Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

I really should read my own blog.

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

T R E 4 5 O N

“But what about the lurkers?”

“More of this”, i said to the dog.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

Conservatism: there are some people the law protects but does not bind and others who the law binds but does not protect.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

You don’t get rid of your umbrella while it’s still raining.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

This fight is for everything.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Tick tock motherfuckers!

Usually wrong but never in doubt

You are here: Home / I Need More than 140 Characters

I Need More than 140 Characters

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Mein GOTT twitter is frustrating:

clueless

Yeah, the problem here is Obama has not reached out enough.

Some of these guys never learn anything, ever. John McCain has never been a maverick. He has never been a major player in legislation- his only signature bill is McCain/Feingold, and that is due in large part out of guilt and an effort to rehabilitate himself (Keating Five, anyone?). He flips and flops depending on what is best for him, personally, at that very moment, and some talking head somewhere will excuse his lack of consistency as “John McCain being a maverick” or “John McCain being John McCain” or some other nonsense. For chrissakes, he put Palin in a position where she could have been a heartbeat away from the Presidency. That alone should tell you that John McCain is in it for himself, and himself only. That is all he cares about.

So put two and two together, guys. John McCain is looking at a very tough primary against Hayworth and Simcox, a Minuteman, and he senses he needs to run to the right to shore up his flank. The Obama White House didn’t “lose” John McCain, John McCain is just doing what he always does- looking out for himself.

In fact, you can almost bet that the next couple of months leading up to his primary, McCain will step up his criticisms of Obama, will become louder and more vocal and more strident, and will move to the right of his past stated positions and his alleged “core beliefs.” And you know what else you can bet on?

Some beltway bobblehead looking at McCain’s behavior and wondering- “Gee, what did the Obama administration do to piss off John McCain?”

Reader Interactions

77Comments

  1. 1.

    Max

    Chuck Todd’s tweets will make you want to kill yourself.

    I choose to look at them like they are Fake AP StyleBook.

    Also. Too.

  2. 2.

    Morbo

    his only signature bill is McCain/Feingold, and that is due in large part out of guilt and an effort to rehabilitate himself (Keating Five, anyone?).

    Really? I always thought it was sour grapes over how the 2000 primaries went down.

  3. 3.

    The Moar You Know

    Hayworth is McCain’s challenger, not Simcox. Well, Simcox is a McCain challenger, technically, but he’s only pulling 4%.

  6. 6.

    Tim I

    McCain is also the most bitter loser of a Presidential Election that I can recall. He started hating Obama during the race and nothing much has changed.

    I think that McCain is a life long screw-up in the eyes of his Admiral father, who always wanted to do better to show his dad (very Bush-like). After he realized he would never make flag rank in the Navy, he left to pursue politics. Becoming a Senator was pretty good but not enough. He had to be Commander in Chief. Losing that and knowing he’d never get another shot was crushing. He will never forgive Obama for that.

  9. 9.

    Bobby Thomson

    How do you lose what you never had?

    Chuck Todd should do something less intellectually challenging. I’m having trouble thinking of what that would be, though.

  10. 10.

    Karen S.

    Back in early 2008, at the tail end of my career as a reporter for a suburban Chicago community newspaper, I interviewed a GOP state senator who was supporting McCain in that year’s election. I asked him why and he went into a little speech about how heroic McCain was because of his experience as a P.O.W. And that was all he said about him. I said, “That’s it?” The state senator seemed flummoxed because I suppose he thought McCain’s P.O.W. experience was a good enough reason to support him. It was weird.

  12. 12.

    Butch

    Chuck Toddler always makes me want to throw things at the TV screen; he’s especially nonsensical when he decides he’s going to ask a “tough” question.

  14. 14.

    soonergrunt

    It was ever thus.
    Beltway journalism is all about fluffery and they loves them some McCain “Mavericky-ness” because it makes them feel a little bit less like the girl just off-stage of the p or no flick.

    Rolling Stone got it right though, so there is hope.

  16. 16.

    comrade scott's agenda of rage

    “Gee, what did the Obama administration do to piss off John McCain?”

    Kick his ass handily in the presidential election. It’s gotta grate as a repup knowing you lost to a BLACK MAN!!!!!!! Kinda like you never want to be the first #1 seed in the NCAA Basketball Tourney to lose in the first round. Your name will always be remembered.

    I think that McCain is a life long screw-up in the eyes of his Admiral father,

    McCain was a lifelong screw up in the Navy. Shitty pilot, by most accounts a mediocre officer. He got as far as he did because of the family. It’s questionable whether or not he would have ever had a career in politics if he hadn’t been shot down and spent those years as a POW. That’s how he started his political career.

  17. 17.

    The Grand Panjandrum

    Ha ha ha! J.D. Hayworth is going to primary McCain. That is fucking priceless. I wonder how long its going to take Hayworth to get under McCain’s very thin skin. This is going to be fun to watch.

