Monoxide. It’s the oxygen that kills you, as is well known…
When you carry on that hard and that relentlessly on something that is tough to disprove out of personal direct experience, it’s disturbing to be around because we still (somehow!) expect people we’re interacting directly with to be honest, or at least sincere.
My sister’s a research psychologist and a psych teacher, and she’s told me about a fascinating experiment that’s done on the street. You have someone asking directions of a stranger, and two people carrying a door. The people carrying the door pass between the direction-asker and the stranger, and the asker and first door-carryer switch places. Many people don’t notice that they’re suddenly talking to a different (not radically, but different) person who’s carrying on the same conversation.
If the direction asker is dressed as a construction worker and so are the door carriers, even fewer people notice the person has changed. There must be a subset of people who go off and have nightmares and don’t know why… it’s very Twilight Zone, after all.
This falls into the category of ‘pranks’ or the pathology of cognition- and so do you, RC. You’re engaging in behavior that is untrustworthy for starters, and on top of that you’re intentionally trying to produce the maximum cognitive dissonance, specifically around Barack Obama, in a conscious attempt to introduce ideas (like ‘smirking’ and analogies with Bush) which are as deceptive as the identity of the direction-asker in the door experiment.
I don’t see you trying to get any Clinton supporters to curl up in a ball of cognitive dissonance sucking their thumbs, so it does appear that unless you’re a total sociopath in it for the lulz, you’re a Clinton advocate following in your candidate’s pantsuitsteps and trying to basically bust up anything positive that isn’t to your team’s personal advantage. Salting the earth, as it were.
We can keep on knocking down the actual lies you tell, all day, but don’t you understand you’re hurting this country by lowering a very serious subject to the level of cognitive pranks? I’m going to request that you be honest. The Presidency is serious business and affects the whole world.
Chris Johnson
I wonder if I’m talking to a bunch of sockpuppets all run by the same guy? I see RC replying to RC, and Thomas Smith replying as if he was RC. I stand by my point- this is actually a serious subject, please talk less crap and throw out less chaff. We already know that you can say anything you want even if it’s crap- people like Limbaugh proved that.
I’m suggesting that this is not a longterm winning strategy, that it is actually debilitating and harmful.
cleek
the troll is fat. maybe it’s time to stop feeding it?
Chris Johnson
I’m kind of meta-ing it. And there’s a person on the other end of that troll, though God knows why he’s carrying on in that way. Trolls are people, too, with a vote and everything.
It’s just that their idea of fun is about as good for society as street racing around and around the nursing home…
tattoosydney
I know that the whole “popular vote” thing should be treated with the contempt it deserves – this is not a competition about the popular vote, it is a race for delegates…
However, the hoops that Clinton bloggers can jump themselves through amaze me:
Jeralyn at Talk Left, with her “Count every vote” argument outlines this:
and then manages to conclude that:
Yes, but only if you ignore the figures THAT YOU JUST QUOTED WHICH SAY THAT HE IS IN THE LEAD IN THE POPULAR VOTE.
Damn they make me angry…
RC
“Seein you don think much of them boys Obamy, Gore an Bush, but you got a hardon fer thet Hillary eh?”
No, I don’t think much of Hillary either. I like politicians to be wonks and perform. Obama is just a show pony, he talks about hope being a plan which is absurd. What could be more ridiculous than hope as a campaign? Even this was lifted from Bush, painting Gore as a pessimist on tax cuts, the environment, etc.
El Cid
It’s certainly possible that from the point of view of Clinton, the party is about to nominate “another McGovern” and progressives can’t win so they have to go out and save the party from itself.
But from my point of view, I see two elections Bill Clinton barely won with huge help from Ross Perot (and don’t dare give me that nonsense about how he drew votes from both Bush & Clinton given that Perot spent the entire campaign undermining Bush Sr as a false conservative).
And I saw them passing a hugely Republican agenda typically with a majority of Republicans AGAINST a majority of Democrats.
And I saw that leadership lead directly to the Democrats LOSING CONGRESS FOR A DOZEN YEARS 1994 – 2006, and forming a direct precedent for the Bush Jr. triumvirate.
Not to mention that, oh yeah, you know the McGovern that all good Democrats are supposed to hate as a failure? Well, go back to the 1968 election where they party insiders took it from McGovern, the leading vote-getter, to give it to the war-hawk Humphrey. (You know, the 1968 election in which the nomination went to June?)
How’d that insider-favored, centrist hawk Humphrey do?
How was that first Humphrey administration? Did the Clintons work in it?
Oh, no, that’s right — the party-insider chosen, centrist war-hawk Humphrey lost to Republican Richard Nixon.
So maybe some of these people can shut the f*** up about McGovern as though he’s the only f***ing Democrat in history who lost, and as though as long as you can play Republican-lite everyone loves you.
I don’t need the Clintons to substitute their supposed political insight on who can or can’t win for mine. The 1990s are no g** d*** role model for people who want Democrats to win — barely pulling off a plurality twice with a strong independent hammering the conservative and then losing Congress for a decade while passing Republican-originated legislation against your own majority.
So, you know, more than one group can play the history and judgment game.
RC
“Oh yeah, Obama is the next W. One of them had to work and scratch and claw for everything he’s got, the other had everything handed to him on a silver platter and still squandered most of his golden opportunities. One didn’t want to invade Iraq, the other literally couldn’t wait for the bombs to fall and the punishment to begin. One got to where he is by way of community activism, the other by using his family’s connections and Nazi money to buy himself an oil business, then a baseball team, then a governorship. One seeks to bring people together, the other wants to carve the country into 50%+1. One has spent half his life immersed in different cultures and different points of view, the other can’t tell the difference between Sweden and Switzerland.
Should I go on, about all the many similarities between the two?”
No, I’ll do it for you. Bush portrayed himself as a Texas farmer and Gore as the elite snob, just like Obama tries to pretend he isn’t an elitist. We know this about Bush now, but then he got away with acting like a hick and people made him president because of it.
