Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Hot air and ill-informed banter

White supremacy is terrorism.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

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

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

Republicans in disarray!

Celebrate the fucking wins.

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

Republican also-rans: four mules fighting over a turnip.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

Well, whatever it is, it’s better than being a Republican.

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

“What are Republicans afraid of?” Everything.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Motown is Joe-Town!

In my day, never was longer.

Following reporting rules is only for the little people, apparently.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

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148Comments

  2. 2.

    Chyron HR

    Reagan just told a hi-larious joke about the nigras, and everybody else is laughing while Lincoln is like, “…What?”

  3. 3.

    Bobby Thomson

    @Hawes: Nixon financed his political career with his poker winnings from the war. One can debate whether an officer playing against enlisted (against regs) always won with skill, but it’s a fact.

    I think TBogg had fun with this artist a few years ago. There’s a similar one with Democratic presidents that isn’t as wingnutty as he usually paints them.

  4. 4.

    MattF

    I takes some talent to portray Richard Nixon in a way that makes him look human. I’m sorta impressed.

  6. 6.

    Bobby Thomson

    @Hawes: Nixon financed his political career with his winnings from the war. One can debate whether an officer playing against enlisted (against regs) always won with skill, but it’s a fact.

    I think TBogg had fun with this artist a few years ago. There’s a similar one with Democratic presidents that isn’t as wingnutty as he usually paints them.

    Sorry for the FYWP double post if it occurs, but I wasn’t thinking and used an obvious forbidden word.

  7. 7.

    Botsplainer

    @MattF:

    So what would America look like now if Hubert Humphrey hadn’t been kneecapped by Our Progressive Betters in 1968?

  8. 8.

    low-tech cyclist

    OK, who IS the standing guy in the blue shirt? I recognize everyone else (Lincoln, TR, and every GOP president from Ike to Shrub) but who the hell is this guy?

  11. 11.

    Botsplainer

    @Chyron HR:

    Reagan just told a hi-larious joke about the nigras, and everybody else is laughing while Lincoln is like, “…What?”

    Wrong. They’re still laughing about Reagan calling “Gin!” on a four card run while tossing a one off discard during the previous poker hand.

    Thing they don’t know is he was serious.

  12. 12.

    Botsplainer

    @Chyron HR:

    Reagan just told a hi-larious joke about the nigras, and everybody else is laughing while Lincoln is like, “…What?”

    Wrong. They’re still laughing about Reagan calling “G!n!” on a four card run while tossing a one off discard during the previous p0k3r hand.

    Thing they don’t know is he was serious.

  20. 20.

    MattF

    Worth noting, for the record, that Nixon was probably the best poker player/President we’ve ever had. So, those other guys look happy but are getting their pockets picked.

  21. 21.

    Mr Stagger Lee

    I’ve seen this at our local licensing place with a smaller version of Democrats playing cards(FDR, Woodrow Wlison, LBJ,Jimmy Carter, I think Andrew Jackson and Bill Clinton) I believe the owner was forced to put the latter, or the State of Washington would strip him of licensing privileges. Anyway when I see the pic of the owner standing there, I think “What an A-hole.”
    P.S. was it the Shilo Inn you were staying at?

  22. 22.

    low-tech cyclist

    I was listening to the Hillary interview on NPR’s Morning Edition this morning, and fortunately I was stopped at a traffic light when I heard Hillary say “Henry Kissinger is a friend of mine.” (At the 7:48 mark here.)

    This is right after she criticized the Bushies for their moral failings (“We were viewed as being untrustworthy, as violating our moral rules and values”), and I’m scratching my head trying to figure out how Kissinger was any better.

    If anything, there’s a damned good argument that he was worse. How many Vietnamese got killed just so he could make Nixon look like he was standing up to the Soviets, and get a peace deal that folded like a beach chair just two years later? The carnage in Iraq pales by comparison. And while Bush threw Iraq into chaos by toppling a dictator, Kissinger overthrew a democratically elected government in Chile in order to install a dictator. And with respect to torture, can’t forget those tiger cages.

  24. 24.

    beltane

    @low-tech cyclist: In her memoir, Clinton also stated that she was in favor of arming the Syrian rebels, and that she felt Obama was too tough on RW Israeli settlers.

  25. 25.

    Cheap Jim, formerly Cheap Jim

    @MattF: But Ike could have cleaned all their clocks at bridge.

    So, is that a framed picture mounted on a US flag, which is itself framed?

