Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Beware of advice from anyone for whom Democrats are “they” and not “we.”

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

Human rights are not a matter of opinion!

You cannot love your country only when you win.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

There is no compromise when it comes to body autonomy. You either have it or you do not.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

This is dead girl, live boy, a goat, two wetsuits and a dildo territory.  oh, and pink furry handcuffs.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

When they say they are pro-life, they do not mean yours.

Republicans cannot even be trusted with their own money.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

So fucking stupid, and still doing a tremendous amount of damage.

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

People are complicated. Love is not.

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

Jesus watching the most hateful people claiming to be his followers

Stay strong, because they are weak.

One lie, alone, tears the fabric of reality.

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

Innocent people do not delay justice.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Late Night Off-Peak Open Thread: ‘Big Chicken’ Christie Jumps on the Klown Kar

Late Night Off-Peak Open Thread: ‘Big Chicken’ Christie Jumps on the Klown Kar

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christie announces sheneman

(Drew Sheneman via GoComics.com)

Jeb Lund, at the Guardian:

Chris Christie is now officially running for president – and what makes Chris Christie special is that he is running because he is running, and because what are you going to do about it? The animating purpose of Christie’s entire career is one regionally-accented hostile tautology: why is Chris Christie in the race? Indeed, why does Chris Christie do anything? Because f-you, that’s why…

But it is very difficult to conduct a campaign as the man who is a “solution” to “Washington” when you have multiple staffers under indictment, have inched close to threat of indictment yourself or are actually under indictment. Christie has the first two and may hit the trifecta – as may Scott Walker. (Rick Perry is under indictment, but he wears it well, because his demeanor is a man who seems unaware that he is under indictment, which is consistent with his theme of being unaware of most things.)…

The most dynamic and interesting thing Christie could do now would be to pivot left – bully his fellow Republicans for living in the past when it comes to Obamacare and same sex marriage, tell them to get real, get a life and get with the 21st Century. He could tell audiences that the other candidates could never win because they don’t get it, stomp across the stage like a conservative Howard Beale delivering a purple-state reckoning to every schoolyard joker trying to build a government in a sandbox instead of in the real world where bullies can kick them apart and deliver real life lessons. It would be mesmerizing.

But that’s completely unrealistic, because it would stop the end goals of the Chris-Christie-for-Chris-Christie train – the local to nowhere that stops at every ATM. That truth-teller schtick only pays the bills if you believe it, and the only people Christie has ever kicked the crap out of on his way up have been straw men and targets of opportunity. He doesn’t swing at big checkbooks or institutions, certainly nothing solid enough to bruise the glad hand. And, when this is all over, if no indictments hold, having outclassed dead-enders like Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson, George Pataki, Bobby Jindal and a few others, he will be there at the top, with Donald Trump – brands to the last, available to speak for certain fees, never having sold out apart from that first fatal sale that embarked on a life that reached its soul terminus here…

Mr. Charles P. Pierce, at Esquire:

…[N]ow that Chris Christie is out there tellin’ it like it is, taking his 30 percent approval rating in New Jersey out for a spin, it seems a waste of time to point out that Big Chicken’s candidacy is less popular than brucellosis in Iowa, and that, at the moment, he’s pushing in all his chips on New Hampshire, where he is currently edging out Dr. Ben Carson. (Also, in one poll, 55 percent of Republicans said they wouldn’t vote for him under any circumstances.)…

Nate Cohn, at the NYTimes, dutifully tinkertoys a potential “Path to Relevance“…

…[M]any candidates with little or no chance to win the nomination nonetheless play a big role in presidential primaries, and Mr. Christie could be one of them. He could drain votes from Jeb Bush, widening the opening for Marco Rubio or even improving Scott Walker’s odds to win both Iowa and New Hampshire…

If Mr. Christie’s campaign took off, it would mainly be at Mr. Bush’s expense. It is hard to see Mr. Bush winning Iowa, where the most conservative voters reign, which makes it all but necessary for him to win New Hampshire. A weaker Mr. Bush would give Mr. Rubio a better chance to win New Hampshire, which might be as important to his chances as it is to those of Mr. Bush. It would also give Mr. Walker a better chance of following a win in Iowa with a win of his own in New Hampshire.