And Bush became president on an anti war platform just like Obama. Obama is the one carving the Democratic Party in half in his 50 + 1% strategy.He has his share of shady businessmen, lobbyists and easy money. Obama could have made millions a year as a lawyer with his connections like his wife is making a fortune. He didn’t do this to pose as a poor man for politics, just like Bush did. Maybe if Obama had paid more attention he would know the difference between Buchenwald and Auschwitz, even Bush might have known how many states there are in America.
Obama has made as many gaffes as Bush did at this point in the election against Gore.
Peter Johnson
I agree. This is the most important election in years and we’re about to throw it away because some Obama supporters are too busy joking to face the possibility, and at this point it is just a possibility, that their candidate can’t win in the general.
The latest pollster.com average of polls shows Hillary solidly beating McSame by nearly three points, while Obama trails by one. Shouldn’t we all take that into account? Isn’t that just as important as pledged delegates? And I say this, again, as an Obama supporter, a maxed out Obama donor.
Peter Johnson
No, I’ll do it for you. Bush portrayed himself as a Texas farmer and Gore as the elite snob, just like Obama tries to pretend he isn’t an elitist.
And he’s not even doing a half-way decent job of it. Think Rove would have let Bush eat arugula on the campaign trail? Think Rove would have let Bush scream “LET ME FINISH MY WAFFLES” at reporters. Think Rove would have let Bush repeatedly describe rural Americans as bitter.
Obama’s campaign has been Bush strategy with worse execution from day one.
bago
OOh! Because they are fully documented on his website? You know th things with the URL’s?
Because he is a a Harvard Graduate who says words like “folks”!
You can really Trust them Yalies though. They’re “Awesome“!
Chris Johnson
It’s a little bit like the Kennedy assassination talk, isn’t it? You get upset and want to say ‘no, you can’t go there’.
Please stop talking so crazy, RC. It’s not lots of fun, except for you.
50 state strategy is NOT 50% + 1% strategy.
Black kids from Chicago ARE NOT like the Ivy League, wealthy children of Nazi-supporting industrialists.
I’ll quote Jon Stewart from a similar context- please stop HURTING America by talking such relentless crap. We know it’s fun for you, but it’s exhausting and it’s poisoning the well for anyone who doesn’t have the energy to deconstruct your crap. People tend to trust that the arguments they read are at least sincere. Please stop HURTING America this way.
Chris Johnson
Can’t win, my ass. Fundraising and turnout tell the story.
Peter Johnson
Because they are fully documented on his website? You know th things with the URL’s?
All websites have URL’s. That doesn’t prove anything.
Peter Johnson
Black kids from Chicago ARE NOT like the Ivy League, wealthy children of Nazi-supporting industrialists.
Obama’s not from Chicago. That’s a myth He’s from Hawaii. So your point is moot. It’s ironic how little some Obama supporters know about the man’s actual biography.
Otto Man
No, only shallow assholes think that.
I was an Edwards backer, and when he dropped out I had to pick a new candidate. (Unlike Clinton supporters, I never thought to hold the party hostage and demand the majority bend to my will. If only we’d known holding-your-breath was an option.)
I’ve never been impressed by the idea of Obama as a “rock star” or whatever, and am pretty much a cynical cold-eyed realist when it comes to politics. Looking at his positions, his platform, and his promise to campaign across the country and not just on the tried-and-failed DLC sixteen state plan all won me over.
You want to see people with a deranged attachment to a savior figure? Head to Hillaryland. The diehard Hillary supporters are committed solely to her as a person, so much so that they’re promising to vote for the candidate who stands against everything she stands for and not the candidate whose platform is 99% like hers. That’s beyond pathetic.
Otto Man
I’m all for getting the mentally retarded out on the internet, but someone needs to watch so they don’t hurt themselves.
Thomas Smith
Chris Johnson Says:
Reading comprehension aside, you are not talking to anyone, shortpants. Look around, you are down here in the deep dark depths of a dead thread writing long boring diatribes no one will ever read.
Heres a clue. keep your comments short. Nobody reads comments, much less long boring unfunny ones. It helps if you say “tits” once inawhile.
hth.
RC
“When you carry on that hard and that relentlessly on something that is tough to disprove out of personal direct experience, it’s disturbing to be around because we still (somehow!) expect people we’re interacting directly with to be honest, or at least sincere.”
No, it’s hard but let me explain. People much like you elected Bush in 2000, perhaps the all time worst president in history. He had the most ridiculous campaign and was obviously a stupid, corrupt, aristocrat and yet people got suckered into thinking of him as a genius, hard working farm boy elected to clean up Washington corruption.
Not only that but he managed to get the highest approval ratings on any president in history with the same lame Rovian tricks. Now finally he is exposed for what he always was, but what was really exposed was the idiocy of the people who fell for it all. John Cole here, and Andrew Sullivan for example were just ridiculous is how taken in they were by Bush, and it was painful to watch them slowly and publically realise just what fools they had been. I would have thought after the all time most gullible group of voters in the history of the US elected someone like Bush they would be a bit more humble about the very next election.
Now Obama is pulling the same lame stunts and people are falling for the same nonsense all over again. I would have thought this time everything the candidates said was checked for accuracy, to see how smart they really were, how corrupt, etc. Instead Obama has no real political experience, to say otherwise is just silly. He has a ridiculous campaign based on vague hope with no plan to do anything. He smiles all the time like Dubya does, it looks to me like he is smirking at the same suckers Dubya was. Others think it is a beatific smile like Jesus might have had. 99% or more of his policies are the same as Hillary and people see this as a huge difference and somehow change.
Every time he speaks without a speech he makes silly gaffes as bad as Dubya did. Yet somehow people can’t see any of this because of the same vague change and hope Dubya peddled, that if Obama is president some how they will get more money, even though Obama hasn’t promised any. He uses a lot of big words to make himself sound more intelligent, but there is no evidence he is a genius in his college results. He acts like a prophet, like Dubya did, because he was lucky his Iraq speech turned out accurate. With the surge though he may well be wrong, and in any case he has no intention of leaving Iraq either.
