Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the GOP

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Eh, that’s media spin. biden’s health is fine and he’s doing a good job.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

If you are still in the GOP, you are an extremist.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Let there be snark.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Technically true, but collectively nonsense

This fight is for everything.

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

We still have time to mess this up!

Whatever happens next week, the fight doesn’t end.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.

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Reader Interactions

89Comments

  1. 1.

    Mnemosyne

    Ah, Karen Tumulty. Amazing how the usual suspects surface around election time.

    ETA: Also, too, I would not be surprised if one of the anonymous “Democratic campaign strategists” turned out to be Dick Morris. After all, he got Clinton re-elected.

  3. 3.

    Hunter Gathers

    Romney must have figured out a way to resurrect the dead, ’cause the only way he’s going to win is to get dead Bush and McCain voters to show up at the polls. But that won’t stop the WASPs in DC from trying to get their horse race.

  4. 4.

    LGRooney

    @Mnemosyne: How do you people remember the names in the bylines? I avoid the opinion pages because it got too expensive losing that much coffee and washing unworn shirts so I rarely pay attention to the names. I have the Post at my door every am upon waking and read this without even thinking about the author. Livid at the banality of it but nonetheless paying no mind to the author.

  6. 6.

    jibeaux

    Lord, it’s JUNE, what the fuck. Who sends out all these APBs to the media anyway, they all report the same damn thing.

  7. 7.

    Stuck in the Funhouse

    Some days I just want to live in a cave.

    Won’t work. If you stay in it long enough, the frogs and lizards start quoting anonymous democrats.

  8. 8.

    Turgidson

    Are these all the same “strategists” Obama’s team ran circles around last time? Yes? Ok then.

    His campaign is “struggling” because the economy is. Not because they aren’t following the advice of a bunch of has-beens and never-weres.

  11. 11.

    JMG

    A 10-year ban on the use of anonymous sources by U.S. journalists would be good for journalism, the U.S., and most of all, readers.

  12. 12.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Haven’t read the piece and don’t intend to do so, but is the piece itself as bad as the headline? That being said, why would one panic in mid-June? This smacks of horse race creation to me.

  13. 13.

    Valdivia

    This is the week I am going to limit my reading to here and catch up with 2 seasons of True Blood so I can watch season 5 now that it started.

    I love how it is JUNE and we are being told we are in doom. If it were October I would panic, but June?

    Love too all the anonymous sources.

  14. 14.

    David Hunt

    Some days I just want to live in a cave.

    It wouldn’t do any good. You’d be constantly bothered by people projecting shadows on the cave wall and asking what the shapes are…

  16. 16.

    danah gaz (fka gaz)

    Has anyone else noticed that when a headline for an opinion piece is phrased in the form of a question, the author is either knowingly lying or saying something that they know is outrageously stupid? This is like, a universal constant.

    This is also why I skip over these.

    (As it happens David Sirota does this all the time – I think that’s where I first really noticed the dynamic.)

  17. 17.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Yes, the not for attribution “party strategists”.

    Keep pumping that horse race narrative, beeotch.

  20. 20.

    shortstop

    My favorite part is where she explains that the insular Obama team is resistant to “new voices,” such as James Carville’s.

  23. 23.

    amk

    @JMG: Heck, a ten year ban on US ‘journalists’ would be great for journalism. Who the fuck are these cowardly ‘strategists’ any way ? Why are they so afraid of the black guy to come out and say it openly?

  26. 26.

    Scott S.

    Ehh, I’ll start getting worried when the Republican nominee isn’t a charisma-free robot who can’t stop saying incredibly stupid shit in front of open microphones.

  27. 27.

    Roger Moore

    I think they meant “party hacks complain it is resistant to unsolicited advice from people it rejected as advisers”. Of course if the campaign were listening to those hacks instead of its paid campaign consultants, the news would be “Obama campaign in disarray; listening to outsiders instead of its own campaign strategists”.

  29. 29.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @shortstop:

    James Carville? The James Carville who literally sleeps with the enemy?

    Fuck him sideways with an unlubed, no governor operating chain saw.

  30. 30.

    Trakker

    Karen, two words: Mitt Romney. As long as the Mittster’s mouth opens and words flow we’re going to be just fine UNLESS THE PRESS LETS HIM GET AWAY WITH HIS LIES!

  31. 31.

    Sentient Puddle

    @danah gaz (fka gaz):

    Has anyone else noticed that when a headline for an opinion piece is phrased in the form of a question, the author is either knowingly lying or saying something that they know is outrageously stupid? This is like, a universal constant.

    Really, any piece of journalism. It’s weasely because it doesn’t pin down what precisely you’re trying to say. For opinion pages, it makes you seem wishy-washy. For standard reported pieces, it doesn’t make clear what you’re trying to say, and in the worst possible way (it can be X or not X…specific!).

