There’s no question that today’s GOP acts much crazier than the GOP of 2008. I hate counterfactuals — leave that shit for Niall Ferguson and BloggingHeads wankfests — and I know this is the second Hillary-based one I’ve busted on you, but I wonder if they would have gone as crazy if Hillary had become president.
On the one hand, Hitlery and the Clenis, on the other, well, teh black. I think the anti-Clinton stuff of the 90s was weirder than the anti-Obama stuff of today, at least insofar as conspiracy theories about mass murder and drug running are inherently weirder than conspiracy theories about birth certificates.
Maybe the biggest difference between anti-Clinton hatred and anti-Obama hatred is that anti-Clinton hatred was driven by elites. The Village hated Clinton for being Big Mac-eating, blowjobs-from-interns-getting white trash, whereas their criticism of Obama is more the usual where’s-my-pony. Somewhat to my surprise, no one in the Village ever latched onto birtherism (I had assumed Kaplan or Slate would eventually write a highly counterintuitive “I’m not a birther but reasonable people blah blah blah” piece about the phenomenon).
In other words, the anti-Obama hatred is organic in a way that the anti-Clinton hatred was not. And there’s nothing more organic than racism. I noticed this in a Times piece today:
So what do Tea Partiers have in common? They are overwhelmingly white, but even compared to other white Republicans, they had a low regard for immigrants and blacks long before Barack Obama was president, and they still do.
Chauncey De Vega has a long piece about how racism is what’s driving the insanity of the anti-Obama hatred. This struck me:
For the first time in its history, the pristine AAA credit rating of the United States has been downgraded. Through the Great Depression and two world wars America was able to remain first among nations, a sure bet for investors, and the gold standard for following through on a promise that it would pay its debts in full, on time, and with interest. Apparently, the credit rating of the United States could survive all these perils, but not the tenure of its first Black President.
So back to my original question: would the Tea Party have come into being if Hillary were president? Would the Republican party have gone as stark, raving mad without a black president?
Jamey
No.
SATSQ
eemom
ah, memories of drunken dancing at college parties.
That’s the same guys who did Tainted Love, right? I’m blanking out on their name. The Clash?
freelancer
So DougJ, please please please…
I think we would have seen a different iteration of the GOP base than we’re seeing, but the amount of extremism would have been just the same. “Look at the Hillbots, pandering to the minority base of her party! Ugh!”
ETA:
@eemom:
Tainted Love was by Soft Cell.
jrg
The TP would still exist if Hillary was president. The GOP would still need cover for the fact that they didn’t say a fucking thing about the deficit while their boy Dubya was turning Iraq into a goat rodeo.
Liberal Sandlapper
The Gray Lady magazine is way ahead of you…
http://http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/what-would-hillary-clinton-have-done.html
More Hilary bullshit from the purveyors of such…
eemom
@freelancer:
yeah. The Clash also did Rock the Casbah.
Good stuff, good stuff.
hey wait a minute — aren’t you a young ‘un? We’re talking early 1980s here.
Big Baby DougJ
@eemom:
You’re trying hurt me, aren’t you? How can you confused Soft Cell with the only band that matters?
Also too, you’re not that much older than me if that was when you were in college. You can’t pull this you need someone older and wiser stuff with us anymore.
Peter
No, I don’t think they would have. Racism is the magic pixie dust that has turned the formerly ailing Southern Strategy into an epidemic psychosis that has been the Galtians’ wet dream. With Hillary, it would have been more risible conspiracy nonsense, but not this level of nihilistic, country-damaging loathing.
My hope is that the paroxysms of this Civil War redux are not sufficient to actually torpedo the joint, but are enough to sour the middle permanently against the Confederacy.
My other hope is for a pony.
Samara Morgan
Yes.
its not just the black man in the white house..its the blackening/browning of the electorate.
teabaggers are not jut white……they are white christian nativists.
i know its considered bad form to acknowledge that the Tea Party is a wholly religious movement–but tuff titty.
it is wholly religious.
freelancer
@eemom:
Born in ’82. I’m still in my 20’s. Obama screwed me, haven’t you heard?
Sasha
My summation of the Tea People is that although racism doesn’t fuel their engine, it’s an additive that makes the fuel higher octane.
The TPs would still have come into being had Hilary become President, but it wouldn’t be *quite* as frothingly unhinged in its mania.
Kathleen
I think it’s Soft Cell, eemom. And I believe they would have been just as evil if Hilary had been elected.
Violet
@eemom:
Always safe to go with The Clash for DougJ titles.
I think the Tea Party would exist, but it might be called something else and it would full of a lot more sexism and less racism.
bottyguy
Based on my right wing relatives I’m sure it would have been as bad, just different. During the 08 primaries those wingers were already freaking about Hillary, I don’t think they thought that a black man could ever be elected president.
Bubblegum Tate
I don’t know that I agree with this. The weird thing about the birth certificate stuff is that even after the BC has been shown, the theories persist. In other words, the exact thing the birthers claim doesn’t exist has been displayed. With the Clinton stuff, there was never that explicit “you claim this doesn’t exist, but here it is” thing because it wasn’t set up that way; maybe you could disprove this accusation or that one, but they could always come up with a new one.
Odie Hugh Manatee
Check this out. I liked the Yahoo link that I found this through:
Survey’s surprising finding: tea party less popular than atheists and Muslims
Heh. This guy was on Hardball and he really laid it out good on there. I expect lots of Teahadist hand-wringing and raging over this.
Lots.
eemom
@Big Baby DougJ:
I’m gonna be 49 on Tuesday. Oh the pain….the pain. Wish I could just skip to 50 now and get it the hell over with.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@eemom: Clearly you had a wilder college/grad school career than I did if you can confuse the Clash with Soft Cell. I’m just sayin’ … congratulations.
gonzone
Sexism is just as potent a liquor for them as racism.
Haters gonna hate.
Teahadist = re-branded Christianist
Alwhite
Yes. The difference, if she is as much a fighter as her old man, is she would be fighting back against the bull shit instead of taking and repeating it.
lamh34
I would say no, in it’s current form, IMHO, the one factor that goes across whatever spectrum of the Tea Party, racism seems to be the common denominator. The anti-tax, anti-government, anti-immigration part of the Tea party is not different that the GOP as a whole right. Those things don’t distinguish them from the “main” GOP.
it’s the inherent racism that puts them over the top.
But IDK, I tend to take much of the “racial” language of the TEa Party and GOP very personally and I admit to not being as politically aware as I was before ’08. So my actual knowledge of the “Clinton years” is not as in depth as some others here at BJ and elsewhere in the blogosphere.
Xecky Gilchrist
Apparently, the credit rating of the United States could survive all these perils, but not the tenure of its first
Black Presidentopenly deranged House of Representatives.Blame where blame is due, buckaroo.
Ann B. Nonymous
Of course not. Even the most sinister dyke in the world — Wilhelmina Wuornos Rottemeyer-Strapon von Klebb — pales in comparison to the existential threat of Mandingo Maximus.
Steve M.
I think if Hillary had come into office with a 68% approval rating, the good wishes of every demographic group expected to increase in number in the next few decades, and even a vague plan to raise taxes on the wealthy and/or institute universal health coverage, there absolutely would have been a tea party. The GOP has just gotten more extreme over the years, and the Kochs and Murdoch and Ailes and Dick Armey don’t have many more years left. This was going to be the Hail Mary one way or the other.
forked tongue
“Tainted Love” was a cover of an older soul tune by Gloria Jones.
This post has been brought to you by Pedantica, Inc.
drkrick
It would have looked different, but I’m guessing you would have found just as many people freaked out about a President without a penis as we’re seeing freaked out about a President with extra melanin. Taking orders from a woman is pretty much as threatening as taking orders from a black man for a lot people – a lot of the same people, of course.
What we might not have seen is an embittered Obama supporter version of the FDL caucus. People who were upset about the lack of a magic unicorn, but not the peculiarly embittered flavor to it.
Mark S.
Oh man, they would be just as crazy if not crazier if it was Hillary. They hated her even more than Bill.