But some people are as incapable of seeing this as they were with Bush. Over time as he flounders people will start to realise they were played just like with Bush though.
Peter Johnson
but there is no evidence he is a genius in his college results.
You’re going way too far here. He was editor of Harvard Law Review and graduated magna from Harvard Law, which means he was in the top ten percent of his class. You’ve got to be pretty damn smart to do that.
John S.
Unelectability? That’s why concern troll is concerned about Obama? Gimme a break. Here’s a little premonition from Yiddish with George and Laura (2006):
kaporah (kah-PORE-ah) n. – Disaster or catastrophe.
Otto Man
Famous Hope-Based Campaign Slogans that Failed Horribly:
A New Deal
The New Frontier
The Great Society
Morning in America
As the Daily Show noted, Hillary’s slogan appears to be “Vote Hillary, Because a Deaf God Ignores Our Prayers.”
RC
“I’m all for getting the mentally retarded out on the internet, but someone needs to watch so they don’t hurt themselves.”
I would have thought that voters who elected someone mentally retarded and gave them the highest approval rating in history might be more humble about their skills in selecting candidates. However this is exactly how Bush ran his campaign for president, as an antiwar compassionate conservative.
Thomas Smith
Is that what we’re calling “boring as all crap” nowadays?
Here is another clue, Chris, you aren’t going to convince anyone, no matter how many passionate paragraphs you write deep in the comment section of someone else’s blog. You want to change hearts and minds, turn off your computer and hit the streets, see if you can not bore people there.
Chris Johnson
You can almost automatically take the inverse of what this guy says as truth… except if you do he’ll throw in some changes to screw you up. And say ‘tits’.
Don’t need clue from you, mate!
I’ll write extended, completely thought out statements if I want to- it’s a method of communicating ideas and taking the time to make sure they’re understood, which is most useful when you’re asking another person to think. I admit that short punchy crap is the most effective way of mobilizing opinion without eliciting thought, but for years we’ve seen the results of that, and I’m quite sick of it.
tl;dr should be tl;dv (too lazy, don’t vote).
We’ve got a responsibility to weather the impending decline of the US empire as our society totters under $6, $8, $20 a gallon gas in the future- it’s going to be tricky work that will require thought and communication as we evolve big societal changes.
Don’t even presume to teach me how to make shorter, punchier trolls to manipulate people’s unthinking reactions, when that’s not going to help a bit in the long run. Perhaps you mean to have fun as long as you can and then commit suicide?
El Cid
Look, it’s cute and all that some paranoids are trying to scream the Obama is just like Bush Jr. because he tries not to be elitist whereas Hillary Clinton has never ever ever been a politician she has been 100% genuine on everything always.
And, look, give it your best shot. Scream it to the rooftops. Get everyone who shares your view to repeat it over and over and over.
But the record is clear: Obama is a mainstream liberal from the Democratic Party with a background of academic achievement and a decent bit of actual community organizing under his belt before he became a quite successful local politician.
George Bush Jr. was the son of a President and the grand-son of a Senator, who went to elite prep schools, and whose career involves a series of taxpayer-subsidized failed businesses escaped only by the use of his father’s cronies, and after the governorship of Texas, he was selected by the organized right wing neo-Reaganites to head their party.
It’s cute that some anti-Obama paranoids are trying to make those two seem parallel.
And I say, bring it on. Bring it ALL on. Pour all your little dear hearts into it.
Because you’re going to lose. Bad.
Chris Johnson
Must be winning, I’m trolling the trolls to ever more personal attacks ;)
And I _like_ John’s blog- some people actually talk sense here- and far from being the depths of a long dead thread, I have to say- guys, this is the TOP STORY on this site. Hello?
I should be working, but I’m self-employed and was up early this morning so I have lots of time in my schedule today- and I do like to take the time to explain what I actually consider important, and what needs to be done, rather than saving a lot of time by punchy short retorts along the lines of ‘lol u sux and ur boring’.
Of course, some of you guys are getting dragged in to many, many posts like that, so you’re not saving time by it at all.
I still think it’s tragic. You should try to not HURT America by poisoning our discourse with obvious, insincere bullshit. The fact is, we need to go with the ‘hope, diplomacy and rescinding Bush executive orders’ guy, because that’s the right thing to do, and also he has way better fundraising and turnout than anybody else, not to mention a much sharper organization.
Otto Man
Right. The 2000 Republican platform’s statements on military buildup and foreign involvement sound like they were written by Dennis Kucinich.
Can we get smarter trolls? Please?
Thomas Smith
Man I am so with you we don’ need short we need long because too much last 8 years and dont forget clinton to many years … its like dynasty or some shit, bush and clinton for so many years, we need to rise up above and get on the streets and make some noise and make sure this shit doesnt happen again.
I mean can you imagine another 4 years of Gerge Bush? And we can have that. $ more years of war, imagine what he will do next time to start war with Iran like he and cheney did blowing up the world trade center to start the iraq war, and this time the masons might come out from their underground caves in china
RC
“We can keep on knocking down the actual lies you tell, all day, but don’t you understand you’re hurting this country by lowering a very serious subject to the level of cognitive pranks? I’m going to request that you be honest. The Presidency is serious business and affects the whole world.”
Serious subject? Your generation voted in a retard for president, thought a pampered corrupt aristocrat was a farm boy from Texas. Then you gave him the highest approval rating in history. If Bush is the worst president in history what do you think history will think of the people who elected him twice? How about some self honesty on what you really know about Obama other than unspecified hope and change, grinning like a Cheshire Cat at all the money he is going to make as president by fooling people with Bush’s campaign plan?
I cannot possibly be lying because that would mean there is evidence to the contrary. Obama has made no promises to anyone except vague hope and change, which is meaningless. I wouldn’t have believed it possible someone would become a candidate with literally no platform, no policies, no promises, but Dubya did it and now Obama has done it too.
