Righteous explanation by Charlie Pierce at Esquire‘s Politics Blog on why 2012 just got more interesting:
Back in 2000, when the Supreme Court stepped in and foozled a presidential election to achieve the outcome that some of its members desired — oh, don’t bother to deny it — the dismissal du jour was to tell grumpy liberals to “Get over it!” This was so successful that not a single Democratic senator was willing to stand up with John Lewis and contest the election, and if you won’t stand up with John Lewis on an issue of voting rights, then you’d have rolled dice for the robe on Golgotha.
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The problem, of course, was that a lot of the forces demanding that people “get over” 2000 were far from getting over it themselves. They set about trying to make sure that their side wouldn’t come that close to losing an election again, and they worked to turn “voter suppression” into a science. It used to be that Ed Rollins could suppress votes by buying off a few preachers. Now, though, it can be done through willing local satraps — Katherine Harris, say, or Ken Blackwell, or that woman in Waukesha, Wisconsin, who apparently keeps election results in her freezer. It can be done through willingly partisan judges who wink and nod — hi, there, Tony Scalia! — or through the wholesale corruption of the Department of Justice, which is what happened during the Bush Administration when U.S. Attorneys were fired because they declined to conduct political prosecutions at the request of political appointees up to and including the president’s political guru.
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On Monday, the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU law school published an exhaustive study (short versions here and here) of the effect of these new laws and concluded that more than five million eligible voters will find it more difficult to vote in 2012. The political implications are so obvious as to beggar explanation. What’s more compelling is the hole in our soul…
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The Brennan report is one of those things that ought to unite people on the right and left who realize that they’re getting played by the true centers of power in this country, and that laws are now being devised to prevent them even from having the ability to defend themselves in the most basic way possible — by voting the bastards out. But I doubt that it will be. Thirty years of effective rhetoric have convinced too many people in this country that “politics” are something practiced elsewhere, usually on behalf of people they don’t like, and that the “government” is an alien entity over which they have no control anyway, so what do they care that ex-felons, or poor people without cards, will find it so difficult to vote that they give up? What’s the point anyway? The whole thing’s a rigged game. Believe that long enough, and it will come true. Because there will always be people whose power depends on the rigging of the game…
By all means, read at least Adam Serwer’s MoJo summary: Five million Americans potentially disenfranchised:
…The rash of new voting restrictions is ostensibly intended to combat “voter fraud.” But there’s only one kind of election fraud that has been shown to be a real problem throughout American history, and voter ID laws don’t prevent it. “Any kind of successful fraud we’ve seen in the past is not someone pretending to be someone else, but election officials and party bosses manufacturing votes,” Norden explains…
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The new voter ID laws may serve a purpose beyond preventing fraud, however—the same purpose as curtailing early voting, restricting reinfranchisement post-incarceration, and ending election-day voter registration. None of those reforms actually reduce the kind of fraud Republicans claim to be concerned with, which as stated earlier, is extremely rare. They all, however, make it slightly more difficult for Democratic-leaning constituencies to cast ballots.
Violet
And if you do get to vote, they’ll just hack the machine to get the outcome they want.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
and merely talking about how your vote won’t count will keep people away. the problem with attacking the republicans on this, is that you have to go big, or you are telling your own, marginal low-info voters to stay home.
Bill E Pilgrim
@Violet:
Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early
My favorite Onion headline ever, here in video form.
Kola Noscopy
OK…I’ll ask: Exactly what has the Democratic party been doing over the last ten years to prevent and oppose these entirely predictable republican tactics.
Crickets.
Reason #4,325 why I have no respect for the national dem party. pathetic, worse than useless.
patroclus
That NYU study has frightening implications.
(I wonder what Amanda Knox would say about this).
eemom
@Kola Noscopy:
are you gonna vote in the next election?
Just curious.
mclaren
Not to worry. If Obama wins in 2012, he’ll simply put into practice the policies that the most extreme psychotic far-right Republicans advocate today.
And if a Republican wins in 2012, why, we’ll get the exact same policies.
So what does it matter if you vote?
More endless unwinnable wars in third-world hellholes, more police-state brutality and surveillance, more war on drugs, more military spending, more economic austerity to hurl more millions of people out of work and into poverty and homelessness, more cuts to social service to support more military spending and more war on drugs…so what’s the difference?
Don’t worry. Be happy. Whether you can vote or not, whether Obama wins or loses, the policies put into action in Washington will be exactly the same.
There’s only one party in Washington DC today: the “crush the bottom 99%” party.
burnspbesq
@Kola Noscopy:
Pathetic, useless, and the only thing standing between you and President Rick Perry. Suck it up and do what’s required.
burnspbesq
@mclaren:
And you still live here, so all those things will be done in your name and on your behalf. Either work to change it, or take responsibility for it. Or GTFO and take your worthless sanctimony with you. There is no fourth option.
piratedan
@mclaren: well then give the fuck up and move to Costa Rica, you’re wasting my bandwidth which I need to combat the tide of attack ads and misinformation that is being spewed in various and sundry forms, online, over the airwaves and in print.
You don’t wanna work and wanna sit on the sidelines and piss and moan about how bad it is, move your ass to Fiji and go kick coconuts on the beach.
goddamn concern troll asshats… you wanna be part of the solution, go run for office yourself and put it out there to BE that better candidate. If you can’t be bothered to help out, get the fuck out of the way for those of us who ARE doing something.
burnspbesq
The Brennan Center makes me proud to say I have a degree from NYU Law.
amk
The firebagger trolls/ rw teabagging trolls (no difference between them) can’t seem to resist in their voter suppressing stratergy here. Fuck’em.
rb
@mclaren: uh, your privilege is showing.
William Hurley
“Just got interesting…”.
Where have you been for the last 15/6 years?
The current round of right-wing attacks on voting rights are gaining traction because B) GOPers control too many Governorships and too many state legislatures and A) they’re putting laws and regulations in place that “benefit” from decades of trial and error i pursuing their goal of limiting access to democracy.
Sure is a shame that the Obama team pushed Howard Dean and his staff out of the DNC. Had the present leadership of the Democratic Party continued the “50 state strategy” instead of the Rahmbo/Kaine method of chasing easy races and genuflecting to uber wealthy banksters, the state of voting rights in the states might well be very different – liberal even!
Short Bus Bully
I’m finally getting off my ass around here. Just contacted my local dem organization. I don’t have a fucking clue what to do next but come hell or high water I’m going to get trained on how to get people registered to vote and start organizing AND GETTING PEOPLE VOTING.
I don’t think there’s much more I could do without ending up in jail that is as much a middle finger to The Man than getting people voting.
I’m pissed and I’m stoked.
rb
@Short Bus Bully: Welcome. But don’t tell the concern trolls. They leech energy.
Jesse
Wow, the despair trolls are out in force tonight.
This is a superiority thing for you, right? You weren’t “taken in” by mean old Barack Obama- you saw through him, and you know that they’re all the same anyway, so you get to be… wait, I know this… savvy.
Congratulations. You have now reached the exact level of political acumen of Chuck Todd.
Morons.
burnspbesq
I remember the last time somebody told me that there was no meaningful difference between the Democrats and the Republicans. That narcissistic idiot conned 92,000 Floridians into voting for him, making the election close enough that the Republicans could steal it. And as a result, we got eight years of George W. Bush. So I think you’ll understand why my first impulse when I hear someone say that is to imagine that person’s head as a piñata.
burnspbesq
@Short Bus Bully:
Outstanding! There is no shortage of ass that needs kicking.
amk
@Short Bus Bully: Well said. Your kind of getting pissed off is the good kind unlike the useless, fucking trolls here.
hhex65
@Jesse: that reminds me Walking Dead is coming back for a new season in a couple weeks
Jc
Not new – and especially given the hardball tactics used by rethugs in Wisconsin, Florida, Michigan, not surprising.
The truth has been there in our faces for 12 years.
Has there been an action plan on this by dems, for that time?
mclaren
@burnspbesq:
Spoken like a charter member of the “crush the bottom 99%” party.
Keep calling for the brutalization and savaging of that bottom 99% of the American population. Kill, torture, beat, shoot…that’s the solution.
This, ladies and gentlemen, is why there’s no point in voting. The burnspbesqs of America are in charge. When burnspbesq and his ilk see a strapping burly 250-pound man beating a small child to death, they spontaneously rise to their feet and break into the pledge of allegiance. These are the real americans of the 21st century, the true-blue full-blooded all-American cowards who cheer themselves hoarse at the sight of the poorest and most voiceless among us being beaten and maced, shot point-blank by National Guardsmen and ripped apart by police dogs.
Nothing brings an American to his feet applauding until his hands are raw like the sight of a helpless person getting pummeled and brutalized by a burly riot-armed cop. Thanks for showing us the America of the 21st century, burnspbesq. Thank you for giving us a graphic example of just why it makes no difference at all who we vote for.
Jesse
@William Hurley: Gosh, if things were different, they’d be different. I must bow before your penetrating insight.
Let me guess, you’re the guy who makes sure, when your neighbor has a car accident, to send the card that says “If you had only changed the oil when I told you to, you wouldn’t be in the hospital now.”
You’re a complete failure as a human being.
Pamoya
Whenever someone tries to tell me that there is no difference between a Democratic president and a Republican president, I want to scream. Maybe there is no difference for you (I doubt it though). But you have to think about *everything* the executive branch does. Of course there are still problems with the kinds of Democratic presidents who get elected in this country–I’m not defending the drug war or endless military action. But a Democratic president makes a real difference to thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands or even millions of people’s lives at the margins. That makes it worth voting for a Democrat.
It matters whether there is a Democrat or a Republican in charge of the Department of Labor. It matters that the Department of Health and Human Services is pro-science and pro-woman. It matters whether the Department of Veteran’s Affairs actually cares about veterans. It matters whether the head of the EPA is trying to improve things or trying to undo all regulation of industry. It matters that the UN ambassador is a diplomat instead of an asshole. It matters that the Dept. of the Interior is trying to improve the lives of Native people.
None of the stuff that these people do gets reported in the news. I certainly don’t know a lot about what happens in the executive branch. But in the parts I do know about, I know the differences are important. I know that if you take a look at any department in the executive branch, and actually figure out their policies under Democrats and under Republicans, you will see real differences that affect real people.
Jesse
@mclaren: Sure, because the secret to helping the bottom 99 percent in this country is never ever, ever to get mad at anything, amirite?
