Bits and pieces (still) worth reading…
The Washington Post‘s E.J. Dionne, just before the election, on “The Gilded Age vs. the 21st Century“:
The 2012 campaign began on Aug. 2, 2011, when President Obama signed the deal ending the debt-ceiling fiasco. At that moment, the president relinquished his last illusions that the current, radical version of the Republican Party could be dealt with as a governing partner. From then on, Obama was determined to fight — and to win.
It was the right choice, the only alternative to capitulation. A Republican majority both inspired and intimidated by the tea party was demanding that Obama renounce every principle dear to him about the role of government in 21st-century America. And so he set out to defeat those who threatened to bring back the economic policies of the 1890s…
An especially fine Charles P. Pierce essay, in Esquire, on the newly re-elected President:
Part of what drives people crazy about him — and if you wanted to see crazy, you should have seen the fugue state that overcame the Fox election all-stars last night, because I’ve seen jollier police lineups — is that he so clearly understands his own genuine historical stature, and that he wears it so easily, and that he uses it so deftly. It is not obvious. He does not use it brutally or obviously. It is just… there with him, a long and deep reservoir of violence and sorrow and tragedy and triumph out of which comes almost everything he does. He came into this office a figure of history, unlike anyone who’s become president since George Washington. The simple event of him remains a great gravitational force in our politics. It changes the other parts of our politics in their customary orbits. It happens so easily and so in the manner of an immutable physical law that you hardly notice that it has happened until you realize that what you thought you knew about the country and its people had been shifted by degrees until it is in a completely different place….
The long creative project of America has been to engage all its citizens in that work. That is the history that he wears so well, and that he wields so subtly. That is the truth that he represents. That is the great silent thing that has been there through all the debates, and the ads, and all of that preposterous money. We are working on ourselves. We are incomplete. We are never finished. Elections come and go. The political commonwealth is a work in progress. We work with the tools that time and circumstance provide. As he enters his final term, with the elegiac music playing out there in the distance, Barack Obama will use the history that he has come to embody and, perhaps, even to fulfill, as part of a larger project that never will be completed but only finished, over and over again.
Also on Election night, Greg Sargent, weighing “A Big Night for Democrats and Liberals“:
To appreciate the magnitude of the victory Barack Obama and Democrats won tonight, think back to what the political landscape looked like in the spring. The Supreme Court appeared ready to strike down Obamacare, the President’s signature domestic achievement. The recovery was stalling; Republicans were preparing to unleash $1 billion in super PAC ads; Obama’s reelection seemed perilous; and Dem control of the Senate was in doubt. It looked perfectly possible that the congressional GOP’s strategy of obstruction at every turn could be rewarded by voters, possibly with a return of one party rule to the GOP. The Obama experiment appeared headed for failure, and the prospects for the future of progressive reform were teetering on the brink.
Instead, Obamacare survived. Obama has been reelected with a resounding victory in the electoral college (the popular vote is outstanding). Democrats have routed Republicans in the Senate races. A progressive champion has been sent to the Upper Chamber in the person of Elizabeth Warren. The first openly gay Senator — Tammy Baldwin, another solid liberal — joins her. The Dem majority will be more progressive and energetic. In Maryland, gay marriage has been ratified by popular vote for the first time…
The GOP held the House, and the road ahead remains very difficult. A lot will turn on how Republicans handle this defeat and how they interpret it. GOP operative Steve Schmidt said on MSNBC today that this will require “soul searching” by the party. But there will be tremendous pressure on GOP leaders from the GOP base and conservative opinionmakers — angry about tonight’s results — to continue to obstruct Obama at every turn. However, the President will have leverage. He will be able to point to the fact that Republicans lost resoundingly after adopting a four-year strategy of scorched earth obstructionism to argue that it’s time the GOP sees the writing on the wall and cooperates with Democrats to move the country forward.