    See also: Cavuto Mark

  33. 33.

    demkat620

    I am sure Charlie Cook will find his way to MSNBC tonight or Fluffy’s show this Sunday to tell us that “the Cake is baked”

    Lord, sometimes it is hard to be a Democrat.

  34. 34.

    shortstop

    The irony is that the election IS going to be very close in terms of the popular vote–nationally (which matters not at all) and in a couple of key states (which does). Electoral vote-wise, this is Obama’s with plenty of room to spare. But Obama could win the popular vote by, oh, say, seven points, as he did in 2008, and these fools would STILL be earnestly claiming Romney almost had it.

  35. 35.

    MomSense

    @danah gaz

    That is the FUX “news” model as well. It is the same idea as push polling.

  37. 37.

    comrade scott's agenda of rage

    @Villago Delenda Est:

    This. Obviously the Kaplan Test Prep Daily editorial board felt the need to flog the horse race meme again this week. Note that yesterday, another notorious Kaplan tool, Dana Milbank, was saying much the same thing. Thus today, they follow it up with another piece.

    The the Kaplan folks wonder why their paper is going down the toilet. To quote Robin Williams “Assholes do vex meeeeee!!!!!”

  38. 38.

    danah gaz (fka gaz)

    @Sentient Puddle: Headline I’d like to see.

    “Are journalists who phrase headlines in the form of a question being weaselly bastards?”

    Just to break up the mendacity of question headlines with one that’s basically truthful, you know… =)

  39. 39.

    Roger Moore

    @Trakker:

    As long as the Mittster’s mouth opens and words flow we’re going to be just fine UNLESS THE PRESS LETS HIM GET AWAY WITH HIS LIES!

    Oh, so it is time to panic.

  41. 41.

    amk

    The most dishonest candidate ever to run for US presidency and the press is giving him a complete pass. What a disastrous combination.

    god save ‘murka.

  42. 42.

    eemom

    The thing that does bother me about this is that people who ought to know better seem unable to resist getting suckered by it.

    Like yesterday a dear old friend of mine was lamenting on FB about how Obama’s chances of re-election seem “tenuous at best.” I was like, dude, get a fucking GRIP, and I patiently for the thousandth time went over my points about the emmessemm and its horserace, the meaninglessness of “national polls,” etc., and in return I got a lecture about the dangers of complacency.

    Whatever. I mean I love the dude to death but anybody who listens to these idiots is a big old stoopidhead.

  44. 44.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I skimmed the article. The only named critics I saw Booker and Rendell, she’s rehashing shit from almost a month ago. Has anybody ever milked the media like James Carville? We are now celebrating the twentieth year of his last significant achievement, to the extent that it was even his.

  45. 45.

    Linda Featheringill

    IIRC, there are always a bunch of articles written in election years by dum-dums about “They won’t take our advice!” And then “they” go on to demonstrate how wise they were to not listen to the dum-dums.

    The accusation of being “resistant to advice” is a tell.

    This has been going on for a while. Democrats may to be worse at this than Republicans but it really does happen on both sides.

  46. 46.

    Valdivia

    @shortstop:

    This. Many times. I also love how there is analysis out there already saying Obama is going to lose PA. Not one poll has him with less than a huge margin there and Romney is not even really making an effort except in the Pennsiltucky part of the state.

  47. 47.

    shortstop

    @Egg Berry: Which brings me to a related point. I read Nate Silver’s blog and crack up at the way he now gently massages the narrative to imply (or at least allow the perception) that there’s more of a race than there is. He hasn’t spun the actual numbers–too ethical for that–but there is a noticeable difference in his prose before and after the NYT connection.

  48. 48.

    cmorenc

    Ironically, MSNBC’s “First Read” political team led by Chuck Todd is consistently one of the very worst among the hang-wringers about team Obama, never missing a chance to interpret current events as generating more dark clouds above his prospects that he must somehow react to in ways they indistinctly outline rather than whatever they’ve been doing up to that point. And MSNBC is supposedly a progressive-leaning cable news outfit?

    For example, read their latest piece on Romney’s tactic of “running out the clock” in the manner of Dean Smith’s UNC basketball teams back in the pre-shot clock era. Pardon me, but that only worked out in games where UNC was the stronger team protecting a lead of several points, but not so well in the majority of games where UNC was the underdog and Smith was employing the tactic to try to keep the game close. See, e.g. the 1967 National Championship game vs UCLA as but one example where this tactic ended up failing rather badly. Romney is NOT ahead by any sound polling measure at the moment.

  49. 49.

    Nemesis

    The election will be close-much closer than it should be. Im actually in the camp that says we lose this one, but not for the reasons highlighted by the “strateregist”.

  54. 54.