This has nothing to do with Hillary, she has lost now and you cannot deflect Obama’s shortcomings onto her. Bush had the same confident air about him, that he was going to change things too when he was first president. We now know it was all nonsense, and here we are with another candidate doing the same.
SGEW
He knows! Destroy him!
4tehlulz
Obama = Bush. You really have no fucking shame, do you?
RC
“Right. The 2000 Republican platform’s statements on military buildup and foreign involvement sound like they were written by Dennis Kucinich.”
In fact Bush ran on the promise to keep America out of Clinton’s wars like Bosnia. Do you know anything about Bush and Gore, you sure sound like you have no idea. Also it was Gore’s plans to fight terrorism that Bush said were overblown.
But this thread just shows that Obama supporters are as unable to criticise their dear leader as people were with Bush, and the reality for them will be long and painful. Perhaps Obama will even break Bush’s records of hyping hope and change to more than 90% approval and then into the twenties when they see how empty it all was.
And the Republicans will enjoy google bombing Obama as the new miserable failure. I think Obama will be president because people are a sucker for empty promises of hope and change, they proved that with Bush. Still Obama will get his money and fame, and his cronies like Rezco will get their payback.
flyerhawk
Apparently the folks at DemConWatch are expecting a flurry of endorsements today because they have set up a special page just for Monday’s endorsements.
So far 2 supers have endorsed Obama today. Obama will have the necessary delegates by Wednesday, IMO. And if you want to see TaylorMarsh, TalkLeft, Corrente meltdown wait till that happens.
Our buddy Lukasiak told me over at TL that the pledged delegate count is even more irrelevant than the popular vote. Yup he’s just waiting for all those supers to throw their support for Hilrod.
Thomas Smith
Obama is sleek and sexy, and I’m sure you’ll agree Hillary really fills out a pantsuit (rrrow), and Bush, well, we’ve all touched ourselves to that Mission Accompished picture, and Gore’s beard was cute in a bearish sorta way- but I’m all for reelecting the dessicated corpse of Richard Nixon, the last true American patriot and diplomat.
Doug H. (Fausto no more)
I find better things to do on a Sunday night, and come back to find 280+ posts of grade-F trolling and spoofing. You’re disappointing me, guys.
0/10. Yawn. Go back to Hilis44 for a few months, then come back and try again.
El Cid
Look, you may not like them or may disagree with them, but Obama has an extremely clear platform and policies.
If it seems like he doesn’t, maybe that’s because they’re so stereotypically mainstream Democratic positions that they seem to you to vanish into the background.
For example, it would be rather amazing for Hillary Clinton to have criticized point by point Obama’s health care plan proposal as inferior to her own Edwards-derived proposal if the Obama plan she was criticizing didn’t exist.
Secondly, let us not forget that Bill Clinton’s Job #1 was to immediately begin contradicting nearly all of his campaign platform and program commitments once in office, so all his populist left blathering ended up with zero prediction impact on his actual policies of governance.
You have Obama with a clear but not revolutionary platform and program, whose existence has been verified directly by Hillary Clinton via her criticism of that platform, versus Clinton with a clear record of some pretty awful decision-making in her own office. The Iraq war and Kyl-Lieberman being among them.
If the anti-Obama paranoids weren’t driven to such extremes, the degree to which they’re fetishizing the idea that previous candidates had these crystal clear programs & platforms which then got implemented 1-2-3 would be laughable.
jibeaux
Well, this is all about to moot. Isn’t Larry releasing the “whitey” video about now?
Doug H. (Fausto no more)
Oddly enough, Blogspot’s servers seem to have taken a dump. IT’S A CONSPIRACY!!!!!!!!11!!1!1!!!
nightjar
You don’t have to be a smartass butcher. I was offering my opinion, that’s all. I’m not talking about parties being under the finger of government. I ‘m talking about adopting methodology that allows for maximum participation for the greatest number of people. There are lots of people who, like me, don’t like caucuses for a host of reasons. Like I said elections are not a mystical practice of complexity unique to each states whims. They are, or should be, a one person one vote proposal, period. The fact that we have the state by state mishmash of laws and methodology is because we’ve created it that way and making it easier and with greater integrity does not imo constitute interfering in the right of free association, or some freeper concept of states rights, or whatever. And of course, like I said, primaries are somewhat different. And as for my paying for real primary elections, I say there are worse things for our tax money to go toward. But then, you seem to have elected yourself to be resident expert on elections, so what do I know.
J.D. Rhoades
Ask Al Gore how important winning the popular vote is.
J.D. Rhoades
Hillaryis44 will not exist in a few months.
El Cid
“Why’d he” not release the awsum video yet?
PeterJ
Senator Kennedy is undergoing brain surgery right now.
Let’s hope the surgery is successful.
—
hahaha
Dennis - SGMM
Because you can’t dub video in Microsoft Paint?
Sleeper
Drumroll!
…no video from Larry. Shocking, I know. But it’s coming any day now. Also, Obama works for Farrakhan.
El Cid
I have actually come to understand that I like neither caucuses nor primaries as a way of choosing candidates.
As a matter of perspective, it’s weird to have a lot of people acting as though really establishment-protective, cautious institutions like parties are going to have by default methods of choosing candidates equivalent to our participatory democratic fantasies.
There are a hell of a lot of people who have been working on election structuring, democratic decision-making, and funding procedures who could help design nominating procedures a billion times better, but their designs would face nearly infinite resistance from the parties.
(For example: did you know that the reason most local elections were non-partisan was an early 20th Century ‘good government’ program to short-circuit the influence of socialist and ethnic parties? Now you know.)
Narcissus
The much anticipated “whitey”-tape post is like some sort of batshit Wold-Newton of the wingnut universe; it’s an Obama-Farrakhan-Rezko conspiracy. Jesus.
Sleeper
Comment from NQ:
Presented with no comment, except to say: Yikes. You guys weren’t exaggerating.
