TNC does a great job eviscerating more nonsense from someone I think is a good pick for the worst person in the world on any given day, Lanny Davis:
Lanny Davis has distinguished himself, over the past two years, by reaching across the partisan divide. Davis’s commitment to common ground is absolute and unquestioned–even when no common ground actually exists.
In the instance, much of what Davis cites is the inverse of reality. Davis’s conjured Rand Paul is a libertarian. The actual Rand Paul told TIME, “I’m not a libertarian.” Davis’s conjured Rand Paul is pro-choice. The actual Rand Paul wants a constitutional ban on abortion. Davis’s conjured Libertarian party nominated Rand Paul’s father, Ron Paul, for president. The actual Libertarian party nominated Bob Barr. The conjured Rand Paul favors the decriminalization of “the use of drugs for medicinal or recreational purposes.” That one may be true; I’ve seen conflicting reports. But according to TIME, Paul holds no such position.
For quite some time, Lanny Davis has been just making things up and pretending it was reality. His shameless performance during the Clinton campaign of 2008 really was something to behold, although I can’t quite decide what my favorite offense of his was- when he threatened that Obama just had to make Hillary his veep, or when he lashed out at Obama for winning, or his absolutely absurd proposal for the Michigan delegate nonsense.
The other thing that perpetually amuses me is that most of the poutrage crowd who freak out at Obama on a daily basis were all Clinton supporters, and still seem to pretend that the Clintons would actually be much more progressive, failing to understand that Rahm is who he is because of the Clintons and that this is what Clinton did to progressives for eight years:
Using unusually vivid language to describe the threat against Sen. Blanche Lincoln, Clinton urged the voters who nurtured his career to resist outside forces bent on making an example out of the two-term Democratic incumbent.
He pounded the podium with Lincoln at his side, warning that national liberal and labor groups wanted to make her a “poster child” in the June 8 Senate run-off to send a message about what happens to Democrats who don’t toe the party line.
“This is about using you and manipulating your votes to terrify members of Congress and members of the Senate,” Clinton said in the gym of a small historically black college here.
Clintonism begat Rahm, Lanny Davis, and Blanche Lincoln. You would think the people screaming at Obama to undo DADT faster would remember who gave us DADT and DOMA.
Bill E Pilgrim
The very definition of Broderism.
demkat620
Two people in the democratic party I cannot stand:Terry MacAuliffe and Lanny Davis.
So glad Clinton did not win. Those two would be everywhere.
taylormattd
Oh John, now you’ve done it.
You’ve gone and summoned Armando.
me
Your ads are telling me to vote for Ron Johnson. Show of hands for who thinks I should do what the mighty Google Adwords tells me.
MikeJ
@me: I think you should be happy he’s wasting his money by giving it to Cole who will use it to feed Tunch until he’s large enough to eat anybody who refers to Atlas Shrugged as their foundational book.
b-psycho
How someone with as much political involvement as Lanny Davis gets the 2008 Libertarian Party nomination & the 1988 one mixed up is beyond me.
Stroszek
I have a soft spot for Terry Mac, if only because he’s nuts in a comical way and genuinely supports the party.
The whole Lanny Davis, Sid Blumenthal, Larry Johnson crowd is sleazy as fuck though and the nutters they gathered around them were a precursor to the Tea Party hysteria. The DNC Rules & By-Laws Meeting from 2008 easily matched the health care town halls for rancid insanity.
licensed to kill time
Dear Mister Fantasy play us a tune
Something to make us all happy
Do anything take us out of this gloom
Sing a song, play guitar
Make it snappy
You are the one who can make us all laugh
But doing that you break out in tears
Please don’t be sad if it was a straight mind you had
We wouldn’t have known you all these years
Unabogie
I know this violates some blog code somewhere, but the elephant in the room is that PUMAs never really supported Hillary Clinton or her politics, which were, after all, almost identical to Obama’s. What’s driving people like Ferraro, Larry Johnson, Lanny Davis, et al, is that they are racists. They don’t like the complexion of the guy who won. Therefore he is presumptuous, disrespectful, blah, blah, blah.
So of course Lanny has a woody for Rand Paul. They both feel the same way about the civil rights act, if you catch my drift.
Josie
I seriously considered sending this THC column to you, John, but it hit me rather quickly that you would have read it already and would soon post about it. You did not disappoint.
gwangung
@Josie: What I found interesting in the comments were the libertarian idealogues were constantly replying as if Coates was criticizing libertarianism instead of what he actually said.
NobodySpecial
You’ve been in Mike Kay’s stash, haven’t you?
