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When we show up, we win.

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Days Since JD Vance Insulted Women Across America: Zero

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

“Loving your country does not mean lying about it’s history.”

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Donald Trump, welcome to your everything, everywhere, all at once.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

You can’t love your country only when you win.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

I’m just a talker, trying to find a channel!

Tick tock motherfuckers!

White supremacy is terrorism.

Be a traveling stable for those who can’t find room at the inn.

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

The words do not have to be perfect.

In short, I come down firmly on all sides of the issue.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

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Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Bad news for Ron DeSantis is great news for America.

You are here: Home / Open Threads / Yes I think it can be easily done

Yes I think it can be easily done

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I’m sure Ruth Marcus and Bobo and Ron Fournier are having a sad about Harry Reid’s uncivil decision to try to change filibuster rules. But voters don’t give a fuck about it. Yes, your NPR-listening friend who’s been assured that it all started with Bork may care, but he’ll vote Democrat anyway, once he’s done the masturbatory “due diligence” to convince himself he’s an open-minded non-ideological fellow.

Just gut the fucking thing. It’s too much of an impediment to the functioning of the Senate. And, yeah, I’ll still think so if Republicans take the Senate in 2014.

Reader Interactions

216Comments

  1. 1.

    oldster

    Hurray!

    I just sent a note to the White House, thanking the President for standing with Harry Reid in abolishing (or at least restricting) the filibuster.

    A great day for progressives, and for anyone who wants our government to work well.

  3. 3.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Do we know this is actually happening? Has Reid issued a statement personally about it? I am so very sick and tired of political rumors and their low accuracy rate. I’d like something definite.

    (If he does, I support it.)

  9. 9.

    Hill Dweller

    Bork wasn’t filibustered. I’m so tired of hearing wingnuts use Bork to rationalize their insanity.

  11. 11.

    catclub

    “We’re not interested in having a gun put to our head any longer,” McConnell said.

    This is interesting.

    The only gun put to their heads is by the teahadis who will primary them for any deviation from complete obstruction.

  12. 12.

    Belafon

    @catclub: According to the link I put up, someone will say that there has to be 60 votes for cloture, and then a Democrat will challenge it, and then there’s a vote. It takes 51 nos to prevent the rule change, which Republicans have pushed enough Democrats to want to make the rule change.

  13. 13.

    Matt McIrvin

    I’ve heard Bork mentioned so often in this context that when somebody reminded me recently that Bork wasn’t filibustered, but was rejected in a straight up-or-down vote, I was actually surprised. Even though, at the time, my roommate was addicted to watching news of the hearings on TV.

  15. 15.

    Elizabelle

    The only thing that gives me pause is that the Republicans pretty much dared this, with 3 filibusters in a row on DC Circuit Court nominees. They were flaunting it.

    But the system as now is unworkable.

    So nuke the thing.

    And then we REALLY have to turn out our voters in 2014.

  16. 16.

    SFAW

    @Hill Dweller:

    Beat me to it. Thanks.

    As far as rationalizing their insanity – as Roseanne Roseannadanna used to to say, “It’s always something. If it isn’t Bork, then it’s ACORN. If it isn’t ACORN, it’s New Black Panthers” usw.

  17. 17.

    MattF

    I guess the bet is that, whatever happens next year, Dems will win big in 2016. I’m willing to go with that.

  18. 18.

    Tractarian

    And, yeah, I’ll still think so if Republicans take the Senate in 2014.

    I totally agree. If the GOP takes the White House back in 2016, and they have majorities in both houses of Congress, then they should have the ability to repeal the ACA in its entirety.

    The mess that remains will then be, unequivocally, their problem. And the voters can decide, the next time around, whether or not to reward them. That’s the whole point.

    I ain’t scared of a majority-rule Senate.

  23. 23.

    Cacti

    Some highlights from Harry’s floor speech on going nuclear:

    “In the history of the Republic, there have been 168 filibusters of executive and judicial nominations. Half of them have occurred during the Obama Administration during the last four and a half years.”

    “Republicans mounted a first in history filibuster of a highly qualified nominee for Secretary of Defense. Despite being a former Republican Senator and a decorated war hero, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s nomination was pending in the Senate for a record 34 days, more than three times the previous average.”

    “Only 23 district court nominees have been filibustered in the entire history of this country. Twenty of them were nominated by President Obama.”

    No, both sides don’t do it. In the post-civil war era, the nullifcation strategy pursued by the GOP has been without precedent.

  24. 24.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @MattF:
    I believe the bet is that if we don’t do it, Republicans control an entire government function no matter what elections say. This isn’t the legislative filibuster, it’s the presidential nominee filibuster. It has been abused far worse, and the Senate GOP recently announced that they plan to not let Obama appoint any more judges for the rest of his term.

  28. 28.

    SFAW

    @Cacti:

    the nullifcation strategy pursued by the GOP has been without precedent.

    “with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification” –

    – Some guy, talking to some people on 8/28/63
    .
    .
    (Yes, I know that’s not necessarily a strategy.)

  29. 29.

    Elizabelle

    @Cacti:

    Wait to see how network news covers this tonight. Maybe it will be dueling quotes, rather than your 20 out 23 district court nominees, which is quite instructive.

  30. 30.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Cacti:
    And again, I say to everyone who thinks Clinton got the same disrespect: No, he didn’t. Yes, he got disrespect and lots of it, but the opposition to Obama is wildly outside of any precedent. It is a difference in scale so great as to be a difference in kind.

  33. 33.

    Cacti

    @Cervantes:

    I (do really) hate to say this, but I think you had to be there. (Or at least, it helps if you were.)

    Some events really are cultural artifacts for earlier generations. Pearl Harbor wasn’t as personal to boomers as it was to the GI and silent generations. The JFK assassination isn’t as personal to X’ers and millenials. The 9/11 attacks won’t be as personal to the children of this generation.