But in all those situations, Mr. Christie probably goes back to New Jersey.

Jamelle Bouie, at Slate, uses Christie to explain why one should “Never Wait to Run for President“:

… Christie’s prospects have changed sharply from three years ago. Then, Christie was the strongest commodity in the Republican Party. Uncompromising and pugnacious, he fought pitched battles against public sector unions before Scott Walker had ever touched the national stage… By early 2011, top Republican donors were begging Christie to enter the race. They wanted a credible and exciting alternative to the milquetoast Mitt Romney and his lackluster challengers. Christie refused…

We’ll see how Christie’s story ends. But thus far, it illustrates an important rule—perhaps the only real rule—of presidential politics: If you have a shot, you should take it. The United States has an endless supply of people who want to be president; by waiting, you up the odds that one of them will get in your way, or surpass you entirely…

Even if you stay ascendant or at least relevant, you have to deal with the damage that inevitably comes with tenure in public office. The longer you’re governor, the more chances you have to disappoint your constituents, court a scandal, or just get stuck in the inevitable, everyday grumpiness of governing. A Chris Christie who jumps into the race in 2011 is a Chris Christie who never has to deal with Bridgegate…

As far as I can tell, Mr. Pierce is the wordsmith responsible for the “Big Chicken” moniker. For some history, here’s a link to something Pierce wrote at the beginning of last year:

Today’s required reading is Alec MacGillis’s long-eyed view of Chris Christie’s long career of gettin’ some sugar as something of a politician in New Jersey. Suffice it to say, it did not start at the George Washington Bridge. The man’s entire career, as limned by MacGillis, makes him out to be a kind of Huey Long with helicopters…

the more I read about this, the more I am convinced that what we’re dealing with here is an information-age Kingfish, who found a state, not that he could loot, but that he could use as a vehicle for his political ambition, and he fashioned a pleasing personality through which he could take control, but, at every stage, when it came to a choice between that personality and that ambition, the former always — a-l-w-a-y-s — gave way…

Reader Interactions

37Comments

  1. 1.

    Amir Khalid

    Even if he weren’t at risk of indictment, even if he weren’t stuck in the no-man’s-land between the serious Presidential contenders and the fringe candidates, Chris Christie’s got one unique disadvantage: his temper is only ever one minor provocation away from exploding all over his chances. I tend to think he’s running now only because, having already made his intentions known, he’d lose face if he acknowledged he had no chance and quit.

  2. 2.

    opiejeanne

    @Amir Khalid: Hi you.

    I agree. I also agree with the writer (Charlie Pierce?) who pointed out that he missed his chance in 2011. Thank goodness he missed that chance.

  3. 3.

    mdblanche

    How many GOP candidates are we up to now? Have we hit Graham’s number yet?

  4. 4.

    NotMax

    With all due deference to Mr. Pierce, Foghorn Leghorn is the one and only Big Chicken. Christie, the Big Phonus Bolonus, is Giulani without the charm. :)

    Those with political memories which reach farther back than the last month with an R in it recall the Dubya administration’s hacking and packing of U.S. Attorney offices and their smug joy at bringing in Christie, touting him as “our kind” of fellow.

    That endorsement alone ought to be disqualifying.

  5. 5.

    Mustang Bobby

    Using “Telling It Like It Is” brings back the ghost of Howard Cosell, which is enough to fend off any number of people who remember that loudmouth.

  8. 8.

    Waldo

    Hope he hangs in there long enough to participate in a debate. It would be great to see him shout down a moderator or take on Jeb in an arrogance off.

  10. 10.

