I remember reading something about how Clinton said he would have handled the Florida recount. He said something about the Brooks Brothers riot along the lines of “they want to throw a riot, we’ll show them a fucking riot.” That’s pretty much my attitude towards politics. You have to be willing to be just as nasty as the other guy. If you don’t like that, go home and watch the Snooze Hour.
So I agree with Michael Tomasky:
In sum, the Democrats should see an adverse decision as a chance to put the other guys—the Republicans in Congress, Romney, and the court’s ideological majority—on the defensive. It is what Republicans would do; they’d bay endlessly about an “out of control” court and all the rest. It’s one of the key psychological differences between conservatives and liberals. When conservatives suffer a political setback, they prowl the terrain like lions, looking for a few necks to bite. When liberals suffer one, they ball up like kittens and ask themselves, “Oh, gee, what did we do wrong?”
That impulse, not any particular talking point, has been the whole problem on this health-care debate to begin with. As it is on so many matters. Maybe John Roberts and his little quartet of sea-green incorruptibles will finally get it through their heads.
It’s not complicated. Always Be Attacking. The alternative: bunch of losers sitting around listening to NPR saying “oh yeah, I used to be interested in politics, it’s a tough racket”.
Villago Delenda Est
The best defense is a good offense.
They need to take it to the Rethuglicans. Rmoney will cower…he’s a coward.
Valdivia
and then you have people like Galston (I think) going on and on about how Obama shouldn’t even look sideways at the court, and then the celebrating by the purity trolls about how Obama was defeated. I agree though. I hope they do this, at least the few people they can manage to keep on the same page, because you know some Dem will run to the microphone to say (as in your last post) it was all Obama’s fault.
Maude
@Villago Delenda Est:
Obama is out there and doesn’t sound at all weak. He’s great when he describes the Republicans going backwards.
My favorite 2008 line: It’s like they’re proud of being ignorant.
beltane
Since the media is going to say Both Sides Do It no matter what, I think it’s about time our side “does it” a little more. If the Republicans want to kill Americans by depriving them of healthcare, they should be outed as the butchers they are.
John Weiss
I don’t want to punch anyone in the mouth. I prefer an ax handle.
Violet
@Villago Delenda Est:
Absolutely. He’s a coward and a bully. He’ll fold like a cheap suit. Keep hitting.
@Maude:
The President is doing a much better job these days than he used to be. I think he finally admitted/recognized/threw up his hands that the Republicans will not compromise and trying to get them to do so only hurts him. So how he’s calling them on their stuff. It’s a welcome change.
Valdivia
I will add that after Tomasky came out saying some crazy thing about Obama because of the slip-up about the nazi camps in Poland and because in the Daily Beast he has taken a decidedly Villagy turn, I am generally less inclined to read him. I object also to the way he characterizes the way Obama deals with adversity. Has he not been paying attention at all at who is the one always taking it to the republicans and the media and the court?
Martin
Not wrong, just depressing.
the Conster
Jeff Daniels’ great rant on the new HBO show The Newsroom starts off with him yelling at the liberal on the panel – “you know why people hate liberals – because you’re losers”. Not enough of our team hate to lose.
BGinCHI
Charts and facts. Simple ones. Keep hammering the facts and the reality. Dig up the bodies and show their wounds (figuratively). And don’t do any of this apologetically; do it with force. This is one time that Alan Grayson is the model.
We need a Rove of the left.
schrodinger's cat
It is obvious that Mr Tomasky has never lived with cat. My boss cat Yogi he rules the house with an iron paw. A kitteh in full battle cat mode is truly a scary sight, and can be all teeth and claws and really snarly.
You should see my kitteh when another cat tries to encroach his turf.
Davis X. Machina
And they get a stack of answers as thick as a phone book — from other liberals.
It’s a self-reinforcing negative-feedback loop.
JGabriel
__
__
Speaking of anger, I really wish Obama would come out and say something like this to the press:
.
Hypatia's Momma
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yeah, that’s just an unobservant analogy. Sow-bugs or puppies, maybe, but not kittens. Kittens play hard and fight harder.