I was reading this article about a poll out of New Hampshire, and I was struck by some of the favorable/unfavorable ratings the candidates got. In particular, how in the fuck is Huntsman 20% F / 47% U? I barely know who the hell he is, and he’s got a 47% U? Why is he even bothering?
MonkeyBoy
I actually expected several assassination attempts on Obama by this time.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Sasha:
Well put. I don’t think there’s any question that the racism/racial anxiety/whatever fuels the Tea Party, but as just about every study has shown, these people are the GOP base and have been for a generation. “Hillary is a socialist lesbian who had Vince Foster killed because he was going to reveal their torrid affair and all her nefarious money-making schemes” was a rough draft for “he’s a Muslim ’cause his father is a muslim, and he doesn’t love this country because….”
Omnes Omnibus
Apropos of nothing… How could a person possibly confuse Soft Cell and the Clash? I have to go be ill now.
Big Baby DougJ
@Ann B. Nonymous:
This is my gut feeling too.
Xecky Gilchrist
@MonkeyBoy: I actually expected several assassination attempts on Obama by this time.
Me too, and it’s one of those things I’m happy to be wrong about. Of course, there may have been several quietly foiled attempts we don’t know about, but who knows.
I had also expected a bunch of McVeigh-style large scale slaughter attempted and achieved, and that would be very hard to keep quiet. Again, glad to be wrong.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Yes. The only difference between a vagina and being black are breasts. It still would have caused the crazy. There are plenty of white women, and black men for that matter, who have trouble with change, which in this particular case means something other than a white male in the White House.
And I also think there would have been one more issue with the Clintons: Issa would be investigating if every decision was Hillary’s or was it just Bills third term.
hildebrand
I don’t think that the TP would have arisen if Hillary had been elected. I think we would have seen a return of all of the late 90’s usual suspects, but not the virulent haters that cropped up so quickly with Obama.
The old gang would have gone after the Clintons again, but the media would have portrayed it as ‘Clinton fatigue’, and every night would have been about the business of lamenting the fact that the country has never been able to turn the corner from the Clinton years. It would still all be nonsense, but it would be a different kind of nonsense.
With Obama it has been a never-ending way to try to find theoretically polite ways of expressing racist bilge. They hated the Clinton’s for who they were specifically. They hate Obama because of the color of his skin and that he is ‘other’.
They hated Clinton, but they didn’t have a deep-seated fear of him like they do with Obama. Obama represents the future of multi-cultural America, and that produces shaking, quaking fear in the hearts of the old white folks (and the kids they have raised to be bigots).
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Xecky Gilchrist: True, and that’s been building since Newt Gingrich went after Bob Michel’s job (and scalp), and a wet-behind-the-ears punk named Rick Santorum questioned the patriotism of recently departed moderate Republican and veteran of WWII (Iwo Jima, IIRC) Mark Hatfield, b/c Hatfield opposed a ‘balanced budget amendment’. Grover Norquist, Richard Viguerie, Rush Limbaugh, Roger Ailes, all these things existed long before Obama’s national career.
Gex
Hillary would have just unleashed another brand of their bigotry. Dan Savage believes homophobia is misogyny and we still write laws that single out women and gays to be treated differently. Bros before hos as it goes.
eldorado
@eemom with the best troll evar
TooManyJens
The Democratic Party is seen by the Right as the party that wants to “feminize” the country and give white people’s stuff to brown people. Thus, any leader of the Democratic Party is going to be seen as illegitimate and attacked. A woman or (especially, IMO) a non-white person as a leader gives the Right a more specific focus for their fury, which makes it even easier to whip them up.
I think something like the Tea Party might have come into being even if a white male Democrat had been elected in 2008 — after all, there was the whole anti-government militia movement under Bill Clinton, and that was in a good economy. But I doubt it would have gotten nearly as big, and I think it would have been portrayed as more fringe than the TP has. Questioning the legitimacy of a white male President just would have been considered odder, frankly.
If Hillary Clinton had been elected, my guess is a middle ground between the scenario I just described and what we got. I don’t think sexism is as politically potent as racism in the U.S., but there certainly would have been a backlash against “that uppity bitch” and her wanting to turn the U.S. into a “nanny state”.
Big Baby DougJ
@forked tongue:
It came out of the whole Northern Soul movement, which makes me like it. Still…I can’t believe anyone thought it was the Clash.
dude
There would still be silly hat wearing diabetic Medicare scooter drivers protesting Hitlery, because right wing media’s corporate puppet masters would still be shitting themselves with fear since Americans repudiated their policies so thoroughly in the 2008 election.
We’d see less complaining about “those people” getting too much influence and more about “the traditional family breaking down,” which has always just been barely contained sexist concern trolling about women not being controlled by male family members.
gbear
Oohh, ouch. Even Mitt Romney or Ron Paul couldn’t have made a worse guess than that.
Zam
I think the better question is “would the republican party have gone as mad if Sarah Palin was never on the scene?” She brought this stuff to the mainstream. With Hillary on the ticket we would never have seen her.
Baud
The one thing I will say about the Obama version of the crazy v. the Clinton years is that it has not been able to come with a personal scandal of the type that the press swoons over.
Southern Beale
Got the dog an indestructible chu toy today, gave it to her at 4 pm. It’s now 7 pm and she’s already torn a hole in it and pulled the squeaker out.
SIGH
Shirt
Factor in the southern strategy into the conservajihad. If a black should break even as POTUS that whould be a HUGE threat. Peeling of a few percent would be devastating. A black man, with a great family doing a good job…? Hell yes the’re going to piss on it. Are the TPers racist? I recognize that a few percent probably are not, true blued honest dupes. But, for the rest, according to Attaturk, S&P have downgraded them to KK+. Another undeserved downgrade.
freelancer
@Zam:
Sarah Palin was a symptom brought forth to soothe an insane base, not a standard bearer that made her followers worse.
eemom
@Big Baby DougJ: @Omnes Omnibus:
aw, gimme a BREAK, y’all. A Hip Hop Artist is right — I confused the groups because the songs were played at the SAME drunken partays.
For those familiar with Proust, kind of a split madeleine type experience. If you will.
JCT
Ouch — it’s the Clash (RIP Joe Strummer).
I still have all of my fucking *vinyl* Clash albums, except for one that I gave to a neighbor’s kid for his HS graduation after he told me it was his favorite band (he was born in 1993!!) There is still hope.
eemom
@gbear:
stop BEATING me!
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Big Baby DougJ: Man I had never heard of Northern Soul until I came across it on youtube recently. Nice, very nice.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Zam: McCain would have picked her anyway. How else would he have countered Clinton? Remember, this is the party that could not figure out how to fire Michael Steele because he was black.
Litlebritdifrnt
I have not read all of the replies but would ANYONE have been asking to see Hillary’s birth certificate? I think not. There is an underlying theme that POTUS is “the other” a theme that Rick (R. fuckwad) Perry is currently spouting in his speeches and dogwhistling to his ignorant base.
AnotherBruce
@eemom: Actually no, the Clash date from the late 70’s. Hell they even did a song titled “1977”. Ah but they were young back then, and feckless punks as well.
Judas Escargot
A few of us were waxing about old USENET in another thread, and I remember those anti-Clinton memes vividly. Drudge –the Coelophysis of what turned into the rightwing bloggysphere we all know and love now– comes from that era, remember.
Those were the Black Helicopter years, and they were just as nuts then as they are now. What they lacked back then were the conditions to reach a critical mass to form something like the Tea Party.
If Clinton were President, it wouldn’t be much different IMO. We’d be shrieking over/laughing at different things, but it would be just as nasty. If you look back now at some of the BS used against Kerry back in 2004, you can see the early signs of the Tea Party already. They were probably inevitable.
I don’t even think the 2012 GOP would be all that different than it is now. Maybe Giuliani as a contender (because of the “NY rivals” frame), but beyond that?
Litlebritdifrnt
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
OMG you had never heard of Northern Soul? I lived it. Bus trips to the Wigan Casino were the absolute bomb when I was a teenager.