Well, except he sees visions of Nader whenever he partakes. Evidently when you do, you see phantom supporters of Lanny Davis.
Batocchio
Pointing this out makes the baby BTD cry.
Cat Lady
@Unabogie:
You can’t be referring to hard working Americans, white Americans could you, cuz that would be racist.
Unabogie
@Cat Lady:
More this person:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KACQuZVAE3s
Lucy Finn-Smith
I have to disagree, I think Hillary Clinton would be more progressive than Obama, speaking as someone who knew the Clintons from the start as a resident of Arkansas for the last 30 yrs . Hillary is rock solid progressive on womens and childrens issues , none of this half way nonsense on brith control or right to choose , Obama squandered the enormous goodwill ( and young ground troops ) he had going into office …. now we all know the answer to every issue … a bit of this a bit of that … split the baby in two and kick the hippies …..
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Unabogie:
I think that’s a large strain of PUMAism. Another is the people who wanted a woman, and a third is those who wanted Bill back. What always bemused/amused me was the way the last two groups joined together, or more precisely, the people who told me I was a misogynist for not supporting Hillary making common cause with the people who told me I was an idiot because voting for Hillary meant we would get the bestest, smartest most heroickest ever president back! The evidence for Bill’s greatness, btw, was that he had won a second term.
FlipYrWhig
@Unabogie: I don’t believe that. I think that people got very upset that Hillary did everything people always told her to do–careful Senate campaign based on convincing skeptical upstaters, impressing Senate colleagues with her knowledge and relationship-building, burnishing a reputation as a hawk on foreign policy (to show that women can be tough-minded)–and then here comes a new guy who does everything the opposite (fast rise, opposed to the Iraq war, bigger on vision than on wonkery) and snatches it away.
So the big frustration on the part of her strategists and the most enthusiastic blogosphere backers was that Hillary “paid her dues” and Obama didn’t. I think that can _sound_ racial because of the whole “uppity”/”know your place” thing, but it wasn’t _primarily_ racial, at least in most cases. If there had been blogs in 1984 there would probably have been lasting wounds from the Mondale/Hart divide, which was likewise insider/outsider, seasoned/untested, and the blogs practically melted with rage during Dean/Clark/Kerry. So I think race could have been a component, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a major one.
(Not to rehash the whole thing about “hardworking” and “Jesse Jackson” and such, which was definitely my least favorite part of the 2008 primaries.)
Cacti
@Stroszek:
Now that he’s no longer DNC chair, McAuliffe seems like a decent enough fellow.
lawguy
So the primary ended up being a Hobson’s choice between two conservative technocrats, one of whom pretended to be mildly progressive.
Then the election was between the winner of that and a semi senile old reactionary and his psycho side kick.
How by the way did we get here from JFK/LBJ about 40 years ago?
ChrisB
@FlipYrWhig: I largely agree with you but that doesn’t excuse the disgraceful campaign she ran.
And Lanny Davis isn’t simply a good choice for worst person; he’s an odds on favorite.
Cacti
@FlipYrWhig:
If the problems weren’t primarily racial, why the need for all the racist dog whistles from the Clinton camp?
And w/ Ferraro, it wasn’t even dog whistles.
Unabogie
@FlipYrWhig:
While I think that could explain some of the frustration and initial dislike of Barack Obama, the “inadequate black male” comment and the “whitey tape” tell a different story. I say the same thing to the Teabaggers who complain about being called racists.
“If you don’t want to be called a racist, stop saying racist things”.
Cacti
@lawguy:
Right.
Because the modern left would have loved the militarist foreign policy of LBJ and JFK.
Warren Terra
lawguy, put down the rose-tinted glasses. In 1960 JFK was a conservative cold warrior corporatist with only practical interests in unions or minorities. Early LBJ was, at best, better only on poverty.
FlipYrWhig
@Cacti:
I _really_ don’t want to get into this all over again, but my grand unified theory is that both sides’ supporters overlaid and/or projected racism, sexism, and classism onto what was essentially an insider/outsider contest, because liberals and Democrats are alert to all of those -isms and know that it’s Very Bad to be guilty of them and hence they crop up as charges and countercharges.
Also, IMHO it was _fair_ to question, in terms of the notorious “electability” argument, whether The Voters would embrace either a youngish black man or an older white woman as Teh Preznit. Fortunately for all of us, the answer was… Yes We Can! (*dodges hailstorm of tomatoes*).
That is NOT to say that there weren’t racists who supported Clinton, or for that matter misogynists who supported Obama. During the primary season we all knocked ourselves out ferreting out both. I just truly, still, don’t think it was a primary shaper of opinions.