  34. 34.

    catclub

    @Tractarian: “I ain’t scared of a majority-rule Senate.”

    Yes. If we are going to have more parliamentary type parties, we need a more parliamentary style senate. And it is still terribly ineffective compared to a real parliamentary form of government.

  35. 35.

    Suffern ACE

    So what does it take to remove sitting judges? I’m thinking that will be the next line of attack on removing anything within a whisker to the left of Alito from the benches.

  36. 36.

    Anoniminous

    Senate Rules are 100% insider baseball. The only people who give a damn are already locked-in voters, Democrat or Republican. Wafflers, aka “Moderates,” and loosely attached are persuadable with a Good Government argument; the nice part of that is it’s true: have to get the Federal Government working again.

    Running without data here, so take with salt, yet it looks to me like a Nothing Burger or a slight advantage to Democrats.

  37. 37.

    MattF

    @Cervantes: Well, I’m a leading-edge boomer, and I hold no special love for Kennedy. There’s a lot of alternative-history speculation about what Kennedy would have done had he lived, but what he actually did, both politically and personally, leaves a lot to be desired.

  38. 38.

    Cacti

    @SFAW:

    “with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification” –

    It was certainly used on the issue of civil rights.

    In the case of Obama, it’s being used with everything.

  39. 39.

    Tractarian

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    Kinda OT, will someone please explain the media obsession with Kennedy?

    He was a United States President that got shot in the head. That kind of thing is a big attention-getter.

    Plus, there’s this tradition in Western culture where people commemorate things on the day that they happened, except in future years. (Source) They especially tend to do that when the number of years that have elapsed is a large, round number.

  40. 40.

    gbear

    All I know is that if Reid pulls this off, I am not going to bother visiting major media sites or blogs that link to the major freakout that is going to be with us from now until the end of time. It won’t affect my voting habits – straight Dem ticket every time – but I just don’t want to listen to the Cecil B. Demille level of rending and gnashing that’s about to explode.

  42. 42.

    Cacti

    @Suffern ACE:

    So what does it take to remove sitting judges? I’m thinking that will be the next line of attack on removing anything within a whisker to the left of Alito from the benches.

    Impeachment.

    Removing a sitting member of a co-equal branch of government is quite difficult constitutionally, and was intended to be that way.

  43. 43.

    Chris

    @catclub:

    IMO, the Senate is already quite enough of an antidemocratic institution as it is (what’s the score, 16% of the people elect 50% of the Senate?) without piling the filibuster on top of that.

  45. 45.

    catclub

    @MattF: “but what he actually did, both politically and personally, leaves a lot to be desired. ”

    I was amused to read that Kennedy would have gotten us out of Vietnam – no escalation in 1965.
    Not bloody likely.

  51. 51.

    Chris

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    JFK is the last president assassinated that people actually remember. (Not me, but many people). That probably helps a lot.

    I suppose if Reagan’s assassin had been more effective, we’d be hearing all about that instead.

  52. 52.

    Percysowner

    The thing is, I truly believe that if the Republicans take over the Senate they will abolish the filibuster so fast, heads will spin. They will NEVER allow what they did to Obama and a Democratic Senate to happen to THEM. So the Democrats might as well abolish this and then get some things done for the next 2 years.

  57. 57.

    raven

    “You know, you have such a stunningly superficial knowledge of what went on that it’s almost embarrassing to listen to you.

  58. 58.

    schrodinger's cat

    @raven: Trying to figure something out and asking questions about it is dumbass, got it. Thanks!

    ETA: I was not trying to be smart ass. The whole Kennedy myth is a bit perplexing to me, that’s all. Coverage of the 50 th anniversary of the assassination makes perfect sense.

  59. 59.

    Cervantes

    @MattF: Sure, but whether you like it or not, there is a lot of interest in “Camelot.” Or perhaps a better way to look at it: among people who were alive then, there is still nostalgia for that era. The question is why — and it’s a complicated thing. The sixties were wrenching in many ways and The Three Assassinations were just part of it.

  61. 61.

    Redshirt

    The Republicans have proven – repeatedly and with great success – that very few people care about procedure, or how the Government actually functions. It’s all headlines and soundbites, and maybe actual results.

    Time for the Democrats to learn this lesson. Comity’s not coming back in this generation.

  64. 64.

    catclub

    @schrodinger’s cat: Anybody else remember the Red Dwarf episode where they fix their first cockup (disturbing Oswald just before he shoots) by having Kennedy assasinate himself — otherwise it is still Idlewild Airport?

  65. 65.

    Cacti

    @Chris:

    IMO, the Senate is already quite enough of an antidemocratic institution as it is (what’s the score, 16% of the people elect 50% of the Senate?)

    Pretty much.

    The bottom 25 states for population account for about 55 million people out of about 313 million total.

    Gets even worse with the bottom 10 states. Less than 10 million people get to pick 1/5 of the US Senate.

  66. 66.

    Anoniminous

    @Chris:

    The Senate was a recapitulation of the House of Lords, designed and instituted to put a block on the House. Since the US didn’t have enough aristocrats the Founders created one. To ensure in Madison’s words “the opulent” and “agrarian interests,” i.e., Southern slave holders, had control of the Senate senators were parceled two per state and were originally elected by the state legislatures.

  68. 68.

    Tractarian

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    Sure but other assassinated Presidents never get the same amount of coverage, even Lincoln, whose death was no less traumatic and possibly changed the history of the Republic.

    This is actually a good point.

    Anyone remember the media frenzy surrounding the centennial of the McKinley assassination?

  69. 69.

    Cervantes

    @schrodinger’s cat: Trying to figure something out and asking questions about it is dumbass, got it.

    No, don’t pay attention to that. It’s just an aberration. Questions asked in good faith are useful and welcome.

