Via NoMoreMisterNiceGuy, I see that Newsweek seems to have devoted an entire issue to Sarah Palin. As I said earlier, with Sarahcuda dribbling through a full-court press from the media (I’m not sure who I’m parodying here, but it’s someone), Playgirl’s got to pull the trigger on the Levi issue ASAP.
Anyway, the Newsweek analysis isn’t entirely stupid, though it does push the “center-right” nation bullshit. One piece compares her to Barry Goldwater, which I think is wrong. I agree with this email from a reader, suggesting she is more like a cross between Carrie Prejean and Rudy Giuliani:
Palin/Prejean
I haven’t seen many comments about the similarities in the behavior of these two beauty queens.
Both expect to be treated with deference by journalists, and accuse the most milquetoast of old, male interviewers of bias.
They’re both conservative fundamentalist megachurch attendees.
Much of what they say is later proven to be a lie.
Both quit their day job to cash in.
Both have big skeletons in their closets, if you believe Levi Johnston.
Both have a gay blogger nemesis.
I think if you try to understand Palin as a beauty queen, it really explains her behavior as AK Gov — it was just a title to her, and she loved the ceremonial aspects while she dodged the real work. That’s also why I don’t really take her seriously as a candidate. She’s never going to do the work to win enough primaries to get the GOP nomination. Her campaign will look a lot like Rudy Guiliani’s — well financed, based on a few minutes of fame, and ultimately unable to engage with primary voters.
(I admit that this post was partly an excuse to use this title suggestion from South of I-10.)
Lavocat
Nice lede. In fact, I need to hear that song right now.
dmsilev
I’d have to disagree with the last bit of that email. I think that if she runs (not guaranteed; she may find that she prefers life on the wingnut welfare circuit, and as Gingrich has proven, you can keep those dollars flowing nearly indefinitely), there are enough members of the starburst crowd that she could do well in a low-turnout primary.
Maybe not win, but she’d definitely do better than Rudy “One delegate” Guiliani.
-dms
licensed to kill time
I said in another thread that Palin thinks she was/is in a reality show running for the title of America’s Hottest President, or What?!
All surface, no substance is a virtue in that competition.
Tara the antisocial social worker
I’m losing track – is this Very Good News for John McCain, or for Rudy 9u11iani?
Channing
The Palin / Giuliani comparison goes deeper than you’re ready for.
parksideq
I agree with pretty much all of this, but I’ll nitpick this one part:
To be honest, what’s fascinating (in a train-wreck sort of way) is that Palin really doesn’t do much outside of posting incoherent dribble on her facebook page, but she still gets all the love of the far right. She may very well coast through the GOP primaries, simply because her supporters are as intellectually lazy (not dumb so much as unwilling/unable to factcheck) as she is actually lazy.
Look at NY-23 as a microcosm for this. Even though this was a losing proposition, Hoffman came out of nowhere to steal Scozzafava’s thunder, as the right and far-right gravitated toward his teabaggery instead of her measured conservatism. And the only real thing that Hoffman did to gain that support was proclaim to be more conservative than thou; his campaign, in a word, sucked (and as we all know, the Democrat won that district’s election anyway).
It’s not that far of a stretch to imagine this repeating on a national scale if Palin actually tries to run for president in 2012. It’ll completely run the GOP into the ground, but neither I nor the teabag brigade care if that happens.
Steeplejack
I can’t believe anybody takes Palin seriously as a potential candidate for anything. She served part of one term as governor of a state with a population under 700,000 people–about the same as a city like Memphis or Fort Worth. And she left that gig after two years supposedly because the state would be better off without her. Well, we all would be better off without her, and the sooner the better.
The continuing fascination of the national press with Palin is exactly like reality-TV programming: it’s inexpensive, it’s lurid, and they hope it will draw the eyeballs. Content? Meh. Not so much.
Just Some Fuckhead
There are too many old-school “women need to stay in their place” assholes in the Republican party for Starburst to ever get the nomination.
MattF
I don’t think Giuliani and Palin really have that much in common politically– someone supporting Giuliani is expressing a particular political view– that what this country needs is a fascist dictator. Now, that’s a dangerous and obnoxious viewpoint, but it is a well-defined and unambiguous political opinion.
But what political view is someone supporting Palin expressing? That what this country needs is… what? Starbursts?
geg6
Don’t magazines publish about a month before the date on the cover? And anyone who can stomach it, go see Sully’s place where he is in a controlled hysteria over La Palin. He does have a very nice post, minus his own version of birtherism, outlining the outright and verifiable lies she has already told pre-book, some of them just mind bogglingly stupid. Andrew pretty much gets her right in that post. She’s certifiable.
DougJ
I don’t think Giuliani and Palin really have that much in common politically— someone supporting Giuliani is expressing a particular political view—that what this country needs is a fascist dictator.
Not quite. They’re expressing the view that Guiliani should be dictator. It’s all about him, more than anything else.
Just Some Fuckhead
I read somewhere that 9ui11ani was running for Governor of New York, presumably to pardon Kerik.
New Yorker
Heh. I generally skip the stuff about her pregnancy over at the Dish, but everything else is gold. I await with bated breath his review of her ridiculous book.
Leelee for Obama
Not to trash the title, DougJ, cause I like it-love plays on words, but is there, under most circumstances some sort of code that could be utilized to fool The Great Gizoogle, so I don’t have see her visage at the top or side of my favorite blog.
dmsilev
@Just Some Fuckhead:
That’d be pretty stupid of him, since Bernie is up on federal charges.
-dms
Chuck Butcher
Celebrity is a funny is a funny sort of thing. There really is no telling what will kill it. Political celebrity is even stranger. In some aspects the abilitiy to keep repeating the message to the fans is enhanced by media complicity, but cameras aren’t kind. Much of what drives the Palin show is her looks (which I don’t understand) and those looks are transitory at her age. In a few years the simpering and winking is going to be comedic in a woman of her age (if it isn’t now). That media platform hangs statements around a political celebrity’s neck, blind fans won’t notice – others will. Sometimes celebrity is based on real abilities (see Obama) but it generally is an emotion based phenomonen and emotions are fickle because they’re not based on the continuity of reason.
