All right, now that John is talking about it too, I may as well indulge my Caddell/Schoen/Kaplan obsession a little more.
I would like to know, honestly, seriously, what is the purpose running a column about how Obama should resign in order to put “country first”? It’s so over the top that I can’t believe anyone buys it. I was as anti-Bush as anyone, but if I’d read some piece by disaffected Republican politicos about how Bush should resign, I would have laughed, and I was as anti-Bush as they come. I can’t believe there’s much of an audience for this kind of stupidity.
What’s the deal, do they get a Drudge link out of it? Should the Post be seen as the journalistic equivalent of a child who acts out to get attention?
FlipYrWhig
Come back, Schoen!
Mnemosyne
There is a large contingent of the Democratic establishment that can’t handle the fact that Obama is black, and they won’t be comfortable until we have a white president again. I honestly think that’s a huge, huge part of it (and of the troubles he keeps having getting the Senate to vote on perfectly sensible bills).
david mizner
Is there a pun in the headline I’m missing?
jl
Not sure it is all race. I think much of it is identification with corporatism: these people makes tons of money going to a few board meetings, or they get paychecks for doing very little work from giant corporate conglomerates.
Even Obama’s half hearted and fumbling and compromised attempts at reform freak them out.
They may not be the BMOCs anymore, or the people that give them big checks for saying stuff people tell them to say may not be the BMOCs anymore.
That’s how I see it.
Bob
It gave my Teabagger son-in-law a chance to say, “See? Even some DEMOCRATS think he shouldn’t run again.” Meanwhile, Kaplan Test Prep Daily will get back in my good graces when they run an op-ed stating why, for the good of the country, Palin, Pawlenty and Romney should vow not to run in 2012.
beltane
There is really not much to discuss here. What is going on is very similar to the unprincipled intrigue and moral rot found in, say, I Claudius. The bitchiness of spurned courtiers is a sight to behold.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: See, I still don’t really think that the professional Democratic class cares very much about Obama’s race (some Democratic _voters_ assuredly do). I think that the Third Way/DLC segment of the Democratic media/pundit/strategist set is trying to take advantage of Obama’s struggles to spread the word that any politician more liberal than Evan Bayh or Harold Ford is doomed.
(Now several people will probably pipe up to say that Obama _isn’t_ any more liberal than Bayh or Ford, and to them I will say in advance that what you’re noticing about Obama is precisely the _effect_ of this territorial pissing by DLC/Third Way thinkers. They want to make it as hard as possible for him to invalidate their whole raison d’etre, the basis for their careers since Mondale or thereabouts.)
Mnemosyne
@david mizner:
He’s one of the two authors of the article John and Doug are writing about. And it rhymes with “train,” at least for these purposes.
beltane
@david mizner: Probably “Train in Vain”, the Clash song. DougJ is a Clash fan.
Lev
@david mizner: It’s a reference to “Train in Vain” by The Clash.
Schoen is sort of like the poor man’s Dick Morris. Partisan turncoat with outrageously stupid predictions, and so forth. But the solution to having too little political capital isn’t to eradicate what you have left.
DougJ
@david mizner:
I think that Schoen is pronounced “shane” so it’s a pun on Train In Vain.
Cerberus
You know when you look at the old pictures of integration and you see all the angry 20-something white faces screaming at the school-children?
Well, they are still alive and they really really want to read about that black bastard who “stole their country” by being elected being thrown out for being black and uppity and thinking he gets to be in charge.
There’s a lot of less obviously racist racists who want to read about the same thing.
And that’s basically what the op-ed is. A barely veiled call for Obama to leave governing to the proper white men and stop being uppity and pretending to be in charge.
I suspect by the end of Obama’s terms, that they’ll drop even this thin veil of pretense and start just openly saying that there should be a constitutional amendment that n****ers shouldn’t be allowed to be in charge of things.
Mnemosyne
@FlipYrWhig:
I don’t think they’re entirely conscious of it. All they know is that they don’t trust him and there’s something about him that makes them uncomfortable. I doubt that they could articulate it if they tried, but it’s in there.
david mizner
@Lev:
‘
Oh, thanks. Very familiar with the song — used to do the white man’s overbite to it in high school. (Then we used to put on, Death of Glory.)
I didn’t know his name was pronounced that way.
Corner Stone
I thought John was the anti-bush front pager here?
Mnemosyne
@Cerberus:
Exactly. It’s not the only reason (very few things in this world happen for a single reason) but I really do think it underlies a lot of the Village’s discomfort with Obama.
ETA: When we were arguing about the election in 2008, my mom insisted that she was “embarrassed” to have a black president. That’s the exact word she used. And, yes, she is in the teabagger demographic.
FlipYrWhig
@DougJ: Also relevant because it involves feeling betrayed by your partner.
noncarborundum
So you’re saying you were anti-Bush?
