Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Fight them, without becoming them!

Republicans: The threats are dire, but my tickets are non-refundable!

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

Come on, man.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

Accountability, motherfuckers.

A norm that restrains only one side really is not a norm – it is a trap.

Rupert, come get your orange boy, you petrified old dinosaur turd.

Celebrate the fucking wins.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

“When somebody takes the time to draw up a playbook, they’re gonna use it.”

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

And now I have baud making fun of me. this day can’t get worse.

They fucked up the fucking up of the fuckup!

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

They are not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

You are either for trump or for democracy. Pick one.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

No one could have predicted…

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Open Thread: Mistakes Were Made!

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ETA: This is gonna leave a mark…

George Packer, in the New Yorker:

… [W]hy do I keep having flashbacks to 1972? Some of the parallels are weirdly exact. Whether or not he ordered the Watergate bugging, Richard Nixon ran a campaign of dirty tricks for two reasons: he wanted to run up the score going into his second term, and he was a supremely mean-spirited man. Nixon’s reëlection campaign reached out to as many Democrats as possible (not just elected officials but rank-and-file blue-collar workers and Catholics). Nixon ran not as the Republican Party’s leader but, in the words of his bumper sticker, as just “President Nixon.” His landslide win over George McGovern translated into no Republican advantage in congressional races—the Democrats more than held their own. The Washington Post’s David Broder later called it “an extraordinarily selfish victory.”

Christie’s 2013 reëlection tracks closely with this story: an all-out effort to court Democrats in order to maximize his personal power, and a landslide victory in November, with all the benefit going to the Governor, not to his fellow-Republicans in the state legislature. On Christmas, the Times published a piece about Christie’s long record of bullying and retribution. In it, the Fort Lee traffic jam was mentioned as just one of many cases (and, I have to admit, not the one that stayed with me) of vengefulness so petty that it inescapably called to mind the American President who incarnated that quality, and was brought down by it….

It took months and months for “Watergate” to explode from a ‘two-bit burglary’ to ‘what did the President know, and when did he know it?’ but of course communications technology was much more primitive back in that dead century…

Reader Interactions

69Comments

  2. 2.

    mclaren

    Nixon’s reëlection campaign…

    Only the fucking New Yorker would use a dieresis in a word like “re-election.”

  3. 3.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Little Boots: Okay this cracked me up. I was just about to say that I had the weirdest thought listening to that old video, which was that Gordon Lightfoot’s singing style had something in common with Bullwinkle, of Moose and Squirrel fame. Not that Lightfoot is so terrible, it just suddenly struck me that there was an odd voice resemblance.

    Then I Googled it and it turns out someone did a whole thing based on that. So, not just me apparently.

  6. 6.

    MikeJ

    Eventually, when it got bad enough, even Howard Baker and a few other Republicans felt too much shame in attempting to defend Nixon. I don’t think modern Republicans have one decent person’s ration of shame between everybody in the whole party.

  11. 11.

    Jennifer

    @MikeJ: I have this theory that what is mostly wrong with the world derives from an unfair and baseless distribution of the burden of shame, where the many who have nothing feel crushing shame for their condition despite being in most cases entirely innocent of causing their own economic misery, while the few who have everything and more than they could ever need and whose rapaciousness is in large part responsible for the economic misery of countless others and who SHOULD feel a great deal of shame, feel none at all.

    Shamelessness is a requirement for those enjoying the fruits of a grossly unequal system.

  19. 19.

    srv

    Löön-Juicers, missing that there was no smoking gun in 1000s of pages of emails, desperately seek to equate Wätergate with Bridgeghäzi.

    Fortunately, the people of Nöö Jursee know and embrace their fat man.

  20. 20.

    Steeplejack

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    I just find it interesting that the person who is usually flaying us for being stupid, sloppy herd animals with no intellectual standards suddenly burps up a particle of pure yahoo resentment.

  23. 23.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Little Boots: mclaren once accused me of masturbating to holocaust porn because I asked whether the conditions under which Bradley Manning was held was due to his political status or due to the conditions of military prisons in general. In neither case did I intend to imply that I approved of what was happening.

  24. 24.

    Bill E Pilgrim

    @Little Boots: Wait, and it’s mclaren who’s trolling?

    Just kidding.

    Okay before I get sucked into the quickly forming quicksand of the 70s I’m exiting stage right …or left, even.