    Stuck in the Funhouse

    New Mexico is a small state, population wise, but I am going to plug it for being something of a bell weather state, at least since the 2000 election. Where Gore won the vote by some 500 votes, as did Gore nationally win the popular vote by about 500,000. In 2004, the state went for Bush, by a percent comparable to Bush’s national margin of winning the popular vote.

    Then 2008, and similar margins of victory for Obama. And now, in 2012, New Mexico has been taken off the swing state list, by most pollsters having it currently as an Obama/dem lock. What does it mean? maybe nothing at all. But is an interesting study over recent elections, imo.

  56. 56.

    Roger Moore

    @shortstop:

    I read Nate Silver’s blog and crack up at the way he now gently massages the narrative to imply (or at least allow the perception) that there’s more of a race than there is. He hasn’t spun the actual numbers—too ethical for that—but there is a noticeable difference in his prose before and after the NYT connection.

    His numbers are currently giving RMoney a roughly 40% chance of winning the election in November. That sounds like a horse race to me.

  57. 57.

    shortstop

    @Stuck in the Funhouse: Interesting. But there are other states, like Colorado and Virginia, that were moving steadily bluer and now are regressing. They were considered bellwethers a few years back–not now. The old bellwether, Missouri, is busily racing back to the Stone Age. I suspect it’s tough to find a single state right now that serves as a national predictor. But I hope I’m wrong and you’re right.

  58. 58.

    shortstop

    @Roger Moore: 38%. Did you dive into the state-by-state analysis? I don’t think he’s spinning it, and the state polls we have so far seem to support it.

  59. 59.

    LAC

    WAPO doing its usual head tilt faux concern reporting. It gives the weirdos who live on those comments board something to do and the nervous nellies here something to eat their cuticles to.

  60. 60.

    Stuck in the Funhouse

    @shortstop:

    You are correct. There is a overall state of flux for political movements in this country, and the states you mention are testament to that. It is an undercurrent of realignment, I think, that won’t be obvious for the end result until it settles out. I just try to hang onto any substantial nugget portending the future that I can find supporting my side of things. Beats despairing, any day of the week.

  62. 62.

    Keith G

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I have a feeling that you are exactly correct. With the nominations sewed up, we are in the summer doldrums. So it’s time for some creative narative making. in any large national political party it is easy to find someone who is a bit out of sorts… and you have a story to worth a couple of clicks.

    I do think that leaders and candidates can work to get better at being proactive and crafty in dealing with the press. Doing so would mitigate some crap.

  63. 63.

    LAC

    @eemom: I hope you told the dear to get off his duff, volunteer and vote. We can’t have emoprogressive “activism” – which is sit on hands and whine.

  64. 64.

    Chris Andersen

    Seriously. The only thing that depresses me about Democratic chances this fall is the “oh woe is us!” wailing I hear from erstwhile supporters of the President.

    It’s tough enough keeping the fires of hope burning when your supposedly allies are looking for water to throw on that fire.

  65. 65.

    Karen

    Is this the same media who has Ed Rendell (A Obama surrogate?) say that Hilary Clinton would have gotten more done with the Congress?

    Yeah. Concern Trolls R Us strikes again.

  66. 66.

    Peter

    I wonder, are these the same ‘strategists’ who were screaming that Obama HAD to suspend his campaign to match McCain’s showboating?

  67. 67.

    NCSteve

    For as long as I’ve been following politics, and it’s been a long time now, the MSMeme for June in an election year has always been some variant of “oh, those silly, disorganized, panic-stricken, weak Democrats, har har har!” And because Democrats don’t do message discipline, because so many of them are simply self-obsessed monomaniacs, are still suffering from the the learned helplessness and PTSD caused by decades of abuse by Republicans during the Reagan-Bush I-Gingrich years and/or are simply backstabbing “me-first” camera whores, it has always been possible for the MSM hacks to find people to quote to make that story work.

    What’s been notable to me is how much further down toward the “are you kidding, what an embarassment!” bottom of the barrel they’re having to go to find people to quote. The chronically panty wetting DLC’ers quislings are just plain aging out of the system.

    It’s almost as funny as the way none of the People Who Matter gives a rat’s ass what Joe Lieberman thinks about anything anymore.

  69. 69.

    Kane

    A) Obama has a serious problem.
    B) Obama is facing gloom and doom.
    C) Obama is offered free advice.
    D) Weak-kneed democrats panic.
    E) Obama handles things his way.
    F) Obama proves he was right all along, and does it with a smile.

    Lather, rinse, repeat.

  71. 71.

    Bobby Thomson

    Some consider Lanny Fucking Davis a Democratic strategist. At least he does.

    ’nuff said.

  72. 72.

    eemom

    @shortstop:

    But there are other states, like Colorado and Virginia, that were moving steadily bluer and now are regressing.