Big Baby DougJ
@Raven (formerly stuckinred):
I am completely fascinated by Northern Soul. A West Indian friend told me about it a while ago, but that was before Wikipedia and I wasn’t able to understand what he was talking about.
I will do a thread about Northern Soul at some point.
doofus
My answer is no. They already had all of the Clinton baggage to bash Hillary with. In order to make a dent in “No drama” Obama they had to raise the stakes.
Big Baby DougJ
@eemom:
Matt Yglesias and Megan McArdle called. They want their pseudo-intellectual bullshit back.
nellcote
A more relevant question perhaps is would we have firebaggers if Hillary was elected, given that she wouldn’t have gotten more done than Prez Obama.
Elizabelle
I think you’d have a Tea Party no matter which Democrat was president.
The Republican party needed to rebrand after W dragged its good name through the mud.
Despite what Kathleen Parker would have you believe about only liberals being pissed off by George W Bush, the whole country noticed the fail parade of non-stop Republican incompetence.
What got me, though, was mainstream media falling for the Tea Party as a new thing on the political scene. Or a grassroots eruption of small-D democratic fervor.
Neither. And you had to be a highly compensated pundit if you missed that the Tea Party was your far right, the John Birchers that were always with you, in tricorner hats.
General Stuck
An unsuccessful one, no, they wouldn’t go completely mad. If Obama had failed with HCR, he would have been very damaged as a first term president who couldn’t get done his and the dem parties signature issue. Obama would have been eaten alive by the wingers, and their allies on the left. They would be counting the days till his reelection loss, instead, he beat them at something no other dem president has been able to do. To Pass comp HC reform, despite them losing their shit and pulling out all the stops, including violence and the threat of violence.
Obama is squeaky clean in his personal life, which he has to be, unlike a white dem prez. So the wingers are left with doing self destructive to us all shit like defaulting the countries debt. Which has not helped their cause. Though they are successfully blocking any leg to help the economy, and the prez is getting blamed for that. But it is shallow disapproval cause he is the prez. Whereas they are blaming the GOP even more.
And Obama with his good nature, and sense of fair play, at least to the public, has kept his all important likeability numbers expressed as “favorables” above the 50% mark, that can get him through some bad times, like now with the economy. This is what got both Clinton, and Reagan through their troubles as well. Americans will go a long way with presidents they personally like, although of course, there is a limit to that.
ChrisNYC
No, Tea Party would not have happened. “Take our country back” from Hillary Clinton? No.
Dee Loralei
@eemom: Well as an early birthday present, have I got a Youtube video for you. My younger sister sent it today and boy howdy was I giggling.
Fuck it, for some reason I can’t link. YouTube So Tiri Avgolemono.
I tell ya it had me in stitches and I only understood YaYa, avgolemono and feta. But he ignored the gorgeous Greek Babe so he could eat his soup.
Oopa!
nellcote
@Judas Escargot:
Well, it is a lot of the same funders.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
@Big Baby DougJ: Cool, I assume you’ve seen “This England”. I hated fucking disco being a hard core acid rock devotee but this shit is the bomb.
Do you know about Dave Godin’s Deep Soul Treasures? This English cat put together great volumes of little known but amazing soul music.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Godin
Liberalart76
If Hillary were President we would have been treated to wall-to-wall nutcrackers and rumors about the lesbian ‘castrator-in-chief’ wanting to take away your guns and your pick-up truck. It would have been ugly, loud and sustained. It would have been highly sexualized and prurient. The recession would have been been blamed on hot flashes. Millions of red-state males would have spent the last two years moping around and blaming Hillary for everything from flat tires to erectile disfunction. And she would have received even less sympathy from the Village idiots than President Obama has, who at least don’t want to appear openly racist.
The right wing simply can not tolerate a Democrat in the White House and will demonize as ‘the other’ WHOEVER we put in there. Hell, we could elect a southern, white, very very heterosexual Baptist and they would still find a way to demonize him as ‘the other’ too. Oh, yeah, been there, done that.
Just Some Fuckhead
What a stupid fucking post.
James E. Powell
Assuming she would have overcome the barrage of hatred, laced with thinly disguised sexism that would have been fired at her in the general election, things would have been worse for president Hillary Clinton.
The root cause of the Republicans’ barn-burner politics since Obama’s election is that their party, and its paranoid-bigot style, faced extinction. They haven’t had a new idea since Reagan’s first term. To the extent that they had been allowed to enact their agenda, it was a disaster. Other than getting out the pitchforks and torches, they had nothing. They still don’t.
But the Village gave Obama quite a bit of room; they did not jump on his ass from day one. With Hillary, the jeremiad’s denouncing her as a soshulist harpy would have begun before the votes were in from California.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@Big Baby DougJ: A Northern Soul thread will be terrific. As to the question, had Hillary been elected, they’d be more restrained, though just as crazy, if that makes any sense. But the idea of a President of color is just a bridge too far for that type, as it leaves them no one to be better than. So they are more insane by an exponential factor, which is played expertly by the GOP powers that be who see any Democratic President as illegitimate, because they can paint this one an Islamofacsist Kenyan alien.
srv
The black helicopter crowd would be back and making the teahadi’s look bad. They would be seen more like truthers, not birthers. They’d be yelling about Vince Foster and the supermajority that didn’t give a ratfuck about Bill’s diddling and all that old crazy would be rolling their eyes. And the Clinton fans in the media would be pounding that guilt by association.
And the VSP’s couldn’t beat Hitlery for all of Bills selling us all out with NAFTA/GATT/Gramm-Leach/etc/etc, because that would make them look bad and they’d have to say bad things about W also. Some of them even have sympathy for her and her weaker half, treating her as “serious” once she became a Senator.
For those that think it is all about racism (and I’d probably agree), well, that’s just another argument FOR Hillary if you’re the lamestream BJ “pragmatic” type.
*Hitlery would have still fucked up the economy, as Obama is just listening to the same clowns from her circle.
Calouste
@Liberalart76:
The GOP is a monarchist party and considers the Dems to be usurpers of the throne.
steve
I’m absolutely convinced that there would be no Tea Party today if Hillary, or any other white Democrat, was President.
Yes, there’d still be some hatred from the right and some crazy conspiracy stuff. But not on the level of what Obama has faced. The fact that he was driven to prove his citizenship twice is just mind-boggling to me.
What makes me so absolutely certain of this is the ostentatious, repetitive way that teabaggers deny their racism. “I wouldn’t care if Obama was pink, purple, or polka dots!” they declare without being asked. News flash: anyone who disavows prejudice for nonexistent races is a stone racist. It’s a giveaway brighter than neon.
Raven (formerly stuckinred)
Sorry, I get goin on music and I just don’t give a fuck about all this endless bullshit. My bad.
Southern Beale
I don’t know why we keep having this discussion. They’re all the same people. The Teanuts, the Black Helicopter crowd from the Clinton years, they’re the same fucking people. It’s the same 27% who said they “strongly approved” of George W. Bush in the waning years of his presidency, the same 27% who believed Obama is a Kenyan-born Mooslim without a birth certificate, the same 27% who believed the Clintons had all of their friends killed, the same 27% who self-identify as Teabaggers.
They’re THE SAME PEOPLE, people!
Keith G
Yes and yes. Maybe different groups would have been taking the lead in the crazy parade, but it would have been much the same in the end.
Southern Beale
I don’t know why we keep having this discussion. They’re all the same people. The Teanuts, the Black Helicopter crowd from the Clinton years, they’re the same fucking people. It’s the same 27% who said they “strongly approved” of George W. Bush in the waning years of his presidency, the same 27% who believed Obama is a Kenyan Moooslim without a birth certificate, the same 27% who believed the Clintons had all of their friends killed, the same 27% who self-identify as Teabaggers.