  26. 26.

    beltane

    Wasn’t it Milan Kundera who wrote about the link between kitsch and the totalitarian mindset?

  28. 28.

    hildebrand

    @low-tech cyclist: I am getting a bad vibe from Clinton’s interview/book tour – it seems that this will be one long march with the kicking/throwing under the bus/pissing on/fill in the blank with your favorite witticism of Obama every single time that she can. And of course, she won’t lift a finger to help in this Fall’s election (if she does, I will be stunned).

  29. 29.

    greennotGreen

    @Mathguy: Nope, Andy Thomas is the artist. Thomas does all sorts of political art, McNaughton seems to be completely tea party.

    In googling this, I came across the above picture with Sarah Palin photoshopped in. Unsurprisingly, it was a very bad photoshop job.

  30. 30.

    pamelabrown53

    @beltane: Sounds like Hillary left no Conventional Wisdom stone left unturned in her bid to sound like a neocon trying to outwarmonger those “great on foreign policy” republicans.

  32. 32.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    @Botsplainer:
    Kneecapped? Humphrey entered the race too late (April, 1968) to run in any of the primaries. He secured the nomination by gathering the votes of delegates from non-primary states. This led to considerable misgivings among some voters. His vocal support of Johnson’s Vietnam war policies included a pledge to carry out Johnson’s proposal to send an additional 13,000 troops to Vietnam. The ensuing anti-war protests outside of the convention hall were televised live, as were the beatings of the protestors by the Chicago PD. Humphrey stood mute on the subject of what was described at the time as a “police riot.” The assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, as well as growing unease regarding our involvement in Vietnam left Democratic voters dispirited and confused. Humphrey’s late entry left him insufficient time to turn things around.

  34. 34.

    NotMax

    @Mathguy

    Not the execrable religio-nutcase McNaughton.

    The original artist (sans the standing blue-shirted guy) is Andy Thomas, who also did a Democratic version. Short backgrounder and interview here.

  35. 35.

    MomSense

    I want to scratch Reagan’s face off that painting for making it cool to consider our government the enemy. And the so-called Reagan Revolution is just a bunch of selfish, greedy people behaving badly.

    Rolled into the school parking lot this morning to drop off my son and there were cop cars circling because of the incident yesterday where a car stopped on the street by the playground. Inside the car were two individuals and according to half the 3rd graders at recess one of them was holding a gun. The other half of the 3rd graders couldn’t tell if it was a gun or a walkie talkie (that doesn’t make me feel better). Security video confirmed that a car matching the kids’ description did stop but they couldn’t see the people inside.

    This is fucked up and bullshit. Also, too Fox News jumped from lies, propaganda, and farce to inciting violence. Just how bad does it have to get before we can yank their broadcasting license.

  37. 37.

    D58826

    On a ‘cheerier’ note 5 more dead Americans in Afghanistan, possibly friendly fire. In Iraq the city of Mosul has fallen to the insurgents. The Iraqi army dropped their guns and left Dodge. I remember from the Vietnam war people asking ‘why do their Vietnamese fight better than ours’? Not sure the question was ever answered (other than the obvious they believed in their cause while ours didn’t) but if our Iraqi’s won’t fight for their country why should Americans.?

  40. 40.

    MomSense

    @D58826:

    Remember when then Sen. Obama was excoriated for saying that the surge was not bringing about the political and social change required to end the sectarian violence? Yeah that was pretty accurate.

  41. 41.

    canuckistani

    It kinda makes me think of those posters of smiling Mao and Zhou Enlai with Red Guard cadres.

  42. 42.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @beltane:

    Wasn’t it Milan Kundera who wrote about the link between kitsch and the totalitarian mindset?

    Yes, it was.

  43. 43.

    Botsplainer

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate:

    The net result of the tears over those ill-advised protests was the following:

    Loss of respect for the guy who moved Heaven and Earth for the Civil Rights Act and Medicare

    Blown peace talks in 68, thereby lengthening the war

    Installation of corrupt Nixon and youthful cronies that would ratfuck the country for the following 40 years

    A booster shot for the asshole brand of Conservatism that has been fucking all of us across four decades

    Yep, the glorious progressive paradise is just around the corner…

  44. 44.

    Betty Cracker

    @MomSense: I only wish he’d applied that lesson to the “surge” in Afghanistan. New rule: no more fucking surges.

  47. 47.

    Elizabelle

    A local art and framing shop has this picture, and the Democrats at cards, in its window. I’ll see who would be in blue shirt’s place, and if that president is wearing a blue shirt.