  70. 70.

    catclub

    @Cervantes: “The sixties were wrenching in many ways and The Three Assassinations were just part of it. ”

    So are The Three Tenors an improvement? I guess they were 80’s.

  72. 72.

    Cris (without an H)

    @Tractarian: Anyone remember the media frenzy surrounding the centennial of the McKinley assassination?

    Well, you go into that story, you have to say the words “Emma Goldman” on TV, and I think you’re only allowed to do that on PBS.

  73. 73.

    Chris

    @catclub:

    I don’t see how TF anyone would’ve gotten us out of Vietnam unless they were willing to destroy their own presidency, which most of those people don’t like to risk. The trend from the late forties onwards was for every successful presidential candidate to try and out-McCarthy his opponent by looking tougher on communism (Eisenhower and the Republicans did it in 1952, Kennedy and the Democrats did it in 1960), and if you didn’t want to be unseated you’d damn well better take a hard line and not blink.

    Toss in the fact that Asia came with plenty of its own baggage, with the notion that we’d “lost” China and, if not lost Korea, certainly not won it either. And that baggage tended to be laid at the feet of Democrats (thus has it ever been), also a factor. There was a whole sentiment of “God damn it we are NOT losing Vietnam, too.” All that is what Kennedy would’ve had to take on if he’d tried to get us out of Vietnam in the mid-sixties.

    (Heck, from what we know of LBJ, he didn’t want to be in Vietnam. But he accepted the whole thing as a political necessity. Somehow, I don’t see any reason to think JFK would’ve been more virtuous).

  74. 74.

    Jennifer

    Glad Harry pulled the trigger. Funny how in all the media hand-wringing about “destroying the comity of the Senate” not once has it been mentioned that the whole term “nuclear option” arose out of Republican threats to use exactly this same rule change because Democrats were blocking a few Bush appointees to the bench, among them the horrid Janet Rogers Brown. Remember the whole “Gang of 12” who negotiated a deal with Republicans to let some, though not every single one, of Bush’s horrible appointees through, in return for rejecting I think it was a grand total of 3 and a GOP pledge to leave the filibuster rules intact.

    In a much less extreme example, the Democrats negotiated with the majority in order to get some of what they wanted. The GOP negotiating strategy in this case has all along been “no.” They’ve not offered any type of deal in return for leaving the rules unchanged; instead they’ve just increased their obstructionism.

    And as for the whole “we want to permanently reduce the number on the DC appeals court” bullshit they were using as an excuse, if anyone thinks for one second that once a Republican president was back in office they wouldn’t immediately move to stock the 3 vacancies with rightwing loons, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

  76. 76.

    Cacti

    @Tractarian:

    Anyone remember the media frenzy surrounding the centennial of the McKinley assassination?

    The Kennedy assassination is a different animal than the other 3 assassinations of a POTUS, not in importance, but only because it’s the only one that happened in the television age. If there was real time footage of Booth shooting Lincoln, it would seem much less a relic of a distant age.

  78. 78.

    Suffern ACE

    @Gin & Tonic: The other thing that keeps this interest alive is that Kennedy was assasinated under a different government system than say McKinley or Garfield. It’s easier to “accept the official version of the facts” in those cases. Now the interest is driven by the conspiracy theorists who want to always look fo the evidence of a coverup. Had Hinckley succeeded and Reagan had died, you would have had the same thing. Endless “Who killed Reagan” yarns, even though Hinckley was clearly insane.

    The idea that Kennedy was killed by the CIA/Mafia/KGB/PermaGov whatever, makes him a martyr of some sort.

  80. 80.

    Anoniminous

    Damn. They are voting.

    Due to the way the change is worded count “No” votes – we want to see 50 or above.

  81. 81.

    Randy P

    @Tractarian: No, but I’m sure we’ll get a bunch of Lincoln stories in the spring of 1865. There was a brief flurry of articles around the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War, and articles continue to pop up on the 150th anniversaries of various significant events during the War (most recently, Gettysburg — the battle, and then the speech).

    I don’t even remember learning about McKinley’s presidency or assassination in history class, but I don’t think my history education was very good. To this day, even though I’ve tried to fill in some of the gaps over the years, I still don’t know who shot him or why.

  83. 83.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Look at all those people milling around talking to each other. Are they trying to influence the last few votes? This doesn’t seem tense, and I would expect it to be tense.

  86. 86.

    PsiFighter37

    It’s gone.

    Manchin is useless, and Pryor is just trying to save his ass. Levin has been a dick as of late too.

    Good on all the other red-state Dems voting the right way.

  87. 87.

    NotMax

    @Cervantes

    Don’t let it be forgot
    That once there was a spot
    For one brief shining moment that was known
    As Camelot.

    @catclub

    While speculation weighs heavily to what you suggest, it’s not a slam dunk.

    The lessons learned about deference to the military and intelligence from both the Bays of Pigs (compliance) and the missile crisis (skepticism shading to antagonism), together with his already having ordered the pullout of a significant number of ‘advisers’ in Viet Nam in 1963 also must be taken into account.

    But it remains speculative. Certainly though, he would not have had the carte blanche accorded LBJ in the aftermath of the assassination.

  88. 88.

    Chris

    @Cervantes:

    The question is why — and it’s a complicated thing.

    The sixties, or so we’re always told, was an absolute shit show – more assassinations, campus shootings, urban riots, white backlash, Vietnam, the rise of fear- and hate-based politics. But most of that was after Kennedy. Could it be as simple as “people remember him fondly because his presidency was the last one during which things were going smoothly, and they like to imagine that if he’d lived he could’ve guided us through all that and it all would’ve turned out differently?”

  90. 90.

    Cervantes

    @Chris: OT — way OT — but to me the question isn’t “how TF anyone would’ve gotten us out of Vietnam” but rather: What TF were we doing there in the first place? Your three paragraphs (inadvertently) make it sound very mysterious, as if elves and pixies and the ghost of Tadeusz Kościuszko dragged us in, despite our keening protestations.

