Ezra Klein on the increasingly likely government shutdown:
Here’s the Republican Party’s problem, in two sentences: It would be a disaster for the party to shut down the government over Obamacare. But it’s good for every individual Republican politician to support shutting down the government over Obamacare.
It’s a good summary, but there’s more to it: part of the reason Republicans may cause a shutdown is that a shutdown won’t be that much of a disaster for the Republican party. First of all, the media will say both sides did it and why can’t Obama lead. Secondly, about 40% of the country will stick by Republicans no matter what, about 45% of the country will hate Republicans no matter what, and a big proportion of the remaining 15% believes the both-sides-do-it cant, so the needle won’t move much regardless of what they do.
Let’s say the shutdown moves the country 2% away from the Republican and towards the Democratic party. Is that such a disaster? No, not in and of itself. It’s when you start to pile the fuck-ups on top of more fuck-ups that the GOP starts to bleed, and, yes, a shutdown will add to the pile. But by itself, it’s not a big deal politically.
That’s the Republicans’ problem. Their imperviousness to any single blow makes them more likely to suffer death by a thousand cuts.
Frankensteinbeck
I think this is missing a crucial point. If a reasonable budget comes up, Nancy Pelosi can scrape up enough merely-asshole-but-not-bugfuck-insane Republicans to get it passed. This isn’t about the motivations of Republican House members as a whole, it’s on BOEHNER’S head.
Comrade Jake
It certainly does not help that we have prominent media figures who firmly believe it is not their job to correct GOP falsehoods. FFS – we are so totally screwed.
John Dillinger
And someone can do a lot of damage while you are cutting them one thousand times.
patrick II
Money cures most of those 1000 cuts. They buy news media and advertising and “grass roots” organizations and ALEC and that ball of money just keeps rolling downhill.
schrodinger's cat
@Comrade Jake: What is their job then?
c u n d gulag
And OUR problem, is this countries cowed, cowardly, compliant, and complicit, MSM, which screams “BOTH SIDES DO IT! QUAWK! BOTH SIDES DO IT!” like ADD-afflicted parrots on acid and meth.
Our current “Fourth Estate” makes me want to down a fifth.
Make that, a liter – a day. At least.
Unlike John Cole, I’m not even going to pretend I’m going to quit drinking.*
*Not that John’s pretending – I didn’t mean it that way.
I wish you the best of luck, John!
You’re a better man than I!!!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m afraid I see it the same way. We laugh at Boehner but he’s not such an obvious Thanksgiving parade floating cartoon character of sneering self-importance as Gingrich, who couldn’t not sanctimoniously whine at everything that looked like a camera, and since the nineties the media has gotten worse (for all his own cartoonishness, I’ll take Sam Donaldson over Jake Tapper any day), and the Republicans, with help from not just the MSM but a lot of Democrats, have been very successful at selling the notion that government spending somehow makes the economy worse.
Chris
One of these days I’m going to have to read up on this Game Theory shtick.
schrodinger's cat
My thoughts on the anniversary of Lehman’s collapse. I am interested in your thoughts, some BJers have already left thoughtful comments.
schrodinger's cat
@Chris: Google prisoner’s dilemma.
Johnnybuck
@schrodinger’s cat: To pick winners and losers of course, also who’s up, who’s down, who wins the day!
You know the important issues of the day.
schrodinger's cat
BTW I just read Ezra Klein’s views on the financial crisis for another post that I am writing. Shorter Ezra, hoocoodhavenode? Are we sure he is not a Broder in training?
balconesfault
@Comrade Jake: Obama: “The ACA will provide a way for uninsured working class Americans to be able to afford insurance, while levying a tax on employers who don’t provide insurance to their workforce”.
GOP: “Obamacare is forcing employers to eliminate their healthcare coverage”.
Todd: “There you have it, folks. You decide who’s right.”
Roger Moore
Actually, a 2% swing would be a disaster for the Republicans. It would be enough to lose a bunch of them their jobs, possibly enough that the Democrats would get control of the House.
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@patrick II:
And at that point it doesn’t really matter when they have such a solid floor of support and essentially own things from the state level down in so many ways. They do this because they can and because they know they won’t suffer as much as they deserve from it.
Keith P.
I think the general idea is to try to say “See how bad the country is doing under Obama?”