  32. 32.

    Steeplejack

    @mdblanche:

    I still use it. Re-election, co-operation, etc., were artifacts of a time when typewriters and newspaper typesetting systems didn’t have the “special” characters available. Now that we have them, why not use them? At the very least, why criticize someone for using them? It smacks of that strain of “Fuck you, nerds! Hyuk, hyuk!” anti-intellectualism and resentment of excellence.

  36. 36.

    srv

    Bobo Goes Oakeshott!

    Schools are good at transmitting what the philosopher Michael Oakeshott called technical knowledge.

    We should call these Bobogasms.

  37. 37.

    mdblanche

    @Steeplejack: I think a lot of it is just how rare they’ve become. It was years before I learned they were a real thing and not just something the New Yorker had made up to look different.

  40. 40.

    PurpleGirl

    OMG! LOL!! ROTFL!!!

    I’m glad I decided to turn the computer back on. That Springsteen/Fallon duo is fantastic. The Jersey Whale has always wanted to meet Springsteen and attend a show and it is karmic that he’s now immortalized in a song by the king. (And it’s probably a tune that the Jersey Whale really loves to boot, that he thinks is an anthem for the working (Jersey) man.

  44. 44.

    gene108

    I signed up for Netflix. I have it streaming through my PS3 without a problem.

    I have a Macbook Pro (5 years old) lap top with the 10.6 version of OSX.

    I tried streaming on my lap top. It says to install a Silverlight plug-in. I do this. I close my browser per the instructions. Open it again and when I try to watch something and it keeps asking me to install Silverlight. I did this several times, but no luck.

    Anyone have any idea why I’m having this problem? It’s first time I’ve had any problem like it.

    I tried the same thing in both Firefox and Safari and got the same problem.

  48. 48.

    Tommy

    @gene108: Wish I could help but I am that strange dude that a few years ago did the reverse switch from a Mac (got my first one in 1987) to a Windows machine. I only stream Netflix through my PS3.

  49. 49.

    Tommy

    @Jennifer: My parents have more money then they can spend in a lifetime. Not Bill Gates money, but millions and millions. One day that money will come to me. My moderate Republican parents are taking a lead from their hippie liberal son (that would be me) and are giving large sums away. I tell them I don’t need or maybe even want the money. I have everything I need.

    You mentioned shame and I totally understand. My parents have what we call a “last to die” insurance policy. It comes to me to pay the inheritance tax. I also get all their investment info. It is stunning. They can’t seem to lose money. When folks were losing their jobs. Their houses. The economy in a tailspin, they were making money. I’d look at my 401K and I have losing thousands of dollars a quarter, but they were making money.

    I’ve long felt, and I have proof, I can see it, that once you become rich, well it is hard to lose said money. Joe/Jane Smith that don’t have money, well they feel the pain 24/7. It is all kind of sad really.

  50. 50.

    NonyNony

    Nixon’s reëlection campaign reached out to as many Democrats as possible (not just elected officials but rank-and-file blue-collar workers and Catholics). Nixon ran not as the Republican Party’s leader but, in the words of his bumper sticker, as just “President Nixon.” His landslide win over George McGovern translated into no Republican advantage in congressional races—the Democrats more than held their own. The Washington Post’s David Broder later called it “an extraordinarily selfish victory.”

    Interestingly, if Richard Nixon had been the “right kind of person” David Broder would have fawned over how statesmanlike his campaign was and how willing he was to put aside partisan politics and conduct his campaigns as a man reaching out to the great center of the nation to be a President for the whole country, not just the Republican Party.

    I will always contend that Nixon’s greatest failing in the eyes of the DC press corpse was that he was the “wrong kind of person”. Not that he was a meanspirited man willing to commit crimes to get what he wanted – the DC press has never really had a problem with ambitious politicians of the “right kind” – but that he didn’t come from the right family and wasn’t sufficiently glamorous enough to dazzle them with bullshit.

    Had Nixon’s father been a Senator or an Ambassador or some kind of tycoon instead of a guy who owned a single family-run grocery store in California, the word Watergate would still be used to refer only to a hotel and possibly a “salad”. He could still be just as much a criminal – hell he probably could have been even MORE of a crook – and nobody would have batted an eye because he would have thrown great parties and everyone would have owed a debt or two to his father.

  54. 54.

    jayboat

    Leave a mark??? Hell, that one is gonna sting all the way to the grave.

