I know Andrew Sullivan is a controversial subject here, but I love it when he dials the gloom up to 11:
I can see no alternative scenario but a huge – staggeringly huge – victory for the FNC/RNC machine tomorrow. They crafted a strategy of total oppositionism to anything Obama proposed a year ago. Remember they gave him zero votes on even the stimulus in his first weeks. They saw health insurance reform as Obama’s Waterloo, and, thanks in part to the dithering Democrats, they beat him on that hill. They have successfully channeled all the rage at the massive debt and recession the president inherited on Obama after just one year. If they can do that already, against the massive evidence against them, they have the power to wield populism to destroy any attempt by government to address any actual problems.
This is a nihilist moment, built from a nihilist strategy in order to regain power … to do nothing but wage war against enemies at home and abroad.
What comes next will be a real test for Obama. I suspect serious health insurance reform is over for yet another generation.
[….]And so one suspects that this is a profound moment in the now accelerating decline of this country. And one of the major parties is ecstatic about it.
I guess I can’t be so pessimistic, given the demographic trends that favor Democrats. I do think, though, that without non-white voters, we’d probably be a military dictatorship by now.
Quaker in a Basement
Thanks, non-white voters!
Poopyman
Ha! It’ll be a pleasure watching him backpedal Tuesday night. There’s no way Mass voters will put Brown in the Senate.
Poopyman
If non-whites couldn’t vote, those folks wouldn’t need to get all up in arms. Things’d be nice and complacent, like back in the good ol’ days.
Jim
and David Broder, dean of teh Washington press corpse, has written at least three columns in the last year that the only reasonable course for Democrats is to compromise with and be more like Republicans. I don’t read Sullivan, does he ever turn his wrath on the Villagers?
Jim
I have to say, it’s been a while since I saw one of those “Democrats are in trouble because even though they have X percentage of overall votes, take away wimmins and/or minorities and they only have Y number of real (white, empenised) Americans”. Is there less of this, or is it just that I stopped watching CNN and Bill Schneider? don’t even know if Bill Schneider is still with us, professionally speaking.
dmsilev
I’ll support any health insurance reform that mandates some treatment, anything really, to tamp down Sullivan’s mood swings.
-dms
DougJ
I don’t read Sullivan, does he ever turn his wrath on the Villagers?
Yeah, pretty often in fact.
Maude
He’s off his meds again.
Doug Z
Sullivan’s (horrible) predictive powers (re the future of HCR) plus his drama king antics = the above post
Farmer_Jones
hahahahaha, TEA PARTIE FOAREVAR! because dysfunctional govt and empty treasury and impoverished citizens r what make a country STRONG!
Mike G
This “fifth columnist” says fuck you, Sullivan.
Keith G
Bullshit. This a test of our democracy, our society. The hard, elite, right sees us as so many Hatian looters – not deserving of consideration and, quite frankly, no great loss if shot on sight.
I just heard Cornell West on NPR “loving Obama, but holding him accountable”. He said Obama must not forget the poor.
I’m am sorry, Professor Dickwipe, but where the fuck were you last summer?
Ok……breathe…..back to “Answer Me This” so I can laugh.
Keith
He must have read the Politico “9 point lead” headline and didn’t bother to check which polling outfit came up with that one. That’s the only way I can figure out where he’s getting this double-digit blowout stuff.
mk3872
The fact that we all accept that the Dem caucaus having only 59 vote is somehow making it impossible to pass legislation only underscores how broken and F’d-up the Senate is.
Stop allowing fillibusters of EVERYTHING and we may still be able to get some things done.
freelancer
@Maude:
To be fair, he got arrested in a State Park last time he was on them, and calm.
Jim
@Mike G: Like you, I can’t get past that. There are other converts (cough, Cole, cough cough) whom I trust. But deep down I think Sullivan is never more than a shift in the winds away from going back to his “fifth columnist” poo-flinging.
Short Bus Bully
“1984” is coming to be while all the wingers stand around yelling FREEDOM!
Nice.