Allow me to spell this out: the problem in this country is you. Specifically, you, mclaren. In Orwell’s vision of the future, there’s a human face being stomped forever- and then there’s mclaren, telling the stompee not to bother getting up.
amk
@William Hurley: Have you ever had a record of electing of any of your ‘ideal’ candidate to any level of public office ? Going by your firebagger trolling here, you haven’t/never could elect anyone even as a dog catcher.
ruemara
I’m working on voter shorts and organizing. Plus, I must say, can y’all whiners saying that nothing will happen and
GoreObama is the same asBushPerry please recognize we did this dance with you before. And we’re still paying for it.Comrade Kevin
@Jesse: mclaren doesn’t care about wining elections. She is mostly interested in posturing about how “more left than you” she is.
Uriel
@mclaren: Jesus, you’re leagues beyond self-pariody.
Jenny
This is a positive step.
Today Obama had a roundtable meeting with leading bloggers.
http://obamadiary.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/barack-obama-2011-10-4-16-21-8.jpg
I think the one with blonde hair is Cole.
Jesse
@Comrade Kevin: Elections are one thing. What really gets me is that she seems to buy into the deep philosophy of George Lucas. “Anger is bad!” I mean, jesus. Get your moral system from a better class of Muppet, if you want my advice.
Uriel
@Comrade Kevin:
Just fixin’ things on the intenet, don’t mind me.
gene108
@Kola Noscopy: I don’t think many, if any Democrats voted for Voter ID laws in 2010 passed at the state level.
When you have a bunch of Democratic voters sitting on their butts and Republicans turning out and Republicans getting a majority in state legislatures and winning governors races, there isn’t much Democrats can do.
A better thought exercise would be, if Democrats were in power, would the pass these voter restriction laws? Nope.
And that’s all there is to it.
Kola Noscopy
@eemom:
perhaps locally, and perhaps for elizabeth warren
Kola Noscopy
@burnspbesq:
Oh piss off with that stupid bullshit.
Jesse
@Uriel: Oh, come on now. Endless variations on how it’ll all end in tears doesn’t mean she’s…
…you know what? Forget I said anything.
Kola Noscopy
@burnspbesq:
Pot, meet kettle.
Fuck you and your Holy Voter routine. Talk about emo bullshit.
Kola Noscopy
@Short Bus Bully:
Do you have confidence those votes will be tallied correctly?
If so, why?
Jesse
@Kola Noscopy: I have to admit, I find it harder to condemn you than I do your little teammates. You’re just the guy who seems to be personally offended any time someone on BJ feels happy about anything. You’re small, and sad, and I pity any family you might have… actually, I find it pretty easy to condemn you.
Kola, do you go to kids’ birthday parties and painstakingly explain to them what death is, and that they can’t escape it? Because that seems right up your alley.
+4
Kola Noscopy
@Jc:
Oh my. It’s considered impolite at BJ to ask such questions. You’re just supposed to VOTE! and not concern yourself with whether or not your vote is counted or if the party which pretends to want your vote actually cares about guaranteeing that the system has integrity, silly.
Jesse
@Kola Noscopy: I don’t know, maybe Short Bus lives in one of the many, many places in this great land of ours that hasn’t made national news because some crazy official keeps finding votes for her old boss that she “accidentally” misplaced in the couch cushions.
Kola Noscopy
@Jesse:
yeah, yeah, yeah…but what has the national dem party done to highlight these voting issues? What has it done to oppose republican efforts?
I guess all you’ve got is: “Kola is a little person.” So basically, you come here to hear happy talk.
idiot.
Jesse
@Kola Noscopy: Oh, dude.
Your evidence that the Democratic Party “doesn’t care” is…?
Your evidence that *we* don’t care is…?
(Hint: I already know you don’t have any.)
goblue72
@Jesse: Don’t waste your time with folks like Kola or Mclaren. They are hopeless cynics. Cynicism is the province of the weak and cowardly.
Jenny
@patroclus:
I bet she has a killer response.
Jesse
@Kola Noscopy: Do you ever think any of this through, or do you just type?
Okay. You get your wish: a bunch of Democratic elected officials start running up and down and screaming that the voting machines are all crooked. What happens then?
Many Secretaries of State (and parallel officials, in states that don’t have that office) have publicly voiced their concerns, and in some cases run massive audits. Obviously, since no one bothered to cc you on the memo, no one’s doing anything, right?
William Hurley
@Pamoya:
Indeed, the power and responsibility of the Executive branch are massive and by no means trivial.
That’s why is to infuriating the Obama is still dawdling on the nominee/appointment project leaving far too many key posts unfilled or in the hands of a Bush hold-over.
Then there’s the Federal judiciary! The Federal bench is short 50-65 judges, if memory serves be correctly. Yet, Obama has only 10 or so nominees/appointees “in process”.
URGGG!
Jesse
@goblue72: Dude, I’m an insomniac on the internet. If there was something productive to do, I’d be doing it. But I’m open to suggestions for other time-killers.
William Hurley
@amk:
I voted for Obama in the 2008 primary and general.
You had a point?
Bonus question:
What will you do when Obama loses in 2012 and the “exit polling” shows the he got a 2008 level of Dem votes, but few Indies and nor Repubs.
Who will you blame then? Who or what will you and your ilk invent as a scapegoat for failing to anticipate the tragically inevitable?
Jesse
@William Hurley: Are you actually trying to claim that the delay here is due to Obama?
You could be right, I guess. I haven’t checked every single judicial vacancy. In all the cases I have checked, what’s happened is that the Senate has dicked around with “advise and consent”, going so far as to convene in name only so there will be no recess, and thus no recess appointments.
But, I totes believe you that it’s Obama’s fault, because if there’s one thing you’ve built up in your comments here, it’s credibility.
opal
@Kola Noscopy:
Gee, a “suppress the vote” troll.
How novel.
Jesse
@William Hurley: We’ll “invent”… gosh, I don’t know… Independents and Republicans?
And you’ll come back and tell us again how if only Obama had been wise enough to do exactly and only what you wanted, then everything would be grrr-eat!
Which I guess is totally true. Just like, if I won the lottery that one time, everything would be foot massages and pie.
piratedan
@Kola Noscopy: well if that’s your definition, we only “come here to hear happy talk” why are you here? putting people on hold at the suicide hotline not working out for you? What are you hoping to get out of your Balloon Juice experience?
As for what has the dem party done to highlight these issues? Tell me, please, how would they combat this? I’ve seen Maddow keep a running commentary on this but outside of her, how do we get this out mainstream… please… there have been 100,000 people in the streets of Madison and you can’t get MSM to even notice THAT, just how in the hell do you expect THIS to come to light and be addressed at a national level by a party, however ineffectual they may be, that can’t even get anyone on one of those putrid Village wankfests that take place every Sunday and who have statements issued by sitting legislators given the same credence and legitimacy as someone sitting on a hoverround with a sign with three words misspelled complaining about government intervention in their Medicare and no one bothers to point out who the hell is telling the truth.
So when you can muster up something better than “bully pulpit” like a game plan to get national air time or a way to leverage a sudden change of heart in the media or a marked rise in the current standards of journalism, I’m sure we’d welcome that discussion. Mayhap you can feel free to get your own web page noted for being a font of truth and respectability, with intriguing insights on how government can and should work for the people. Also how the fourth estate should work to inform people and not be driven by ratings to satisfy corporate sponsorship demands or be beholden to any particular narrative.
Until Dems do a better job on the ground game at the state level, they’ll be working from behind, hence, why many astute folks here have noticed, is that more folks need to become actively involved and have pledged to do so because the issue is, Dems don’t control the media and they don’t control the message and those with the cash do, so the only way to get the message out, is by personal interaction at the local level. Sorry that doesn’t work for you, its as if there was one all encompassing sound bite message will slay the dragon and we can all go back to the way things used to be. I’m sorry, those days are gone, Ronnie Raygun killed them and he’s had a boatload of folks helping him with the shoveling of dirt over the tracks.
Instead of bitching, feel free to grab a megaphone or a set of walking shoes and get the message out yourself. Feel free to post your outrage on your facebook page, contact your local party hack, lend a hand instead of helping them kick dirt on us because you don’t like our style.
William Hurley
@Jesse:
Sorry to offend you by exposing you to some pertinent historical data and the flaws the data reveals.
It is interesting the after delivering the, then, largest combined Congressional majority for an incoming President, the DNC and Obama – the functional head of the Democratic Party – rewarded Dean by pushing him out. The reward to the nation – and his supporters specifically – was the 2010 wipe-out.
If you can’t handle these elementary truths regarding the amateurish, unforced errors of the Obama political team then you’ll might be facing a psychotic break event on Nov 7, 2011.
dollared
@Jesse: Tim Kaine.
dollared
@William Hurley: Agreed, but you meant November 7, 2012.
But then Howard Dean’s head on a platter was Wall Street’s explicit price for allowing Obama to be elected.
Jesse
@William Hurley: Okay, wait.
There’s judicial vacancies because Howard Dean doesn’t have his old job?
All you have is a merry-go-round of Obama complaints. When someone questions you about one, or asks you to provide (the horror) facts in support, you pivot and go back to talking about another one.
The Obama team has (most likely) made mistakes. You clearly believe you know what a few of them were. What I’ve noticed is that I don’t agree that your list of mistakes had the effects you claim they did, and when anyone asks you to expand on your arguments, you… talk about something else.
amk
@William Hurley:
I bet you did.
So in your own words then, he needs the indies, centrist repubs to win. Then why the fuck are you and your ilk yelping that he rule only from the ill-defined, politically losing loony left point of view ?
piratedan
@William Hurley: and yet, they look like skilled technicians when compared to the complete clusterfuck that has been the Republican nominating process thus far, tyvm Mr. Priebus. So despite how well Reince polishes that turd, all he’s done is create a shiny turd.
As for Dean vs. Kaine, yup Dean was better… you claim that Obama was the one who put the kabosh on Dean, and if he did so, yes it was a mistake. No one here has claimed that our current President is without flaws. Still, Kaine is now gone and its up to Ms. Wasserman-Schultz, so we’ll have to see if she does a better job, she certainly has the better candidate.
Jesse
@dollared: That’s not evidence, that’s a guy’s name. I think what you mean to say is that Tim Kaine hasn’t made a big public stink about “voter fraud” bullshit. That’s still pretty weak sauce.
If “doesn’t care” is code for “hasn’t publicly accused every election result using electronic tabulation of being fraudulent and therefore void”, then, hell, you’re right. Congratulations.
opal
@William Hurley:
Good. Let the butthurt flow through you.
It’s not like Christie was going to win anyway.