    Best public shaming of a loudmouth bully in my lifetime. Maybe forever.
    Shivved, joisey-style by his idol, and with audio.

    I don’t care what else happens- that fat turd won’t ever get over this.
    Paybacks are, indeed, a bitch. Especially if there’s music.

    I’m gonna be smiling all week. 8-]]]

  55. 55.

    Shortstop

    That video is extremely funny. Springsteen never acceded to Christie’s pleas that they hang out after a show, right? This is the only direct attention Bruce has ever paid to him?

  56. 56.

    dr. luba

    @gene108: I use 10.7 and it works, no problem. Maybe upgrade? I think your laptop should support it. (Well, maybe try this after deleting and re-installing.)

    I assume you’ve cleared the cache, dumped the Silverlight preferences and repaired permissions? Those are my first steps for any problem.

  57. 57.

    Splitting Image

    Looks like I picked the right week to fill in the holes in my Springsteen collection.

  58. 58.

    Amir Khalid

    @Shortstop:
    There was that post-Sandy thing, which was brought about by President Obama; he called Christie from Air Force One and put Bruuuuuuuuce* on the line. Christie got quite a bit of face time with Bruce during that thing.

    *I’ve been told that this is how one spells Mr Springsteen’s first name.

  60. 60.

    shortstop

    @Amir Khalid: Ah, thanks. So not the first notice Bruuuuuuuuuuce has deigned to take of his fanboi. Still, a smart slap across the face for the big guy.

  64. 64.

    low-tech cyclist

    Anne – with all due respect, the phrase from 1972-73 was “third-rate burglary,” not two-bit burglary.

  65. 65.

    low-tech cyclist

    @NonyNony:

    Interestingly, if Richard Nixon had been the “right kind of person” David Broder would have fawned over how statesmanlike his campaign was and how willing he was to put aside partisan politics and conduct his campaigns as a man reaching out to the great center of the nation to be a President for the whole country, not just the Republican Party.

    Broder did fawn over Nixon, almost right up to the end. Here he is, in the summer of 1974 – less than one month before “Nixon Resigns” – basically rooting for impeachment to fail and for Nixon’s opponents to get their asses kicked:

    [If impeachment fails, t]he President’s supporters in the country would cry vengeance against a Congress which spent the better part of two years not dealing with energy or inflation but harassing the President for no purpose. The President’s critics would no doubt take a vote against impeachment as a final proof of the craven cowardice of congressmen.
    .
    Instead of Republican candidates trying to escape the drag of Watergate and Richard Nixon, Democratic candidates would find themselves on the defensive about a 93rd Congress which did little but posture on impeachment for two year and then proved by its own votes that there was no need for the nation to have been subjected to that ordeal.
    .
    Resurgent Republicans, rallying around the vindicated President, would almost certainly regain the offensive, exploiting the predictable public reaction against the press and the Democratic Congress which had burdened the country with the Watergate-impeachment fiasco.

  66. 66.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @low-tech cyclist:

    Broder’s rep was made in the Village with a leak from Nixon’s people about his veep pick.

    Broder was GOP trash from the beginning. The “Dean” was always a partisan dipshit. Always.

  67. 67.

    NonyNony

    @low-tech cyclist:

    Broder did fawn over Nixon, almost right up to the end.

    Jeebus. This now makes me wonder if he actually does have columns where he praises Nixon’s reelection strategy for being statesmanlike and above partisanship.

    I know you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead, but Broder really was a scumbag, wasn’t he? I mean, he was no Bob Novak in the scumbaggery department, but still.

  68. 68.

    Cervantes

    @Villago Delenda Est: Do you recall his brightest idea, his most brilliant column ever? Instead of impeachment and so on, he suggested that the nation’s governors convene a special meeting at which they would collectively recommend a person to assume the Presidency until the 1976 election.

    My strong hunch is that if such a meeting were held, the Democrats who hold 31 of the 50 governorships would ignore partisanship in this time of crisis and recommend for the presidency, the most senior man in the ranks of governors, and the most broadly respected, Republican Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York.

    See, he just couldn’t help himself.

    Anyway, the idea was so patently absurd that it was, of course, praised and written into the Congressional Record — and by a Democrat from Wyoming (in fact, the last Wyoming Democrat elected to the House, and whose open seat was later won by Dick Cheney).

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