Sic semper from Fox contributors:
Some Democrats and political analysts are urging the White House to shift course and concede that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor made an error when she suggested in 2001 that Hispanic women would make better judges than white men.
“She misspoke,” said Lanny Davis, a White House lawyer and spokesman for President Bill Clinton. “Every day that goes by that they don’t say she misspoke and she used the wrong words … they just feed it and give it life and give Rush [Limbaugh] and [Sean] Hannity more airtime unnecessarily.”
Yup, it’s the top story at the Politico.
Ninerdave
Lanny Davis is an idiot.
Martin
Gee, and I thought she said that people with experience, even if that experience isn’t a wholly positive one, are better equipped to understand a situation than someone who doesn’t have that experience.
I would think that would hold true from being discriminated against to doing sculpture to running a courtroom. Who knew we had it so wrong all this time.
blogenfreude
Lanny Davis is an idiot who whined when he thought Joe Lieberman might not retain his seat.
asiangrrlMN
Read the whole damn speech, Lanny. Sheesh! With friends like you….
Or, to put it more eloquently, yeah, what Martin sez.
KRK
I’m pretty sure that Davis is a FORMER White House lawyer and a FORMER spokesman for President Bill Clinton. That’s some quality journalism there.
Tymannosourus
Yeah, b/c that’s almost close to what she said even when taken out of context. Stay irrelevant, fuckos.
randiego
I used to see that guy at a (public) golf course near my house in suburban Maryland (at least 5 years ago). I would point him out to my liberal friends and say “that guy was a big Clinton staffer/defender during the impeachment trial, etc”, and everyone thought it was cool.
Now it’s like WTF? douche.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
“When I look over my shoulder (a half-twist at the neck) before inserting my head up my anus, that makes me a Möbius Assclown”
– Lanny Davis.
Every day that goes by that Lanny doesn’t say he misspoke and used the wrong words … just feed this story and give it life.
Wha…you mean he didn’t actually say that? So what. Accurate quotations have no place in this game.
jenniebee
The problem with all of this is the acceptance of White Man as the “normal” life experience and Latina as an “exceptional” experience.
So White Male is “normal” and can stand in for everyone else, but women can’t represent male interests because women are a special aberration from the norm. Same for white/hispanic. Same for straight/gay. And then the decisions that are informed by that inherent bias toward an exception as the “norm” are enshrined in precedent and anything any non-white, non-male, non-straight judge who corrects decisions based on that bias are activist judges whose decisions just prove that only straight white men can be trusted to return “strict constructionist” decisions and everybody else “legislates from the bench.”
It’s no coincidence that nearly all that “from the bench legislation” has been to extend civil rights beyond the white straight men who are used to having them.
Zam
Exactly what we need to do, cave to the demands of Rush and Hannity, that should shut them up. lolz
JK
Lanny Davis is still in Democratic Primary campaign mode.
asiangrrlMN
@KRK: Yeah, I was confused by that as well. What, huh? Someone in the Obama administration is saying Sonia Sotomayor should walk back something she said a long time ago that has been completely taken out of context? I should have known better.
Rick Taylor
Our public discourse is so fucking stupid.
sgwhiteinfla
GOPolitico with an assist from PUMA Lanny strikes again.
MattF
Lanny Davis gives us a valuable lesson on why Democrats kept losing, even when faced with crazy, aggressive, incompetent, authoritarian right-wingers. When Lanny hears the lies and the screaming and the bullshit, he thinks “Gee,… you know,… maybe they have a point.”
Martin
Actually, maybe we do have it wrong. These are the same people that thought a guy who runs horse shows had the right experience to run FEMA.
Comrade Dread
I’m starting to notice that a lot of Democratic leaders are rather slow.
1. Democrat says something rather innocuous.
2. Republican jumps on it, take it out of context and leap to the blogs and airwaves with shrill condemnation. Their base gets whipped up while most Americans yawn or worry about making their next mortgage payment
3. Rather than ignore them or tell Republicans to grow up or go pound sand, Democrats uses reason to try and counter their opponents arguments. They are soundly ignored by the frenzied Republican base. Most Americans are still ignoring this and wondering why American TV stations choose to broadcast reruns during the summer when we all have TiVo.
4. Democrats mistakenly believes that because the frenzied base of Republicans are loud and obnoxious that they must have regular Americans on their side too.
5. They panic and start using weasel words to apologize and clarify their misstatements.
6. Republicans smells blood and like other cold blooded predators gets even more frenzied.
7. The American public hears all of the weasel words from Democrats and assumes that if they are apologizing, the worst interpretation of the Democrat’s words must be true, and consequently all of the BS from Republicans must be right.
8. Democrats come out looking worse than if they had just told everyone in the Republican party to go f*** themselves, and after enough repetition, Americans start to associate Democrats with being mealy-mouthed idiots that consequently make them forget that Republicans pretty much destroyed the nation the last time they were in power.
