Frank Rich on the punditry lecturing the Obama campaign:
David Brooks lamented that Obama’s negativity was “self-destructive” and left him “looking conventional.” Peggy Noonan gloated: “The president opened his campaign with a full-fledged assault on his opponent. This is a bad sign in an incumbent!”
Try selling that wisdom to George W. Bush, an incumbent who started assaulting John Kerry with attack ads as early as March in 2004 rather than reprise his “compassionate conservative” campaign of 2000 (much of it in reality a dispassionate disemboweling of Al Gore). Or to Bill Clinton, who started twisting the shiv in Bob Dole in April 1996, never for a second worrying whether a sorrowful Sunday-morning talk-show pastor might ask, “What ever happened to the Man From Hope?” Those two incumbents both won, as it happened.
Every summer, there are a series of parades in the county where I live. The individual towns in the county coordinate schedules, and each town or village is allotted a certain Saturday for their parade. It’s the high school marching band, fire trucks, small business-themed floats, Girl Scouts, church groups, veterans groups and incumbent politicians or people running for office. This area is so overwhelmingly Republican that the county GOP don’t even bother entering a float. They simply have their incumbents drive the route in borrowed convertibles. The local Democrats do enter a float, however, and our statehouse candidate, John Vanover, borrowed the float and walked the route yesterday with his wife, Theresa:
This particular town is a tough sell for Democrats. Theresa, John’s wife, has never been politically active and this was her first parade. She’s soft-spoken and she smiles a lot, just a generally quiet, calm person. John borrowed the Democratic float and got a driver and he and Theresa planned to walk beside the float and talk to people on the parade route. A few of us told John and Theresa we would meet them at the parade and walk with them, because many of us have….experienced this particular parade before and we figured they could use some moral support, particularly Theresa, who is new at this.
I arrived about 5 minutes before the parade started and John and Theresa had decorated the float and were ready to go. I smiled when I saw that John had put this Obama picture on the float (it’s attached with twine):
Democrats here are enthusiastic about the Obama campaign’s effort to shine some light on Mitt Romney, they’re enthusiastic about the “negative campaigning” that is sending our pampered pundit class into fits of sanctimonious fury, and there’s a reason for that. John isn’t hiding from association with the President or the President’s campaign. He’s proud of them.
David Brooks and Peggy Noonan and Ed Rendell might not be aware of this, but we here in Ohio have been seeing ads by Republican “outside groups” attacking Democrats and the President, non-stop, since 2009. Now, Mitt Romney’s NAME wasn’t on any of those ads, but that’s a campaign finance legal distinction only the fact-check franchises and the punditry would make.
Whether it’s the health care law or energy policy or taxes, Democrats in Ohio have been subjected to a non-stop, comprehensive, negative campaign against Obama by Republicans for YEARS now. The problem was, we never had a name and a face, before Romney. We had “issue” ads put out by Republican billionaires but no elected Republican was directly responsible for any of those ads. We’re thrilled that we finally have an actual opponent to fight, a name and a face. For us, this has been a long time coming. I don’t know a single Democrat here who isn’t pleased that we are finally, finally in a position to fight back against an actual candidate instead of an entity like “Crossroads”. The fact is, Republicans have done nothing BUT negative campaigning since 2009 in swing states, whether people like Noonan and Brooks are aware of it or not.
Republicans should quit whining. They had a three-year head start on negative campaigning for the 2012 Presidential election. They started in 2009.
maven
Bingo!
Off to Batman.
smintheus
Excellent points, Kay, though it might be more accurate to say that the Republicans’ negative campaign began in Nov. 2008.
jwb
Bobo and Tipsy Girl are yelping because they know that the President’s strategy is working. The more they cry about Obama’s campaign, the happier I’ll be.
Hunter Gathers
I disagree. If they are whining, then we are winning.
General Stuck
Let em whine. It’s like the angels singing Freebird to my ear.
Ash Can
What kind of a reception did the Vanovers get?
Ben Franklin
I, for one, feel the American Voter speak with forked tongue when they tell pollsters they don’t like negative ads.
I only listen to words when they match behaviors.
Ash Can
Also, amen on the Republican whining. If they’re whining, the Dems are doing it right.