MattF
I think Klein is talking specifically about dead-end Republicans– the Representative from a safe Tea Party district is going to vote to defund Obamacare, what the various percentages of the rest of the world may think is irrelevant.
Bobby Thomson
The problem with the “government shutdown = disaster for Republicans” argument is that the Republican party actually did reasonably well in the 1998 elections (not quite as well considering they were off-year elections and the party out of power typically gains, but still decent). More importantly, Republicans in Congress know the reality that they didn’t lose the House in 1998 in spite of the government shut down. It helped Clinton (who was willing to say mean things), and Gingrich lost his job, but that’s not the same thing as hurting Republicans.
Roger Moore
@c u n d gulag:
John Boehner will drink to that.
schrodinger's cat
@Bobby Thomson: Past events are not an accurate predictor of future events, just because they didn’t suffer much back in 1998 does not mean they will not suffer right now.
Roger Moore
@Bobby Thomson:
Minor nit: the government shutdowns were in the previous election cycle (1995-6), when Clinton won reelection in spite/because of the shut down. The issue for the 1998 election was impeachment.
cleek
@Bobby Thomson:
yup.
plus, the teabaggers pushing this stuff know that:
1. they’re not going to face a primary from their right over this
2. they’re in safely gerrymandered districts so they don’t have worry about Dems voting them out
3. it’s going to take a lot more than a govt shutdown over spending and Obamacare to get the “conservatives” in their district to vote Dem.
this ain’t hurtin nobody from the GOP. except maybe Boehner, if he tries to fight it.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
This is one of those things that make me suspect there is no actual solution to the active unwillingness to accept reality that afflicts such a high percentage of the US population. Encouraged of course, by the folks getting rich of that unwillingness, and rigging the system to get even richer.
PaulW
I’m wondering if the media will go for the “both sides do it” narrative this time around, because it’s been very obvious that it’s been Republican hard-liners – especially Sen. Cruz – who have been pushing for the shutdown and debt ceiling fights. Considering the Democrats never pushed for shutdowns during the Bush the Lesser years when they had the chance – early 2001, 2007-08 – that “both sides do it” narrative ain’t gonna stick when it’s clearly been Republicans pushing it in 1995, 1996, 2011, 2012, 2013…
And I’m not sure if the Republicans will get a 40 percent backing from the public. It’s usually been about 33 – 35 percent between parties and independents, with the numbers fluctuating between the three groups. Any severe disturbance – say, a massive government shutdown right in the middle of massive crises like the Colorado flooding – would make the side pushing for the shutdown look like total psychopaths no matter how Fox Not-News spins it. I won’t be at all surprised if the GOP party supports drops into the mid-20s because of the shutdown.
Woodrowfan
in other words, the Republicans will screw over the best interests of the whole because it will benefit them individually. wow, knock me over with a feather.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bobby Thomson:
Yes, the GOP did so “reasonably well” in the 1998 off year election that Newt Gingrich was forced out of the Speakership.
The 1998 election was a disaster for the GOP, particularly when they anticipated picking up seats, not losing them, and Gingrich was given the heave ho by the crew of his own ship for it.
Shrillhouse
I think the whole “the GOP will be blamed for the shutdown” angle is exceptionally dumb. I don’t believe that for a second.
If there is a shutdown, the media will just report that “Washington” is “broken” and that the “markets are jittery” after continued “budget wrangling” in “Congress”. The fine details of the debate will be lost on the public, who don’t understand what the issues are, and won’t get any useful info from the likes of Chuck Todd or Lil’ Luke.
artem1s
Newt thought he was untouchable too. Look at where his hubris got him. I don’t think every Rep thinks it won’t hurt individually; most maybe; the batshit crazies, absolutely. Some of them remember what this got them last time though. Newt thrown out and Clinton (surely the whole country hate him as much as we do!?) got great approval ratings out of it.
long story short, Obama has the great luck of having incredibly stupid enemies who love to cut off their noses. every time they have handed him this kind of victory in the past, it has shifted public thinking on the health of the GOP. maybe only a micron, but it keeps adding up.
Bobby Thomson
@schrodinger’s cat: Maybe not in quantum physics. Regardless, past events matter a lot insofar as they inform the risk calculus of current Republican House members. And they do.
@Roger Moore: Yeah, you’re right. And it’s actually not that minor. Dole got his clock cleaned but Republicans really stemmed the bleeding when it came to local races.
Villago Delenda Est
@PaulW:
Yes.