FlipYrWhig
@Warren Terra: Yes, I think everyone forgets that Kennedy was also running as a war hero who would address the “missile gap.”
El Cid
Lanny Davis was also a pretty good hired hack for the Honduran coup d’etat. Got a coup to promote? Hire the principled Lanny Davis.
Josie
@gwangung: Yeah – it’s that victim thing again. They do it so well.
PanAmerican
The dog whistling was about votes. It was pointless and stupid because they started it after the deal was done.
The likes of Lanny Davis and Carville taking cheap shots whenever possible is about them being not getting plum assignments or access in the Clinton II Whitehouse.
Which is tough shit.
Sending Bill out to flog a doomed campaign in his home state?
An evil, vengeful bastard like myself might be tempted to ask: who’s inadequate now m*therf’er?
Tazistan Jen
@FlipYrWhig:
I think this is exactly right. Leaving out fringe nuts like Ferraro and Larry Johnson, that is. There were some nasty sexist Hillary haters running around too, but we didn’t have to watch them in the full flowering of bitterness, since Hillary lost.
The vast majority of candidate supporters were just excited about their candidate and correspondingly dismissive of the other one (two when Edwards was still in).
rootless_e
@Lucy Finn-Smith: I think one of the first times I was told that I was a mindless Obot was when I replied to a virulent attack on Obama’s waffling “late stage abortion” position by posting an excerpt from Hillary doing the same thing in a Senate campaign speech.
Good times!
As a former Arkansan, I don’t have the same memories you have of the Rose Law Firm and Tyson Chicken, and Winrock (I was there before Walmart, in the dark ages).
Napoleon
Wow, no one has mentioned Mark Penn yet. As much as Obama drives me crazy I am still convinced that he was the better choice. He may surround himself with DLCish/Republican lite types in some positions but Hillary had a bunch of close advisers who were absolutely toxic to the party.
Mnemosyne
@Lucy Finn-Smith:
Really? How do you explain the Defense of Marriage Act, NAFTA, signing the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, welfare “reform,” and DATD if they’re so much more progressive than Obama?
(Don’t get me wrong — I think Hillary has been a fantastic Secretary of State. I just don’t think she would have been a very good president.)
Keith G
@efgoldman:
More to the point, the big issues that labor unions were called on to deal with seemed like fait accompli. So fervent support eroded. Support also eroded as the Southern Strategy was able to divide black workers from white.
Alex K
Speaking of TIME, their most recent issue had yet another one of those Rand-and-Ron puff pieces that make me want to gut someone, all about how Rand is jes good folks, and he’s a spunky radical outsider and all that crap. Sure, at the beginning there were two paragraphs about his post-primary meltdown, but it’s something that felt like they only talked about it because it was too big to shove under the rug, not because it’s in any way alarming that a potential U.S. senator could hold those opinions.
CalD
Oh for god’s sake. It just amazes me that people act like this is a choice between Blanche Lincoln and Bill Halter. It isn’t. It’s a choice between Blanche Lincoln and John Boozman. Lincoln could very conceivably still have a shot at holding this seat. Halter never had one from the day he decided to run to Linclon’s left in Arkansas in 2010. It’s that simple.
In that light it is effectively the union coalition’s aim — with a little assist from well-meaning progressiverer enablers — to replace a woman who votes the liberal line about 3/4 of the time (I checked) with a man who is very likely to be actively hostile to everything I believe in pretty much 100% of the time. I may be a long way from being Blanche Lincoln’s biggest fan but I can’t see any way that’s not a pretty awful trade. And yes, the unions are dong this to prove they can and fuck anyone who doesn’t like it. And I don’t. So fuck them.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@rootless_e: One also has to wonder– even assuming that Hillary, Bill and Mark hadn’t found a way to lose to McCain-notPalin, which I firmly believe they would have–how President HRC would’ve been “more progressive than Obama” with –again this is all hypothetical but it’s what I believe would’ve happened– a weaker party in both houses of Congress.
Jeff Fecke
The policy differences between HRC and Obama were and are negligible. I don’t know whether Clinton would have been a better or worse president (my sense — and the reason I backed Obama — was and is that Obama had a higher ceiling, but also a lower floor.)
But Hillary would have been pretty much the same on policy than Barack; their policy positions are essentially identical. As for efficacy, who knows?
None of this changes the fact that Lanny Davis is an enormous douche.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@CalD: In every poll I’ve seen out of Arkansas, Boozman is beating the Dem, but Halter is stronger than Lincoln. This has been consistent for months.