General Winfield Stuck
Somebody needs to send Sullivan a copy of Basic Electoral Politics for dummies. A special election candidate of the opposing party midway thru a first midterm of a new Presnit always does better than well. Even in The Republic of Massastalingrad. He is kind of funny though when in Howard Beale mode.
We”re stupid as hell, and we’re not going to take it anymore
Notorious P.A.T.
@Jim:
“Let’s contribute to a thread bemoaning the decline of America by posting as if we never learned to spell!”
whetstone
Sullivan is a controversial subject because he says stuff like this:
I can see no evidence that a victory is guaranteed. Brown’s doing well in the polls, but not so well that anyone would be shocked if he lost. He might be right broadly, but if he can’t see anything besides the possibility he sees, he’s not trying very hard.
Andy
Sully needs to take a break and enjoy some PALINdromes.
Jim
@Notorious P.A.T.:
um…. what?
Chad S
Wtf? I usually like Sully, but I don’t see how its possible that Health Care dies if Coakley wins…
AhabTRuler
@Jim: The world is going to hell in a handbasket because people don’t know how to spell properly. Also, never use your soup spoon for the dessert course.
jacy
You would think Sully’s fainting couch would be broken considering how many times he’s flung himself upon it lately.
New Yorker
Let’s see, we’ve got one party rotten to the core with useless hacks in the states (like New York and Massachusetts) where it doesn’t face real competition, and another party of abject lunatics who are delighting in the collapsed economy and the suffering its inflicting on millions because of the one overarching goal of getting the n****r president back to his rightful non-uppity place.
You know, I’m really starting to hate my great-grandparents for having come to this country 100 years ago. I could have been born in the UK or Germany or Austria, maybe, if they had stayed where they were…..
SGEW
@Quaker in a Basement:
Um, you’re welcome?
[It’s more of an enlightened self-interest, really: no thanks needed.]
Zam
This is so fucking true, it what fucked up world is having a 59-41 margin a victory for the minority.
DFS.
I dunno if this will help everyone in the thread, but Christina Hendricks’ breasts really cheered me up today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXUz9lwsROg
Macha Maguire
… and a theocratic one at that.
three cheers for demographics…
grass
Let’s be honest, if America was a 98% white nation, you guys would have had UHC 40 years ago.
AnotherBruce
You know, I’m really starting to hate my great-grandparents for having come to this country 100 years ago. I could have been born in the UK or Germany or Austria, maybe, if they had stayed where they were…..
Big Maybe, considering what was going on in those countries 65 years ago.
dmsilev
@New Yorker:
Yes, because absolutely nothing bad has happened in Germany or Austria in the last 100 years.
-dms
beltane
@grass: True. Without racism the Republicans wouldn’t have anything going for them. America’s diversity, while one of its strengths, is also what allows the very wealthy to divide and conquer.
New Yorker
Yeah, that’s what gives me pause.
Plus, my mother’s side of the family comes from Lithuania. They could have been one of the zillions killed by Hitler and/or Stalin, and even if they lived, I would have grown up under Soviet Communism and would now be facing staggering unemployment that’s causing riots in that country.
Fuck, why didn’t they just go to Montreal instead of New York? The worst thing that would have happened is that I would have had my heart broken by the loss of the Expos…..
Lev
Sullivan has many virtues, but he’s also often solipsistic. He’s got some points here, but Pelosi isn’t stupid, and if necessary she’ll pass the Senate bill and make the proper modifications through reconciliation.
SteveinSC
In the debris of the 7.0 Richter scale earthquake that is about to demolish the Obama administration more completely than Port au Prince (along with my hopes), I wish only one thing survives amongst the rubble: The burning at the stake of Rahm Emanuel.
grass
@SteveinSC:
Too soon. Seriously. 200,000 Haitians =/= one lost senate seat.
SteveinSC
@Lev: But in the Senate, they won’t be able to break a Republican filibuster. Jim DeMint wins and Obama collapses.
Metaphor only.
cmorenc
It scares me to live in a country where we’re so often on the precipice of having slim majorities willing to be stampeded by fear into electing a cabal of arrogant, callous, avaristic, selfish assholes, with the party who ought, on principle, to be pursuing our better angels and protecting our common interest, so crippled by timidity, avarice, and corruption themselves that the arrogant assholes in the opposition can so easily fool just enough low-information voters into giving them power back once again.