    I know there’s no Warren G. Harding in the portrait. Coolidge? Will let you know.

  49. 49.

    Ash Can

    I too believe that if all these men were brought together in one room the result would be a chair-breaking, window-shattering fist fight, not an amiable card game. Teddy, Abe, Ike, and quite possibly Jerry would be kicking ass and taking names, and the owner would be huddled under the table crying.

  53. 53.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    @D58826:
    The sectarian violence in Iraq is becoming worse and worse. Fallujah has also fallen to Sunni Muslim militias and nearly half a million people have fled al-Anbar province. On Saturday a dozen car bombs went off in mostly Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad. The army of Iraq has enlisted the aid of the extremist Shiite Muslim League of the Righteous militia in al-Anbar.

  54. 54.

    GregB

    A real American would have Jefferson Davis in the seat held by that tyrant Lincoln.

  56. 56.

    D58826

    @Betty Cracker: I’m not sure that Obama really had high hopes for the Afghan surge. I think it was a way to be able to say ‘I did everything the generals wanted and it still didn’t work’ now its time to come home. If he had rejected the surge Petrous would have been the leading candidate for the GOP in 2012 and we would have had a generation of ‘who lost Afghanistan’ just like in the 50’s it was who lost China.

    It’s terrible that a president has to adopt that kind of amoral calculus and pay for it in other peoples blood but that is where we are at today.

  58. 58.

    Keith G

    @hildebrand:

    I am getting a bad vibe from Clinton’s interview/book tour – it seems that this will be one long march with the kicking/throwing under the bus/pissing on/fill in the blank with your favorite witticism of Obama every single time that she can. And of course, she won’t lift a finger to help in this Fall’s election (if she does, I will be stunned).

    I doubt that the “under the bus throwing” will be any more than is conventional for a same-party replacement. She will have to create some distance, and there have been things that the Obama White House could have been better at. Add to that: They have a fundamental difference in how they view the political behavior of the President as Leader.

    As to the 2014 campaigns, I bet there will be more than enough behind the scene fundraising and chit collecting. Like Obama himself, she my be reluctant to weigh in on the very political campaigns that need her most – the marginal ones where the outcome is either uncertain or a bit of a diminished hope. Contributing to a losing effort brings headlines of diminished power. In the past, the current White House has left candidates a bit frustrated at a perceived lack of full commitment to their campaigns.

    As to the quote referring to Henry Kissinger: Why the face plant or surprise. That is the way the game is played by all mainstream politicians who are successfully operating at that level. Obama plays that game as well.

  59. 59.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    @Ash Can: Ford was a vicious political in-fighter and the leader of an attempt to impeach Justice William O. Douglas.

  60. 60.

    Betty Cracker

    @Keith G: I’m not surprised at all, just disgusted since Kissinger is an out-and-out war criminal. There are things I really like about HRC, but the tendency to reinforce neo-con frameworks and conflate dick-swinging with diplomacy isn’t one of them. I also suspect it’s mostly an act rather than a true reflection of her world view, or at least I hope it is…

  63. 63.

    CONGRATULATIONS!

    Lincoln mentioned freeing the slaves. Everyone else in the room is laughing at him.

  64. 64.

    Seanly

    My first professional job was for an engineering firm in Morristown, NJ. The owner of the company had a cardboard cutout of George HW Bush in his office. He (the owner, not the cardboard prez) didn’t run the company all that well.

  65. 65.

    japa21

    @Keith G: Unfortunately, those things the Obama WH could have been better at are probably things that a HRC WH would have been worse at.

  66. 66.

    Keith G

    @Betty Cracker:

    just disgusted since Kissinger is an out-and-out war criminal.

    That he is, but he is “our” war criminal, so….

    For some, no American can be held to have committed war crimes against Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, the Commies, or certain groups of locationally challenged Muslim children.

  69. 69.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    @Botsplainer:

    Your giving progressives a lot more influence than they had at the time. The Civil Rights Acts,as well as the very controversial at the time Fair Housing Act, were noble and necessary things. LBJ himself knew that the passage of those acts could lead to the undoing of the heretofore Democratic stronghold in the American south. Had Humphrey been elected the South still would have been lost to the Democrats, the Republicans still would have launched their Southern Strategy and Nixon may well have been elected in ’72.