    And yet EVEN with that regression, Obama is kicking Romtron ass in every poll here in Virginia — and that is also EVEN WITH “popular governor” Bobby McD as a hypothetical running mate.

    As for Nate Silver, you are much kinder to him than I am inclined to be. I was utterly disgusted by his article last week wherein he unveiled his fresh out the starting gate [drumroll] Model for the presidential election. He may be only “gently massaging” the numbers, but the bend-over-backwards-with-the-false-equivalence prose wherein he “explained” the various elements of the almighty Model were worthy of the oldest, ugliest, most sold-out Beltway media whore there is.

    Just as one example that sticks in my mind: he included an entire paragraph explaining what a huge coup it would be for Romtron if he took Pennsylvania — even though even though as noted above and as he knows better than anybody, Romtron has no chance in hell in Pennsylvania.

    I hope that little sellout shit is ruined for good when Obama wins by a stomp.

  74. 74.

    shortstop

    @Thoughtcrime: Ha, I had never seen that. Slightly OT, I am apparently the last person in Amercia to learn that Lane Pryce is Richard Harris’s son. Huh.

  75. 75.

    FlipYrWhig

    John King was flogging this same thing on his execrable show, which I tend to see while I’m on the elliptical machine at the gym. Basically, James Carville wrote an open letter about how Team Obama was DOIN IT RONG, producing a downpour of “Democrats concerned/in disarray” stories ripe for the lazy media template. And I think it had something to do with being too negative about Romney’s record. I had closed-captioning FAIL at that point.

  77. 77.

    Calouste

    @amk:

    god save ‘murka.

    God’s already busy saving the Queen, so please take a ticket and wait in line.

  78. 78.

    David in NY

    @Stuck in the Funhouse: I don’t think New Mexico’s shift to a solid Obama state means much for the rest of the US. In good years, Republicans have been able to get a substantial share of Hispanic votes, a big part of the NM electorate. But that’s surely not going to happen this year, and that will mean a lot in NM. It won’t mean so much elsewhere.

  79. 79.

    Stuck in the Funhouse

    @David in NY:

    Maybe, we shall see. It is Obama’s size of lead here that goes well into double digits from recent polling, and includes not only good numbers from Hispanics, but also bigger margins for women, as well as young people.

    I didn’t say it was a sure sign Obama was going to win the overall election, only that there are signs that it could be a bell weather state into the future. At least for the intermountain west. We have a pretty good track record the past three POTUS elections, and we will find out if that extends to a fourth.

    Obama’s overwhelming support from three groups that have received a lot of attention lately- women, Hispanics, and young voters- makes it very hard for Romney to be competitive in New Mexico. Obama’s up 61-35 with women, 67-30 with Hispanics, and 56-35 with young voters.

  81. 81.

    Mnemosyne

    @shortstop:

    To be fair, he doesn’t look much like his father, but, yes, I think you may be the last person in America (or at least the last Mad Men fan) to know that.

    He was also really good as Andy Warhol in I Shot Andy Warhol. He has a wordless moment right at the end that’s just … amazing.

  82. 82.

    J R in WV

    @Stuck in the Funhouse:

    Frankly, I will surprised if Romney’s support among women doesn’t gradually slide to the 27.3% wing-nut number.

    Any woman who can read who goes on to vote for a Republican is pathologically submissive, so I’m sticking with that prediction: 27 – 28% within a standard deviation.

    After, Republicans have enacted laws requiring legal rape of females prior to standard medical procedures – who can vote for monsters like that? Pathologically submissive women who can’t reason and are happy being told how to think…

  84. 84.

    Patricia Kayden

    I’ll press my panic button if Obama is tanking in October. I’m really glad that the Democratic convention is after the Repub convention this go around. Should give Obama a bump going into election day.

    And hopefully, Romneybot 2.0 will continue to make gaffes that he has to walk back.

    And hopefully, despite Repub obstruction, the economy will continue to improve.

  85. 85.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @FlipYrWhig: Howie Fineman and the Politico operative on Tweety were also very Concerned. Barely a glancing mention of the fact that (from what I gather) Carville is calling on Obama to ignore Cory Booker, Carville’s old boss, and Tweety’s hero Ed Rendell (he’s a regular guy, you know) and of full bore on Romney’s anti-middle class agenda.

  86. 86.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Bex: I actually let out a “woohoo!” when I read that King had been cancelled. I really despise that guy, to a far more intense degree than is healthy.

  87. 87.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: That’s actually interesting tactical advice, and does not support the screaming headlines. I don’t get why media people are so dedicated to the Team Clinton vs. Team Obama narrative. Probably because it’s like celebrity-on-celebrity rivalries, which they also love to hate, hate to love covering.

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