MobiusKlein
Did Obama win 2008 by out anger-ing McCain? No. Obama does not lash out. More of a counter-punch, riposte kind of fighter.
eric
You what it takes to run for President? Brass balls.
Heliopause
And yet you’re an Obama fan.
Politics may not be complicated but human psychology sure is.
Quincy
No steak knives in this competition. 2nd place in November and we’re all fired.
kuvasz
Look to the way economic classes live their lives, check out which ones control the liberal agenda, then accept that unless more working class folks step up to engage in a vociferous manner, what you get are college educated nice-guys who have rarely struggled in their lives and do not know how to take on the vicissitudes of the world and punch them right in the nose.
I would place my bets on an high school-educated ex-coal miner turned organizer to move my agenda than a person with a PhD in the social sciences.
Just look at the situation in 2004 when Kerry was swiftboated; a lot of people were disgusted that Kerry refused to go on the attack against the Corsi crowd that wre slinging mud, and stated their concerns that “if he won’t defend himself, how’s he going to defend this country as president?”
BTW gold star for not using the “P-word.”
JGabriel
@eric: Titanium, actually.
NR
The problem is, the mandate is a highly unpopular policy, so this won’t work. Going after the Court only works when you’re defending policies that the people like. See: FDR and the New Deal.
The real lesson here is that the Democrats should stop passing corporatist policy. Somehow I don’t think they’re going to learn that, though.
japa21
@JGabriel: Well he has pretty much done the first half and Carney did the second half. All we got was whining by the press about how mean the administration is. Go back and look at the reaction when the President called out Fox News as being misappropriately named. All the media rushed to Fox’s defense.
The Ancient Randonneur
Absolutely! The GOP wants to overturn a healthcare law they essentially wrote 20 years ago and the presumptive nominee signed into law when he was governor of Mass? I wish a motherfvcker would! If even the tiniest portion of the law is tampered with it should be all out war. In other words, point out that the five judges voting to strike it down are the real DEATH PANEL and they are the ones who want to kill your grandmother. As a matter of fact not only do they want to kill your grandmother, they want to kill sick children!
ETA: Now THAT is some “dingbat Kabuki” for these ratbastards.
MikeJ
@the Conster:
LIberals would rather play by the rules and make sure everybody should have a chance, when we should be going Kobayashi Maru and doing anything it takes to win because losing is so abhorrent to us.
When the republicans whine about Chicago style politics we should flick their noses and say, “what you gonna do about it, bitch?”
eric
Best seven minutes and twenty-three seconds of the day…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7zHF19n2qE&feature=related
kd bart
“It’s not complicated. Always Be Attacking. The alternative: bunch of losers sitting around listening to NPR saying “oh yeah, I used to be interested in politics, it’s a tough racket”.”
Nice reference to Glen Garry Glen Ross
JGabriel
@japa21:
Then do it again, because press-whinging means you’re doing it right.
.
piratedan
@JGabriel: THIS but there aren’t enough fainting couches in the land should this President ever use profanity “in anger” when speaking to the American Press (much less the Republic). It may be that one of us finally has to lend some credence to making due with what we have to be better (MSNBC at night and Current) to finally be in enough homes to make a difference on what is being said and how its being said. I would much prefer single payer to be the law of the land, but if I can’t have it, what will allow me to sleep at night knowing that we’re not neglecting our societal duty to others.
General Stuck
There is some pretty good space for something in between “like lions” which I would call more like mad dogs on the prowl. And “ball up like kittens”. We have a brain, republicans by and large don’t. That is what separates us more than anything in my opinion. Fight, but fight smarter, not harder. This biggest problem liberal have is attacking each other for what others have done. Maybe you should lay off the hot sauce and spinach big guy. You are starting to sound like Cenk.
DougJ
@MobiusKlein:
He’s not the one who’s supposed to get angry. We are.