Support of 20% of the population is politically meaningless, except possibly to the party where it amounts to around half. But, to mock that celebrity is to miss the numbers involved, name another celebrity that can create that emotional response from that number of people. Palin’s political problem is that to be politically relevant she will have to deal in nuances and that won’t work with the fan base – especially as the looks go away.
Palin is not going to go away as a media celebrity as long as she has the numbers of fans she does now. If she cannot move beyond simple celebrity she will not be a political force in the nation. Her ability to make GWB look positively accomplished will not play as a national force.
Palin is a net positive for progressives, she keeps the crazy and stupid in a concentrated group in front of the nation. She holds them out of “respectable” politics within their party, minimizing cohesion. She gives them the illusion of power, allowing politically unsustainable activities (see NY23) to go forward. She provides a massive target for progressives, with hits quite public.
I probably knew what I intended when I started, now a ramble…
ploeg
The proper gauge for seeing a candidate’s potential in a presidential primary is seeing how much the candidate is doing to organize and gather favors from key low-level party poobahs. Organization + favors = primary success. If you come speak at a local party fundraiser for free and help the local party raise gobs of money, the local party remembers that. If you come speak at a megachurch for free, get butts in the pews, the church members remember that.
In what way, shape, or form do you see Sarah Palin doing any damn thing for free to enhance her chances of getting the nomination?
Seebach
I am offended on Mr. Goldwater’s behalf.
ploeg
The key reason why Giuliani failed is that he was not sufficiently anti-choice. For whatever her other faults, Palin doesn’t have that liability.
Even so, insofar as Palin concentrates on any goal at all, Palin will concentrate on maximizing her income during her 15 minutes, whereas her opponents will concentrate on actually becoming the nominee. Not to say that Palin can’t pull off the nomination, just saying that her apparent lack of concentration on that goal puts her at a distinct disadvantage.
PeakVT
But what political view is someone supporting Palin expressing?
The clap louder/la la la la can’t hear you view.
Jesse
@Seebach: Definitely. All that unites Sarah and Barry Goldwater would be support for rather extreme positions. But Goldwater was at least fairly consistent about it and was hardly a tool, and had arguments to back up his positions. To Sarah, “drill baby drill” is not a statement, it’s an argument.
Martin
She’ll never get there. She shortcuts too many things and they eventually catch up to her – she then needs to bail out just to get her own house in order. Been around way too many of these people.
She dumped the governorship because she was going bankrupt with legal bills. The advance on the book saved her ass, but she even shortcutted resigning as governor and that too will catch up on her in time. It’s just a perpetual cycle with these people.
She’ll always be quick to fire the inconvenient people, to lie about the inconvenient truth, and probably to grab a few questionable bucks to pay the inconvenient bill. She’s going to jump from crisis to crisis, blaming all of her bad luck on everyone else, and the very people we discussed in the VA thread will go along, because she is one of the blessed ones, and even though she makes non-stop questionable decisions, none of it will ever be her fault. She’ll be another St Reagan in that she’ll be revered to the end, but she’ll never get the operational side to work and she’ll bolt from the race before she actually gets beaten.
Max
I am curious what the group thinks about the Don’t Ask Don’t Give movement being headed up by AmericaBlog. I personally think it’s misguided, and will lead to postings like their current lead post about Obama that has a headline and opinion piece that is directly opposite the facts.
It seems many of the sites participating are trying to make a name for themselves by being Anti-Obama and when the facts don’t meet their meme, they mis-represent reality.
I’ve been seeing a lot of these blogs writing a post about how Obama won’t say something, or hasn’t said it strongly, and then, when it turns out that they are wrong and he did discuss it, they counter with “just words”.
It’s frustrating to see how a little ODS takes so many straight into Faux News territory.
Martin
@ploeg:
No, the key reason Guiliani failed was that he was lazy and had a shitty strategy. He’s a NY asshole that even NYers don’t like, and it’s hard to sell that in Iowa, but you can do it unless you’ve got a history of badmouthing your wife in press conferences and hope that money will rain from heaven if you mention 9/11 enough times.
Guiliani probably could have won if he honestly addressed his previous failings, worked hard, and actually gave a shit about what anybody else wanted.
A pro-choice Republican can win, but they have to work really damn hard at it – mainly because all of the easy money for the GOP comes out of the anti-choice crowd.
Karen
On “This Week”, David Brooks was asked about her. His response: “She’s a joke.”
When George Will was asked about her, he basically said the same thing as Brooks, only less bluntly.
Clinton (Hillary) said she would like to meet her for a cup of coffee. I have to wonder though: How well does Hillary deal with stupid? (No shots at Bill intended.)
Chuck Butcher
There’s a thing about the difference between local government candidates and national government candidates. A Rep or Sen can point to national outcomes as a part of their campaign. The drawback is that they have been involved in that mess.
This starts to have real effects depending on the public mood, if it is favorable to outsiders being a fed is bad, if it isn’t, insider is good.
Recently, Clinton left something that looked like good governance – it looked easy so the outsider morality bs of a Bush was seen as good. Bush left a record of incompetency, government looked like something needing expertise.
2012 is an open question on that front. 2010 isn’t looking good for incumbents on that basis. The next four months are going to mean a lot to 2010.
ploeg
@Martin:
A pro-choice Republican can win? Really?
Whatever Giuliani’s other faults, his candidacy was dead from the beginning because he couldn’t satisfactorily square his pro-choice views back in the day whatever explanation he gave during the primary season. Being lazy didn’t help, but he was as good as sunk from day one.
Brachiator
@geg6:
The thing is that Palin’s lies don’t matter. Where we have come to is a place where her supporters can dismiss every criticism as the blind hatred and propaganda of the liberal media. This provides a stronger armor than the teflon that coated Ronald Reagan.