John Cassidy, in the New Yorker, on “A Victory for Obama and Obama’s America“:
… For the fifth time in the past six Presidential elections, the Democrats have won the popular vote. For the second time in succession, Americans have elected a black man as President. Throughout the country, Republican extremists like Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock have been repudiated. Residents of Maryland and Maine (and probably Washington state, too) have voted in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage. The United States of 2012 hasn’t turned into Scandinavia, but it isn’t the United States of 2010 and the Tea Party either. To the extent that the election was about anything more than negative advertising and relentless micro-targeting, it was a triumph of moderation over extremism, tolerance over intolerance, and the polyglot future over the monochrome past…
Though the day-to-day exchanges were often trivial, the underlying dynamics of the election were deadly serious, and everybody knew what they were. As both candidates repeatedly said, it was about what sort of country we want to be. Now the American public has rendered a judgement. By a small but significant majority, it has rejected the insular, backward-looking, feed-the-rich, extremism of today’s G.O.P., even when that extremism has a standard bearer who is relatively moderate—or, at least, flexible. It has reëlected to office a President who, for all his failings, tried during his first term to address some of the biggest problems facing the country, and did so in a spirit of pragmatism and civility that the Mitt Romney who governed Massachusetts would have appreciated.More rancor and gridlock may well lie ahead. But yesterday the right side won.
WaPo‘s Matt Miller, “Obamacare Gets Its Vindication“:
… Obama didn’t “have” to do health reform. It wasn’t in his in box. A historic economic collapse was. He could have devoted himself exclusively to economic crisis management. (Though even if he’d done that, it’s not clear the recovery would be further along. After all, the Republicans blocked the sensible infrastructure investments in his Jobs Act a year ago that would have left 1 million more Americans working today — and unemployment at 7.2 percent, not 7.9 percent).
But Obama took the longer view. He knew U.S. health care was a scandal, with outsize costs and 50 million people uninsured. Now, thanks to the president’s reelection and the certainty that the law will be phased in by 2014, everything will change…
There are surely 100 reasons why reelection must be satisfying to the president. But one of the biggest has to be the vindication of his choice to go big on health care. Long after the damage of the burst financial and real estate bubbles is healed, Obamacare will be his legacy. It will have improved our society and laid the groundwork for greater economic security in an era in which Americans will increasingly be buffeted by global economic forces beyond their control.
Even before the final tallies, Brian Beutler at TPM made an important point about “Why the GOP Agenda Is Probably Dead…“:
… Without a Senate majority, Republicans can’t control the budget process. Which means they can’t cram their entire agenda into a reconciliation bill that’s immune from the filibuster. It means that even if they force votes on repealing the Affordable Care Act, they’ll need 60 votes — or about a dozen Democratic defectors. Not likely. President Romney would have to stymie implementation of the law from within the executive branch — a difficult task — and his tax agenda would be a non-starter. So would his plans for Medicare and Medicaid. He’d still be able to appoint Supreme Court justices and lower court judges, but Democrats would be able to block conservatives they deemed too objectionable…
And Paul Constant at Seattle’s Stranger calls out the third-party voters:
…To everyone who voted for a third-party candidate, or who refused to vote because of an issue of conscience, I’m speaking directly to you: This is your time. Barack Hussein Obama is your president for four more years. Convince him. If you give up on your issue and your outrage now that the race is done, you’re guilty of the worst kind of hypocrisy, someone who waves his outrage and his principles around like a braggart when the spotlight is on, but who slumps back into apathy when the drama has passed. Voting is not the most important thing you can do as an American—it’s the least you can do. Now the onus is on you to become a political animal, to take part in your government. We know that President Obama’s mind can be changed; he can change course and reach out for the greater good. You just have to convince him, the way he convinced us four years ago to take a chance on him. That conversation needs to begin as soon as possible.
Cris (without an H)
I’m in pieces, bits and pieces
LanceThruster
I propose that in victory we use the model of the Battle of Carthage from the Third Punic War (though the claim of sowing the ground with salt is considered apocryphal).
Davis X. Machina
None of this matters because the rule of law is dead.
WereBear
I love that.
the Conster
My takeaway after reading all of the delicious schadenfreude conservative postmortems is the dawning reality that they lost not just the election fair and square, but the argument. There’s no real place to go for them now, because they didn’t lose with Gore style shenanigans that would give them the victim mentality they’re so good at exploiting. Obama ran on pro-choice, gay marriage, tax increases and healthcare, so people knew what they were voting for, and just told all the old white men, you’re not the boss of me.
red dog
Now O must keep his foot on the gas and not capitulate on anything. Make the GOP wish of non-compromise come true.