Hill Dweller
Chuck Todd went to his fancy twitter machine last night and accused Obama of swiftboating Willard. This after a week of Willard and the Republicans blatantly lying about Obama’s small business quote.
reflectionephemeral
Was gonna make a similar point, @smintheus, but I was going to start the timeline around January 2008.
The GOP base is of the view that Pres. Obama wasn’t “vetted”. Which means, “If only we’d called him a Kenyan Muslim socialist louder and harder, we would never have lost in 2008!” This is just plain false. First off, Pres. Obama was thoroughly vetted in 2008– the Rev. Wright business that so inflames the resentment-driven Republican base was the biggest story of the ’08 primaries. And the Republican VP nominee wasn’t shy about accusing the president of being a terrorist sympathizer.
smintheus
As a side issue, I’d like to add another point however obvious: A lot of voters feel like they’ve been under attack by the agenda being pursued in their state houses by Republican majorities. That’s almost as true in PA as it is in OH. Corbett ran a low-key, avuncular campaign and then the moment he was elected he began pushing an extreme agenda that he’d kept secret until then. It’s been rammed through rapidly in the face of vociferous opposition, and I gather that little by little Pennsylvanians are becoming dismayed at what they’re seeing. It partly explains Obama’s continued strength in a state where economic and especially fiscal problems ought to have made it ripe for the plucking by any competent GOP campaign.
piratedan
ty Kay, that’s right the fuck on…. whenever I’m home in AZ, every night, at least once a day (sometimes as many as ten) we see one of these Obama’s sucks ads telling us how he’s not fixed anything and how “polarizing” he is as a politician.
Christ almighty these people have way too much money to be able to continue to pump out this propaganda on a full time basis and the amoral sonsabitches who gin this shit up and go out and buy all the airtime are just “doing their jobs” apolitically natch.
If the money that’s being spent on airtime had been taxed, it’d go a healthy ways into solving our nations issues with preventing the oncoming crisis with wastewater management, grid upgrades and repair of bridges and dams that are sorely needed. Instead its used to brainwash folks while watching Wheel of Fortune.
BGinCHI
Fox has been telling its viewers that everyone hates Obama and that it’s just a matter of time before he’s gone.
I can’t wait to see the panic as Nov. gets closer.
BGinCHI
@Hill Dweller: So, “swiftboat” means attacked him relentlessly or attacked him with lies?
Jesus, even Chuck Todd must know that Romney is lying about Obama and lying about his role with Bain.
What does he think the Obama campaign is lying about? Or are they just being mean.
The Beltway is NOT ready for strong Democrats. They better get used to it.
Kay
@Ash Can:
It went fine. His opponent wasn’t there, but he did have a car entered with his name on the side. We think that’s a “good sign” because he’s so safe in that seat he usually doesn’t have a presence at these things at all.
jwb
@Hill Dweller: So far, it hasn’t been picked up and amplified in my Twitter feed. We’ll see.
amk
Great post Kay. Glad that OHians are ready for the fight.
Kay
@Hill Dweller:
You know what drives me crazy more than anything else? The lack of imagination. Every Obama problem was “Katrina”. Every political attack is “Swiftboating”. Jesus Christ. Draw some distinctions. Put some thought into this. EARN your pundit salary.
Everything is not “just like” everything else. Surface, vapid comparison is the laziest, easiest analysis, and they ALL do it. Not only that they all use the SAME comparisons.
jwb
@BGinCHI: As far as I aware, it was James Fallows who started this idea that the Bain attacks are akin to swiftboating. I understand Fallows’ point, and it makes sense in the context in which he uses it, but it was as much a blunder of political speech as Obama’s ambiguous use of “that.” In the political world today, you have to presume that you are facing jackals and there is no margin for misstep. Every mistake means several days off-message explaining what you meant and that is time that you are not on the attack.
Hill Dweller
Todd also hosted Chris Matthews’ weekend show, and repeated the swiftboating claim. Making matters worse, Dan Rather agreed with him.
Kay
@Hill Dweller:
That’s why I wish Frank Rich were still at the NYTimes. He goes the extra mile. He adds some value. When they’re all chirping “Swiftboat!” in unison, Rich recalls Dole v Clinton, which is, you know, interesting along with being TRUE.
amk
This rule doesn’t apply to rethugs/ sd msm
Hill Dweller
@jwb: Obama’s ‘that’ was referring to the sentence that preceded it. Pretending it was some sort of mistake or gaffe absolves the assholes on the right that completely distorted, and even rearranged, Obama’s remarks.