I have a co-worker, a woman who rose to a well-earned position of power and authority despite a very humble background and not a huge amount of formal education. She admires Palin tremendously and has, in a way, re-created Palin in her own image, endowing Palin with more competence than she has ever demonstrated. And so, she is fiercely protective of Palin because, in a weird way, an attack on Palin is an attack on her own more real and more credible achievements.
Corner Stone
@Karen:
She gets a little feisty.
SteveinSC
I forget, has Palin gotten her blessing from AIPAC or is Bobo doing a Pooh-Pooh because she lacks these bona fides? I think he did say something about her anti-intellectual (i.e., Neocon) attitudes. If she won’t listen to handlers, what good is she? Dangerous, a Rogue can be.
Martin
@ploeg:
Nobody thought a black man could win either – but a shitload of hard work and good decisions prove otherwise, now didn’t it. Of course a pro-choice Republican can win. They win by putting forward the stories that Sully was good enough to advance on women that were either carrying totally non-viable fetuses or were genuinely in life-or-death situations themselves. Pro-choice Republicans win by being honest about the real needs for abortion and centering around a moral stance there.
The problem they’ll face is self-imposed – they’ve advanced radicals into media positions on the issue and they’ll be pilloried by the wurlitzer, but voters have a much more nuanced view than the wingnut media.
J.
Though in Palin’s defense, her tits are real.
JenJen
Probably the best title evs. Congratulations and thanks to both of you.
licensed to kill time
@J.:
I think she should fax a photo to John Cole and prove it. Where’s ….the ….certs?!
eastriver
Write your own headlines do you?
RaptureReadyAndLovinIt
Palin can be compared to Goldwater when she becomes a Major General in the U.S. Air Force Reserve.
Goldwater retired from the Army Air Force with the rank of Lt. Colonel. He did not quit halfway through his tour of duty.
They say that you can see Russia from one of those airplane windows. So, she has that in common with him. That’s about it.
kay
@ploeg:
Rudy was a horrible, horrible national candidate and he’s never going to President. Thank God. I’m genuinely afeared of him, as President.
He’s going to be appointed by some other GOP President, for a Cabinet position, but hopefully he won’t survive the big, messy confirmation battle, with a zillion unseemly revelations.
gnomedad
@parksideq:
They don’t even care what the facts are. If she ate babies that would somehow be a good thing. She and JTP and that crowd are essentially cheerleaders for teh crazy. Facts are liberal anyway.
hal
Haven’t the concern trolls over the coming Palin 2012 Presidential JUGGERNAUT!!! been disproved already? She couldn’t make it with McCain, how the hell is she going to make it by herself? If she picks another anti-choice, anti-gay candidate, how far will they even get outside of the south?
Martin
@hal: They’re working on the theory that the attitudes of the south will propagate to the rest of the country. Unfortunately, the media seems to be accepting of this theory.
Yeah, I know…
Notorious P.A.T.
Sure, The Grifter will never do enough work to get a nomination. My worry is that some national organization will do the work for her, like Dick Armey’s did for Hoffman.
How well does Hillary Clinton suffer stupidity? Did she ever fire Mark Penn from her campaign staff?
ellaesther
Again, I must insist on giving props to my gal Cat Lady for the best Levi song reference:
Levi’s comin’, hide your heart girl!
But yeah. Your headline is good, too!
forked tongue
But what political view is someone supporting Palin expressing? That what this country needs is… what? Starbursts?
That what it needs is someone who really pisses liberals off.
licensed to kill time
Palin’s a Rorschach test for a certain segment of the population. They see American Values and Exceptionalism, a Regular Jill with Common Sense who can lead the country better than some fancy pants intellectual elite, that Can Do spirit that’ll solve all problems in some vague way by following your gut or letting Jebus whisper in your ear.
The rest of us see a splotch of ink on paper, shallow and flat.
ellaesther
Oh, and by the way:
I am very happy with the use of the name “Rudy 9u11iani.” Excellent. Most excellent.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Max: I don’t know what the group thinks, but I think that Aravois, Hamsher, and Kos wildly overestimate the influence that their blogs wield, and that this boycott/pause/whatever the hell they are calling it today will sink without a ripple into the political pond. I don’t read FDL or AmericaBlog much, but the GOS has devolved into the same kind of cesspit that RedState wallows in. That’s why Obama stopped posting over there a couple of years ago—every time he did, he was jumped by the purity police.
Last year I posted a comment here that the people at GOS would be the most disappointed in Obama, because a lot of people over there saw him as some kind of progressive. He’s not, and never was: all they had to do was listen to his speeches and read his policy positions. I voted for Obama because he was an adult, because his positions were closer to mine, and because McCain did serious damage to this country by selecting Palin as his VP candidate. I didn’t think that Obama was the MUP, or that he would magically bring about a more progressive social or political climate. I did think that he would help stop our plunge into right-wing extremism, and he has.
Until there is more public support for rolling back DADT and DOMA, and officially recognizing gay marriage, few politicians are going to take point on passing legislation to do that. Gay marriage has failed in every public referenda to pass it. That’s the main reason why the homophobes are taking that approach, rather than fight it in legislatures and courts. Politicians aren’t stupid: they can count votes.
South of I-10
I am glad you liked the title.
I am hoping for a Palin/Prejean ticket in 2012. Maybe we could scratch one of the debates and have a swimsuit competition instead. Oh the starbursts!!
Corner Stone
@forked tongue:
But she doesn’t. From what I can gather across the left-ish spectrum, she amuses or possibly befuddles the Left.
The fact that they take some perverse victimhood joy out of thinking she pisses the Left off…should display just how beyond warped her supporters are.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@J.: You know this how?
Corner Stone
@South of I-10: I, for one, just starburst.
FlipYrWhig
@Max:
I think John Aravosis is a self-aggrandizing nitwit who lies a lot, doesn’t read or listen carefully, and taints everything he touches in his mad rush to be the #1 voice of wanna-be righteous rage. He’s everything that’s wrong with the left end of the blogosphere. You can gauge how worthwhile a blog is by how little they take Aravosis seriously, which is one of the best things about this place and its readers.
de stijl
When they try to appear serious, Prejean and Palin both possess that off-putting, freaky faux-gravitas reminiscent of Dramatic Squirrel.