It’s what the vermin of the Village DO. They know two things: that it’s a horse race, and that both sides do it.
That’s all they know. They are utterly worthless.
Wipe them out. All of them.
schrodinger's cat
@Villago Delenda Est: What irritates me more than the GOP obstructionism is the hand wringing and defeatism from our side. Oh we is doomed, we are all going to die, lets hide under the bed.
piratedan
@cleek: and they simply don’t care who it hurts, it’s an ideological fixation for them, i.e. the Tea Party. Those roughly 50-80 old school Republicans that could form a reasonable majority with the Dems will not do so because the political calculus puts their jobs in jeopardy and if you want to show me a Republican who wants to give up THIS day job and do what we would perceive as the rational thing to do, then I’d advise you to recalibrate your notion of reality. These guys, cowards that they are, will watch the government shut down, even though they know it’s wrong, know that the TP’ers are wrong but will go along anyway because that’s what R’s do. While Dem’s can be manipulated by shitty intel and “doing what’s right for the country” even if it goes against their beliefs and nature, these “true believers” won’t be swayed and they’ll take these fellow travelers right along with them. The scary thing, I see the TP’ers knowing who “their friends are” coming about and these milquetoast R’s are going to get primaried anyway. We just get to bet on the front row as the Republican Party becomes the latest victim to Religious Fascism.
schrodinger's cat
@Bobby Thomson: Past events matter, I never said that they didn’t. Past is not reliable predictor of the future, life is not a trend line that you can extrapolate.
john b
that’s not typically how gerrymandering works. gerrymandering would make the districts more competitive for Rs, not less. It’s the dems that would get stuck with one 90% dem district. putting all your republicans in one district doesn’t help.
Say there are 50 republicans and 50 democrats evenly distributed in a state with ten districts. Some D heavy areas, some R heavy areas. Typically you’d expect 5 R districts and 5 D districts. Gerrymandering for example, might attempt to make two 80% D districts, and then eight 42.5% D districts.
MaryJane
@artem1s:
He also has the bad luck of having an incredibly stupid electorate and a worthless MSM.
Roger Moore
@PaulW:
Party registration is only loosely connected to vote support. A lot of people who don’t register with a party are just as firmly committed to that party as the party members are. The number of independents includes a large group of reliable Republican voters who just aren’t registered that way.
The Republicans have recently been seeing a decline in registrations in favor of independents, but that’s mostly defection from the right wing of the party who are fed up with their insufficient craziness. When election time rolls around, those people will tend to hold their noses and vote Republican anyway. This is a big part of what was feeding the unskewed polls nonsense. The people doing the “unskewing” were assuming 2010 party registration numbers but 2012 polling results. That skewed the numbers badly because 2012 independents included a large block of people who had given up their Republican registration but were still going to vote a straight Republican ticket.
Comrade Jake
@schrodinger’s cat: Their job is to report what both sides are saying, full stop.
kindness
I don’t agree with the premise presented here. I don’t think most Republicans are TeaHaddists. I think most are silent Republicans. You know, the old silent majority thing while being a minority in the full spectrum of the populace. Possibly a majority within the Republican scheme of things but certainly not within the Daddy Warbucks class nor the media enablers.
Having said that that whole silent thingy? It applies to the actions too. They won’t say anything till they don’t get their A) first check B) Medicare premium payment or C) their garbage picked up. So we are stuck with the TeaHaddists running the show. Sucks.
balconesfault
One structural problem is that the 27%ers are going to always vote, even in otherwise very low turnout elections. The Dems need a similarly sizable and motivated base. Doesn’t help that so many Dems have been willing to piss on the unions in the media to make themselves look more “fair”.
schrodinger's cat
OT: Did anyone see Colbert’s interview with Phillip Mudd? Jon Stewart could take lessons on how to interview torture apologists from Colbert.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Roger Moore: not really a minor nit. In early ’95 Clinton was “the incredible shrinking president” (Time magazine still mattered) and being mocked for going on TV and angrily declaring “I am too relevant!”. Gingrich was the future. Barely a year later Newton Leroy was a joke (thanks in no small part to gleeful warrior Pat Schroeder, whom I miss), and six months after that the Dole campaign was trying to lock him in the attic with the Two Pats
Kay
@Comrade Jake:
This is one problem I really do think markets will handle.