    It’s difficult for someone who wasn’t of Draft age during the Vietnam years to understand the mixed feelings of Democratic voters at the time. Those feelings weren’t something ginned up out of clear air by progressives, they were the feelings of everyday voters who were the parents, friends and relatives of the thousands of young men who were drafted to fight in a war with nebulous goals against an enemy who posed no direct threat to America.

    Now resume your hippie punching.

  70. 70.

    drkrick

    @japa21:

    Unfortunately, those things the Obama WH could have been better at are probably things that a HRC WH would have been worse at.

    This is my impression too, but I’d be interested to hear someone make the argument to the contrary. For example, whatever the shortcomings of Obama’s ACA, it became law.

  72. 72.

    WaterGirl

    @D58826: I was about to write pretty much what you did in the first paragraph. Can’t say I agree with the second, but I completely agree with the first.

  73. 73.

    Keith G

    @japa21: I see it less of a competition than the real world notion that different leaders have different skill sets. Some of those skill sets work better in a given set of conditions than others. And of course, those conditions change over time – usually faster than people change or update their skills. That is one of the unplanned for benefits of strict time limits to the office of president.

  74. 74.

    WaterGirl

    @Betty Cracker: Yeah and which state voted in their politician because even though he said some bad stuff before the election, they were sure he didn’t really mean it and was just saying it to get elected. That did not turn out well.

    Edit: obligatory “I will vote for her if she is the democrat in the general” but i DO NOT want her to run and I do not want her as president.

  76. 76.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate: and it sure worked out great, didn’t it? Two elections of Nixon and a war that continued anyway. But in the end it was all worth it, because of that thing, and that other one, what was it again, well, gotta go.

  78. 78.

    catclub

    @hildebrand:

    And of course, she won’t lift a finger to help in this Fall’s election (if she does, I will be stunned).

    Oh bullshit. Do you think she does not realize that congress matters, and the sooner we get more democrats in, the better?

  79. 79.

    catclub

    @Keith G:

    Some of those skill sets work better in a given set of conditions than others.

    Swap Othello and Hamlet and neither one is a tragedy.

  80. 80.

    Keith G

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate: Allow me to double down on your comments.

    The “progressive betters” comment above is just asinine. By 1968, LBJ had lost the confidence of the American people at large and most of the Democratic party. HH’s best chances of winning were if he campaigned in the general as a reformer – an agent of change, but he would not.. He was not willing to distance himself from the policies of the sitting president.

  81. 81.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    That’s one bad photoshop job to put the owner in that picture.

    And I have to say, while they are all politicians and all that means, it really stretches belief that Teddy Roosvelt would have tolerated Bush in his presence with Bush’s military record.

  84. 84.

    priscianus jr

    @catclub: “Do you think she does not realize that congress matters, and the sooner we get more democrats in, the better? ”

    I think she realizes it, I just don’t think she really cares. Same with a lot of other stuff.

  85. 85.

    japa21

    @catclub: The question (and this is only a question, not my reading of her intent) is whether she feels, from a legacy point of view, having Obama still stymied for 2 years allows her to accomplish more when she becomes President. Thus both her and Bill’s legacies (though not sure what legacy Bill should have of a positive nature) will be greater than Obama’s.
    From a purely political point of view, her getting out there campaigning for candidates, specially in those areas where people view her more positively than Obama (KY), not only could help the Dems, but it would give her some power in the primaries. She can go back to those folks and say, hey, I helped you in 2014, I want you to endorse me, campaign for me, whatever in 2016.
    Quid pro quo works well in politics.

  86. 86.

    D58826

    Folks we can wait for the ‘great progressive hope’ or accept the flawed candidate Clinton. If we opt for the former than it will be 2010 again. Whatever her flaws Clinton is infinitely better than anyone the GOP will put up.

  89. 89.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    @FlipYrWhig:

    What’s your point? That the Civil Rights Acts and the Fair Housing Act shouldn’t have been passed? LBJ was a moralist and a pragmatist. He knew that he could either end the war or he could get those acts passed, but he couldn’t do both. It was a terrible choice to have to make.

  90. 90.

    Betty Cracker

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate: That tracks with my mom’s stories of her journey from apolitical to hippie. Her 19-year-old brother was scooped up from their little hamlet and deposited in a jungle 10,000 miles away to get shot at. The resulting sorrow and rage made swallowing realpolitik a bit difficult, at least for a while. I think that’s understandable, if not strategic.

  92. 92.