Think “Blue Steel” but fakier.
(Or maybe “Le Tigre” – I always get those two messed up.)
Starfish
I didn’t read any of the above. I am just here to complain that Balloon Juice was not the first to tell me about the Sarah Palin coloring book.
Martin
@de stijl:
Blue Steel was the good one. Le Tigre was very outdated and passé.
FlipYrWhig
@J.:
@hal:
So would you say she puts the jugs in juggernaut?
(Sorry, that was crass. Irresistible, but crass.)
forked tongue
Well, I was trying to articulate their view. But I have to admit, she pisses me off (as well as amusing and befuddling me), with her lying and stupidity and arrogance and undeserved success.
calipygian
There is a danger….
…turnout.
Can you envision a world in which the GOOPers have just enough oomph in Congress to stymie any legislation, the country sinks into a 10-12 percent unemployment “recovery” and the liberal press just hammers away at Obama’s “lack of success”, which could mostly be attributed to right-wing temper tantrums in the House and feckless, ball-less leadership in the Senate?
I can.
Can you imagine a world in which St Sarah rallies enough Mendoza Line Republicans (that 25 percent that thought Bush was a GOOD preznunt), the right wing attacks on ACORN et. al. hampers voter registration, the war in Afghanistan kills five thousand more Americans for no apparent reason and to no result and the rest of the electorate is too unmotivated to turn out for Obama because of what is in effect a Teabag Fillibuster of the previous four years?
I can.
As likely as the X-Wing finding the reactor port?
Maybe.
Luke STILL hit the port though…
Corner Stone
@FlipYrWhig:
All of this and more. He’s just not a very honest broker of anything, or any purported viewpoint. He’s just a horrible person, IMO, and not an effective advocate for anyone or anything but himself.
Corner Stone
@calipygian: “In a world…”
dfd
@calipygian: But it’s only two meters wide!
de stijl
@calipygian:
As likely as the X-Wing finding the reactor port?
And as disturbing as the Ewok dance party.
Fern
@Comrade Scrutinizer:
Ain’t that the truth.
I don’t see how anyone can delude themselves that it is even possible to have a “progressive” president in the US – given the political climate and a political system in which it requires unbelievable amounts of money to run a viable presidential campaign.
inkadu
@calipygian: Luke did hit the reactor port, but if Luke were anything like Sarah Palin, Han Solo would have jettisoned him from the nearest airlock right after Mos Eisley.
de stijl
The Farce is strong with this one.
inkadu
@Fern:
I was hoping Obama was fresh enough to be a progressive mole and smart enough to play the game. I still don’t know if he’s a progressive or not. There are very few things a president can do on his own, and almost none that don’t have an effect on his political fortunes. He’s methodical and patient, and not willing to go down in a blaze of glory.
But, yeah, I tend to think Obama’s been oversold as a progressive. Finance reform is a good weather vane on this; it’s an obvious problem demanding an obvious solution with only lobbyists against it. If there’s an arena where Obama could stretch his progressive wings, it would be there. But he seems as beholden to finance as any president; maybe even more so…
And I’m not even sure what a progressive is anymore, either — Obama is to the right of Richard Fucking Nixon on matters of policy.
inkadu
@de stijl: And Obi Wan in his cave on Tatooine would have concluded that the Force skips a generation and told Luke, “Maybe you should think again about that career in farming.”
sloan
Jon Meacham loves him some center-right nation. Two weeks before the election Newsweek published this cover story. From the article:
It’s common for conservatives of a certain age to believe that their life experience defines a permanent reality: That we were, are, and always will be a “center-right nation”. They grew up with Carter and Reagan as their reference points for liberalism and conservatism and have not adjusted to the fact that the past 20 years have redefined those terms for a new generation of voters.
Voters under 40 probably have no living memory of the Reagan presidency and when they think of a conservative, they think of George W. Bush, who is despised. Ask them to name a liberal Democratic president and they’ll name Bill Clinton, who remains very popular despite the fact that he was impeached.
This new reality is what made the Obama presidency possible. Conservatives who believe the President must abandon the agenda that he ran and won on and tack right to appease the Reaganites are dead wrong.
sloan
%#$# blockquote.
From my post above, this should be in blockquotes:
” Will a Democratic administration … “ban handguns? No. Will it throw its weight behind legalizing gay marriage in every state? No. So even if you have, as we will, a Democratic Washington, America will remain a fundamentally conservative country.”
Like the apostles of Jesus who expected their Messiah to return in triumph before they themselves died, many liberals are almost certain to be disappointed in a President Obama.”
de stijl
@inkadu:
If things keep following this Idiocracy curve that we’re on, we’ll probably be looking at Trig Palin / Frito Pendejo ticket in 2042 or so.
RaptureReadyAndLovinIt
@inkadu:
Obama, by his own declarations, is not a fan of ideology.
Trying to fit him into the ideologue model is a waste of time.
Nixon was not really much an ideologue either. His explanation for calling his congressional opponent a communist: “You’ve got to win.”* Nixon saw anti-communism through a pragmatic lens. He cashed it in for votes.
*From the Frost interviews.
Cat Lady
@ellaesther:
Yo! In the house!
I still think Levi’s comin’. He’s young, but he’s a hunter. I’ve known serious hunters, and they’re used to waiting, waiting, waiting for just the right time. When betting on a grifter or a hunter, I’ll take the hunter every single time. He’s going to watch her walk her path, and when it’s the right time he’s going to take her down. Payback’s a bitch.
AhabTRuler
That estimate’s a little high. I’m 35 (or at least I will be a week from Monday), and I have many clear memories of Reagan, lying sack of teflon-coated shit that he was. Admittedly, I was a bit precocious, but still, anyone my age should at least recognize Iran-Contra.