Xecky Gilchrist
It’s not too early to start making fun of the Republican nominee for 2016, I think.
I believe it was DennisSGMM who said that, given current trends in choosing nominees, their next one along was going to be speaking in tongues and wearing a helmet. I think there’s a good chance that’s true, but it’s worth figuring out exactly why.
The Redoublechin coalition might be something like the Disney cartoon studios (granting the difference that the Disney studios do actually turn out a competent and salable product.) Like, there’s one team that makes serious, dramatic stuff like Lion King, another that makes completely absurd stuff like Emperor’s New Groove, one that makes princess flicks, etc.
So Romney was from the “fiscal conservative”-themed team, their equivalent to the Lion King type of movie. Not sure where McCain came from, but Palin might have made it that it was the princess team. So next up? The absurdist team, the religious right, is scheduled for release, wouldn’t you think?
So DennisSGMM was right: tongues and helmet.
Stooleo
Day three of my schadenfreude tour of conservative blogs. Ace of Spades has a sadz
BGinCHI
I think we’re finally getting a country Pat Paulsen wouldn’t have to run for President in.
Warren Terra
To add to your essay collection: David Simon (he of The Wire, Treme, etc) has quite a good essay up.
FlipYrWhig
@red dog: I’m not holding my breath for that, not so much because of Obama and his instincts, but because of people like Joe Donnelly and Heidi Heitkamp, who (I’m guessing) will be eager to demonstrate to their red-state constituents that they’re not THAT kind of Democrat. There are still a lot of “moderates” among Dems in the Senate who tend towards Republican thinking on budgets and spending.
Villago Delenda Est
NOW is the time to remind our newly rehired for four more years chief executive that he should now repurpose the superb organization that worked hard and long to secure that victory to taking back the House, to fighting for every single fucking seat, in 2014.
The next two years, with the House still in the hands of the party of the 19th century, will be difficult. They will do everything they can to thwart his attempts to govern, and to go forward.
Build on this victory. Keep the organization intact. Do not commit the mistake of 2010 which was to lie back on your laurels.
The fight is not over. Push it. The darkness must be fought, you cannot assume that Voldemort is dead. The horcruxes are still out there.
FlipYrWhig
@Xecky Gilchrist: I think it’s going to be Scott Walker, who’ll run an entire campaign premised upon sticking it to liberals. He’s already tight with the Kochs, so money will be no object, and if he can win his home state he changes the map.
The Ancient Randonneur
If you haven’t read TNC’s piece about the election you really should. I love his closing lines:
I haven’t read everything from every front pager so if this has been discussed previously my apologies. It really is worth repeating, innit?
Hungry Joe
I started lurking around BJ in 2008. One of my clearest memories is popcorn, the vast quantities of which we were going to scarf down as we watched the GOP tear itself to pieces. Well, maybe it will this time, but I’m not plowing any of my resources into popcorn futures. We should wallow in the ecstasy of victory for a while* — that’s what I’m doing — then 1) start working to slam home tax increases on the wealthy and improvements on/expansion of the ACA, and 2) start gearing up to hold the Senate and re-take the House in 2014.
*Belle Starr (Pamela Reed) in “The Long Riders”: “I am having a real good time.”
jl
Happy snippet for Californians out there in Balloon Juice world, and world in general: heard radio report while driving into work that if current counts hold up, Dems have 2/3 majority in both state assembly and senate.
If report is true and no recounts change results, then GOP has basically lost ability to block fiscal legislation in sate legislature. The California GOP would be completely irrelevant in state government.
catclub
@the Conster: “dawning reality”
Well, that dawning reality has made not even a blemish on the no new taxes part of their credo. I see no change in their core belief that rich people should be worshipped.
And NPR is consulting only GOP politicians on the deficit.
Rather than, say, spokespersons for the guy who just won a nationwide election.