Soonergrunt
@NR: fine. Let Roberts declare the mandate unconstitutional. He’ll most likely kill the whole law with it, in which case we attack him and his bosses every day every way about how many Americans die needlessly because of them, but if he doesn’t and the best parts stay with no mechanism to pay for them, we get that much closer to single payer.
Maude
@Violet:
Obama knows what he is doing. Look at the laws he got passed by working in some way with the Republicans.
Obama understand political timing. He knows when to speak out and when not to.
If Obama had been calling the Republicans names, so to speak, would we have DADT, START and all the other laws? No.
It’s the Left that keep saying that he caves into the right and he doesn’t know what he is doing. And, He’s worse than Bush and he sold us out.
I keep repeating that because since 2009, they have been saying it over and over again. They need to find something new to complain about.
eldorado
impeachment is off the table. looking forwards not backwards etc etc
Violet
@JGabriel: Exactly. If the press is whining, you’re doing it right.
burnspbesq
@NR:
What the fuck does that actually mean (if anything)?
Specifics, please.
Davis X. Machina
@burnspbesq: A poem should not mean, but be…
JGabriel
Maude:
Is this a joke?
Because there wasn’t a single GOP House vote for the stimulus or the PPACA. The DREAM Act didn’t pass at all. The past two years have been a war with the GOP just to get enough funds to run the government. No liberal causes, or any policies to improve the country, have been advanced through the 112th Congress; all the House and Senate GOP have done is bitch and block.
If I’m wrong, please cite passed bills from 2011-2012 legislative period as counter-examples.
(ETA: Sorry if the tone is harsh, that’s not really my intent here. There just aren’t any examples I know of in the latest Congressional session of Obama achieving Democratic objectives through compromise with Republicans.)
.
Lurker
@JGabriel: Maybe Maude meant “by working with conservatives.”
Not all of the elected Democrats are liberals. For better or worse, the Democrats elected in conservative states reflect the views of their voters.
Svensker
@JGabriel:
The wingers I know have all responded to that point with: “yeah, but Republicans weren’t conservatives then, now they are, so it’s completely different.”
So if it were to be brought up, Jake Tapper would say, “Dems say Republicans are hypocrites. Republicans point out, however, that the party has changed and become more Constitutionally aware since the 1980s.” And then all the Villagers would agree that modern Republicans care more about America and the Constitution than old-fashioned Republicans. And then Cole/DougJ would write a blog post screaming about Jake Tapper and the Villagers.
The end.
Xecky Gilchrist
When liberals suffer one, they ball up like kittens and ask themselves, “Oh, gee, what did we do wrong?”
Sort of. There are plenty of liberals who only need to imagine suffering a setback before they go into Curl Up and Die mode.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Reposted from the previous thread because it fits better here:
This diary by Markos about liberal billionaires not spending their money is worth the read.
nitpicker
You know full well that if a Mormon Democrat were running for office, every lamppost in the Bible Belt would be explaining that Mormons don’t believe in the Trinity, that people don’t go to heaven when they die (they get a planet instead) and that God had a whole bunch of other kids besides Jesus. I’d love to see Democrats take that page out of the Republican playbook and say, “Hey, Republicans: Suck. On. This.”
Liberty60
Always Be Attacking.
Fuck yes.
Many of my liberal friends always seem to want to “educate” people into submission. As if we would win elections if there were more people who listened to NPR and could speak articulately about Keynesian economics. As if the New Deal was composed of anything other than illiterate Appalachians, Okies, blacks, immigrants, and the parents and grandparents of today’s mouthbreathing Tea Partiers.
FDR made is simple- the Wall Street bankers ripped you off. Vote for us and we will defend your interest and kick their asses.
Look how the Tea Party willfully ignores reasoned debate and clings to tribal signifiers- “we eat red meat and hunt- they eat arugula and are effete snobs”
Right now the middle class is pissed off, and ready to receive the message that the Dems are not the party of college snobs and welfare receipients, but of Joe the Plumber types who know they are being screwed.
Culture of Truth
Who called out the Court in front of the whole nation during the State of the Union? Obama. He’s tougher than Clinton, and more liberal too.