Seebach
I do think it’s important that we do have left wing maniacs screaming at Obama. Ideally, they keep the Overton window from shifting even further to the right. I just wish the media would present their critiques fully, and not just mention that the left hates Obama too.
licensed to kill time
Palin Sees The Hand of God:
I wonder if she can see him from her porch? That would be awesome.
Martin
Well, truth be told, I don’t see how anyone can delude themselves that it is even possible to have a “conservative” president in the US.
This country has been marinating in magical thinking, power fluffing, tribalism, and just simple faith-based decision-making that anyone who brings in science, means testing, and reasoning is doomed. We really are, collectively, a little too close to ‘Idiocracy’ for anyone who is openly rational to ever make it.
I personally think that you need to bring in a centrist who has good core abilities like Obama. Yeah, you’ll get a bunch of half-measures, but at least they’ll be solid half-measures and can hopefully move things a little in the right direction. String enough of those together and we might get to a real progressive, but until we (and especially the media) learn how to shout down the conspiracy theorists and witch doctors on both sides, we’re going to be stuck here for a long-ass time.
Chuck Butcher
@Seebach:
I don’t know about the maniacs part, but it is important to keep in a Party’s mind that the base is who turns out and is who does the grunt work – and that they don’t come free.
Comrade Scrutinizer
I was thinking about this the other day. I was born during Eisenhower’s first term, and the first President I really remember was Kennedy. If I were asked to pick a President in my lifetime that defined “Liberal”, I’d pick Johnson, and I’d say that either Nixon or Reagan (or some blend of both) would define “Conservative” for me. I wouldn’t have called any other Democratic President a liberal; certainly not Clinton.
Brachiator
@Martin:
The idea that a “real progressive” would have all of the solutions to the nation’s problems is another example of magical thinking.
With Obama’s election, I had hoped that we would get some authentically innovative thinking and decision making, something that went beyond the simplistic, dated nostrums offered by both “conservatives” and “progressives.” Instead, too much of Obama policy is little more than needless compromise and warmed over Democratic Party policy masquerading as economic stimulus and reform.
Note that I do give Obama credit for getting health care reform through the House, a significant achievement even in its watered down form. But it should have been bolder, and he is needlessly ceding leadership on financial regulatory reform to the Senate Democrats, who have are nearly as clueless as the Republicans.
MikeJ
I’ve not read Americablog’s take on the don’t give thing, but Kos seemed pretty sensible in his post about it. Keep giving to individual campaigns, don’t give to the DNC. He even admitted that since the site had always just targeted individual campaigns not donating to the DNC wouldn’t make a bit a of difference.
The DNC is always going to be funded because there will always be people who care more about access than policy. There’s no reason for the activist base to help the DNC move in the wrong direction. Kos’s approach of targeting longshot races seems to be the perfect use of the left blogosphere.
ellaesther
@Cat Lady: I have to say I agree with you. He strikes me as decidedly sane, and that will serve him in the end…!
comrade scott's agenda of rage
@Corner Stone:
Hamsher’s definitely another self-aggrandizing “representative” of Left Blogistania. Kos has turned into that to a lesser degree.
I agree that all delude themselves about their clout. I have lots of exceedingly activist lefty friends who have *never* heard of those sites. Never.
And I say this somebody who’s pretty active at Teh Orange.
Max
@Corner Stone: Thank you. I agree with everything said above on the subject by you and others.
inkadu
@sloan: The “center-right nation” bullshit is bait-and-switch if you’re using European standards. You can in a scholarly way say we are a center-right nation (though any honest evaluation would probably make us a right-right country), but the “center-right” meme is always used around election time to make Republicans the “natural” choice. If we are going to be using European standards, then we might want to point out that the center-right party in the United States is the Democratic Party. Anything less is intellectually dishonest.
@AhabTRuler: 37 here, and remember being happy Reagan was elected (because Carter was BAD according to my parents). When Reagan unveiled a new multiple warhead missile, I was shocked and terrified — the dangerous of the cold war rested heavily on my seventh-grade brow. Iran-Contra was another big event, and, again, it scared me how a criminal like Oliver North could become a hero, much less how Reagan could avoid impeachment, much less how the complicit George Bush got elected…
@RaptureReadyAndLovinIt: I’m so used to Bushian reality-making, that raw pragmatism seems progressive to me. Most key progressive policy reforms (the popular ones, anyway) aren’t ideological, they’re practical — there’s good arguments for them and good evidence. The “gay agenda” is partly based on an ideal of openness, but also buttressed by the evidence that homosexuality does no harm. Progressivism, as applied politically, is far from the reckless group therapy session that is conservative ideology. I’m disagreeing that a progressive president has to be an “ideologue,” and would be curious about what you imagine a hypothetical progressive ideologue president to look like.
@Martin: You’re right — this country has a infantile psychology that is hostile to reality.
Sly
Palin and Giuliani share a love of women’s clothing, also, too.
Nellcote
Has anyone asked Rudy what he thinks of Kerick’s arrest?
Martin
@Brachiator: We might be defining progressive differently, but in my view progressivism is centered on accountability to the individual and an active role of government to identify problems in society and seek functional solutions if any exist. It is a rather non-ideological position. I’m not suggesting liberalism.
But I agree that Obama hasn’t been as bold as I would prefer. The economic stuff in particular isn’t even a matter of debate over what the proper course of action is – that’s clear. The only debate is how far to go, but that shouldn’t stop us from at least starting, and yet we haven’t done it. I was excited about the reports of the Afghanistan decision, but since so much of that has been retracted, I’m now not sure.
I wish I could see a long-term plan here. I’d rather the Dems get together and decide that they have an opportunity to accomplish more in 4 years than a President usually has to accomplish in 8, and just go for broke on the agenda – fuck re-election concerns. If it works, re-election will largely take care of itself.
phoebes-in-santa fe
I was watching Hardball last week – can’t remember which day – and they had on a “serious” journalist who said that Palin could win the nomination because she was so good at debating. “Why, she made mincemeat out of Biden”, he said.
