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Clinton's prediction for Congress – the 2016 election will flip the U.S. Senate to Dem control, but the U.S. House will remain in GOP hands.
— Jennifer Jacobs (@JenniferJJacobs) September 22, 2015
Since I was on involuntary hiatus last week, I didn’t get to highlight Jonathan Allen’s smart Vox article, “Why Hillary Clinton keeps racking up key endorsements even as Sanders surges and Biden weighs getting in” (http://www.vox.com/2015/9/20/9359405/hillary-clinton-endorsement-sanders-biden):
… Political campaigns are dynamic, and things could change. But Clinton’s mastery of the inside game — winning over prominent Democrats, co-opting the party’s top policy thinkers and cornering the market on staff — is a factor that will help her as she tries to fend off at least Sanders and possibly Biden. They simply have fewer resources available to them.
Or Politico‘s “What Is Hillary’s Greatest Accomplishment?” (http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/09/carly-fiorina-debate-hillary-clintons-greatest-accomplishment-213157?o=0), where I think they got more than they bargained for:
… It’s a question that even, at times, has tripped up Clinton herself: During her 2014 book tour, when ABC’s Diane Sawyer asked her about her “marquee achievement,” Clinton changed the subject and she fumbled over a similar question during a women’s forum in Manhattan last year. “I see my role as secretary—in fact leadership in general in a democracy—as a relay race. You run the best race you can run, you hand off the baton. Some of what hasn’t been finished may go on to be finished,” she told Thomas Friedman…
Harry Reid, Senate Democratic leader: “American foreign policy was stronger when Hillary Clinton left the State Department than when she arrived. She took the reins from a Bush administration that had left America’s reputation deeply damaged and planted the seeds for the foreign policy successes we see today. From the agreement to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, to the landmark normalization of relations with Cuba, nearly every foreign policy victory of President Obama’s second term has Secretary Clinton’s fingerprints on it…
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Secretary Clinton was also an outspoken champion for women around the world. She set records for travel while leading the State Department and used every trip to empower the women of the 112 countries she visited. She made gender equality a priority of U.S. foreign policy. And she created the ambassador at large for global women’s issues, a post charged with integrating gender throughout the State Department.”…Harold Koh, former Legal Adviser of the Department of State: “As Secretary, Hillary Clinton defined and tried consistently to implement a “smart power” diplomacy that combines diplomacy, development, aid, rule of law and private initiatives with limited applications of hard power to project U.S. global leadership abroad. In an age where our hard power resources are limited and near exhaustion, her approach is a much more promising than the Republicans’ to addressing our hardest global problems in the years ahead…”
And now, Allyson Hobbs at the New Yorker, “Why Aren’t We Inspired by Hillary Clinton?” (http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/why-arent-we-inspired-by-hillary-clinton?intcid=mod-most-popular):
… If Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination and the national election, can we expect the same gathering of crowds and the same emotional outpouring [as in 2008]? Would the historic election of the first woman President evoke a similar thrill and sense of wonderment at the leaps that this country is capable of making?
Probably not. But why not? Is the election of a black man more revolutionary than the election of a white woman? Of course, one cannot compare the moment of an election victory of one candidate to a moment during another candidate’s campaign, a year before the election. And much of the excitement about Obama derived from the dissatisfaction with the President he was replacing. But the question remains: what’s behind the shortfall of enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton?
There are myriad reasons, and Clinton, of course, is not remotely as inspiring a speaker or campaigner as Obama. But another obvious explanation is the persistent problem of gender bias in American culture. Perhaps the sexism—in both overtly hostile and less visible but still insidious ways—has helped stoke the fires of animosity towards Clinton while, at the same time, creating an almost impossible standard for her. Unlike her male opponents, Clinton has to be far more careful and measured in what she says and does. To be free from a strict choreography of words and actions is a form of male privilege that Hillary Clinton cannot access…
***********
If the blue links above work for you guys, I may have discovered the Sekrit FYWP code — one has to include the http//: twice, once for use and once for FYWP to strip out. If the links don’t work, well, I’m doing my limited best!
Speaking of which, can anyone tell me a simple paste-inside-the-carats < > code for the missing “More” button, so I can move material ‘below the fold’?
And apart from mocking my tech-illiteracy, what’s on the agenda for the morning?
raven
Looks ok. The painters started yesterday, the kitchen and bathroom counter tops have shipped and the floor dudes are ready so we may be as close as a couple of weeks.
I got a nice shot of the kiddo across the street yesterday.
Frankensteinbeck
Well, a lot has to do with the way the positions and policies she has endorsed on the campaign trail have been ignored by the media in favor of horse race discussions of her advantages within the party or whether she’s inspirational. What I have heard has delighted me, and once the campaign goes far enough that everybody has heard what she has to say, I think all but the protest-vote fringe will eagerly support her.
Right now it’s Trump, Trump, Trump, with a side of Berniementum in the desperate hope that Democrats are also in Disarray. I understand that the meltdown of the GOP is important news, but even here, quotes of her speeches are rare.
sharl
AL,
Of your four links, the last three worked fine. That first link – the time stamp within the tweet – is getting hosed up somehow. It comes up as this:
But should look like this:
Hmm, let me try that last one directly: twitter.com/JenniferJJacobs/status/646455879730987008
ETA: I doubt that you are sticking the “balloon-juice” in the tweet URL in place of “twitter”, but that’s what is going wrong. Why it’s doing that, I don’t know. It didn’t mess with my straight URL entry, for whatever that’s worth.
RK
Is it true that when someone denigrates the Pope it’s called a papal smear?
Villago Delenda Est
There is nothing on the agenda aside from mocking your tech illiteracy, Anne. Just nothing at all.