Zandar
No, children have actual positive qualities, too.
cleek
jesus h beiber, those two people are fucking insane.
jl
“What’s the deal, do they get a Drudge link out of it? Should the Post be seen as the journalistic equivalent of a child who acts out to get attention?”
I wonder whether there is pressure from the advertisers on editorial page content. That would be in line with agricultural and petrochemical giants underwriting various news shows, on broadcast networks and PBS.
Agricultural conglomerates sell nothing to the general public. I myself have never seen an ADM frozen dinner, milk carton, apple, squash or chicken in the store. But they do get lots of goodies from the feds, and they do sell gunk that goes into convenience foods.
Maybe it is made known to the Post that these kinds of views are very serious and important, and space needs to be allocated to them, over and over and over and over again.
The press coverage of the pre emptive BS informal catfood commission non report has been idiotic. Very sad commentary on the press.
And now I hear Keven ‘Dow 36000′ Hassett ringing alarm bells about the Feds’ new quantitative easing. He made no sense. At least he was balanced by Alan Blinder, who has more credibility.
Also, I think it is true that people like Galbraith, Blinder, Diamond, Stiglitz, get space, but it is almost always buried deep in the business columns at places like the WSJ and WaPo. Only hacks get on the official editorial page regularly. Krugman was a mistake. As he has said, his column was supposed to be a kind of Kristoff thing, nerdbait for wonks. Then Bush II happend and the GOP went insane. I wonder if he would have gotten the offer is the NYTimes knew how things would turn out.
joe from Lowell
To suck up to Republicans, so that they will hire you at inflated rates.
MattR
@Mnemosyne: And one more reason that Bloomberg is not running in 2012. As a Jew who remembers the history of his people, he is not gonna be the one to kick a black man out of office.
And speaking of teabaggers, I am listening to the song George by moe. whose chorus sums up my feelings towards them
@Zandar: @cleek: “Heh” to both of you.
DougJ
@noncarborundum:
I was a real ranter-and-raver about Bush in 2004. I still think he was the worst president since at least Hoover.
Mnemosyne
@MattR:
Not only that, he’s heard all of the anti-Semitic rumblings coming from the right wing (Glenn Beck, I’m looking at you). I doubt he wants to be the center of that 24/7 freakshow.
FlipYrWhig
@Mnemosyne: IMHO Schoen at least profiles more as a conservative/corporate Democrat than as an outright teabaggers. That’s why I suggested the turf war hypothesis. An architect of Clinton’s victories could well have a working hypothesis that the only way to win as a Democrat is to be a conservative Southern Democrat. Schoen wrote a book called _Declaring Independence: The Beginning of the End of the Two-Party System_, and I think that’s his Thing.
Caddell I don’t know about.
Nick
@Mnemosyne:
Or that Hillary lost. A lot of Democrats want him to fail to prove they were right. It’s all about being proven right.
Moses2317
It helps move the discussion another step to the right. Right now, the debate is between folks who think that President Obama should be bolder, and those that think he needs to capitulate on everything in light of the midterm elections. But if someone is out there saying that President Obama should quit, then it makes the capitulate position seem like the middle ground.
Winning Progressive
joe from Lowell
@Mnemosyne:
Anti-semitic? Can’t a guy even complain about rich, cosmopolitan, big-city, secular people of questionable loyalty who don’t share our Christian values, without you playing The Race Card?
Lev
@DougJ: I think Hoover wins that comparison easily. The stock market collapse happened only a few months into his term, making it mostly the fault of Coolidge and Andy Mellon, and while Hoover made many mistakes, he did try to alleviate the Depression. Still a lousy president, but not one of the worst.
Bush, though, belongs to the bottom three. His failures in leadership are at least Pierce-esque, if not (James) Buchananesque. Needless wars, polarization, plus a financial panic? I don’t see how you beat that.
Martin
Never stop putting the C.R.E.A.M. tag on media posts, DougJ.
Joseph Nobles
I thought it wasn’t a call for Obama to resign, just announcing that he wouldn’t seek a second term in office. Not precisely the same thing.
On a lighter note (but still just as cringeworthy), Bristol Palin’s routine tonight on Dancing with the Stars is a pasodoble/waltz to the music of the “Passion of the Christ.” Sarah just tweeted that she’s flying to LA to catch it!
FlipYrWhig
@Nick: I think Hillary started out as the DLC candidate, but then tacked in a different direction to try to become the “hardworking Americans” candidate — which picked up some racists along the way. So maybe your Hillary theory is where my DLC theory and Mnemosyne’s white backlash theory converge.
Bob L
@Cerberus:
Likely, shock is a big part of this. They want outrage their opponents so much they are left speechless and monopolize the conversation. Only so far it can go with shock until the N bomb is dropped.
morzer
It’s probably about the few remaining members of the Blue Dog rabble trying to exert what leverage they can. I don’t doubt that race is a factor. I’ve seen Blue Dog fanboys on blogs trying to suggest that progressives sold out on key bills, and that if we had all listened to the Blue Dogs all would have been well. For an illustration of this, if any of you read Michael Tomasky’s weak sauce liberal blog in the Guardian, just take a look at the comments – especially those by a guy called “lefthalfback”.)