Ben Franklin
@jwb:
Up until 2004 I believed the GOP mantra ‘End justifies means’ was a deadfall you need to circumvent.
I’ve learned since then, it’s a necessity in the face of losing to our lessers.
Raven
@Hill Dweller: Fuck em, go for the throat.
Baud
I’m happy to hear this.
Baud
@Hill Dweller:
I’m ok with the use of truth-based swiftboating.
cmorenc
Many of us feel about this aggressive start to the Obama campaign the way Lincoln probably felt about Grant and Sherman after having put up with the tepidness and at times, uncooperative McClellan, Meade and other insufficiently competent generals, to say nothing of the abundance of copperheads within the Union ranks.
Right on! I love the sound of GOP and villagers whining about the earth being scorched right underneath Romney’s feet, using fuel of Romney’s own making.
Yutsano
@BGinCHI:
Democrats are not supposed to be mean. They are supposed to be supine delicate wallflowers that wilt at the first sign of opposition. How else are they supposed to get bipartisanship?
OT: when are you coming to the Emerald City? MikeJ and I are starting meet-up organization.
jwb
@Hill Dweller: That’s not the point. The point is you have to presume that every attempt is going to be made to rip your words out of context and turn them against you and that the media is going to go along with it. I have yet to hear anyone say that Obama’s words in this instance were well phrased. On the other hand, if we had a functioning media, it wouldn’t be a problem. But we don’t, so we have to deal.
Hill Dweller
@Baud: Same here. I’ve always thought of swiftboating as lying to destroy the other candidate’s strength. The Obama campaign is destroying Willard with the truth.
The media only seems to give a shit about tone when it is the Democrat hitting back.
ThresherK
Yep. All the media asks of the GOP is to win, after which whatever was done goes in the textbook as “connecting with voters”. (Except in Columbus, OH, 2004, and other incidents.) The next time around, every paperwipe from the outhouse of Karl Rove, Suuuuuper Geeeeeeenius, is hailed.
Where is the Beltway Event Horizon? How close can a media figure get to these Todds and such before they get swallowed up in it?
Haydnseek
You had to mention Peggy Nooner…you know the dems are doing something right when she puts down her glass and starts whining about Obamas “shortcomings.” I thank her for one thing. I bailed on the Sunday talking head shows forever after hearing her bleat about how “Barack Obama has shown no ability to lead! He’s not a leader! He’s not Ronald Reagan! (Sorry, I made that last part up. Couldn’t resist.) You can’t lead people who hate you with every fiber of their teabagger being. ANYTHING HE SAYS will be seen as the anti-American Kenyan Muslim socialist propaganda that will pave the way for Sharia law next week.
It’s too easy to rip on Nooner, but she represents everything that sucks about the MSM.
jwb
@Ben Franklin: I still don’t like ends-justified reasoning—as Charlie Pierce would say that’s not just a slippery slope it’s a luge course—but I do like to see the Dems more willing to deploy the instruments they have at their disposal and not be so concerned about delicate fee-fees of the villagers and other VSPs. I love to watch the righteous march of truth, and you only get to form that parade if the actual facts are, you know, on your side.
phoebes-in-santa fe
I don’t mind the negative ads, particularly if we’re running them, BUT I think Chicago should start doing positive ads, touting Obama’s record. They did a piss-poor job about ACA. And Obama should tout his record in every speech, in front of every audience.
NM is not supposed to be a toss-up state but for the last week I’ve been seeing some “soft negative” ads about Obama from some pac. They’re “soft” because they say, “Obama promised this and that, and nothing happened. It’s okay to fail but we should switch leaders”. Very strange ad. Has anyone else seen this?
hueyplong
I have no interest in ever voting for a Democrat of whose behavior Peggy Noonan approves.
SG
Democrats are always in a position to fight back, if they are of a mind to fight. Republicans don’t confine themselves to only attacking actual candidates — you mention the “issue” ads paid for by Republican billionaires.
The Republicans are engaged in non-stop campaigning, propaganda and attacks on Democratic policies across the entire media spectrum. They are unrelenting in their efforts to discredit Democratic policies before they start sinking their teeth into all those oh-so-collegial Dems at election time.