Jesse
@William Hurley: Still waiting on “pertinent historical data”, by the way.
You’ve provided historical data- Howard Dean was not DNC chair during the 2010 election cycle. What you haven’t shown is pertinence.
William Hurley
@Jesse:
Why is it that so many of the ardent “O-Bots” here demonstrate such a poor grasp of policy making and the history of options available to the President when making his decisions.
Consider the ARRA. Inside the White House, Timmeh! and Summers and Orszag argued for the smallest possible fund sum AND to “balance” outlays with tax cuts. Christie Romer and others concluded that the minimum sum necessary to stimulate jobs growth was $1.4 trillion. Outside of the White House, Krugman and many others routinely and with no sarcasm criticized the White House’s trial-ballooning of $800 and even $700 billion as woefully inadequate. Some of those critics even prognosticated that a too small stimulus package, regardless of “balance”, would fail to restart the nation’s jobs and econ engine leaving the President to face re-election with unemployment at or above 9.4%.
What happened?
Obama ran with the Timmeh!/Summers plan, a plan that was more than 60% tax cuts and presented that to the Democratic majority leaders in the House and Senate as his preferred starting point for negotiations. In short, he chose to pre-concede on the best option and to then negotiate down from a “sum” that was only half the sum required – again – as his negotiation starting point.
Now that Obama’s going to be running his campaign with unemployment rising, now @ 9.1%, and ~26,000,000 Americans under-employed, he’s finding that the general mood of the electorate is unsympathetic to his whiny “Beohner’s picking on me”, accountability-free Village rhetoric.
Here’s a plain truth.
No incumbent can win re-election with headline unemployment at or above 9% – period.
By election day, headline unemployment might well top 9.5%, the participation rate will be anemic as well (under 60%) and the labor force under-utilization rate will be ~18% (presently 17.2%) – the latter meaning that there will be more than 30,000,000 working age Americans un- or under-employed on election day.
And we haven’t even mentioned the on-coming calamity known as Cat Food v2.0. The spending cuts that will result from that Obama-created joke will – essentially – be the arresting cable that brings the barely breathing economy to an abrupt and violent stop.
Before you turn your “O-bot” whine machine to 11, take a peek that this polling. When 70% of registered voters say the economy is in the shitter – and likely to get worse – the President is political dead-meat.
dollared
@Jesse: No, typical Balloon Juice conservadem strawman. I never said anything about Diebold, and to anticipate your next line of argument, I actually suspect that Al Qaeda did 9/11 without Bush’s help.
No, my complaint is that it is long past time to pin Republican acts and morals explicitly to the Republican Brand. 2009 should have been a festival of investigations and frog marches, at the CIA and on Wall Street. Obama has steadfastly refused to do the investigations, the indictments, the entirely appropriate name-calling.
Tim Kaine was just evidence of the lack of fight in the Obama-led Democratic Party, and 2010 was the result.
Yes, the Democratics, at every level, should be lobbying every local and national media organization driving the message about the right to vote. Instead, with Obama’s blessing, they surrendered ACORN without a fight.
Jesse
@dollared: I heard Howard Dean lost his DNC gig because UFO aliens demanded he sacrifice a goat.
I have exactly as much evidence for my proposition as you do for yours.
“Allowing Obama to be elected”, forsooth.
cat48
@Kola Noscopy:
The Justice Department is currently investigating several of the new laws.
In Ohio, Obama’s organizers in Oh, have attempted to get the new law put on the ballot.
Also, I’ve registered voters twice this summer thru Obama’s Org.
William Hurley
@Jesse:
We agree! Dean was not the DNC chair in 2010. Reread my post and ask yourself this, “what year was it that Obama was elected”? Also, what year was it that the Democrats took an 80 seat majority in the House and a 19 seat majority in the Senate?
To aid you in getting up to speed, here’s one then another piece on the Obama team and party election strategizing.
amk
@William Hurley: yeah, if only he had got approved 1.2 trillion package through a fucked up congress, everyone would be having cushy jobs now and honey will be flowing on the roads.
You know jacksquat about how economy works, dontcha ?
Jesse
@William Hurley: Yep, he’s in trouble. Your point being?
By the way, “no President can be elected with unemployment above…” is not a law of nature, or, as you put it, a “plain truth.” It’s a statement based on past behavior. Obama might be re-elected anyway. Or he might not. I don’t feel comfortable handicapping the race until we have some more data, like an actual opponent. Even then, honestly, I’m just gonna let Nate Silver do it.
(Google “Long Term Capital Management” and we can talk some more about models based on past behavior.)
I don’t understand why this is supposed to turn on my “O-bot whine meter” or whatever. Millions of unemployed people is a sucky fact. The President’s almost certainly on the bad end of any election bet. So… I should back a Republican?
Seriously, what’s your point?
Jesse
@William Hurley: Of course we agree, because that’s the only fact I’ve seen you adduce. You seem to be making the argument that “Obama made mistakes!” and then nodding and sitting back all satisfied like you’ve made some devastating point.
You have not.
Obama made mistakes. Stipulated. So?
opal
@William Hurley:
You’re a frightened little bitch and your party has no answers, otherwise you wouldn’t be here.
The reason you don’t have any decent candidates is because they’re too busy fucking you in the ass.
William Hurley
@cat48:
Ahhh, no.
The No on 5 movement in OH is labor driven. OFA functionaries are now trying to glum to the huge petition signing success that union locals and liberals delivered.
No “O-Bots” were harmed – meaning did anything – to aid in getting the more the 300k signatures in record time.
Meanwhile, Holder’s only recently decided to look into state’s violations of the voting rights act and Constitution.
Seeing it took Holder 2.5 years to investigate mortgage fraud – and still has yet to bring a case – we can expect that the DoJ will “wrap-up” this new family of by Inauguration Day 2013.
cat48
I know about BOTH actions because Kay the FPer blogged here about the attempt Voter law being put on the Ballot & OFA organizers were the ones who did it. Has nothing to do with SB5 up for vote next month. This will be on the next election ballot, per Kay from Ohio.
William Hurley
@opal:
I would say I’m frightened, but I do agree that my party – which happens to be your party too – has a weak, unelectable candidate leading it – that would be President Obama.
My real fear is that “O-tards” like yourself will follow the same denialist path to destruction that the loons who denied the fact of the housing and financial system bubbles took – ending in a disaster of equal magnitude though differently manifest.
Why do you think Obama can be re-elected with the unemployment rate at or above 9%?
Jesse
@dollared: Snort.
Dude, the comment you replied to was part of a thread that started with Kola talking about someone’s reasons to believe his vote would be fairly counted. Diebold is not a “strawman” in that conversation, and if you want to avoid being misinterpreted, typing more than “Tim Kaine” is probably a good start.
The “frog marches” nonsense is particularly interesting. See, in order to make someone do a good old-fashioned perp walk, you have to have evidence that they committed a crime. Not “did something crappy” or “fucked over some people”- the whole reason we have OWS is that there are plenty of legal ways to f-ck the bottom 99 percent in this country.
There were no loud, public investigations because the President opted against a series of “show trials” that would all end in public acquittals. I would have made the same decision, although I can’t say the reasoning I’d use would be the same.
“Tim Kaine was evidence of the lack of fight…” No, that’s not gonna work. Tim Kaine was a bad appointment? Maybe. Don’t care. What you’d have to show is that Obama knew in advance Kaine couldn’t do the job, and you can’t, because he couldn’t.
It takes too much work to fill in your Mad Libs and get sentences that make sense.
William Hurley
@cat48:
Or the local OH press, labor e-mails and even the MSM.
Your “insider” tack info is stale and inaccurate.
Jesse
@William Hurley: Oooh, ooh: because the situation is sufficiently unlike previous elections that models (or “heuristics”) derived from them don’t apply.
Just wanted to jump in there.
Jesse
@William Hurley: Oooh, ooh: because the situation is sufficiently unlike previous elections that models (or “heuristics”) derived from them don’t apply.
Just wanted to jump in there.
cat48
I’ll tell Kay from Ohio she’s inaccurate.
William Hurley
@Jesse:
Actually, the lack of formal DoJ investigations renders your speculation that any litigation of financial wrong-doing by Wall Streeters and other parties as necessary “show-trial” doomed to failure is nothing more than an uninformed guess.
Venturing my own guess, you missed the release of information this very day regarding the fraudulent use of “robo-signing” by banks and their law firms on mortgages, title transfers and foreclosure filings as far back as 2003. Nope, nothing but “sow-trial” material there!
Get a clue, please!
Jesse
I cursed in some previous comments, so they might be in moderation. Would something tell me if they were?
Jesse
@William Hurley: So you’re claiming that Obama’s DOJ should have launched investigations in 2009 based on evidence that was released today? Interesting. Also crazy.
I can’t know why Barack Obama does or doesn’t make any decision, at least until he writes his memoirs. What I said is that I would have opted not to prosecute “Wall Street” or “the CIA” based on the likely outcome of those prosecutions, which is to say long trials followed by acquittals. It is therefore not surprising to me that Obama made a similar decision.
I honestly have no idea of the point you’re trying to make. Obama makes different decisions than you would. So… we would all be better off if you were President? In all seriousness, *again*, what’s your point?
opal
@William Hurley:
Clumsy. Not convincing at all.
Who even talks like that?
Jesse
@William Hurley: Oh, I missed this before, and it’s really precious.
It really strikes you as a surprise that Justice Department investigations are slow?
Jebediah
@William Hurley:
So let me ask you again what I asked in another thread – if you think Obama is unelectable, who do you think is electable?
Or should we all just vote for whatever assclown moron that fail parade of a GOP nomination process barfs out? Romney? Cain? Perry seems to be sinking fast, Christie is too fat for a modern candidate, Bachman seems to be literally retarded, and Snowbunny won’t run, so I don’t know who it will end up being – but what is your solution? And what have you done towards that end? Quite a few folks here have started (or already were) phone banking, registering voters, etc. What are you doing?
William Hurley
@Jesse:
So, you cannot distinguish a model from a basic comparison of empirical data.
Fact: No incumbent President in the modern era has been reelected when the unemployment rate is over 7.2%.
Fact: The BLS’s “U6” measure of labor force under-utilization stands at 17.2%. In raw numbers, that means that ~25,000,000 working age Americans are un- or under-employed right now. Population growth and a slight up-tick in headline unemployment (ten ot twenty basis points) adds up to a whopping 30,000,000+ Americans of working age being un- or under-employed on election day.
Fact: 7 in 10 Americans say Obama has not helped economy, source.