    Also, too, Quemoy. Not to mention Matsu.

  93. 93.

    Anoniminous

    According to CSPAN 48-52 — which means the rule is repealed.

    Holy damn. I’ve never, ever, seen the Senate move this fast on something this important.

  94. 94.

    jonas

    @Hill Dweller: *Thank you!* Bork wasn’t filibustered. Liberals, led by Ted Kennedy, started a public relations campaign to reveal what a reactionary Bork really was and he went down in a full Senate vote. The man was a complete kook. He had no business being near any court, much less the Supreme Court. Remember, Scalia was a *compromise* candidate after Bork tanked and was approved close to unanimously, IIRC. That’s how insane Bork was.

  95. 95.

    Mnemosyne

    @Tractarian:

    Anyone remember the media frenzy surrounding the centennial of the McKinley assassination?

    Exactly. But the Kennedy assassination is something that happened within the memory of the people who are currently in charge of the media, so therefore we have to have a 24/7 frenzy about something that happened 50 years ago.

    Though I’m sure that my nieces and nephews will be wondering what the big friggin’ deal was about the Challenger disaster when that 50 year anniversary comes around and is accompanied by a similar media frenzy.

  96. 96.

    MattR

    @dmsilev: According to DKos, Levin, Manchin, Pryor.

    EDIT: Are they now voting on whether or not they actually meant it with their first vote? Is that what McConnell just forced?

  97. 97.

    Tractarian

    @Cacti: No doubt. It really is no mystery why the media obsesses over, of all things, this.

    Plus, the centennial of McKinley’s assassination was the same week as 9/11 so even if there was a media frenzy no one would have remembered

  99. 99.

    Hill Dweller

    @MattR: Pryor seems to think being a coward is going to help him get reelected. If people want a Republican, they’ll vote for the Republican.

  101. 101.

    Suffern ACE

    @MattR: I think they needed to wait for Corey Booker to get into the senate so that no one had to be the “One Vote” in a 51-48 tally.

  102. 102.

    Anoniminous

    @MattR:

    Welcome to the Senate. We should be grateful they don’t have to ask the Sacred Geese if the gods approve.

    (Roman governmental institutions and procedures, we haz them.)

  105. 105.

    scav

    Have to admit, I never got the mystique either, but for that, sometimes one just has to be there. He certainly seemed to know his media tech bleeding edge better than his opponents. And people don’t always have media charisma for understandable or even laudable reasons, look at all the quivering over la palinista and shoulders with attached planes — explain that in 50 years. So I was left with a politician, necessary mix of good and bad that died in a fashion that nailed the buddy holly et al meme. bingo, mythos. Add a bit of reality breaking into into the middle class bubble? (Those things don’t happen in our community, they happen to those other people, a-la 9/11 and Katrina.) Maybe.

  106. 106.

    Gin & Tonic

    @jonas: Oh, and Bork was rejected in Judiciary by 9-5, yet nobody objected to its going to the floor (“upperdown vote”), where he lost 42-58. Just for history’s sake.

  108. 108.

    satby

    @schrodinger’s cat: Ok, I skipped the thread to answer, so sorry if someone else already said this. For many people, Kennedy was a young, vibrant war hero; the first Roman Catholic elected (until then the anti-Catholic bigorty had doomed other Catholic candidates, even as the Roman Catholic population of the country grew), and the promise of expanding civil rights came with his administration. The fact that he was shot down in cold blood, that it was captured on film, and that Lyndon Johnson used the nation’s shock and sorrow to push the civil rights and Great Society programs as a homage to the slain President at the time all factor in for many of us who were alive then.

  109. 109.

    schrodinger's cat

    @raven: You probably didn’t read all my comments. I get that the media will cover the 50 th anniversary of the assassination. What perplexes me is this whole myth surrounding Kennedy and his family. When John John’s plane went missing there was wall to wall coverage on TV, and he did not even hold any elected office. While the anniversaries (even the ones ending in zeroes) of other slain Presidents come and go without nary a mention by the TV folk.

  110. 110.

    raven

    @Cervantes:
    INR’S Vietnam Study in Context

    In retrospect, as the INR study shows, those of us who worked there on Vietnam in the 1960’s have the ironic satisfaction of knowing that most of our forecasts have been vindicated by history. We can only lament that, while we were heeded, we were unable to persuade, sway, or prevail when it came to the ultimate decisions.

  112. 112.

    Gin & Tonic

    @jonas: Oh, and BTW, Scalia wasn’t a compromise candidate after Bork tanked. Fat Tony was already on the court, having been approved the year before. He was a pseudo-compromise, after Rehnquist was appointed chief, and had a contentious vote. Tony was a couple months later and nobody had the stomach for another battle (and nobody wanted to block the first Italian-american nominee.) That’s why he got a 98-0.

  113. 113.

    liberal

    Normally I take a relatively firebagger attitude about things. For giving, I give to more liberal Dems.

    But, strategically, the Party should be rewarded for doing something right (for once). Anyone have suggestions as to what kind of contribution (with a note about this event attached, of course) would be best, tactically? I was thinking the DSSC or whatever it’s called, but maybe there are particular Senators?

    That said, WTF is wrong with Levin?

  116. 116.

    PeakVT

    Kennedy is interesting because he was pretty (as was his wife), and because he died before he disappointed too many people, leaving everybody free to speculate how wonderful everything might have been if only.

    That’s my cynical take, at least.

  120. 120.

    liberal

    @Chris:

    There was a whole sentiment of “God damn it we are NOT losing Vietnam, too.”

    Agreed. Too bad we had to murder literally millions of Indochinese doing so. (Not going to blame V vets; if you read newspapers/periodicals from that era, you can see how screwed up the flow of info was. Not to mention conscription, or the fact that the majority who volunteered perhaps knew they’d get the most dangerous assignments if they didn’t.)