Also too, Heath Shuler needs a serious ass-kicking amid public ridicule. I know that’s the story of his NFL career, but there’s no reason to stop now that he’s taken his fumbling arrogance to the Beltway.
Starfish
This article got Caddell on NPR where they could discuss the merits of this serious idea by a former Carter person.
I was glad that I had my blood pressure checked before I heard this, and I turned the radio off after a few minutes just in case.
suzanne
@Cerberus:
I’m not convinced of this. The teabaggers and other crazies seem to be really expert at the kind of cerebral jiu jitsu that allows them to BE racist without actually admitting it, to themselves or anyone else.
Tom Q
@FlipYrWhig: Caddell has been a reliable “I used to be a Democrat but they’ve gone off the deep end” voice since at least 2000, when he’d sit with Chris Matthews and explain how Gore was trying to steal the election (“I know how it’s done because I was an insider”).
Caddell’s whole shtik, even inside the Dem party, was being a renegade. He handled both the McGovern and Carter primary insurgencies, and also ran Gary Hart’s near-successful primary run in ’84. He’s always been big on “Tear down the power sructure” as his whole governing philosophy — policy never mattered to him as much as posturing. Even without the big bucks to be made as a Fox Democrat, he’d probably be taking something like this position because Democrats actually winning and governing probably seems sullying to him.
He’s also the genius who encouraged Carter to give what’s become known as the “malaise” speech, so the pool of Democrats who take his advice is reassuringly small.
morzer
@Joseph Nobles:
Can audience members vote for flogging and then crucifixion? Or are we going directly to the resurrection stage?
Zandar
Shorter Village:
Of course if President Shabazz Whatevermuslim there would stop being so…ethnic…we wouldn’t have to ask him to resign “for the good of the country” you see. I mean, he’s making us perpetuate these lies about him, and it’s really his fault.
Tim I
The only time the Post gets any attention from the rest of the media is when they run one of these dumbass op-eds.
No one gives a shit what any of their regular columnists writes about.
Tom Q
@Lev: Bush was like a Greatest Hits compilation of every bad president — LBJ’s war policy, the Grant adminstration’s corruption, Wilson’s civil liberties approach, and, in the end, Coolidge/Hoover’s economics.
Joseph Nobles
I’ve got $500 on Allen West shouting, “N****r, please!” in the middle of the SOTU this year.
jl
@Lev: I agree. One of the Tea People memes I have seen cropping up is that Hoover was, along with FDR, the beginning of the downfall of the U.S.
Hoover believe in active government policy to deal with the Great Depression. It was just very dinky and timid compared to what came after with FDR and WWII.
Hoover was not really a conservative in the contemporary sense, he was a moderate sensible Very Serious Person technocrat (maybe in the DLC vein in some ways?).
This has been lost, even by academics who are supposed to be experts on the subject. Some famous public works projects that were planned and started under Hoover, are often credited to FDR, and you see this in badly done academic studies as well as popular discussions. Some of those projects are now named after Hoover (hint).
The political debate has drifted into such reactionary realms in the U.S. that Hoover is a socialist. So, in some quarters, when people like us say ‘Obama is the new Hoover’, others will say ‘Yeah, see, Obama is a commie!’
We live in surreal times.
jl
@Lev: I agree. One of the Tea People memes I have seen cropping up is that Hoover was, along with FDR, the beginning of the downfall of the U.S.
Hoover believed in active government policy to deal with the Great Depression. It was just very dinky and timid compared to what came after with FDR and WWII.
Hoover was not really a conservative in the contemporary sense, he was a moderate sensible Very Serious Person technocrat (maybe in the DLC vein in some ways?).
This has been lost, even by academics who are supposed to be experts on the subject. Some famous public works projects that were planned and started under Hoover, are often credited to FDR, and you see this in badly done academic studies as well as popular discussions. Some of those projects are now named after Hoover (hint).
The political debate has drifted into such reactionary realms in the U.S. that Hoover is a s o s h u l i s t . So, in some quarters, when people like us say ‘Obama is the new Hoover’, others will say ‘Yeah, see, Obama is a commie!’
We live in surreal times.
Note: resposted due to presence of Forbidden Words, which are now corrected.
Just Some Fuckhead
Who cares what Caddell thinks? I wanna hear what Zell Miller thinks.
Lev
@morzer: I took Tomasky off the RSS reader. That used to be a great blog, then something snapped in the guy a few months ago and it became practically unreadable.
As for the Blue Dogs, I think it’s clear we need some of them in order to win a majority, but now that they’ve almost all lost there’s an opportunity to recruit new ones that are economically liberal and pugnacious (if necessarily socially conservative), instead of the prevailing model, which seems to be never to draw any contrasts with the GOP, on the grounds that they never want the voters to make a real choice. As I wrote:
kdaug
@beltane:
When Obama appoints Incitatus to the Senate, I’ll lend them my ear. Until then, they should kindly shut the fuck up.