  18. 18.

    Bobby Thomson

    @John Cole: He was “awesome” when he confined himself to interpreting poll results and delegate counts, which actually isn’t that difficult. When your competition consists of AEI shills, it’s pretty easy to stand out. Sticking to hard data makes it hard to sell shabby reasoning. Once you get away from objective, quantifiable stuff, it’s easy to just make shit up. And that’s what Todd is doing now in his new role.

  19. 19.

    sparky

    the best thing about twitter is that it can be used in place of frogs to show involuntary twitching as a response to stimulus.

  20. 20.

    Rep. Pomeroy

    McCain has hated Obama since 2006. Remember this letter from McCain to Obama:

    . But I understand how important the opportunity to lead your party’s effort to exploit this issue must seem to a freshman Senator, and I hold no hard feelings over your earlier disingenuousness. Again, I have been around long enough to appreciate that in politics the public interest isn’t always a priority for every one of us. Good luck to you, Senator.

    McCain is just an asshole with an healthy appetite for vengeance.

  21. 21.

    Peter J

    “That one” reached out to McCain and helped him by removing his biggest Democratic threat, Janet Napolitano, and in the end got nothing for it.

    So I’m very happy hearing that McCain might lose the republican primary.

  22. 22.

    R-Jud

    @Karen S.:

    I interviewed a GOP state senator who was supporting McCain in that year’s election. I asked him why and he went into a little speech about how heroic McCain was because of his experience as a P.O.W. And that was all he said about him. I said, “That’s it?”

    You are awesome. Are you still a journalist, or did they throw you out for not being a stenographer?

  23. 23.

    Hunter Gathers

    Obama should just bite the bullet and invite the media over to the White House for BBQ and quaint stories about chicks he used to bang.

  24. 24.

    Rick Massimo

    How completely does your head have to be up the RNC’s ass before you think “losing John McCain” is an important setback?

  25. 25.

    JenJen

    John, as you become more acquainted with Twitter, you’ll probably find that Chuck Todd is the biggest Media Concern Troll Tweeter. I can’t remember a communique of his that wasn’t infuriating. It might be enough to make you stop tweeting altogether.

    But I hope not!

  28. 28.

    The Moar You Know

    Shitty pilot

    @comrade scott’s agenda of rage: Understatement of the year. McCain is the world’s only “reverse ace”, having lost five of his own aircraft.

    SOP is if you lose one for any other reason other than getting outfought by the enemy, you’re done. McCain lost four of his five through hotdogging or negligence. The fifth he lost by disobeying rules of engagement – which earned him a trip to a POW camp.

  29. 29.

    valdivia

    The Village is so so stupid. They got amnesia as soon as the election was over and forgot the kind of campaign McCain ran and forgot that he chose Palin and imposed her on us. He is a no one but gets treated like the actual President. I guess they are pinning for the WH BBQ’s they would have had with him every weekend had he won! Ugh.

  30. 30.

    Senyordave

    A co-worker of mine was a big McCain supporter during the election. His main reason was McCain that was a hero POW, and stated repeatedly that he saw him as an Eisenhower type because of their similar military experiences. I pointed out that Eisenhower was a five-star general and Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe. Didn’t matter, thye were both in the military. I realized you can’t argue politics with most people.

  31. 31.

    El Cid

    Look, on the one hand, these people can just say “MAVERICK” over and over and over and over and over, and all of their kewl friends will love them.

    Or they can, you know, like, remember stuff and shit, and look up votes, and dig up old quotes by John McCain, and all that would just be BOOOOOOOOOOOORING.

    So, maverick maverick maverick, Maverick MAVERICK maverick maverick maverick maverick. Maverick, maverick maverick. Maverick? Maverick maverick maverick; maverick maverick, maverick maverick — MAVERICK!

  32. 32.

    Senyordave

    Hayworth used to be on Imus’ program. I occasionally heard him, and he seemed like your classic, dumb-as-a-stump wingnut.

  33. 33.

    comrade scott's agenda of rage

    @The Moar You Know:

    Everyone should read the link soonergrunt provided above. I remember reading it last year but there were also a ton of links and pieces last year leading up to the election that went into great detail (same conclusions) about St McCain’s completely mediocre career in the military. The only thing that saved him from being a complete wastrel like Dubya was that trip to the POW camp.

    And he came back from that more assholier than before. Thanks North Vietnam!

  35. 35.

    timb

    @Peter J: What Peter said. Obama gave him the quid pro quid of removing Janet. John McCain will have no trouble winning a primary challenge by a racist Minuteman and a Teabagger.

    The fact that he’s shivved Obama is just proof that their agreement about Janet extended to the stimulus and not much else

  38. 38.