  122. 122.

    raven

    @schrodinger’s cat: What “myth”? The myth that he would have gotten us out of Vietnam? The myth that Bobby was some kind of choir boy?

    Whatever you or I think of the Kennedy family story I don’t get how you don’t see how compelling it is as a story? Everyone in the country and most people around the world were touched by it. How do you feel when the anniversary of John Lennon’s death roles around? Are you stunned by the interest?

  123. 123.

    NotMax

    @schrodinger’s cat

    It’s the difference between living memory and dead history.

    Tons of coverage of the 50th anniversaries of Pearl Harbor and of D-Day, not so much as the years roll on past 50.

    That it was an event which forced TV to soberly rise to the occasion and stamped television news as a go-to source is also a factor.

  124. 124.

    liberal

    @Cervantes:
    Also, I’m pretty sure that our involvement started in 1946.

    And don’t forget that (IIRC) by 1954 we were funding 75% of the French war effort.

  125. 125.

    scav

    @schrodinger’s cat: Good chunk of that is just the nature of celebrity, not there for a reason, more as a knee-jerk habit. No one questions when it’s royalty, and that’s just as soap-opera as anything. Why did the bbc or guard see fit to inform me that one of the princes of Orange was in a coma after a skiing accident? (I clicked because I thought “Like the William of Silent and whole Glorious position isn’t dead yet?” which is a variant of stupid.)

  127. 127.

    raven

    @liberal:

    ” majority who volunteered perhaps knew they’d get the most dangerous assignments if they didn’t” That’s a big perhaps.

  128. 128.

    SFAW

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    of other slain Presidents come and go without nary a mention by the TV folk

    If Coolidge, Harding, or Hoover had been assassinated, the probably would have gotten the same “treatment” as Garfield and McKinley.

    Kennedy was the youngest President ever, the first born in this century, and the pre-Vietnam optimism was fairly strong re: where the country was heading. Certainly there were problems, and not everyone shared the optimism, but his assassination was pretty traumatic at the time. And (almost) everyone had a TV, and were caught up in the (brief) search for Oswald, Oswald’s murder, and so forth. Add to that Jackie as grieving widow, Caroline and John-John being so young, and it’s not something that people (of that generation) would forget easily.

    Kennedy had a number of flaws, and he was not as liberal as Hubert Humphrey, but his charisma (etc.) was palpable.

  129. 129.

    liberal

    @satby:

    …and the promise of expanding civil rights came with his administration.

    My recollection is that he wasn’t all that great on civil rights, when actually in office.

  132. 132.

    Mnemosyne

    @raven:

    I remember when John Lennon was murdered. I have zero memory of Kennedy’s assassination, since I wasn’t even born until 6 years later.

    That’s the point she’s trying to make to you — it’s significant to you because you remember all of these events, and where you were, how you felt, etc. For those of us who weren’t born yet, they’re pretty abstract. I remember Jackie Onassis, not Jackie Kennedy.

  133. 133.

    Matt McIrvin

    @catclub: Most of the boomers were kids or teenagers when Kennedy was killed, and it was probably one of the very first political things they really paid attention to. And then it was effectively the prelude to the entire Vietnam era, which dominated their youth. Imagine someone who was ten or fifteen years old on September 11, 2001, and how they would see the world and subsequent history as a result. It was kind of like that.

    So it makes intuitive sense to them to draw a causal connection, whether it was there or not (I personally don’t have much of an opinion about this).

    That’s also the appeal of the theories that Kennedy was killed so that escalation would happen in Vietnam (again, I have no opinion about the factual merits).

  134. 134.

    Mike E

    Andrea Mitchell leads with…something other than the filibuster. I believe this confirms what a nothing burger this whole panty-twister is.

    Would you like fries with my mixed metaphor?

  135. 135.

    liberal

    @raven:
    Maybe; I wasn’t around at the time. But I read something recently that draftees really did have a higher casualty rate.

  136. 136.

    Frankensteinbeck

    So, what does Obama do now? How may current high level bureaucrats are packing their bags, knowing they can finally be replaced? Are we looking at a flood of appointments in the Senate going on and on for months?

  137. 137.

    Jay C

    @Cervantes:

    [re Vietnam] What TF were we doing there in the first place?

    Well, as the Pentagon Papers revealed, we were simply following (to disaster, but never mind for now) an “anti-Communist” policy going back to the Truman Admin’s decision to back Charles De Gaulle’s re-occupation/re-colonialization of Viet Nam in 1946. Now Le Grand Charles had his own rationales: but over the years, keeping a Communist government out of power in VN became standard US policy: first, backing the French, and then, when the French were defeated, stepping in to “manage” the situation. By staging the Geneva Conference of 1954 to partition Viet Nam a la Korea, and hoping it would take. Of course, the Vietnamese had other ideas….
    The main thing about Vietnam, though, was that for 9 years after Geneva (a lifetime in American political terms) nothing much happened – until Diem’s Government fell apart in 1963, and what had been a minor conflict in a distant country flared up into another Big International Deal.

  138. 138.

    raven

    @Mnemosyne:Oh, I get it. You and she understand the impact of something YOU remember but can’t fathom why something of equal, or greater, importance that YOU don’t.

  139. 139.

    liberal

    @raven:
    Yes; I knew there was some pretty positive interaction during WWII (and in particular with the OSS).

    I don’t have time to track down the 1946 date, but, again, the fact is that by Dien Bien Phu, we were bankrolling the French war effort.

  140. 140.

    schrodinger's cat

    @raven: I think we are talking to cross purposes. To me, someone born long after Kennedy assassination, it seems like distant history and not quite as compelling as it is to many others. So I was trying to figure out what was so compelling about Kennedy and many of the answers here help me gain some understanding of the Kennedy mystique.

  141. 141.