Fact: Excluding the top 5% of income earners, wages and salaries for the “bottom” 95% of working Americans continued to decline over he past 2+ years.
Fact: HAMP, an Presidential order created program, has been an abject failure at best. IG reports issued over the past days detail the utter lack of over-sight, staffing and clear directives leading to the tandem disasters of no action and the baiting of millions of mortgage holders into the program only to have their home foreclosed on. For example, GMAC (yes, General Motors accounting arm) the nation’s 5th largest mortgage originator restructured exactly 0 (zero) mortgages is reviewed under HAMP.
and more…
The net result is that the electorate is, rightly, angry, tired and untrusting. The President’s choices contribute significantly to this state of affairs. Whining about the opposition party being a particularly douchey version of opposition is not a winning strategy given the facts above.
Rihilism
Dammit! If only Obama had used his fiat power rather than dealing with Congress, we wouldn’t be in this mess. Will Obama ever learn to use the dictatorial authority granted to him by the constitution?…
Here, here! I distinctly recall Ben Nelson, et.al., letting Obama know, in no uncertain terms, what a huge mistake it was to ask for soooo little…
Rihilism
An utterly meaningless metric…
Jesse
@William Hurley: But you’re not just comparing empirical data. The argument you’re making is that with various indicators being where they are, Barack Obama is toast in the 2012 election. But in order to draw that inference, you say things like “no President has ever…”, which is only true until some President does.
This is the same mistake Wall Street gets its nuts caught in over and over. Argument from precedent is fine, until the precedent ceases to be relevant. Much of the financial crap we’ve all had to go through stems from reasonable-sounding assumptions “quants” made about how likely it was that “everyone” would default on their home loans.
Now, are your precedents relevant? Probably. I’ve already stipulated Obama’s on the bad end of any election bets. But I don’t agree that Republican To Be Named Later is a mortal lock.
Does “Dewey Defeats Truman” ring a bell?
opal
@William Hurley:
Fact: Chris Christie is running…to the nearest “All You Can Eat” buffet.
Fact: Sarah Palin is running for DP Queen.
Fact: I’ve forgotten more about trolling than you’ll ever know.
hhex65
@William Hurley: braiiiins, how do they work? or taste?
William Hurley
@Jebediah:
I missed seeing your question on the other thread.
Here’s my thoughts, a subject I’ve written about here on several occasions.
Competition can be and usually is good – especially in a democracy and in business. As such, the potential for positive results to emerge from Obama facing primary challengers is high. Who might fit the bill?
Putting aside the “will s/he or won’t s/he” guesses for the moment, consider Russ Feingold or Howard Dean.
And no, I am not and have not suggested a fight to madness, a flight to voting GOP.
The point is that Obama is doomed. He’s been over-matched by the circumstances and despite having delivered some solid “wins”, the factors that are crucial for any imcumbent’s reelection chances are in the shitter.
Tens of millions of Americans whose home is in process of or has been foreclosed on don’t give a shit about “Lilly Leadbetter” nor the repeal of DADT. The 25 million or so Americans who are unemployed or are under-employed (and also short of benefits if getting any at all through employer) may be happy about the ACA’s “pre-existing” protections (if they even know about them) but are eually likely to bristle at the threat and out-of-pocket costs of having to buy health insurance.
I’m sure that a goodly number of active duty, reserve and guard military members are less than excited to still be in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere when they heard the President promise to reduce the military’s presence in those and other theaters of combat.
Those are just a short list of grievances.
Now, we see OWS and associated protests blossoming across the nation. Surely, there are pro-Obama types involved, but so to – and in larger numbers I’d suggest – are liberals, leftists, progressives and other Democrats who are dissatisfied (and more) with Obama and who would LOVE to see a primary challenger or two.
But, the truth is that the data, the economy, the national mood and the novel danger of post-CU campaign funding makes Obama a lame-duck – now.
How much effort, money and hope will you put into the effort to reelect Obama? I suggest you take that result and triple it because there’s a real and reality-based enthusiasm gap on the left that Obama unchallenged, making more promises cannot overcome. And we’re not even talking about all those not formally enrolled or affiliated with the Democratic Party. Among those folks, Obama’s a lost cause.
Jesse
I don’t get this at all.
I want Obama to win. I like the guy. I like most of his policies, even. In 2008, I actually got to vote for the candidate I wanted to win, instead of holding my nose and voting for “not as bad”, for once.
I read Balloon Juice, and a lot of people burn through a lot of pixels telling me Obama is terrible and voting for him is stupid. But every time I want someone to explain *why* Obama is stupid, they bring up stuff that every President has done since ever (like bombing other countries) or “explain” how Obama is a fool for not doing something they wanted done, even when there are rational reasons for Obama to have done what he did instead.
When Obama wins, there’s carping about how he’s secretly evil, or about how his win will somehow ruin us all, which, frankly, I could go to RedState for. When he loses, it’s all about how the keyboard quarterbacks could have done so much better.
And nowhere in this, ever, is there a solid reason not to vote for Obama. There’s just a lot of whining about how No True Democrat blah blah blah, and if he *really wanted*…
I have no reason to believe the President or people “speaking” on his behalf have ever lied to me about what he was trying to achieve. I want to achieve (some of) those things too. So I back Obama.
Call me “Obot” if you want, but I don’t get it.
PS. Friendship still magic. :P
Jesse
@William Hurley: Obama’s a lost cause among Democrats?
Er… not in my state.
William Hurley
@opal:
re: your fact #3. Your “fact” is a tautology. I’m not a troll nor have ever been one. Therefore, your confession to having experience as such necessarily means you know more and have forgotten more than one who has no experience as such.
opal
@William Hurley:
Bring it home Hurley.
Who’s your boy for 2012?
opal
@William Hurley:
And don’t tell me you’re sitting this one out.
You have too much conviction.
magurakurin
@Comrade Kevin: McLaren may well CARE about elections or may well not. But anything they care about is more or less totally irrelevant because they appear to have some rather serious and untreated mental health issues. It’s very sad actually and he/she should seek help if at all possible.
Jesse
I would like you to point me to a public statement by Howard Dean or Russ Feingold that they are interested in running against the President for the Dem nomination. Good luck with that, btw.
I would also like to see the argument for why “I’m a Democrat, but totally not Obama” puts your fantasy candidate ahead in the general. Again, good luck.
Your kung fu is very weak.
opal
You best be typing Hurley.
Dawn is coming.
William Hurley
@Jesse:
I wrote that he’s a lost cause with those who are not Democrats.
His standing within the party is rocky, but in the end the base will turnout. The electoral problem that most O-bots I’ve read here ignore is that the Democratic base is not sufficiently large on its own to ensure Obama’s reelection.
As with any election, it’s axiomatic that the incumbent President must win voters from outside the party in addition to maximizing internal turnout.
Using this map as a jumping off point to assess the electoral landscape for 2012, its pretty plain to see that Obama’s got problems.
To my eye, the RCP map errs as follows.
CT & NJ – lean Obama
OR, WA and ME – toss-up
FL, IA, NV, NH, NC, OH, PA – lean GOP
Consider too that there are 23 Democratic Party Senate seats to defend.
I mention the latter because that number “stretches” the field and also ratchet’s-up the fund raising imperatives.
If you add in the 5+ million likely Dem voters denied their legal rights by GOP efforts, one can only conclude that Sisyphus had a better chance with his boulder than Obama has next year.
magurakurin
@William Hurley: Russ Feingold said just the other week that he felt any attempt to primary Obama would be stupid and harmful to the party. So, that leaves you with Howard Dean, who would tell you the same if asked.
You are full of shit. You are a Republican who is just here to stir up the pot.
Fuck you very much.
William Hurley
@Jesse:
I would like you to read my post in full. You’ve overlooked my pre-buttal of your non-point.
opal
@William Hurley:
Who’s your man, Hurley.
William Hurley
@magurakurin:
Another who overlooks my comment in full for his/her own pre-conclusions.
Let’s try it this way.
Why will any voters who are or consider themselves moderate, independent, conservative, very conservative or a Tea partier vote for Obama?
Why or how will Obama overcome the 9% or greater unemployment rate?
opal
Gee, I wonder if Anne Laurie will give a time-out to William Hurley.
Or delete any of his posts.
I somehow doubt it.
Jesse
@William Hurley: @William Hurley:
No, it isn’t, which is why I asked my questions. A primary challenger would have to be more likely to win both the primary and the general to make a good alternative to Obama. (Technically, “at least as likely”, fine.)
And therefore… Feingold or Dean wouldn’t?
“Assumes facts not in evidence.”
But I repeat myself.
William Hurley
@opal:
At the moment, I’m busy looking at Dems in my home district to replace our retired Congressman. The district has turned competitive from blue and a number of well financed GOP/Tea Party types have entered the race.
I’m also more interested in finding and backing a Senate candidate that’s viable.
I’ll get around to the Presidential stuff soon.
Still, I do have major problems with Obama – and his economic face-plant is only one. Even with these high negatives, I’m inclined to vote for him – if he’s the only option presented – on Nov 6, 2012.
In the end, I do expect that if Obama is the party’s candidate, he will lose.
Why do you think independents or GOPer might vote for him? Why would he be rewarded by the electorate with unemployment is over 9%????
opal
@William Hurley:
It’s a simple question.
Who would you like to see as president in 2012?
Jman
Obama won’t overcome the 9% unemployment rate as long as the republicans control the house and senate. Is that so difficult to understand? Why blame Obama for republican malfeasance? The justice department is taking action on republican voter suppression. Obama deserves to be held responsible for his mistakes but electing a republican congress and president is not the way to do it.
William Hurley
@Jesse:
For all of your “penetrating” insight, you don’t comprehend much of what you read, do you?
What is your rationale for Obama being rewarded with a 2nd term when unemployment is over 9%, the economy mired in a recessionary state (formally), the housing markets still in chaos and bankers in all likelihood facing yet another meltdown – driven by Europe’s financial crisis?
The electorate is made up of more constituencies than Democrats. How will Obama, in your mind, win enough non-Democrats to push him over the top?
What does that misguided fantasy look like?
opal
@William Hurley:
Again, clumsy.
Of course you do.
Perhaps you should give us some guidance.
From the gut, as it might be.
William Hurley
@opal:
I gave you a simple answer.
Sorry to confuse you with plain honesty.
May I ask you why it is you think Obama can win? Why you believe he can overcome circumstances in which 70% of Americans say he’s done nothing to improve the economy?
Do you plan to “stand by your man” no matter the unlikelihood of his being reelected?
opal
@William Hurley:
Who would you like to see as president in 2012?
