I’m starting to become convinced that, like countless comic book supervillains who gain universe-changing power only to stupidly blow it in the end, Jeb Bush is self-sabotaging and doesn’t really want this gig that his dad and older brother had.
Jeb Bush vigorously defended some of the defining foreign policies and national security strategies implemented by his brother George W. Bush as president on Thursday, casting in a positive light elements of the Iraq War, a conflict that haunted much of his tenure.
He notably used wording similar to the “Mission Accomplished” banner that hung behind the 43rd president as he gave a speech on an aircraft carrier in 2003. The speech was one of the biggest embarrassments of his administration, since the war went on for years after that.
“I’ve been critical and I think people have every right to be critical of decisions that were made,” Bush said Thursday. “In 2009, Iraq was fragile but secure. It was mission was accomplished in the way that there was security there and it was because of the heroic efforts of the men and women in the Untied States military that it was so.”
In a question and answer session hosted by Americans for Peace, Prosperity and Security held on a college campus here, the Republican presidential hopeful said the removal of Saddam Hussein from power “turned out to be a pretty good deal,” and he praised the 2007 troop surge his brother pushed as “an extraordinarily effective” strategy.
On the debate over interrogation techniques, another issue that dogged his brother, Bush would not say for certain whether he would preserve the executive order President Obama signed banning enhanced interrogation. “I do think in general that torture is not appropriate,” he said.
“I’m cautious about making commitments without having all the facts,” he said. Bush defended the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, which Obama has struggled to try to close throughout his presidency. “This is not a torture chamber,” he said, adding that he had seen it firsthand.
Bush went further than just lauding the the policy merits of the Iraq troop surge. He also commended his brother for not caving to the intense political opposition he faced at the time. “He had the courage to do something that is completely against the political grain,” he said.
I’d say Jeb couldn’t possibly be this utterly moronic, but it makes sense if deep down that he sees what history did to his dad and especially his big bro and that he feels like he’s being forced into this disaster, the poor little hothouse flower that he is.
I mean right now he’s supposed to be the crown prince with people tossing hundreds of millions of dollars at him to run and win, and instead he’s getting his ass handed to him in the polls by two failed CEOs with bad hair and a neurosurgeon who incessantly compares everything to slavery.
I think he seriously wants out, so he’s mailing it in.
Either that, or Jeb’s so incompetent that the people who made his idiot brother president for eight years still can’t find a way to get this guy in the W column, which is entirely possible.
Kropadope
So, were we supposed to stay there forever to ensure it stayed that way? Were we supposed to do so in defiance of a status of forces agreement your own brother signed with the Iraqi government and the Iraqi government would not be persuaded to change?
rikyrah
rotten, evil azz muthaphucka.
………………………
Chicago, New Orleans, and rebirth
Envy isn’t a rational response to the upcoming 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina..
But with Aug. 29 fast approaching and New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu making media rounds, including at the Tribune Editorial Board, I find myself wishing for a storm in Chicago — an unpredictable, haughty, devastating swirl of fury. A dramatic levee break. Geysers bursting through manhole covers. A sleeping city, forced onto the rooftops.
That’s what it took to hit the reset button in New Orleans. Chaos. Tragedy. Heartbreak
Residents overthrew a corrupt government. A new mayor slashed the city budget, forced unpaid furloughs, cut positions, detonated labor contracts. New Orleans’ City Hall got leaner and more efficient. Dilapidated buildings were torn down. Public housing got rebuilt. Governments were consolidated.
An underperforming public school system saw a complete makeover. A new schools chief, Paul Vallas, designed a school system with the flexibility of an entrepreneur. No restrictive mandates from the city or the state. No demands from teacher unions to abide. Instead, he created the nation’s first free-market education system.
Hurricane Katrina gave a great American city a rebirth.
And after careful study of the levees, it turns out the devastation was not born of natural disaster. It was man-made.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-chicago-katrina-financial-disaster-landrieu-new-orleans-mcqueary-emanuel-pers-20150813-column.html
Honoré De Ballsack
So, were we supposed to stay there forever to ensure it stayed that way? Were we supposed to do so in defiance of a status of forces agreement your own brother signed with the Iraqi government and the Iraqi government would not be persuaded to change?
The official GOP party line answer to both those questions is: “Yes.”
Chris
Here’s the problem:
1) You can’t ignore the legacy of the Iraq War when your last name is Bush – another candidate might, not you. Even if the mainstream media were willing to ignore such an amazing source of drama, your opponents won’t. Sooner or later, you’ll have to square with the Iraq War and either endorse it or repudiate it.
2) You can’t repudiate the Iraq War in a Republican primary. The right wing base firmly believes that it was not a mistake, and that while it might have gotten off to a bumpy start, THE SURGE had worked its magic and we were winning, before Obambi the Appeaser pulled all the troops out and it all went to hell again.
So, Bush is between a rock and a hard place. The smart thing to do would have been to, you know, not run, but now that he did it anyway, I think he’s just saying what he knows he has to to make the Republican base happy, and hoping that anti-war sentiment’s faded enough by now that he doesn’t pay too high a price for it.
Derelict
Jeb doesn’t want out. He wants the White House, and he wants it bad.
His problem is that the White House will not be handed to him the way everything else in his life has been. Even his stint as governor was largely enabled by Daddy’s friends and bargeloads of their cash.
I think he’s genuinely puzzled that the presidency is not being presented to him as is his due, and he’s mystified as to just what more he needs to do to get these stupid, stupid voters to understand that he’s next–that it’s HIS turn!
rikyrah
I don’t think he’s playing to lose. Even moreso than Hillary in 2008, he believes he’s ENTITLED to the Presidency, and resents that he should be forced to go through the motions. He’s forever heard that he was ‘ the smart one’, so why shouldn’t the Presidency be handed over to him?
He has his mother’s personality, and can’t hide his complete contempt for the ‘little people’.
I honestly still am back at the point that he went on UNIVISION, and told those folks that they could work here, and pay taxes, but don’t believe that you will ever get full citizenship in America. But, because he used fancy language, and did it in Spanish, it’s supposed to take the sting out of what he said.
And then this week, telling that guy, who had been waiting 8 years to bring his sister over – that she better do it before he became President, because he was going to shut that down?
Sigh.
I got nothing.
JPL
Kerry has arrived in Cuba. For those preaching human rights, they need to do an inventory and see how many items they have, that were made in China. Hypocrites.
GHayduke (formerly lojasmo)
Half the American electorate doesn’t vote, and half that does are morons. Bush will be the nominee, and he’ll end up with at least 45% of the vote.
Chris
@Derelict:
Everything I read about Jeb Bush reminds me of Romney four years ago – and Romney was a terrible candidate. It’s amazing that the Republican establishment thought what was needed was another candidate exactly like him, only worse.
bystander
I’m going with “utterly moronic” and “incompetent” as the reasons for the implosions. When you are used to having things handed to you on a silver platter, you dont have reason to.put any work into it. Jebula will be even lazier and less engaged than his idiot brother or Ronald Reagan.
NonyNony
I think it’s a combination of things:
Jeb! is a lousy campaigner. He seems to somehow be worse than his father at it, and I always thought that Poppy Bush was just terrible at campaigning. He’s easily the worst campaigner to actually achieve the presidency in my lifetime that wasn’t Gerald Ford. His son is worse at it – it seems like Bush the Elder was better at making connections to the average voter than Jeb! is – and that’s just astounding to me.
Also W was a campaigning savant. He was really good at it. The entire Republican field this time around looks like a bunch of clowns compared to W in 2000. People who go to see Jeb! expecting to be fired up the way they were when they saw W in 2000 are coming out disappointed.
I’m rapidly becoming convinced that W was actually the smart one. People kept telling me that Jeb! was the smart one for years, but I’m beginning to think that getting the “Florida Man” vote might not be an indication of genius political prowess.
SFAW
100,000-plus former Iraqi civilians – if by “former,” one means dead due to the war – might disagree with you, you clueless fuck.
When was that, you lying prick? Because the persons who ACTUALLY went against the political grain were labeled by your brother’s Administration as traitors.
Be that as it may, Zandar: I don’t think the Rethug base cares about the points brought up in the op-ed. And someone thinking that all that shit spells CERTAIN DOOM for Jeb! is not looking at recent history very closely. Being a lying, clueless moron is a feature, not a bug, in Your Modern [sic] Republican Party.
Chris
@JPL:
The human rights justifications for Cuba’s special status (one of the few nations we embargo like that; the only nation whose refugees get automatic “feet dry” asylum) were always bullshit. Cuba has nowhere near the worst human rights record in the world, or even in the communist world, and we do business every day with countries that make Cuba look like Switzerland.
boatboy_srq
@Kropadope: Ayuh. Most people in most places call that colonialism; the GOTea calls that “success.”
sparrow
@bystander: It’s interesting to note that research shows that when you tell kids that they are smart or did something smart, they don’t work as hard, whereas telling them that they really worked hard or showed a lot of perseverance, they are more likely to actually put in effort for difficult tasks.
Apparently Jeb fits this finding.
MazeDancer
On an unconscious level, Jeb may, indeed, be trying to make himself not President.
Maybe he’s tired of performing for Mom’s crazy expectations. His dad is getting very old, maybe Poppy Bush isn’t pushing the “you must do this” pedal as hard.
Also, his wife is Mexican. His children have as much Mexican heritage as they do Bush Crime Cartel. He cannot enjoy the possibility that his family will be constantly subjected to the hate-wing vitriol. And since, forgetting Dukakis abandoning Kitty, he did not loudly and instantly stand up to Trump’s racist slurs, clearly he’s going to let hate reign. And how can that be something he hopes happens?