New Yorker
Hey, I’m just talking about me here (and the post was semi-tongue-in-cheek). No doubt my parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents were better off here than over there, but I’m not sure about myself. I’d sure love to live where there’s a social safety net considering my draining savings and my dim job prospects right now.
Texas Dem
Democrats can win elections but they cannot sustain a media narrative. Obama was supposed to be following the Reagan model but he failed to learn the most important lesson from Reagan’s first term: when things got really bad, circa 1982-83, he NEVER hesitated to place the blame for the bad economy on the previous administration. In other words, you have to sustain the outrage, just like they do on talk radio and the Fox News Channel. Dems didn’t do that, and so people have now forgotten why they put Dems in power in the first place.
The good news in all of this, if there is any, is that the right is following the example of the French Bourbons, i.e., they’ve remembered everything and learned nothing. They quite obviously learned nothing from the Bush disaster, because they’re now promising more of the same, i.e., more war, more torture, more tax cuts for the rich with no offsetting cuts in the ever-growing entitlements. This will eventually lead us to a debt crisis and a collapse of the dollar. It’s just a matter of time, as Sullivan has suggested.
If such a crisis is inevitable (and I believe it is, given the massive denial in the electorate–they seem to want it all yet they do not want to pay the bill), then it’s better if the right is in power when the next storm hits us. Then we just have to hope our republic survives the deluge, and that we don’t end up like Chile circa 1973, which I’m beginning to think is a very real possibility.
Zandar
That’s funny, to hear the firebaggers gleefully rubbing their hands together, you think it was one currently.
To them, I quote Christopher Walken in the Prophecy:
“You have no idea, of the trouble you got there.”
DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio
Wow. Too bad BJ couldn’t have been the first to announce complete failure tomorrow, then of Dems on a larger scale, then of Obama, and finally, of America itself. Instead we had to import it from smarter, hipper locales.
You know what I would find really hilarious? A poll to find out what percentage of the BJ readership hangs around here just for the regular doses of gloom and doom, or at least for links to the gloom and doom.
Maybe you guys could hire Rasmussen to take the survey?
Just a thought.
celticdragonchick
@Mike G:
And fuck you in return. What the bloody hell has Sullivan done to any of you? Christ on a crutch, some of you foam at the mouth types in here act like he killed your dog or something.
No wonder the Dems are in trouble! This shoot everyone around you (including sympathizers to your goals and friends) is unbelievable.
celticdragonchick
@Chad S:
Because the Nelsons etc in the Senate will help sink it.
Bordo
I will echo a few other commenters here that while the GOP may see some short-term gains and an uptick in popularity, the conservative movement is on the wrong side of demographics and history.
The vast majority of younger people honestly do not care very much about skin color or sexual preferences or religious backgrounds. My kids have been attending school in multi-racial classes since they started. Now that they are in high school, they have some out friends and they know kids who are Muslim, Jewish and Sikh as well as Christian.
The smartest play the Republicans could have made would’ve been to woo Hispanic voters. These are largely social conservatives, very religious, big families. . .tailor-made for the GOP. But the loudmouthed crackers and the anti-immigration cranks guaranteed these folks would be driven into the waiting arms of the Democratic Party.
Sullivan needs to sip a martini or something and settle down.
Bordo
Celticdragonchick,
Andrew Sullivan is a gay conservative who was as strident and shameless a war worshipper as anyone you can name. He smeared all of us who opposed the Iraq War with his columns in some of the vilest language imaginable to the point of suggesting we might try to harm our own nation because of our opposition to the war. Now that he has had his “come to Jesus” moment, he wants everyone to forget just how big a hard on he had for the war. He has apologized a few times, in general, but he has never taken full responsibility for suggesting that millions of Americans would commit acts of sabotage, which is generally what fifth columnists do. I have chosen to move on, but Michael G still feels the sting of being called a traitor.