They’re THE SAME PEOPLE, people!
kmeyer the lurker
My in-laws, FSM bless ’em, really illuminated what this whole ‘tea party’ crap is about. They were life long democratic voters (as well as hard core Irish Roman Catholics, which they still are). The instant Obama got the nomination, they went about as far to the right as one can imagine, all while insisting that they aren’t racists. I don’t broach politics with them much at all (My general rule is no politics or religion with in-laws or co-workers), but I did have to ask them why they thought Obama was so different than Kerry. They could not come up with a coherent answer, settling on how he wants to kill babies, which was very sad, because they’re generally much smarter than that.
As much as I just don’t get it myself, I think the election of a black man as president just completely melted the brains of a lot of older people.
Emma
@General Stuck: Holy cow. For the first time I COMPLETELY agree with the general.
Spaghetti Lee
I think something like the Tea Party would have arisen, with only cosmetic differences from what we see now. The Kochs and Armey and the rest, they don’t just dislike Obama as a person. They dislike the idea of any form of liberalism surviving in American politics. Clinton would be just as good a cipher for that sort of hatred as Obama.
But I wonder how voting patterns might have changed. There were about 5 southern states Obama did worse in in ’08 than Kerry in ’04: Arkansas, Tennessee, West Virginia, places like that. During the primaries, that area is where Clinton was strongest. With her in charge, would some of the blue dogs have hung on in 2010, maybe enough to keep the House? Would the Tea Party not be able to consolidate so strongly in the South, and thus be somewhat reduced in power and influence?
This probably sounds like it’s pining for Clinton, and while I do think it’s important to keep the Democrats’ right flank in order, I think eventually we as a country had to move on from the Clinton years. I think that all the various Clinton-era baggage would have made governing harder in other ways.
Anya
People who are uncomfortable with admitting that a lot of the opposition against President Obama, is rooted on racism make this point (I am looking at you Jon Stewart), but I am not sure I agree with this assessment. Yes, the right went full vengeful against Clinton, but the most nutty stuff was never mainstream. I don’t recall presidential candidates or losing VP candidates, sitting congressmen and prominent pundits accusing President Clinton of murder or drug running.
Marginalized for stating documented facts
Undoubtedly, yes, the GOP would’ve gone stark raving batshit insane if Hillary were president.
You can say that the hatred for the Clintons was driven by the elites, but I visited several gun shows during the Clinton years. (Gun shows offer an excellent way to take the political temperature of the right wing in America.)
T-shirts with Bill Clinton in the crosshairs of a rifle scope with the logo REACH OUT AND TOUCH SOMEONE and bumper sticksckers with a red ban circle over Clinton’s face and the logo DEFEAT COMMUNISM A SECOND TIME! were common. Lots of guys peddling conspiracy videos that purported to show that Clinton personally ordered the murders at Waco, etc.
Seems pretty clear to me that the visceral hatred for the Clintons boiled up from the grassroots of the right wing, and what’s more, even back in the mid-90s, the hatred of the Republican base for Hillary was even more virulent than the loathing for Bill.
So, yes, the GOP would’ve gone at least as insane under Hillary. Probably more so, because there would’ve been vast amount of score-settling, lots of old festering feuds would come to life, Gingrich would be railing at her and Bill every night on Faux News, and so on.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: I will give you that both were popular in ’82, but that’s about it. I still feel ill.
FWIW I like Soft Cell. The Clash, of course, is the Clash.
On topic: I think the racial crazy is greater than the sexist crazy would have been.
ChrisNYC
Also on Villagers and birtherism — Geez — David Brooks himself wrote an entire column about how Trump, whose whole schtick was birtherism, was just the type of all-American, brash, rascally, wildly successful guy that makes the US so fucking great. Brooks, remember, said he would not want to live in a country without people like Donald Trump. And the liberal New York Times published it. Shameful.
kdaug
@Sasha:
Know what happens to an engine running full-bore on high octane for extended periods?
Big Baby DougJ
@Anya:
You’re right about that. The weird thing is was even more mainstream among elite media. The WSJ got very close to outright claiming those things were true.
jl
I think things would be about the same, except swap in sexism and white trashism and swap out racism and Muslin threatism. That is about all the difference there would be.
(Edit: and neurotic liberal worrying would be the same. Instead of the uppity n, er, ‘angry black male’ issue, there would be the h * w l * n g b * t c h, er, assertive woman issue)
I think HRC would also be too centrist and corporatist for liberals and progressives, though not on all issues.
The health care debate would have been crazier, since there is the potential issue of the proposed Hillary Care from back in the Big Dawg days.
I think there is the assumption behind that DougJ’s question that Democrats can do something or nominate somebody to make some of the standard social wedge issues, dog whistles and white/male/middle class/NASCAR dad/Soccer Mom nonsense go away. This assumption is completely false.
The GOP and conservatives are constantly running potential BS up the flagpole to see how well it flaps in the wind. When they find a good prospect, they beat it into the ground, with marketing fine tuned to appeal to the corporate hacks who do reporting and analysis for the US mass media.
You could run Mr. Rogers, or Andy Griffith, or anybody, and it would be the same type of game.
Dee Loralei
@Big Baby DougJ: Is Genessee beer any good? Local store started carrying it, and I almost picked some up, but thought I’d better ask first.
Also, I’m drinking a Leinenliugel’s Summer Shandy in honor of our Wisconsin folks.
bonkers
Yea, no doubt they’d be demanding to see Hillary’s birth certificate in triplicate long form, since as many “true progressives” always say, “Hillary has more balls than Obama,” so they should probably make sure.
jl
@ChrisNYC:
I missed the Brooks’ Trump celebration column. Too bad.
But doesn’t Trump flunk Brooks’ all American
passive chumpitude,hapless mark, deferential to their betters humbility test?jeff
Geez, I’m oooooooooooold, and even I know that Tainted Love was covered (fairly successfully, I think) by Marilyn Manson.
Bruce S
Without going deeper into this, the Tea Party qua “Tea Party” movement came out of the crucible of the 2008 financial meltdown. “Legitimation.” Without this event and subsequent response, I’m not at all sure the Tea Party would have gelled. But there would have been a racist/resentment current triggered by Obama’s election. But the paranoia and fear magnified by the economic crisis fed the flame. Re Hillary, I would never underestimate the depths of Clintonphobia magnified by overt misogyny. Just think of Bill Clinton “in the shadows” of every White House decision. It would have been as full-on loonytoons as anything we’re experiencing with Obama – but maybe with a slightly shifted core composition. The reality is that much of this stuff is legitimatized – even driven – by elites who find it useful (cough, cough…Wall Street Journal…cough.) With apologies to the late Gilda Radner, “There’s always something!”
danimal
@eemom: I was hoping that your first post was the Troll of the Century comment. It sure got a quick response from DJ (and rightfully so–Soft Cell and the Clash???)
Back to the substance of the post. Most of the same TP players and same TP craziness would have emerged, but with a slightly different marketing scheme. But I don’t think the alternative Tea Party would have the same emotional punch that we saw in 2010. As bottyguy #13 states, they didn’t ever imagine a black guy would really get elected. Some of my co-workers were convinced that, once alone in the voting booth, voters would choose the white guy for POTUS.
The Tea Party is partially a reaction to the failure of the Bradley Effect.
Dennis SGMM
The Clash were good indeed. I’m still a Stranglers fan.
JPL
If Hillary were president there would be books published on where’s Bill’s p.e.n.i.s. Waldo would be jealous.
edit..and what will the children think
Big Baby DougJ
@Dee Loralei:
It’s better than Bud, but not that great.
kdaug
@eemom:
Howdy, Leo. I’ll hit 44 tomorrow.
SGEW
@Big Baby DougJ:
This is the meanest thing you’ve written in a while, Doug. Ouch.
jl
One area where I think HRC would have been more aggressive than Obama is the bail out and economic stimulus.
Summers would probably have been heading up the economics analysis, as with Obama. I have read that Summers in fact did not censor the advice to Obama, and the Prez knew about analysis that a much bigger stimulus might be needed.
There would have been same resentment (much of it well justified) against CEOs who benefited from any bailout. There would have been the same manufactured astroturf wedge issue about it all being losers/brown people/deadbeats/poor people’s fault, so why should they get any help with their mortgages (must less justified sentiment).