Country first, and all.
joe from Lowell
Here you go.
morzer
@kdaug:
Given the presence of Lieberman and McConnell, do we really need another horse’s ass in the Senate?
morzer
@Lev:
I suspect that if you pair that narrative with the demise of Northern Republicans, you could probably account for a good part of current politics and social history. I’d add that the general failure by Democrats to fight for their positions has done much to discredit those positions. After all, if even the Democrats don’t believe in their ideas, why should unconvinced voters?
kdaug
@jl: Hoover Dam, anyone?
Dennis SGMM
What’s the over/under on how long it will take Caddell and Schoen to call upon Obama to commit seppuku on nationwide television?
meander
One of the main complaints of the GOP these days is the “uncertainty” is causing American business to pause in their hiring and purchases. Somehow, the uncertainty of this era is incredibly different from previous eras. So, here’s a pitch for an Op-Ed in the key of Caddell/Schoen/Kaplan: To reduce uncertainty for the business community, the GOP will pledge to NOT run a candidate for president in 2012. After all, who will be in the White House from 2013-2017 is a major piece of uncertainty, so not running a candidate will assure the business community that there will be continuity of leadership in the White House and none of that messy campaigning (and think of the savings incurred by avoiding a multi-billion dollar campaign!).
ogliberal
@Cerberus: Been saying the same thing for years. Racism is far from dead in this country – the folks who practice it are just scooter bound and bit more careful about the words they use to talk about “the other”.
Here’s an archive photo of the Future Tea Baggers of America (standing behind counter):
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/library/civilrights/sitins/sitin.jpg
kdaug
@morzer:
McConnell’s not a horse’s ass – he’s the Cupcake Dog!
Bob Loblaw
@Mnemosyne:
This is both entirely wrong, and entirely predictable. Honestly, Mnem, it’s people like you who have racial issues on shit like this. If you seriously intend to spend the next few years screaming “blackity blackity black black black!” over classic internecine Democratic Party self-sabotage, you’re going to look like a fool.
Obama is perceived to look weak right now. So it’s open season for media hacks to kick him while he’s down and earn themselves good will with tv and radio bookers looking for “salacious” fluff to fill air time with, consulting commissions with AEI and whoever, as well as the plaudits of right-wing Beltway jackasses who love watching their token opposition act like squabbling monkeys.
The ongoing effort to discredit anything that even vaguely resembles liberalism is a lot older than The Black Guy (dun dun DUH) becoming President. It’s a cottage industry and the money is always good.
morzer
@Tom Q:
Actually, the malaise speech was very well received. Things went south, so to speak, only after Carter fired the bulk of his cabinet, leading the nation to conclude that things really were bad, and not likely to get better.
morzer
@kdaug:
Hmmm I’d say he’s ahead by a nose from Rand Paul in the Kentucky Derby of Stupid. But YMMV.
FlipYrWhig
@Lev: You totally nailed it. The one caveat I would suggest is accounting for the echo-image Blue Dog phenomenon in ’06 and ’08. Is that the temporary success of the “Fifty-State Strategy,” swimming upstream against the trends you identified?
morzer
@Dennis SGMM:
I think the approved term is “self-lynching”. Seppuku is much too un-American as a word for two good old boys to use it.
MikeJ
@morzer: The military crashing choppers during the hostage rescue mission is what did him in. Had they pulled it off Carter would have won in a walk.
kdaug
@morzer:
Yeah, but it’s a nose that really wants cupcakes!
morzer
@MikeJ:
Not likely. Carter flubbed the debates and the economy was sour. Yes, Iran probably made the situation irretrievably bad, but it wasn’t what set the disaster in motion.
http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=a_politics_of_national_sacrifice
Kryptik
I’m still lost, exactly, on how vowing not to run in 2012 is ‘Putting Country First’. These asshats never quite get around to explaining that cleary, do they? Just kinda treat it as a given that it’ll be a net good.
Seriously, how the fuck are we even having this discussion?
Mnemosyne
@kdaug:
I prefer the bunny cookie thief, myself.
morzer
@Mnemosyne:
I found the real John McCain:
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://tigertailfoods.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/great-white-shark-smile.jpg&imgrefurl=http://tigertailfoods.com/wp/%3Fp%3D4354&h=1200&w=1600&sz=328&tbnid=ZfS9TwuRfzqtEM:&tbnh=113&tbnw=150&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dshark%2Bgreat%2Bwhite&zoom=1&q=shark+great+white&usg=__nRsrsalgn9vjhntU2XEOtESkOmI=&sa=X&ei=o8PhTOauOsT48AbcxoSYDw&ved=0CB4Q9QEwAQ
kdaug
@MikeJ:
That is true, but also the original October Surprise – the deal that the money-men (read: oil) made with the Ayatollah to not release the hostages until after the election.