    TriassicSands

    Christy has a problem. He’s a loud-mouthed bully. No, that’s not his problem — Repubicans love thuggish blowhards. Christy’s problem is that he’s not the only, or even the biggest loud-mouthed bully in the race. He’s got to contend with Donald Trump, who can blow and bully with the best of them. Why, his foreign policy, even with our friends, amounts to little more than telling them what their gonna do and when their gonna do it and their gonna like it or face the consequences, and by the way eff you! Europe’s going to love having the Donald lecture them on every imaginable subject all with the punchline being “You suck so shut-up and do as you’re told. With all his other problems, Christy faces a real challenge — which loud-mouthed bully can alienate the most people the soonest. My money’s on Trump. He makes Christy seem like a refined, even elegant scholar.

  11. 11.

    mikefromArlington

    Nice image.

    Has anyone heard or seen the PUMA crowd yet? lol. Remember them?

    No doubt someone will find a reason to resurrect that farce.

  12. 12.

    Tommy

    I am officially announcing I am running for President. Seems I am about the only person not running so I guess I should.

  13. 13.

    MattF

    @Origuy: Graham’s number is bigger. Much bigger. A cosmologist (on her day off, I’d guess) calculated that if you ever ‘understand’ the size of Graham’s number your brain would collapse into a black hole. A consequence of the Holographic Principle, apparently.

  16. 16.

    Tommy

    @MattF: I had to Google Graham’s number. I wasn’t sure what you were talking about. I so love not knowing everything and having to figure it out. I get it now :).

  20. 20.

    Tommy

    @MattF: I have never been good with numbers. A few years ago I read a book about the history of zero. There is a history behind it. I had no clue. Numbers are so powerful things.

  21. 21.

    mclaren

    Like every other Democrat, I enjoy the spectacle of the Republican presidential candidates for 2015 making fools and tools of themselves.

    I’m starting to suspect, though, that this kind of light entertainment has turned into what Herbert Marcuse called “repressive sublimation” — it’s a way for the System (corporate crony military-industrial capitalism, AKA “inverted fascism”) to co-opt dissent and distract people who might usefully criticize the System from the real problems barreling down on them like a locomotive racing toward a cow trapped on the tracks.

    What are the real problems facing Americans in 2015?

    I think that’s clear, Bernie Sanders has enunciated them.

    Income and Wealth Inequality: Today, we live in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world but that reality means very little for most of us because almost all of that wealth is owned and controlled by a tiny handful of individuals. In America we now have more income and wealth inequality than any other major country on earth, and the gap between the very rich and everyone is wider than at any time since the 1920s. The issue of wealth and income inequality is the great moral issue of our time, it is the great economic issue of our time and it is the great political issue of our time. And we will address it.

    Let me be very clear. There is something profoundly wrong when the top one-tenth of 1 percent owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent, and when 99 percent of all new income goes to the top 1 percent. There is something profoundly wrong when, in recent years, we have seen a proliferation of millionaires and billionaires at the same time as millions of Americans work longer hours for lower wages and we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country on earth. There is something profoundly wrong when one family owns more wealth than the bottom 130 million Americans. This grotesque level of inequality is immoral. It is bad economics. It is unsustainable. This type of rigged economy is not what America is supposed to be about. This has got to change and, as your president, together we will change it.

    Economics: But it is not just income and wealth inequality. It is the tragic reality that for the last 40 years the great middle class of our country – once the envy of the world – has been disappearing. Despite exploding technology and increased worker productivity, median family income is almost $5,000 less than it was in 1999. In Vermont and throughout this country it is not uncommon for people to be working two or three jobs just to cobble together enough income to survive on and some health care benefits.

    The truth is that real unemployment is not the 5.4 percent you read in newspapers. It is close to 11 percent if you include those workers who have given up looking for jobs or who are working part time when they want to work full time. Youth unemployment is over 17 percent and African-American youth unemployment is much higher than that. Today, shamefully, we have 45 million people living in poverty, many of whom are working at low-wage jobs. These are the people who struggle every day to find the money to feed their kids, to pay their electric bills and to put gas in the car to get to work. This campaign is about those people and our struggling middle class. It is about creating an economy that works for all, and not just the one percent.