Oh, wait, some guy with a pointy hat is in the country inspiring Baptists, of all people, to rush to his defense as some crazy Muslin guy is dissing him by meeting him at the airport.
Or, as RK helpfully reminds us all, is papal smearing him.
Amir Khalid
@RK:
Golf clap.
Gimlet
capitalnewyork.com/article/florida/2015/09/8577571/republican-lawmaker-says-inmates-key-defeating-co…
TALLAHASSEE — In a private gathering during last month’s Republican Party of Florida quarterly meeting, state Rep. Janet Adkins told a group of North Florida GOP activists that the key to defeating Corrine Brown, a black Jacksonville Democrat, is boosting the number of black prisoners in her district.
On maps passed by both the House and Senate during an August redistricting special session, lawmakers redrew Brown’s seat to stretch west from Jacksonville to the Tallahassee region.
they knew it had 18 prisons in that district,” Brown told the Senate Redistricting Committee during the special session, referring to those who drew her district.
Though they can’t vote, prisoners are counted as part of a congressional district’s overall population and demographics, including race. Brown’s seat was drawn in 1992 by a federal court as a seat that allows black voters to elect a candidate of their choosing.
Even under the east-west configuration, the map is still likely to allow black voters to elect a candidate of their choosing. During the past two elections, black voters comprised more than 60 percent of the Democratic primary electorate. President Barack Obama won the proposed new seat with 63 percent of the vote, meaning the winner of the Democratic primary has a very good chance of winning the seat.
RK
All you need do is look at Elizabeth Warren to see this is wrong.
Baud
@raven:
That is a nice shot. It looks like something out of a fashion magazine.
raven
@Baud: Yea, she’s a sweet little girl and she loves the dogs!
EconWatcher
I’ll vote for Hillary if she is the nominee, as appears extremely likely. But there are many, many reasons to be unenthused other than sexism. For pete’s sake.
The list of accomplishments is indeed remarkably thin.
As we all know, she voted for the Iraq War in the Senate. What are the great things she accomplished as Senator to balance that out?
And in the State Department–listing the number of trips she took and creation of an Ambassador at Large position–seriously?
And no, having other politicians use positive adjectives to describe her is not the equivalent of a list of accomlishments. That certainly speaks to the power of the Clinton name.
But if you were reviewing a job applicant claimed to be “an innovative, effective driver of change, with concrete results,” and the applicant’s references couldn’t give specific examples of the results actually achieved, what would you conclude?
I think she’s genuinely focused on policy, and most of her policy positions seem to be good. But as President, will she run towards short-term political expediency when the going gets tough and nasty?
Her record, such as it is after many years in public life, is not very encouraging on that point. I will say, I think Biden’s record is even worse on that score.
Another Holocene Human
Okay, so looking at the sexism is a great idea, but this statement is just silly. The Obamas have always had to be far more guarded in everything they say than any Clinton. And you can prove it by taking them head to head in 2008 and looking at how the media reacted to the things they were saying.
Another Holocene Human
@Gimlet: Wow, that kind of makes Congressman Brown’s argument for her. OTOH, she had like an 80%+ district, a packed and incredibly gerrymandered district, surrounded by R districts, some of which have pretty slim margins. Her other argument has kind of been, I’ll provide constituent services while these other clowns will leave you in the lurch. When that asshole before Yoho was congress-pay-check-casher, that was certainly true.
Gimlet
Probably should be happy for promoting some of the things we agree on, rather than pissed off for areas of disagreement.
In a commentary in the journal Nature, Paul Ehrlich, a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, argues that Pope Francis is simply wrong in trying to fight climate change without also addressing the additional strain on global resources from population rise.
Ehrlich, in his Nature Climate Change commentary, accuses Francis of a dangerous flaw in his indictment of consumerism and its effects on the poor and the environment. The pope had fallen for the usual clerical “obsession” with contraception and abortion – when he could have instead broken new ground on the Catholic church’s approaches to women’s reproductive rights and family planning.
magurakurin
@RK: you mean the Elizabeth Warren who is not running for the presidency? That Elizabeth Warren?
And Bernie Sanders seems to agree with the overall assessment that women are held to a different standard. Per the article
Another Holocene Human
@Frankensteinbeck: I was stuck in a doctor’s office and they must have played 5 minutes plus of a Trump stump speech without interruption from the night before. I mean, what the actual fuck. They had Mike Rowe’s parents on to promo some show and they spent less time on that.
msdc
I can think of one former Clinton opponent who has had to be far more careful and measured in what he says and does for every goddamned day of his presidency (and probably his adult life). But otherwise, the point stands.
Another Holocene Human
@Gimlet: It’s sort of “blame the head” while ignoring the rest of the organization. The Church has been locked in this position since Paul VI and they’re not going to budge during this generation.
In his off the cuff comments, Pope Francis has delivered a wink and a nudge to family planning. As a South American cleric he would have been well aware that Catholics there ignore the bishops and use condoms anyway.
eta: I haven’t heard him flogging Ratzinger’s “condoms cause AIDS” conspiracy theory crap yet
Morzer
@Another Holocene Human:
I seem to remember someone named Bill being put through the wringer as part of a possible impeachment. I also remember someone named Hillary going through a prolonged period of criticism simply because she was alive and had views of her own – hell, she couldn’t even choose her own name without offending some bizarre standard of decorum. I don’t think your case holds up too well to scrutiny here.
Botsplainer
@raven:
What kind of camera are you using?
magurakurin
@EconWatcher: And Bernie Sanders has accomplished so much. In his 25 years in the Congress we got a minimum wage tied to an inflation index, single payer healthcare, increases in Social Security, free college. Many accomplishments.
but Clinton meh, nothing. per the same article
satby
@raven: What a great picture! And she’s a beautiful child.