And where are the Democratic responses? Weak boilerplate from pols like Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Harry Reid. The only full-throated counter-attacks come from a handful of stalwarts like Bernie Sanders and outgoing Barney Frank.
I keep praying for snarling honey badgers that will go for Republican jugulars, but they never materialize. Maybe the reason the Sunday morning hack-fests are always overweighted with Republicans has more to do with their entertainment value than their ideology. We need Democrats who can hold their own in a cage match.
There are a few liberal pundits who are ramping things up and it’s a beautiful thing to see the shock and dismay on Republican faces when someone calls them on their bullshit. We need more of that without people wringing their hands about how we’re “stooping to their level” and other crap from the Marquess of Queensbury Rules while we’re getting kicked in the balls.
jwb
@phoebes-in-santa fe: My understanding is that Obama touts his accomplishments in every campaign appearance he makes. It’s just that the reporting ignores it. You’ll certainly see a lot about accomplishment at the convention.
It’s not clear to me what’s going on in NM except that Obama’s support has eroded quite significantly. I have yet to read a plausible explanation for the erosion.
Frankensteinbeck
@cmorenc:
Speaking softly was the proper way to get through the last four years of actual governance. It got more done when we had an advantage and made it easier to defuse the insanity of the GOP house.
Now it is campaign season. Time for the big stick. And boy, is Obama’s big stick satisfyi… I may need to rephrase that.
tam
@Hill Dweller: I’m looking at Todd’s feed right now and I don’t see the swiftboating tweet. Did he delete it?
Ben Franklin
@phoebes-in-santa fe:
In a perfect world the truth prevails. But it’s about repetition and force of will. The electorate would chafe more at limp-wristed responses, than they do negativity.
They value strength over honesty, as they have given up on having both in one candidate.
It’s a mistake to bring a butter knife to a knifefight.
jwb
@SG: Look what kind of Dems get invited on to the shows. If what you said was true, Frank would be on the shows as often as John McCain. But he is not. The “successful” Dems—those who keep getting invited back—are the milquetoast Dems. At a certain point, you have to figure that’s because that’s what TV wants.
g
David Brooks, Peggy Noonan and Ed Rendell are all concern trolls lecturing Obama on how to campaign.
The entire Republican primary was an insane Anti-Obama commercial on steroids.
ed
Ah, so “swiftboating” now automatically implies something underhanded. Noted.
Ash Can
@Hill Dweller: Speaking as a former pro editor, yes, it was a mistake, in that the placement of the pronoun made the meaning less clear. A small mistake in and of itself, but it gave the screeching monkeys something to grab hold of and fling around. Most importantly, though, I fully expect the Obama campaign to recover in plenty of time, and to learn a useful lesson from this.
Ben Franklin
@jwb:
In a perfect world the truth prevails. But it’s about repetition and force of will. The electorate would chafe more at limp-wristed responses, than they do negativity.
They value strength over honesty, as they have given up on having both in one candidate.
It’s a mistake to bring a butter knife to a knifefight.
BGinCHI
@Yutsano: Aug 15-22, but will have to let you know what night will work. I know, narrow window of opportunity, but that’s life with the wife’s family….
home and garden
Please make flat black and silver frame options.
Xboxershorts
I would like correct a sentence in your post:
Democrats in
OhioAmerica have been subjected to a non-stop, comprehensive, negative campaign against them for several decades nowThis right here is a bit more factual. I know you were talking local politics, but this right here is why so many teabaggers, FauxNews addicts and low information voters constantly call Democrats and Progressives un-American, or much worse. They grew up with that kind of rhetoric.
Soonergrunt
Of course they’re aware of it. But they are professional concern trolls, and they’ve been given their scripts.
Ash Can
@jwb: Actually, “TV” loves cage matches; all you have to do is look at how many daytime reality-type hair-pulling contests there are (prime time too, for that matter). The confrontational Dems would most likely pull in more eyeballs just due to the excitement factor. So it must be something else keeping them off the shows. Gee, I wonder what ever could it be.
MacKenna
I’m surprised someone hasn’t crafted a Leave Mittenay Alone! video on behalf of the poor very rich little baby, Mitt Offshore Billionnaire Romnoid.