If all they’re doing is reciting what anyone can find on a campaign website and then adding some personal anecdotes and speculation, they aren’t adding any value. We just saw this play out in the 2012 election, with Nate Silver versus the yarn-spinners. People really do need to know what is factual and what is not re: the healthcare law.
If they’re not planning on correcting GOP falsehoods, they could limit the damage they’re doing by not repeating them. Just stick to straight politics. That’s a real option for them. There’s no rule that says they have to repeat things that aren’t true, even in slavish service of “both sides”. Just omit both the lie and the rebuttal.
Ultimately, people will find out what’s in the health care law, through one or another avenue. It just won’t be through commercial media. That’s a decision Chuck Todd is making, “not from me!”
WereBear
@schrodinger’s cat: Oh, that’s easy:
It’s to keep people from realizing one of the political parties warring for the country’s future is batshit insane.
Except for mass shootings, missing white women, the long lines at Apple launches, and misinformation about prescription drugs, that’s pretty much all they do these days.
peach flavored shampoo
PSU’s Sandusky diddled little boys. Ohio State University has a charity set up to help underpriveleged youngsters. Both sides work to change little childrens’ lives!
Signed,
Chuck Toddler
MomSense
@Comrade Jake:
Damn I was watching him this morning but he was so insufferable before he said that I had already turned it off.
WTF is the job of the news media if not to educate the public about the particulars of policy??? So if the President, whose role is ad man, doesn’t “sell” his policy well enough such that the opposition can tell lies about it, the media are not supposed to provide objective information (dare I say facts?) to the discussion?
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@schrodinger’s cat:
I’ve just seen far too much backsliding on key issues these last few years, and not only not from lack of trying but because of public snapback FROM us trying, to really have any faith in much anymore. About the only thing we seem to have made actual forward progress on is Gay Rights, and as major as that is, it’s offset by drastic losses and setbacks on workers right, climate issues, gun issues, economic issues, etc. Between scorched earth tactics, a media that absolves the GOP with ‘both sides same thing’ ad nauseum, and an electorate that loves ideas until they come from ‘hippies’, at which point which they swing so fucking hard the other way it causes vertigo…
Yeah. Obama is great but it keeps seeming more apparent to me that the best he’s managed is staunch the bleeding of a country that the GOP institutionally owns top to bottom.
Comrade Jake
@MomSense: I know, it’s a fairly astonishing viewpoint. But I have little doubt that it’s one shared by most of the media. It explains a lot, actually.
Tone in DC
@schrodinger’s cat:
Amen to less of that. “Omigod we’re DOOMED” is past tired.
And don’t forget, according to these oh so Serious People in the media, Obama lost the 2012 election and the g00pers took the Senate.
The Big Dog told us a while back, these winger idjits cannot even add and subtract. Don’t give them so much credit, they do not deserve it.
schrodinger's cat
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: I know, its easy to lose hope and if we do, they win. Things did not get this bad in 8 years, so it is going to take more than 2 presidential terms to right all the wrongs since Reagan. However I do think we are moving in the right direction.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Comrade Jake: the rise of “fact-checking” as some sort of specialized, and minor, branch of political coverage says a lot, and none of it is good. And even there, the ref-working of the MSM by the right is apparent. A flat out lie is only somewhat un-true if “some people” believe it.
Also, too, as is best evidenced by the gun debate, most reporters, even as they preach the gospel of Both Sides, are deep believers in the cult of the presidency, at least when it comes to blaming Obama for everything.
Kay
@Comrade Jake:
It seems like a real fundamental error to see themselves as somehow giving Obama an unearned advantage by correcting falsehoods. I know they think Obama didn’t sell the law. Even if that’s true, now what? They just keep saying that? Shouldn’t they move past Obama and go to them + viewers and listeners?
It isn’t a closed circle with Chuck Todd, Republicans and Obama, where we’re just listening to these three parties duke it out. What is their role? Just to call the fight? “Obama’s losing messaging!” Thanks! What about the health care law?
Roger Moore
@Kay:
Yep. The ultra-rich will buy up the media companies and turn them into mouthpieces for their personal philosophy. The Invisible Hand at work!
WereBear
The only thing that cheers me up is that credulous old people are the backbone of the Republican party, and they are literally dying off. What’s that stat: average age of a Fox News viewer is over 65?
These people grew up with Walter Cronkite and Ed Murrow: they think Fox News is actual journalism. I don’t know anyone under 50 who falls for that crap.