This would’ve been a tough seat for Dems to hold on to in any environment, but Lincoln brought on this primary challenge herself, by being weak, stupid, double-crossing the unions, and running to the right on HCR instead of showing some leadership. Whether in the primary or the general, Lincoln is finished in electoral politics. My only regret is knowing that she’ll not only cash in as a lobbyist, but probably be happier.
Just Some Fuckhead
This is bullshit. Put the big brush away.
tatere
Dang, he’s on to us! Who forwarded him the secret emails?
The Raven
@Lucy Finn-Smith:
Bingo. There was otherwise very little difference in their platforms, and I think Hilary Clinton’s genuine feminism (for that is what you are describing, a very moderate feminism) probably cost her the election. Obama ran just enough to the right of Clinton to pick up more Republican voters and not scare the “threatened-masculinity” crowd.
My sense, generally, is that the Clintons, despite their conservatism, are more decent people than Obama. I don’t think there is any issue that Barack Obama cares about as much as Hilary Clinton cares about women’s and children’s issues. We really didn’t know very much about Obama before he took office; now that we do, it seems to me that Hilary Clinton is a bit tougher than Obama. Having been personally attacked by the radical right, I think she would show less sympathy with it than Obama. On the other hand, her sex and her feminism might have cost her the election, had she become the Democratic Presidential candidate.
Triassic Sands
Why does wanting a senator who better represents one’s views have to be an evil liberal conspiracy?
Bill is the gift that keeps on giving, but he has never been a progressive and his major accomplishments are things conservatives would praise him for if conservatives were capable of honestly appraising anything.
If I lived in Arkansas, I would vote for Halter. Not because I’m sure he’ll be great (he’s from Arkansas after all), but because he might be better than Lincoln. Right now, that’s enough of a reason to support him. After six years, I might support someone else to replace him, but today I’d like to see Lincoln retired and Halter is the only positive means of doing that.
If a Republican wins in November, then Lincoln will be gone, and Democrats will be free to decide that the reason they lost this election was because their candidate was not conservative enough.
handy
And people thought in 2004 that Dubya was someone they’d like to have a beer with. And Algore was a liar in 2000.
Yutsano
Is it a bad sign when a trackback linky no work?
Marc
A lot of the most vocal online critics of Obama today were heavily invested in the Clinton primary campaign. They developed hostile attitudes towards Obama at that time, and this colors their overall approach (and, to be honest, credibility.) This fact has nothing to do with rehashing the primaries, which is where I’m afraid that this is going.
The biggest division in the 2008 primaries from the point of view of a Democrat was between hack and non-hack. The outrages of the Bush era promoted a certain style of combativeness, at times uncomfortably close to the five minute hate favored by the online right. We saw toxic assumptions, e.g. that those who disagree with you are evil, and that the worst possible motive is the only possible motive.
All deployed in the verbal equivalent of friendly fire, and still being used against fellow progressives today. (e.g. Obama’s supreme court nominee must be a closet fascist….because I don’t know much about her actual positions, and I hate Obama…)
FlipYrWhig
@The Raven: How did Obama run to the right of Clinton? Clinton sunk her whole campaign by refusing to admit that the Iraq war was a bad idea. Why did she take that course? Because she was advised to project forcefulness lest she be pegged as the Chick Candidate. The whole Obama phenomenon happened because there was room _to Clinton’s left_. Edwards and Obama slugged it out for that space.
FlipYrWhig
@Marc: The way I remember it, the blogs were basically ABC, Anyone But Clinton. There were Edwards people and Obama people (and both groups were _unbelievably_ obnoxious) and virtually no Clinton people. (Was any leading blogger pro-Clinton? Not that I recall.) That’s why there eventually was the “strike” from DailyKos when the Clinton supporters all bugged out, and only after that point was there a vocal pro-Clinton presence–basically as a backlash.
The way I remember it, Clinton was the frontrunner, and the blogs (who were tight with the Dean ’04 effort) didn’t like it because she was insufficiently antiwar and aligned with people like Terry McAuliffe who were pro-corporate and not down with the “50 State Strategy.” So the big bloggers went looking for a champion, eventually settling on Obama, who was both against the Iraq war and less tight with DLC/Corporate/moneybags types. (“DLC” was the big catchphrase. That’s who everyone blamed for everything.)
Then the Clinton people got pissed that they were being silenced and trash-talked on the blogs and formed a different circuit they could have to themselves.
Then the Obama people started to say the Clinton people didn’t like their candidate because they were racists; then the Clinton people started to say the Obama people didn’t like their candidate because they were sexist and classist and antigay. And some of them never got over any of it.