Linda Featheringill
@Violet: #6
It seems to me that this new-found assertiveness on Obama’s part dates from the incident this spring when House Republicans reneged on a hard-won agreement made last fall. Maybe it was about the budget. At any rate, the Reps promised and then didn’t honor that promise.
I might be wrong about the timing and goodness knows I can’t read Obama’s mind, but the Reps may have just crossed a line on that one.
feebog
@ the Ancient Randonneur:
Absolutely! The GOP wants to overturn a healthcare law they essentially wrote 20 years ago and the presumptive nominee signed into law when he was governor of Mass?
Charts and facts. Simple ones. Keep hammering the facts and the reality. Dig up the bodies and show their wounds (figuratively). And don’t do any of this apologetically; do it with force. This is one time that Alan Grayson is the model.
terraformer
@Martin:
Indeed. It’s a sad take on reality that spirited debate on issues of substance, based on fact, just isn’t in the cards.
Van
@kd bart: Agreed, perfect reference, here’s the clip:
http://youtu.be/zCf46yHIzSo
Schlemizel
And this is exactly why I don’t expect the 5 pigmies to throw out the entire ACA. That would be a political win for the Dems. Instead they will throw out the mandate. This will allow the GOP to continue to run against Obamacare & nothing of value for the Dems to grab a hold of. Then the insurance companies will go nuts with rate increases to cover the fact that only sick people will want to pay for insurance and there will be an outcry to kill the whole thing.
Roger Moore
@NR:
But the chances are that the Court won’t strike down just the mandate. If they rule the mandate is severable, the Democrats get the parts of the bill they like and it’s the insurance companies that are screwed. Then the Democrats brag about all the good parts that got left in place and leave the Republicans to come to them about fixing the problems for the insurance companies.
If the Court rules the mandate isn’t severable and eliminates guaranteed issue and community rating, the Democrats rail against losing those popular parts of the bill while ignoring the part about them being cut as part of eliminating the mandate. Leave the explanation about how you can’t have one without the other to the Republicans.
The Moar You Know
@burnspbesq: Somebody didn’t get a pony.
Culture of Truth
James Fallows, April, 2012:
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@NR:
See: 59% Democratic majority when FDR came in.
See: US Constitution.
See: Your ratfucking bullshit, for what it is.
ruemara
@Culture of Truth: It did not happen on the
tvinternet blogs we favor, so it did not happen.Valdivia
@Culture of Truth:
but it doesn’t count because he didn’t say fuck and the Village didn’t cover it. Obama does all the things people yell he doesn’t do, the big problem is that his side is always bellyaching instead of having his back.
The Moar You Know
I keep saying this. Most of you tell me I’m full of shit, we must take the high road, can’t be like them or they win, and other BULLSHIT excuses.
Dems getting tough. What a fucking joke. It will never happen.
I give this country two election cycles max before the GOP says “fuck it”, cancels all elections, and just takes the whole fucking prize.
And most you will be right here crying about how unfair it all is.
Rex Everything
All I can say is HELL YES to everything DougJ posted here.
Keith G
Damn fine post Mr. DougJ. Damn fine indeed.
Brachiator
@DougJ:
Unfortunately, Democrats are the anti-Hulk. They get nervous when they get angry.
They’ll look around at each other and say, “there’s too many of us milling around. We might become an angry mob. That just wouldn’t be appropriate. We’re supposed to be evolving to a higher, more spiritual state of consciousness.” And then they will go home to blog about their brush with rashness.
Some liberals spend so much time looking for the high road that they don’t see the wingnut truck speeding down the road to roll them over.
MD Rackham
@Valdivia: If the Village doesn’t cover it, it didn’t happen.
Unless Obama figures out a way to get his message past the gatekeepers, then no one knows that he’s doing anything.
It won’t happen, but saying “fuck” a few times in a speech would in fact get some coverage. Sadly, not of the actual message.