Jesse
Because the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t?
Hardcore GOP/Tea types won’t vote for him, ever, and they didn’t last time, and he won.
A “mushy middle” voter will, in the end, be deciding between Barack Obama and Other Guy. If all Other Guy can offer is, “hey, he wants to tax rich people”, Other Guy doesn’t look great.
The real answer, though, is that voters, like jurors, are crazy and can do anything. If you’re looking for a just-so story, those are much easier to write after the fact.
Jman
You should stand by Obama because there is no other feasible choice. It is just.that.simple.
William Hurley
@opal:
As noted about your earlier post, there a distinct circularity to your entries. They start nowhere, end nowhere and arrive at no conclusions no matter how many times around the circle you go.
I guess you’ll stand by your man no matter the circumstances. Then, when he loses, you can satisfy your need to whine with the added benefit of the role as victim added-in.
How many of the 1 million undocumented workers he’s had deported have family, friends and/or former neighbors who are registered voters? Will they vote for Obama, or just the down-ticket candidates?
William Hurley
@Jesse:
Wow, for all of the posturing your penned in response to my posts, this is what you bring as your a-game?
Pathetic.
I was unaware that you’re a mind reader.
May I suggest that the 2012 race is taking shape to be very much in the mold of those held when the incumbent was struggling to right a listing economy.
In those elections, the “framing” of the choice was not the known v. the unknown devil. It was a plebiscite on the incumbent’s ability to manage the economy and provide leadership.
2 examples. Reagan overcame the economic calamity of 1984 by relentlessly demonizing Mondale and getting some late good news on the economy. Carter – how much need be said. He was crushed. So too H.W. Bush. Once the Iraq I glow wore off, the quagmire that was the economy turned his ~90% approval rating into a one-term Presidency.
Obama’s GOP opponent will run as a fresh choice, asking voters the “Ed Koch” question more or less. And most Americans are already declaring that they are worse off now than they were in 2008. In short, “how am I doing”, the Koch question goes. The answer so far is “poorly” – according to the 70% in the survey I posted above (several times).
nancydarling
I was at a meeting last night and I met the woman who has just signed on as Kenneth Aden’s press secretary. He is running for Congress to unseat the odious Steve Womack (his first foray into lawmaking was to propose cutting funds for P. Obama’s teleprompter so you know what we are dealing with here). He has an uphill battle as District 3 in Arkansas is probably the reddest of the red. He has cojones and a resume that appeals to Arkansas voters—11 years in the Army 82nd Airborne. If you can afford a few bucks, go to ACTBlue and show him some love. That’s Kenneth Aden, District 3, Arkansas.
William Hurley
@Jman:
Since Obama cannot and will not win, you’d rather blindly back a loser, waste time and money, and still watch the White House go red than entertain the idea of competition, confrontation and change.
So “Obama-y”. Why fight for victory when quitting is so much easier!
opal
@William Hurley:
You have a child’s understanding of the actual process of democracy.
You have an internal list of grievances that will never be addressed.
Your reluctance to speak the name of your nexus is systemic, and telling.
Just say it, and be free.
Xenos
@William Hurley:
Case A) Someone other than Romney is nominated. Given the closed set of potential nominees, we can be confident that the nominee will have liabilities that exceed Obama’s.
Case B) Romney gets the nomination. This is much more troubling, but is doable if Obama puts together an effective negative campaign (depressing the parts of the right-wing vote) and can bring about a populist campaign that brings in a significant number of centrists.
Given the events of the last week, we have to work with Case B. Indeed, Obama is the underdog. Indeed he needs our support, because Romney is the return of Bush I, which is only marginally better than Bush II.
So quit bitching, Hurley. Go to war with the president you have, not the one you wish for.
kay
@cat48:
William Hurley is making stuff up.
OFA and the Ohio Democratic Party ran the 194 signature campaign start to finish. I know because I was personally involved in it start to finish.
He’s conflating SB5 with the 194 campaign because he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. No one who knew what they were talking about would do that.
On SB5, he’s dead wrong, too, as were most of the internet liberals. It was a union and Ohio Democratic Party effort. Internet liberals never seem to know about state parties. I wonder why that is?
Liberals on the internet opined, nay, DEMANDED that Obama should jump in on SB5, but as liberals on the internet were demanding that Obama jump in, I was sitting in a Steelworkers hall 2 miles from where I’m sitting now, listening to the AFL-CIO organizer out of DC tell us that the SB5 campaign was deliberately non-partisan.
I knew it would be, because unions ran the (successful) state campaign (I also volunteered on that) to raise the Ohio minimum wage and that too was deliberately non-partisan.
Hey William? When you denigrate OFA on the successful effort to keep the Ohio voter suppression law from taking effect you know you’re lying about and smearing actual human beings, right? The OFA organizer here is 22 years old. She worked 16 hours a day on it. I’d like to see you spout this nonsense to her face.
The SB5 organizer is 25. You know where she came from? Obama ’08, then Strickland 2010, now We Are Ohio. So much for William’s theory on “OFA functionaries”.
The distinction that liberals on the internet make between unions and the Democratic Party, on the ground, is imaginary. They’re the same people. Literally. They go from campaign to campaign. The idea that there’s some OFA firewall and then the “true activists” is paranoid bullshit, with no grounding in fact.
Sherrod Brown was and is intensely involved with voting rights, so I’m not sure where the “Democratic Senators don’t care about voting rights” bullshit came from, but I’d put in the same basket as the uninformed commentary on SB 5 and 194.
To understand voting, you first have to understand this: election law is state law. National commentary/punditry on election law/voting rights is nearly always nonsense. Not the Brennan Center, who did a stats analysis,state by state and then added it up, but punditry.
William Hurley
@Jman:
aiiiee carumba! Another revisionist!
When Obama took office, he enjoyed unprecedented majorities in both chambers of Congress in the wake of Dean’s brilliantly managed “50 state strategy”.
Dems had an 80 seat advantage in the House and a 19 seat advantage in the Senate.
ARRA, the one and only stimulus bill, was submitted and made law in 2009 – when Obama’s Congressional majority was at its largest.
Furthermore, whining about the opposition being opposed to their opponents is not a winning strategy.
Xenos
One variation of Case B I did not mention – the Talibangical wing puts someone clearly toxic in the VP slot. One can hope for such a thing, but can’t rely on it.
opal
@William Hurley:
Who would you like to see as president in 2012?
kay
@William Hurley:
Nonsense. Pure nonsense. It’s fun to read, because all you guys do with this is reveal yourselves as people who never actually do anything.
How hard would it be for a national blogger to call someone on the ground in Ohio before spreading lies? For all the bitching about the “MSM”, bloggers never do their homework. You’re reading press accounts and then formulating a Grand Theory of activism? I have an idea. You could ask an activist! Nah. Too difficult, I guess.
William Hurley
@kay:
I appreciate your taking time to compose such a lengthy entry.
Too bad its wholly unsourced.
The circumstances surrounding the passage of SB5 and the subsequent movement to begin repeal via ballot measure are not murky, unknown or otherwise under-reported.
It is the case that lobbing efforts to curtail the bill’s passage in the state legislature were spearheaded by labor. Once passed and signed into law by Kasich, the lobbying efforts were morphed into the petition drive – again spearheaded by labor. The effort was then aided by the state Dems – because the Dems have voter roll info and other logistical facilities that the unions and other action groups simply don’t have. These efforts were, after the fact, rolled up under Progress Ohio to provide an organizing shell, central coordinating capabilities and as a means to expedite collections ahead of a ticking clock.
My understanding of the efforts, pre and post legislative action, is gleaned from local, political and national news, interviews and other sources. My politically active relatives in Columbus and Dayton provided insights too.
But, to address the matter from another angle, riddle me this.
If OFA and labor are in such good standing with each other, then why are over 100 unions boycotting the Democratic Convention?
The short answer is Obama’s indifference to labor. Remember Bill Halter? Labor does.
opal
@William Hurley:
Who would you like to see as president in 2012?
Here’s a bonus: It’s a perfect world.
Omnes Omnibus
@kay:
@William Hurley: The juxtaposition is hilarious. (Note to William Hurley: a primary source is a source.)
kay
@William Hurley:
This is nonsense too. There’s nothing mysterious or complicated or magical about the “50 state strategy”. No alchemy. No special Howard Dean sauce.
It’s this “run a Democrat in every race, and build up state parties”.
As a practical matter, the way that plays out is, you end up with conservative Democrats in conservative areas, as both members in state parties and candidates. There was no other way it could play out.
Xenos
@William Hurley: A couple parthian responses:
Assumes facts not in evidence. You could easily get a poll result that Obama (or the government, generally) has not done enough to improve the economy. But nothing? Even Fox watchers don’t think that – they think he has done the wrong things, but not nothing.
I think you need to be answering that question, not Obama supporters.
William Hurley
@kay:
Wow.
Interesting assertions.
Riddle me this. Why lie when the facts of the matter are readily available to anyone with a browser?
Why lie when the stakes here, on this blog, are inconsequential.
I can’t hep it if your understanding of the No on 5 petition drive’s genesis differs from that which I’ve described here. You say, or at least strongly insinuate, I’ve lied. Then, no sources. No counter-factuals. What fives.
I’ve merely suggested you’ve erred in presenting a picture of the effort’s genesis. Did you lie, an affirmative and deceptive presentation of misinformation as fact? No, I don’t think so. But, your summary was out of alignment with the circumstances of the matter.
Hopefully, we’re moving toward better alignment with the facts.
Omnes Omnibus
@opal:
It is? That is a relief. Oh, wait, I took that statement out of context – just like William Hurley has been doing all night. I do suspect, however, that there was a shift change a some point and we are reading at least two different “William Hurleys.” I doubt the ratfuckers pay overtime.
opal
@William Hurley:
And, hopefully, you will answer my question.
kay
@William Hurley:
I helped run it one county in Ohio, as a volunteer. You’re misinformed. I don’t blame you. The major liberal sites (Kos and FDL) were wrong. Again: when you were screeching that Obama put on his walking shoes, the AFL-CIO out of DC were telling actual county Democrats that this was a non-partisan campaign.
Internet liberals have difficulty differentiating between advocacy (what you hear and read from national labor leaders, public statements) and reality.
National labor leaders push. They’re advocates. That’s their job. That has nothing whatsoever to do with the reality of their relationship with Barack Obama or the Democratic Party. Their job is to tell the Democratic Party that they aren’t doing enough for labor. It’s a dance, and everybody involved knows it’s a dance, except for internet liberals.