Mnemosyne
@red dog:
Nah — I prefer the debt ceiling solution of punking the Republicans by giving them what they say they want while getting almost everything the Democrats want because the Republicans are too stupid to read and understand legislation.
the Conster
@The Ancient Randonneur:
Beautiful. I’m going to tuck that away for the next time someone asks how that hopey changey thing is working out, although I doubt I’ll ever hear that question again.
Punchy
Who the fuck kidnapped Jen Rubin and replaced her with this long-hair hippie-type pinko f#g?
Good lord. I had to check the URL 3 times to make sure I wasnt on DKos or the Onion.
Mnemosyne
Also, too, I weirdly would not be surprised if a few of the more vocal firebaggers start coming back to the Democrats and give more support to Obama. For at least some of them, I think they were afraid he would not be re-elected so they wanted him to pass as much legislation as humanly possible during his first term and were very upset because they thought this was our only bite at the apple.
Now that we have four more years, I think a few of them may unclench.
Ben Cisco
@Xecky Gilchrist:
Not that that’s the way he put it, but, you know, fix’t.
Xecky Gilchrist
@Ben Cisco: Not that that’s the way he put it, but, you know, fix’t.
Good point. No reason there can’t be both, though!
jl
May God save us all. See on TPM that they are already doing primary polls for 2016 in NH.
Madness.
Good that I am ulraswamped at work. Gives my unconscious mind time to figure out how to turn the endless money and media race for power in US politics into a ‘popcorn’ experience.
Look at as a dowdy low brow intellectual thrill ride, a debauched reality show, a political thriller for those who do not like thick books (Edit: and with very low thresholds for what can in any possible world be considered interesting).
Dick Dastardly
I have a Republican friend who is insisting that if they’d just turned the extra three million McCain voters out they’d have won, that the GOP is inclusive (Condy Rice, Rubio!)and horrible stuff about African-Americans and Hispanics. Anybody got some good concise links from the past couple of days that show how out of touch the GOP is with America please?
handsmile
Never realized I was such a glutton for Schadenfreude. From Wonkette (a site I rarely visit but which has been killin’ it since Wednesday),
“A Special Wonkette Tribute to Fallen Senator Staple-Crotch, Masssachusetts’ own Scott Brown”: http://wonkette.com/489271/a-special-wonkette-tribute-to-fallen-senator-staple-crotch-massachusettss-own-scott-brown
and “Pour a Little on the Ground for America’s Greatest Deadbeat Dad, Hero Congressman Joe Walsh”: http://wonkette.com/489264/pour-a-little-on-the-ground-for-americas-greatest-deadbeat-dad-hero-congressman-joe-walsh@<a href="#comment-3951959
@Warren Terra:
Thanks for posting that link. While I’m not as sanguine as David Simon on what Tuesday night’s victory portends for future elections, I thought this closing remark was precisely right: “And now, normal isn’t white or straight or Christian.”
Villago Delenda Est
@catclub:
This means it’s a false dawn. Something along the lines of an impending rise of Venus above the after-midnight horizon.
Raising taxes (on incomes greater than $250,000 a year) is absolutely essential to dealing with the deficit. Right now, the problem is primarly structural, and the only cure is raising more revenue off the backs of the parasite overclass. I say “primarily structural” because I do not buy the argument that our bloated “defense” establishment is “non-discretionary” spending. There’s plenty of lard to be cut, primarily on the parasites there…the defense contractors. For any number of reasons, the outsourcing to civilian outfits (see Maddow’s superb Drift for details) of military operations and logistics needs to cease, and one reason is that it is actually more inefficient economically to allow parasites like KBR to skim off money better spent on actual people in uniform.
It’s telling that yet again, Obama mentioned those people in his victory speech on Wednesday morning, and Rmoney did not.
Mr. Longform
@jl:
as opposed to Indiana which just turned the legislature into a super-majority Republican circle of jerks. And with Mike “dumb as a stone” Pence as governor, we should be Mississippi within a few short months. Workin’ on ma drawl rat now. (I’m from up north; I realize everyone south of Indy already talks like that.)