Lucy Finn-Smith
I agree with The Raven that Hillary cares passionately about women and children issues and has cared for years , not just when she was running for office and yes she is tougher than Obama , and she would not have wasted months trying to get Repubs on board with health care reform , she would have gone on TV and shamed every one of them for obstructing reform .
I realise that its difficult for Obama to show anger and strong feelings because Fox would love to push the ” angry black man ” meme (” he is just like his pastor ” etc) but I think Hillary would give them hell….. oh well maybe 2016…
BrighidG
@The Raven: Real feminists don’t pander to racists for votes.
BrighidG
@Lucy Finn-Smith: she would have gone on TV and shamed every one of them for obstructing reform .
Because it worked so well when she and her husband tried it in the 90’s!
Does anyone remember the 90’s? Aside from the Republicans, that is.
Robert Waldmann
I don’t think more than I have to about Davis, but I think he just jumped the shark. His claim that Rand Paul is pro choice was absolutely false. From now on, I think that whenever he makes a claim of fact, he should be asked for proof and reminded of this error. It should be career ending.
I think it is impossible to defend Bill Clinton signer of the Welfare reform bill. I do note that he wasn’t the candidate.
However, I will defend his campaigning for Lincoln. The defense follows. Nothing useful can be accomplished with the next congress — the current one is almost paralyzed and there will be more Republicans in the next one. Therefore it is wise to do whatever it takes to get things through the current senate. Lincoln is a senator and can block everything. Anything that will win her vote in the next few months is worth it (same for Specter).
Stroszek
@The Raven:
Clinton’s defeat had nothing to do with threatened masculinity nor did she run to the left of Obama in any visible sense. It had everything to do with liberal resentment at the party establishment over Iraq and Obama’s delegate strategy.
Yeah, get back to me when Obama starts sexually harassing interns.
Stroszek
@Stroszek: I would add that I did some work with the Children’s Defense Fund earlier this year and talked a lot about health care and social policy with dedicated children’s advocates. Their view was that Obama’s health care bill, while imperfect, was a big step in the right direction and probably the most significant pro-woman/pro-child/anti-poverty achievement in over 30 years. If you ask them what they think of the Clintons and their “passionate” support for women and children’s issues, they’ll go on for hours about the devastation caused by welfare reform for single-parent households struggling with shitty work in low income areas.
As far about Obama “not caring” about issues as passionately as the Clintons… the Clintons basically dropped health care reform at the first sign of trouble. Obama repeatedly revived it from the brink of death at great expense to his political capital. Actions speak louder than empty words at think tank conferences, IMO.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@FlipYrWhig:
Thank you. The refusal of (some) Clinton supporters to admit that her own actions and decision had more to do with her loss, in a primary where 58% of voters were female, than her gender is incredibly dishonest.
‘
@Lucy Finn-Smith:
Ah. She would have given Mitch McConnell and Orrin Hatch a stern look, and the filibuster would have disappeared. Hillary is magic!
liberal
I don’t freak out on a daily basis, but I think a lot less of Obama than many/most of the commenters here.
Not me. Voted for Obama in the MD primary. Gave money to Obama in the primary and the general. A lot of money.
Given that Obama has turned out to be more right-wing than I wish he were, and given that we don’t know for 100% what Hillary would have been like as president, it’s possible that she could have been to Obama’s left, but all the evidence was against it, and still is.
In fact, I looked up Hillary’s and Obama’s Am for Dem Action scores before the primary season really got under way. They were roughly equivalent. I preferred Obama because Hillary seemed to have no core convictions, and Obama seemed to be a little bit to the left of her on the things like Iraq and Iran.
liberal
@Jeff Fecke:
This is a very reasonable claim, as is your entire comment.
Sheila
I find it interesting that so many of the frustrati ranting against Obama consider themselves true “progressives”. If it is true that they were erstwhile Clinton supporters, this certainly belies their claims to progressivism. Where were they when Bill Clinton was gutting the Democratic Party of all its core values? He pushed the Party to the right, the gops moved farther to the right to distinguish themselves from his lackluster Republican policies, and thus, the entire country moved to the right. If Hillary Clinton was indeed his co-President, then she was indeed not a progressive. I do admit, however, that I am comfortable with her as Secretary of State, something I never thought I would be.
rikyrah
Davis is a piece of crap, plain and simple. I was sorta mad that TNC even wrote about him,but he gutted him so that it was great to read that. Davis takes a paycheck from Rupert Murdoch – that’s all you need to know about him.