Faulty parts? Sandstorm? Logistics? Who knows?
But the combination of the downed helicopters and the immediate release of the hostages after Reagan’s election cemented the idea in the minds of the American people that Democrats were weak on security.
FlipYrWhig
Fuckin’ formatting, how does it work?
Jed Lewison at DailyKos: CNN poll: Many who disapprove wish Obama were more liberal.
SRW1
@DougJ:
I think that Schoen is pronounced “shane”
In Yiddish, but not in German.
morzer
@SRW1:
Well, you know who else had a German name and didn’t like black people, don’t you?
morzer
@FlipYrWhig:
Your figures rather suggest that a majority of the disapproving wish Obama were less liberal. At least, that’s how it seems to my uneducated eyes.
FlipYrWhig
I KNOW I have nested blockquotes before. FYWP. FY with a rusty Garden Weasel. Sideways, then rub against a cinderblock wall.
FlipYrWhig
@morzer: Lewison reads it to suggest that “one-fifth of those who disapprove of President Obama don’t think he’s liberal enough.” I, like you, read it that the number of people who are “disaffected liberals” are 9% of the electorate, and when we talk about “motivating the base” we’re talking about a very small number. Still significant, but that’s the scale of the problem.
debbie
@Starfish:
I listened to the whole program, and your head likely would have exploded. No one called him on the fact that if Obama didn’t run for a second term, it would in effect give Republicans permission to permanently act like they have for the past two years.
morzer
@FlipYrWhig:
It would interesting to know what these people thought “liberal” meant. But I suppose the pollsters prudently did not engage with that topic.
FlipYrWhig
@SRW1: Is it more like “Shaun”? Or “Shun”? I can never get my German vowels straight.
FlipYrWhig
@morzer: The thing I really want someone to poll is, “Do you think the government should do more to create jobs?” Then, to those who answer yes, “OK, seriously, how do you think that’s gonna happen?” I’m very curious to know how people think “creating jobs” takes place, given that some of the people who want the government to do it also think that “government work” is an oxymoron.
Cermet
The reason Obama is being told to resign is that he is BLACK, period. That is the only reason – racist come in many colors and ethic groups but in the US of amerika, they are teabagers and their re-pub-a-thug masters
morzer
@FlipYrWhig:
Kind of like “shh-earn”. At least, in German. God only knows what it sounds like in Goopertongue.
Ash Can
@SRW1: I thought the “e” after the vowel was the anglicized spelling of the vowel with the umlaut. And it makes sense to have a family name that translates essentially to “fair of face.” So I’m not sure what you mean.
morzer
@Cermet:
There are more Blue Dogs who are quietly racist than you may wish to believe. I’d add that they have a certain amount of free-floating misogyny as well. That’s why a good chunk of Hilary’s white working class “Democratic” support and the people who spoke “for” it would never hold up in the general election against a white male Republican.
Mike in NC
It’s already in the GOP ‘Pledge to America’, a paragraph buried between Tax Cuts for the Rich and Deporting Anybody with a Funny Accent.
aimai
@Cermet:
You know, I don’t agree. There’s plenty of racism to go around in the Democratic party, and in these turncoat Fox News Dems but there is nothing new in asking a Democratic President to, essentially, resign “for the sake of the country.” There were drumbeats of this towards Clinton and, I daresay, towards Carter. And you know what? If Hillary Clinton were president right now Schoen and Cadell or someone like that would be calling for her to sacrifice her presidency “for the good of the country”–perhaps their ostensible reason would be that she was “so divisive” or perhaps because she is “too old to run again and should step down in favor of new blood–like Health Shuler!” or because of intense right wing rumors that Bill is going to have the relevant amendment repealed and run again for President. You name it, they’d be saying it.
Ever since the Republicans tried the coup d’etat of the impeachment of Clinton they’ve realized they don’t have to wait for four years to try to hamstring and/or defenestrate a Democratic President. In fact they’ve been using “public opinion” and psyops style public opinion mongering to effectively treat Democratic Presidencies as though they are English style Prime Ministerships in which a failed vote of confidence can throw the party out of power.
aimai
morzer
@Ash Can:
It is an example of how the German umlaut has traditionally been transcribed into other languages, as an “e” after the relevant vowel.
SlyFox
My God, were these two put into a chamber night and day for 6 months and forced to listen to Sarah Palin’s vice presidential nomination speech on a loop? Have mercy.
Cermet
@MikeJ: Do you remember why the helicopters crashed during the Iranian hostage episode? If I recall correctly because all three uniform services demanded to have a piece of the pie (fuck the american hostages! Mil brass – so much for valuing americans lives!) Communications were a nightmare and the ground equipment couldn’t talk to the airborne and during the confused operations this resulted in the terrible mishap – worse, the Iranians working for us were all exposed since they had moved to prepare for the amerikan rescue and all were executed (including, shockingly, the Iran Premier!)