PeterJ
Actually they didn’t dub the video, but they used Microsoft Paint. Three of my source say, independently, that they have been working day and night since February painting over Eddie Murphy with Michelle Obama.
Thomas Smith
I can only imagine how pathetic you must feel, Doug. My advice, a long shower and a warm vinegar douche.
4tehlulz
As soon as he can find a crack for his pirated version of Adobe Premiere, he’ll produce the video — IN HD
PeterJ
I will also point out that this is also the actual reason that Clinton lost, all these people painting were so tired that they couldn’t do any campaigning for Clinton. They actually even didn’t turn up to vote…
Sleeper
ha! Awesome reference. Farmer is the man.
PeterJ
Also, what the fuck is up with the sub standard troll RC? Learn to blockquote for fuck sake…
markus
@El Cid
This isn’t about Obama being like Bush, it’s about getting you to forget or ignore that Clinton’s candidacy is partly built around her husbands presidency. She was the one with the establishment support, the insider knowledge, her husbands fundrasing ability etc. all of which make her much more like Bush in terms of being a legacy candidate whose success is relatively less her own.
But, straight from the Rove playbook (which has it’s uses) a pawn arguing clean up-is-down-ism keeps the debate in the corner opposite the one one wants to avoid and provides enough material for the believers to latch on to and stave of cognitive dissonance.
Actually, legacy support is mostly neither here no there (perhaps a slight negative in that it is irrational and without precondition) and guessing “true substance” is a fool’s game. Which makes it a favourite topic for people unable to win an argument on policy positions or looking to mask a predjudice. Forget it.
over_educated
You are going ot have to try harder on this board to rile folks up RC, we can engage in rational arguments here.
The comparison between Obama nad Bush is patently absurd, their background, education and attitude are substantially different. You seem to keep refferring to the way Obama smiles as somehow upsetting to you. I think that falls into the “I don’t like the way he looks” category which, I’m sure you will agree, is not a basis for a system of governement.
As for policy, please point out 3 policy positions Obama has that are substantially different from Hillary’s. Barring that, I think it is safe to say that from a policy standpoint they are both the essentially the same.
So now we go to a question of style and appeal. Obama clearly appeals to younger, better-educated and black voters, while Hillary seems to have the edge with older white and female voters as well as Hispanics.
But really it is irrelevant, I would vote for either Democratic canididate this fall becasue I agree with their policy positions (particularily on the war in Iraq, where I feel Obama has shown better judgement and leadership) more than Republicans.
If you are not going to vote for Obama because you don’t like his smile, then really there is nothing I can say to you because you are not basing your decision on anything rational.
(Not that I excepect a serious response by the way, you are an obvious troll, but I thought I would give you an example of some of the reasoning you do not see on the ra-ra Hillary boards).
RC
“Look, you may not like them or may disagree with them, but Obama has an extremely clear platform and policies.
If it seems like he doesn’t, maybe that’s because they’re so stereotypically mainstream Democratic positions that they seem to you to vanish into the background.”
You can’t have it both ways. How can he be the messiah of hope and change when his policies are exactly the same as the same old Democrats. As they used to say, meet the new boss same as the old boss.
Dennis - SGMM
They voted in Puerto Rico. Quite a spectacle this: the candidate who started with universal name recognition, a ton of money and 100 supers now reduced to braying about her victory in a place that can’t even vote in the general election.
Otto Man
Did you read the link? Bush’s 2000 campaign was predicated on Clinton having let military funding languish — remember the bullshit about “if the commander-in-chief were to call our troops to service, two full battalions would have to say, ‘Not ready to serve, sir'”? — and as the platform shows, the military buildup, complete with Reagan-era “peace through strength” nonsense was clearly telegraphed.
Bush said he wouldn’t do “nation building” which is Republican talk for “wasting our troops on something other than killing.” He didn’t like Bosnia because it was a NATO-led endeavor that subjugated US authority to international forces. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to use military force; he wanted to use it by himself.
If you thought Bush was promising to be an “anti-war candidate” in 2000, you’re a bigger moron than you let on.
Sleeper
One more, I promise. Then I’ll stop.
But except for that minor detail, it’s confirmed!
Okay. No more nutpicking. I just couldn’t help myself, sorry.
rachel
I’m sure all it wants is some pie. :-D
jibeaux
That is hysterical.
Somehow, it goes hand in hand with:
We have:
1. racist voters
2. sore losers
3. women who think electing Hillary will reverse that promotion that got passed over for in 1976
4. don’t forget Puerto Rico!
The only thing we don’t have is enough delegates to win the nomination or any other way to win it. Okay? Stop whining.
Octavian
Ben Smith (at Politica) is reporting that Hillary’s campaign are shedding a lot of staffers before converging on NYC Tuesday night. This sounds an awfully lot lik the actions of someone who is about to announce the “suspension” of her campaign.
Thomas Smith
Not true!
But i know people who have seen a tape of Larry Johnson with young boys in Cambodia. Not something i’d describe as “STUNNING” tho, more like “just sick”.
I have not seen it but I have heard from five separate sources who have spoken directly with people who have seen the tape. It features Larry Johnson, Larry Sinclair, Rush Limbaugh, several naked underage Cambodian boys and a goat . They are lolling on a futon at some sleazy whore dive with their peckers exposed. Whoops!!
Of course, I haven’t actually seen the tape, so no way to know if its actually true, what 5 separate sources told me.
Octavian
Damn it all, I meant POLITICO, not Politica. Politica sounds like either a Russian political journal or some kind of strange porn name.
cbear
Be patient.
Larry’s still interrogating the albino and he’s proving to be one tough customer. Nobody could have anticipated that they could breathe underwater, and Agent Flowbee is having to go to Plan B.
Conservatively Liberal
Fixed.
I quit reading the trolls after my last post. They are so lame that they weren’t worth the effort. Yes, we need to ask McCain to send us some trolls of a higher caliber. It seems that we only get the dregs of the troll barrel right now.
nightjar
Fantasies are the Carnivals of Human Life.