His wife has been widely reported to not like political life. And does not take part in political discussions. That she is a “refuge” from politics for him. That’s not going to work as First Lady.
Waldo
@Derelict: I think that’s the real issue. He wants the job — he just doesn’t want to work hard to get it. He wants to pass this test with a gentleman’s C. Not gonna happen.
Amir Khalid
If Jeb didn’t want to run for president in 2016, why didn’t he just say no like he did the previous cycle? I’m with those who reckon he’s an incompetent candidate, rather than a reluctant one. His exclamation point quit very early in this campaign.
MattF
And what we all really need now is a President with a need-to-fail. Sigh.
So, you ask, a) ‘What’s wrong with this picture?’ and b) ‘Could Jeb! actually be worse than W?’ Bear in mind that W was ‘advised’ by the likes of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rove and Jeb! thinks that being advised by the same crew is a good thing.
Redshift
@Honoré De Ballsack:
I think the party line answer to those questions is actually “obviously, a fragile stability would have gotten steadily more stable” and “shut up.”
Jeffro
that’s gonna leave a mark.
I agree with the folks who think Jeb? feels entitled and thought he would walk right to the nom, much less the presidency. He is a lousy campaigner, saddled with the baggage of W, trapped in an era when the GOP base has decided now is the time to let it all hang out in full, frothing fury at Establishment types just like him. He missed the boat by not running in 2000, he missed it again in 2008, and he sure as heck is going to miss it in 2016.
Cervantes
@NonyNony:
What makes you say that?
Chris
@Jeffro:
If the last name “Bush” is a handicap in 2016, it sure as hell would’ve been one in 2008.
Mack
So, for the sake of discussion, Jeb is somehow ushered in as the establishments’ pick, Bernie flames out, and it winds up being Bush v Clinton. I think that voter turn out on both sides will be impacted negatively…or will it? Will the GOP repair links with the evangelicals and get them to the polls? Will women unite around Hillary? This is where I was a year ago. What do y’all think?
Zandar
@SFAW:
That’s true, but right now about 92% or so of the GOP wants somebody other than Jeb. How he gets that down to 49% or less, I’m not sure.
Kropadope
@rikyrah:
So, you can work here, but not benefit from our labor laws. The perfect Republican plan, devalues the work of immigrants AND native-born Americans.
Redshift
@NonyNony:
I trust Molly Ivins’ assessment: GW Bush is not stupid, but he is willfully ignorant and proud of it.
Jeb! is failing with the rubes in part because he’s convinced he’s smart and knowledgeable and it shows, and the base has no use for that.
And he’s failing with normal people because he’s convinced he’s smart and knowledgeable and repeatedly demonstrates that he isn’t.
HRA
The truth is the majority of voters for this election are waiting to choose a candidate on both sides. It’s not an easy decision like it was in 2008 and 2012. Being smacked with the possibility of a dynasty election is not the solution for either side of it. Most people do not like reruns. It’s that simple as to why Trump and Sanders have been surging. .
Chyron HR
JEB! is only biding his time until the Cleansing Winds of the Revolution Clear The Fields in preparation for the Great Harvesting of Votes.
Yeah, that’s good. I’ll just round that up to 30 minutes when I bill it to his campaign.
Kropadope
@SFAW:
There hasn’t been a modern Republican party in 50 years. Shit, maybe a hundred. I think the word your looking for is “contemporary.”
Kropadope
@Chyron HR:
collin
I say the opposite. The Repbublican Party to excise the Bush demons, decided that they needed to run Jeb! to lose. He is a secret plant to F*** Up the election so the R nominee can state “I am not a Bush.” Think about it:
1) The R realized they needed the nation to forget Bush Presidency.
2) Let Jeb! take all the Iraq War hits.
3) Shower him with money (which is in endless supply this cycle) to prove he is a real candidate.
4) Let him Suck!
So far plan was working until Von Clownstick took control of the primary.
Chris
@Redshift:
That was my assessment as well. I never thought Bush was stupid in the sense of being actually mentally deficient in a way that he couldn’t help (didn’t he fly F-102s? I assume you need at least some degree of competence to operate a fighter plane). Just lazy, intellectually incurious, and someone who by dint of birth had ended up surrounded by the wrong crowd, which continued to guide him his whole life in a way that he was rarely interested in questioning.
ETA: I say “rarely” because when the public gave him that giant kick in the ass in 2006, he did wake up long enough to fire Rumsfeld and replace him with someone who wasn’t a complete toolbag, ignore Cheney’s calls for a third war with Iran, and somewhat improve the Iraq War policies. What a pity he didn’t do it five years earlier.
gene108
When Bush, Jr. was campaigning in 2000, even though what he was proposing was total bullshit, he and his supporters could always retort “well we believe this will work, here’s some Heritage Foundation, AEI, etc. analysis with Math! And numbers don’t lie”…When he ran in 2004, he ran on people’s emotions about 9/11/01, hatred of gay marriage and outsourced dirty tricks to outside groups like Swift Boat Veterans for Truth.
There was also a major right-wing media push to deflect blame from Bush, Jr. from day one, such as 9/11/01 was all Bill Clinton’s fault and that deflection continued, with some effect, until it met reality head on in 2006 and got whacked.
Bush, Jr. always maintained a certain level of plausible deniability about what he was involved with as President, through very carefully crafted statements and not being in the room, when the dirty work was done.
But by 2007, no one cared about how careful he was in his pronouncements or where he was, when the hatchet work was done. Things were bad, and he’s in charge.
Unfortunately for John Bush, he doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt, his brother enjoyed for 6-7 years the media gave him. His big bro used up all the benefits of doubts the media had and they have none left to give John. He’s stuck with trying to justify and distance himself from his loser older brother at the same time and failing miserably at it. If he could just get away with saying, “those actions are in the past, so I want to look into the future that Obama is destroying” he would be fine, but unfortunately the media went nuts about how ISIS/ ISIL/IS is going to kill us all in our beds last year, so the situation in Iraq and how we got there can’t be brushed aside.
Poor John. Poor, poor John. His drunk big bro screwed up his chance at being President and there’s nothing he can do about it.
Also, too it doesn’t help John that the right-wing consensus opinion of why his brother sucked was that his brother was “too liberal” and, if he had not been such a flaming left-wing-Alinksy-ite-Leninist-Communist-Socialist America would never have had to suffer through the Obama regime.
There’s no where for John to run to besides stage right and he’s not going to out crazy Walker or Cruz, let alone the current incarnation of Trump.
Kropadope
@Kropadope: That strike tag was supposed to be closed somewhere around “MSM.”
Cervantes
@MazeDancer:
Are you referring to the “debate question” about rape?
It was a hypothetical question, and a deplorably stupid one. He should have responded differently — but to say he abandoned his wife is ridiculous.
If that’s what you’re talking about.
Kropadope
@gene108:
So, Jeb is suffering due to the tactic the R-leaning MSM used to try to hang Obama and Congressional Democrats? Good.
Punchy
2 months ago, I’da said fo’ shiz. Now, no so sure. Still the overwhelming Vegas fav (+170), but dayum, every day in 7th place makes him look weak.
Patricia Kayden
I can completely understand not throwing your brother under the bus — even when your brother was an incompetent, dumb leader. I thought Jebbie would try to avoid speaking about any of his brother’s actions but I guess that’s not possible. Unfortunately for Jebbie, the dysfunction of his brother’s presidency is still fresh in our minds. Much too fresh given what’s happening with ISIS and Iraq. The Bush name has been damaged beyond repair. Jebbie is running way too soon.
NonyNony
@Cervantes:
The reactions of every Republican and “I-Say-I’m-Independent-But-When-I-Bother-To-Vote-I-Vote-Republican” I know that ever heard him campaign in 2000? My Grod you would have thought that he was the second coming of Ronald Reagan from the way they reacted to him.
I listened to a few of his campaign speeches in 2000 (because I considered myself an Independent then after falling off the Republican bandwagon during the Clinton Witch Hunt years the way Cole did during the Schaivo nonsense). He was really, really good at firing up not just the base of the GOP, but the marginal GOP voters. And with connecting with them – somehow this rich spoiled brat that was fourth generation wealth and third (or fourth) generation DC insider could convince people that he was a good-ole boy who they’d like to kick back and watch a NASCAR race with. Think about that for a minute – W was so slick that, despite the fact that he came from old money, and despite the fact that his family were the definition of DC insiders, he could STILL convince audiences that he was an outsider candidate who was closer to them in affinity than any of the other DC politicians were. He played that populist gambit like a fiddle and did it very well. He was almost as good at it as Reagan, and Reagan actually DID come from working class roots and DID earn all of his money by working (well, by acting – but he didn’t have it handed to him by his family like W did).
Now it didn’t work on me because what he was saying was nonsense and I was long past believing GOP nonsense at that point (his saying “fool me once shame on you, fool me twice you can’t be fooled again” was pretty much where I was) but if you were even marginally on the right and at all sympathetic to the whole “someone needs to go into DC and clean it up” mentality you could project that right onto W. He was absolutely stunning at projecting an image of an outsider, middle-class sort of guy that his supporters could project anything onto without committing to anything in particular. The GOP won’t see another one like him for a while, I hope, and I’m really, really glad that his incompetent presidency left him so toxic that he can’t go out and stump for his brother or anyone else without costing them votes.
dedc79
@GHayduke (formerly lojasmo): if Jeb gets the GOP nomination there will be a third party challenge from the right, making it hard for Jeb to get anywhere near 45%
Redshift
@Mack: I don’t agree with that at all.