FlipYrWhig
@NR: As we saw with DADT repeal, the best strategy was to attach it to a defense spending bill. Then when the Republicans filibustered that, even the milquetoast Democrats knew they didn’t have the option of hiding behind The Defense Bill and actually got themselves behind a standalone DADT repeal bill — which they wouldn’t have done without the safer option having been ruled out. What I think might happen here is that Democrats who didn’t like Big Government Health Care and kept balking at, say, the public option, might have to confront the notion that the “market-based” solution to health care doesn’t fly constitutionally, and hence might grudgingly embrace a degree of government/public involvement they would not have previously. And if they do, it will not prove that “The Democrats” should have done this or that all along, but rather that people have to adapt when their policy preferences can’t be satisfied.
IOW, maybe the conservaDems will now be ready to be less “corporatist” after the “corporatist” idea of the individual mandate is ruled unconstitutional.
gwangung
@FlipYrWhig: I think that with a lot of progressives, they don’t fully realize that their preferred tactic entails fighting a two front war: one against the Republicans, and one against the more conservative parts of the Democratic Party. Or more exactly, it’s a two front war that means expending just as much energy against your own people as against the political enemy.
Folks should think about that.
El Tiburon
HA HA I want my front page now bitches. This is what I was saying in the prior Thread.
Also too Digby et al.
From Digby today:
danielx
Bewildered look from the DC press corpse: what are these “shameful reportorial omissions” of which you speak?
One must have a sense of shame to feel shame. The courtiers of Versailles – er, the Village – have no shame. The last three words of that declaration would do just fine. Hey, it works for Republicans.
Keith G
@Valdivia:
This is Obama’s biggest problem? Really?
Ya know, presidents are often expected to do damn near impossible things. Bad odds and a belligerent opposition (and fair weather friends) are part of the job description. Hell, even Geo Washington got dumped on.
BHO took on the presidency embracing some nontraditional tactics and they largely worked. On occasion, however, he has seemed to be a bit slow changing the play with an audible at the line of scrimmage.
gene108
@eldorado:
Has any sitting President ever launched a full blown criminal investigation of the actions of his predecessor?
I can’t think of an instance, when one President decides to criminally prosecute his predecessor and/or his predecessors Cabinet members and advisers.
As much as Bush & Co. were a bunch of crooks, it’d be a huge, huge issue for President Obama to start criminal investigations of Bush & Co.; on the order of probably the first time in American history it’s been done huge.
P.S. Maybe the Teapot Dome scandal had some folks busted during the early days of the Coolidge Administration, but that’s as close as I can think of to prosecuting folks prior administrations.
Zach
I’ve yet to hear a prominent Democrat, or any Democrat, go on TV and say, “When Mitt Romney says ‘Job Creators’ he means ‘rich people.'” Economic policy should be about people first and businesses second. Kind-of/maybe impacts on employment are a second-order effect of policies that first and foremost benefit rich people.
El Tiburon
Fuck getting Mad.
Get Better Than Even.
Public Option Advocates To Push Medicare For All If Supreme Court Strikes ‘Obamacare’
Nah. Impossible, right? Just like the odds of a black man with the name Hussein being elected President.
General Stuck
@Keith G:
Haven’t they all? Every single human president we’ve had. If you qualify such a general remark with that fact, then it is an accurate portrayal of any president only being fairly judged against other folks who have held that job. We don’t get much of that from the left, and I think that was what Valdavia was saying. Dissent is a good thing, but dissenting from your own side of things, takes some effort and care. Or it just sounds like the opposition doing it.
FlipYrWhig
@El Tiburon: I just said in this very thread that “conservative” Democrats loath to do things that could be characterized as expanding the welfare state are starting to run out of cover. If the individual mandate is unconstitutional, what’s left as a solution for (1) uninsured and underinsured people, (2) escalating health care costs? If you’re Mary Landrieu, and you don’t want to look like you’re giving generous benefits to the poor (because you’re Not That Kind Of Democrat), but you also can’t turn the whole thing over to be solved by Free Market Magic, what can you say you support? I think a public option starts to look a lot more appealing under these conditions to someone like her. You need to have something to help address the problem.
If the mandate goes down, I want to see wonks fanning out to brief the remaining conservaDems about what their options are.