    Mike E

    @Frankensteinbeck: 93 vacancies in the Federal judiciary. I would love it if they had one of those thermometers we see here for act blue and other fundraisers, where the seats getting filled get enumerated. Put it side by side with the numbers of people signing up for health care/medicaid. Daily.

  142. 142.

    raven

    @liberal: @liberal:

    Draftees vs. volunteers: 25% (648,500) of total forces in country were draftees. (66% of U.S. armed forces members were drafted during WWII)
    Draftees accounted for 30.4% (17,725) of combat deaths in Vietnam.

  143. 143.

    sparrow

    @raven: Why do you respond to people who agree with you in such a pissy way? You must be a seriously unpleasant person to be around. Jeez.

  144. 144.

    liberal

    @Jay C:
    I think the best example of how extreme the anti-Commie nuttiness was was that in the wake of a minor shootup between China and the USSR, a lot of powerful people thought it was just a faint.

    OTOH, the number of people who had it completely right (that the so-called Communist system was terrible, and yet, unfortunately, those forces were often the strongest nationalistic forces in their respective nations) in real time was probably pretty small.

  146. 146.

    Mnemosyne

    @raven:

    You and she understand the impact of something YOU remember but can’t fathom why something of equal, or greater, importance that YOU don’t.

    So you were really upset when the 100th anniversary of McKinley’s assassination didn’t get this same amount of coverage? Or you didn’t really notice, because it’s not something that YOU remember?

    I’m assuming you make a big deal out of Pearl Harbor Day every year, too. After all, just because it’s something YOU don’t personally remember doesn’t mean it wasn’t of greater importance than the assassination of one president.

  148. 148.

    liberal

    @raven:
    As someone put in on a thread where people expressed their surprise re the WWII vs V numbers: “well, in WWII, they basically took everybody.”

  151. 151.

    Anoniminous

    Senate now voting to advance the Millet nomination. 55 Yes, 40 No.

    he-he-he, Fuck You McTurtle.

  152. 152.

    liberal

    @raven:
    Hah hah. I’ll add it to the list of things I’ll never read anytime soon, due to (a) having small children, (b) having just made a pretty major career change not too shy of finishing my 50th decade.

    :-(

  159. 159.

    Kay

    @burnspbesq:

    One wonders how folks like Goodwin Liu and Dawn Johnsen are feeling right about now.

    It is different though. Reid sees this blocking for no reason as akin to the government shutdown (from what I’ve read). He distinguishes it from the blocking that went on prior (Cordray) because then they were coming up with (supposedly) substantive objections. Now they are just announcing they aren’t bringing any of Obama’s nominees up for a vote. That subverts process. It can’t stand, anymore than repealing the PPACA thru shutting down the government could stand. Any time they didn’t like a law they’d simply shut down the government. It was endless, and it would have had repercussions far beyond “Obama’s law”.

    I do have some regret as far as Reid’s working as Obama’s “bad cop” because 1. I think that works, politically (Reid is good at it) , and 2. Obama has sorely needed a real single ally/partner in the Senate. My sense is that would have been Kennedy but he died.

    Reid sees it as protecting BIGGER process mechanisms. It’s true, too.

  161. 161.

    Mnemosyne

    @raven:

    The Kennedy assassination is not as fascinating to people who were born after it happened as it is to people who remember when it happened. Sorry, but that’s just human nature. I don’t think that SC was saying anything that was out of line or saying that it was stupid — she just doesn’t get why it requires five new books about the Kennedys and 24/7 news coverage.

  163. 163.

    mdblanche

    @Jay C:

    nothing much happened – until Diem’s Government fell apart in 1963, and what had been a minor conflict in a distant country flared up into another Big International Deal.

    Yes, if by fell apart you mean assassinated by a US backed coup. Diem was asking for trouble by trying to impose Catholicism on a majority Buddhist country but there was nobody else who had the stature and local backing to take his place. Kennedy didn’t live long enough to see the fallout from that decision, but given the chaos in South Vietnam afterwards withdrawing as planned might have caused South Vietnam to collapse almost immediately. And there’s no way Kennedy could have gotten away with that given the Cold War atmosphere.

  164. 164.

    Matt McIrvin

    @SFAW: Harding died in office and actually seems to have been widely beloved at the time; there was immense national mourning. His status as one of the loser presidents came about because of the revelation of his administration’s scandals mostly after his death.

    I think it’s hard to for us to gauge how the assassination of Garfield or McKinley played for people who were young at the time, simply because nobody directly remembers that now. The killing of Lincoln was such an epochally important thing that it still has some emotional pull.

  165. 165.

    Cervantes

    @Jay C: The main thing about Vietnam, though, was that for 9 years after Geneva (a lifetime in American political terms) nothing much happened – until Diem’s Government fell apart in 1963, and what had been a minor conflict in a distant country flared up into another Big International Deal.

    Diệm’s government didn’t just fall apart. The US government was instrumental. As you might expect, JFK’s staff was divided, but the CIA supported the coup — even paid for it in cold hard cash.

    And to answer someone else’s question: Diệm was assassinated on November 2, 1963.

  166. 166.

    raven

    @Mnemosyne: What is the point? Nothing requires anything and no one is required to read or watch any of this? I don’t think he or she was saying anything “out of line” but the fact is that there is an audience for the books and programs you reference. I

  167. 167.

    catclub

    @Frankensteinbeck: ” Are we looking at a flood of appointments in the Senate going on and on for months? ”

    Why not? They will not be occupied with legislation to get through the House.

  169. 169.

    SFAW

    @Matt McIrvin:
    Yeah, I had forgotten about Harding. I’ll attempt to weasel out of it by saying I had used the word “assassinated,” but it’s still a mistake on my part.

  171. 171.

    raven

    @Cervantes: They are all right here on my bookshelf. Try “Late Thoughts on and Old War” by Phil Bielder. I’m currently into “The Valley of Death” about Dien Bien Phu.