Yutsano
@BGinCHI: We’ll figure it out. If nothing else just pick a night and who shows up is who shows up. We’ve run things like that before. :)
Ben Franklin
I deleted 41…no?
kay
g@43,
Ed Rendell could make himself useful by talking about the voter suppression campaign the GOP are running in PA, considering that the only reason he’s sitting in that pundit chair is AA voters in PA put him in office.
Instead he’s decided to lobby on behalf of private equity.
There’s gratitude for ya, huh?
I guess Rendell doesn’t need the voters they’re trying to block anymore, so who cares if 18% of Philadelphia won’t be be able to vote.
SG
@jwb: Yes, I have to agree. Frank and Sanders are MSNBC faves who might upset the broadcast networks’ sense of what’s right and true in the universe, namely the notion that Republicans are warriors for serious ideas and Dems are panderers and milquetoasts.
jwb
@Ash Can: I agree with your analysis. I do think that right-left cage match political shows would likely garner ratings. But that’s not what TV is willing to show us. Yes, I concur that a decision has been made, and not on the basis of ratings, not to show us this.
I will say that if you watch shows that feature a younger set of pundits, the young leftists beat the crap out of the young conservatives. I can’t tell you what shows these are, as I don’t generally watch TV myself and just happened to catch a couple when I was visiting relatives. But if you think the current conservative talent pool is thin, it gets even thinner as you start looking among the 30 and 40 year olds.
Hill Dweller
@tam: I don’t know. Todd did repeat the swiftboating accusation while hosting Chris Matthews’ weekend show.
MikeJ
@cmorenc:
Find out David Plouffe’s brand of whiskey and send it to all our campaign managers.
geg6
Kay, I love your guy and wish the hell I could vote for him. We have a similar guy here locally (though, sadly, he’s in the next legislatve district), Rob Matzie, who is also a standup guy who I would be proud to vote for. He gets a 100% from all kinds of liberal cause groups. He, too, is a blue collar guy who found himself running for state office a few years ago and has never forgotten who he is and where he came from. He’s my sister’s neighbor and puts on no airs. Love him
This is OT, but I have taken TNC off my blog roll again. It’s not him this time, but his commenters that I just detest. I’ve never seen such a self-congratulatory, ignorant, self-important bunch outside of winger sites. This is the third time I’ve done this and it won’t be back on my roll ever again. I may read his stuff when he posts his Civil War stuff when I see he’s posted some, but will never again wade into the comments. I simply can’t take the faux intellectual superiority that every thread turns into there, especially when I know how full of shit so much of the commentary is due to my actual experience and expertise in a particular area. I quit commenting two years ago for that very reason (was told I was the ignorant one by several ignoramuses) and I just have give it up completely because the temptation to read comments on a blog is too much for me to resist. Ugh.
Dennis SGMM
David Brooks lamented, Peggy Noonan gloated. Sky blue, grass green.
Nutella
Only July and all they’ve got is the tone argument? That’s pretty weak.
MikeJ
@Nutella:
They’ve been using a “tone” argument for four years, but it usually has to do with “darker than a paper bag”.
JWL
Of course republican party apparatchiks cluck about democrats. It works.
They clucked about history’s greatest monster (after his defeat by Reagan in 1980), and congressional-wolves-in-democratic party-clothing began their exodus from the party to set up shop as Blue Dogs.
They clucked up a storm during the propaganda campaign of 2002-2003, and stampeded enough of the democratic party in Congress as to render it a cipher.
And republicans clucked and fretted the Obama administration away from the criminal prosecution of Wall Street (or the former leadership of the Bush administration, for that matter). To this day President Obama accords them an undue respect, even as he talks turkey.
kay
Hi Geg, I hope you’re holding up okay w/all the horror at work. You, of course are not responsible for corrupt criminal leaders in that huge organization. You did nothing wrong.
On another topic my daughter is registered to vote in PA and she’s young so she moves a lot. Her registration address didn’t match her PA driver’s license address, which, she discovered, would have put her into a provisional ballot.
Anyway, she fixed it, she got a card from PA election authority to take to the polls w/ driver’s license, but she’s asking all her friends and none of them have an “address match” btwn license and voter reg. So that scares me.
dead existentialist
Here’s an internet ad somebody posted at YouTube. I found it in the comments at the cited Rich piece. Show it some love.
rikyrah
1. kay, thank you for this report.