Doug H. (Fausto no more)
Has anyone checked with William B. Davis?
RC
“As for policy, please point out 3 policy positions Obama has that are substantially different from Hillary’s. Barring that, I think it is safe to say that from a policy standpoint they are both the essentially the same.”
Exactly, which is why Obama is a huckster. Nearly every speech talks about change, hope, a new America, being post partisan, etc and yet his policies are the same as Hillary. So why can’t he stop lying about change and admit he is the establishment candidate? Because it worked in Bush’s campaign, in case people have forgotten how Bush said he was going to heal partisan differences, reach across the aisle, etc. Of course that was all nonsense, he was the establishment candidate and stood for little more than tax cuts for rich cronies. It worked though, it is working for Obama, and it will work for Jeb Bush in 2012.
And if he really is the stype candidate then all his promises of change and hope are style and not substance. All people get is a president who smiles a lot, like Dubya or Carter.
I don’t like Obama because he has no integrity. This campaign of hope and change is pure hucksterism, proven by his own commitments to not change anything. He claims to be the prophet of the Iraq war but now backtracks to not changing anything on the war there. He has no ideas on change in foreign policy except to talk to more leaders instead of snubbing them.
His background is also fake. He tries to say he had a humble work background when he clearly did this to look good for politics, which is what Bush did with his ranch. He has even less experience in the senate than Bush did as governor of Texas. He has no better education than Bush did, and we saw how that was no indication of fitness to govern. He even admits in his own book that he pretends to be mild mannered so white people won’t think he is an angry black man.
And like Bush he got this far by blaming everything on the Clintons, Bush blamed Bill and now Obama can blame Hillary. But now Hillary is finished and Obama can’t get anywhere by trashing her any more.
nightjar
Ok! Who ordered the Mendacious Troll Mr. Smith.
Dennis - SGMM
This is becoming reminiscent of an episode of “Get Smart”:
“I get it, Chief; if we find out who, what, and where then we’ll know when and why.”
zzyzx
“Presented with no comment, except to say: Yikes. You guys weren’t exaggerating.”
That was pretty much my reaction when I first read the comments section.
Hey just because there’s absolutely no one who will admit to seeing this tape doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. It’ll come out ANY day now!!!
GoMS
I have a job, so I can’t read all the comments here, so maybe someone said this already, but the Clinton machine isn’t about doing something for your country. This is about winning a job and being the first. The Hilary would be the first woman president, that is her goal. So don’t expect any quit in her. They are playing this like a game; use and bend every rule possible to get the most points, that’s all. And actually, that is all politics is about these days. I said it before, if you people are foolish enough to believe that Obama is in this for the nation, then you are fools. I like Obama, I think/hope that he would be a more reasonable man than the recent POTUS group. Maybe he will legalize drugs and end the tyranny of streets gangs and organized crime. But I doubt that he will accomplish much and he will blame it on the midterm elections which will swing back to the republicans. Sorry to try to throw a wet blanket on the party….
4tehlulz
I have it on good authority that the tape is currently in the hands of the INTERNATIONAL JEW George Soros, who is using it to pull THE strings behind the scenes at the campaign of the SECRET CRAZY BLACK CHRISTIAN MUSLIM Obama.
BRB there is a van out front with that masonic pyramid eye thing on it.
Punchy
OT:
Scotty says he will talk.
Question — can Bush prevent a subpeoned individual from talking? If so, how? Isn’t it a Catch-22? If he does attempt to testify, Bush has the executive branch (FBI?) arrest him, and if he doesn’t, Congress gets the Seargent-at-Arms (hypothetically) to arrest him.
How in hell does this jive?
RC
“Bush said he wouldn’t do “nation building” which is Republican talk for “wasting our troops on something other than killing.” He didn’t like Bosnia because it was a NATO-led endeavor that subjugated US authority to international forces. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to use military force; he wanted to use it by himself.
If you thought Bush was promising to be an “anti-war candidate” in 2000, you’re a bigger moron than you let on.”
Completely wrong. The Republicans positioned themselves by being against Clinton in funding anti terrorism and tried to stop the Bosnian war. Bush was the same though he supported spending more on defense. There were no wars the Republicans wanted that the Democrats failed to provide, and plenty they didn’t want. You simply have no idea what you are talking about. Of course that’s why Obama uses Bush’s strategy, because his supporters think like Bush that up is down and Obama can give change by having the same Democratic policies that are no change at all.
El Cid
RC: I never said Obama was the “messiah of change”. You did. I don’t need to have it both ways. You do.
I never suggested that Barack Obama & Hillary Clinton were some sort of polar opposites policy-wise.
I do acknowledge the fact that Hillary Clinton comes from and leads one of the most destructive organizations to get its hands on the Democratic Party, the Democratic Leadership Council, and that this has led to the backing of an awful lot of Republican policies.
But ideologically Obama isn’t so different — yet thankfully isn’t mired in a paranoid, deluded organization convinced that the only way Democrats can win is to get rid of liberals and labor and African American influence. That’s what the DLC stood and stands for.
So at least Obama isn’t trapped in that.
4tehlulz
OBAMA = BUSH = MCCAIN! VOTE NADER 2008 FOR REAL CHANGE!
Dennis - SGMM
Bush seems to be mousetrapped on this one. If he attempts to invoke executive privilege then he destroys the Republicans’ argument that McClellan was a low level mouthpiece who wasn’t in the loop. McClellan gains instant credibility. My guess is that Bushco will attempt to run out the clock with the help of the DOJ.
Napoleon
In this now non-litigator attorney’s opinion he has zero legal basis to have him arrested (and if he did a court would spring him in a heart beat on a Habeas Corpus petition).
The way Bush would keep him from testifying is filing a suit/motion to quash with the Federal District Court for DC and have the court rule that the privilege has been invoked. Now the reason they have not done this until now is because they have no basis to invoke the privilege, and they don’t want to end up with a court ruling to that effect.
zzyzx
Also I like this whole concept that the Republicans are holding onto the tape until October, because, y’know, when trying to define a candidate it’s best to wait until after everyone’s already formed an opinion.