First, the attempt by the pundits to call them both “dynasties” will convince no one but the pundits – we’re misogynistic enough as a country that one of the main ways for women to achieve high office is still to take over for their husbands or build on their success. If the GOP is dumb enough to push that line, there will be a backlash.
Second, if Clinton is nominated, it won’t just be women who are motivated to turn out by a historic candidacy, just like it wasn’t just African Americans who were motivated to turn it for Obama.
And that’s not even getting into the people on each side who will be motivated to vote against the opposing candidate.
Honestly, what is the argument that it would depress turnout? Voters will see them as retreads from presidential families? That’s just pundit fappery, it has nothing to do with how real people think.
Chris
@NonyNony:
The other thing is that while he was great at presenting the image of a regular middle class guy that the base could eat up, being the scion of an East Coast dynasty meant that Republican Establishment elites also knew him and trusted him. He could be convincing in the Huckabee role and the Romney role. I think it’ll be a long time before we see anyone like that again.
Kropadope
@NonyNony:
Ignorant militarism, government-as-the-problem, blew up the debt and deficit…wasn’t he the second coming of Ronald Reagan?
Cervantes
@NonyNony:
Thanks for explaining.
You may be giving Bush credit for things the elite media achieved on his behalf.
shell
That sums up perfectly his bored, lackluster campaign appearances (Whether he really wants out or not, that remains to be seen)
Funny how the last Republican candidate gave off that faint reek of Entitlement. Or quoting his Missus , ‘Its our turn now’
Mack
@Redshift: I hope you’re right. I spend a lot of time with Millennials (due to the sport I play) and I hear quite a bit of lamenting the fact that they feel forced to pick between these two families. Also, too, my FB feed.
Kropadope
OT, but I’m very entertained by the way a bunch of people in my local city’s Facebook group are talking about how their butt hurts because the media ignores the death of unarmed white teenagers shot by police. The linked story about the white teenager’s death is from the Washington Post…
SiubhanDuinne
I flagged this at the tail end of an overnight thread that was in its death throes, but I’m mentioning it again because I find this typo both hilarious and rather sad:
Not too long ago, the Washington Post had proofreaders and copy editors. Sigh.
shell
And with the initial Republican ‘deep-bench’ how could he not feel that way?
Too bad Trump came in to queer the deal.
Amir Khalid
@Jeffro:
It’s a reference to that cartoon Anne Laurie front-paged recently.
dedc79
@SiubhanDuinne: Not too long ago, readers had to pay read the Washington Post.
Jack the Second
@Chris: I kind of liked his paintings.
jonas
@NonyNony: I think this is right. Plus, it’s important to remember how hard he pushed the “I’m not the asshole kind of conservative — I’m a ‘compassionate conservative’.” The GOP candidates in the current field, first and foremost Trump, don’t even make any pretense about not being the 100% asshole kind.
JPL
For those who want to watch the raising of the US Flag, in Havana, you can stream at CBSN…
That way you won’t have to listen to Andrea.
Oatler.
@Derelict: Reminds me of the SNL skit where GWB in a debate ruefully said “why do you even want this job? It’s hard! It’s really hard!”
Betty Cracker
@NonyNony, @Chris & @Cervantes: Great points all around. Regarding the Beltway media contribution to GWB’s bamboozle, I remember the build-up to the first debate with Gore, when the media set the expectations for GWB so damn low that all he had to do was remain continent to be declared the “winner” by outperforming expectations.
Mike J
@NonyNony:
Not only that, the Connecticut born, Yale educated Bush convinced even Democrats he was an idiot shitkicker. Both sides fell for the act, but the Republicans thought it was a good thing to be an idiot and the Democrats thought it was bad.
rk
@Patricia Kayden:
I don’t know. If my brother was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and chaos in the entire middle east, I’d not only throw him under the bus, I’d get in the driver’s seat and roll the bus over him.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@NonyNony: Nicely stated and totally true. I’ll always give credit where credit it due. W was the second-worst president of my lifetime. But he was a great campaigner and had an amazing ability to get people to think he was “one of them”, even when the truth was that if he thought about “the little people” at all, it was probably in terms of what their organs could fetch on the open market.
GW Bush could get folks to BELIEVE. Very dangerous.
His brother is running to lose. I’ve believed that since the day he announced. He displays all the enthusiasm and preparation I used to have about going to school, i.e. none whatsoever.
MomSense
@rikyrah:
Wow. People abandoned, dead in their homes, nursing homes, convention centers, roof tops, and bridges is what was needed to rebirth a city?
Evil. Evil. Evil.
ETA The author says that her piece is about finances and that she would never diminish a tragedy about lives lost. WTF. That is exactly what she did by not realizing how a nation spends money or doesn’t can result in lives lost. I hate these fucking financial compartmentalization psychopaths.
Hoodie
@Cervantes: That was W’s talent, manipulating members of the press (and others) who want to be in the club. W is the popular guy at the frat who is a complete asshole, but everyone who wants to be in the club sucks up to him and rationalizes away his assholism as part of his charm (e.g., his giving nicknames to WH reporters was condescending, but they lapped it up like dogs eating cat poop). Jeb strikes me as a the dutiful, studious son, not stupid but not particularly creative, lacking the “vision thing” like his dad. He sucks at campaigning like his dad, because he’s always emulated his dad. He has no business being president but, then again, his dad and his brother were also not particularly suited to the job. They’re where they are because they’re Bushes. They’re not self-made like Clinton, Obama or even Reagan.
Kropadope
@Betty Cracker:
Then they stuck him behind an opaque, wooden podium. Just in case.
SiubhanDuinne
@dedc79:
True.
NonyNony
@Kropadope:
Reagan was a highly trained actor (well, a B-list actor, but still) whose delivery on stump speeches is clearly influenced by his acting skills. Watch some old footage of him giving a campaign speech and compare it to W – no contest. W even in his best days still stumbled over words, had malapropisms aplenty, and was nowhere near as “charming” as Reagan. And yet, somehow, he was able to connect with people in a way that made them think of Reagan.
(But yeah – as far as actual policies go W was the second coming of Reagan. History repeats – first as tragedy, then as farce. But even the farce this time around was tragic.)
@Cervantes:
I think too many people on our side are too quick to take credit away from W and hand it off to Karl Rove or the media overlords or whatever. I don’t think that our media has nearly as much power as our media tries to pretend it has to manipulate the minds of voters. With W specifically I think I can refute that idea with a single name – John McCain. During the primary in 2000, the media was entirely in the tank for John McCain – he was their buddy and they wanted him to get the nomination. And they tried – oh they tried so hard to get it for him. But no – the Republican voters were having none of it. W fired them up, McCain at best bored them at worst irritated them. If the media elite had their way, John McCain would have been the nominee in 2000. But he wasn’t because W had both the GOP insider tracks greased by his father AND was a much, much better campaigner than John McCain could ever hope to be.
W was a good campaigner for his audience. If you’re not in his audience he looks like a bumbling goof who can’t talk straight. But if you’re in his audience he’s really good. Similarly, I know that Republicans can’t listen to Bill Clinton without thinking that he sounds like a slimy weasel. And Obama comes off as “thinking he’s smarter than he is” (i.e. “uppity”) to Republicans when he’s talking. It’s all about the audience – and W was a master of playing his audience.
Barry
@Punchy: I still think that it’ll be Jeb!
He’s got to have more money than everybody else put together. They have one billionaire each; the Bush family probably still has dozens.
He can continue on, making massive media buys, while the others flame out. Trump is helping him, IMHO, because Trump is trashing the others, and they’ll have to spend beacoup bucks to survive his attacks.
Trump will flame out, and that leaves Jeb! with a vast fortune backing him, against a bunch of largely spent out and burned out dwarves.
It will be a long, slow, WWI style attrition war.
feebog
I think Jeb! has failed to calculate that we are in brave new world of campaign finance. He got in early with the intention of locking in a shitload of donors. OK, mission accomplished, but there are still a bunch of billionaires out there looking for a candidate to back. And so, 17 candidates. As a result, nobody but the big mouthed billionaire gets much in the way of support. Jeb! thought he would be polling in the 20s or 30s right now. Instead, Walker, Carson, Fiorina, and Kaisch are all leeching support from him. That being said, I agree that he comes across as the lackluster and unfocused. If he has a stump speech that lays out his principles and platform I have yet to hear it.
Chris
@MomSense:
Sounds like someone took the villain from Daredevil as a role model rather than a bad guy.
SFAW
@Zandar:
Governor Charlie Crist agrees with you 92 percent.
ETA: In case that’s too abstruse: Rick Scott was declared dead-and-buried, politically, a year before his re-election – and he had a recent track record. Jeb!?! is 12 years out of office, so all he has to do is whisper sweet nothings in the ears of
moronsthe Republican base.Betty Cracker
@Kropadope: Haha, true!
Still, with all of that, GWB didn’t actually win the 2000 election; he just made it close enough to steal. The 2004 election was much more disheartening, to me anyway.
SFAW
@Kropadope:
Hence the [sic].
Kropadope
@Betty Cracker:
OMG, I was despondent at work that day, like the world was going to end (and it came pretty close as far as I can tell). Still, the shenanigans in Ohio with voting machines kinda makes 2004 suspect also.
Kropadope
@SFAW: Right, I know. I was just trying to help you out with the “contemporary.”
SFAW
@Betty Cracker:
Not clear he won that one, either. (Ken Blackwell’s shenanigans may have made the difference.)
SFAW
@Kropadope:
Except the usual phrase is “Your Modern Veeblefetzer” or whatever, not “Your Contemporary Potrzebie.”