2. so glad to see Democrats unashamed to run with this President.
3. swiftboating Willard?
GMAFB.
everything those mofos did to Kerry in 2004 WAS A LIE.
all the President’s people did was TELL THE TRUTH about Willard.
they’re VETTING Willard – you know, what the Press SHOULD BE DOING.
but, they’re too busy sucking Willard’s dick to be bothered with actually VETTING him.
it’s the Boston Globe, Mother Jones, Vanity Fair bringing the truth about Willard.
NOT ONE original REPORT done through INVESTIGATION done on Willard by ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN etc.
NOT ONE.
Frankensteinbeck
@JWL:
There is no criminal prosecution of Wall Street to be had. The shit we want to throw them in jail for weren’t crimes. That’s what deregulation means, making stuff that should have been a crime no longer a crime. We’ve had a great deal of it in the last 30 years. Destroying the world economy by deceptively packaging and reselling bad mortgages is not criminally illegal. Neither is the robosigning crap, although that at least raises legal questions of ownership. I’m sorry, but just because they SHOULD have been crimes doesn’t mean the things they did actually WERE crimes. Clucking had zero to do with it.
It didn’t have much to do with not prosecuting Bush, either. That had more to do with wanting to get any legislation done whatsoever rather than having all of congress, who have made it abundantly clear with veto-proof near-unanimous majorities, rebel and pass laws declaring that it was all cool. Which they did this last year anyway, by the way. But at least we got the ACA and Finreg passed first.
Xboxershorts
@Frankensteinbeck:
Asserting that all the crap the Wall St finance community was doing that brought this crisis to a head were deregulated into legality is not entirely true.
Lots of illegal activity took place. But…the 2 federal agencies tasked with oversight and governance of this activity, the SEC and the OCC are both severely underfunded and understaffed. So, investigations of the Wall St behemoths could be ongoing for a decade or more.
Just remember this, The House controls the purse strings. To render an agency ineffective, revolving door not withstanding…all Congress need do is cut it’s funding.
FlipYrWhig
Regarding “negative campaigning,” that was also one of the things the punditocracy flung at Al Gore. The phrase they kept coming back to was “attack, attack, attack.” They professed to be quite bothered by it. Bag of salted dicks all around.
JWL
@Xboxershorts: Indeed. A former TARP administrator (whose name escapes me) has written a book chronicling his experiences with U.S. regulatory agencies, and it’s not pretty. It’s scheduled to be released later this week, and is reviewed in today’s NY Time book section.
Ben Franklin
No crimes? Holy Moly…..and don’t refer to the 800 m in fines. Chump change
The fictitious UBS trades to hide $2.3 billion in losses is cause to tote up the fatiguing number of fines paid on crimes by the Masters of the Universe.
Only two years ago UBS paid $800 million in fines to the Justice Department for a multi-year illegal scheme to solicit wealthy American citizens to hide their wealth from the IRS by letting UBS move the assets to tax havens on behalf of 52,000 Americans. The fine would have been far greater had the Swiss government not intervened to warn the US off putting UBS in a fragile financial position. In 2008 the Swiss Central Bank had to inject funds into UBS to rescue it from insolvency.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertlenzner/2011/09/18/wall-street-pays-for-its-crimes/
Crimes result in sentences. Violations of the vehicle code result in fines.
catclub
@Frankensteinbeck: Neither is the robosigning crap”
no that was criminal, Various small fry could have gotten a zillion years for multiple counts of perjury.
but when the banks get to negotiate what the penalty will be, it only seems like there was no crime.
There was also the fraud against county registers of deeds.
Each transaction (transfer of mortgage) is supposed to be recorded.
But when a big consortium of banks do it, suddenly it is not a crime.
Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism
@phoebes-in-santa fe: I’ve been seeing that one for about a week. It’s an RNC ad.
phoebes-in-santa fe
@jwb: That’s what recent polling has stated and I’ve become worried.