FlipYrWhig
@morzer: The New Jersey Devils used to have a coach named “Schoenfeld,” and I think he pronounced it “Shawn-feld.”
water balloon
I don’t think that’s how you pronounce Schoen. Every time he’s on Fox, they pronounce it like “shown.” He never corrects them, so I’m pretty sure that’s how it’s pronounced.
Emma
I keep telling y’all: the Post once helped bring down a crooked Republican president and they’ve been apologizing ever since! (Or at least since Mrs. Graham died)
Brick Oven Bill
There is a strong case that only white males should be eligible to be President. This is because the press should be able to be critical of the President and question his actions and motivations.
But I’m kind of starting to enjoy this Obama guy. He is far better for the Country than George Bush.
Cermet
@aimai: Maybe but for Carter and Clinton they, at least, had huge policy disasters (but I never heard anyone say Carter should have resigned then) – but Obama has done what wrong? Anything at all? Just the opposite (but yes, some demo-rats are as bad as some of the thugs but teabaggers are the worst of the worst – they are shit that both sinks and stinks (nice trick)).
Comrade Mary
Off topic but I’m furious: check out the cowardice displayed when this piece of shit does what he always does.
Cermet
@Brick Oven Bill: Ok, where is Bob and what have you done with him? A comment like that with no follow through and with a positive comparison? What gives?
Brick Oven Bill
By the way, did you hear Obama’s last teleprompter reading to the Association of Transgendered College Professors? Now, that “Obama Is a Keynesian” sign that got all those John Stewart-Liebowitz followers calling the man holding it calling him a ‘Birther’ on camera was pretty good Teabagger humor. But this latest hacked teleprompter reading was better. Obama read to the Association:
“We have seen what the other side has done. They have driven the car into the ditch. Now I am trying to pull the car out of the ditch. And all they want to do is watch me and drink a Slurpee. There is only one Allah and behold I am his new messenger. Well I do not intend to give the Republicans back the keys to the car. Thank you and keep up the hard work. Your fight as Transgendered College Professors is a fight I share.”
Pretty good stuff from this President Obama. All George Bush provided for us was cringes. I do not support Shoen’s call for him to step down.
morzer
@Brick Oven Bill:
I see that Boring Old Boob is back.
stuckinred
@Cermet: And no one knew that helicopters would suck sand into their engines.
va
It’s Drudge bait plus (as aimai says) an “Obama is illegitimate” tune in the key of concern troll. It’s not even its own offense, since I can imagine those very same words being penned by Hiatt, but part of the vomitous clusterfuck that is the WaPo in its decadent phase.
H-Bob
Were they the ones who advised McCain to “suspend his campaign” in 2008 ?
Martin
If the Koch brothers were true to their libertarian ideals, they’d have people in airports with stacks of these, surreptitiously slipping them into the pockets of unsuspecting people in the security line.
Crusty Dem
Alternative titles include (depending on exact pronunciation):
Danke Schoen
In Schoen in the Membrane
Obama has been Schoen’d
The Rocky Horror Picture Schoen
dww44
@beltane:
This is my favorite explanation of the many that I’ve read. I love the moral rot/Roman Empire reference.
@joe from Lowell:
and this as well, because this is what I think, that all of these pieces are hat tips to the GOP’s electoral victories last Tuesday. Conservatives MUST always be bowed to and placated. I know too many of them. This is who they are, and, sadly, these suckass Dems are all too ready to comply. We really do need stronger and better Democrats, particularly inside the beltway.
ogliberal
@MikeJ: That goofball Boykin was a top guy on that mission. His “bigger god” didn’t help him in the face of a nasty sandstorm. It was a very audacious plan with all kinds of risk. All the hostages came home alive – had the mission “succeeded” it’s a sure bet that a number of hostages would have died during the rescue. But yeah, had we even got 75% of them home alive via that mission (which was likely), Carter would have won in a landslide. If I’m not mistaken, the race was neck-and-neck until the last week or two.
Koz
First of all, the piece said that Obama shouldn’t run for reelection, not that he should resign. Second, nobody is taking it very seriously anyway.
The bigger issue is this: Obama never really had a well-thought program to begin with. His ideas of what’s going on have been pretty much shown to be inch-deep. It’s anybody’s guess where to go from here, so oddball stuff like Caddell and Schoen become more plausible.
Bob Loblaw
@Cermet:
This can’t possibly be a serious question.
FlipYrWhig
@Crusty Dem: Schoen Tell.
Nick
@Bob Loblaw:
There’s a difference between “wrong” and “good enough”
Crusty Dem
@FlipYrWhig:
Nice.
Suzan
I’ve read already that those guys are as left wing as the imPoster allows, so they figure that words from them about the need to rid ourselves of that sellout Obama will influence some supporters.
Or something like that.
Yes. It’s f***ed up.