People can change. Perhaps the light of reason did dawn on Sullivan. Or maybe he finally got pissed off at a political party that has marginalized him and millions of other Americans because of their sexual preferences. The why doesn’t interest me. I’m simply happy he has become a vocal critic of the conservative movement.
That said, he is capable of ridiculous mood swings and really should have a strong editor between him and his reading public. His mewling today is not atypical.
maus
@celticdragonchick:
Stop wetting your pants and getting the vapors over our irritation. We’re more angry with people that we agree with on more issues and that SHOULD KNOW BETTER. I don’t expect a thing from the Joe the Plumbers and Sarah Palins, but someone with an ounce of thought rattling around in their head has the potential to be far more disappointing.
fraught
@celticdragonchick: Andrew Sullivan killed my dog last year in P’town. He Killed my friend’s dog and my mum’s cat. And then he pooped on them. And this was while he was getting gay married to my father. And still, I didn’t hate him.
This Coakley thing makes me really mad at him though.
Garrigus Carraig
Um, he has come to my country & gained a large, loud platform from which to advocate for destructive policies. Hypocritically. Fuck him. Fuck Murdoch too. If you’re gonna bother to come here, try to build shit, don’t try to break shit.
maus
@fraught: I think “she” is a troll.
https://balloon-juice.com/?p=32647&cpage=3#comment-1532488
Too full of intent to be that stupid.
Tax Analyst
@ #16 Jim
Yeah. Sullivan is at most only a temporary ally. The reality is that he just really doesn’t like the Democratic Party and probably never will. What he wants is for the Republican Party to find it’s way over to the positions he favors, and would trumpet their cause if they even came moderately close to ANY of them. But if the Democrats did the same he would be carping at every tiny point of variance.
maus
Yeah, selective ally and “fairweather friend” are pretty decent descriptors, whenever gay rights and someone marginally smarter and less wingnutty than Palin come into the GOP, he’s going to be back to his old gollumy tricks.
DougJ
Wow. Too bad BJ couldn’t have been the first to announce complete failure tomorrow, then of Dems on a larger scale, then of Obama, and finally, of America itself. Instead we had to import it from smarter, hipper locales.
Uh, I’m not agreeing with Sullivan, I’m making fun of him.
cmorenc
@Bordo
…and while I agree with the above as long (and even medium-term) trends….the unfortunate fact is that, at least in off-year elections YOUNG PEOPLE AND MINORITIES DON’T YET CONSISTENTLY VOTE IN REMOTELY NEAR THE PROPORTIONS OF THE AGING WHITE FOLKS WHO ARE THE CORE GOP DEMOGRAPHIC, especially in off-year elections. Unfortunately, there’s still enough time left before this youth/nonwhite demographic finally gets consistently dominant traction for the GOP-leaning portion of the white electorate to get the upper hand and send this country into permanent degradation and ruin, out of fear against progressive change.
Also, remember how the coming age of young people in the late 60s/early 70s was going to fundamentally change politics and society? How’d that turn out? An awful lot of them turned out, underneath all that hair and pot smoke, to harbor bourgeois materialistic turd-filled hearts and vote for Reagan and Bush in 1980, 1984, 1988, 2000, and 2004, having left their dreams of communes for life in ‘burbs with lawns and mortgages.
Don’t get me wrong – I sincerely hope you’re right and the Reagan/Bush incarnation of conservatism is terminally ill demographically, practically, and philosophically, and we’re momentarily experiencing a mere death-throes spasm from it on the way to a bona fide era of enlightened progressive ascendency.
Just don’t bet the house on it – quite yet.
DougJ
I will echo a few other commenters here that while the GOP may see some short-term gains and an uptick in popularity, the conservative movement is on the wrong side of demographics and history. The vast majority of younger people honestly do not care very much about skin color or sexual preferences or religious backgrounds.
Exactly.
The fact that old, white Americans are scary mofos politically (as a group) is a feature not a bug. The scarier they get, they more they kill they off the GOP longterm.
New Yorker
So in other words, he’s a relatively reasonable guy (aside from the whole Palin pregnancy nonsense) who disagrees with most of us on some things. That’s a problem because…?