Doug H. (Fausto no more)
Turn out the lights, the party’s over… o/~
The only question remaining is how big of an endorsement does Hillary give Obama, and how big of a cranial implosion does the Hilis44 and Agent Flowbee crowds suffer if its anything more than lukewarm?
Doug H. (Fausto no more)
Whoops, ate my link.
(If this one doesn’t show, just go over to Marc Ambinder’s.)
RC
“RC: I never said Obama was the “messiah of change”. You did. I don’t need to have it both ways. You do.”
El Cid this thread isn’t about your comments. Obama says in every speech he is all about change and hope, whether you believe it or not. So if he says that then I say he is giving a false impression when in fact he is planning no changes and no hope for anything different, just like Bush did.
Everything about Obama is phony just like it was with Bush. I would rather a candidate who promised much less but with more honesty about it. That’s why it was so absurd picking on Hillary on things like Bosnian sniper fire. At least with McCain and Hillary you have a good idea on what they might do, though Hillary is out now. It doesn’t mean I supported Hillary, just that I knew what she represented. All I see in Obama is lies, sneaky campaign strategy like Bush used, a big false grin, and no explanations on what he is going to change, how he is going to change it, and how he knows his ideas won’t be a miserable failure. In other words a typical lying politician out to line their own pockets and with a lust for power. It’s just Obama pretends to be more than this.
Sleeper
That more or less sums up my feelings on him. I liked Edwards initially, and voted for Clinton in the primary here in NJ. What eventually put me off about her was, A) she was and is nowhere near as competent as she claims to be, and B) when she started losing, badly, she became (or maybe just revealed herself as) this bizarre creature loudly demanding we all talk about pastors and flag pins and the commander-in-chief test and how McCain was so swell. That did it for me.
The starry-eyed Obama cultist meme is really a lot of crap, at least from my own personal experience. Pure projecting.
Dennis - SGMM
The Clinton campaign’s lack of movement is due to it being tired and shagged out after a long squawk.
dr. bloor
Perhaps the fabled Whore of Mensa?
Thomas Smith
BREAKING NEWS! I just got of the phone with someone who knows someone who has actually met someone who saw a video of Larry Johnson with a n underage muslim goat. The tape exists! its on betamax and they are busy transposing it or tranpording it or whatever, but Larry has a muslim problem that is going to make that semen-stained blue dress look like a video of a little girl plucking daisy petals.
Also, this just in, Steven Segal is from the bayou-
http://youtube.com/watch?v=PU93PbZijNM
El Cid
RC: You tin-eared little idiot. Obama can be the candidate of change & hope. If he hadn’t pushed those words first, Hillary could have used them. Edwards used similar words.
Both represent change & hope from Bush Jr.
But when Hillary emphasizes that she’s ‘ready on day one’ to lead the country in a new direction, you hear a sober assessment of changes in policies. When Obama emphasizes the exact same thing, you hear “I AM A MAGIC PONY CHANGE BRINGER EMPTY SUIT BLAH BLAH”, and the fact that you hear those two things so differently is about you & idiots like you, not me or Obama.
Good grief, what, are you, like, 2 years old? You have never, ever noticed that in political campaigns candidates choose to promote themselves as real meaningful huge change bringers despite their history as fairly conventional politicians?
No, you’re just simply doing your job as an anti-Obama paranoid trying to spread the “OMG HE JUS SAID HE’S BIGGER THAN JESUS LIKE THE BEATLES DID ZOMG”.
Thomas Smith
BREAKING NEWS! Steven Seagal has giant head, is clairvoyant, is sorry for any pain or hurt or suffering or negativity he’s ever caused to any sentient being.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-a_-g-6kvk
No news yet on shocking Larry johnson video.
RC
“The starry-eyed Obama cultist meme is really a lot of crap, at least from my own personal experience. Pure projecting.”
I disagree, Obama gets to be famous and make lots of money. It’s been a fabulous year for him and Michelle. I think Obama will be a major disappointment as president because he is clearly unqualified, and people like with Bush will write about how he managed to become the nominee. Then the similarities to the Bush campaign will be obvious.
One of the real problems with Bush is his whole campaign was a packaged phony story, and so his real popularity collapsed making him look dishonest. Obama will go the same way because he has created a phony image of himself, will beat McCain and then you will have a forty something mediocre lawyer with empty promises of change,and policies that could never have changed anything. If he would be quiet about this hope and change and just talked about policies he would have finished behind Edwards because he has nothing of substance to offer. But like a vacuum cleaner salesman he got this far by promising the Earth, and like Bush this creates a feeling of destiny, of something wonderful is coming, like the black messiah Farrakhan believes he is.
But this was Bush’s scam, to promise enough to keep your approval ratings up long enough to bleed the country white for his cronies and family, then let it heal for a while with the Democrats until Jeb is ready to fleece it again. So he promised tax cuts, to increase spending, pay for a war, and led people to hope it could all work out. Instead there is potentially the worst financial crisis since the depression, and no end to war.
But they counted on an honest Democrat not a Bush clone in Obama to scam with every higher empty hopes and promises. Now all anyone has to do to be president is to have no integrity and promise everything to everyone with a straight face, a big smile, and supreme confidence. We all remember the pictures of Bush as the confident leader and somehow we all believed he knew what he was doing. But he didn’t even know there was a problem, because he was just reading the teleprompter.
And Obama is just reading the teleprompter, he has *no* idea on how to change anything, but he knows how to fool enough of the people enough of the time to be president, which is all he cares about.
RC
“RC: You tin-eared little idiot. Obama can be the candidate of change & hope. If he hadn’t pushed those words first, Hillary could have used them. Edwards used similar words.
Both represent change & hope from Bush Jr.”
Then he is still a phony. If all he is doing is pushing the establishment Democratic line compared to the Republican then that is no change because Hillary or Edwards were saying exactly the same thing. But he won the nomination by saying he represented change and hope compared to the old politics of Hillary, when he has the same policies as her.