So, there would be some kind of astroturf teabagger style nonsense. May have been a bigger fuss, because I think stimulus would have been bigger, or at least the WH stimulus request would have been bigger.
All in all, same thing.
Next, DougJ should throw out whether we would all be speaking Hindi now, if James Otis had not gone mad and died, or what type of Native American inspired government we would have now if Samuel Adams could manage his money.
If Lee Trevino had not been hit by lightning, and his golf prowess had continued, how would his presidency affected organized curling in the US. That would be interesting.
Savage Henry
There would be a Tea Party, but I’m not sure if they would be that crazy. If Hillary were in office, we would be hearing about how she is a lesbian. Whatever is takes to make the point that the person is of “The Other” and not a Real ‘Murkin. I think racism clouts homophobia with this crowd.
SiubhanDuinne
Here’s how old I am (and I want y’all to notice how deftly I address the two major, yet unrelated, themes of this thread):
1. I have never even heard of either The Clash or Soft Cell. Sorry, but I haven’t.
2. In 1972 I hosted a campaign event for Shirley Chisholm’s presidential run.
jl
Also, too. You don’t have to be THAT old to understand that the Clash rules!
Gimme some Selector, Specials, Public Enemy Wu Tang, and the Clash and I am set for a long time.
If there is space some pop novelty acts like the Beatles and the Stones will be OK too.
Cacti
Says you, Doug.
Dollared
Yes. The Tea Party is all about preserving the Bush Revolution.
It was going to hit whatever poor sap had to try to fix what Bush broke. It is funded by money freed up by the Tax Cuts, it is empowered by the Supreme Court justices Bush appointed, and it would have attacked Doris Day if she had become president.
The crazies in the Tea Party are not driving the bus. The money guys are. And it is not out of control. It is doing exactly what it is supposed to do. People, do you really think Eric Cantor is some out of control crazy guy?
It is working like a charm.
Dollared
I loved Soft Cell’s “Guns of Brixton.” Also, too.
dmbeaster
Yes.
This is another addition of simple answers to simple questions.
The point is not that he is black, but that the Republicans are out of power. In my life experience (now 55 years), they have consistently gone mad as a reaction to being out of power. As said in the post, the nuttiness in the 90s in response to the Clenis was also off the charts, and no reason to think that it would have lessened for Hilary.
Still, “teh black” undoubtedly fuels a special brand of nutty this time around, but the nuttiness would have taken whatever form was necessary to develop the necessary froth and drool amongst the red state faithful until power was restored.
Mark S.
@SGEW:
Ever since he became Big Baby, he’s been one cold mother fucker.
Anya
@eemom: I am afraid you’re never going to live that down. I feel you’re pain.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@Anya:
Dan Burton’s watermelons (or was it pumpkins?) are calling.
eemom
@Dee Loralei:
why thank you!
Yes, a good avgolemano IS to die for — my mom makes a great one.
OldDave
@Southern Beale: Yep. I had a dachshund once who destroyed an “indestructible” chew toy in 4.5 minutes. I miss the little shit, too. Nothing lasts forever, even dogs.
jl
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN):
It would be Issa shooting, I dunno, banana squashes, cabbages, whatever, in his back yard now? Probably, yes, some kind of outrageous nonsense would be going on.
Or contracting a private eye firms to do mock drug smuggling flights into deserted airstrips at night to show how the Clinton drug smuggling ring worked? Sure, why not?
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
@danimal:
Oh, for god’s sake. Before we pile on to eemom too much, can we at least remember which Clash song it is that the title references? I don’t know about you, but I try very hard to forget that they made that one.
cleek
yes,
the GOP hates team Clinton more than they hate anything.
Bruce S
Hell, THEY’RE running “Andy Griffith”: http://www.amazon.com/Face-Crowd-Andy-Griffith/dp/B0007TKNHO
something fabulous
@SiubhanDuinne: You win the thread! Also, did you get to meet her?? How awesome!
Dollared
@OldDave: My terrier always goes in through the back of the neck and pulls out all the stuffing. Then he resumes working it until he pulls out the squeakie.
I’m pretty much assured that if I ever fail to deliver that little beef roll before bedtime, I’ll wake up to find him sipping on my spinal fluid.
I’m not sure I want to know what’s analogous to pulling out the squeakie….
Andre
Republicans would have gone this crazy for any moderately popular D President. They know they can’t win by agreeing with anything a Democratic candidate says, so the Democratic Party’s gradual swing to the right was always going to amplify the crazy. Republican voters reward “fighters”, even if those fighters are at war with their own best interests.
eemom
sheeeeyit. This is worse abuse than I get in the Israel threads.
fer fucks sake, what’s so SACRED about the fucking CLASH? It’s not like they’re the Stones or the Beatles. Or Pink Floyd. Or the Who. Or the Kinks. Or Led fucking ZEPPELIN.
Bruce S
Very good husband and great father is who the man is. It’s not because he “has to be”…”because he’s black” – leave it at “is.” And there’s nothing “squeaky” about him.
You don’t much sound like you’re on Obama’s side…
noodler
No TP bc her stim package would not have been as large, ergo no Santelli rant on CNBC, but BO would have been VP and HRC would have given him every sticky wicket in the admin to take care of, and there would have been a BC scandle.
jl
@Bruce S: Ha. Good point.
But Griffith is a dirty Demo lib, so, there would be something. He and Don Knott’s were lovers, or something. Aunt Bea was a French spy. The show spawned the evil Opie empire. Something.
Dollared
@eemom: Eemom. The pretty girl in college who was fun at parties, but you could never get her to understand why some bands are important, and some are just bubblegum.
eemom
@Big Baby DougJ:
easy there, chief. You don’t REALLY want to compare me with Megan McArdle. Cuz if you did you’d have to be OBSESSED with me.
{chortle}
Dollared
@eemom: Well played!
Big Baby DougJ
@eemom:
If you have to ask, you ain’t never gonna know.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
There’s no comparison between the two. Yglesias peddles 100%, Grade A intellectual bullshit. Give him credit. A philosophy degree generally means that you have mastered authentic bullshit, not that fake stuff McArdle sells.
hitchhiker
@Dollared:
Precisely this.
JCT
@eemom: Whoa, I just turned 49 in June but I think you’re backing up a bit too early in the 70’s there. That is some good stuff you listed — I still remember where I was when I heard Keith Moon died.
The late 70’s were a real watershed — The Clash, Talking Heads, Elvis Costello, The Pretenders, The Cars, the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, X . Total sea-change. And not a minute too soon.
And yes, if Hillary had been elected it would have been lesbian-bashing 24/7.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Judas Escargot:
“Those were the Black Helicopter years, and they were just as nuts then as they are now. What they lacked back then were the conditions to reach a critical mass to form something like the Tea Party.”
What they lacked was an easy and fast way to communicate with other insane, racist, hateful nutjobs and the numbers of other nutjobs that that would attract. As computer and other new communication methods improved and spread it allowed these assholes to fluff each other endlessly, making themselves into the ‘colorful’ (bowel) movement that they are today.
The digital KKK.
cleek
all you new wave experts better try my quiz, or i’ll be all like… sniff.
Bruce S
“fer fucks sake, what’s so SACRED about the fucking CLASH?
It’s not like they’re the Stones or the Beatles. Or Pink Floyd. Or the Who. Or the Kinks. Or Led fucking ZEPPELIN.”
Exactly that.
Bruce S
This is the critical distinction between bullshit and horseshit.
Cat
@Bruce S:
I think he means Obama is held to a double standard because of his race. If he had been a typical candidate with the usual human failings high achieving politicians have he’d be in treated worse then a white politician.
I believe that for a politician he is “squeaky clean”.
Big Baby DougJ
@cleek:
Meh, other than Boys Don’t Cry, Watching The Detectives, Tatooed Love Boys, and the Devo song (can’t place it), those songs suck. Axel F, really?
General Stuck
@Bruce S: @Bruce S:
Think I’ll leave it just the way it is. You can think what you want. And apparently, that is to dismiss Obama’s race as a factor in how he is perceived and judged in his actions. What a stupid notion. And that’s the good part.