The cycle used to hold true in reverse too, but sometime around the 90’s it changed to:
1. Republican says something unfunny, offensive, and/or racist.
2. Democrats jump on it.
3. Republicans whine a lot about reverse discrimination and political correctness.
4. The party base has an orgy of self-pity, whining and misery.
5. Democrats eventually tire of listening to them and drop the subject.
Cat Lady
Usually I’m really really glad John McCain didn’t get elected, but sometimes, like when I hear Lanny Davis and Mark Penn who was on a morning show a couple of days ago, I’m just as glad Hillary Clinton didn’t get elected. Imagine the panty sniffing media whores and PUMA losers being on our TeeVees 24/7.
ZOMG.
Little Dreamer
Well, I guess if Sonia Sotomayor misspoke, Samuel Alito did too?
WereBear
Yes, I for one am still waiting for some Democrats to realize they, you know, won, and can see the right wing idiocy the same way the majority of, say, the voters do.
Why in the heck is any of these clowns still given the benefit of the doubt? Mainstreaming Birchers and racists and religious fundamentalists used to be verboten.
CalD
Thanks again for reading The Politico (so I don’t have to)!
AnotherBruce
Yeah Lanny, we could 1.Have Sotomayer apologize for her comments, or..2. We could ignore the right wing’s demands while mocking them and laughing at them because they are ridiculous. A really tough choice there, hombre.
Ked
Wow.
I mean, dude. Wow.
In one short quote, Lanny was perfectly pathetic, cowardly, delusional, and self-defeating. I’ve never seen any political speech so profoundly awful from anyone not in the process of being indicted.
Lanny, baby, take your own advice. You misspoke – the sooner you can back off this statement, the fewer people will want to spit on you.
Wow.
JL
Does Lanny read? He probably doesn’t have time because he is to busy in the makeup room.
DanSmoot'sGhost
They are going to rope a dope the tards.
Let them make the Latina Woman thing the big issue. It will take the judge 5 minutes to clear it up at the hearings. She just says, a judge has to know what her prejudices are, so that she can make sure that they are not getting in the way of her work. End of controversy.
Then what will they do? Come back with the Puerto Rican dishes, and reverse elitism?
Martin
I’m not sure that’s precisely the attitude from the right. I think it’s more accurate to say that White Man is the desired future normal life experience, so anyone who doesn’t have that would be ill equipped to shape policy to create it. That is, they are more worried that their kids will grow up in Sotomayor’s culinary world than in the 1950s Life magazine cover that they have in mind.
The proposed theory of the court from the right is that judges should review precedent with the detachment of the Google search algorithm, just barfing up the outcome that most closely matches prior decisions. Of course, they really fucking hate it when that happens and it goes against them, so they also want someone who will be an activist for that utopian wife-waiting-in-the-driveway-with-a-pie-and-perky-boobs world that they so desperately crave. It’s probably fair to say that Sonia is not about to be an activist for that world.
Little Dreamer
@Comrade Dread:
Damn, I don’t have Tivo, where did I go wrong?
gwangung
@Comrade Dread: That’s simple Truth. No two ways about it.
Obama figured that out. Most of the Democratic leadership STILL hasn’t figured it out.
Steve
Wow…Politico isn’t even trying to hide it anymore.
What a hit piece.
She did NOT say that you fucking dolts!
Little Dreamer
@DanSmoot’sGhost:
Don’t forget her Puerto Rican parents were illegal immigrants. ;)
Comrade Dread
I don’t know, probably not held enough as a child.
But if you like sports, a Tivo or a DVR is a must. I can watch a football game in a little over an hour.
Little Dreamer
@Comrade Dread:
How did you know?
Steve
It’s a shame Politico doesn’t have a print version. I would like to wipe my ass with it.
I suppose I still could, but I’m not interested in buying a new monitor.
Or standing on my desk naked.
Joshua Norton
Never apologize. Never explain.
TenguPhule
Every day Bush and Cheney are not hanged by the neck till dead gives unnecessary airtime to Liz Cheney and Karl Rove.
MikeJ
I know that @Joshua Norton wasn’t a response to @Steve, but it’s a more interesting world if it was.
JL
@Little Dreamer: Technically could a person from Puerto Rico move to Kansas and run for President?
Dennis-SGMM
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
A thing of beauty, a joy forever.
El Cid
Maybe we should do what Lanny says, ’cause if we do, and Rush & co. can get rid of this terrible dumb spic chick they hate, then they’ll be really nice to the Democrats and help them with the next nominee, who should probably be a compromise candidate such as Trent Lott.
Comrade Jake
I really really hope the Obama admin ignores this nonsense, because a walkback akin to what Davis is suggesting is just the type of defensive crouch that is everything I hate about the Democratic party. Obama has largely resisted this kind of weakling posturing so far.
Little Dreamer
@JL:
Rightwingers would probably say no. ;)
linda
lanny davis — the prototype fox news democrat.
JL
@Little Dreamer: What would Scalia say? Since they are American territories, they are viewed as citizens. Of course, we could ask Lanny and see what he thinks.
Comrade Dread
Fixed for accuracy.