Baud
@Another Holocene Human:
The fact that Obama faced racism doesn’t refute the fact that Clinton faces sexism.
FWIW, Clinton decided to adopt a low key approach to start his campaign. It may explain the absence of roaring crowds so far.
satby
@magurakurin: Somebody will be along to tell you that those aren’t REAL accomplishments of Clinton’s because they were done in partnership with others.
Yeah, as a female of a certain age not far behind Hillary, I do consider it sexism when women’s accomplishments don’t count if any other team member was in any proximity to the result, but men get solely credited with “accomplishments” that could not have occurred at all without a team.
kindness
I have a couple friends that have blown up the facebooks. The Bernie supporters that they are they have been constantly portraying Hillary as the devil/a Republican. Now I do like Sanders. I prefer his ideas but I also do expect Hillary to win and have no problem with that. They on the other hand see Hil as apocolyptic it seems. I might lose a couple of these facebook points as I’ve been weighing in asking them how that Nader support worked out for them (of course they were Nader supporters too). I’ve asked them not to portray Hillary as the devil, to no avail. They’re really caught up in it. I’ve tried to communicate that how they portray Hillary matters, that any Republican now running would be worse than bush43 and that Nader supporters were (indirectly) complicit in the election of dubya. ‘Don’t pull a Nader’ I’ve said. Of course it is me that is the asshole in these posts.
Se la vie.
Baud
MoJo
RK
@magurakurin: Not sure how that responds to my point.
satby
@kindness: I know I totally waste my time, but being the asshole that tries to point out the obvious to the utterly clueless is my main role lately on FB.
David Koch
@EconWatcher:
This criticism of Clinton is true, but it is also true of Sanders.
In 25 long years in office he’s passed 1 bill (a cola increase for vets – that’s it), while Biden passed 28 bills in 36 years and Kennedy passed 88 bills in 46 years.
If you’re objective you have criticize both Clinton and Sanders on this point.
Another Holocene Human
@Baud: Child poverty is up again this year.
Welcome to the gerontocracy.
The Millennials are pissed. Imagine how pissed the next ones after them are going to be.
Baud
@kindness:
Bernie needs to have a Sister Souljah moment with some of his supporters.
Another Holocene Human
@David Koch: Sanders did a lot of good stuff as Mayor of Burlington. And, uh …
I’ve been restraining myself from conversations with the “Ask Me About Bernie!” folks. Like, fuckwits, his congressional record is not what you think and nothing to write home about.
I’m still pissed about the Gitmo thing. I am not a “leftie” and one reason I am not a “leftie” is that I’m incapable of zonking myself into taking form over substance. Fuck you, “RINO” Obama tried to close that place and “Da Bern” voted to keep it open. Case closed.
MomSense
I don’t really need to be inspired this time around. I’d just like to keep my health insurance and make some progress on climate change.
magurakurin
@kindness: You can always take comfort in the fact that you never had a choice…oh wait…that’s from True Romance…take comfort in the fact that you are right. Clinton is not the devil, not by a long shot and the Hillary Hate is dripping all over the intertubes these days. The usual suspects went nuclear when Clinton announce her opposition to Keystone. They were desperately trying to spin her decision as another in her long list of evil deceits. A similar dynamic was alive at TPM as well. It was sad and pathetic. Let’s just hope most of them come around and do the right thing when the time comes next November. Because they are going to be very very bitter and angry around the end of March…
magurakurin
@MomSense:
+1000
Another Holocene Human
@Baud: I never said it did. I just said it was a lousy argument to go with for the writer. I think Hilary Clinton has faced an avalanche of nasty sexism in public life.
Fair Economist
@EconWatcher: I got a pretty substantial list of accomplishments for Clinton’s SOS term, just browsing around:
If you think it’s not good, what recent SOS do you think has done better?
Individual Senators just don’t do very much anymore, with the polarization of Congress. As magurakurkin says, Bernie hasn’t done much either. Neither fact reflects much on either; there’s just too much institutional constraint.
RK
Do we have evidence of this? Maybe Hillary’s problem is Hillary.
David Koch
Oh great, now Francis is dog blogging
Another Holocene Human
@magurakurin: I understand the anybody-but-Hilary phenom. “You can’t tell me what to do!!” What I don’t understand is the lying about your candidate’s record, lying about the other candidate’s record, ginning yourself up into this apocalyptic battle thing and completely forgetting that not only does the other party exist, they have 47% of stupid likely voters in the bag. So have that primary, but don’t give your heart away. Christ.
MomSense
@raven:
Great photo.
Kay
@EconWatcher:
I think endorsements are more than “saying nice things about her”, though. She has almost half the Democrats in Congress– 30 Senators is 30 people who represent 30 (whole) states and the vast majority of them worked with her at one time or another.
The Obama campaign thought endorsements were really important. They called the people who endorsed him in ’08 “validators”. It’s like a reference on a job application.
ThresherK
Having mechanic look at my car to see if I should keep it beyond the current emissions/registration period, ending in January 2017. Wondering if I can replace this with a stickshift car which my wife won’t ruin on the days I bring her vehicle to the mechanic.
Oh, and wondering why the press coprse is already into its narrative of Democrat X has to do something trancendant to be notable, all that is demanded of Republican Y is to win the White House so fking early.
EconWatcher
@David Koch:
I agree that Sanders’ list of legislative accomplishments is also thin, and I’m not actually a big Sanders proponent, if it came across that way. I wish we had other choices, hence the lack of enthusiasm.