But what’s new lately at the Post?
S
morzer
Something worth seeing:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsd0Yjtnis8&feature=channel
This is the keynote speech given by Rick Perlstein at Berkeley a few weeks ago, called:
“Fractures, Alliances and Mobilizations in the Age of Obama: Emerging Analyses of the ‘Tea Party Movement'”
He has some interesting things to say about right-wing activism and ongoing rage.
cleek
@Starfish:
ah NPR… the station that did five minutes on how backed-up the Senate is on important legislation without once mentioning the fact that the GOP is solely responsible for the backup.
liberal!
Bob Loblaw
@Nick:
Oh please. It’s pure sycophantic nonsense, and every bit as ridiculous as saying that the Obama administration is never right at all either (hi WyldPirate).
The administration is frequently wrong in its methods and motivations. It is occasionally wrong in such a way that is harmful to our nation’s long term interests. The administration is frequently right in its methods and motivations. It is often right and forward thinking in ways that puts previous administrations to shame.
If people can’t come to grips with the truth of those four abstract statements, at minimum, then what’s the point in any political communication at all?
bemused
I think they really meant putting country head first into the wood chipper.
Joseph Nobles
@Crusty Dem:
The Shoen Must Go On
The Shoen-ing
I’ll Rise, But I Won’t Shoen (for all you Tennessee Williams fans out there)
Sly
It positions Obama as the cause of all problems and inserts into the public discourse the solution to all problems: him no longer being President. You therefor convince people to vote Republican without actually telling them to vote Republican.
Which is what Caddell and Schoen have always been about.
Cermet
@Bob Loblaw: Really? Then name a serious error and I don’t mean minor policy issues that some people don’t like – not like Raygun who, like bush violated our treaties and performed not just immoral acts but totally illegal ones.
Obama: The drone strikes? That wasn’t illegal since the people we are fighting and at war with and they are hidding in a nearby country (which will not defend its own boarder to keep our enemy out as international law requires – so, yes, we can strike back since they have continued to attack us from that territory.) So, while not moral it is legal. The bank bail outs? Again, not in any way wrong. The war on terror? The keeping of POW’s, again, not really moral but legal even by our courts as well as international law. So Obama hasn’t really had any major problems (except made up ones by repug-a-thugs/teabaggers and similar loons.)- Obama, while far from perfect he has done a great job and one far better than most presidents over the last thirty years.
Cermet
@Koz: You are crazy – Obama stopped the most serious and deep economic disaster to strike the US for over fifty years – sure doing more would have been better but who stopped that? Not Obama. He saved GM, our banks and many other aspects of our economy. The health care law was the greatest advanced since the thirties under FDR and you think that is not significant? What planet are you living on – you trolls are a joke – what, your unicorns don’t shit gold? That’s Obama’s fault, right? He did this and far more all with blue dogs fighting him, demo-rats demanding more or they’d cut and run and the thugs lying their asses off with over paid, greedy white assholes fighting like he was the enemy – what shit are you people smoking?
Cermet
@Brick Oven Bill: BoB, didn’t take long to go over the deep end – you are a strange troll; guess time away hasn’t helped – take your meds before typing any more … .
Ash Can
@morzer: That’s basically what I said. And the umlaut-“o” is pronounced (approximately) as a long “a” with the lips forming a long “oo.” Therefore, “shane” is as close an approximation of the original pronunciation as you’re going to find in English. If SRW1 meant that “shane” wasn’t the German pronunciation because it was only an approximation, I can see that. But to my untrained ear and limited knowledge, I’ve always thought there wasn’t that much difference between the Yiddish and German pronunciations of the word.
cleek
@Cermet:
you might want to ask the American people if they agree.
fair or not, that’s how he will be judged.
Nick
@cleek:
They’ll never agree because the media is telling them it got worse when it didn’t and not paying attention to any other arguments.
and the left thinks it’s above them to make that case
Suck It Up!
@FlipYrWhig:
I don’t see what Jed sees.
Nick
@Koz:
if by nobody, you mean everyone who isn’t in front of, behind, or watching the product of a camera.
Nick
@Suck It Up!:
Half the commenters agree. If I wasn’t banned from the site for not being progressive enough, I’d kindly point out that in a world where 9% is “many,” what do you call 30% who agree with the tea party?
Koz
Ok, then who besides Schoen and Caddell are making this particular argument, ie, that Obama could reclaim his “unification” healing magic if he announced that he wasn’t going to run for reelection? Nobody that I know of.
Nick
@Koz:
didn’t say people “agreed” with it, just said it’s being paid attention to. It’s being debated all over the media and even made it into workplace discussion. Bitter Hillary supporters who are making their PUMA presence known again after Nov. 2 are throwing it around like crazy.
morzer
@Ash Can:
No, ö/oe is pronounced much closer to the vowel sound in the English words earn/urn/perk. It’s not an “a” sound in German at all. That’s why, for example, Scharnhorst doesn’t begin with an ö/oe , as opposed to say, Schoenhof’s, and why mögen and magen, and können and kannen are not the same word.
