If only we could clone this woman, I’d feel a lot surer about America’s future:
__
Per Ed O’Keefe at the Washington Post:
“I just want to come back with the Democrats in the majority, that’s really what is important,” she told ABC’s “This Week.” “I’m really excited about the election and the opportunity it gives us to make the distinction, and I’m very proud that president Obama is at the top of our ticket.”
Whether or not she serves again as speaker is “incidental,” Pelosi said, adding that “what’s important is that the Democrats win.”
Republicans maintain a 244 to 196 majority in the House, and Democrats would need to hold all of their current seats and win at least 25 more in order to win back the majority in November. Pelosi said Sunday that she agrees with House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) that at least 50 GOP lawmakers are vulnerable this year, but added that she think as many as 75 Republican seats are in play.
“I feel pretty good about where we are,” she told ABC.
Villago Delenda Est
It all depends on coattails. President Obama’s.
I think the fact that we have a do-nothing about the economy House has not been lost on most people.
James E Powell
I think the fact that we have a do-nothing about the economy House has not been lost on most people.
While that may be true of people who follow politics, we have to concern ourselves with the great mass of those voters who do not. I’d be surprised if more than 25% of Americans were aware that Republicans control the house. In fact, I’d be surprised if more than 25% knew there were two houses of congress. The problem is the voters who don’t know anything are the ones who will decide this election.
Both Sides Do It
“If only we could clone this woman, I’d feel a lot surer about America’s future”
We’d still have about thirty to fifty years of darkness as the fetus (or fetii? Let’s get nuts! A whole Pelosi caucus!) develop, are born, and mature into functioning adults. It’s like global warming: part of the problem is that the time necessary to take steps to fix stuff already puts us past the point of no return.
Marcellus Shale, Public Dick
the kind of win we need is definitely bigger than obama. that is why how we win is important. slime can win a race, against a single opponent, but message, ideas, policy, record, can win multiple races.
geg6
I just love her. From her mouth to the Great Pasta’s ear.
danielx
From her lips to God’s ear, hopefully. Although the way things are going at the moment, I’m waiting for a Supreme Court ruling that corporations are not only allowed but required to contribute money to wingnut causes, because it would be illogical if they didn’t. At which point electoral democracy in these yere Yewnited States will become a complete rather than partial exercise in futility. Straining at gnats and swallowing camels evidently being the prime reason for living for the court’s right wing majority…
amk
@danielx: Don’t worry. grey lady’s confessore is on their case and is almost orgasmic over the ‘power’ of superpacs. .
Patricia Kayden
Pelosi is a tough cookie. Very proud that she’s from my state (Baltimore, MD). Hope her optimism is justified.
Skippy-san
Don’t forget she is not going well on most of her predictions-she predicted the Dems would hold the house in 2010. She may be effective-but her, herself, is a lightning rod, and on overall liability for the Democratic party.
Linda
@Skippy-san:
She is a lightning rod for conservative political junkies–most people don’t know or care who she is. But pretty much everybody is a lightning rod for political junkies.
amk
Obama’s new ad on bain capital.
Suck on it cory.
magurakurin
@amk: The more I think of the more of douche Cory seems. Why did he fucking say what he did? Why can’t everyone just get on board for the next 5 months? Can’t Axlerod send a memo when someone is going to be on tv and tell them to pull their head in before they open their mouth?
And don’t the media whores just so badly want a horse race. GS asks Nancy Smash “what does the President have to do to win this very close race?” Is it really a “very close” race? Looking at the EV’S it seems like Romney has a long way to go. NC has softened up in his favor but Arizona has gone 50/50. It’s a long way out and Romney has to turn a lot of states from blue to red. Ohio, Florida, Virginia and North Carolina aren’t enough.
I hate GS and all the other smary pundit fucker boy punks.
Linda Featheringill
@amk:
I think Team Obama is planning to produce several similar ads featuring different victim-companies, with plans to air the ads locally.
Morning Joe is correct, of course, that is the way that capitalism works. And that is the problem with it. Not only is it theoretically unfair, it’s actually unfair.
gene108
@Linda:
She’s a lightening rod for the low-info voter, which is why she gets featured in so many attack ads against Democrats in toss-up districts.
She’s a Communist-Gun-Grabbin’-Socialist-Take-Away-Your-Freedom-Big-Government MONSTER, who cannot never ever be allowed to have political power again.