    The Golux

    Obama lost McCain when he forced Mr. POW to call him “That One” in the debate, against his will.

  39. 39.

    mk3872

    “Gee, what did the Obama administration do to piss off John McCain?”

    This has been the media theme now for months: EVERYTHING is Obama’s fault.

    This has helped the GOP take no flak when saying (as they did yesterday to Geithner) that the current economic troubles are Obama’s fault, too.

    By doing this, the media shields themselves from being ambushed by Bill O’reilly’s producers and not being called a “butt-boy” on every DC villager’s favorite radio program, Rush Limbaugh.

  41. 41.

    Alex S.

    Sadly, you can’t describe progressive policies with less and 140 characters. Conservative policies, that is, slogans, are much better suited.

  44. 44.

    Kryptik

    I’m sure McCain will be on Meet the Press shortly to explain why the Obama Administration has betrayed him, and to discuss his Maverick-y principled opposition to Obamarx.

  46. 46.

    geg6

    And thus the reason I have no interest whatsoever in Twitter. The stupidest, most shallow form of “communication” ever invented. There is nothing there I can’t do better or easier somewhere else and I don’t have to be subjected to the musings of Chuck “I Want To Suck McCain’s Dick” Todd or even John “I Chose Caribou Barbie To Be Vice President” McCain, whose Twits I am told are even more mind-numbingly stupid than Todd’s.

    As for what John McCain thinks about anything, who the fuck cares? The only time I want to hear a single word from John McCain is when he announces he is resigning in shame for inflicting Sarah Serendipity upon the nation and spending the next 30 years flogging himself around the fleet with a captain’s daughter on the new reality show on CSPAN called “John McCain Must Atone.”

    (And no, a captain’s daughter isn’t some new woman with whom McCain is cheating on Cindy. It’s the cat of nine tails that was used in the British Navy. And flogging around the fleet was for serious crimes or misconduct. Instead of just being flogged on his ship, the miscreant is rowed from ship to ship in the fleet and flogged on each ship to set an example.)

  48. 48.

    OC

    Some beltway bobblehead looking at McCain’s behavior and wondering- “Gee, what did the Obama administration do to piss off John McCain?”

    He kicked McCain’s ass last November. I think it’s as simple as that.

  49. 49.

    valdivia

    @Max:

    1. that was totally awesome!

    2. so that is why the NFL would not let Limbaugh buy a team? They are minions of Obama?

  50. 50.

    JenJen

    @geg6: Yeah, but for every Chuck Toddler there’s a Jamison Foser, an Atrios, an Oliver Willis, and a Markos. It’s better than you think. One thing about Twitter that actually surprised me is the high quality of political snark from people I already admire.

    Allahpundit and Erick Ericksson are fun to laugh at, too. :-)

  51. 51.

    Butch

    What geg said. Ditto – no interest whatever.
    But interesting about what Barbara S. said. I actually was a reporter on Capital Hill for several years. I guess in a way it should have been a career pinnacle, and I couldn’t stand it.

  52. 52.

    geg6

    @JenJen:

    You may be right. But I still have no interest in it whatsoever. I have yet to see any tweets from anyone that I need to see for any reason. Even the people I admire in the media and the blogosphere sound like teenage girls gossiping in the locker room. Simply not worth the time, IMHO.

  53. 53.

    Karen S.

    @R-Jud

    You are awesome. Are you still a journalist, or did they throw you out for not being a stenographer?

    Thanks, R-Jud. :D
    I’m doing some freelance journalism right now, but I’m no longer working full time as a reporter. I really loved it, but the company I worked for (Sun-Times Media Group or whatever it’s calling itself at the moment) was and is growing through so much upheaval, partly because of money troubles, but also because it couldn’t figure out how to be a profitable news organization anymore. It was throwing Facebook, Twitter and all kinds of multimedia stuff at us without much thought as to how it would help us gather and report the news better than what we were already doing. Plus, the company had laid off so many good people (reporters, editors, nearly the entire copy desk) over the years that the newspapers we were putting out were becoming unrecognizable to me. So when they offered very generous voluntary buyout packages, I took one and haven’t looked back.
    One more thought occurred to me about McCain. It’s the bitterness someone else mentioned up thread. I compare him to my dad and he always comes up wanting. I mean, my dad is an 82-year-old black man who grew up in Missouri in a small Mississippi River town and saw all manner of racism and discrimination. Blacks weren’t allowed to check out books from the town’s public library, for crying out loud. His home life when he was a boy wasn’t that great either, yet he has achieved much (a Ph.D. in chemistry and a family he loves, among other things) and I’ve detected no bitterness at all in him. Certainly, he’s dismayed that racism lingers, but he’s not angry, mean or vindictive like McCain, a man who has had every advantage a white man could have in this country.