And darn you to heck (as Chuckles Heston might have said) for beating me to the punch on the Ohio thing.
Chris
@NonyNony:
Without wanting to diminish these people too much either, Karl Rove’s handling of Election Night 2012 made me think that he wasn’t nearly as good as he was given credit for. Especially since, as Betty noted, he couldn’t even get a clean win in 2000 – even with the vote suppression effort in Florida, it still took the Supreme Court stepping in to hand him the election.
Davebo
Jeb’s not playing to lose.
He just knows he’s already won.
Kropadope
@SFAW: At least we now know that we don’t have entirely dissimilar ideas on word choice.
Although, what is Veeblefetzer and Potrzebie? Is that, like, German or something?
ArchTeryx
@Betty Cracker: The 2004 election was close enough to steal, too. I was an Election Protection volunteer for Ohio. I saw what Ken Blackwell (Ohio Secretary of State and Bush campaign manager) did with the voting machines there, the endlessly long lines in minority districts in Columbus (and very short lines in white districts). Not to mention the county that shut down all counting due to a “terrorist threat”, kicked out all the observers, then some hours later, reopened with tens of thousands of additional votes being “found” for GW Bush. Bush was even in Ohio coordinating; we got a massive disruption in the middle of the day when Bush’s motorcade actually showed up in Columbus, and he immediately went into a closed-door conference with Ken Blackwell.
There were shenanigans aplenty in 2004. Most of the Election Protection folks got on their busses and went home thinking Kerry had won the day. Only later, when the full story came out, did we find out how tragically wrong we were.
2004 was stolen just as blatantly as 2000. It just wasn’t as well publicized outside of Ohio.
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
That was incredibly moving.
Steve from Antioch
Bush isn’t self-sabotaging, he’s simply taking the positions he must to reach his base.
The positions are contrary to reality, and probably won’t garner general election support from the 20 of 30% of the electorate that is actually in play, but they’re sound strategy now.
Hell, he is significantly to the left now of Trump, who’s really exciting the base.
And as far as the psychoanalysis of what he wants, I think he believes, deep down in his dark soul, that he deserves the presidency.
Patrick
It seems that whenever a Republican is talking about the economy, they always talk about “Obama bankrupting the US”. Well, the Iraq war will easily cost in excess of $1-2 trillion. A war that was completely unnecessary.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@SFAW: Stealing an election is a long-standing American tradition. If he got away with it, and he did, then discussion of whether it was won fairly or stolen is utterly pointless.
He won. Twice. The “how” is at best a cautionary tale for democrats and a discussion for the history books.
Knowbody
@Davebo:
This.
Once again Zandar is completely fucking clueless. Right now the only person who can compete with Jeb in the money department is Trump. All Jeb has to do is let Trump take the flak, stay low, and then unload his hundreds of millions when Trump flames out.
What the fuck makes you think that a country that elected W won’t elect his dipshit brother?
Paul in KY
He has to live with (see from time to time) Dumfuckya & his mother & I think he has to put a positive spin on it for sake of his shitty family. Trashing his brother’s epic mess seems to be a bridge to far for Jeb!.
I think he thinks that he’s going to tough it out till end & get nomination & then feels that he can beat Hillary (no matter what he has said/did).
shell
Classic Mad Magazine
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne: I assume that Joe watched and mentioned that it was BFD.
It’s amazing what President Obama has accomplished during the last six and a half years.
jonas
@Chris: This is why I still think Bush will be the nominee. He sucks, but he has the most bucks. Like you said, everyone was rolling their eyes at Romney four years ago, too.
Chris
@ArchTeryx:
From what I read in the paper at the time and heard from the baristas talking amongst themselves at Starbucks, lines in Miami in 2012 were similarly disgracefully long, as in six hours or more. (Thank God, I voted absentee).
Honestly, the way we do elections is such a goddamn mess that the result of pretty much every national election is at least somewhat questionable. The fact that election day is on a work day alone probably prejudices the outcome against Democrats right off the bat, and that’s not even counting things like the voter suppression laws that have started popping up.
Amir Khalid
@shell:
I’ve spent decades wondering: is the R in “Potrzebie” silent?
Capri
@Honoré De Ballsack:
If things had gone well, it would have been credited 100% to Bush Since they didn’t, it’s 100% Obama’s fault. i.e. like every other thing in the world since 2004
Paul in KY
@Cervantes: He was better than VP Gore, IMO.
SFAW
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Not sure I consider 2000 a “win” – but it’s probably a semantic distinction. That is: if he was declared President by Scalia (who should have recused himself, by the way), was it actually a “win”? I don’t think so, but reasonable persons can disagree.
JPL
@SFAW: Scalia was not alone.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
from time to time? I’d be surprised if that generation doesn’t see Barbara in their dreams, sharp-toothed and dead-eyed like Pennywise the Clown.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: I’ve always read it as a Polish “rz” as in Krzyzewski or Krzysztof.
Paul in KY
@Cervantes: Having the courtiers in the tank for him definitely helped him in 2000.
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
It’s really stunning to look at the list of what he’s accomplished. And he still has almost a year and a half to go! Man doesn’t know the meaning of the term “lame duck.”
And Old Handsome Joe would be right. Restoring ties with Cuba, raising the flag over the U.S. Embassy in Havana after 54 years is a BFD. (And what really nice symbolism to have the three Marines who lowered it for the last time in January 1961 be there today to present it for the re-raising. Somebody was truly on the ball to connect those dots and track down those guys.)
Amir Khalid
@Gin & Tonic:
Alas, I have no Polish.
SFAW
@Kropadope:
See shell’s answer.
ETA: Or, as an alternative, you could ask Mickey Bitsko.
@Amir Khalid:
It’s a Polish word. Not being a speaker of Polish (although I know a few words), I cannot answer intelligently – not that that’s stopped me in the past – but I think it’s silent or almost-silent (meaning it’s sort of half-voiced, but not a “full-bodied” R as in words like ratchet, real, and Rogaine. But, I figure SOMEBODY here speaks Polish well enough to correct me if I’m wrong.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
is this a rather clumsy attempt to talk about Cuba– “it’s not just bitter old men who want spite-driven foreign policy!” ? or just distract from Wolfowitz (which should be much more difficult for him to do)?
Paul in KY
@Kropadope: When the Florida recount fiasco went down, I swear I felt a physical rip like I had just gone off into an alternate universe & was not going to be in the sane universe where Pres. Gore had 2 terms, etc. etc.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
this implied eye-roll in this tweet gives me some hope for Benjy Sarlin, who a few minutes later referred to Rubio as “knowledgeable” about foreign policy
Brachiator
So, Jeb! is really like Al Gore (or Ted Kennedy), and doesn’t have that fire in the belly to want to be president. Who knew?
Goddam, that’s a nice touch. On the one hand, we have Republicans stuck in the past, wanting to get over the failure of Vietnam by starting new wars to “show how it’s done,” or Jeb! stupidly wanting a do-over in Iraq; and other Republicans wanting to cling to guns, religion and old-style anti-communism, hating Cuba forever.
Meanwhile, we have Obama, with no need to cling to past wounds, slights, or even glories, quietly moving ahead towards a new future.
No wonder the Republicans hate him.
Chris
@jonas:
Then again, the other thing I was thinking when watching Romney embarrass himself was “this can’t go on forever.” 2012 was the second time in a row that the right wing base held its nose and voted for a candidate they hated, but couldn’t come up with a credible alternative to, who was handpicked by the establishment, and whom they saw as a RINO, and what they took away from it both times was “damn it, we keep running fake Republicans, and that’s why we keep losing!” Combine that with how stirred up they’ve become in the teabagger years, and sooner or later they’re going to flat-out reject the establishment candidate, insist on a complete freak, and absolutely not take no for an answer, based on the logic that “we need a real conservative to win.”
The establishment doesn’t always win. They lost in 1964, they lost in 1980. Depending on just how weak this bench is, maybe this’ll be the time they lose again.
Kropadope
@SiubhanDuinne:
That these Marines would show up for such an event helps expose the chickenhawk anti-rapprochement crowd for what it is.
Patricia Kayden
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Why would America have to sanction Cuba for communism for another 50 years and yet award China with most favored nation status? There is no way one could argue with a straight face that Cuba is more communist than China (or Vietnam which is another communist country with which America has relations).
gvg
Couple of points, Jeb is running AFTER W. Historical facts are different now and his name really is a problem even to GOP voters. Not all of them, but enough. In fact there were warning signs that W was really bad on foreign policy before he was elected but most who considered themselves conservative ignored it because they cared much more about domestic issues. Most people do most elections. Unfortunately it wasn’t going to be the mainly peaceful time we had enjoyed for the last decade plus. Looking back I think W didn’t care about foreign policy either and when 911 happened and he had to think about it, he latched onto the policy some of his friends in the administration had before…I think they were the only ones he knew that HAD a policy. Jeb has apparently missed that many people think it was a failure.
I think the GOP coalition is divided on their view of that policy. Quite a few of them know it was a bad idea. Others don’t. So the GOP polling is getting mixed signals I think and they are all ignoring the parts they don’t like. I think its pretty significant that several of the top 5 or 6 running have never had elected office. That to me implies that the GOP voters actually hate their own party.
Its not a monolith any more. their voters are going wild. I also think the religious and non religious are splitting. Trump and Fiorina don’t have a religious flavor but are doing well. I would not have expected that in prior elections.
Bobby Thomson
In fairness to Jeb, more than 50 % of voters in 2004 bought that shit, and quite a few bought the summer of ISIS and Ebola. Betting on Americans voting for stupid isn’t the riskiest bet.