She gets demonized a ton on right-wing media. Rush, Hannity, et. al. spend a ton of time demonizing her, so she becomes a caricature of everything right-wingers dread and the folks, who are dialed into Fox News, Rush, et. al. disseminate this caricature to their friends and family (Not implying Fox news viewers are actually high info voters, but they’re probably a step up from the right-winger, who doesn’t watch the news).
Linda Featheringill
Yes, it’s quite OT:
I had a dream last night that [my] life was made up of reality plus an overlay of a combination of wishes and perceptions. The overlay resembles the real base but doesn’t match it.
Strange thing to dream about. I used to dream about sex. Is this an improvement?
jwest
Nancy Pelosi was cloned and sent out to teach high school kids about politics:
youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=vjpWaESn_9g
amk
@magurakurin: I am just glad that the Obama is not ‘pandering’ to these pundtwit nitwits and just keeps on laying the truth on mitt and bain despite their pig squeals. If the ‘murkans still want to fuck themselves over because of blackitty black, they’re welcome to it.
amk
@Linda Featheringill: Good for them. It’s money well-spent.
danielx
@gene108:
She’s effective, which means she can never ever be allowed to have political power again.
Off topic, but…not usually a fan of shameless blogwhoring, but this is just too good. TBogg is on the case and following the appearance of – ta-dah! – a series of awards to honor Andrew Breitbart’s contributions to journalism, to be called – wait for it – the Breitbart Awards, or “Barties”. I can’t wait for the announcement of the prizes to be given to winners of said awards – two free trips to Dallas coming right up. Talk about comedy gold…
tbogg.firedoglake.com/2012/05/20/all-tomorrows-barties/
Betty Cracker
@James E Powell:
True, and although that’s appalling, it gives me some hope for the presidential election at least because Romney is a horrible, horrible candidate.
Davis X. Machina
When asked which party controls the House, most people basically flip a coin.
kay
@amk:
They’re making a much broader argument than Bain, specifically. That’s what’s most disappointing about the Newark mayor. He’s not listening, which is pretty amazing, since they’ve been making this argument since 2009.
Biden’s Youngstown speech (all of Biden’s Ohio-Pennsylvania speeches) outline the argument. It’s that we, the US, have coddled and subsidized and promoted the finance, insurance and lending sector of the economy when we should have taken a more balanced approach (manufacturing). Bain’s just a good jumping off point to that argument. Bain sets it up, and ties it to Romney, but it’s not new.
I don’t know if the punditry cluelessness on this has to do with their absolute groveling love of finance-sector CEO’s, or if it’s a regional bias towards finance because finance is centered on the east coast. I suspect it’s regional, because a lot of news and opinion has an east coast slant.
Anya
@magurakurin: I am puzzled by Cory B’s false equivalence. How can he equate something that’s central to Romney’s candidacy (job creator and business experience) with race baiting is beyond me? But I read somewhere that he said the republicans attacks on women and voting rights was a side issue. WTF! That asshole needs some perspective.
kay
@amk:
I hope they keep making it for another reason. If you listen to Romney, there’s two parts of a successful business: investment and management. His whole campaign rests on the top tier, managers and money people. He completely ignores the people who work at these places. They’re interchangeable, easily replaced. I don’t think it’s true. I think employees are actually quite important to success, but managers (like Romney) have successfully convinced the whole country that all we need are 1. money and 2. new management.
That’s self-serving. It hugely benefits managers, the top tier, like, um, ROMNEY.
Linda Featheringill
FWIW, Cory B has recanted:
2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/05/cory-booker-obama-romney-bain-ad.php
Linda Featheringill
I am stuck in moderation because, while my comment is clean, the link I posted contains Cory B.’s last name.
Pfooie.
Try again: TPM has an article on this topic.
amk
@Linda Featheringill: cole’s vista moment.
Donut
@Skippy-san:
It’s way more important to have a leader who fires up her base and fires up her colleagues than to worry one iota about whether or not she also draws controversy. Making sure that dstinctions are clear wins elections; worrying about hurting the other side’s fee-fees, not so much.
Davis X. Machina
@kay:
Xenophanes the pre-Socratic used to say — or so we are told — that if horses and cattle could make images of their gods, their statues would all have hooves and horns.
Anya
@Linda Featheringill: You can shorten the url. Use this.
Donut
@gene108:
I can’t think of anything to say to your comment other than, “…and!?!?!”