Well, I wanted someone to say that Biden was told to back off pressing Palin at all during their debate in order not to stir up sympathy for her. And if she – or her supporters – think the others vying for the nomination are going to go soft on her, they’re loonier than I think they are. I can’t see Romney or Huckabee or Pawlenty not going after her tooth-and-nail.
Particularly Romney.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Seebach:
__
I don’t like talking (or reading) about “moving the Overton Window”, because it all too often seems to be an excuse for acting like an idiot. Or maniac, if you prefer. I think the concept of the Window has some utility, but moving it depends on making the unacceptable seem acceptable, not just yelling louder. Overton thought that the range of acceptable policies could be shifted
__
That has to be a somewhat incrementalist approach, because if you’re too far away from the border of acceptable policy, the media and the pols are still going to marginalize your position. ( Obama recognized this during the campaign, when he said that he personally favored single-payer health care, but didn’t think it was possible given the entrenchment of insurance companies.) We’ve had decades of movement to the right away from the New Deal and the Great Society toward the mess we’re in now, and most people in this country have never lived in a society in which government is seen as a positive good, rather than as a necessary evil that should be “drowned in a bathtub”. We need to keep a vision of where we want to be, but we also have to be practical about the politics. GOS, FDL, and AmericaBlog seem to have forgotten about the practical part of politics.
Shell
I don’t know anyone who is a die-hard Palin fan. Wish I did, cause I would love to ask them this question, without snark. ‘Why do you like Sarah Palin, as a candidate?”
And I’m talking solid political reasons, qualifications or her stands.
Not ‘she’s one of us,’ or ‘she pisses off liberals, etc.’ No, tell me, directly, why you think she would make a good president.
I really want to know.
Corner Stone
@Comrade Scrutinizer: I disagree in that this is not a practical example of how the window has been moved to the right.
The Right has their lunatic fringe shout mad, crazy things. Their politicians then wait a beat and see how the media receive this crazy fringe shit. When they see no push back they use the cover to discuss the lunatic shit as a reasonable idea. The media then accepts the lunatic shit as a reasonable debating point. They then aske Democratic politicians their thoughts on the lunatic shit. And voila! The window has been shifted.
Educating legislators and presenting facts have absolutely nothing to do with moving the accpetable discourse to the right.
Shell
And Giuliani? Gaaaaaahhh;;hh! Driving back from grocery shopping, we hit the four o’clock news. Punching from station to station, but still couldn’t escape this news bite. ‘Former mayor Giuliani says bringing terrorists to NY for trial puts new-yorkers at risk…..’ Yadda-yadda-yadda. Why does any respectable news outlet give this bozo any crediblity? He simply happened to be mayor when the towers were struck and suddenly that makes him some uber-expert on terrorism and national security. Let’s not forget , this was the genius who put the emergency response center in the twin towers, a landmark that had already been proved to have a bulls-eye on it.
Napoleon
@MikeJ:
I agree with you. I think you just can not lump the GOS (particularly Markous and the front pagers) in with Ameriblog and Hamser.
@Shell:
I passed a van with a self made “Palin 2012” sticker on it today on the highway and couldn’t help but look to see what a moron who drives around with that on their van looks like.
Zach
FYI, Amazon screwed up and put up new info for Palin’s book before it’s release – check it out. Honestly her vision seems unrealistic.
hal
What pisses me off about the likes of Avarosis and Dan Savage is that I went through the whole of the 90’s with my gay brethren insisting that in spite of signing both DADT and DOMA, Clinton was still a gay hero. He did what he had to do. Fine, I voted for him twice. But, I’ll be damned if I’m going to throw Obama in the fire because he hasn’t magically instituted gay marriage for everyone in his first 10 months.
I believe Obama will make good his promises on gay rights, but not necessarily in the time frame certain people want. Personally, I’m more concerned with getting it done period, rather than it having to be right here, right now.
conumbdrum
This point is a crucial Reason as to why a Palin candidacy is doomed from the gitgo. The Dems don’t even matter in this equation – her fellow Goopers will stick the shiv in.
What got Dick Nixon elected president in ’68, more than anything, was the endless gruntwork he did on behalf of the GOP. He ran himself ragged traveling the length and breadth of the USA, stumping for Republican after Republican, building up a backlog of favors owed that he cashed in all at once to secure the nomination. Palin can barely be bothered to do more than Twitter on behalf of a fellow party member. The adulation of the base isn’t enough to put her over. You need that smoke-filled-room support of party bigwigs, and she’s too self-obsessed (not to mention lazy) to do the hard work necessary to get it.
Anyhow, even if she ran, she’d get nuked in the primaries. She’ll have to debate repeatedly with her fellow Repubs, where the likes of Mitt Romney would cut her to pieces. Joe Biden had to be a gentleman when he debated Sarah; her GOP opponents don’t.
Mike G
I see that Newsweek seems to have devoted an entire issue to Sarah Palin.
Because Meacham is a shallow, conventional-wisdom Villager douchebag.
Don’t you remember Newsweak always devoting acres of newsprint to the losing VP candidate? Remember how Lloyd Bentsen was all over the news in 1989, or Jack Kemp in 1997? Me neither.
Citizen_X
@Corner Stone: I’m going to have to go with Corner Stone here. How did we get “educated” about the dire necessity of torturing the Brown Peril with KGB methods? By having Michael Fucking Savage screaming about how we needed to blanket the Muslim world with nuclear strikes, that’s how. The loonies set the far post, the politicians see cover to creep ever so slightly in that direction.
calipygian
@conumbdrum:
Never underestimate Princess Obtuse’s ability to mau-mau the refs:
“That mean, nasty liebrul press hates me and wants Mitt/Rudy/Bozo to win”.
hal
Jack Kemp was a VP candidate?
Brachiator
@Martin:
OK. It’s too bad that no party or individual politician exists who embodies this.
I’m not sure what the best plan for Afghanistan might be, and appreciate the president’s refusal to be pushed into backing an ill-considered plan. I just hope he won’t be as bad as Bill Clinton here, who didn’t appear to understand how to use the military at all.