Bulworth
Well, Boener is still saying Read My Lips: No Tax Increase. Boener seems not to realize that tax rates will increase automatically. Obama and Reid can go fishing for two months.
dm
I’ve been thinking about Bill O’Reilly’s “makers vs. takers” assessment of the election results.
Take a look at this map:
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:ElectoralCollege2012.svg
Now take a look at this map:
(per capita small business)
http://www.ilsr.org/lightly-regulated-states-friendly-small-businesses/
Notice the resemblance (yes, there are some differences, particularly
in small-population states)?
This is a little less clear, particularly when divided by county, but:
(poverty by county): http://maps.howstuffworks.com/united-states-poverty-map.htm
I trust many of us are already familiar with this:
(federal taxes vs federal expenditures by state)
http://www.economist.com/blogs/dailychart/2011/08/americas-fiscal-union
Now, let’s talk about how this was an election decided between the
“makers” and the “takers”.
r€nato
@Stooleo: that’s great, thanks for sharing. Almost a complete absence of clues there.
Can someone tell me what “TFG” means in the context of voting for Obama? I didn’t get that. “The federal government” fits but doesn’t seem to quite make sense and I don’t own a right-wing secret decoder ring.
Villago Delenda Est
@Punchy:
Read the comments. They’re taking her to the cleaners for her baseless assertion that OvenMitt didn’t make an issue of gay marriage.
The Rethug skank is still a skank. No change there. She’s still spouting lies in the defense of a man who she says has “innate decency” that is not in evidence in any way, shape, or form.
JPL
IMO, The President needs to raise the capital gains tax. It’s just too darn low. Why are folks more concerned about the earned income moochers while it’s the unearned moochers who are laughing all the way to the bank. I’m looking at you moocher Mitt.
Randy P
OK, here’s a good snippet via email from my local (county) Democratic chair, David Landau:
Some background: Landau first came on my local radar when he led a Democratic slate of candidates in a run for County Council (in 2008 as I recall). Our Council has been majority Republican since the Civil War, and 100% Republican for decades. He nearly made it. He also made me aware during his campaign that we have no idea what our county budget is actually spent on (cronyism, mostly) and one of the things it isn’t spent on is a Health Department. We don’t have one. It’s appalling.
He’s been a tireless worker in the party and has brought a lot of enthusiasm back at the local level. I can’t tell you how discouraged and listless the local Democratic Party looked when I moved here in 2001. Total turn-around. I kind of lost my steam after the 2010 elections, but Landau obviously did not.
Ben Cisco
@Villago Delenda Est: Hell yes, 1000x THIS!
I do think he’ll remember what happened last time around. It’s GOT to be on his mind that the NeoConfederate seditionists started their shit fit on the very same day he took the oath.
A song from the Who seems appropriate here…
russell
pierce is the best. that is all.
polyorchnid octopunch
@Punchy: she’s lying to her readers, just like she did about Romney during the campaign. She’s a lying mendacious propagandist working the rearguard cover as her fellow corporate fascists retreat to regroup to consider how best to stir up limbic fear to get people to hurt themselves thinking that they’re hurting others.
LD50
Another weird phenomenon: three days after the election I am still seeing some of the less bright rank-and-file wingnuts claiming Obama lost the popular vote. Is anyone else noticing this?
JPL
President Obama is now on TV to gloat and say I got this.
Hopeful thinking!
Fouten
WHOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!
I won my race! Joe Walsh dosn’t speak for me anymore unless he’s relaying my food order back to the kitchen!
You. Are. Welcome. America.
McJulie
@Mnemosyne:
Well, they can now see Obama’s successes as smoothing the way for president H. Clinton or Elizabeth Warren.
Nemo_N
At CNN they just played the Obama video where he cries while addressing his staff.
Wolf Blitzer commented that the president was channeling John Boehner.
Sigh.
LD50
@dm: That’s something that continually amazes me about Romney’s “47% speech” — most Americans were aghast, but the GOP true believers loved it. Soaked it right up like it was an official new campaign meme, including, of course, those wingnutty members of the 47% who stood to get boned worst by a Romney/Paul admin. To me that may be the most stark example of the disconnect between the 27%ers and normal decent people.