Bobby Thomson
@Chris: yeah, this. If voters are still pissed off about Iraq a Republican isn’t going to win anyway. This is his only play.
Kropadope
@Bobby Thomson:
If the Ds nominate Clinton and the Rs don’t nominate Bush, that might not carry as much weight anymore.
Chris
@Patricia Kayden:
Loud voices in Miami. There used to be a similarly loud “China Lobby,” but the prospect of a common front by the U.S. and China against the Soviet Union was just too attractive strategically to pass up, and then their economy started going capitalist and it became a huge market with a lot of Americans keen to invest in it.
Cuba never had nearly as much to offer (either strategically or economically), and after the Cold War ended they basically became irrelevant even as an enemy. So even the people in Washington who knew better were happy, for years, to let Cuba policy be run basically by domestic considerations, figuring nothing in Cuba is worth the aggravation of a fight with the Miami Cuban lobby.
Except now even Miami Cubans are starting to not give a shit.
Jeffro
@Chris:
Somewhere, Ted Cruz’s ears just twitched…
Benw
I’m joining the “Bush is in it to win it” crowd. My guess is that he’s biding time and floating some trial balloons until his team thinks they’ve got a message that works. Then they’ll spend his $100M+ trying to make that stick, and ignore everything he’s said before then. He’s got the same machine as W and saw what it takes to win firsthand.
For example, if they think the backlash to his defense of the Iraq war will really hurt in the general, they’ll get away from that message fast. And I don’t think W’s feelings will be hurt if they do, he knows how the game is played too.
oklahomo
@Amir Khalid: I’ve spent decades of seeing and pronouncing it as “Potzrebie”. I never noticed that I was swapping the z and r to make it more pronounceable.
JustRuss
I’m a bit surprised, and disappointed, that no one’s picked up on this:
I guess this has become old hat, but Jesus fuck, a “moderate” candidate for POTUS hand-waving torture as “inappropriate”?! I want my fucking country back, the one that used to be proud of the fact that it didn’t torture–sure, we outsourced it around the edges, but at least it wasn’t SOP.
At least he admits “enhanced interrogations” are torture, that’s progress, I guess.
nodakfarmboy
Meanwhile in other, Trump-related, news:
“White supremacist wants to take over, rename town after Donald Trump
ANTLER, N.D.–After white supremacist Craig Cobb tried and failed to start a whites-only enclave in the tiny North Dakota town of Leith, he set his sights on another community: Antler, population 20-something…
He also planned to change the town’s name to “Trump Creativity,” or “Creativity Trump,” in honor of Donald Trump, who Cobb admires deeply.”
http://www.grandforksherald.com/news/region/3817566-white-supremacist-wants-take-over-rename-town-after-donald-trump
Nice group of fans the Donald has gathered.
Amir Khalid
@nodakfarmboy:
I prefer “Trump Creativity” as a name. Particularly if you use the Donald’s surname as a verb rather than an adjective.
Brandon
In both 2008 and 2012, Republican front runner status changed frequently with the loon of the month. But eventually the monied establishment candidate won out on Super Tuesday or a little bit thereafter. I am sure Jeb’s people know this and that the campaign is a marathon and not a sprint. It is probably also great for them that he gets the hiccups out of the way now and fine tunes his delivery ahead of when the real scrutiny starts. So in summary, I doubt he people are really that worried about his campaign blunders right now. Probably more so they are worried about Trump because he has ruined their strategy, which was to encourage and take advantage of the crowded primary (which is probably by establishment design) to win winner take all delegates on Super Tuesday with a low plurality of the primary vote ~30% or even less.
Gin & Tonic
@Amir Khalid: @SFAW: The “rz” phoneme in Polish is most closely approximated by the sound taken by the letter “z” in “azure.” In the Cyrillic alphabet it is the consonant “ж”, which is usually transliterated into English as “zh.”
MomSense
@Chris:
That is exactly it.
Kropadope
@Brandon:
The Trump boomlet has seemed much more durable than those 08 and 12 ones. Also, I have never seen as much excitement around an R candidate in the real world away from the internet as I do for Trump.
SiubhanDuinne
@Kropadope:
Indeed. According to Kerry’s remarks, they vowed at the time they lowered the flag that they would return one day to raise it again. I’m sure they never dreamed that the chickenhawk anti-rapprochement crowd would push that day to a distant 54 years in the future. The guys all must be well into their 70s if not 80s. I’m so glad they lived to see this day and participate in it.
Cervantes
@Hoodie:
One of his talents, I agree. And I’d even agree that it made his campaign more effective — so one could say it made him an effective campaigner.
@NonyNony:
I don’t mean to say that Bush did not help himself. As you point out, and as the world knows, he’s good at that. What I suggested was that we should not give him all the credit for things the elite media achieved on his behalf. From ’92 on, through the Bush-Gore campaign, the elite press was hostile to Clinton and then Gore — and not only hostile but dishonestly so. Had the press been more even-handed, would you be calling Bush a “campaigning savant” today? I’m not sure.
Leaving aside such doubts, thanks again for elaborating.
NonyNony
@Bobby Thomson:
In 2004 W was a president in the middle of a war (two, actually). Americans have never voted a president out of office in the middle of a war (Johnson might have been the first, but he resigned instead), and he came damn close to being the first. Jeb isn’t going to get that benefit.
(Also – I still contend that the most important thing in a national election is Getting Out The Fucking Vote. Not winning the votes of the fence-sitters, but convincing marginal voters who are inclined to vote for your party when they bother to vote to show up on election day and cast a ballot. W was good at that. Obama was very good at that. Romney was not good at that, and neither is Jeb! He might still end up winning the nomination, but it’ll be because of the money games more than anything else.)
scav
Helphelphelphelphelphelphelpthislaughterhurtsohelphelphelp They’re now trying to airbrush out the Christie Obama hug!?
Cervantes
@Paul in KY:
In 2000, Bush was a better campaigner than Gore? No question about it.
Debbie
@ArchTeryx:
You left out Blackwell’s trick about disqualifying registration forms because the paper wasn’t 60 pounds.
dmbeaster
@NonyNony:
W is the smart one when it comes to glad-handing and pure politics, as well as having the Bush crime family instinct when it came to hiring “turdblossom.” He was otherwise uncurious and as a result dumb as a post, but he had a killer instinct for people and politics.
Jeb!? Not so much.
Cervantes
@Debbie:
You have a good memory.
debbie
@Cervantes:
Only on occasion.
NonyNony
@Cervantes:
Since I personally think that the idiots in the press salivating over Whitewater and blue dresses pushed Clinton’s popularity up rather than where it would have naturally fallen based on the policies of his second term had they been more even-handed, I think Bush still would have looked good. I don’t think that the press directly hurt Gore nearly as much as people think – Big Media is not nearly as effective at changing opinion as it thinks it is.
What might have made a difference is if Gore had given a middle finger to the negative press, embraced Clinton, and begged him to campaign on his behalf instead of asking him to stay out of it. Because listening to the press and thinking that they were really reflecting what the rest of the country was thinking about Clinton was one of the things that killed Gore. W was almost as good as Clinton at campaigning, but Clinton was better. And Clinton might have motivated some of those “I vote when I feel like it” voters to show up at the polls for Gore instead of staying home. It still might have ended up close enough to steal (because W was quite good), but it wouldn’t have been nearly as close.
Bobby Thomson
@Kropadope: no, because a majority favored the invasion. What pissed people off was the execution and the stubborn unwillingness to leave after it was clear that the flowers weren’t going to show up. Other than Trump and possibly Paul (hah!), there aren’t any Republicans who won’t have to deal with that baggage. It’s like saying that Trump is the only one who has to worry about a gender gap or losing the Spanish vote.
JPL
@scav: Well, if they accomplish that, Christie’s popularity will just soar.
lol
Paul in KY
@Cervantes: Better campaigner. Not a better anything-else-I-can-think-of-that’s-good
Applejinx
Trump is not going to flame out. Forget that idea. Trump’s a narcissistic sociopath and loves it, and he is wired to the most ultimate mainline of narcissistic ‘feed’ anybody could ever possibly be. You CANNOT walk away from that, and there is nobody who can tell him ‘no’ or flame him out.
FFS, Red State is starting to abandon the Republican Party to side with him! That’s power.
Now, can he win? Well… anybody who is capable of fooling with voting machines for him will be (a)Republican party machine and (b)pissed off with him. He will be riding a legit (but scary) populist swell, with the same ratfucking people who could have been helping him, sitting on their hands at best or actively fucking with him at worst. I don’t believe for a second he can win, but he can take it all the way to the end boss and he’s going to do that.
And then he will take over a state, rename it Trumpland and be its king: or possibly colonize a country. Maybe they can take Texas? It’s big, and has oil. I can’t really predict what’ll happen. Maybe they’ll take Texas and then begin trying to conquer parts of Mexico? No doubt something hyoooge, whatever it is. ;P
If Hillary Clinton ends up running as the Dem nominee, I will pull the lever for her no matter what happens or what she does, because out of the existing political machine that’s been killing us for decades, she is absolutely the best option. Some parts of where she’s at aren’t all that bad, especially if we telegraph what the country wants through the use of Bernie Sanders. I won’t give her or the Democrats a dime, because it’s really childish to think me or my dime matter the slightest to her when she’s taken $711,490 since 1999 from Goldman Sachs, and that’s not even the MOST she’s taken from bank special interests. My money does not matter to her or help her and it’s insulting to pretend that it does. I’d pull the lever for her, that’s it. I’m not stupid, just practical.