Big Baby DougJ
@Bruce S:
I’m putting you and eemom on the pie filter on this one.
Ain’t no fucking ballpark neither. Now, look, maybe your Pink Floyd CDs differ from mine, but you know laser shows and Janie Jones ain’t the same fucking ball park. It ain’t the same league. It ain’t even the same fucking sport. Look, Pink Floyd don’t mean shit.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: I don’t even know who you are anymore.
pragmatism
the plan has always been the same. feed the beast/starve the beast. creating a narrative to embolden teh carzy is the easy part.
Farnsworth Bargle
@kmeyer the lurker:
Jeez. On first glance I thought that read “the erection of a black man as president just completely melted the brains of a lot of older people.” Heh.
OzoneR
The difference is women are a much larger and much more politically active demographic than African-Americans and thus probably would’ve been far more defensive of her.
Obama’s presidency has basically thrown the white vote for the Democrats forever, hell Christine fucking O’Donnell won white men in Delaware in 2010.
Democrats can win without the white vote, but that’s going to require pandering to non-working class interests because without whites, they lose a large portion of working class voters.
Sasha
@Cat:
Not just himself, but his family as well.
Imagine if Obama had a teenage daughter who got knocked up out of wedlock like Palin’s did. Would the consensus be that this was a personal thing meriting only a superficial examination, or would his candidacy have been hounded for the Obama baby-mama drama?
catclub
@Big Baby DougJ: Anybody who has read Proust, I have their back. Of course, if they just read the first three pages to get to the Madeleines, then it could be pseudo-intellectual.
eemom
ahem.
I REMEMBER the Talking Heads. I NEVER mix David Byrne up with anybody else.
At the risk of sending you all into another apoplectic fit, I even REMEMBER the B52s.
Now. Would someone like to explain to me, calmly and rationally, WHAT is so great about the Clash?
This is your last chance.
catclub
@Odie Hugh Manatee: “What they lacked was an easy and fast way to communicate with other insane, racist, hateful nutjobs and the numbers of other nutjobs that that would attract.”
Which is to say that email and usenet were far too complicated for the intelligentsia of the teabagger brigades. Wow. Also AOL. Wow indeed.
Jeffro
I am taking a (Pyrrhic) victory lap around the living room…I’ve been telling people FOREVER that the Tea Party is just the all-white, bigoted, mostly religious conservative base in fiscal conservative clothing that was apoplectic when
a) Bush failed them in all his numerous stupid ways (actually, when he failed conservatism, b/c conservatism cannot fail of course) and therefore
b) a black guy with a funny name became President. Also too, uber-liberals Pelosi and Reid were in charge, at least initially.
Nice to see not just this, but most all references in most all media referring to the Tea Party as the idiot rump of the Republican party. I wonder how their grassroots base – whatever part thought they were were genuinely going to magically rein in gubmint and therefore restore some sense of order and progress in their lives – is taking it?
Big Baby DougJ
@eemom:
Where do I even start? Death or Glory. Complete Control. Janie Jones. Wrong ‘Em Boyo. So many…they’re the best.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@catclub:
Yup. Remember, in 1992 computer use in the average household was very low, same with knowledge and the necessary software to allow any idiot to create their own personal shithole. As the 90’s and technology progressed, add blogs, IM and such and you have the ability to reach critical ass.
That’s what you get when you make something so easy to use that an idiot can do it.
SiubhanDuinne
@something fabulous: Absolutely I met her! She drank coffee (made by me) and sat in my best living room chair and spent maybe an hour or 90 minutes with us. Mostly youngish (30-ish) women from my consciousness-raising group. I recall the event as being much more of a feminist statement than political. We all recognized the symbolism of her candidacy even though we all also knew her chances were < snowball in hell.
She was an incredibly gracious lady, smart as a whip. I would have loved to have her around during the Dem primaries in 2008. I'll bet she would have had some choice words about the woman vs. black thing.
Villago Delenda Est
I agree that no matter which Democrat was elected to the Presidency in 2008 (and given the total fuckedupedness of the deserting coward, it would have happened regardless) the ‘baggers would have gone apeshit.
It’s just that both Hillary and Obama have qualities that exacerbate and amplify their obvious usurper status. After all, Bill Clinton was an usurper, too. One who kicked the ass (with help from that utter loon, Perot) of Poppy Bush.
shortstop
@Dollared: And that great song that goes, “Tainted love in Andalucia, all the love a boy can give ya, o, mi corazon.”
Doug, I think your posts are generally muy perceptive, but I feel like we’ve all been discussing this particular question — is the teabagging crazy from the masses mostly about Obama being near? — for three years and you’re just now catching up, the way you were just catching up a couple of weeks ago when you said in semi-wonderment that a lot of the criticism of Obama is explicitly racist.
@Big Baby DougJ: And with that great list you’ve barely even scratched London Calling, really one of the top 10 albums of all time.
pragmatism
@eemom: i like how they incorporated reggae and ska influences. i like their version of pressure drop as much as i like the original maytalls. i kind of miss ska. white guy dance approved.
also, too, i misattributed this lyric when i saw it as the title post as well. and i allegedly like the clash.
Villago Delenda Est
The thing is Noam Chomsky apparently did not get the entire “Obama is near” angle…instead he was addressing the disillusionment on the right with Obama as “well, he’s just another corporatist”. No, I don’t think so, Noam. You really, really missed the boat on the teabaggers. While the usurper angle is very important to keep in mind, it is, as mentioned above, on high octane due to melanin overflow.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym (JMN)
I like the Clash, but they were one decent lead singer away from having far too much skill to be a punk band.
I’m still a prog rock fan, though not so much that 1970s stuff. 1970s Yes was the Johann Strauss of rock music. Very pretty, technically impressive, but ultimately empty. I’ve liked their stuff since 1990 a lot more, really.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@shortstop:
You win!
shortstop
@pragmatism:
Me, too. Let’s start a fourth wave.
eemom
wait — there was a topic on this post?
eemom
@catclub:
I read the first volume in French. Of course, that was back in the days when Proust went in one ear and the Clash came out the other.
Big Baby DougJ
@shortstop:
People are very upset when you call them racists, so I try to give the benefit of the doubt on that one as much as possible. I’m leaning towards believing it, but waiting to be convinced.
lol
@Alwhite:
It’s like you people don’t even remember the Clinton administration.
Uncle Ebeneezer
I’ve never understood why it’s so fashionable to make fun of Bloggingheads. (Admission: I’m a big BHTV and frequent commenter there.) I don’t see how the wankfestery is substantially higher at BHTV than it is on any political blog. Heck, Tim F and Anne (luv them both) appear regularly. Still waiting on John Cole…pretty please!!! Help a Steeler-fan liberal out.
shortstop
@Big Baby DougJ: I wish this were brilliant snark instead of you being dead serious, but I suspect that nothing short of the entire tea party caucus running on the slogan “Take the Nigger Out” will convince you if you don’t get it yet. And that’s not the end of the world–you have a blind spot that’s pretty epidemic among American white people–but then you come up with these “Hey, guys, so and so makes a good point here!” posts “discovering” what has been discussed at length all over the place for months and years while you remained oddly oblivious to it.
You’re not just now getting new evidence; you’re simply taking longer to process and break down your internal resistance to the same evidence most everyone else has already digested. These plodding “I think I’ve figured out something important about the current political climate and race!” moments are kind of embarrassing to watch, coming as they do so far into overtime. We all have issues on which we’re weak, and this one’s yours; you might want to think about working some of this out on your own time without posting every time you have a revelation on the subject.
pragmatism
@shortstop: we’re gonna need some porkpie hats. And some weed.
Big Baby DougJ
@shortstop:
I heard too many people talk about the Bradley effect and tell me Obama had no chance in the primary to think this is so simple. Most of the commenters here are saying it would be the same under Hillary. I lean towards thinking they’re wrong, but I don’t think it’s a slam dunk.
eemom
@shortstop:
good Lord. You are a nasty bitch, aren’t you.