Dan
@LD50: Yep. I figure most of them blew out their tvs with shotguns once Fox called it for the President. At that point, I think Mitt was ahead.
jibeaux
@Dick Dastardly: Put me in the camp of “let ’em think that, let ’em lose again.”
scav
Just a little crunchy sweet tidbit picked up along the way, brought to you by convoluted Condi:
Actually, dear, I think the mixed (?) messages came through the funnel loud and panderingly clear.
Broad-spectrum lying not adequately conveyed by a sufficiently docile broadstream media. There’s the problem.
Schlemizel
@Stooleo:
This one comment makes me believe Doug & Gilchrist have hit the nail:
“The common clay of the new West . . . you know, morons”
Keith G
@red dog:
No! Stop wishing for unicorns.
The only way that good things will happen is if the progressive population stays active, organizes, and asserts itself into the debate en masse. Going forward, our (progressive)political leaders must have our support and our blunt expectations ringing in their ears. Remember, they are the means we choose the reach the end points we desire.
Sites such as this need to play a role in promoting proactive and affirmative behaviors to help us avoid missing important opportunities.
cmorenc
The leverage Obama has over the GOP-obstructionist house is that the expiration of the entirety of the Bush tax cuts is imminently forthcoming, and there isn’t any way for the GOP house to force Obama to go along with keeping or lowering the rates for the 2% upper-most income earners without openly holding hostage tax cuts for middle-class earners. He can amplify this leverage by prominently and frequently pointing out that the Democrats in both House and Senate are ready to fast-track extension of the lower rates for middle-class earners, and will allow in the Senate a separate vote on the upper-income earners rate portion. Do this early, often, clearly, and loudly so that the right-wing noise machine cannot successfully drown out, obfuscate, or blatantly mislead the public on which party is being obstructionist and which party is taking whom as hostages.
BenA
@LD50: Yes and it’s annoying as all hell. I noticed this also in the last election. They acted like Obama barely squeeked by McCain when he won the popular vote by 7 points. It’s largely because it takes awhile for the final vote to come up and all they really remember is what the vote total was when they their guy was announced as the loser.
Schlemizel
comments gone to hell again – mine failed so I opened a new window, its not here but I bet it shows up later & triples from LD50. At least success hasn’t changed BJ 8-{D
Kip the Wonder Rat
@FlipYrWhig: But can he campaign from jail?
LD50
ugh, sorry about the multiple posts, guys.
dianne
There is a funny comment thread going on over at “Ace of Spades” The repubs are crying the blues over the failure of
a program called Orca which is an app of sorts for pollwatchers. I was laughing at loud at some of the comments. A gigantic fail, I guess.
Schlemizel
@Xecky Gilchrist:
I took @Stooleo: ‘s advice & read the comments over at the aceholes place.
You & Dougy have nailed it
We probably need a simpler more cartoonish candidate to get them now. Jesse Ventura or some shithead like that.
That is why we need someone who can motivate them next time, someone who can look comfortable going into a Walmart for example…someone who can speak their language.
They are “the common clay of the new West, you know, morons!
Randy P
@dianne: lots of details on the Orca failure here, in multiple threads but check out especially the “fail whale” thread.
Stooleo
This video just broke my schadenfreude meter. I didn’t think it was possible! I was only a couple minutes into it.
Schlemizel
waited 15 – 20 minutes still no sign of my post so I made a new one, it also failed waited about 5 minutes & multiples of all of them SIGH
Schlemizel
One float missing from the fail parade
When can we see the video of the Lord High Norquist saying the only thing the GOP needed was a buffoon who could sign the bills?
They had the one candidate most matching that description & lost anyway!
Bill E Pilgrim
David Brooks writes about the Republican debacle in this sort of roundabout way focused on the work ethic, and in the middle actually says some sensible things (I know, don’t faint) about how Asians and Latinos in the US don’t buy the Republicans’ anti-government pitch so much:
Then however, at the end, he writes this:
Mind you, not that he has any problem with the fact that a handful of billionaires can essentially purchase an election. He just wants to give them some advice on which PR firms and marketing people to hire and pay to accomplish that, so they can succeed in buying the next one.
catclub
@Schlemizel: Um, I vaguely remember an election for governor in California. It worked there.