I will do whatever I can do, to get Bernie Sanders instead. I’ve given money and attended an event and clearly I gotta do more while being as smart as Bernie about weathering disruption and attacks, and about not going all offensive against Hillary. She’d be totally the best option if we didn’t have Bernie, and he would tell you that himself. He originally intended to end up backing her. But we do have Bernie and I’m not done helping him, because he’ll be better.
Plus if we’re decent people about it, and not dicks, then when the dust settles we’ll be able to work with the Democrats under whose banner we are. The Republicans won’t be able to work with Trump. It’s gonna be a wasteland out there.
beltane
@Amir Khalid: There is already a Trump Village for real in Brooklyn. If he’s not careful, this ardent Trump fan may find himself being sued by The Donald for trademark infringement.
colby
Dubya was the shrewd one. He didn’t give a crap about most of what you actually do as President, but most of what we called “dumb” was a put-on. He thought voters wanted dumb, so he gave it to them.
Yes. And, hiring the right people and winning over enough of the media are essential skills for a Presidential candidate.
That being said, there’s this cult of the campaign manager. Rove, Carville and Begalla, all those useless Reagan-era guys…they’re always held up as savants, but they’re always quickly exposed to be full of crap once they’re parted from their guy. Convinces me that it’s usually the guy, not the guy behind the guy. It’ll happen to Plouffe and Axelrod, too, except that they both seem a little less interested in trading in on their rep (so maybe Gibbs or something, I dunno).
Frankensteinbeck
@Brandon:
The problem is that Jeb Bush is not the monied establishment candidate. He is a monied establishment candidate. If it were Jeb against Trump, yeah, I think Jeb would win because Jeb would build a ground game and I doubt Trump will bother. But Kasich, Walker, Fiorina at the least seem to be organized, and it takes only one billionaire to have enough money to play the game to the end. Hell, any candidate with the Kochs behind them will have just as much money as Bush or more, because the Kochs are fucking nuts and this is what they want to spend their money on. They find the Bushes unpleasantly liberal and insufficiently racist.
Cervantes
@debbie:
I’m in that terminal cliché where I can remember as clear as day what happened years ago but not what I had for breakfast this morning.
Anyhow, I’m off. Here’s to a great day ahead!
Kropadope
@Bobby Thomson:
This was because people like Hillary Clinton provided cover for the administration’s abuse of intelligence that anyone who read past the A section of the newspaper could’ve debunked.
raven
Fuck all this, Snoop’s kid quit the UCLA football team!
Goblue72
@rikyrah: Shorter Chicago arsehole -If only we could get rid of these blacks & unions, stuff would be awesome.
Article is behind a firewall, but whoever wrote it should be tarred & feathered.
Debbie
Just saw this. Was this from his front porch?
NonyNony
@Frankensteinbeck:
More than that – if it were Jeb! against Trump it would be more obvious that Trump’s supporters, while more rabid, are a smaller part of the GOP primary voting base.
Having a number of candidates with one aggressive alpha dog is really doing a number on this primary. 75% of primary voters are not into Trump right now, and yet because there are 16 candidates to spread support around to it looks like he’s the obvious winner. If there were 3 candidates in the mix – Jeb!, Trump and let’s say Walker – the race would look completely different.
Kropadope
@Debbie:
Indeed it was, right past Russia.
Bobby Thomson
@Kropadope: yes, but as between Clinton and say, Marco Rubio, who do you think is more likely to take advice from Cheney and Wolfiwitz? More to the point, the Republican candidate is NOT going to try to out-dove Clinton. That’s not what they do. That’s not their brand. And while you and I hate that part if their brand, at least a plurality of voters fairly consistently loves that shit.
Tl; dr – no one ever went broke underestimating Americans’ intelligence.
Kropadope
@Bobby Thomson: Who was it inside the Obama administration giving the same sort of foreign policy advice as Cheney and McCain?
sukabi
@NonyNony: don’t think he was a “campaigning savant”, between the press doing major clean-up of his language, and putting the “proper spin” on his mutterings, W had people both inside his campaigns and in the media polishing the turf.
Paul in KY
@raven: Are you sure it wasn’t PDiddy’s kid?
Paul in KY
@sukabi: He was great at staying on message & not veering down conversation paths that were bad for him.
Kropadope
@sukabi:
Also, too, the turds. Meanwhile greasing the skids.
brantl
DING, DING, DING,…… WE HAVE A WINNER! Tell ’em what they’ve won, Johnny!
Jeffro
@Frankensteinbeck:
Feb 2016: Billionaire candidate Trump vs billionaire backers the Kochs. Hey Reince, up for some campaign finance reform yet?
Cervantes
@NonyNony:
One other thing:
I agree that “changing opinion” — or controlling it — is a complicated task. Consider these questions: (1) In 2000, how often were polls done to ascertain how “honest” Al Gore was perceived to be? How often was the same question polled for Bush? (2) In what media were these and similar poll “results” made available to the electorate? Newspapers, radio, comedy shows on TV? And to what effect? (3) What do you think Fox News does? To what extent is it unique?
More generally regarding the political economy of the mass media in this country, especially re foreign policy, I imagine you have read this book — but if not, you might consider it.
Thanks again. Have a great day.
Paul in KY
See it was Snoop, Jr. Surprised PDiddy’s kid hasn’t left yet.
phoebes-in-santa fe
@Redshift: That might be the best summing up of Dubya and Jeb! I’ve seen so far.
raven
@Paul in KY: Nope. Snoop’s is a 4 star wideout.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
JEB!’s advisers are reported to be the well known neocons and W advisers that got us in the mess o ‘potamia the first place. It’s not hard to imagine why he’s being told to try to convince everyone that Iraq was great for the US until BHO and the Democrats came along and messed it all up.
The Teabaggers/GOP only listens to each other. They’re obviously right so there’s no need to take any criticism of their policies seriously. Talking points trump reality. JEB!’s inability to think and speak beyond platitudes that comes from the RWNM until after it blows up in his face (and he has to try to ‘explain’ it a few days later) shows how incompetent he and his team are.
So, your last is the reason. He wants to be President for himself and his team, but he has no conception of how to actually get there because reality doesn’t fit his talking points.
Fortunately for us and the rest of the country…
Cheers,
Scott.
Bobby Thomson
@Kropadope: you do realize you’re not making an argument for Bush to disown Iraq, right? My point is that what looks stupid to us is the right political call for Bush to make.
Paul in KY
@raven: My bad on that, raven. Thanks for info.
Elie
For my two cents, I think Jeb! wants it but has a very difficult PR and political task in dealing with Iraq. There is no way he could say Iraq (BOTH) were a mistake, though much of the foreign policy analysis clearly states that BOTH, not just W, were what led us to where we are today in the ME. Poppy thought he could grab a quick victory while the USSR was imploding and China was looking at its navel. Actually, he started the massive destabilization of the area, pushing Sadam Hussein to more prominence. The US took all the wrong lessons from that adventure and W thought he could do another quick fix to remove Saddam Hussein after 911. By that time, the world had changed and the dependence on oil and tribalism mixed with increasing muslim fundamentalism allowed a complete misreading of the strategic situation. The US just ended up demonstrating its weakness — a weakness that would have been made worse and worse because there is no number of US troops that could be placed in the ME to make things stable…
What will also be very tricky for him and the other Republican assholes is to ask them this: Are you advocating for sending more US troops into the ME? If so, how many, under what understanding and on which country’s behalf?
He will not be politically able to answer that question in the current environment. ISIS is a boogey man, but at this point, is it big enough to the average American to talk about recommitting troops and raiding the treasury again? I don’t think so.
That said, could these people back some fake terrorist event here to make that mood change? I hate to think that way, but otherwise, I don’t see how Bush or any other Republican can do much except whine.
PurpleGirl
@Gin & Tonic: On a light note: someone once told me that the in the movie Earth Without End, the mutants speak Polish. The producers didn’t want the expense of developing a language for the the mutants so they decided to use a real language that sounded “alien”. Viola, Polish.
Turgidson
@NonyNony:
I wouldn’t say W was the smart one. Jeb’s probably smarter in an intellectual sense (that’s not to say he’s a Mensa scholar or anything). I’d say GWB was the natural politician in the family in the sense that campaigning and retail politics came fairly easily to him and he seemed to enjoy the attention and spectacle of it all. Bill Clinton was that way, Hillary not as much. Obama was good at it but I didn’t get the impression he liked doing it. Mittens, Gore, Dole, Bush Sr. pretty obviously didn’t enjoy it and weren’t very good at it.
Another Holocene Human
@NonyNony:
No.
W was the establishment candidate. Everyone else scattered out of his way, except “Maverick” McCain and W’s operatives, not the candidate himself but the ratfuckers he relied on to win elections with, ran that “black baby” ratfucking campaign in SC and ended McCain’s run there and then.
McCain then ran without serious opposition but the GOP was facing a very unpopular president and their smartest whips were plotting out 2010–the presidency was lost.
And then Romney. Most of the field, as was tradition, got out of the way of the establishment candidate, but something was different.
Citizen’s United. Frustration with the establishment by the GOP base. The first loss to Obama. Then Romney delivers the second loss to Obama.
GOP campaigns have changed. Hermain Cain and Ron Paul ran successful grifts and more clowns want in. Then you have dueling billionaires who want their own made man, not a collective rich man’s candidate. Then you have Trump. And they are looking straight in the face of a 3rd loss.
Jeb’s lame game is not orders of magnitude worse. Like, he obviously is bad at this. But it didn’t used to matter quite so much.