  172. 172.

    eemom

    wrt getting the Kennedy fascination vs not and what it has to do with age: I was 15 months old at the time so I don’t remember it at all. However, I’ve gotten a very clear sense from my Mom of how intensely the public was fascinated by John and Jackie for all the various reasons noted above. Charisma, they indeed had in spades.

    So I get it, even though I wasn’t exactly “there.”

  173. 173.

    satby

    @satby: And for those asking about Viet Nam, what has been lost in the mists of time was that the original conflict was between Ho Chi Minh’s Communists (allied with the Chinese Communists) and the French, and the French were our allies. As well as that whole, “fighting Godless Communism” thing we got committed to in the 50s. We originally got involved as support to our allies.

  175. 175.

    Cervantes

    @raven: Sure. Wasn’t aiming the recommendation at you specifically; just throwing it out for anyone who might be interested.

  176. 176.

    Yatsuno

    @Frankensteinbeck: This means I kan haz head at my agency naow. Which gives us a tool to argue for an actual budget so the agency that gets the revenue can, you know, GET THE REVENUE.

  179. 179.

    Cervantes

    @satby: We originally got involved as support to our allies.

    I’m not sure that’s entirely accurate. Altruism has never been the hallmark of US foreign policy.

  183. 183.

    Jay C

    @liberal:

    Spot on: “nationalism”, per se, was always discounted as a motivation during the [American phase of the] Vietnam War by most domestic officialdom and media. At the time, any reference to nationalism – still less the idea that the conflict there might be some sort of civil war – was usually dismissed as “Communist propaganda”, and the entire war reduced to a simplistic Good-Vs-Evil scenario (Good Guys Us and Our Noble Freedom-Loving Allies vs. the Evil Murdering Commies). But as I pointed out in #137, the Vietnamese had other opinions on the matter….

    @mdblanche:

    Exactly: Diem’s regime was in big trouble domestically even before the October coup; American support for the coup-plotters was, AFAICR, proffered as a sort of desperation move, as the US felt that the instability in RVN would be too much of an opportunity for the Communists; and they felt that a “stronger” (i.e. military) South Vietnamese government would do a better job.

    @Cervantes:

    Also, too. My bad for not being more thorough

  184. 184.

    Matt McIrvin

    @SFAW: The thing that strikes me reading about Garfield and McKinley (Sarah Vowell covered them at length in her book Assassination Vacation) was that their deaths were immensely drawn-out, and basically happened because of infection during surgery. McKinley seemed very much like he was going to pull through, for a while. So it must have been a very different experience for the public from the deaths of Lincoln and Kennedy, which happened more suddenly.

    (I’ve heard Lincoln’s death blamed on unsterile surgery too, but it seems much less clear in his case; he was shot in the head and I think he never regained consciousness.)

  185. 185.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @Mnemosyne: I think if you weren’t around but had a parent or an old sibling that was it might be different. I was born 19 years after Pearl Harbor but my dad was there the day after and talked about what he saw; so I do make note of the date.

  186. 186.

    Mike E

    @liberal: since I am a poor wretch of a political operative, my efforts tend to focus on issue advocacy, LTE recruitment, and GOTV activities, all of which I get compensated for (tho not handsomely) so I’m not one to speak about giving money. In my view, and of course YMMV, I would focus $$$ resources on local house races AND even moar local boards and councils. This may look bleak depending where you live (I’m in NC, so, many tears shed over this) but I foresee ’14 as the year the fever breaks, and ’16 as the moment of opportunity for a shift built on the aforementioned local efforts. You may be surprised by some “pop-up” opportunitues, locally.

    Long-game thinking; short-term carpe diem action.

  187. 187.

    Chris

    @Jay C:

    “nationalism”, per se, was always discounted as a motivation during the [American phase of the] Vietnam War by most domestic officialdom and media.

    It’s a recurring problem in international relations: America simply doesn’t grok the concept that nationalism is something that other people have, too. It’s why we’re honestly bewildered when we roll tanks down somebody’s main street and aren’t greeted as liberators, but back in the Cold War it was cranked up to eleven. Largely because so much of the world was recently decolonized and as far as we were concerned, they weren’t “real” countries.

  189. 189.

    satby

    @raven: I knew that, and that Ho had asked the US for help in influencing the French against partition; but given the Cold War dynamic at the time no politician in this country would dare support a Communist against putative allies. So for the knee-jerk “agin Commies” attitude back then, we wasted tens of thousands of young lives and billions in national treasure. And in the end, because it was his country, Ho won.

  191. 191.

    Mike E

    @Elizabelle: No, it was Benghazi Afghanistan being the longest war evah, and she interviewed PBO’s former chief of staff, Chicago Thug whatzis, who ended the seg by jabbing at Andrea with, “When you say ‘nuclear’ I get confused about the subject you’re on…is it Iran? Pakistan?” Lulz.

  193. 193.

    Mike E

    @ruemara: I think it was because of all the promise of a ‘new birth of freedom’ set against the backdrop of staid, resistant institutions who saw a threat to their rein.

    Sound familiar?

  196. 196.

    liberal

    @Mike E:
    In the big picture, yeah, that’s important. I was focusing on this particular “event,” though.

    That said, locally, I’m thinking of trying to teach the local Boston area folks (I thought MA was liberal?) that there’s this thing called “government,” and one of the things this neat thing “government” can do is pay for (drum roll…) traffic lights at intersections that provide pathetic level-of-service at rush hour.

  197. 197.

    Jewish Steel

    @eemom: Duh! Total rock stars, the pair of them.

    Also, this commemorates the first true television age media frenzy. And the media is always the media’s favorite topic.