Those low info voters that Republicans target in those ads are not ever voting Democratic. They use Nancy to remind their base why they hate Democrats, not to convince them. Advertising is used to reinforce old habits and ideas, not just make new ones.
Anya
@Linda Featheringill: Steve Kornacki thinks Mayor Cory made these comments deliberately.
Mino
If you’re cloning Nancy Smash, could you include a bunch of Chris Hayes?
amk
@Anya: shorter kornacki – cory needs to kiss the wallstreeter’s collective ass if he wants to be prezinent someday. Yeah, pull a harold jr. That’s the ticket to prezinentcy.
Clime Acts
Sweet Jesus.
Yeah, cause Dems were so great at promoting and passing progressive legislation 2008-10 when they had a majority.
but never mind…move along…vote for us…
rikyrah
Nancy Smash rocks it.
totally rocks it
geg6
@kay:
Oh, kay, you know it’s 50/50. You’re just too polite to point it out. ;-)
They practically cried on air and smeared their newsprint with tears when they had to report about the fall of their most recent fallen god, Jamie Dimon.
Clime Acts
@magurakurin:
I don’t like what he said, but I like that he said it since it is what he actually, you know, believes apparently.
This would be a refreshing tactic for the dude in the WH to adopt.
I know you preferred to be lied to, but that doesn’t really work for a lot of people.
Clime Acts
@amk:
Do you believe the childish shit you write?
Obama’s version of the truth is very malleable, beginning with is recent gay marriage “evolution” narrative.
He occasionally rags on wall street, then goes groveling for their money behind the scenes.
Grow up.
Anya
@amk: Not necessarily, since Harold FordJr., socially conservative on top of being a corporate democrat. But I think Cory destroyed his brand. But maybe his calculation is correct and we will all forget about this when he runs for senate.
Anya
@Clime Acts: God, you’re tiresome. In every fucking thread you make the same points.
kay
@geg6:
They did. “He’s so charming!” I feel as if the cycle has sped up a bit. Pundits promote someone, and almost immediately we find out they’re hugely incompetent.
We get all these crappy business magazines at the law office. I don’t know why they send them, or why they give them away (to pump up their numbers for advertisers?) but they always have a CEO on the cover. It’s like one person works at these places.
Waynski
@Anya: I’m not puzzled at all as to why Cory went off the reservation. He wants to be Governor of New Jersey and a huge number of Wall Streeters live in our fair state. It was calculated. Separate yourself from Obama on being mean to financiers in May, when it will mostly be forgotten by the electorate come November, and you can tell all the banksters in 2013 that you’ve always been on their side. No real mystery here.
amk
@Clime Acts:
.
Davis X. Machina
Urban North Jersey is one giant back-office for the FIRE sector. They get what they want, from the politicians that they want. Sometimes — Corzine — they’re all the same thing.
Clime Acts
@Anya:
As do you, Anya.
Your primary point being: Obama good regardless.
Change your schtick and I’ll change mine.
Sly
@Clime Acts:
It takes a lot of work to believe something this stupid.
Donut
@Clime Acts:
Pelosi led one of the most productive Congresses in American political history. That is a simple fact, which you can verify for yourself.
But then, you knew that already, troll.
burnspbesq
@magurakurin:
Umm, because he believes it? It’s not clear why you have a problem with the expression of opinions with which you disagree. If you think Booker is wrong, I’d be somewhat interested in seeing your explanation, as opposed to reflexively playing the douchebag card. That doesn’t add much to the conversation.
Surely it hasn’t escaped your notice that we’re talking about the Democratic Party here.
burnspbesq
@Clime Acts:
Liar. That tired shtick is the totality of your existence. You’ll never change.
...now I try to be amused
@Donut:
Yep. Nancy Pelosi is their Emmanuel Goldstein.
BenA
@Linda Featheringill:
And to Morning Joe I say, “So What?” That might be the way that certain people practice capitalism… but it’s also okay for voters to say, “We don’t want the kind of person who is okay making money that way to be President.”
This is the way Romney got (more) rich… Obama has every right in the world to highlight it and the real impact it has on people.
The whole idea that it should be off limits because it’s just capitalism is absurd… If it’s just capitalism… then he should have no problem with Obama highlighting it. ;-)
Clime Acts
@burnspbesq:
ooh, ouch, ooh
Clime Acts
@BenA:
I totally agree with this.