Fox runs on resentment and prejudice and bitterness and hippie bashing, and it’s completely meaningless to anyone younger than their target audience. We are still running on Nixon’s strategy, but when it goes, it will erode faster than we expect.
I’m hanging onto that.
piratedan
@Kay: educating the public is for suckers, it’s a business Kay, it’s measured in advertising dollars. If these guys believed that there was an actual profit for educating the public, then that’s what they would do. Todd is just the front of the problem, it’s what enables him to be a blatantly duplicitous fucktard is the real issue, his producer, his program director, the people that determine what narrative sells and how to sell it. That’s what TV is, its advertising writ large and translated into “profitable” or “not profitable”, everything else is secondary.
Johnnybuck
@balconesfault: well, there are no unions in the south so that’s not really a factor here. The problem here is that we get near-republicans running as democrats which is really no choice at all (John Barrow I’m looking at you) so there’s little motivation to support, much less vote for someone who talks like his opponent, distances himself as far from the President as possible, and whose only redeeming factor is that he has a “d” by his name, and might get the gavel back in Nancy Smash’s hand.
Villago Delenda Est
@WereBear:
Because Roger Ailes (the Chairman Mao of Faux Noise) was a major player in shaping Nixon’s 2nd and 3rd Presidential elections.
Ailes is up there with the Dark Lord Cheney as a principle avatar of evil.
Jeremy
We need to stop comparing the 90’s republicans to today’s republicans. The 90’s republicans were more popular, more sane, and the party was in a much better place. The same can not be said for today’s party. The party has never been more unpopular in it’s history. As things stand right now based on opinions,polls, and demographic changes the party is looking at 8 years of Obama and potentially 8 years of Hillary Clinton.
The party is looked at as a non governing party and if they go ahead with a government shutdown after the debt ceiling debacle that image will stick. There is a reason why the WSJ editorial page is telling the republicans to back off because the elites know that they are killing any chances they might have in 2014 and 2016.
Kay
I would also say Democrats should be mad at the selling of the health care law. The fact is Democrats, the Democratic Party, have a huge paid corps of people who are supposed to sell Democratic initiatives. This is their job. Once Republicans took the House it’s not like they had anything else new to sell. One would think they’d have all day to think of ways to sell that law, for the past 4 years. Even if I give them that Obama didn’t sell the law effectively, are they just planning on petulantly refusing to do so themselves? Once Obama’s gone, they’re all still Democrats and the health care law is still there. What then?
I would just think once you vote for it, you’re all-in whether you like it or not.
Jeremy
@The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik: Well on Climate issues I disagree. The country has made tremendous progress reducing carbon emissions, clean energy production has increased by a large amount since the President was elected, and the president is continuing his climate change agenda through EPA regulations.
Jeremy
@Kay: Thank you ! Many of these democrats sit on their butts expecting the President to do all the heavy lifting. Then they start complaining.
Kay
@piratedan:
He actually gets on my nerves because he’s so thin-skinned and defensive.
Decide. Just be a hack and revel in it, but skip the anguish. They talk about themselves too much.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
A lot of Blue Dogs decided in 2010 that they would be better off running away from PPACA and saying publicly that they would work to repeal it (the law they passed!) than supporting it. The vast majority of them are out of a job now, but there definitely seems to be a lot of timidity about supporting Obamacare.
I’m happy to say that my (former Blue Dog) Democratic rep is happy to publicly support Obamacare and spends a lot of time touting it, judging from the constant newsletters I get from him. But he seems to be part of a small minority of Democrats, unfortunately.
Chris
@Kay:
There’s also something ludicrous about the media bitching about “losing messaging;” it’s sort of like an Internet service provider cutting off your access and then complaining that you don’t send as many emails as you used to.
Kay
@Jeremy:
It was sort of a mildly interesting political point in 2010 or so. Really, though, move on.
if the health care law is like the other Democratic social programs, and they intend on remaining Democrats, they own it. I just hate the cowardice in saying “HE has to SELL it”. Well, obviously he isn’t to your liking. Now what?
Bobby Thomson
@schrodinger’s cat:
“Reliable predictor” doesn’t mean “predicts with 100% reliability,” just that the factor makes it more likely than not. If past events matter, then they are a reliable predictor.