Thomas F
Doug, I will be eternally perplexed how you continue to hold Clinton as some type of paragon of liberal virtuosity. You otherwise seem too intelligent to fall for such farcical bullshit.
Keith G
@Zach: The problem is the 11 dimensional chess played by…the GOP for the last several decades.
The Democratic party’s traditional labor base has been politically neutered while other segments of its base has been surgically reduced, e.g. many Catholics and some Jews.
To make up the difference, Democrats have had to cozy up to as many FIRE elites as will let them kiss their ass.
Many Democrats now want nothing to to with making corporate elites upset.
FlipYrWhig
@gwangung: I think a lot of progressives vastly underestimate the number of conservative elements in the Democratic party — and think of them as Johnny-come-latelies who just need to be faced down and brought to heel, rather than as a countertradition with fairly deep roots in the history of the party.
NR
@Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God: See: FDR not cutting secret backroom deals to kill progressive priorities.
See: Your blind, unthinking fanboyism for what it is.
gwangung
@FlipYrWhig: True. The minute I see someone define Obama’s base as being progressive, I know they don’t know the first thing about politics or the lay of the land.
Chukwu
@NR: Oh! You mean like the way the New Deal tackled Jim Crow head-on, using the bully pulpit to erode Southern support for segregation?
Waitaminute…
gogol's wife
@Heliopause:
Go suck an egg. Obama has more intestinal fortitude than any leader I’ve ever seen, and I’m old.
sparky
re the post: i disagree. the reason “liberals” don’t go on the “attack” when something doesn’t go their way is because having already threaded the needle with their owners, there is no other position for them to take. the Ds cannot and will not bite the oligarchy that feeds them. as a consequence, except on social wedge issues that the oligarchy doesn’t care about, they are sitting on their golden perches, thank you very much.
edit: i should have said this applies to the “leadership” rather than the rank and file, who are left dangling in the wind.
@Keith G: yes.
Davis X. Machina
He left Madison Square Garden after making that Halloween speech, and proceeded to throttle back the New Deal, take steps to rein in the deficit, and in the process triggered a second dip in the Great Depression.
Not even FDR was ‘FDR’.
The Moar You Know
@NR: Like the one in which he stopped integration of the armed forces at the insistence of Southern Senators?
I got a lot more, if you’d like.
Tragic to see
commentorsratfuckers like you, so ignorant of…well, everything.Oh wait, that’s not ignorance. Deliberate disinformation is what that is.
tjmn
My 100-year-old Grandma and my 70-year-old Mom are extremely frightened that Social Security will be gutted. I hope that anyone with any sense whatsoever will not propose such a vile and insidious bill to do so. The Repugs are out of their effing minds.
How do I console my Mom and Grandma?
Keith G
@General Stuck:
That shouldn’t stop a political party from communicating to its leadership the need to get better.
I get that there is a cadre of commenters here who feel that there can be no (or only the slightest and very quiet) critique of our current political leadership. That’s seems to be a bit of a Kremlin-esque outlook. Presidents make mistakes and good presidents get better. The greatest keep on learning and changing tactics, (see Lincoln). All the while they are forced to take into account the voices of dissent from within their own ranks, (see Lincoln again). And they get better. That is democracy.
Obama is not fragile crystal who will be damaged by the musing of your “buddy” Hamshire or others of that sort, or from that spectrum of our politics. If he suffers political damage it will be from the misty shores of the rightish side of the Center, where self-styled “independents” are looking for someone to help them feel better. Those low info peeps have no idea who Hamp, GG, Sully, (or whoever the fuck else) are. They just want to feel better about tomorrow.
Keith G
@tjmn: Tell them that they will be long dead before any changes will take effect.
Davis X. Machina
@Keith G: Obama can grow like Topsy, but if he’s not actually in the White House, what’s the point?
DougJ
@Thomas F:
I’m not a big Clinton fan but impeachment was fucked up.
Maude
@tjmn:
Tell them that SS isn’t going anywhere. It has always been threatened and it is still here. Not to worry.