But at least Sanders knew how to vote on the Iraq War, and that’s a big distinction over Hillary. Biden is actually worse than Hillary on Iraq, because he voted against Gulf War I and for Gulf War II, getting it exactly backwards, at least in my view.
Baud
@MomSense:
I’m never inspired by anybody. (Events, yes, but not people). But that’s my own personal demon.
Amir Khalid
@EconWatcher:
Doesn’t Hillary regret that vote nowadays?
Gimlet
@Another Holocene Human:
salon.com/2012/07/23/the_obama_gitmo_myth/
every time the issue of ongoing injustices at Guantanamo is raised, one hears the same apologia from the President’s defenders: the President wanted and tried to end all of this, but Congress — including even liberals such as Russ Feingold and Bernie Sanders — overwhelming voted to deny him the funds to close Guantanamo. While those claims, standing alone, are true, they omit crucial facts and thus paint a wildly misleading picture about what Obama actually did and did not seek to do.
President Obama’s “plan to close Guantanamo” — even if it had been approved in full by Congress — did not seek to end that core injustice. It sought to do the opposite: Obama’s plan would have continued the system of indefinite detention, but simply re-located it from Guantanamo Bay onto American soil.
as part of that excuse, one frequently hears that even liberal civil liberties stalwarts in the Senate — such as Russ Feingold and Bernie Sanders — voted to deny funding for the closing of Guantanamo: as though it is they who are to blame for these enduring travesties, rather than Obama. But this, too, is misleading in the extreme.
The reason these Democratic Senators voted to deny funds for closing Guantanamo is not because they lacked the courage to close Guantanamo. It’s because they did not want to fund a plan to close the camp without knowing exactly what Obama planned to do with the detainees there — because people like Feingold and Sanders did not want to fund the importation of a system of indefinite detention onto U.S. soil.
Feingold: While I recognize that your administration inherited detainees who, because of torture, other forms of coercive interrogations, or other problems related to their detention or the evidence against them, pose considerable challenges to prosecution, holding them indefinitely without trial is inconsistent with the respect for the rule of law that the rest of your speech so eloquently invoked. Indeed, such detention is a hallmark of abusive systems that we have historically criticized around the world. It is hard to imagine that our country would regard as acceptable a system in another country where an individual other than a prisoner of war is held indefinitely without charge or trial.
Once a system of indefinite detention without trial is established, the temptation to use it in the future would be powerful. And, while your administration may resist such a temptation, future administrations may not. There is a real risk, then, of establishing policies and legal precedents that rather than ridding our country of the burden of the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, merely set the stage for future Guantanamos, whether on our shores or elsewhere, with disastrous consequences for our national security.
Worse, those policies and legal precedents would be effectively enshrined as acceptable in our system of justice, having been established not by one, largely discredited administration, but by successive administrations of both parties with greatly contrasting positions on legal and constitutional issues.
David Koch
This is just killing the teabaggers HA!
RK
This is one of my big problems with Clinton because in my view she did know how to vote on the war but went the other way out of political expediency. The woman has blood on her hands.
Gimlet
@Amir Khalid:
As does the NYT’s promotion of the invasion, but I have few doubts that they would do it again and apologize again when the situation recurs.
amk
@Gimlet:
rrriight, that’s what the ebil kenyan really wanted to do.
coupla fucking clueless purity pricks.
Baud
@Gimlet:
That does not compute.
And, frankly, it does not justify Sanders vote, IMHO. He voted against the plan, when he should have voted for it.
Baud
@Baud:
Feingold also would not support Dodd Frank, which forced the Dems to cut a deal with Scott Brown.
Another Holocene Human
@Gimlet: Bullshit, yes, some of them would come onto American soil. That’s part of the point, bring the problem home instead of far away where you can la-la-la about it and let people rot. This same Congress pissed their pants about trying terror suspects in regular courts on American soil. This was another big push by civil liberties advocates, to move these cases into the normal course of justice and out of drumhead military courts. If you recall, Jon Stewart did a bit about the crazy prisoners in Supermax and why it was so silly that these people were going full hamster over the likes of Khalid Sheik Mohammed.
Sorry, but Feingold and Sanders’ idiotic excuse making for their cowardice falls flat to me. They were afraid of the overwhelming majority of the public who was agin’ it, and that’s a fact. Don’t try to dress it up to be a serious case of the principles breaking out.
Another Holocene Human
@Baud: Profile in courage.
Gimlet
@amk:
From the link
Long before, and fully independent of, anything Congress did, President Obama made clear that he was going to preserve the indefinite detention system at Guantanamo even once he closed the camp. President Obama fully embraced indefinite detention — the defining injustice of Guantanamo — as his own policy.
In February, 2009, the Obama DOJ told an appellate court it was embracing the Bush DOJ’s theory that Bagram detainees have no legal rights whatsoever, an announcement that shocked the judges on the panel hearing the case. In May, 2009, President Obama delivered a speech at the National Archives — in front of the U.S. Constitution — and, as his plan for closing Guantanamo, proposed a system of preventative “prolonged detention” without trial inside the U.S.; The New York Times — in an article headlined “President’s Detention Plan Tests American Legal Tradition” — said Obama’s plan “would be a departure from the way this country sees itself, as a place where people in the grip of the government either face criminal charges or walk free.”
Robert Waldmann
this should work (I wonder what it does in comments?)
David Koch
@EconWatcher: I’m not supporting Biden or anyone. I mention him as an example. Here’s a guy from a similarly tiny state (only 3 electoral votes), who had no money or family power, a widow at age 29, survived two brain aneurysms, and still got shit done, including saving reproductive choice by sinking Bob Bork.
Robert Waldmann
I am trying to send the between the code for the missing more button. My first attempt was rendered as a blank space here in comments.
it is (between the pointy things)
!–more–
that is “less than” !–more– “greater than”
I will now see what the html imp does with my current effort.