Brachiator
@gvg:
I think you are right, but all this will settle down soon. Between the next Republican debate, and at least by the first primaries, the GOP will have figured out what it’s strategy will be, and focus on the candidates it thinks will lead it to glory.
And I think they still want Jeb! and want to see if they can knock Trump loose and unify the party. Also, we have not heard anything from the Koch brothers or Sheldon Adelson indicating a clear preference of the big money men.
SFAW
@beltane:
One hopes you were making a joke.
Brachiator
@Kropadope:
Just Hillary? All by herself? Someone that powerful should be elected president immediately.
Even people who read past the A section believed the lies that were being pushed. Do you want to disqualify any Democrat who voted the wrong way on this?
Omnes Omnibus
@NonyNony: Johnson did not resign. He did not run in ’68. There is a big difference.
brantl
@SFAW:
It was a Million: 1,000,000, long before we left the war. A MILLION. Not 100,000.
Paul in KY
@Omnes Omnibus: Damn! I should have caught that.
Grumpy Code Monkey
It’s only August. Jeb can noisily fellate his own foot every day from now until Halloween and it won’t matter. Nobody will remember or care what he said last week. By the time New Hampshire rolls around he’ll have a script that has been extensively vetted and focus-grouped and appeals to the squishy middle who only pay attention to this crap once every four years.
He won’t have the bugfuck base, who will throw in behind Trump’s inevitable third-party run, but that’s to his advantage. Those are votes Cruz and Walker won’t get in the primaries, and in the general he can say “look, I’m not like those crazy people, I’m the sane Republican.”
Brachiator
@Another Holocene Human:
There are a few wild cards in play. The Republicans may have a shot if sufficient numbers of Democrats decide to commit political suicide by clinging to Team Bernie if Hillary Clinton is the Democratic Party nominee.
SFAW
@brantl:
Last I heard, 100,000-plus covers the million figure.
Be that as it may, I’ve seen a number of different figures, from 100K to 300K to more than 500K. I thought the 300K-400K was more generally agreed-upon, far more so than a million. I was under the impression that the million was on the same level of accuracy as the “thousands” who show up for something like an Oathkeeper (or whoever) rally, when the actual number is, shall we say, different.
But, frankly, does the “precise” number matter? Especially since that precision is probably not available. They’re all still dead, thanks to Bush, Cheney, and Rummy.
SFAW
@Brachiator:
I thought Bernie said he won’t run as a third-party candidate?
Ruckus
I’ve just scanned the post and see a lot of interesting stuff. But the thing I see is people trying to pigeonhole Jeb or actually any of the republican candidates. Can’t Jeb be a loser based on more than one reason? Can’t they all? Jeb doesn’t seem like he’s in this to win. He also doesn’t seem to be very good at running and all the polish in the world doesn’t look like it will help. That he may be running for Babs and dad is a possible reason. That there is, as laughable as it sounds, actual competition for the job on the conservative side, considering the contestants, says more about our countries politics and development than anything else. Either there is no one on the conservative side who is actually serious (a very highly distinct possibility!) about government/governing or we are nearing the end point of this 200+ yr experiment. And I don’t think it’s the second.
Jeb maybe one of the worst of their candidates but none of them are worth a bucket of spit. Not a single one. Out of 17, you’d think that one might be capable of being at least a bad city council member. But no, not one could rise to that level. A couple have reached higher office than that, and distinguished themselves not at all positively.
SFAW
@Ruckus:
And what has Hitlery ever accomplished?
I certainly enjoyed seeing that from Carleton “I never met a company I couldn’t kill” Fiorina. Of course, I guess killing a company as large as H-P was when she took over would be something of an accomplishment. Of course, she fucked that up, too. Thank FSM
Kropadope
@Brachiator:
“People like…”
I was a college freshman and the BS regarding Iraq was as clear as day to me. Hillary should’ve known better.
I never voted for Kerry, for president or for Senate. I might consider certain Dems, perhaps, but HRC hasn’t shown too many other redeeming qualities before or since.
Robert Sneddon
@Frankensteinbeck: The Bush family has a permanent election team in place, folks who have been getting Bush family members elected to high office for DECADES. The last time they failed was in 1992 when GHW Bush was not re-elected President. The most recent “Mission Accomplished” for them was late last year, getting Jeb’s son George on the first rung of the ladder to the White House by picking up a minor elected position in Texas, a wholly owned subsidiary of Bushco.
All the others, Fiorina, Walker, they’re minor league jokers with inexperienced supporters who will have to learn how to win by making mistakes and those mistakes (like Clinton’s abysmal team performance in 2008) will cost them the nomination no matter how much money their masters throw at the problems.
Obama’s team in 2008, running a pretty much perfect campaign for the nomination still made enough mistakes that at the end it was closer than it should have been after Clinton got rid of the dead wood like Mark Penn and the DLC old hands got to work twisting arms and pressuring the nominators to do the Right Thing. Money will solve a lot of problems but a well-tested and polished machine will get the nomination in the end and that is what the Bush family IS, a device for getting family members elected to high office.
Brachiator
@SFAW:
Yep, good point. It’s very early in the contest. I was looking at a worst case scenario in which people who feel strongly attracted to Sanders decide to sit out the general election.
Of course, if Trump continues to rile up voters before he drops out, which I think he will, this could also have some impact on the election.
SFAW
@Brachiator:
Good point, I should have picked up on that.
Maybe St. Ralph the Pure will pick up disgruntled Sanders voters.
Kropadope
@SFAW:
Not him. I’d look at other third party candidates. If no good third party person shows up, I could use my traditional write-in candidate, Mickey Mouse.
SFAW
@Kropadope:
As a time- and labor-saving device, why not just pull the lever for Jeb! or whomever wins the Rethug nom?
Kropadope
@SFAW: I won’t make an affirmative vote for anyone whom I don’t want to be president. I live in MA, so my presidential vote is worth approximately a warm bucket of spit anyway.
That said, I do have what I call the “Missouri test.” Would I vote for this candidate if I lived in a swing state? Hillary doesn’t even meet that benchmark for me.
ETA: I wrote myself in against Ed Markey for his uncontested primary, before voting third party in the general.
I voted for the zombie corpse of Ted Kennedy over Martha Coakley in her Senate run. Noteworthy, because when he was alive running for reelection, I voted for the R (I believe his name was something like Ryan).
Mapaghimagsik
@SFAW: if @Kropadope is in a sufficiently blue state, it’s not.
Brachiator
@Kropadope: I noted your qualifier “people like…” It wasn’t germane to my point that you gave her too much credit and others not enough.
That it was clear to you doesn’t mean much. At my office there was furious debate, and the people who claimed it was all lies didn’t have much in the way of evidence, only their conviction and hatred of Bush. There were honest journalists and newspapers who were not as certain about things as you were.
But even here, you say, Hillary should have known better. She didn’t. Now what? Again, I ask does that disqualify her and anyone else who didn’t pierce through lies and immediately grasp the truth?
I have reservations about Clinton as well. On the other hand, I care much less about her past vote on Iraq than I do about her current opinion about Iraq, Iran, Israel and the Middle East.
Kropadope
@Brachiator:
On which she distinguished herself in the Obama administration by being in favor of every dopey mobilization for intervention that came down the pike.
Mike G
hosted by Americans for Peace, Prosperity and Security
Boy, there’s a name that raises some flags.
When you hear ‘Freedom’, ‘Liberty’ and ‘American Century’ with other buzzwords poisoned by mindless overuse by the right wing, you know you’re about to get duped and screwed.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Barry: Is he making major media buys already? Because if so…they don’t seem to be helping much judging by his position in the polls, which is worsening. I’m beginning to wonder if all the plutocrats are shortly going to get pissed that they wasted as much money as they have on an obvious loser and start looking for someone else (Kasich maybe?) to give their vast sums to. The guy can’t open his mouth without planting his foot so firmly in it that his Aldens are poking out his ass. Money can do a lot in politics but I’m not sure money alone is capable of overcoming this kind of incompetence.
jl
Jeb! is a wet paper bag in search of problems that can punch through steel.
SFAW
@Kropadope:
Yeah, I picked up on that.
As I said — irrespective of where you live — why not just pull the “R” lever (or whatever). Saves having to deal with all that messy imperfection that life sometimes presents us.
Maybe your senior Senator — assuming you voted for her; if not, then my suggestion will fall on deaf ears — can give you one of her Mumia posters. I don’t know if she has any Mumia sweatshirts.
SFAW
@Mapaghimagsik:
State color doesn’t matter to Kropadope, apparently. And it’s pretty clear that there aren’t too many Dems pure enough for him, no matter what state.
Kropadope
@SFAW: I did vote for her, but WTF?
SFAW
@Kropadope:
WTF indeed.
Well, good to know there exists a Dem who’s good enough to merit your vote.
Kropadope
@Kropadope:
I mean, it depends on what you mean by purity. She’s with me on nearly all major issues; I just find her to be insincere, tactically aggressive, and very thinly-accomplished given her time spent working on policy issues.
ETA: In 2008, she was still with me more policy-wise than Obama, but I still voted for Obama. Policy only gets you part of the way, character has to count for something.
SFAW
@Kropadope:
You talking about Clinton or Warren? I’m assuming Clinton, but it’s not completely clear.
ETA: OK, your ETA clarified.
What you’re saying is that you agree with her on many or most things, but she hasn’t reached some magic threshold (“character,” or some such) whereby she is now good enough to merit your vote.
Kropadope
@SFAW: I’ve voted for four Democrats for high office; Deval Patrick, Barack Obama, Elizabeth Warren, and Joseph Kennedy III
@SFAW: In 195 I’m talking about Clinton; and Warren stands as a stark contrast to Clinton on those very traits.