Koz
I don’t think Obama hasn’t anything but the most shallow idea of the reasoning behind the proposals that he has made and the policies that he has enacted. I doubt if he could explain the velocity of money or community rating if his life depended on it.
He’s simply associated with the liberal establishment and accepted their policy recommendations. But when these are found to be incomplete or unacceptable to the American people he seems to be at a loss for what to do next. His usual choice is to play golf or watch ESPN.
morzer
@Koz:
Evidence? Or are you just free-basing Limbaugh and O’Reilly?
SRW1
@morzer:
Wasn’t that an Austrian name?
morzer
@SRW1:
I am sure you know that quite a few Austrians also speak German, as well as Austrian. Many of them even have the nerve to see it as their native language, despite numerous demands that Austrian be taught in schools, that immigrants must be fluent in it, and that anyone who cannot master the language should be turned away at the border fence.
Mnemosyne
@Koz:
It’s weird how all of these criticisms of Obama sound exactly like the critics opened up a Word document and did a search and replace for “Bush.”
We’ve already heard complaints that Obama goes on too many vacations and that he’s too cold and detached, so I’m wondering which other Bush criticisms are going to be reanimated and dressed up in Obama clothing?
SRW1
@FlipYrWhig:
I don’t think I can transcribe the proper German pronunciation of Schoen because there is no phoneme in English that corresponds to the ö in German (and oe in German is the o-umlaut).
So, if Douglas Schoen does have German ancestors, they would have spelled the name Schön, just like Boehner would have been spelled Böhner (and of course the way his name is pronounced today would be written as Beiner in German).
John Bird
Didn’t read any of the discussion but it’s the second one, the one about the child.
John Bird
I would not clean up motor oil with the Post. The Post is dogshit.
morzer
@SRW1:
You could transcribe “oe” in German as English “ur/er” without too much inaccuracy. Boehner’s own pronunciation of his name would not be be Beiner, however, since he says something close to “Bay-ner” rather than Buy-ner”.
JenJen
I know this is going to come as a complete shock to everyone, but Mika Brzezinski today on “Morning Joe” was just loving that op/ed. I can’t remember exactly what she said that made me do a spit-take, but it was something along the lines of “Now wouldn’t that be refreshing? Putting policy ahead of politics?”
That show really makes me want to break things. How stupid do you have to be, exactly, to get that fancy high-paying job, plus a limo service and hair & makeup, I’m wondering? Because I suppose I could fake it for as long as I could keep my integrity buried.
Mnemosyne
@Mnemosyne:
Other recycled criticisms:
Dumb
Can’t speak extemporaneously
Yale legacy (aka affirmative action)
Corner Stone
@Cermet: This was pathetic.
SRW1
@morzer:
Ever heard of the famous Bavarian veal sausage they call ‘Weisswurst’? A little bit like the Mason-Dixon line in the US, there is the ‘Weisswurst-equatorial’ in Germany along the river Main around Frankfurt. That equatorial demarcates Germany in several important cultural aspects, one of them being that the people to the North of it generally do not understand Austrian and therefore would deny that it is a German dialect, while the people to the South of it, especially those living in Bavarian, do understand it and often consider the Austrians as at least distant cousins.
Koz
They are, but in reverse sorta. President Bush gave up golf, remember. President Bush adapted as best as he could to an unexpected crisis. President Obama has more or less checked out.
Mnemosyne
@Koz:
Wow. You really need to invest in better quality tinfoil.
morzer
@SRW1:
My point was, and I may have been a little too ironic, that Austrians do speak German, admittedly with a pronunciation and some vocabulary of their own. Doubtless some northern Germans consider it not to be echt Deutsch, but they are simply wrong by any reasonable linguistic criterion. Thus, Hitler would have been a “German” name, whether it was uttered by a Prussian, a Bavarian, or an Austrian. Anyway, I was mocking the nightly idiocies of Glenn Beck in my original comment, not trying to start a debate on German identity.
SRW1
@morzer:
Actually, my reply to your original comment wasn’t an attempt to start a discussion on German identity either. It was more a play on the old joke as to what illustrates the ingeniousness of Austrians. The answer to that is that they have managed to make the world believe that while Beethoven was an Austrian, Hitler was a German.
Karen
You ever get the feeling that what makes the racists the maddest is that with Obama you won’t be finding a stained blue dress or a daughter with a child out of wedlock or having a lovechild himself, ala Edwards?
You know what has made me convinced? You notice how suddenly education is a negative thing? School smarts mean nothing now, in this new era.
As for why members of his own party are stabbing him in the back well…
People pissed at him for running and proving his “unelectability” wrong
People loyal to Hillary Clinton hated him.
And yes, I believe that there are people in the Congress who don’t like the idea of a black President but more likely they have consituents who don’t.