It sort of amazes me, because I’m a lawyer. When a lawyer steps in front of a microphone and advocates for his or her client, standing on the courthouse steps, are internet liberals interpreting that as FACT? It isn’t. It’s advocacy.
You were also wrong about Wisconsin, by the way. I know OFA people who made calls in Wisconsin, so that was complete bullshit too.
Xenos
Since Hurley won’t answer, why don’t we take a poll:
Hurley is
a) a Naderite,
b) a Larouchie,
c) a Greenie,
d) an Adbusters-addled international sockialist/’trendy lefty’/NDP goofball,
e) an anarcho-syndicalist,
f) a shit-eating Republican troll,
g) ___________.
4tehlulz
@Xenos: Unfair. a, c, and f are the same thing.
Omnes Omnibus
@Xenos: I say Hurley is a pseudonym used by a variety of poorly paid, indifferently educated employees of a GOP ratfucking operation that works out of a boiler room in some less attractive section of Trenton. So, I guess I go with “f”.
ETA: I might be wrong about Trenton. It could be someplace more like Moline, IL.
kay
@William Hurley:
You know William, it doesn’t really matter.
We succeeded on SB5 and 194 without internet liberals, who were insisting for weeks that Barack Obama had to “put on his walking shoes” or some stupid shit, rather than supporting us. They only came around when it looked like me might WIN. I suspect they’ll abandon us again if we LOSE, and I’ll have to read endless reams of bullshit on how internet liberals had a totally awesome strategy, but were ignored.
It was more important to internet liberals that this be about Obama, when really, it wasn’t. You have an ax to grind, and it makes you useless. In a real way, you’re using ordinary people in this state to buttress your imaginary scenario. That’s gross.
If you don’t want to help, and you don’t, fuck off and leave us alone.
agrippa
@mclaren:
La garde recule!
Nous sommes trahis!
Sauve qui peut!
William Hurley
@Xenos:
I think you might want to revisit your pithy dismissal of the CBS poll. Certainly, polling can be made to tell a story not, as intended, to reveal the contours of a story unfolding. The CBS poll’s results comport with polls from numerous sources on the same and similar subject matter. In the aggregate, the polling speaks to a sentiment of distrust and/or unease with the President’s policies and their effect – or more correctly lack of effect – on the economy and the lives of average Americans.
Your wanton dismissal of the poll and polling speaks more to your prejudices than to any “flaw” (flaws you fail to identify with any specificity or supporting evidence) in the poll.
As for Obama, he’s done. Obama himself foretold of such an outcome during an interview with Matt Lauer on the 9th day of his Administration. In that interview, he said:
By his own standard of measure, he can’t win.
I recognize this fact. The preponderance of the evidence is too strong. Losing the White House is horrible. Bit, it seems that too many are too scared to change course, preferring the company of others as the electoral car goes careening over the electoral cliff.
For the meantime, I’ll be doing what I can to ensure my district’s seat stays blue. The retirement of our House member has stirred-up the primary field and, in several polls, has opened up the possibility that a GOPer may steal the seat. All politics is local. And this one’s important.
Reading the stuck-minds herein, I’ve begun to think about the blamestorming OFA/O-Bot types will indulge in when Obama meets the fate he said he would when speaking with Lauer 2.5 years ago.
agrippa
@William Hurley:
No thank you Hurley.
I am not buying it. full stop.
agrippa
@William Hurley:
No.
Nice long rant though. well played
“O bot” busted you.
epic fail
agrippa
@Xenos:
None of the above.
Hurley is a cipher.
kay
@William Hurley:
Internet liberals cite facts selectively. Obama’s “indifference” to “labor” (what a punditry term! Kudos!) is contradicted by what I’ve witnessed in Toledo Ohio, but I suppose it’s too much to ask that internet liberals get off their asses occasionally and actually go to one of the places you’re always pontificating on.
You wouldn’t even have to go! You could call an activist! If you knew any.
amk
@Xenos: I vote ‘he’ is a sockpuppet of that insane jane dame.
kay
@William Hurley:
Why are you using union members to grind your anti-Obama ax?
You know they’re fighting for their lives here in Ohio. Do you know how much it sucks that you’re using these real people to spout your self-important, preening bullshit?
Is your objective to hurt them, this close to their issue election? They’re not “labor”, you know. They’re real people.
Omnes Omnibus
@kay: Go to Toledo? Heaven forfend. Is there some other option? I mean, Toledo? Ew.
opal
@William Hurley:
I have to hand it to you Hurley, that was some professional-grade butthurt.
Do Boxxy next, she’s losing to Chloe.
kay
@William Hurley:
There’s two conference calls on SB5 (Issue 2, to the informed) today, one at 11 and one at 6:30.
Will you be on one of those? Or will you be frantically googling for news reports?
I don’t mind that you aren’t cut out for this real work. I don’t think you have to do it. Do what you want, and vote for whomever and whatever you want. But you should stop talking about it. Stick to what you know, whatever that might be.
William Hurley
@kay:
Incorrect.
It was/is, for OFA/O-Bots, about the existential panic they (you?) felt when unions began to publicly announce their boycott of the Democratic Convention. There was a realization that having been firmly and comfortably on the side-lines when Walker, Kasich, Snyder, and others attacked and succeeded in taking essential rights away from workers – especially organized union workers. In the wake of the Blanche Lincoln slap in the face by Obama/Rahmbo, and uncomfortable push-back by unionleaders, OFA needed to find a way to rebuild the bridges they tore down and burned.
If the timing had been a little different, OFA would have tried to coopt the WI recall efforts instead of getting behind No on 5. But, to your good luck the WI calendar was much shorter than OH’s.
Don’t get me wrong, the outcome is outstanding – thus far. But to suggest a narrative that neglects the standing of OFA with unions and the clear and present need to repair that relationship, using OH as a legitimate vehicle to do so, misses the largest of large points. That is that outside of true-believers, a goodly percentage of the electorate no longer trusts Obama – and with reason.
You may not agree with the reasons this large motley demographic has for distrusting Obama, but the fact of your disagreement will not change anyone’s mind.
The fact is that come election day, the economy will be as it is today – or slightly less “robust”. The headline unemployment rate will beat or around 9.5%. In total, 30,000,000 million Americans will be un- or under-employed. As the article at the head this thread reports, 5 million eligible voters may be culled from the roles before election day. I suspect, as the reporting on GOP attacks on coting rights show, that most of the disenfranchised are likely Democratic voters.
What I’m trying to do here is simply convey the truth. One truth is that the up-coming election is Bigger than Barry. Choosing to follow Obama over the cliff is to replay the lethal, blind allegiance a platoon of Japanese soldiers demonstrated on Okinanwa where at a location just south of Naha, the cornered and defeated soldiers chose to march over a cliff to their deaths than to surrender and live. People still visit the site, now decorated with a memorial and commemorative installation (since most of the men were Okinawans following the orders of their Japanese commanders, the Okinawans consider the dead to be victims of Japanese racism).
But, I digress.
The fact is that by Obama’s own measure, discussed in a post above, he cannot win reelection. Yet, he’s a politician. He’ll spend as much money as he’ll be given and work paid and volunteer staff long hours even though he knows what his own measure, his own analysis of the career path ahead required more that he’s delivered.
$1 billion is a lot of money to waste on a loss.
amk
@William Hurley: lmao. So you’re shit scared that he is gonna raise 1 bil, aren’t ya ? 2012 result will be an existential issue indeed …. for firebagger trolls like you.
arguingwithsignposts
@William Hurley:
Yes, campaigning and voting for Obama is just like that.
opal
Nice try, but you already lost that demographic with all of Perry’s yapping.
Besides, my aunt is from Okinanwa.
arguingwithsignposts
@opal: Isn’t it Okinawa?
kay
@William Hurley:
Whatever, William. Blogger bullshit and patronizing lectures.
Words, buddy. Blah, blah, blah.
It’s not even original. You all sound the same, because you live in an echo chamber. You know what it sounds like? “ME, ME, ME”.
Can I make a request? In your quest to support “labor” try not to hurt them. They’re not an abstract concept, they’re people, and they don’t deserve to be used by you.
You’re a liar. You have no idea what you’re talking about re: Ohio, and while it’s interesting to speculate on why you might be spreading this bullshit you read on internet opinion blogs, I suspect it’s just ego. When you were writing it, were you at worried you’d encounter someone who is actually involved in Ohio? There are a lot of us. I always wonder about that.
opal
@arguingwithsignposts:
Sorry. ctrl-v laziness.
Jado
“What’s more compelling is the hole in our soul…”
What soul? We sold that long ago.
William Hurley
@amk:
Why would I be “scared” that Obama declared his intention to raise at least $1 billion?
Does my honesty terrify you? Isn’t $1 billion a lot of money to waste?
Do you think the banksters and fabulously wealthy GOP funders like the Kochs drive GOP fund raising well past that which Obama can raise?
Consider this reality. Closing tax loopholes, ending subsidies and implementing even modest regulatory controls via Dodd-Frank will “cost” financiers and the wealthy billions – with an “s” for plural. Why not donate a billion or more – secretly as the Roberts court allows – to rescue the free billions you’re at risk of losing?
The only real limitation on super-rich donors (individual, familial or corporate) is cash-flow. Even is they lose, they’ll get the money back by increasing “debit card” fees, transaction fees, oil/gas prices and more.
The loss of the White House is a horrible reality to consider. But, failing to assess the means and outcomes of such a loss, regardless of one’s emotional attachments, is to expedite the loss and also ease the financial and operational burden of the battle for the opposition.
Let’s game-out a scenario. A thought experiment.
Given the practical abundance of funds the GOP’s presidential candidate will enjoy – much of it coming from the SuperPACs and 527s instead of through the campaign itself – why would those groups not organize ad buys months if not a year in advance? They could, in one move or in a series of buys over months, lock-up all radio and TV ad time for the months of Sept & Oct in key, battleground states. Even if they didn’t buy ever single 15/30 second block, radically limiting supply will drive the costs of free slots up dramatically – leaving the Democrats with limited exposure and higher costs.
There are no laws or regulations preventing this strategy. Obama’s failure to fight to round-out the stable FCC commissioners may well have a direct and negative effect – embodied in the functional neutering of “neutrality” and “equal time” rules.
Or this scenario:
Given the panoply of new, restrictive voting regulations across the country – a result of what’s obviously a decentralized and coordinated GOP project – why not spend heavily on lawyers and poll watchers to challenge ever single voter they can? They’ve done it before, in fact former Chief Justice Rehnquist cut his teeth as an ideological “jurist” sitting as a poll-watcher armed with a JD challenging African-American and Hispanic voters in Arizona in the ’60s.