Unfortunately, the Democrats (and the Republicans, as well) are locked into the idea that getting elected and staying in power is more important than what you accomplish while in office.
We saw this big time recently in California, where the Democrats simply did not believe that the voters would recall a Democratic governor. Since then, whenever a vote has gone against them, both parties are quick to claim that the voters were “confused” and didn’t understand the issues. This masks a refusal to actually tackle tough problems, and instead fall back on the infantile conclusion that since their constituents voted them back into office, they must be happy with their work performance.
It will be interesting to watch the excuses that the Democrats in Congress come up with to rationalize their own political cowardice.
Napoleon
@conumbdrum:
While I agree with most of what you say, and I would 100% agree that if she is facing off against one other candidate during the primaries, even if it is a dead dog, she is going to lose, but if 3 of them go the distance and the other 2 are, say, Pawney (sp?) and Romney, she has a real chance of winning. remember almost all the Republican primaries are winner take all. Based on the above scenario she could string together a bunch of 34-36% victories and get every single delegate up for grabs.
By the way in the last 2 or 3 weeks I read somewhere (I forget where) that some Republicans (and I forget who) are suggesting they need to change the Republican delegate choice method. There is no way that was not prompted by something other then people worrying about the above scenario.
Napoleon
@hal:
Wasn’t he Doles?
mcd410x
Holy crap!! Track had to fast from chew for a day? That’s Mavericky!
Mike G
“When we compare ourselves with, say, Europe—which the left loves to do…”
Yes, why compare ourselves to countries with similar income levels and economies and the most cultural similarities and ancestral connections? What a dirty leftist deception.
Why not pull the right-wing bombastic trick of only comparing America to the Soviet Union, China, Iran, Nigeria and other third-world hellholes — it makes it so much easier to explain away American deficiencies in health care, educational achievement, employment benefits, civil rights, infrastructure and so forth compared to Germany, New Zealand, Norway and so forth — “At least you’re not in China working for dog food”; “If you don’t like it why don’t you move to Iran”; “In Saudi Arabia they’d cut your head off for questioning government torture”.
For people who claim to “love America” so much more than the rest of us, they sure do have low standards for it.
Corner Stone
@hal:
Yes, he was. And more importantly, he wrote a hell of a letter to his grandkids after Obama was elected President.
And that is the true measure of a man.
Nellcote
@hal:
You don’t remember the Dope/Hemp (Dole/Kemp) alt. bumperstickers?
calipygian
Apparently, St Sarah had an abortion.
I find it pretty hard to believe that she’d get a hospital bill after treatment for a miscarriage with the word “abortion” whited out and “miscarriage” written in.
Sounds like a kid making a “D” a “B” on his report card to me.
Mario Piperni
DougJ – here’s my contribution to this post.
Palin and Prejean – Just a Couple of Dolls
sloan
@AhabTRuler:
I’m 36 and I remember Reagan, but I’m a political nerd. I was assuming that younger people don’t pay a whole lot of attention to politics based on their low turnout on election day.
I wonder how many of the 1980 Reagan voters are even alive today. The youngest of his ’80 voters would now be 47 years old . And most of the older Reaganites from the 80s (I’m thinking 55+ at the time) are probably long gone.
Does anyone know where to find election statistics that break down the 1980 and ’84 results by age? I’m curious as to how many Reagan voters might even still be alive today. The Republican party has been coasting on his legacy for 20 years. That free ride won’t last forever.
ellaesther
@calipygian: Once upon a time, back when I was writing commentary for daily newspapers, I ran pieces in a few different places that started with the line “I’ve had an abortion. Have you?” – because it seems to me that in all the talk about abortion, people are simply unaware of how many of the women they love have had them — the teenager considering one doesn’t know her mom had one, the man railing against pre-marital sex doesn’t know his wife had one last year, the young lawyer terrified to pee on a stick doesn’t know about her young lawyer pal.
We as a nation are so dishonest in the conversation, and so many lives are ruined because of it.
calipygian
@ellaesther:
Quite frankly, in 99.9 percent of instances, I wouldn’t give a shit. None of my business. As it should be.
This is different.
Comrade Scrutinizer
@Citizen_X: Making torture acceptable didn’t start with Michael Fucking Savage. The School of the Americas used texts that taught torture back to at least 1982, and probably before that. Torture has been a staple of certain types of action movies as long as I can remember—the “ticking time bomb” scenario didn’t start with 24. Torture has been acceptable sub rosa for a long time; I remember tales of the jail elevator, for example, and stories of Brown People thrown out of helicopters in Nam to encourage other Brown People to talk. Apocryphal or not, those stories prepare a lot of ground. What made torture (“more in sorrow than in anger” donchaknow) publicly acceptable was fear and the desire to hurt back, not nutjobs screaming about it.
Nuking the Muslim world isn’t a new idea either. We started nuking Yellow People back in War 2, and there has always been an element ready to blow one bunch or another back to the Stone Age. It hasn’t happened since War 2, but there was considerable pressure to do it in Korea, and then again in Cuba. Mostly we didn’t because we were afraid of retaliation, not because it was a morally unacceptable alternative.
Jamey
Dismantle the Internets; it’s never going to be better than this.
conumbdrum
I hear ya… but that little trick will only work so many times with voters outside her immediate base. If the Sarahcuda starts looking like a whiner, she’s dead in the water.
Julia Grey
But what political view is someone supporting Palin expressing? That what this country needs is… what?
Gawwwwwwd, you silly rabbit.
All will be well if we just place ourselves in the hand of the Laaaaaawd.
phoebes-in-santa fe
@Corner Stone: Kemp was evidently a member of “Republicans for Obama”.
conumbdrum
My mother-in-law Sally was so smitten by Sarah Palin after seeing her first VP-pick speech that she wouldn’t shut up about how maaaarvelous she was for days.
Within a few weeks the blush had fallen from the rose; she now saw Sarah as somewhat shallow and way out of her depth.
By election time, Sally had written Palin off as a dimbulb and voted enthusiastically for Obama.