    David in NY

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate:

    It’s difficult for someone who wasn’t of Draft age during the Vietnam years to understand the mixed feelings of Democratic voters at the time. Those feelings weren’t something ginned up out of clear air by progressives, they were the feelings of everyday voters who were the parents, friends and relatives of the thousands of young men who were drafted to fight in a war with nebulous goals against an enemy who posed no direct threat to America.

    Let me add that the convention hurt Humphrey in several ways. Humphrey appeared to have won the nomination through back-room dealing and the murder of Robert Kennedy, not the democratic process. And many Democrats (including me) were revolted by the thuggishness of the Chicago police, condoned by the Humphrey-supporting establishment and symbolized by Mayor Daley’s “F… you, you Jew sonofabitch,” directed at Abe Ribicoff when he called out the police for their actions. (I watched that moment on television and it was terminally depressing). Of course, more conservative Democrats sided with the police, so it was a lose-lose situation.

    The hippies (or yippies) keep getting punched (even here), but Humphrey’s wounds were self-inflicted, and inflicted by his “friends,” far more than by anti-war protesting, which, after all, was right the right thing to do.

  93. 93.

    Keith G

    @japa21:

    whether she feels, from a legacy point of view, having Obama still stymied for 2 years allows her to accomplish more when she becomes President. Thus both her and Bill’s legacies (though not sure what legacy Bill should have of a positive nature) will be greater than Obama’s.

    Ah…No.

    She would have to be less cognitively aware than an average 6th grader to hold the above view – or have a level of catty hostility that is usually an over the top female stereotype (except when applied to HRC, sadly it seems).

    Democratic impotence during the next two years strengthens the case to be made for electing a Republican to the presidency. It would also lock in place a variety of conditions that might make it structurally harder for a Democrat to be successful even if elected.

  94. 94.

    Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name)

    Is there any chance at all that we can get through the 2014 elections before we start speculating on when and how HRC is going to sell us all out?

  96. 96.

    RSA

    @Bobby Thomson:

    There’s a similar one with Democratic presidents…

    From an interview with the artist, on the Democratic version:

    My original sketch had [Teddy Roosevelt] giving a hearty laugh and saying to Nixon, ‘Isn’t that funny, buddy?’ The original Nixon I had kind of turned away, sheltering his cards, in a paranoid pose, as if he thought Teddy was trying to read his cards. I had thought that was funny. I called the guy at the print company and I said, ‘I’m going to make everyone look good. I don’t want to make fun of anybody.’ Like with Nixon, that was almost a clinical paranoia that he had. It was kind of sad. It dogged him all his life. I don’t want to reinforce clichés or any comic things. I tried to make everybody look good.

  97. 97.

    RSA

    From an interview with the artist, on the Democratic version:

    My original sketch had [Teddy Roosevelt] giving a hearty laugh and saying to Nixon, ‘Isn’t that funny, buddy?’ The original Nixon I had kind of turned away, sheltering his cards, in a paranoid pose, as if he thought Teddy was trying to read his cards. I had thought that was funny. I called the guy at the print company and I said, ‘I’m going to make everyone look good. I don’t want to make fun of anybody.’ Like with Nixon, that was almost a clinical paranoia that he had. It was kind of sad. It dogged him all his life. I don’t want to reinforce clichés or any comic things. I tried to make everybody look good.

  98. 98.

    Villago Delenda Est

    There are only two non vile sacks of shit in that picture. TR and Ike. The rest are irredeemable scum…those who are still alive should be made not so by swinging from a lamppost along Pennsylvania Avenue.

  101. 101.

    Matt McIrvin

    It kinda reminds me of Disney World’s Hall of Presidents. In the current version of the show George Washington symbolically hands off the office to Barack Obama. No word on whether he’s wondering why Obama is walking around free.

  106. 106.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @elmo: And others…I didn’t recognize Lincoln’s head.

    All three of them (Lincoln, TR, and Ike) would be purged from the modern GOP in a New York minute for insufficient ideological purity. Hell, they are for all practical purposes socialists by modern GOP thinking.

    Three of these are not like the others…three of these don’t belong.

  109. 109.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate: what in my comment indicated I wouldn’t support those things? I was saying instead that the attempt to punish Johnson by proxy by being lukewarm-to-derisive about Humphrey didn’t turn out very well. Add to that the idea that ever since 1968 the American public has shrugged off or actively disparaged the whole idea of mass protest. ’68 was a debacle on all levels. Obviously the feelings were real that fed into the unrest within the Democratic Party, liberals, and the left, but it had extremely bad ramifications we’re all still living with.