Chris
@Mnemosyne:
Sounds about as stupid as Al Gore’s decision to separate himself from the Clinton legacy.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: Ezra Klein reportered (what isn’t really surprising but worth remembering) that a lot of the individual House Dems he interviewed didn’t understand what was in the bill, so elected Dems often made for lousy surrogates, and of course no small number of them have their own futures and resentments that interest them more than helping the country. I don’t watch a lot of CNN, so I don’t see him much, but from what I see Paul Begala is one of the few really effective Dem TV debaters, which is in part because solutions don’t fit on bumper stickers.
Along the same lines, Michael Grunwald said a lot of them didn’t understand the difference between “stimulus” and “bail out”.
LanceThruster
@c u n d gulag:
Here’s to alcohol : The cause of … and answer to all of life’s problems. ~ Homer Simpson
Betty Cracker
@Kay: You’d think so, huh? I don’t know what you’re hearing where you are, but in this Obamacare battleground state, the conversation is dominated by Republican lies about the law. They do control state government and have a larger megaphone, but there’s not nearly enough push-back.
FSM bless her, K. Sebelius has been down here to call the GOP out for its outrageous sabotage (including stripping the insurance commissioner of the ability to manage rates! FFS!). But too many of the local Dems are cravenly hiding under their desks. It’s infuriating.
WereBear
@piratedan: But it is supposed to do public service; it’s right in the charter. In exchange for reaping insane profits, they do news and public education.
Of course, the Republicans are busy knocking that down; people are astonished when I tell them that they are public airwaves and we are supposed to be getting something for it.
Bringing back the Fairness Doctrine would do a lot. How about that law that kept Fox out of Canada? The one that says “news” is not allowed to lie to the public?
ericblair
@Tone in DC:
Ties in with purity. The only way to be really, truly pure is to sit on your ass tut-tutting and shaking your head at the world while doing nothing to improve it. Otherwise, you could get your hands dirty, and what then? As long as you don’t do anything, nothing’s your fault.
Patrick
@Comrade Jake:
Goodness. If Chuck Todd truly believes that it is not the media’s role to correct GOP lies about the ACA, then that man is way overpaid. He apparently thinks that the role of the media is simply to be stenographers. Well, stenographers do not get paid what Todd is currently being paid.
Todd’s comment is a disgrace to our media. Unfortunately, he probably speaks for the vast majority of our media considering how incompetent they all are.
Jeremy
@Kay: Exactly !
Splitting Image
In a manner of speaking, it is the other way around. A small national shift in voting trends won’t matter, because so many districts are gerrymandered so that the Republicans win three quarters of a state 60-40 and the Democrats win the rest 90-10.
However, the calculus changes if the shift is large enough in some of the large states that the Democrats can redistrict the congressional districts. Then the Republicans will be in danger of losing a large number of seats 5 and 10 at a time. Pennsylviania, Ohio, Virginia, and Texas will be good candidates for this. The G.O.P. can probably stifle any positive changes all the way until 2022 if they keep their present course, but the 2022 elections will be a bloodbath if they do.
More likely they lose a bunch of seats each election between now and then as Democrats retake legislatures and public support for redistricting increases. (Although in fairness, neither of those things will happen without effort.) Pennsylvania ought to be the #1 target for 2014. Even if they can’t dislodge the Republicans in Congress, if they dethrone Corbett and take the state legislature, they can redistrict them for the next round or turn the job over to an independent commission, like California.
liberal
@Jeremy:
You’re out of your ****ing mind. The party started going nuts in about 1980 or so; the transformation was pretty much complete by 1994. Of course, elements of nuttiness date back much earlier than even 1980.
It’s reasonable to argue that it’s even worse now than it was then in 1994, and that it’s getting worse and worse over time, but it was plenty bad after the 1994 elections.
liberal
@WereBear:
IMHO adjudicating “truth” is something best left out—who decides what’s a lie?
But bringing back the Fairness Doctrine would be great.
schrodinger's cat
OT: Whatever happened to Bernard Finel, who would post those hand wringing posts about how Obama is doomed after Bengazi and the first debate? He doesn’t seem to post here any more.
Mnemosyne
@Bobby Thomson:
Sort of. Think of the recent kerfuffle here over the US intervening in Syria. Many people here felt that the US’s past history in Iraq was a reliable predictor of our actions in Syria and freaked out because they felt sure that, based on past events, the US was going to bomb Syria.