MikeJ
A republican or a democrat? Remember, born in Panama=all American, born in Hawaii=foreign born secret muslim.
geg6
Lanny Davis is the worst kind of sniveling DLCer. And he works for fucking FOX. Much as Harold Ford also fits the sniveling DLCer label, at least doesn’t work for FOX. Hell, Colmes is a better Democrat than Lanny. What a blithering idiot.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
Lanny has been blessed with a spine of steel. It may be a Slinky, but it’s made out of steel!
El Cid
Improv’d.
Incertus
You ever think that Hillary Clinton sees stuff like this and wonders “what if I’d just kicked him to the curb in October 2007?”
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@Ked: In one short quote, Lanny was perfectly pathetic, cowardly, delusional, and self-defeating.
As geg6 says in #47, I can spell that in 3 letters – DLC.
This is why I’m glad Hillary didn’t get the nom. Whatever her own inclinations, she’d have surrounded herself with the most self-pissing, submissive, whupped-dog Democrats ever.
Napoleon
@Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist:
That was actually the single biggest reason I did not support her when I went looking for someone to support after Edwards.
rikyrah
did you see this from Tancredo?
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/05/28/tancredo-latino-kkk/
Tancredo: Sotomayor Is A Member Of The ‘Latino KKK Without The Hoods Or The Nooses’
Seizing the opportunity to vilify a female, Hispanic Supreme Court nominee, noted bigot Tom Tancredo has emerged from obscurity to denounce Judge Sonia Sotomayor. Earlier this week, Tancredo declared her to be a “racist” who should be “disqualified” from serving on the bench.
This afternoon on CNN, he went further, attacking her affiliation with the National Council of La Raza as equivalent to being a member of the Ku Klux Klan:
This is why the White House shouldn’t say JACK.
I hope Tancredo’s video goes viral all around Spanish Media.
oh really
Samuel Alito is a white male. White men are totally objective, unaffected by their backgrounds, and are the only credible interpreters of the Constitution, which just happened to have been written by nothing but white men. Or so the Wingers would have us believe.
I’m a white male, but I wish I could live long enough to see an American Supreme Court with five or six women and five or six minorities. Not being immortal I’m unlikely to get my wish, but it would be nice.
Of course, I would also hope that none of those justices had been appointed by a Republican president, because Republican women and minorities tend to behave in unpleasant ways. While not the worst-case, Sandra Day O’Connor was an embarrassment — so obviously incapable of understanding anything outside her rich country club perspective that I could only shake my head at her ignorance.
If you don’t understand the realities of the poor, women, and minorities, you don’t belong in Congress or on any court. That understanding would not dictate any verdict, but it certainly would increase the likelihood of informed consideration of legal and constitutional issues.
HyperIon
It just never stops!
I think I heard somebody say that once.
Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist
@Napoleon: That was actually the single biggest reason I did not support her when I went looking for someone to support after Edwards.
Ditto.
Looks like we kind of dodged a bullet with Edwards, but I did like the guy in the primaries. I think he’d have done a good job as Pres but the love-child thing would have hurt pretty bad in the election.
Napoleon
@Xecklothxayyquou Gilchrist:
More like a cannon shot
Wilson Heath
Somewhere a village is missing its idiot. Anyone looked for Lanny’s face on milk cartons lately?
Little Dreamer
@oh really:
Absolutely. ;)
Ash Can
@rikyrah:
Oh, Tom, would that by any chance be the same La Raza that Arnold Schwarzenegger and George H. W. Bush have addressed — very happily, I might add — in the recent past? And the very same La Raza that counts Dubya’s BFF Alberto Gonzales among its proud members as well?
Sm*t Cl*de
Yeah Lanny, we could 1.Have Sotomayer apologize for her comments
You misunderstand. The call was for the White House to apologise for her. Sotomayor is not seen as capable of making her own decisions.
Little Dreamer
@Sm*t Cl*de:
You want a presidential administration that hasn’t been in office for over 8 years to come out and make a statement apologizing to Sotomayor? Are you serious?
Get real!
cosanostradamus
.
Load ‘a crap! I just read the Nutso News, now. It’s just funnier.
.
Jrod
What the hell does this even mean? Is Davis suggesting that if Obama would just apologize on Sotomayor’s behalf, Limpballs and Shammity would just cancel the final half of their shows?
If they weren’t filling time with this nonsense, they’d fill it with other nonsense. I’d call Davis a nitwit, but I suspect he knows exactly what he’s doing.
Johnny Pez
Welcome to the Village, where Lanny Davis is “Some Democrats and political analysts”.
Johnny Pez
Ah, since I don’t have permission to edit my own comment (WTF?) I’ll note here, after reading the piece, that “some Democrats and political analysts” also includes Chris Lehane and Larry Sabato, so they pretty much hit the Douchebag Dem trifecta.
Steeplejack
@jenniebee:
Well said.
What I keep thinking about as all this hits the fan is the incredible callousness and out-of-touch-ness of the Supremes as they
discussedyukked it up over the 13-year-old girl who was strip-searched at school because the school administration thought she might have some contraband Advil. Talk about a complete lack of empathy.Anne Laurie
Dude, I am *totally* stealing that!