    Then again, if Humphrey had pulled it off, we probably get Reagan in 1972 and an even worse counterfactual future, so there’s that.

  111. 111.

    hildebrand

    @Omnes Omnibus (the first of his name): It might help matters if Clinton wasn’t out doing the press junket playing the expectations game regarding her Presidential run. I highly doubt any of the folks interviewing her will be asking her about the mid-terms, and I really doubt she will bring them up.

  114. 114.

    Keith G

    @FlipYrWhig:

    that the attempt to punish Johnson by proxy by being lukewarm-to-derisive about Humphrey didn’t turn out very well.

    Was it about LBJ the person or was it about an evolution of policy choices that was being reinforced by HH? Hubert Humphrey was not telling the party how he would be different from what had gone before and that was an issue that desperately needed to be addressed.

    Yes HH had a tough task. At that time, the Democratic Party was spread out all over the place – Southern racists to California ‘Libbers and the New Deal Coalition in between. In the end, HH didn’t excite any of those and probably only got the votes of the New Deal remnants. Weirdly, it was Nixon who lied his way to the support of some moderates who were “finished” with the war – a position that HH was said to have, but would not speak out on.

  115. 115.

    David in NY

    @FlipYrWhig: I don’t think you understand at all. It wasn’t mostly the “left” that was protesting. It was people who were anti-war, many of whom are now the very conservatives that get referred to as the “olds” responsible for the sad state of current politics. The anti-war people and their loved ones and friends stood to lose a lot by the war policy because we had this thing called the “draft” that hauled young people off to a jungle to be candidates to become the “last man to die for a mistake,” as someone once succinctly put it. This was no ideological fight — it was a fight for people’s lives. They didn’t just have bad “feelings” about the Democrats, they were actively threatened by the war policy they had bought into. They didn’t want to “punish” Johnson and Humphrey — they wanted to stop them, and they had a good concrete reason for doing that.

    This is what happens when a party abandons the people that could be its most active supporters. That’s all. And you should stop blaming those who got abandoned and blame the people, Johnson and Humphrey, who drove into this car wreck. They created an issue that was paramount, a matter of life or death, for many people — and when faced with a choice of candidates whose records on that issue were indistinguishable, they naturally stayed at home. How can you blame them? The party left them before they left the party.

  117. 117.

    trollhattan

    Abe: “Everybody ready for me to roll the last card and take actor-boy’s lunch money?

    “Why are you laughing Ron? Do I amuse you?”

  120. 120.

    Joel Hanes

    @David in NY:

    Thank you for this.

    After all these years, the desperate need to blame hippies for the political sins of the Democratic Party still runs strong in some, as if LBJ and HHH were simply pawns in game of life, and not two of the most accomplished politicians on the national scene. Both of them were quite publicly on the wrong side of the Vietnam War, the pre-eminent political issue in 1968 (at least among most white voters).

    And the Chicago ’68 demonstrations could have been just a silly story today (as is, for example, the levitation of the Pentagon) if Daley and his minions had had any shred of humanity, restraint, or allegiance to the rule of law.

  123. 123.

    Keith G

    @raven: Fun link.

    Despite the avalanche of bad press (much of it sincerely earned) there was many things to like that were happening in that period from the late ’60s to mid ’70s.

  124. 124.

    Rasputin's Evil Twin

    @Ash Can: There was a “New Yorker” cover some years ago, around Presidents Day. Andrew Jackson is overturning the card table in a rage, drawing his pistol, while Taft, Lincoln, TR, FDR, Ike, look on in disbelief or fury. Nixon’s trying to look innocent as he drops a hand that contains five aces.

    No question, TR would pound Nixon into the floor, while Lincoln picked W up, raised him over his head and threw him through a brick wall, Maybe they’d go easy on Ronnie, as he was senile.

  126. 126.

    Bokonon

    @Tokyokie: Taft created the federal income tax – so of course, he isn’t invited to this pantheon poker game. Instead, the tea partiers are beating Taft up outside at the direction of Ayn Rand.

  127. 127.

    low-tech cyclist

    @David in NY:

    Let me add that the convention hurt Humphrey in several ways. Humphrey appeared to have won the nomination through back-room dealing and the murder of Robert Kennedy, not the democratic process.

    Absolutely yes to everything you said in that comment. With RFK dead, the Dems didn’t have any good choices: there was Gene McCarthy, who’d won more primaries than anyone besides Bobby, but who was really too much of a flake to give the nomination to. And there was Humphrey, who’d skipped the primaries pretty much altogether.