He barely mentioned Bush and McCain, this has been all about how he is so much better than Hillary, completely fake.Sure politicians choose to pretend to offer change, but Obama has campaigned as being different, honest, not the old politics, post partisan when in fact the whole strategy is cynical and dishonest.
El Cid
RC: Okay, then every politician promising positive change but not promising complete, utter, and revolutionary change yet denying in any way that choosing them in particular would be a better choice than others should be publicly shamed as a phony, a word sure to shake the boots of the kindergarten crowd.
The Other Steve
Who cares? They’re both Democrats. If I want Democratic policies I vote for the fucking Democrat, right?
Choosing the nominee is almost entirely based upon personality and ability to communicate. And that is why Obama has won.
stinky mcgee
Shorter Taylor Marsh:
“I won’t be ignored, Dan!”
Rick Taylor
Their waiting until well after the convention so that by then it will be too late for us to realize our error and elect Hillary, our only hope to defeat McCain in 2008. That’s why it’s a millionaire Republicate who hates McCain who’s been offering all that money to get a copy out earlier.
You know, this wouldn’t even make a good spy novel.
Chris Johnson
Okay, NOW this isn’t the top story on BJ anymore.
RC: your craziness is quite exhausting, as intended. You can’t possibly believe any of this, somehow you’re working from talking points, even if you’ve built them yourself from refrigerator magnets or molded them out of cheeto dust and your own secretions.
Just shut the hell up- all you’re doing is wearying people on the other side, and since the other side is not actually the losing, doomed, side, there’s lots of us and we can happily trade off mole-whacking you for appearances. But you are both futile and alone. Have fun.
Chris Johnson
Anyhow, I’ve never seen Obama promising magic ponies and glorious victories and two dollar gas: he’s doing something a bit more impressive, he’s talking SERVICE and CIVIC VALUES and making them seem appealing. Rather than promising that he will do wondrous things and everybody should sit back, shop and enjoy, he tends to exhort people to get up and get involved, go into politics themselves, go put in the work to make a difference.
That’s a change from Bush and Hil, but it’s not really a change for America- we used to be like that. Maybe it’s conservative in a good sense, this call to civic duty. It’s absolutely the right answer for this country at this time. If we don’t pull together we’re gonna flame out bigtime, very quickly.
Big E
RE: RC “Maybe if Obama had paid more attention he would know the difference between Buchenwald and Auschwitz”
that statement proves you are a dope
Tax Analyst
Well, shit happens.
Sometimes you’re the flinger and sometimes you’re the flingee and then sometimes all you are is the fan. I don’t think I have to tell you what happens when you’re the fan and shit is flying around.
I learned to duck at a young age. At age 5 I interepted a tossed glass jar of Instant Postum with my forehead…right above my right eye. Mom had a good arm, but she never did learn how to read a Zone Defense.
Sometimes Advanced Degrees and initials after your name can be a lot like a thrown jar of Instant Postum – they’re OK as long as you don’t let them go to your head.
One day about, oh, 20 years later, I was crawling around a rather low, tight and stifflingly hot attic painting this awful toxic chemical gunk with an oversized paint brush on ceiling joists that had mostly already been hollowed out by about 30 or so years of termite chompings…the experience reminded me somewhat of a sci-fi story where some poor schmuck traveled the galaxy cut-rate…but had to inhabit the body and occupation of a “local”. His task was to gather something called…I think it was “Gonzer Eggs” or something like that. Can’t remember the title or the author or much of anything else except the general theme…except that gathering Gonzer Eggs was mostly a difficult, dangerous and mostly unrewarding task.
And now 32 years later I’m a Tax Analyst killing time talking about it.
Oops! Think it’s time to duck again.
Jeff
Late to the conversation, but how can Hillary supporters expect to be taken seriously as members of the Democratic Party when they will not vote for the party nominee, even if it is Obama. Especially, if they say they will vote for McCain instead. They’ve just shown they are not true Democrats, just part of the Cult of Hillary.
LanceThruster
Thank Dog for Ballon Juice. Though this is truly serious stuff, some of these comments make my sides hurt.
DrBlack
Damn ,John Brown of Kansas sure explains Taylor Marsh and is very funny doing it.
I knew it was a made up name.It is the kind of name you see on the covers of romance novels or Porn flicks. No that isn’t sexist,it is true. She annoys me so much as do all people who lack reason or talent and yet have some sway with the public. Okra anyone?
I ignore Hillary and have for awhile now. No true Democrat is going to help McCain by either not voting or voting McCain. Even the die hard Clinton supporters I know (all 3 of them out of dozens of Obama supporters)are sick of Hillary and no longer understand what they saw in her,
Hillary has pushed all rational people from her and may not be able to hold onto her Senate seat.
Clinton name is now mud.
Chuck Butcher
RC’s argument is
GWB lied
GWB is a politician
Obama is a politician
Obama is GWB
Politician; anybody running for President is a politician.
Point of view can make a huge difference in how you approach politics.
I have won controversial issues in politics by not taking the “usual” approach. I have watched people lose taking the usual, or lose later based on their preceding approach.
I have personally watched Obama in Q&A at a political event. Good clear thinking and detailed answers. Can Obama do everything he says he wants to do? That is a question. There’s exactly one way to answer it.
I’ve been up to my ears in politics for 45 years and I’ve watched a lot of things happen. I have some cynicism; I also know that in politics you seldom get all you want, I also know that all politicians are not the same.
slippytoad
I guess I’m just revealing how seriously I take her. I mean, I even stole that crack from the GOS. To me, it isn’t worth sitting down for three hours to read everything she wrote and produce a line-by-line rebuttal.
But now that you mention it, maybe I should. There’s a lot of chaff to be made out of them wheat stalks. Sorry to disappoint, though.
yet another jeff
Maybe that’s because policies and politics aren’t the same freaking thing…gawd.