    Citizens United: My fellow Americans: Let me be as blunt as I can and tell you what you already know. As a result of the disastrous Supreme Court decision on Citizens United, the American political system has been totally corrupted, and the foundations of American democracy are being undermined. What the Supreme Court essentially said was that it was not good enough for the billionaire class to own much of our economy. They could now own the U.S. government as well. And that is precisely what they are trying to do.

    American democracy is not about billionaires being able to buy candidates and elections. It is not about the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson and other incredibly wealthy individuals spending billions of dollars to elect candidates who will make the rich richer and everyone else poorer. According to media reports the Koch brothers alone, one family, will spend more money in this election cycle than either the Democratic or Republican parties. This is not democracy. This is oligarchy. In Vermont and at our town meetings we know what American democracy is supposed to be about. It is one person, one vote – with every citizen having an equal say – and no voter suppression. And that’s the kind of American political system we have to fight for and will fight for in this campaign.

    Source: Bernie Sanders presidential candidacy announcement, 2015.

    Yves Smith has offered a blunter version over at Naked Capitalism:

    There is an entire large, well funded, and extremely effective business apparatus that extracts lucrative programs, explicit subsidies, guarantees, and various other gimmies from government bodies at all levels. Tom Ferguson has been meticulously documenting since the early 1980s how campaign finance in America works, which he calls he calls the “investment theory of politics“: that political parties in the US respond not to popular will or the interests of broader society, but the patronage of large money blocks, with certain industries preferring one party to the other.

    One suspects the reason for the sensitivity within the ranks of the Democratic party water-carriers to the “corporatist” label is that Obamacare is a textbook case. Konczal cleverly tries to undermine this charge by serving up an example of histrionic right-wing messaging: depicting the contraception requirement (PR-wise, the Republican have been big on throwing identity politics into the ACA mix, but they are hardly alone).

    Yet Obamacare IS corporatist. Here we have the industries that are significant contributors to why the American medical system is so overpriced – the health insurers and Big Pharma – actually playing a major role in writing the legislation. And how is it not a sop to large companies to have the government require that citizens buy your product or else pay large tax penalties? Mr. Market certainly thought so, for the price of health insurer and drug company stocks jumped the day the ACA passed. And remember, the beneficiaries of Obamacare extend beyond the insurers and pharmaceutical makers. Hospitals, who increasingly engage in oligopoly pricing (most surgeries need to be done in hospitals), also come out even stronger because new requirements imposed on doctors’ practices will make it difficult for a retiring MD who practices medicine, as opposed to servicing the rich (e.g., cosmetic surgeons) to sell their business to anyone other than a hospital.

    And the label fits in the banking arena like a glove. I’ve been called both the Bush, but far more often the Obama bank-friendly policies “Mussolini-style corporatism” since 2008, and well before what Konczal claims is the origin of this description, Tim Carney’s book Obamanomics, published November 30, 2009.

    Folks, all this yuck-yuck, let’s-have-fun-bashing-the-Republican-front-men stuff is a distraction, and a dangerous one. The truly dangerous Republicans are the ones pulling the strings behind the scenes — the (mostly) nameless or largely unknown billionaires like that guy on the Wal-Mart board who constantly proclaimed that “Labor unions are nothing but blood-sucking parasites living off the productive labor of people who work for a living,” guys like Sheldon Adelson, the Koch brothers, et al.

    The people you folks are laughing and giggling and snickering at and dancing up and down at how foolish they are…these people are just the front men, the torpedos, the hired muscles. The real Al Capones are the dangerous ones, and they’re laughing at you because in states like Wisconsin they are winning and winning and winning, they’re driving back the New Deal, crushing the middle class, and enriching the top 1% at a startling rate.

  23. 23.

    Kay

    This is great. No one needs to write about him ever again

    Most Americans don’t know Chris Christie like I do, so it’s only natural to wonder what testimony I might offer after covering his every move for the last 14 years.
    Is it his raw political talent? No, they can see that.
    Is it his measurable failure to fix the economy, solve the budget crisis or even repair the crumbling bridges? No, his opponents will cover that if he ever gets traction.
    My testimony amounts to a warning: Don’t believe a word the man says.
    If you have the stomach for it, this column offers some greatest hits in Christie’s catalog of lies.
    Don’t misunderstand me. They all lie, and I get that. But Christie does it with such audacity, and such frequency, that he stands out.