Sarah is like Rudy Giuliani in one very crucial way… her appeal is mainly at a distance. As you draw closer, the rock-bottom ugliness of their souls become increasingly obvious.
Jackie
@calipygian: Much as I enjoy outing hypocrites, medically a miscarriage is a spontaneous abortion. She may have made with the whiteout but it doesn’t prove a thing.
jl
Don’t have time to read all the comments, but the wonkette piece warning of a bald snarling Rudy-esque Palin wouild be the end of us all. That would be too much gender-bending Rudy for this earth. And, contra some pf the commenters at the top, I think they are equally authoritarian.
Maybe some commenters noted it further down, but they both spout complete gibberish. I’ve very rarely heard Rudy make any sense at all when he talks -his speech acts are just random, or very repetitive strings of empty management guru buzzwords with pep-talk slogans and mixed with ‘junk wordage’ used as spacers. The content is pure gibberish, just like Palin.
Maybe sexist attitudes towards beauty queens causes people to notice and discuss Palin’s gibberish more than Rudy’s. But if you listen closely, you just cannot top Rudy for nonsense. He is right there with Palin, both emit amazingly long strings empty speech-like sounds that simply do not mean one damn thing at all.
jl
No edit function, so I cannot fix the mysteriously triggered strike out in my comment.
Napoleon
@sloan:
Huh, I am 48, closing in on 49 and I voted in that election.
JasonF
Anybody who wants some insight into the conservative love of Palin — and is willing to wade through roughly 200 comments worth of crazy — should check out this post at the Volokh Conspiracy.
Anne Laurie
@Brachiator:
Your co-worker is not alone. The McCain’s campaign original Palin strategy — “You want a candidate with tits? Okay, we’ll give you tits!” — was a godsdamned joke, but the sexism of much of the ‘good leftist’ response sparked the PUMA backlash before the Repub ratfvckers leaped to use it as a weapon. The same progressiver-than-thou jerkwads who can sniff racism or homophobia at the drop of an ‘articulate’ or the failure to correctly arrange the G-L-B-T letters are all too happy to slang Palin’s looks and/or sex life, because it’s more “fun” than sticking to her actions and statements. That’s one reason the serious men of the Permanent Republican Party have been happy to let Sarah be Sarah… she’s a giant target for exactly the sort of “We’re just better than you stupid mouthbreathing rednecks, and you need to just shut up and go away” Very Serious Leftists that will encourage women like your friend voting for the Republican party… even when it means voting against her own self-interest.
Speaking of which, Jackie is right — every ‘miscarriage’ is medically a spontaneous abortion. The M-word gets used because a-b-o-r-t-i-o-n has become such an emotionally loaded term in what passes for modern America.
Bobby Thomson
I initially misread this post, and one thing that struck me is just how much Rudy Giuliani really is like a vain pageant contestant.
Bubblegum Tate
@JasonF:
I can’t tell if that “Palin/Rubio ’12!” idea one commenter floats is for real or not.
zoe kentucky in pittsburgh
Does anyone think that McCain and his people are going to be able to completely ignore her as she does the talk show circuit to promote her book? (Pass the popcorn!)
As for her POTUS position, I think she could be their nominee if Obama and the economy is doing well and the GOP would be happy to have her be the defeated placeholder who puts up one helluva entertaining fight. (Plus they’d get to claim the the “first” title of first woman presidential nom.) However, if Obama and/or the economy is weak in 2012 then Palin will not get the nom, it will be someone who actually has half a chance of winning. Regardless, I don’t think Palin is interested in doing that much hard work, I think her love of money and fame is far bigger than her craving for political power.
Brachiator
@Anne Laurie:
RE: I have a co-worker, a woman who rose to a well-earned position of power and authority despite a very humble background and not a huge amount of formal education. She admires Palin tremendously….
You nailed it, but I think there is something class based at work here as well. For some, it wasn’t just that Palin was a pretty woman or that she was unqualified, it was hints that someone with her background could not possibly be considered for the VP slot, and that only someone with Hillary Clinton’s Ivy League credentials and insider connections was authentically The Woman who should be considered presidential.
This kind of thing stuck in the craw of a lot of women, even women who would not necessarily vote for Palin, but who still see her as being a lot like who they are.
Anne Laurie
@Brachiator:
I’m sure the ‘not Our Kind, ifyouknowwhatImean’ dogwhistle sounded for quite a few less-than-upper-class men as well. But, believe me, part of the PUMA backlash was the suspicion, well-known to every woman over 40, that the Old Boys’ Club will never admit that any woman, no matter how hard she works or how impeccible her credentials, could possibly be taken seriously as presidential timber. For many women (and I include myself), some of the loudest “How can some mouthy broad outta nowhere like Sarah Palin ever be taken seriously?” commentary had an undercurrent of “We let that Hillary broad eat in the clubhouse, just because we’re such nice guys, and now every dumb set of tits with a business suit thinks they’re entitled to traipse around the premises, spoiling the putting green with their spike heels!” You know, it’s not really a slur to say that a fellow candidate is “clean and articulate”… unless that candidate comes from an ethnic group that’s traditionally been branded as, well, not. When Democrats & progressives said that Sarah wasn’t a credit to her gender, they seemed to be saying that Hillary could still achieve C.T.H.G. status. And the implication that such “credit” was something to be awarded or withdrawn at the favor of a bunch of powerful upper-class male politicians & pundits did not seem friendly, or positive, to a lot of women who’ve been fighting that form of — what’s the word? oh yeah, PATERNALISM! — for our entire lives.
eyelessgame
She’s perfect continuity of the Republican brand. Think about it.
Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, Dan Quayle, George W. Bush, Sarah Palin.
The Republicans have been running Chauncey Gardiner for president or veep for thirty years. She’s no dumber than the rest of these posts. (The rest of them didn’t have Tina Fey to lampoon them; that’s a big part of the reason the MSM seems to have dimly noticed her limitations, when it kept solemnly pretending the others didn’t suffer from the same thing.)
The Republicans keep trying to convince us we’re watching Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, when we’re really watching Being There.