Of course, that didn’t happen and we ended up on the diplomatic road instead, because past events matter but are not always a reliable predictor of future events. In fact, our past history in Iraq probably led to the diplomatic outcome, which means that those events mattered but led to a different outcome than the one that was predicted.
piratedan
@WereBear: sounds like we need a class action FCC complaint
chopper
@liberal:
isn’t that exactly what he’s saying?
RaflW
@PaulW: I believe the Pew Poll had repeal and don’t replace (the GOP rallying cry for the shutdown) at the earthquake inducing massive majority of … 23%.
Not even the storied 27% we’d come to expect.
I’ve been really irritated at all the people who say a majority oppose Obamacare. 42% approve. And, 27% want it fixed/improved. To my math, that’s 69% who want Obamacare or something better.
The GOP is misreading this like crazy. I wonder why that is.
Roger Moore
@Mnemosyne:
Has Schiff finally dropped out of the Blue Dog Caucus? I guess he’s been willing to move to the left along with his district.
MattF
@liberal: I think the crazies took over in the 90’s– one only has to look at Noot and the multiple cases of Clinton Derangement to see that there was a big problem. On the other hand, there were still moderates and even honest-to-goodness Republican Liberals back then. My own district, for example, was represented by Connie Morella, who was well to the left of most Democrats. But that was then.
xian
@Patrick: Ginger Balls is a defensive twerpish hack.
Mnemosyne
@Roger Moore:
Yep, he dropped out a couple of years ago. I think he was still an official member during the PPACA debate, but he was a very strong supporter of that legislation, so that may be when he dropped out. It happened very quietly IIRC — I had to look him up and see he was no longer on the list.
dogwood
I think that what will surprise the anti- Obama talking heads will be the fact that not everyone who views the ACA negatively will be in favor of shutting the government down to destroy it. Despite wide public disapproval of Scott Walker and his policies, the Democrats couldn’t pull off a recall. The majority of the public doesn’t live and breathe politics 24/7, but that doesn’t mean they are stupid. People’s views about policy vary in intensity. In the short run the republicans and the President will see their polling numbers decline, but in the long run, the Republicans are on shakier ground. If the general public starts to view the Republican Party as a party that is consistently willing to shut down the government to get its way, that will eventually become an albatross around its neck.
themann1086
Good Everclear reference in the title, by the way. Actually heard it on the radio earlier this week.
WereBear
Are you going to argue with me about Immanuel Kant? Do you know the risk you are running?
:)
WereBear
@piratedan: That would be SWEEEEET.
How does that work? Getting the right lawyer on board?
Poopyman
Actually, that’s a single sentence unnecessarily broken. Into two.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@schrodinger’s cat: I always wondered where that jackass came from. He wrote as if he had some reputation that we should all respect as if it were Cartman’s authoriteh. Whatever, I’m glad he went back there.
schrodinger's cat
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I have no idea where John found him.
Tone in DC
@ericblair:
Gotta agree with that.
And there are a lot of purity trolls around here in Humidity Central. I see these tut-tutters at my usual watering hole, at happy hour. They want to watch CNN at the bar.
agrippa
@Frankensteinbeck:
true.
Boehner is the Speaker; he is responsible.
cvstoner
This is what happens to a democracy that allows political parties to gerrymander voter-proof majorities: You have the end of democracy.
boatboy_srq
@Kay:
It’s as good an explanation as any why pay TV subscriptions are falling year-on-year: why bother with “news” when the Internet is far more effective at actually publishing journalism, and with Roku and Hulu who needs FiOS TV?
@WereBear:
That’s Capitalism at work, donchano – it’s how Job Creators™ are able to go on Job Creatin’. “Sane” profits went out the window when Prosperity Gospel came in.
EconWatcher
@schrodinger’s cat:
Remember the other dude who began and ended as an FPer here during the Helen Thomas kerfuffle? He said something pretty dumb right off the bat. I can’t remember what it was, but he was eaten alive within days of arrival and never seen again. Good times.
J R in WV
@Comrade Jake:
No, no, Dude, their job is to tell which side is LYING their asses off !!!!
Death panels!
Beauracratic decisions that you can’t see your doctor!
etc, etc, etc……
These are lies, and we all here know which party is telling these lies.
mericafukyea
Just stfu with your ridiculous fearmongering ball juice Doug. You are embarassing yourself.
Nikolita
Late, but good song.