Here’s a link to the WaPo article about the ad.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/rnc-ad-takes-softer-approach-on-obama-saying-its-ok-to-make-a-change-in-the-white-house/2012/07/16/gJQAHqvkoW_story.html
Frankensteinbeck
@catclub:
But those are not CRIMINALLY illegal. This was discussed to death when it was first found out. The law says they’re supposed to have better records, but doesn’t specify that they’re punished if they don’t. The legal effect was to make the ownership of the loans nebulous.
@Xboxershorts:
But the major criminal seeming activities, all the debt swap crap that locked up the banking industry and caused the recession, was legal. There may have been separate crimes committed around the edges, but good luck finding them. I’m hoping some WILL be found and prosecuted, but they aren’t glaringly visible since they’re not the things that caused the disaster.
EDIT – To sum up, there was no charging in and throwing anybody in jail for destroying the economy, because there weren’t laws in place to make it illegal. It was not a situation where the DOJ could go ‘We are prosecuting you now.’ They didn’t have evidence of actual crimes. They may never find evidence of actual crimes that would hold up in court, although there are ongoing investigations.
Mnemosyne
@jwb:
@phoebes-in-santa fe:
A lot of the time, if you see a sudden unexplained decrease in support for a politician, you need to dig into the internals of the poll to see who exactly was polled. Quite a few pollsters have been found to be changing the percentages of people polled to boost the number of Republicans in the pool, which not surprisingly changes the outcome.
Valdivia
@phoebes-in-santa fe:
the poll about NM had a very republican sample. See here for an explanation of why it’s not reliable
JR in WV
@Frankensteinbeck:
Frankly, the same laws that prohibit selling a wrecked 2011 Cadillac as a “new car” prohibit rating financial instruments AAA+ when they are nearly worthless, in fact. It is called fraud, and it is a common, every day crime.
Any federal DA in the country could bring action against Standard and Poor’s or the other rating agencies for lying about the value of those CDOs.
Once the rating agencie’s employees were on the hook for hundreds of years in prison, I imagine they would have been happy to discuss the overtures the investment bankers made to them about giving these pieces of crap good ratings.
Then, once the lower level “
investment bankers” con artists were indicted for many crimes worth hundreds of years in a federal pen, the higher level felons would have fallen like ripe apples.But the big political money also falls like apples from investment banks, and hedge funds, and so on and so forth.
Pisses me off, but President Obama can only do what conditions of possibility allows him to do. He is not the Great Oz, all-powerful orb of control. He’s just the top politician, and he has to work with politicians every day. At least, now, if the Republicans don’t win next fall, financial regulations should hold the con artists back a little, and, maybe, keep them from destroying the golden goose, which is what they were after in 2008.
I’m working for Obama, contributing to Obama, and still have a Veterans for Obama on the vehicles we use every day, even though I don’t worship the ground he walks on. He’s braver than most by far; the bravest politician in American history, I believe.
So far we’ve had two obvious negative reactions to our sticker, one in Arizona and one in Ohio. Positive reactions are more face to face than thumbs down from a passing bike or car, and there are more of them.
No police officer has pulled us over for it, which surprises me a little, but cops are humans, and they know their names are on a Republican list for pay cuts, just like the social workers.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
@kay: That’s scary and of course most of the point of the statute, isn’t it? Since they don’t have you for a mother, can she help them, perhaps by giving them an outline of steps to take?
BTW, thanks for asking after me! I feel pretty good, except for the days of most brutal heat when I can barely stay awake and my balance is next to nonexistent. I’m quite lucky, given the dx.
Brian R.
Draw some distinctions. Put some thought into this. EARN your pundit salary.
Nah, they don’t have to put any effort into it at all, and they’re not shy about admitting so.
How do I know? Two words: Luke Russert.
The media today thinks so little of what it does that they took a 23-year-old kid and just put him on camera just because his dad had done the job before him. No training needed, no time to earn your stripes in the trenches. Anyone can do this kid, so have at it.
Jesus, my dad was an accountant, but that doesn’t mean I’m qualified to do your taxes. But report the news? Eh, fuck it. How hard can it be? This side says A, this side says B, both sides are to blame, and cut to commercial.
Brian R.
@hueyplong:
I have no interest in ever voting for a Democrat of whose behavior Peggy Noonan approves.
Preach.
bob h
And, by the way, the Gallup has just ticked up for Obama.
In time we will have a VSP, probably Gergen, inform us that the negativity must stop because Romney’s ability to govern is being impaired.