Both sides need to just take off the gloves and go at it.
Entertainment!
burnspbesq
@Clime Acts:
A non-denial.
Clime Acts
@amk:
I wonder if any of this will complicate the OBAMA AS OUR SAVIOR FROM WALL STREET AND BAIN CAPITAL narrative?
Frankensteinbeck
@Clime Acts:
The facts, they are against you – as they always are. Obama had the most productive legislative first two years of any president since LBJ. He passed a piece of legislation, the ACA, that presidents have been trying and failing, over and over, to pass for the last one hundred years. You are simply wrong, and since it’s the basis of your argument that electing Democrats is useless, your argument is wrong.
@Skippy-san:
Her other predictions, about whether or not the Democrats would pass legislation or knuckle under to Republican demands to gut the safety net, have been very reliable. One prediction is not ‘most’. Also, she’s not a political lightning rod, she’s a scapegoat for the arch conservatives. Any scapegoat would do. Everyone who isn’t well inside the Wingnut Bubble looks at their screeds about what a devil woman she is and goes ‘Huh?’
amk
@Clime Acts: Ah, the whiny two-bit hack from brazil.
. In bold letters, no less.
So the dems and obama took money from them and are fucking them now publicly. So what is not to love about that ?
Idjits. Both you and that whacko from brazil.
Clime Acts
@Frankensteinbeck:
Well, that simply depends on how you define “productive,” now doesn’t it?
Since you define it strictly from a hard center right Obot perspective, your evaluation is irrelevant.
Clime Acts
@amk:
hahahaha…god, you are gullible.
It would be cute if it weren’t so dangerous.
Frankensteinbeck
@Clime Acts:
Gay rights, the largest extension of the safety net since it was created, massive packages of regulation for the insurance, medical, and financial industries… these are ‘hard center right’? Well, there is no logical counterargument for opinion value judgments, but I have to say, yours are bizarre.
EDIT – Oh, and let’s not forget renewable energy and infrastructure investment – there’s been a lot of that snuck into the legislation both proposed and passed.
RalfW
@kay:
There are a lot of people, even or particularly in journalism, who seem to have no idea that the U.S. is still an important manufacturing nation. Less so as a % of economic output than a generation or two ago, but still very important.
They’ve started believing all the hype about service-sector jobs. Yes there’s a lot of growth there, but contrary to popular perception, manufacturing isn’t over in this country. Just in the minds of our punditry and overlord-class.
Biden is right, we have focused on finance at the expense of actually creating things. Finance matters, functioning capital markets matter to lubricate and operate the rest of the economy, but at this point, as JP Morgan so ably shows us, it’s doing an absolutely shitty job at allocating capital efficiently.
In fact you can put a pretty precise price on the inefficiency: $3 billion dollars. That they can afford to give that inefficiency away as profit to someone else – hedgefunders – then bully for them. But imagine what $3Bn invested in productive capacity could do.
I know, businesses won’t invest if they don’t see demand rising. But companies are sitting on piles of cash and could afford to invest in productivity gains to increase marginal profit on existing demand.
They’re not. In part, I believe, because tax and other policy favors finance over industry. Dividends over reinvesting in the business. At a 15% tax rate, it’s just too tempting to drain businesses dry and not invest in new plant and equipment for the future…
rikyrah
@kay:
ON THE MONEY, KAY
A Humble Lurker
@Clime Acts:
So since the Democrats didn’t do well enough, we should vote in Republicans who have vowed to not only not do well enough, but go in the complete opposite direction?
NR
@Frankensteinbeck:
Presidents have not been trying to pass a bill that forces American citizens to give money to private corporations for the last hundred years. Even the Republicans, in their wildest corporatist dreams, never tried something like that. Obama was the first.
Finn13
I can’t believe Nancy is getting so much praise here after she indicated a few weeks ago she’d be voting for Social Security and Medicare cuts when it comes up. It’s time to put pressure on her between now and November, not kiss her ass.
slightly-peeved
@NR:
By the same measure, are Americans forced to buy a house, since they get a tax break on mortgage repayments? You don’t like it? Pay more tax.
NR
@slightly-peeved: The penalty for not buying insurance is a punitive fine. Try again.
Dr. Morpheus
@NR:
The penalty for not buying a house is a higher tax rate.
The penalty for not buying health care insurance is a higher tax rate.
Try again.