How much would it cost the GOP to take the 5 million, discussed in the article anchoring this thread, and to further cull Democratic votes at the polling station voter-by-voter? How much can or would Obama, the DNC or liberal voting rights groups spend – station-by-station nationwide – to protect voters and elections’ integrity?
I could go on…
The fact is, I hope Obama and all Democrats can raise as much money as possible. Even achieving that goal may prove too little under the as yet “stress-tested” Citizen’s United campaign funding paradigm.
If you could spend $500 million to secure billions – would you? I’m pretty sure the greedy fucks on Wall St would (and will!).
William Hurley
@kay:
Have you ever been a union member? I was. After serving in the USAF, I worked as a mechanic for an airline and was a Machinist Union card holder.
Please do continue to ascribe intentions, motivations and biases to me – blindly. Much is revealed in those assertions.
As for your understanding of the relationship rebuilding efforts undertaken by Obama/OFA with unions, I stand by the information I’ve posted as its drawn from the public domain in the main. If you really want to bolster you interpretation, may I suggest you provide sources.
Until then, feel free to continue your habit of inventing words, thoughts and deeds for me. As I wrote above, much of what is written here is, in a practical sense, inconsequential. But that doesn’t mean its not humorous nor useful as a window into the mind(s) of the true-believer.
arguingwithsignposts
@William Hurley:
You must have missed the memo when Reagan did away with the “equal time” rules back in the 1980s.
“Neutrality” in terms of media organizations (not “net neutrality,” which is an entirely separate issue) is a self-imposed rule, because they don’t want to piss off advertisers who don’t want to be on one side or the other of an issue.
Seriously, dude.
ETA: “Public domain” is a term with a specific legal meaning. I think you mean widely-available sources.
William Hurley
@opal:
You are a serial self-baited hook swallower.
Perry’s irrelevant – always has been. His role is not to to actually run, but to participate in the slate-cleansing pantomime designed to give Romney or an as yet announced alternative (or a “rebranded” Huntsman) a “steam-cleaned” air or reasonableness for the MSM and general electorate.
By pushing Perry, Bachman, and other fringy wackos into the center ring, then out again, the GOP and its nominee can “testify” to having given the extremists a chance to make their case and to have had the “process” scrape them from the contest like barnacles on a skiff. Perry et al are performing a faux purity ritual for public consumption and a real, in-group purity test to measure the allegiances of “up and comers” to that party’s funders against their own ambitions.
Do you think Politico got the Perry family ranch story by exercising journalistic elbow grease? Or was it a gift from a functionary blowing the end of game whistle on actor Perry. And poor Rick, he gets to go back to Austin and pad his personal coffers at the public’s expense.
Here’s tip. Sometime after the 2012 election is over, maybe before hand, you’ll see or read about Perry/Bush/Rove political “make-up sex”. A disgusting image, but one that fits the contrivance.
William Hurley
@arguingwithsignposts:
First, pardon my quick, inexact use of legal/technical terms. My use of them was clearly imprecise and ease to misconstrue.
As to the facts, “equal time” rules do still have effect – even though they’ve been trimmed, clipped and minimized since the 80s.
Another access to public airwaves regulation, or body thereof, known as the “fairness Doctrine” has been neutered. But, in campaign season, it the “equal time” rule that is and was the relevant reg. To point, back when Issa was funding the “Recall Grey” campaign, Ahhhnold’d films were pulled from CA broadcasters schedules in compliance with “equal time” regs.
And yes, “Net Neutrality” (NN) pertains to inter-network access and content transmission on the web. The FCC has been in the process of “reauthorizing” “NN” – and radically reconceiving the concept. As you may well know, there have been a multitude of highly technical legal challenges pushed by network operators that seek to limit if not eliminate the FCC’s authority to enforce “NN” – no matter how its constructed.
I hope this synopsis clarifies my shorthanded use earlier.
kay
@William Hurley:
Just grind your anti-Obama ax using someone else. Yourself, perhaps. It’s perfectly valid to have an opinion. It’s using other people to make your argument that’s dishonest.
You’d like to take down “Barry”. That’s fine. Why are you hiding behind all this bullshit? You have no earthly idea what’s happening in Ohio. You’re simply repeating some well-worn exclusive-to-the-internet themes, in order to bootstrap your personal opinions off of people you don’t know and don’t care about.
William Hurley
@arguingwithsignposts:
It is indeed. Remember GOPers inability to acknowledge H.W.’s immanent defeat? They campaigned and rallied and solicited funds well after their collective feet left terra firma to flutter in coordinated and pointless lockstep until their candidate and campaign met ground. So too with Bob Dole, a campaign made memorable by Norm MacDonald.
In Obama, there’s a Hellenistic tragedy unfolding. As the Greeks understood it, tragedy defined a chain of compelling, unavoidable acts that all led to a ruinous end – an end that was established at the beginning by the chorus to ground both the invariability of the drama and the consequences of the characters’ past bad acts in the inevitability of destruction and loss.
The self-inflicted blindness I’m witness to here is in many ways a too obvious echo of Oedipus fumbling his way to a death he literally cannot see due to wounds of his own making.
To point, how large should the ARRA have been, according to the consensus of economists not named Summers? It should have been twice as much, or more, than Summers told Obama it should have been.
If you scan my replies above, you see entries discussing an Obama interview with Matt Lauer on Obama’s 9th day in office. In that interview, he plays the role of Greek chorus to his own fate. Give it a read, or listen as there’s video and a transcript too. Obama has interesting things to say about his reelection prospects if he fails to improve the economy by the time the election is a year out.
Guess what the calendar says!
William Hurley
@kay:
If you paid any attention to my posts on this and other threads, you’ll discover that you’re again inventing words and thoughts for me that do not exist outside your creative speculation.
My hope is that the Democratic Party will come to a more sane, congruent read of the polling – public and internal – and the observable mood of the electorate on-whole. In making that connective leap, there could be a chance to bring forth a viable candidate – one with policy preferences that are more in-line with the democratic vales of the Democratic Party.
As I’ve written here several times, if on election day Obama is the Democratic Party candidate, he’ll get my vote.
My efforts, this cycle, will not follow those of last Presidential cycle. I’ll not be door knocking, phone banking or donating money to his campaign. I’ll be engaged with the contest to keep my House district blue.
In the end, Obama himself forecast his fate in an interview with Matt Lauer. See posts above for the link.
One last question, assuming that you will give the interview a look. That question is this: which Obama do you believe? Today’s Obama whose personal ambitions are colliding in an ugly way with reality, or Obama fresh off of his victory speaking confidently and (it seems) extemporaneously on the scale of the challenges he faced and the measure he felt to be the most telling of his future prospects.
Which of those variants of an ambitious politician do you believe – and more importantly – why?
You don’t have to tell me, or others here. But do consider telling yourself. The cliff’s edge nears.
Xenos
@William Hurley: But what is the point? Obama is in trouble, sure. Doomed? Hardly. Likely to pull it off – I don’t know.
I doubt there are any fellow Obots here who would disagree with me on this — and this is very different from the denial of reality you could see with the some republicans in 2008.
And as a further note, the point behind Greek tragedy is not that it is invariable misfortune but that it is inevitable, with some strong sense of irony, to boot. I don’t see how Obama’s downfall is inevitable, even if his eventual downfall is due to a fatal, and ironic, moderate course of political management of the presidency. That would be America’s tragedy, not Obama’s.
Ash Can
Let this be a lesson to you, boys and girls — just because that acid is brown, it doesn’t mean it should go in your coffee.
kay
@William Hurley:
You oppose Obama and you’re not confident enough in your own opinion to make your case, so you’re creating an imaginary army of Ohio union workers to back you up.
It’s cowardly even as an advocacy tactic, what you’re doing. There is collateral damage to your approach.
Just make your case. It’s the internet. Everyone’s got an opinion, and everyone is a pundit. Stop pretending to specific, local knowledge you don’t possess. You’re bootstrapping off other people’s actual work and in the process, you’re defaming them. That’s unfair.
William Hurley
@kay:
Why would I worry when the facts and my recounting of them are in harmony?
May I suggest that you exercise judiciousness in touting your “eyewitness” status as privileged vis-a-vis the truth. A “hot” topic in law, legal theory, psychology and neurobehavioralism is the reliability of “witness” testimony. The evolving state of research on this subject has proven sufficiently robust to Fed and state courts that rules of evidence and witness impeachment are being reformed.
One take-away from the meta-analyses is that those prone to certain beliefs or pre-dispositions are highly susceptible to suggestion – either explicit or contextually implicit regardless of whether the “suggestions” originate in the “world” or in the witnesses own mind.
Here’s one teaser on the matter:
kay
@William Hurley:
More blah blah blah, William. if you want to talk about Ohio’s Issue Two, you’re going to have to get off your ass, or you’re David Brooks.
You know, the advantage of the internet was supposed to be that ordinary people could recount their real experiences, and we’d all sort of collate that. “Citizen journalism”. All that.
Instead we got 50,000 people like David Brooks.
I saw you also opine on Massachusetts. Any thoughts on Utah? Delaware? What’s going on in South Carolina with voter suppression? Perhaps you could lecture me on that, too.
Xenos
@William Hurley: OK, the post-modernism settles it: the correct answer is d) an Adbusters-addled international sockialist/’trendy lefty’/NDP goofball.
I feel bad that this category needlessly smears Canadians, but there you go.
eemom
@Xenos:
I was independently searching for some words to describe this “William Hurley” pastiche, and coming up empty. Then it occurred to me: there are no words left. He’s USED them all.
baZING. Here all week.
William Hurley
@Xenos:
I appreciate your perspective.
The fact in plain view that point to the inevitability of Obama’s defeat in the generals, if he does indeed serve as the Party’s nominee, is his record on jobs and economic policy – followed closely by his embrace and amplification of Bush/Cheney war-making and spying regimes.
All things being equal, the unemployment rate on election day will be 9.2% or higher. The number of Americans falling into the “U6”, labor force underutilization measure, will be 30,000,000 or more working (and voting) age Americans. Homeowners, by the millions, will be somewhere along the spectrum of foreclosed upon to distressed and heading for foreclosure. The housing calamity, still a meat-grinder chewing up families and their dreams, was made worse by the Administration’s “all thumbs” mismanagement of HAMP and HARP. The way Americans are experiencing these events is traumatic. And there’s still lots of road to travel before Nov 2012.