Tell them it’s a lot of noise and it won’t happen.
General Stuck
@Keith G:
Bullshit. You aren’t making specific arguments or dissent over policy. You and the others rarely do that. It is done with smarmy sweeping statements of general failure, dubious motives, history revision, and Obama having a weak disposition. Usually with a troll protector of how much you admire the man, and the like. That sounds like nothing more than damning with faint praise.
The link you brought, was replete with the racist meme of cowering black guy, afraid to look people in the eye from some place of inadequacy . Quiet wanking gets the same response as the loud kind. I’ve read your swill about Obama for 4 years now, and the only change is that it gets smarmier over time. At least the other firebaggers like El tibs, and NR, and corner stone, show some gumption and straight forwardness about their bullshit.
Make a specific case for failure, say why, and then defend it, and I will do the same, unless I agree with you. That is real dissent, the kind that has value.
Keith G
@Davis X. Machina: Barring any jarring catastrophes, it seems to me that the key to Obama winning a second term is Obama himself. Although it probably will be sooo fucking tight, he has the cards in his hand to win. Let’s see how he plays them
Keith G
@General Stuck: See above. Others disagree.
burnspbesq
@tjmn:
Give them a stiff belt of their favorite booze. After you get back from driving them to the polls.
Maude
@Keith G:
Vote for Romney.
General Stuck
@Keith G:
LOL, you mean like sparky and NR? . Representing two of the dozen or so three stooges of balloon juice. Now that is funny.
Keith G
@Maude: Maude dear. What an 6th grade response. Come on.
I type that there are things that Obama can improve on and you type “Vote for Romney.”
Lordy. You just illustrated what I said above
@General Stuck:
Ding, ding, ding The man wins a cigar!
I have not, because:
Most of Obama’s policy choices have been good, some more and some less. His process choices in some cases have been a bit more problematic then necessary. To put a button on this, let me pull down from above:
Keith G
@General Stuck: I was speaking of the author of this thread
Heliopause
@gogol’s wife:
Didn’t say a word about his “intestinal fortitude”, just pointed out, accurately, that Obama has spent the majority of his career selling himself as everybody’s pal, not an “attacker”. In fact, if you would put down the Dictionary of Sports Cliches and research a little ancient history you’d discover that Obama has long enjoined against the “politics of division.”
Doug said above @30 that Obama needs to be a nice guy but the rest of us need to be little brownshirts or something. I’m not sure how that’s even supposed to work, the quarterback working from a different page of the playbook than everybody else. Oops, sports cliche there. Anyway, this all seems a bit inconsistent to me.
TG Chicago
The only part I disagree with is the last line you quoted from Tomasky. There is no point in trying to get through to the Supremes. I guess maaaaybe Kennedy or Roberts might be convinced to ease off the wingnut throttle, but Scalia, Alito, and Thomas are all in.
The people you want to convince are the press and the voters. Tomasky is looking at the short term when he suggests convincing the Supremes. This is a long-term problem and it requires long-term solutions. Liberals have done the kitten cower for decades. To come back, we’ll have to wrap our jaws around necks for a long time.
General Stuck
@Keith G:
Dougj was focusing the thread on getting mad, and I commented on what I thought of that theme as it was presented. @General Stuck:
Don’t know if Dougj read the entire article by Tomasky, but I will direct the same criticism I did with you on other sections that imagined Obama one of his kittens curled up in a ball. Or as the cowed black president. I don’t have much patience after reading so much of that kind of superior wanking by snot nosed liberals concerning Obama. I do the same when Cole puts up a part of a Greenwald article, that contains the regular horseshit from him in another part. At least without a voiced disclaimer for those other points.
When I link to something without either reading it completely or not explaining why I disagree with other parts of it, I expect the same treatment. I don’t do that much anymore, from some unfortunate experience doing so in the past. And getting called on it.
edit – I guess posts on needing to get mad, kind of pass by me, as in case no one noticed, I don’t have a problem much in that arena. Though the temper is the same in real life, it is very rare I get as mad as I have being stuck in the same with a bunch of knuckleheads. I can’t even remember the last time I went ballistic in meat space.