  199. 199.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Mnemosyne: And since short stretches of history seem immense when you’re a kid, it’s very sensitive to your actual birthdate. I have no recollection of the Vietnam War since that all happened when I was really young. But I really didn’t have a sense of how recent it all must have seemed to adults during the Reagan years, and how much of what was going on then was a direct reaction to those events that were still fresh in memory.

  201. 201.

    Mike E

    @liberal: I think you have a bead on this. We threw off the yoke of local TEA party placeholders on our school board, and now have to somehow do the same with our state’s general assembly. Miles to go…

  202. 202.

    fidelio

    @schrodinger’s cat: I think you would have seen, in the years after Lincoln’s death, a lot of the same reactions and myth-making, if perhaps for different reasons. They dodn’t have our tools, but the effort was there.

    It’s also important to realize what a press-savvy set of people Kennedy and his team were; even before the assassination, the press was fascinated with the Kennedy presidency. They looked terribly young and cool and hip, especially next to bald old Ike and and the prissy Mamie, sweaty Dick and plastic Pat, as well as people like Strom Thurmond (who was old even then). The WW2 generation could say that Kennedy was One of Them (even if they didn’t agree with him about something). Men wanted to be as cool as Jack Kennedy, women wanted to be as lovely and elegant as Jackie. It’s hard to feel the impact of that from years in the future, but it was there, and the Kennedy team worked it for all they were worth, to great effect.

    They were also masters of the art of leaving us wanting more, which is hard to do, so neither the president nor Mrs. Kennedy was on television too much–just enough to whet the appetite, but never enough to completely sate it, let alone wearing out their welcome.

    In addition, the effectiveness of television in impressing the events of the assassination and the following events must not be undereatimated. Consider the impact of the television coverage of 9/11, but with new and different things associated with this astounding event happening every day–the arrest of Oswald, the shooting of Oswald by Jack Ruby, the whole long parade of formal official morning and the funeral, which was a spectacle the likes of which had not been seen since Roosevelt’s death, all of it on television, and with no cable channels to flee to for a little relief.

    Then there were the arguments, the theorizing, the Warren Commission, then more arguments and more theorizing.

    Johnson was also more than willing to use Kennedy’s death to further what he considered important agendas–NASA, the Civil RIghts Act–making support for these things a litmus test for respecting his predecessor, who had been shot down by a treacherous Communist tool, because They didn’t want us to make the US of A a better place.

    I realize this will fall short of explaining things, because it’s hard to tell someone years later why something had such an impact when so much is due to subjective things. I mean, millions of America didn’t like Nixon, but elected him to the presidency twice in spite of it–my father was one who voted for him in spite of not liking him much.

    Figuring these things out–not just the What, but the How and Why of history–is something I like, but it’s not always easy to get my head around some of these causes and effects.

  203. 203.

    fidelio

    @raven: Halberstam is always good, and after the Korea book, there’s The Best and Brightest.

    How are thimgs going with your lovely bride? It sucks having to cope with knowing how little you can do for an ailing loved one except be there for them and hope things will go well.

  206. 206.

    sparrow

    @raven: I’m not disputing that you’re taking someone’s innocuous question way too personally, what I’m saying is that you’re being rude. Your very first response which was to call SC a dumbass. Classy.

  208. 208.

    fidelio

    @Cervantes: I’m glad it was helpful. This is something that’s always amazed me as well, but I could feel it as I was growing up (I was 5 in 1963) even though I didn’t really understand all the reasons that went into making it happen.

    One of the better recent comparisons is the death of Princess Diana. She was not an important person in terms of real political power, but she had the same sort of fascination for people (including the media) that the Kennedys did (and a similar degree of projection of people’s wishes and ideas), and the same sort of high profile.

  210. 210.

    raven

    @tybee: Yea, there a pins and bumper stickers that get sold at vets “events”. There is also “if you weren’t there shut your mouth” items sold right next to the Hanoi Jane urinal targets/

  211. 211.

    Juju

    @SFAW:
    Kennedy was the youngest president elected to office. Theodore Roosevelt was the youngest president to take office.

  213. 213.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @schrodinger’s cat:

    It actually means a lot to those of us who remember, even if we don’t run television networks. Each of us has quirky, individual memories. I just posted this on FB:

    Everybody else is doing their “50 Years Ago Today” remembrances, so I will just mention that exactly half a century ago tonight (November 21) I attended a wonderful pipes-and-drums Tattoo by the Black Watch. They had performed for President and Mrs. Kennedy in Washington only a day or two earlier. I might not have remembered the concert, except that as we were getting in the car afterwards, my then-fiancé accidentally slammed my right hand in the car door and I went to emergency care and couldn’t type so didn’t go to work the next day. But my left hand was unscathed, so I took advantage of the day off and Ken and I were at the jewelry store in downtown Atlanta having our wedding rings sized when someone ran in from the street with the news. A few days later, the Black Watch were back in Washington to play at the President’s funeral. Mournful bagpipes.

  216. 216.

    J R in WV

    @fidelio:

    One more thing. Jackie was the first stylish First Lady, before her they were invisible in the family area of the White House. But she invited TV in to take a tour of the whole White House, the ceremonial parts, the business of government parts, and most interestingly of all, the parts where the Camelot family lived.

    I could see that to many folks, she was the most attractive first lady ever, and she did totally set the style in the early 60s for all women who aspired to be stylish. And Jack was a good looking and stylish young man, too, for the people who like that kind of thing.

    So that was part of it, if such beautiful, wealthy, powerful people could have it all taken away in an instant like that, who could be safe? Plus, there really was the possiblilty of total war, the Cuban Missle crisis was just the other day, and we could have destroyed the world in just a few hours. People forget about the actual policy of destroying the world as part of geopoltics. But it was there.

    I tried to dig a bomb shelter on the crawl space under our house, I was 11, and bedrock was about 14 inches down. Some uneasy nights for a little tyke back then. Having the Kennedy shot and replaced by a country Texan, wow.

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