    And Daley’s thugs basically put Hubert in a position of having to decide who to alienate: the Daley machine, the cops, and probably a hell of a lot of working-class white people who were still the backbone of the Democratic Party back then, or the protesters and those who sympathized with them (and look both heartless and gutless doing it).

    Once Bobby Kennedy got shot, it was lose-lose, all the way down. I still wonder how things would have played out if Sirhan Sirhan hadn’t existed. Would the Democratic establishment yielded to the reality that Bobby was the guy that people wanted, or would the establishment have insisted on Hubert anyway? (I think they would have had the sense to anoint Bobby. How do you go against a Kennedy under those circumstances?) How would Bobby have fared against Nixon in the fall? (Hubert lost by a hairs’ breadth. It’s hard for me to believe that Bobby wouldn’t have done better.) What sort of President would Bobby have been? (Less clear, of course, but I think less cautious and more overtly progressive than JFK.)

  129. 129.

    Mike in NC

    We first saw these godawful works of “art” in a restaurant in Charleston a few years ago. Evidently you can get a custom version for yourself, as the guy in the blue shirt was impressed enough to pay for.

  131. 131.

    David in NY

    @Death Panel Truck: So what? Just shows that if Humphrey had promptly come out against the war, he’d have won. He’d have gotten the votes of people who stayed home as well as those of some people who voted for Nixon based on his lie that he’d end the war.

  132. 132.

    Higgs Boson's Mate

    @David in NY:
    @low-tech cyclist:

    Thank you both for fleshing out the tone of those times and the confluence of bad things that sank HHH’s presidential bid. It’s worth noting that despite George Wallace splitting off 46 electoral votes Nixon carried 32 states and trounced Humphrey in the Electoral College 301 to 191 votes. In the 1972 election Nixon carried all but but Massachusetts and the District of Columbia.

    Despite all of the facts to the contrary and despite the complexities of the time there will still be those who will blame the damned hippies for Humphrey’s defeat. They seem to be members of the same group which blames Ralph Nader for Gore’s defeat.

  134. 134.

    Patricia Kayden

    @D58826: Amen. That’s why I’ll be happy to vote for Secretary Clinton. The Republican candidates (Cruz, Paul, Santorum, Pale Male Governors, Possibly Palin) are deranged. The choice in 2016 is easy.

  135. 135.

    David in NY

    @Patricia Kayden: To join two threads of comments, I’ll probably vote for Clinton the same way I did for Humphrey in 1968. On the whole, though, I’d prefer Humphrey were given another chance, rather than her.

  138. 138.

    Betty Cracker

    @Higgs Boson’s Mate: I was one of the morons who voted for Nader in 2000, and I do blame myself for enabling Bush the Lesser. I think what went down in 1968 among Democrats was far more understandable: As you noted, it wasn’t just hippies but people whose own and family members’ lives were directly at stake in a pointless war that was bloody beyond our ability to comprehend by today’s standards. I was just a dumb earth muffin who fell for Nader’s “there ain’t a dime’s worth of difference” nonsense. (In my defense, I did learn my lesson.)

  139. 139.

    Jay B.

    @Botsplainer:

    Jesus, I really try not to respond here anymore, but you really are a fucking moron. Yes, it was protests against a completely immoral war that turned the tide. 1968 also saw two assassinations of major American political figures, one of whom would have probably won the election if he wasn’t killed. It saw one political party tell one of the people at the Paris Peace Conference to tell the communists they could have a better deal if they held off until well after the election. It saw race riots and cops beating the fuck out of people in Chicago. If only Humphrey wasn’t kneecapped and those hippies could have shut up, it would have been different? Is there no shit you won’t eat?

  140. 140.

    Grumpy Code Monkey

    @Hawes:

    Teddy Roosevelt would’ve beaten the shit out of Richard Nixon

    And Reagan, and Poppy and W, while shooting a bull moose from horseback.

    What, no Hoover?

  141. 141.

    Grumpy Code Monkey

    @Betty Cracker: FWIW, I don’t blame Nader or people who voted for Nader. I put the blame squarely on Gore and his staff, because the election should never have been that close. You’re coming off the longest peacetime expansion in history, you’re actually running surpluses, and you’re going up against a hick governor with a gift for malapropism. How could you lose?

    Well…

  142. 142.

    JaneE

    I think most of those presidents would consider themselves Democrats today. And if they didn’t, the current Republicans would throw them out of the party anyway. I am not sure that any of them would make the cut today, actually. GW, maybe, if they can forgive him for ruining their brand identification for a decade.