Another Holocene Human
@RK: Blood on the hands is going a bit far, re: Iraq II. Bush was gonna do what Bush was gonna do–the Senate just jumped onto the bandwagon for fear of war-hungry voters. Was it horrible? Yes. Could they have turned refusenik and eroded some legitimacy? Sure. Would that have stopped it? Hahahahahaha.
A coup might have stopped it. Of course, it would have caused worse problems.
I thought Afghanistan was a big fat fucking mistake, too, and if GWB really wanted OBL (shorter: he didn’t), they should have sent special forces in there, not the whole fucking Army. But the whole world went mad around me, and they wanted to kick a dirtbag nation around in revenge.
Another Holocene Human
Blood was on all our hands, actually, whether we opposed the war or not. I was in the streets. Great demotivating moments in history.
amk
@Gimlet:
shite, it’s a gg pos. why did I even bother?
OzarkHillbilly
Sunday treat in store as supermoon meets total eclipse
I’ll most likely be sound asleep but for those night owls in the audience, it should be worth a fire in the pit.
Baud
@Gimlet:
Do you have a link to the details on the plan itself?
Another Holocene Human
@Gimlet: In Feb 2009 “Obama’s” DOJ is still Bushwacked. You seriously expect us to be that gullible?
ETA: your article didn’t give a date. I’m just wondering how many days after inauguration all civil servants are required to swear blood oaths to Dear Leader and plug into the Hive Mind for instructions
Kay
It’s frustrating to me because she’s stilted and guarded and I almost long for her to break out of it , because I have heard her sound like what I believe is “herself” (or as close as a politician gets) and it’s FINE- it’s better than the careful Clinton.
I know what you’re going to tell me- it’s because of the history- Hunting the President- all of that, but she can’t control all those other people and they aren’t going to change. Saying “I wish political media would let Hillary Clinton say something unscripted” is just futile. It’s not going anywhere. It’s really like watching a bad relationship- she says this, then they say that, and it just goes round and round. I think the only way she can break out of it is to just walk away from it and do what she wants. I feel like something has to bust up this back and forth and she’s the only person who can, so has to be the one who tries a different approach.
Gimlet
@amk:
Feel free to refute his main points.
Another Holocene Human
@amk: There is none more saintly than Saint Glennzilla. None more saintly.
Another Holocene Human
@Gimlet: Scroll up.
Although his main point is always incoherent rage at the Kenyan Imposter, or whatever the fuck it is they call him–I forget, and it’s kind of hard to argue with that. More a shake your head moment.
Gimlet
@Baud:
Google can be your friend, if you’re really interested and not just nitpicking at one level then going to the next.
PurpleGirl
@raven: Cute kid. She has a amazing hair.
amk
@Gimlet:
his main points being those that he pulled out of his rear side? forget it. The kenyan has done more to close gitmo than anyone else and gg was just whoring his poutrage since his star was waning post dubya.
Baud
@Gimlet:
I’m not interested. Bernie should have voted to close Gitmo. It’s not my burden to convince myself I am wrong.
Another Holocene Human
@David Koch: That’s an awesome photo.
Big difference from some of those awkward state visit shots where both parties are ramrod in their chairs eyeing each other sidelong.
Have you seen that awful “Come Home To The Catholic Church” ad that’s been on cable? More like, remind me why I left. I do hope that some eccentric billionaire’s PAC funding that thing and not actual parishioner donated funds. Because if so, the Church got ripped off.
Steeplejack
@Anne Laurie:
I don’t see how to help you with that. I don’t think the “More” button shows up for us peon commenters. That must be a back-office thing?
I looked at the most recent front-page post with a fold: Mayhew’s “You Be the Referee.” The link for the post itself is:
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2015/09/21/you-be-the-referee/
The “Continue reading” link is:
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2015/09/21/you-be-the-referee/#more-174478
I have no idea where the “174478” comes from; that is what tells the browser where to continue after the jump. So I don’t see how you could generate it manually.
David Koch
@Gimlet:
Is this the same Griftwald who said the 2012 polls were skewed and Romney would win?
Or this the same Griftwald who pushes the republican conspiracy theories on Benghazi?
Or is this the same Griftwald who pushes Trump’s racist talking points on immigration?
Baud
@Kay:
She should do more alternative media.
Cervantes
@RK:
Yes, I’m not buying it, either.
Baud
Damn, over 450 killed at Hajj in Mecca.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay: I agree to an extent but the truth is they are all fairly well scripted and when they go off script they get ripped for it. Even Trump is scripted in that his script is so off script 27% of the GOP is enraptured by it.
The problem for Hillary is that the press, the GOP, and a not insignificant # of Dems are rather unforgiving when it comes to her. Part of that is sexism but another part of it is she’s a Clinton. People have forgotten the lengths the GOP went to in their desire to trash her and Bill.
In fact, that was one of the reasons I voted Obama in the primaries. I naively thought the GOP wouldn’t go after him the way they went after Bill. Lesson learned.
debbie
@David Koch:
Along with the pope canceling his lunch with Congress to instead dine with the homeless!
OzarkHillbilly
@Cervantes: Hillary has her issues, no doubt, but if anybody thinks Warren could run a national election and not face unDogly amounts of sexism, I think they weren’t paying attention when Warren ran for Senate.
“Who would want to see her without clothes?” or some such from the estimable Scott Brown.
Cervantes
@David Koch:
Just FYI: Sanders was in the House from 1991 through 2006. He was elected Senator in 2006.
Baud
@debbie:
Did he cancel? I thought he never accepted in the first place.