Samara Morgan
@Big Baby DougJ: you are a retard.
they arent racists, they are nativists.
white CHRISTIAN nativists.
dww44
@ChrisNYC: I agree. The “take my country back” stuff happened way too fast for it to be rooted in anything other than racism.
dww44
@Samara Morgan: I disagree that the Tea Party is nativist and not racist. Why not both? IMO, racism can very much be a part of nativism.
Have you read the link to Chauncey De Vega that DougJ provided in his post? As a lifelong Southerner, albeit a white one, I think it’s spot on.
shortstop
@Big Baby DougJ: Okay, fair enough that it might not be different under Hillary–I can’t say I’m sure either way and some people have made some compelling points–but I’m really talking more about your lingering resistance to the idea that what’s powering a huge chunk of the opposition to Obama (Hillary or no Hillary) is racism. In some sense, Obama’s major Democratic opponent having been a woman complicates and even confuses the issue, because instead of comparing red apples to yellow apples, we find ourselves speculating about whether tangerines would have received a different response than red apples. What you quoted from the Times piece is a fair point, but it’s not a new idea at all–it’s something we mostly came to terms with years ago–and it’s absolutely not a point that rests on whether things would be equally bad or worse with Hillary as president.
Do you see what I mean? The question of whether the tea party is racist doesn’t rely on whether it would be sexist about President Hillary Clinton (of course it would). What we can fairly and factually compare Obama to is white male presidents. You’ve tried to do that in some fashion with this post (although I think you’re still missing the strong racist overtones in the campaign to emphasize Obama’s “otherness” — not just birtherism, but the constant refrain of his foreignness, his secret brown people religion/plan to implement sharia law, his urbanness, his suspect love of America, some of which are at least as wacky as Vince Foster and drug running), but you’ve consolidated the two Clintons in doing so. I don’t think you can fairly do that because of their separate genders.
dww44
@dww44: Ooops, I meant have you read the Chauncey DeVega post that DougJ linked to above?
Big Baby DougJ
@shortstop:
But that’s not the question. The question is whether or not their hatred of Obama is primarily motivated by racism.
You see what I’m saying?
EDIT: To turn it around, I think someone could live in dire fear of Strapping Young Bucks buying T-bone steaks and still have felt that Obama knew what he was talking about whereas McCain was an idiot…and pulled the lever for Obama.
I think the impact racism had on teahadism is complex, but I think it *did* have an impact.
AxelFoley
@hildebrand:
This sums everything all up.
Hell, no, there wouldn’t have been a Tea Party. But, it would have been the 90s all over again.
shortstop
@shortstop: FYWP. And thanks, Doug, for not being knee-jerk defensive about my expressed belief that this is a real weak spot for you. I know I’m coming at you hard, but I’m frustrated at what seems like rather stubborn blindness on this topic from someone whose analysis is usually very strong. If I don’t say that last part enough, mea culpa and I’m saying it again now.
Big Baby DougJ
And on sexism, if they’d hate a woman president, then why do many support Bachmann and Palin? I think it’s more complicated than you make it out to be.
Villago Delenda Est
@Samara Morgan:
Pot. Kettle. Black.
It’s very possible for them to be nativists, Christianists, and racists all at the same time.
Big Baby DougJ
@shortstop:
I’m not defensive because I don’t think this is a blindspot for me. I think white attitudes on race are complicated.
I know people who I thought were too racist to vote for Obama who completely support him and I know others who I thought weren’t who talk about “community organizers” and “barefoot in the White House”. I think this is all over the map and I don’t think there’s a simple answer.
eemom
Yer doing great, little Dougie. Just watch out for that defensive stuff, don’t forget the weak spots, and keep up with the homework — and someday, I promise, you could be almost as smart as mrs. shortstop.
And don’t forget, your analysis is really strong! Usually.
shortstop
@Big Baby DougJ: I’m really not making it out to be uncomplicated. My comment about HRC and sexism was simply a notation that yes, she would be the target of sexist rhetoric and dogwhistling from the right if she were president; I hardly think that’s debatable given the kind of comments the right has regularly directed at Pelosi and Democratic Congresswomen as well as the candidate and president’s wife Hillary, but it’s also not an assertion that that would be the only thing motivating the right’s hatred of her. There is a right-wing madness about the Clintons as a couple that exists outside of any gender-based vitriol for her, but I think would be pretty short-sighted to assume that the critiques of her, had she been president, would be limited to the old Rose Law Firm/Foster/etc. stuff.
And, re support of Bachmann and Palin, that’s a little like someone claiming that because he has black friends, he’s not racist, or that naming Michael Steele RNC chair makes the GOP not racist. In my view, that’s the truly simplistic position. It is fully possible for the right to support a minority who’s perceived as being “on their side”; they do it all the time and hold it up as alleged proof of their open-mindedness, but usually they’re the only ones who buy that. (On a side note, this is the first time the GOP has had a female candidate for the big job. It will be interesting to see what happens to Bachmann as the campaign goes along, whether the comments from her opponents and their surrogates begin to focus on aspects of her femaleness now that she’s considered a contender who isn’t going away.)
But again, Hillary’s an interesting side issue, but not necessary to an examination of Obama and the tea party’s reaction to him. To be very clear, I’m not asking you to believe that teabaggers are only motivated by racism or that it’s the only major force driving the insanity about Obama. I don’t think we’ve gotten to the point where that’s even a question for you yet, because I don’t even see in your posts a recognition that a large portion of the criticism directed at Obama by the tea party is explicitly racist or has unmistakably racist elements and overtones. Of course the issue is complex; it’s interwoven with notions of class, status, education, change, citizenship, religion, entitlement and accountability, to name just a few. But recognizing the complexity, not least in the seemingly contradictory views that can be held by people (your buck-fearing Obama voter, for example) doesn’t negate the actuality of racism as a very significant, often primary, piece of that mix. Thinking that it does is, I think, itself terribly simplistic.
shortstop
@Big Baby DougJ:
Yep. They are. Would you agree that the particular white people we’re discussing–the tea party–may be loosely characterized (with exceptions, to be sure) as being somewhat less complicated in their views on race than white people in the aggregate? And if not, why would you quote the Times excerpt approvingly?
eemom
uh oh. I’m sorry, I got ahead of ourselves there.
DougJ…..I can’t actually promise that you will be promoted to second grade next year.
Jenny
Guys, you’re forgetting, they actually impeached Clinton.
230 years and only two impeachments.
If they were crazy enough to impeach Bill, then god knows what they would have done to Hill.
ChrisNYC
@jl: Here’s the Brooks thing
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/19/opinion/19brooks.html
It really is absolutely vomit inducing and an unwelcome portal to Brooks’ mind. He talks about how Trump rejects “subservience” — as tho a kid raised by a real estate baron in Forest Hills who never had to actually GET a JOB knows from subservience. Just appalling. Trump still has a show of NBC. Repulsive. Ayn Rand would be very distressed. Trust me.
I just wish David Brooks would stop laying out his cramped and repressed psyche on the op/ed page. Too much? Apparently.
shortstop
@Jenny: I kinda agree with the folks who think that part of the point of impeaching Clinton was to render impeachment petty, vindictive and silly in the minds of the electorate and thus preimmunize themselves for the future…if so, it worked. I wonder if the talk of impeaching Bush would have gotten past “it’s off the table” if only we hadn’t just gone through that circus with Clinton.
But the thing about defanging impeachment is that it makes it harder to use it again yourself — against Hillary, against Obama.
Hard to know. Hard to bet on what crazy people will do next. Just a couple of months ago I had this precious little idea that members of Congress wouldn’t be willing to let the U.S. default for the first time in its history because they weren’t getting everything they wanted.
dollared
@shortstop: I get really tired of the Tea Party racist talk. There always have been 20% hardcore white racists in this country, and the rest of white folk have big blind spots as well.
But Obama’s opposition is simply hard core Republicanism controlled by a group of the most conservative R’s. The Kochs, the Hedgies, the oil companies, and a few others are in control. You really think Eric fucking Cantor was defying Wall Street?