SFAW
@Kropadope:
Yeah, I know, “some of my best friends are Democrats. “
Gin & Tonic
@Kropadope: So in other words, you typically exercise the franchise by throwing it in the trash.
SFAW
@Gin & Tonic:
Now, now, let’s not be too
accurateharsh.ETA: Besides, the Rethugs don’t consider it “throwing it in the trash.”
NorthLeft12
Is there some reason that the Governor of Florida would have any business in going to Guantanamo for a look-see?
I’m assuming it was some Bush family outing and they toured the prison area throwing peanuts at the captives.
Kropadope
@Gin & Tonic: Throwing it in the trash would be blindly voting for a person whom I don’t want to win.
The third party candidate I chose for governor in 2014 earned his fledgling party a guaranteed position on the ballot for 2016. That’s not nothing.
SFAW
@Gin & Tonic:
Based on his response, you’re wasting your time, you know.
As am I.
Fuck it, I’m going to write St. Ralph, see if he’ll run.
SFAW
@Kropadope:
As I have said more than once in this thread: just pull the damn “R” lever, and be done with it. But don’t pretend that you’re doing anything BUT that.
Brachiator
@Kropadope:
Well said. I was for Obama very early on. I agree with some of your views here on Clinton.
But I also think that she is not a natural politician, and certainly doesn’t have the flair of Bill or Obama. She essentially chose to be a back seat driver, and now has to huff and puff to make up for it.
I also give her high marks as Secretary of State, and think here she has honed some foreign policy skills that are superior to all the Republicans. She could have failed at the job, and none of the past Clinton allure would have saved her. But she did good in a tough and important spot.
And note here I am not trying to sell Clinton to you, but noting how I came from a similar place as you might have in considering her.
Here we differ. I was always pro-Obama. And it wasn’t just character. I wanted a new and younger perspective.
Kropadope
@SFAW: Why? Every Democrat I voted for has won.
And none of these elections was decided by my one vote.
Cervantes
@Kropadope:
No, it’s not nothing.
Falchuk is a good guy and he ran a good campaign. You’re right to be proud of your vote for him.
SFAW
@Kropadope:
Big deal. In MA, that’s not saying much. I’m just amazed that you voted for Deval Patrick, considering he ran somewhat to the right of Obama, and considering his first one or two years in office were, shall we say, sub-optimal.
But I am SO happy for you that you found Dems good enough to win the all-important “Kropadope demographic.”
SFAW
@Kropadope:
Ah, the now-famous “here’s-my-ETA-but-I-won’t-label-it” ETA.
I have certainly disagreed with most of your comments here, but that one was just silly.
Kropadope
@SFAW:
The main thing I liked about Patrick, which he has in common with Obama BTW, is that while he supports an active role for government that helps its citizens, he recognizes and adopts good ideas from the other side. Yeah, he had some problems the first couple years, one must learn on the job. His reelection campaign was the only electoral campaign I ever volunteered for.
Obama wasn’t guaranteed a win in 2012. And Ds aren’t a lock in MA. The only non-incumbent I didn’t vote for who won was Ed Markey. I’m actually not a bad bellwether, at least so far.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Kropadope:
So in November of 2016, you would rather see Jeb Bush or Scott Walker win than Hillary Clinton? Because, let’s face it, either the Democrat or the Republican is going to win no matter what and saying, “I voted for Kodos!” is small consolation when the Republican is standing up there getting sworn in. I voted for Nader in CA in 2000, and I am NEVER going to make that moronic mistake again.
SFAW
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Jerk. It’s Kang for me!
Kropadope
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Not how I’m looking at it. I certainly don’t want Jeb Bush or Scott Walker as president, so I won’t vote for them. Hillary hasn’t closed the deal for me yet and I’ll be watching very closely through the election season. But if I wind up not voting for her, I will not feel guilty in the least, regardless of outcome.
Cervantes
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
Presumably you had a reason at the time — and maybe you indulged yourself — and maybe it did some good — but what harm did it do to deserve being called a “moronic mistake”?
Tree With Water
Be it the skunk shit of GHW, the chicken shit of GW, or the little rabbit pellets now falling from Jeb!, all the Bush’s stink. That family and its allies have inflicted tremendous damage upon the country in a very short time, and they must be as closely studied as cancer cells for that very reason. To begin with, I’d like to see people shed [what is to me] their inexplicable unwillingness to refer to the Bush-Cheney plot to war in polite conversation. I’d like to see that bit of common wisdom explode like a drone at a wedding party… that the enormity of the war crime be better grasped by the American people. We demanded the same of the German and Japanese peoples after WW2. We’ve got it in us to face up to the ugly truth about ourselves- that people stampeded, and worse, actively collaborated with evil while knowing better. The one thing that the country cannot afford is to continue to lie to ourselves about “honorable people, misled by faulty intelligence”.
Brachiator
@Tree With Water:
Aside from scourging ourselves in the morning with a stick, what would you suggest.
And funny thing your mentioning how we demanded acknowledgement of the bad acts of the German and Japanese peoples after WW2. The Japanese are getting tired of eternal shaming and apologizing.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-33924159
Grumpy Code Monkey
To repeat myself, it’s only August. Nobody’s voted yet. It’s not a given that Clinton will be the Democratic nominee. She most likely will be, but it’s not a lock.
Remember how inevitable she looked in August 2008? Yeah.
As for the “thinness” of her resume, how does it compare to the one the black guy with the funny name had back in ’08? Yeah.
And besides, it doesn’t fucking matter who wins if the GOP keeps the Senate. That’s the battle we should be focusing on. No SC Justices get appointed without Senate approval. Cabinet positions don’t get filled without Senate approval. The House can still cause its share of mayhem (such as shutting down the whole shebang over yet another futile attempt to repeal the ACA), but that’s not as critical this time around.
There needs to be a national, coordinated, full-court press to win back the House in 2018, but it is vital we get a friendly Senate right off the bat.
Cervantes
@Grumpy Code Monkey:
Not very, actually.
Perhaps you meant 2007.
Yes, I agree.
Cervantes
@Brachiator:
Who’re you calling “ourselves,” kemo sabe?
What would I suggest? I’d suggest shaming the guilty parties via as many actual and frank conversations as needed. (Timing I leave to you to decide!)
J R in WV
@Kropadope:
You think you were despondent at work. I was off work, in Houston TX, helping my Dad finally die on election day, 2004. I was staying with my brother, who had Bush ’04 stickers on all the family cars.
I will give him this: he didn’t say a fuckin’ word while we watched the election returns that night. As a result, we still have a relationship.
And so far the country survives, no credit to any of the Bush family, who have stolen from and debased everything the country ever stood for.
The republicans can’t even see that the reason we were the good guys in WW II was that we didn’t torture, murder, commit genocide, etc. And now, we have done much of that list.
That pretty much makes us the bad guys, by any sane definition. Thank you President Bush, Darth Cheney, for putting America on the same level as the Third Reich!
And really! thank you President Obama, for ending those bad habits as well as you could, with total opposition from the republicans in congress and in the MSM, where the unelectable right wing goes to hide.
Kyle
Jeb World 101:
1> My brother was a massive fuckup and everyone not-insane knows it
2> I am inevitably tied to my brother
3> I can’t publicly admit that he was a massive fuckup
Sucks to be you, and you deserve it.
Ruckus
@SFAW:
Well let’s see, senator and not from a state with the population of Disneyland on a sunny summer Sunday and SOS. Granted she voted for war in Iraq but that seems to be her worst issue and she, unlike many others seems to have learned from it.
Let’s see the competition.
Jeb former Gov of FL, the dumb one. Need I say more?
Walker, Gov of WI, He’s not cheap but he can be bought. For proof, I give you his results, WI.
Kasich, Gov of OH, some think a bit of him, I think that’s way too much credit. He’s not as bad as the rest of the group, but that bar is buried about a 1000 ft underground.
Rubio, senator, useless idiot
Cruz, senator, harmful idiot.
Huck, former Gov, praise the lord and pass the bible, not that he seems to have read it, I think he wants to use it to beat people over the head with it.
T Rump, If it wasn’t for his ego, you’d never know he existed. When that ego walks into a room all the IQ points run out laughing.
Got anything else?
Cervantes
@Ruckus:
What has she learned and how do we know?
That invasion was a major disaster. Has she made a major speech on the subject of what she has learned? Has she given an interview in which the question is explored frankly and in depth?
Or do we have to infer her learning from her subsequent actions? If so, how?
They’re ridiculous each and every one, no question.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@Cervantes:
Derp. I can add, really.
Ruckus
@Cervantes:
Ya gotta go with who wants to run, then you can make a decision about which one you like. Right now it’s an old man with a pretty good ideas, but how is he going to get any of it done? And a women who is getting to be old (disclosure, she is one yr older than I am) who has some experience and a platform that, if you listen has answered your questions. Maybe not to your satisfaction but she has answered. Next we have a former mayor of Baltimore, then governor of Maryland, with a crap record as mayor, who seems to have little support or ability to be heard at all. If you listen close he seems to be saying the right things but his record makes me think he doesn’t believe all of them.
Not a deep field maybe but the top two seem to have at least enough experience and chops to be far, far better than any of the competition. And of those two I like her better, for her experience and her strength, although I like that old man’s ideas. A lot.
You can’t elect someone who doesn’t run, or someone who has no understanding about at least attempting to reach the people you want to vote for them. And yes it costs money, it’s a big country and it takes time and money to reach enough people.