Princess
@Kay: It is also worth remembering that Obama’s primary campaign really began to take off when he started to get big endorsements. Kennedy was the biggest of course. When I was phone banking, a lot of people talked to me about that one, and I think Iowa would have been a blip without it. Two things turned the tide for Obama: those endorsements, and beginning to win the AA vote. If Bernie doesn’t do either to some degree, he isn’t going to win the primary.
Gimlet
@David Koch:
You have the same opportunity to refute what he says rather than attacking the messenger.
beltane
As for thin resumes, we should remember that the Democrats hold very few governorships, which can be the best resume builders of all. The Republicans have a deep bench of sitting and past governors, but all their accomplishments are negative.
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
It’s a running problem for the Saudi authorities: Incidents like this happen all too often, caused by huge crowds that Mecca only sees for a few days each year. To make the Haj as safe as possible for pilgrims, they have to set strict quotas for Haj visas to restrict the number of incoming pilgrims. If anything, incidents like this show that the number of pilgrims needs to be restricted even more. But the demand for visas is going in the other direction. And strict Haj visa quotas mean long waiting lists, so that a would-be pilgrim could have to wait years. That tends to fuel resentment from Muslims abroad, and diminishes Saudi Arabia’s prestige as the Custodian of Islam’s holy places.
Cervantes
@Gimlet:
Right, but I doubt it will sink in. It hasn’t yet.
Amir Khalid
@Cervantes:
Do Senators stand a better chance than Representatives of getting their legislation passed ?
Matt McIrvin
@OzarkHillbilly: Indian-gate would have gone national, too, and it would have been ugly as hell.
beltane
@Amir Khalid: “That tends to fuel resentment from Muslims abroad, and diminishes Saudi Arabia’s prestige as the Custodian of Islam’s holy places.”
Given Saudia Arabia’s role in the Middle East, a loss of prestige would not necessarily be a bad thing, expect perhaps for the Saudis.
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
I’d just as soon watch it on TV, but I don’t like crowds.
Baud
@Amir Khalid:
There are far fewer Senators, so that helps.
Cervantes
@Baud:
Campaign slogan?
Amir Khalid
@beltane:
They are not quite universally beloved in the region as it is. The other countries are not ruled by babes-in-the-woods, you know.
Baud
@Cervantes:
Too long for a bumper sticker.
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid:
Numerically and rules-wise, the two chambers are quite different.
Cervantes
@Baud:
I’ll get a bigger bumper.
sdhays
I’m generally happy with Clinton’s domestic positions this time around, but the reason I was against her in 2008 was:
1) her foreign policy instincts are really bad and
2) she had surrounded herself with terrible advisors, which spoke to poor judgement.
#1 is clearly still a problem – she talks about how she wanted to give a bunch of weapons and training to
ISISthe “good” Syrian rebels (whoever they are since, just like John McCain, I’m sure she has a magic way of knowing that she’s not sharing with the rest of the Obama administration). #2 is also still a problem, but hopefully less so. There still seem to be more unhelpful leaks out of the Clinton camp which is much more rare from people working with Obama. You could say that I want to believe #2 is tamped down enough to no longer be a big problem (not yet convinced), but every time she brings up how she was with John McCain on how to deal with Syria, I start hoping that someone (maybe O’Malley?) starts going after her on that.As big a disaster Syria is, the chemical weapons have been removed from the equation without any lives lost (dealing with that specific issue) – would that have been possible if we had been arming “the good guys” in Syria in the first place? The only way the US could have done anything to avoid the situation in Syria now would have been supporting Assad early on, and that was never going to happen.
Baud
@Cervantes:
I like big bumpers and I cannot lie.
RK
@Cervantes: More like a slogan for an anti-psychotic drug.
Matt McIrvin
@Fair Economist:
I’ve seen a lot of people making negative comparisons to John Kerry. But my impression is that many of the things Kerry has accomplished were the end states of processes that started under Hillary Clinton.
Cervantes
@OzarkHillbilly:
You’re right.
I hadn’t meant to say that Warren did not (or does not) face sexism.
Clinton does, too — but I don’t think it explains the relative lack of enthusiasm for her even among those who support her (and Warren). Cf. the question raised by Allyson Hobbs:
debbie
@Baud:
I misspoke. Scanning the articles through Google, it seems he declined Boehner’s offer to dine with Congress after his speech.
debbie
@Cervantes:
But Warren would be a whole lot more vocal in her pushback against the sexism. That’d be a treat to watch!
I still haven’t recovered from Phil Gramm’s dismissive attitude when Brooksley Born testified before the Senate about the need to regulate markets.
Tom
I’ve been up since 1 this morning. (I’ve never been a good sleeper)
I dropped an email to one of my colleagues, thinking that she’d get back to me later today. Turns out she also has trouble sleeping so she answered me minutes later and we had a lively back-and-forth.
PurpleGirl
@Baud: Further, those unwanted pregnancies would turn into unwanted children who could potentially be abused by their parent(s) and who would live incredibly restricted lives in poverty and with less education. I think many people see this possibility as less than desirable for society.
Cervantes
@debbie:
In part he was covering for his wife, some of whose old mistakes Born was warning us about.
Tom
@Morzer: The Republican war against…well, everything reminds me of a saying from my youth:
“He’d complain if he was hung with a new rope.”
magurakurin
@Baud:
best thing I’ve read in quite some time. I love it.
OzarkHillbilly
@Cervantes: Correct. Like it or not I think there is a certain fatigue with the Clintons. It is something that Hillary needs to surmount of she is going to GOTV. Like Kay, I think if Hillary can adopt a more natural/human … face? Pose? Voice? for her, it would go a long ways.