Now, am I referring to Schwartzenegger or Reagan?
And California is a lock for democrats in presidential elections! Or maybe not.
catclub
@Bill E Pilgrim: It sounds like he wants to get hired to run said thinktank.
Suffern ACE
@LD50: It’s not hard to understand that. They don’t think that they are in the 47% because they haven’t asked for the programs that they use.
Also, anecdotally from my facebook feed (which is pretty useless, why not), if you are a working class republican in coal country, you believe that social security for people whose families haven’t been in the country for “generations” is a government give away. Like even if your mother from Argentina worked 40 years in the US paying into SS out her paycheck, she doesn’t deserve any of that SS check she is getting now because her family hasn’t been here long enough to have contribute to the building of the country.
Also, cutting off foodstamps is somehow giving people an opportunity to succeed.
Bulworth
@Punchy: Yeah that is some serious “The decadent left in its coastal enclaves” stuff. What’s next–that RWNJ should stop bashing universities and be more intellectual?
DaddyJ
@Fouten:
Amen to that!
Judas Escargot, Bringer of Loaves and Fish Sandwiches
@handsmile:
That animated GIF of Warren and Scott from one of the debates makes the article worth it, just for that.
More than anything, Scott Brown’s loss is what makes this year for me. Even better: I’ve been voting since 1992, and this is the first time ever that *everyone* I voted for, won. Even Tea Partier Tisei lost his bid for MA-6 (a shocker, that).
I’ve been quiet because I am still, quite frankly, dazed.
DaddyJ
@scav:
How monstrous of the narrow media spotlight to cause people to only hear one side of the both sides of the mouth you are talking out of!
Classic Condi. “Nobody told us that [thing which was my job] was important.”
Gravenstone
@FlipYrWhig: At this moment in time, I’m not convinced Walker could even retain his Governorship. The only reason he survived recall is there were a lot of folks voting against the concept of recall rather than for Walker.
rikyrah
@the Conster:
love this comment
catclub
@cmorenc: “without openly holding hostage tax cuts for middle-class”
It was not very well covered, but they did this at the end of 2010.
I agree with the rest of your post. In 2010 the Democratic senators (and Lieberman!) just wanted to sign any tax extension, and did not make a stink. I have hopes they will this time, but am not sure. Obama REALLY wanted the extension of the payroll tax cuts, and that is what he traded then.
We shall see this year.
Keith G
I am so sorry for the multiples. Something is snaffed with work net, but it’s still humiliating,and as always FYWP.
Chris
@LD50:
It wasn’t a “new” campaign meme. I’ve been reading it for years on wingnut blogs, not just the idea that there are “takers” living off the government because they suck but right down to the actual number, 47% (outdated by now, I believe, even if you count it there way, but it’s become as iconic a number for them as 1% or 27% are for us). That’s why they loved him for it. He was finally speaking their language.
And yet close to half the voting public still went for Mittens. The lesson I’ve drawn from the last few years is that we’re still an incredibly class-conscious society, and if anything, the fact that overt racism keeps getting less and less popular in the U.S. has only encouraged them to double-down on the classist themes.
Chris
@Suffern ACE:
Yeah, there’s also the case of people who ask for and use these programs consciously and then sweep it all under the carpet and pretend it never happened.
This happens all the time when you meet wingnuts from the bottom half of society, who wear their blue-collar origins like a badge of pride because “*I* never got a handout! *I* pulled myself up by my *bootstraps,* I did! No one gave me *anything!*”
“Really? How did you manage that?”
Then you go back through their life story, and as inevitable as a sunrise in the east, you eventually hit that one, *special,* *exceptional* time when they – or their parents – actually *did* use Medicaid, or food stamps, or some other form of government assistance.
But it’s DIFFERENT! Because you see, *they* really *did* need it, it’s all these *other* people who don’t really need it. And, well, *they* didn’t take very *much,* it’s all these other people who are gorging themselves and making shit unaffordable. And they weren’t on it for very *long.* And… and… and… SHUT UP! SHUT UP! I’M DIFFERENT! I DESERVED IT, BUT THESE PEOPLE DON’T, SHUT UP, THAT’S WHY!