Omnes Omnibus
@Heliopause: Presidents have frequent tried to stay somewhat above the fray during campaigns. Veeps and VP-candidates have often been the attack dogs. Ike used Nixon that way and Nixon used Agnew.
Keith G
@General Stuck:
I want some of my political leadership to get as obviously upset with the GOP as you do with your fellow Democrats – with one caveat: No out of control, illogical blathering. (edit – not saying that you do)
If theatrically produced, righteous indignation did not work, the GOP would have been out of business a long time ago. But, they have made a living learning how to use the right words and the right setting, and the right attitude to crawl inside of peoples heads.
Acting with rational coolness is a very good thing and sometimes it came be masterly complimented with a quick kick to the throat in order to get the job done.
dollared
@The Moar You Know: That will not happen. It does not suit their needs to have it be that obvious. Instead, it will be All Singapore, All the Time, with God Fearing Nation being the reason all protesters and labor organizers are arrested and held indefinitely without trial. There will be elections, every two years. Coke and Pepsi will be the lead sponsors of the elections.
Bread and circuses are so much more effective and profitable than dictatorship.
Heliopause
@Omnes Omnibus:
And while governing in the case of Obama. I don’t think I imagined the first 2-1/2 years of his Presidency, I think I saw lots of outreach, or at least pro forma outreach, and very little of the rhetoric Doug says we need. I don’t disagree that Presidents sometimes need to look like nice guys, but I’m genuinely curious to know how it gets communicated down the line to the grunts that they are not to be intelligent, eloquent, and inclusive, but rather assholes.
Just Some Fuckhead
I plan on lighting up both sides – Republicans who overturned their own health care plan and the Steely Eyed Realists who fubarred this whole thing so badly from jump that they just barely passed a Republican plan with a near straight line Democratic vote, only to watch activist judges overturn it.
I’m getting a stiffie just thinking about ripping into all of you fucking idiots.
Of course, it won’t be overturned. Because that would get in the way of my precious schadenfreude.
General Stuck
@Keith G:
I am perfectly pleased with how Obama is conducting himself currently and since the campaign season kicked off Labor Day of 2011. There are well recognized modes of presidential behavior for different cycles of a presidency, that goes back well before Obama. And aside from Obama learning the ropes for starting this impossible job, that takes a while. I am pleased the way he does politics. It not perfect, but not cow towing to the republicans either. It is no sin in a democracy to reach out your hand for compromise with the other side. As democracy boiled down to its core, it is artful compromise. Even if the other side is insane. It is a tactical move, if nothing else, for capital with the public. So long as you don’t give away more than you get. Obama has gotten little, but has given up little, at least the past two years, with respect to what republicans have really wanted. Before that it was an entirely different calculus with democrats running the whole show, and enough caucus votes in the senate to beat a filibuster. So without folks really taking the time to learn the ins and outs of presidential politicking, for the right season to act in certain ways. Just fight fight fight is kind of a dumb sloganeering thing.
General Stuck
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Both sides do it, eh? You sound like Broder’s mangy corpse.
If you play your cards right, fuckhead, you might even get an appearance on Fox News. Cause they’ll be cheering their wingnut court did what they was told against 70 years of precedence. Fucking idiot? lol. you need some mirror time, dude.
Now give us the schadenfraud on cheering 50 million people that would go without Health Care and it’s ‘the steely eyed realists to blame for that. That’s a real barn burner.
PS – do you think the supreme court would let by the public option pony? Or single payer? When they wouldn’t follow the law on a so called republican HCR? fucking idiots, indeedy.
Chris
@Davis X. Machina:
True. In the same way that conservatives have turned Reagan into this self-vindicating plaster saint onto whom they project all their current beliefs, there’s a class of progressive that idolizes FDR as having been far more to the left than he actually was. The “professional left” in his day felt just as betrayed by him as the modern one has by Clinton and Obama, because they thought he had the opportunity of a century to destroy capitalism and chose to save it instead.