  24. 24.

    Alex S.

    Strange how these exploratory stages of a campaign almost always lead to an actual campaign. I mean, Christie, if he were a rational person, really should have come to the conclusion that his campaign makes less sense by the day. Jindal is a similar case. Did they really “feel the momentum”? Were people excited about them? And yet, they jump in. Christie’s entrance reminds me of comedy skits in which a fat man tries to enter an already overcrowded tiny car.

  25. 25.

    Mobile Grumpy Code Monkey

    @mclaren: Hey, I’m voting for Bernie in the primary, but as ever we focus way, way, way too much attention on the Presidency and almost none on Congress. It really doesn’t matter who’s in the White House if Congress is still wholly owned by the Kochs.

    Congress runs the show, guys, and there needs to be coordinated campaign across the nation to find, support, and actually elect enough Congressmen and Senators to push back. That’s the hard bit.

  27. 27.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    Oh man…
    …everybody better watch out when Christie JUMPS IN THE POOL!

    Especially since the pool already has Santorum in it.

  28. 28.

    Cervantes

    @Amir Khalid:

    TL; DR.

    Here’s the key (quoting maclaren):

    What are the real problems facing Americans in 2015?

    I think that’s clear, Bernie Sanders has enunciated them.

    One may agree or disagree, but there’s a reasonable argument there.

  29. 29.

    Cervantes

    @Mobile Grumpy Code Monkey:

    For what it’s worth, I agree, and I’m pretty sure we’re not alone.

    Why, then, does so much of the conversation (not only here) focus on the presidency (or simply lambaste the Republican candidates for president)? Perhaps because it’s easier or more enjoyable? Occam’s razor might lead us to think so.

  31. 31.

    Chris

    I can’t remember exactly what it was, but I remember something being mentioned on Balloon Juice a couple weeks ago where Christie had offended big donors by treating them like, well, the same way Christie treats everyone, instead of bowing and kissing their ring and licking their shoes the way these people expect.

    That was the moment when I said “Chris Christie’s campaign is screwed.”

  34. 34.

    Feathers

    @TriassicSands: The other problems is that Christie obviously wants to be liked. Trump thinks he should be worshipped and anyone who isn’t doing so is a shithead loser. But you can feel Christie’s pain at not being one of the cool kids. The mouthing off isn’t from a place of strength.

  35. 35.

    low-tech cyclist

    Jamelle Bouie, at Slate, uses Christie to explain why one should “Never Wait to Run for President“:

    During the mid-1990s, I taught math at an evangelical Christian college. When Dan Quayle, a politician many of them unfortunately thought well of, decided to skip 1996 and wait for 2000, I made this same point in a discussion with some of my students. By the 2000 cycle, I said, somebody is going to come along and occupy Quayle’s niche. That person’s gonna be that year’s model, and Quayle will be yesteryear’s news. “Who?” they asked. “I have no idea, but there are always new people coming along. There will be somebody.”

    Of course, that somebody was GWB, who was basically a more politically savvy version of Quayle. Quayle ran in 2000, but hardly anyone noticed.

    So yeah: if you’re a pol considering running for President, you seize the moment.

  36. 36.

    Hungry Joe

    @Tommy: You’re going to need a bumper sticker/logo. Jeb! already has the exclamation point, so how about:

    Tommy …

    or,

    Tommy;

    or,

    Tommy?

    or (my fave)

    TOMMY???

    Hey, just trying to help out.

  37. 37.

    StringOnAStick

    @Feathers: That’s why his announcement was held at his former high school, where he was president of his class.

    I heard part of his announcement speech; somehow I don’t think that promising to be someone willing to compromise is all that attractive to the batshit no-compromise rethug base.

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