  143. 143.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Grumpy Code Monkey: No, I blame Nader. The asshole put his fucking megalomania before any obligation he felt toward the country.

    As far as I’m concerned, he’s an accessory to the war crimes of the deserting coward and the Dark Lord. No quarter for such villains. None.

  144. 144.

    Bill Murray

    @Villago Delenda Est: so you don’t blame the Republicans that stole the election? Nader was at best the 4th biggest reason that Gore lost. the Supreme Court, many different types of Republican vote stealers and Gore losing 150,000 Florida Democrats that voted for Clinton in 1996 to Bush in 2000 were all far more major factors than the about 10,000 votes Nader “cost” Gore. I should also throw in the about 23 times Gore agreed with Bush in the third debate making Nader’s criticism seem viable, but it’s hard to quantify that.

  145. 145.

    Fred Fnord

    @Villago Delenda Est: As we always do for those who we secretly are afraid might be correct. They attract much more hostility and hatred than those who we know are wrong.

    Meanwhile, six years after we elected a Democratic president and, for a few months at least, a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and a majority in the House, scientists are openly talking about the entire human race going extinct, and our president is talking about maybe thinking about some minor regulations of global warming, ones that we know will not actually come even close to doing what needs to be done, and isn’t even talking about what would have to happen to have any real impact. And meanwhile, he is apparently still quite enamored of a certain pipeline through the middle of the country.

    If you think Al Gore would have done any better as president, just because of his rhetoric AFTER his presidential campaign (because there was precious little during or indeed before), you have much more confidence than I do. After all, we knew about global warming during Clinton’s presidency too, and we were happy to ignore it because … because…? Anyone?

    Tell you what: if, in 40 years, you and I are still alive, and it has become clear that the human race actually isn’t going to kill itself off via global warming, then you can say ‘I told you so’. But it seems to me that if person A and person B have some minor differences but both of them still kill off the entire human race, it’s hard for me to judge them all that different.

  146. 146.

    J R in WV

    I got drafted in February of 1970, and enlisted in the US Navy to avoid muddy foxholes and Marine bootcamp. Yes, draftees were sent to the Marines, because very few young men volunteer for what looked a lot like suicide in 1970.

    I watched those riots in Chicago and was horrified. My parents were both staunch Republicans… I still don’t know for sure who they voted for. Mom stopped voting for them several elections before she died of tobacco poisoning, because of their abortion position – let those sluts die.

    I don’t know her position on a terrible unwinnable war her older son was being drafted into. They offered to introduce me to friends in Canada, for what that was worth. I made a stab at that, and came back to the college town I was comfortable in.

    When they shot Bobby, I was horrified, again. So many good people were killed. We remember Martin and Bobby, but there were southern civil rights workers, buddist priests who killed themselves with fire, never moved a muscle as they burned to death. I use the word THEY killed Bobby, no one with half a wit thinks Sirhan Sirhan did that on his own. That boy was brainwashed by total professionals, probably the CIA guys who killed Jack.

    I actually enjoyed the work I did in the Navy, I never left the continental US, mostly in Key West and the Gulf Coast. Worked hard, in great physical shape for most of the hitch. Got out a little early, they were downsizing, as we were out of Nam by the end of it.

    I’ll vote for Hil if she’s the non-Republican candidate. That will mean these isn’t a progressive candidate. I may never get another chance to vote for a progressive candidate. That’s a bummer.

    The painting, Teddy would beat W into a pulp if he knew how he fulfilled his military duty. Abe would help. Reagan wouldn’t understand unless someone spelled it out in simple speech. Then they would ask Nixon some hard questions. Most treasonous President ever until W was selected.

    I guess this thread is probably dead – seems like I write a lot of comments doomed to not be read much. That’s OK, life gets in teh way of being at the top of all the threads. Errands and chores. Met with a Dem organizer to get names and numbers to do get-the-vote-out phone calls. Hope it helps, afraid it won’t.

    Have a nice evening. Guacamole and such for dinner tonight.

  147. 147.

    Kolohe

    I’ve seen this and it’s Democratic Prez counterpart as full on paintings in Old Town Alexandria.

  148. 148.

    Fred

    The guy in the blue shirt is not painted as well as the presidents and looks kind of pasted in. My bet is that, for a price anybody can get their image dropped into this group.
    Smells like a Newt money making $cheme. Not quite a grift but oh so tacky in that slimey GOP sort of way.

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