One event on the path that will be disruptive will be addressing the either the policy recommendations of Obama’s Super Committee. Whether present chatter proves prescient or not is immaterial. It boils down to major cuts or major cuts – of which one “package” must be signed into law by Obama. Will it be safety net or defense that takes the biggest hit. I have my preferences, given this Jobian menu. Yet, both outcomes have large, negative drawbacks for the President with the electorate as a whole – an electorate that by 75% or more wants more spending and more taxes exacted from the rich. To do the opposite will set Obama in opposition to the populace, thereby making the election a plebiscite on Obama and his policies. Again, with that as the principal or guiding framework, the unemployment rate figures figure to be an Achilles heal brought onto center stage.
Then there’s the money stuff. Much has been written above about that.
Just as Agamemnon was forced to wait on the Grecian shores for the grace of the gods to supply the easterly wind, the inevitability of his his daughter’s slaughter by his own hand was a necessary and invariable step on the tragic path prepared for Agamemnon by his gods. Yet, as Homer instructs, the tragedy was only at its beginning when Agamemnon’s blade separated his daughter’s head from neck – a murder committed in reverence to and by command of Artemis.
Differently than the Greeks, our actors can defy the tragic intentions of the gods. Obama and the fortunes of the Democratic Party need not be sacrificed at the alter of the voting booth. He can turn back, choose a different mission and set in motion a new, different chain of causality that itself makes better outcomes possible. Homer’s epic poems would be markedly different, dare I say modern, if he had had Agamemnon realize the he could make a different choice, a different and less expensive sacrifice, and live to save his kingdom rather than sew the seeds of its destruction.
William Hurley
@Xenos:
Interesting. Are you one of those anti-MMR neurotics?
The mountains of data produced by thousands of clinical studies rests on a solid, classically empirical foundation.
That you confuse good, robust science with political “science” and the rhetorical arts is of little surprise.
William Hurley
@kay:
My case has been made – regarding Ohio and the President’s impending defeat.
Like it or not, you’ve provided neither counter-factual of any of my arguments’ components nor have you supplied verifiable facts supporting your “witness’s” testimony.
It’s been grand!
Mack Lyons
I’ve been reading most of William Hurley’s posts, and I still can’t quite figure out exactly what he’s angling at.
This guy apparently wants an Elizabeth Warren or a Bernie Sanders to primary Obama and then run against whomever the GOP decides to run.
Either that, or he’s one of the best GOP concern-trolls to ever come out of the gate swinging. That’s part of why I love coming here — to see the trolls try to put on their best A-game and to see the regulars walk all over them.
Yep, you want Obama primaried. Too bad it isn’t going to happen.
Kola Noscopy
@William Hurley:
WH, the Bots will love this; it will give them another excuse to talk about how stupid everyone is but them; how unworthy of Obama is the electorate.
Kola Noscopy
@opal:
In other words, you have no credible reply to anyone calling out the Democratic non response to Republican voter suppression, but CLAP LOUDER!
Fool
Kola Noscopy
@William Hurley:
Perhaps they weren’t errors. Not flaws, but features.
harlana
@William Hurley:
I cannot say that this is inaccurate. I haven’t really thought about it this way, but it’s interesting to contemplate. Most likely, most others here will have a counterargument or hurl some insults, etc., but, personally, I think you have a point here. Everyone else, feel free to correct me if I am wrong and lay out the facts I’m overlooking. I lived it so, you know, I’m sure I don’t really know what I’m talking about. ;)
And for heaven’s sake, pls don’t tell me to self-lobotomize and just completely wipe the past from my memory. Those who do not learn from the past are condemned to repeat it. (Even Mr. Cole seems to be leaning this way, given his recent posts).
arguingwithsignposts
Rule 236579 of the internet: as soon as someone mentions Agamemnon in the context of a political campaign, it all becomes tl; dr
Kola Noscopy
@William Hurley:
Otards! I love it! May I use it? I think I shall!
kay
@William Hurley:
No, William, you made specific statements about 194 and Issue Two that were inaccurate. You were wrong. You confuse opinion with fact.
I wouldn’t have engaged with you had you not told a series of specific lies about those two efforts, because Brooksian pontificating bullshit bores me. It’s a dime a dozen. I can google for polling as well as you. Anyone can.
To say that OFA didn’t run 194 in Ohio is a lie. You had a chance to retract it, but you instead went to grand, wordy national themes.
Steer clear of specifics. They trip you up. Stick with “pulse of the nation”.
piratedan
good ol’ Bill here is doing such a good job of rattling our cages I guess we should be thankful. nfi what his end game here is other than concern trolling….
the choices appear to be simple….
Republican candidate… no matter who it is… fills judicial seats with more folks of the ilk of antonin scalia on the courts, places more philosophically inclined “less is more” people into the higher positions of the government bureaucracy and continues to favor corporations over people when it comes to considering legislation to be signed into law.
Democratic candidate… again, no matter who it is… doesn’t do that….
You wanna third option… feel free to start your own party, support a fledgeling party and do the scut work necessary to give voters a real choice while fighting the reality that one party controls the vast majority of the media and that the 4th estate is more worried about the murder of the month than they are about educating the public on issues, regardless of position.
So Bill, which side are you on?
You talk about the mistakes and the choices that the Obama administration has made and what’s before them. You seem to forget that despite all of the power that is levied with the position of the President, he only wields so much power and can only sign into law, those bills that reach his desk. For some reason, you continue to believe that if he just had more bully pulpit, everything would be fine. If anything, Obama (and a good many of the rest of us) were naive into thinking that he would be treated just like every president before him and that while partisan politics would be played, that the good of the country would supersede the most heinous offences. We were wrong about that, but it sure as hell isn’t his fault.
Svensker
@opal:
He said Feingold or Dean. How Feingold, who couldn’t hold his own state, or Dean, who couldn’t get the nom before, would beat Obama, he doesn’t say. But he did frigging say it. OK?
kay
@William Hurley:
It sort of makes me laugh, because the original premise of the thread was “Democrats never do anything to protect voters”.
That’s what 194 was about. But it doesn’t matter, because that’s fact, and it contradicts the Grand Theme.
Ash Can
@Svensker: Whatever that guy’s on can’t possibly be legal. Or it is, and he needs to get back on it. One or the other.
Svensker
I love that this Hurley guy keeps asking KAY for her sources. As if a first person account is less good than some report on the internet.
The frosting tho was when Kola came along to support ol’ Hurl. Match made in heaven!
Oy. I’m going back to work. It’s less irritating than this crap.
Xenos
@arguingwithsignposts:
Corollary 1 to that rule: If you can follow the Agamemnon reference with a trenchant Dune reference, you can save the thread.
Corollary 2: if the commenter attempting the ‘Dune save’ is a troll named after a Dune character, the thread is lost anyway.
kay
@William Hurley:
It’s not like it’s a big secret:
Tell me again how OFA “took credit” for the “labor ‘n liberals” effort that you imagined.
ruemara
@harlana:
This was never true. Never.
source
We never had 60 votes in the Senate. When we had majorities in the House, we passed a ton of legislation that went to die. And William Hurley is a ratfucker. End of Story. He’s here to depress votes with passionate, well-reasoned pastiches of common internet political wisdom. How do you know this? He derides someone who’s physically there working on the issue. Plus, Colon shows up to support his wisdom. Enough already, people. You got your job done, but we have work to do for 2012.
kay
@William Hurley:
Here’s “labor” and the President, William.
The betrayal! The slaps in the face! What is he saying? Doesn’t he know labor has abandoned Obama?
They’re much, much better at politics than that, unions.
DFH no.6
Probably another dead-thread that I get in when no one is reading anymore.
Oh well, a little personal story on fascist “vote fraud/vote suppression” anyway (in Ohio, no less), in case anyone is still here.
We all know fascists project like motherfuckers, and the same is blatantly obvious with “vote fraud/vote suppression”.
So one of my several Tea-baggin’ rightwing asshole brothers-in-law still lives relatively close to the inner-city Cleveland neighborhood I grew up in (which has, like most of my old hometown, transitioned from solid working class to very poor working class/unemployed).
Said asshole brother-in-law has volunteered the past few election cycles to be a brownshirt election “monitor” at my old elementary school, you know, to make sure the Democrats weren’t committing the voter fraud the rightwing always screams about (the projection-thing).
He told me about this last Thanksgiving (gotta love Thanksgiving for forced family fun and political discussions). He was all puffed up and proud of his work in helping to keep the soshulists from committing the massive voter fraud he is sure is epidemic, especially in working class/minority inner-city locales like my old neighborhood.
I asked him what his election “monitoring” and voter-fraud prevention work entailed, and he said it was mostly challenging as many voters as he (and the other fascists there with him) could, based on nothing more than some bullshit “suspicion” that a voter might not be who they said they were, or didn’t belong to that precinct.
I asked him how many he and his compatriots challenged, and he claimed over 100 at each of the past three elections (’06, ’08, ’10). How many were “fraudulent”? None, he said, but that wasn’t the point. The point in challenging was to “keep the liberals honest”, to show they were being watched and so prevent them from bringing in “ringers”. The fact that no “ringers” or voter fraud of any kind was ever found just proved how well this “monitoring” worked.
I told him what he was so proud of doing was in fact voter suppression. He disagreed, but then said, “it’s a free country – whatever works”. I wanted to punch him in his fat, smug face. I guarantee no one is pulling his bullshit at the local election precincts in his nearby middle class leafy suburb.
He and I were friends in the long ago, even before I knew his sister (my wife) back when he and I protested Vietnam together and he (and I, and many others we knew) were all enjoying the fruits of our Democratic fathers’ union wages and the local tax-supported public schools (including state college). Then he read Ayn Rand and was lost forever.
He and I don’t talk much anymore.
William Hurley
@kay:
You’re slower than snail mail!
Please do try to keep up!
Unions to Boycott Dems Convention in NC
As a refresher, or more likely introduction, here’s a report on a teachers union convention held by the AFT and NEA. Obama wasn’t welcome, nor were his emissaries.
Lastly, your ignorant dismissal of the real anger expressed by union rank & file and their leadership over Obama’s decision to undercut union-backed Bill Halter for the doomed Blanche Lincoln. Here are the Teamsters thoughts on Obama’s betrayal.
So, tell me, how many tens of millions of Americans can be unemployed on election day before Obama’s reelection is untenable?
25 million?
30 million?
50 million?
I’m curious as to your thoughts. It will help me gauge the depth of O-Bot pathology.