The reason I hate the GOP right now is not because they disagree with me. Debate is good in an open society. The reason I hate them is because they’re a bunch of messianic-fascist lunatics with no grasp of reality. It’s a right-wing version of Hugo Chavez that represents a clear and present danger to the continued prosperity of this country.
I might not have agreed with Milton Friedman on most things, but I could respect the guy. The problem is that Friedman is dead and has been replaced with Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck, who are legitimately frightening people who I can’t respect and wouldn’t trust to feed my fucking cat if I went on a vacation.
Hawes
You have to consider that if Brown wins, ALL legislation grinds to a halt. The GOP won’t do shit about shit.
And I don’t think that’s what people want. They don’t want gridlock as much as they wanted it in the ’90s.
If the GOP shuts down Washington, I think it hurts them in November.
Darryl
The long term trends really do look good. When it comes to gays, minorities, etc, the 25 yros now have much better values than the 75 yros.
I’ll tell you something else that should make you happy, which doesn’t get talked about much. The baby boomers statistically tilt toward the Dems, and they are moving into the ranks of the elderly, whose members vote at a higher rate than anyone else.
So yeah, short-term stuff aside, the Tea Baggers and mindless Grover Norquist types are tee oh ay ess tee.
burnspbesq
@celticdragonchick:
You must not have gotten the memo. In order to be a true progressive, one must have “never forgive, never forget” tattooed on one’s eyeballs, so that it perpetually clouds the vision.
burnspbesq
I take no comfort from demographic trends. They take generations to play out, and during that time a Republican administration can do incalculable harm.
gbear
Great! Now can they please get interested in off-year and local elections? Thanks.
Tax Analyst
@ #58 New Yorker said:
Let’s see…I ALSO said: “The reality is that he just really doesn’t like the Democratic Party and probably never will. What he wants is for the Republican Party to find it’s way over to the positions he favors, and would trumpet their cause if they even came moderately close to ANY of them. But if the Democrats did the same he would be carping at every tiny point of variance.”
…which I guess you forgot to read (or understand). Let me rephrase it slightly for you – he dearly wants the Repubs to join his favored positions – which they probably won’t. Once they come get anywhere in the vicinity to any of them he will once again resume his cheerleading position. It’s either an emotional attachment to the Republicans or some sort of negative visceral reactions to the Democrats. Then I said that if the Dems did the same he would carp, complain and generally throw a tantrum at even the slightest point of disagreement.
You may disagree with my assessment, and that’s fine, but your “So in other words, he’s a relatively reasonable guy…blah, blah, blah” depends on what you consider to be “reasonable”. If you think that’s reasonable, why then you are 100% correct. I don’t, and thus I consider him a “temporary ally” when he happens to take a position I agree with.
There, was that so hard?
Rebecca
@DonBelacquaDelPurgatorio:
Actually, Rasmussen says Coakley is ahead.
nepat
@Texas Dem:
I agree, but where is the outrage sustained? There is no equivalent forum on the left to Fox News or Drudge. Our side is so hellbent on proving its intellectual integrity to itself that it actually ends up reinforcing right-wing memes – if not outright aligning with right-wing forces (see Hamsher, Jane).
Unfortunately, the answer is that there is no answer in the absence of public forum where liberal media narratives can thrive that operates independently of election cycles. As it stands now, all media – including the “progressive” blogosphere – is where liberal narratives go to die.
nepat
@Tax Analyst:
Don’t piss on Sullivan for bashing Democrats. He doesn’t pretend to be one on TV. Firebaggers, on the other hand…
celticdragonchick
@Garrigus Carraig:
alex
Sometimes temporary allies are the only thing that stands between us and the abyss. I don’t agree with Sullivan on most things, and he’s done a lot of terrible things, but he also has a pretty decent megaphone. If people insist on helping you, you let them. What’s the downside of temporarily allying with Sullivan? Is it going to stain our souls?
There’s also something of an irony in insisting on Sullivan being only a temporary ally that one should throw off on John Cole’s website.