  55. 55.

    kommrade reproductive vigor

    John McCain doesn’t like it. UR DOING IT RITE!

    Lighten up Cole. If you can’t see the hilarity in this, you need to furminate the pets and crack open a beer.

    McCain tried to put Sarah Palin a slip and fall in the bathtub away from the Oval Office. And right when we’re getting hourly reminders of how very, very, very not good that would have been, the Very Serious People are clutching their pearls over the president’s failure to kiss and make up with this idiot.

    This is great news for conservatives.

  60. 60.

    R-Jud

    @Karen S.:

    it couldn’t figure out how to be a profitable news organization anymore.

    It ain’t just the S-T; friends of mine still at Tribune Media mutter about the same stuff. The social media stuff: I can see a reason for it if you’re a pundit, but for an actual reporter, who needs to be doing shoe-leather stuff, it’s got to be a serious time-suck.

    McCain: I think the bitterness comes from the fact that some tiny part of him knows he’s a rotten person, and he’d be a nobody if not for his family connections. The media treat him as if he has earned his all privileges by being a POW, which makes him feel better, because it puts that little nagging voice back to sleep.

    /armchair psychology

  61. 61.

    Keith

    The Politico article was head-slappingly painful to read, at one quoting McCain calling the thing “cap and tax” and a “monstrosity”, and then later quoting his spokesperson as complaining that the thing isn’t being done “in a bipartisan fashion”. Typical GOP MO

  63. 63.

    asiangrrlMN

    @R-Jud: This and that when you grow up thinking you’re entitled, it burns doubly bad when you don’t get something. For McCain to lose the White House to an upstart who is also black…well, there was no way His Highness would be able to deal with that in a gracious manner. The White House was, in his mind, HIS. He EARNED it by backing W. and toeing the line and all that shit. So, in his mind, he didn’t lose it, he got it taken from him…by ACORN!

    @Max: And, after reading the other comments, yeah it’s great to see the president encouraging kids to be active, too!

  65. 65.

    gf120581

    Seriously, did Obama ever really have McCain? Because if you paid any attention to the presidential campaign last year, you would know how much McCain despised Obama (hell, it was a big reason why the debates were so disastrous for him, between the “can’t even look at him” act in the first debate and the “THAT ONE!” moment). To him, Obama was this young punk swooping in to steal something which he hadn’t earned (McCain seemingly under the delusion that he was “due” the Presidency or something similar). Coupled with McCain’s blistering temper and his ability to hold grudges and it was foolish to think he would ever be “had” by Obama. You can’t lose what you never had, media.

  66. 66.

    Redshirt

    What’s extra great about that NFL ad (and it is objectively great) is that Drew Brees is a legitimate Wingnut, probably a Birther as well.

  67. 67.

    Chat Noir

    @geg6:

    As for what John McCain thinks about anything, who the fuck cares? The only time I want to hear a single word from John McCain is when he announces he is resigning in shame for inflicting Sarah Serendipity upon the nation…

    Amen to this. Everytime I see Sarah Stupidhead on my teevee, I want to scream. Jeesuz, the media should be falling all over David Plouffe; all he did was create a winning presidential campaign against enormous odds. And his book is well-written. Also too perhaps.

  69. 69.

    Butch

    By the way, I wanted to do something painful and I didn’t have a nail handy to drive through my hand, so I went over to First Read for Chuck’s morning wisdom; there’s actually a line about the “political wind at the Republican’s backs.” In some alternative universe….

  70. 70.

    Persia

    @mk3872:

    This has helped the GOP take no flak when saying (as they did yesterday to Geithner) that the current economic troubles are Obama’s fault, too

    I shouldn’t be surprised at it any more, but that one baffled me.

  73. 73.

    Rick Taylor

    For chrissakes, he put Palin in a position where she could have been a heartbeat away from the Presidency. That alone should tell you that John McCain is in it for himself, and himself only. That is all he cares about.

    And yup, I couldn’t agree more.

  74. 74.

    Bruce (formerly Steve S.)

    Regarding McCain’s behavior, I think we underestimate how much is just plain old vindictiveness for having lost to Obama rather than political calculation.

Comments are closed.

Trackbacks

  1. […] John and I were just discussing Chuck Todd’s unbelievably idiotic tweet defending McCain’s latest primary-induced flip-flop. Todd’s an idiot, but not as dumb as Howie Kurtz—was John’s take on it. Mine is that neither Todd nor Kurtz is dumb in the usual sense. To stay in the good graces of elite medias is simple—just keep saying everything is good news for conservatives, that we are a center-right nation, that John McCain is a principled maverick and so on. Criticize the Iraq war and you get shit-canned—ask Ashleigh Banfield or Phil Donahue. Any reporter interested in having a cushy, high-paying gig for the rest of his or her life would be foolish not to keep repeating the Village-approved talking points. […]