Warren seems to get a pass (in the form of less scrutiny) from a lot of liberals because she is a new voice speaking for truly progressive goals and we are excited by it.
PurpleGirl
@David Koch: What a great picture of an everyday life type activity. I think the thing I like about Pope Francis is a feeling that he knows something of the plain living that most people do. Even the President and Mrs. Obama have “ordinary” experiences of petting their dogs.
If that’s the dress Mrs. Obama wore for meeting the Pope at the airport, it’s was perfect. I don’t understand the RWNJs derision of it… but then it’s Mrs. Obama and they’ll deride anything and everything she wears.
Morzer
@Baud:
Got some junk on my bump.
PurpleGirl
@Amir Khalid: She says she does, but to the purity trolls you can never change your mind and have it count. IOW, you can never learn new facts and change your ideas and mind.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
No one cares about this, though, outside of base Democrats and media. It just reinforces the narrative. She did this for a time in ’08 “I am being treated unfairly by the media” and it’s not that it isn’t true, it’s that it doesn’t matter. It takes her into the cycle where all we talk about is Hillary Clinton and political media- that’s a closed circle. Younger people have no idea what she’s talking about, for one thing and Democrats need younger people and younger people love Bernie Sanders. Wood County, Ohio will not be a Democratic county in ’16 w/out 15k college-age voters. That’s how close it’s parsed.
Talk to them, not the Morning Joe people. Walk the fuck away from this 20 year dispute with political media. No one cares who “wins” the Clinton versus NYTimes fight. She should say what she wants to say and stand by it. It will be fine.
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie:
Maybe it is just Hillary’s more visible political presence, but I find it hard to believe that Warren could ever possibly be more vocal in fighting it. THAT is the one defining aspect of Hillary’s entire life.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Vocal was a poor word choice on my part. Warren would be more direct. She’d call a dick a dick, while Hillary might say the same thing, but she’d phrase it more genteely. Gentility is the last thing sexism needs.
gene108
@magurakurin:
Her first job out of Yale Law School was working with the new non-profit start-up Children’s Defense Fund. She’s been involved with them pretty much since the beginning.
I think this sort of dedication to a non-profit will make me over look her other faults, such as the murder of Vince Foster, cocaine smuggling, the murder of two teens on a lonely stretch of Arkansas railroad tracks for finding about the cocaine smuggling, crazy lesbian sex with Huma Abedin and probably some freaky three way’s with Anthony Weiner, as well as defrauding millions of investors with the Whitewater land deal.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay:
Oh I totally agree, nobody does care and bringing it up only makes her sound like a whiner, but she doesn’t bring it up (does she? I haven’t heard her say so, I hear a lot of other people talking about it, but not her) and I only bring it up as an explanation of some of the Clinton fatigue. (it is impossible to separate all that has happened since they left the WH from what happened when they were in the WH) (the GOP hates the Clintons)
I thought it was great when she was “ignoring the media” even to the extent of putting a rope up between her and them in the parade. You’re right, she doesn’t need to talk to them, she needs to talk to us, and they need to report on it whether they like it or not.
raven
@Botsplainer: Canon T3i
Sondra
The blue links work for me. Thank you for your efforts.
FlipYrWhig
Did we get the same gathering of crowds and the same emotional outpouring as in 2008 ANY OTHER TIME? It’s an absurd standard, no? Did Democrats go Obama-level wild about Bill Clinton’s campaign appearances or electoral victory, or Jimmy Carter’s? Did Republicans do it for Bush or the other Bush or even Reagan? TBH, if Hillary Clinton isn’t as galvanic as Barack Obama, I suppose that’s a strike against her, but it you’re making a list of presidents who gathered (happy) crowds and induced the outpouring of (happy) emotions, it’s going to be a damn short list. How about comparing the ardor Hillary Clinton inspires to the 43 presidents _before_ Obama?
OzarkHillbilly
@debbie: I’m not sure you are correct as Hillary seems pretty direct to me, but I don’t get to listen to Warren often. I will say this tho, throwing off gentility is a luxury that a candidate running for national office can ill afford to throw away. I can be far more direct than Warren would ever dream of being, but that is because I’m not running for anything.
FlipYrWhig
@debbie: That doesn’t sound like Elizabeth Warren to me. She’s firm about banks, polite and soft-spoken about pretty much everything else. Lest we forget, when she was running for Senate the liberal blogosphere was crucifying her for her lackluster stump presence and started pulling out its collective hair about how she was obviously the next Martha Coakley.
magurakurin
@OzarkHillbilly:
And Warren can be more direct than Clinton because she is a senator from Mass and not running for the presidency of the nation. I’d wager that one reason Warren didn’t want to run for president is she understands that she would have to temper her message if she did. She can say things with more “ardor” from her seat in the Senate than she could on the national campaign trail.
But it is all bullshit anyway. Hillary Clinton is fine. Her coldness or stiffness or woodeness or whatever catch phrase is being passed around is way over stated. She is fine. She was great on Jimmy Fallon making fun of Trump. She’s a funny lady.
funny how? How am I funny? Do I make you laugh? Am I here to amuse you? How the fuck am I funny…now if she said that…would she be a liar?
Sondra
About Hobbs’ piece in the New Yorker…Hillary has the same type of image problems that Obama had: and still has much of the time. He always seems to have tread the fine line of projecting not an angry black man, but a reasonable man.
Those of us on the left always wanted more fire from him but he only gave it occasionally. In the beginning of his first term he seemed relentlessly fair to the right-wingers and gave in to their demands. The result was bad deals or no deals anyway. He learned and did better as time passed.
Hillary has the same problem and always has. No matter how reasonable she tries to be, they always insinuate that she is the female equivalent of that angry black man. If she is tough she’s a power hungry bitch. If she is soft, she is unsuited to be President. If she is warm, she is a phony: but if she is not warm she is unlikable.