AhabTRuler
IIRC, Sullivan identifies as a conservative, while Cole now identifies as a DFH. Bit of the old difference, there. He is, by his own admission, a temporary ally as he does not trust or support progressive liberal (as opposed to liberal, conservative) solutions. He, at least, is honest and consistent about that.
ETA: The late vitriol hereabouts has somewhat robbed me of any fire towards Sullivan. Although I still do not entirely trust him, and I think that he is surprisingly foolish for such a well-educated man, he just ain’t anyone’s idea of the devil.
mvr
@SGEW:
Yeah, but why don’t us white voters have the intelligence to go with enlightened self-interest? It isn’t like most whites wouldn’t be better off without the Republicans having any power. But they’re/we’re just too easily distracted by BS, I guess.
Seems like we ought to be grateful that some people are less easily mislead about their interests than others.
Jim
S
What the hell are you babbling about?
Tax Analyst
@ #69 alex said:
Again, maybe somebodysaid that here but I’m pretty sure I didn’t. I don’t think I even half-assedly agreed with anyone that this should be done. I didn’t say more than what I said…his alliance for Democratic party initiatives is mostly pretty shallow (except for on torture and gay marriage). That doesn’t mean I hate him – actually for the most part I kind of like him. He often says things I heartily agree with. I don’t always agree with the Democrats for that matter, but I realize how awful the Republicans of 2010 actually are, so I strongly prefer Democratic Party candidates.
Anyway all I said is all I said. Just that and nothing more. Thanks.
Tax Analyst
This should have been block-quoted in my last post (#73)
Tax Analyst
@ #67 nepat:
Not pissing on anybody, nepat. Just stating what appears obvious to me about Sullivan. I don’t expect him to come join the party, and when he agrees with a Democratic Party position I don’t count on him sticking around if he can find anything at all to quibble about or nibble at. On the other hand if the Republicans toss him the nub of a broken biscuit I think he would come sprinting back onto the reservation, even though they’re going to whack him upside the head with a rolled-up newspaper when he gets there.
Well Hell…maybe I AM pissing on him. Well, so what?
Kyle Moore
“…without non-white voters, we’d probably be a theocratic military dictatorship by now.”
/fixed
John Ball
So basically, it’s our huge minority population standing between us becoming Greece during the junta years…
Damn it, I love this country. I love it so much it hurts.
celticdragonchick
@Jim:
It was a joke. You didn’t get the reference. Forget it.
Gekkobear
“Remember they gave him zero votes on even the stimulus in his first weeks.”
I don’t remember that at all.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29179041/
“The Senate approved the measure 60-38 with three GOP moderates providing crucial support…”
Of course if you expected factual accuracy from Sullivan you’re just not paying attention.
Lex
@Lev:
I’m gonna have to see some evidence on that score.
Phoenix Woman
@Zandar:
Please don’t confuse Seminal posters with FDL posters. That makes you just like Andy.
Phoenix Woman
@Tax Analyst:
Aw, nepat wants to join Sully in blaming FDL for — well, everything. We’re the new scapegoats, haven’t you heard?
Panurge
@morenc:
Don’t forget, the young people of 1980 and 1984 weren’t necessarily the young people of 1968 and 1972. It was the so-called “Gen-X” with their neo-retro anti-hippie attitude who really voted so heavily for Reagan; lots of them were awakened politically just in time to swallow the line that the Iranian hostage crisis constituted THE FINAL HUMILIATION OF THE GLORIOUS U.S. or some such. Some former hippies crossed over, but not that many from what I can tell.
Point is, we have a system that makes it easy to decide to give up your ideals and values; I mean, look at all the neat stuff you can have! And besides, you had a good run, and you guess the squares aren’t wrong about everything, and maybe you’d better show them you’ve learned something from them, and maybe you should show you understand that You Can’t Always Get What You Want etc., and it just goes on and on from there. Having responsibilities is a great way for the Man to jerk you around. I don’t think Boomers are so bad–I just think they think they’re in an impossible position.
What happened back then WAS going to change society, and in fact it did to an extent even if it didn’t produce Hippie Utopia and even if much of it has been pushed back. I just don’t think anyone realized that the Man would figure out how to use soft power.