BruceFromOhio
@McJulie: Well, they can now see Obama’s successes as smoothing the way for president H. Clinton or Elizabeth Warren.
It would be an honor to vote for either, alas, I cannot vote for both simultaneously. ‘Supreme Court Justice Clinton’ sounds pretty damned fine, too. Just sayin’ …
blingee
The real beauty about this fiscal cliff thing is that all Obama has to do is NOTHING. I know it sounds cold and harsh and of course he will try do something to prevent it and the problems it will cause the country…but even if Republicans obstruct him at EVERY turn…it will ultimately be their fault because THEY will be the ones triggering the fiscal cliff thing.
The best part is that if and when they obstruct and nothing happens…the bush tax cuts simply expire and Obama wins.
It’s a very very strong position to be in politically.
David in NY
@LanceThruster: Apocryphal! OMG. Are there no verities left?
I learned stuff like the sowing-of-the-ground-with-salt as a boy and believed every word of it. And now all these decades later you come along and disabuse me …
Funny how my critical faculties don’t always focus on the stuff I learned that long ago, which is stored in my mind, unquestioned.
Liberty60
@jl:
Its actually better than that. The Dem supermajority allows us to increase taxes without repealing Prop 13.
That, plus the passage of the tax increase in Prop 30, will allow us to fix the state budget deficit, and fund what needs funding.
Happy talk would be that just as the Reagan Era began in 1978 with the passage of Prop 13, the Obama Era is dawning with the passage of Prop 30.
Liberty60
@Chris: Or its like Sarah Palin casually mentioning that they moved to Alaska so Todd could get one of those good union jobs on the pipeline.
So that a few years later they could shit on the union members down in the 48.
StarStorm
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/09/business/popular-wrench-fights-a-chinese-rival.html
This was just assholish to me until i reached this paragraph:
Is it me, or is Bain involved with every last bit of outsourcing? Because seriously wtf.
Berial
Anyone notice this yet? Seems SCOTUS has decided to determine if the Voting Rights Act is constitutional or not.
mclaren
The sheer Mussolinismo of that Charles Pierce piece is nauseating. There’s a point of craven cringing cult of personality hero-worship that goes beyond mere cultism and into the level of idolatry, and gets so bizarre it becomes disturbing — and the Obots on this forum are badly infected with that kind of lunacy.
Why don’t you loons just go the whole way and explain to us that merely by allowing us to kiss the hem of his garment, Obama will heal us of our economic troubles?
Look, folks, Romney was insane, sure, but Barack Obama is just another pol. And most of his policies are identical to those of the Drunk-driving C student.
Obama presided over torture of prisoners at Bagram airbase in 2010, just like George W. Bush. Obama signed off on extending the Bush tax cuts, just like George W. Bush. Obama has ordered U.S. citizens murdered — worse than George W. Bush — and kidnapped and thrown into dungeons forever without a lawyer and without charges, just like George W. Bush. Obama has let rich bankers commit criminal and walk away without punishment, just like George W. Bush. Obama has acquised to the brutal repression of non-violent political protests against those fraudlent criminal bankers, just like George W. Bush. Obama has expanded the endless unwinnable War on Drugs, just like George W. Bush. Obama has expanded the endless unwinnable War Against Copyright Infringement, just like George W. Bush. Obama has presided over a vast giveaway to corrupt medical-industrial complex doctors and hospitals by forcing all Americans to buy unaffordable for-profit insurance from medical thieves whose costs are guaranteed to rise forever because there are no cost controls, and the doctors take bribes from Big Pharma and the medical devicemakers (and the bribes are even legal, because they’re called “consulting fees”). Obama has expanded the already bloated American military by raising its budget 8% last year alone while maintaining a freeze on all other government services, just like George W. Bush.
And now your’e trying to convince us that Barack Obama is some kind of sacred liberal historical figure?
Obama is a point guard. He fakes left and moves right. Obama is George W. Bush’s third and fourth term.
You people are drunk or on drugs.