They probably are racist, just cause. But it doesn’t matter. What motivates them is money, power and control, and like the Latin American elites, what really matters to them is that nobody else has power. They don’t care if that fucks the economy, because they can play it either way.
And so they funded the Tea Party, gave it professional message experts, hired professional PR flacks to push the media to cover them (the only reason the Tea Parties were covered), gave them goals, and slogans, and buses. And they decide what battles the Tea Party will take on, and when and how they insert themselves. They just took on the racist 20% as a useful tool.
And by us whining about the racism expressed by their “brown shirts in scooters,” we deflect attention from these scary rich bastards who are genuinely undermining our democracy and economy, to the detriment of millions. Great. This is the disaster that is identity based liberalism.
DaddyJ
I lived in Chicago in the mid-80s (the Harold Washington “Council Wars” era) and the whole vibe then was just as it is now: “we’d rather burn this place down than let that melanzana run things.”
It was pretty obviously fueled by racial hatred then, and it sure feels like the same thing now. Yes, the Clinton years were nasty, but I don’t recall the same level of annihilating spitefulness in the political class.
As McConnell said, the 2010 Republicans’ number one priority is stopping a second Obama term. Here’s hoping they have the same success as Fast Eddie Vrdolyak and that Obama has a better ticker than Harold Washington.
An interesting question: what did David Axelrod learn from Council Wars?
ChrisNYC
Oh come on. Impeaching Clinton was pay back for Nixon. “You are going to lose someone too.” Nixon was an absolutely historic disaster for the GOP. A whole generation was tainted. Untouchable. He is an historic criminal. Rumsfeld and the like were salvaged only because they were out of the country. Why do you think there was an opening for Reagan in 1980? Because the rest of them were tainted — untouchable. IT WAS NOT ABOUT THE CLINTONS OR YOU. It was about Nixon. Jesus. Not all about you.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jenny:
Some of them actually admitted that the impeachment of Clinton was “payback” for Nixon, who would have been impeached, and convicted and removed from office, if he had not resigned to preempt that process.
Mind you, Nixon committed the minor misdemeanor of Obstruction of Justice, while Clinton committed the capital felony of lying about a blow job.
fuckwit
Yes. Based on the content of HR 1 from 2011, they hate women as much as they hate black people and brown people.
AxelFoley
@Big Baby DougJ:
You got a problem with that, homie?
Jebediah
I saw the Clash, but it was after Mick left. And I think explaining their mightitude to someone who doesn’t get it requires more space than a blog comment, and you sure as shit can’t start with Rock the fucking Casbah. Import version of their first record, and remembering the historical/musical context is a good start, though.
Now to go off-topic a bit more – I accidentally saw a few minutes of Fox’s “Red Eye” tonight. They were blathering about the hoax that is global warming. Their reasoning, was of course, that Al Gore claims he invented the internet, he cheated on his wife, he flys in a jet, thirty years ago “they” were worried about global cooling, etc. GAH! One of them was Penn Jillette, who I know is currently a twat – but does anyone know if he has always been a twat, or if it is more recent?
A Humble Lurker
I just want to say that while there would be shit under Hillary, I think it wouldn’t have been as bad. Because of the money boys.
The money boys are funding the tea party. And the thing about Obama is, everything else aside, he was and still is to a degree a largely unknown factor to them. The money boys would probably have figured they could predict the way Hilary was gonna lean. And let’s face it, both Clinton’s are ambitious people. If they had to bow to the money boys to get shit done, said money boys had reason to believe they would have.
You can argue that the concessions Obama has made was bowing to them, but the important thing is they don’t think so. They’ve never liked him, and never trusted him, and might only be realizing now (if at all) that they’d be better off trusting him than the nut job magic broom squad they’ve been supporting up ’til now.
I also think it’s important to note that I think Hillary wouldn’t be getting the same stuff from the left that Obama’s getting. I am not saying criticism from the left of Obama is exclusively motivated by racism, but some of it definitely is. Would there be just as much sexism from the left had Hillary been elected? Hard to judge. But it wouldn’t be the same.
something fabulous
@SiubhanDuinne: Just got home and meandered the rest of the way through this long long thread, but just in case you see this: AWESOME. And a vote from me that you can LOL speak however you want.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: How about the fact that they produced both punk’s “White Album” (London Calling) and its “Exile on Main Street” (the loose, sprawling mess that was Sandinista)?
gelfling545
@freelancer: Have you told the National Enquirer?
MarkJ
I think the Tea Party would have happened regardless. The lesson of the last two democratic administrations is that Republicans are sore losers, and have no problem throwing a 4-8 year hissy fit every time they lose power. However, the TP would have been able to gain less traction on economic policy, I think, if Clinton were in the White House, simply because of the reflected glow of the economic success of the first Clinton administration.
I will say one thing: anyone who thinks that either Clinton has more fight than Obama is misremembering the ’90s. They triangulated so much I’m surprised their noggins are still oval shaped.
Rancher
I agree that there is an organic quality in racism that makes Obama-hating more deeply appealing to some Teabaggers than Clinton-hating.
On the other hand, sexism is quite visceral for some misogynists. As president, Hilary would be attacked with similar if not equal fervor, especially if she caused the overlords to think they might lose some of the gains of the Bush years.
That motivation doesn’t depend on racism or sexism – those are just useful tools to ramp up the rage. As I’m sure you know, there’s an art to this Limbaugh/Atwater/Luntz stuff – they use racism, sexism and fear like charismatic preachers use the rhythm and pacing and syntax of their rant to work up the fever in the crowd before passing the collection plate.
Tracy
Well, black men were given the right to vote before women. So… I think, YES, they would have lost their minds only worse. Just imagine all the OMG VAGINA!!! emails we could have waded through. It would have been much, much, worse. Anyone who doesn’t think so should seriously reconsider.
Bruce S
Baby Doug J – you misunderstood my comment. What I intended by “yes exactly that” was that of course the Clash wasn’t “those other guys” which is exactly why they were “so fucking sacred.” The only Pink Floyd album I’ve ever owned was “Piper,” which was cool when it came out. Led Zeppelin ws overblownn and I hold them responsible for giving birth to the most infantile genre of rock ever – although they had talent and some vry good stuff. The Clash brought it. They were more much vital and essential than Springsteen in their day. London Calling is one of the dozen or so greatest rock albums ever, hands down. Maybe top five…
Bruce S
Unfortunate, “General Stuck” that you can’t recognize a parody of your ridiculous political commissar approach to Democratic politics.
Bruce S
#189 – Gillette is a hard-core libertarian. Pretty much in the tank with a lot of their BS.
DanF
As deep as racism can run, I believe misogyny runs deeper. I remember discussing with some friends during the 08 primary about who had a better chance of getting elected president in America – a white woman or a black man. I came down on the side of the black man for the simple reason that the opponents would have to use dog whistles that don’t resonate with everyone. Meanwhile, Chris Matthews can call Hillary “witchy” and wonder “whether the troops would follow her orders” and not lose his job.
Jim
Seriously, you have to ask?!? Seriously!!??!!
Bill Murray
Why the Clash is great (in the order I thought of them)
1. They wrote great songs in the rap, ska, reggae, punk and pop genres
2. For quite a bit of their career they let their fans stay in their hotel rooms (and not as groupies) after shows
3. They were at the forefront of the rock against racism/anti-fascism movement
4. They had their albums priced at less than MSR, as giving their fans value for money was one of their major points of emphasis, even though it meant less money for them and for touring
That’s a start.
Bill Murray
The primary purpose of the TP seems to me to be to delegitimize the elected Democratic president and that person’s policies. They throw a bunch of shit at the wall and follow up on the attacks that stick. Coded (and probably not so coded) racist attacks work well against Obama. Misogynistic attacks would have worked on Secretary Clinton. Tax and spend liberal would likely work on both, regardless of real applicability. the point isn’t the specific attack, the point is delegitimizing the President and their preferred policies.
So i guess I come down on the side of there being something like a Tea Party regardless of who was elected President. Whether the attacks would be as strong and over a long time period is hard to say, as it really depends on the success of the attacks