We want passion and inspiration from our candidates, but she is not either of those things. She is
workmanlike and thorough. She is the definition of a good public servant.
It’s just not very exciting.
FlipYrWhig
@Sondra: How many exciting presidents have there ever even been? I know things are different in the era of mass media, so there aren’t that many presidents or candidates to evaluate, but I’d start the bidding at 2: Kennedy and Obama. Maybe Reagan.
Betty Cracker
Good morning, Anne Laurie. You could try the following to to put text below the fold (I can’t just copy & paste because it doesn’t render in comments):
caret pointing left, exclamation point, two dashes, the word “more,” two more dashes, caret pointing right
No spaces, commas, etc.
@Sondra: That’s it exactly.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@kindness: I don’t think there’s really all that much difference in the policy positions of Clinton and Sanders so far. Maybe Clinton isn’t gunning for Medicare for all, but she’s pro raising the minimum wage and most of the policies she’s proposing would reduce, or at the very least prevent the further spread, of economic inequality. I’d be happy with either Hillary or Sanders but am leaning Hillary right now. I can’t believe people are saying being Secretary of State leaves her with a thin list of accomplishments, compared to being the junior Senator from Vermont.
Svensker
@RK:
Egggzackly. I’m not unenthusiastic about Hills because she’s a girl, I’m unenthusiastic because she’s a corporatist warmonger and she’s also so very careful not to do anything until she’s sure it’s safe — vision is not her strong suit. I’ll vote for her because of the Supreme Court and especially because of abortion and “women’s issues” (until family planning and pregnancy are no longer considered “women’s issues” we are all pretty f’d up anyway, eh?) but it’s hard to generate much enthusiasm for such a weak candidate who’s also wrong on so much.
Steeplejack
@Betty Cracker:
Like this?
<!--more-->
magurakurin
@Svensker:
is she wrong about this
or is that too abrasive? oh wait she needs to be direct…maybe she’s just lying and doesn’t believe it all.
Betty Cracker
@Steeplejack: Yes! Only when I typed that in, it didn’t show up in the comment. I’m not a sorcerer like you.
Steeplejack
@Betty Cracker:
It’s just that FYWP wants to interpret the code, not show it, so you have to do a bit of hand-waving to shoo it off when you want the latter.
What I wrote to get the above was:
<!--more-->
The symbols are lt = less than, gt = greater than. Ergo, show the actual characters rather than using them as the start/finish for HTML code niblets.
Posted the snippet so Anne Laurie could easily copy for later pasting.
Cervantes
.
debbie
@OzarkHillbilly:
Warren’s been far, far more direct on the banks than Clinton has, which frankly has the smell of Larry Summers about it. Hillary’s more direct now, but that’s Bernie’s doing.
OzarkHillbilly
@FlipYrWhig: I hated Reagan then as now, but the GOP was definitely excited about him and his charisma won over a lot of voters.
FlipYrWhig
@Svensker: I know what the “warmonger” business is referring to. Where does the “corporatist” bit come from, exactly? Too close to The Banks, and so forth… based on what?
Original Lee
@sdhays: This. Her 2008 advisers still give me nightmares.
FlipYrWhig
@OzarkHillbilly: Chalk him up, then. Still we have plenty of uninspiring and workmanlike Presidential candidates: Nixon, Johnson, Goldwater, Humphrey, McGovern, Ford, Carter, Mondale, Bush, Dukakis, Dole, Gore, Kerry, McCain, Romney. MAYBE in a pinch you can say Bill Clinton and George W. Bush were capable of conveying enthusiasm and motivating a measure of it. The rest of them? Workhorses all the way down.
kindness
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Yea, good points. I mean there isn’t a ton of difference between Bernie & Hillary. Fine details. I like Bernie’s positions better but think Hillary would win the general election easier. What is sticking in my craw is that people I ostensibly like and agree with are doing Rupert Murdoch’s job of painting one of my sides leading candidates as horrible. That did affect the Gore/dubya election and God knows after (a recent even) 8 years of bush43 the last thing I could swallow is another round of Republican troglodites running the show. My ostensible ‘friends’ don’t see it in those terms though, bless their hearts.
EconWatcher
@PurpleGirl:
I was an adult in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq. I’m no genius, but I could tell the Administration’s case was bull4#it. I can’t imagine that Senator Clinton, smart as she is, couldn’t see it too.
It was politically risky to vote against it, because we were still in the numbed aftermath of 9/11. But several dozen democratic Senators had the guts to do it. She wasn’t one of them. I think she thought it was politically safer to stay with the pack.
Given the horrendous consequences–in lives, money, and moral standing of the US–I do hold this vote strongly against her. And I’m not impressed with her claims of regret long after, when it’s politically safe to say so.
You’re free to disagree with all of the above. But purity troll? Come on. It was the signature political test of our age, and she failed it. If that doesn’t cause you to question her reliability when the going gets tough, I don’t know what would.
Kay
@OzarkHillbilly:
I know she can do it. The stuff that was published when she spoke to Black Lives Matter is exactly what I’m talking about. It was really good.
Cervantes
@EconWatcher:
And, here and there, an Independent!
That one was a bit puzzling.
Betty Cracker
President Obama wanted to make Larry Summers Fed Chair and relied on Summers and other Wall Streeters as a key advisers throughout his administration. That is just a reflection of reality — you can’t influence the economy without working with Wall Street. Except when Hillary Clinton does it, in which case it’s corporate / bankster whoring. Duh!
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: Obama is worse than Bush! He sold us out!
Kay
@Betty Cracker:
And Larry Summers is now carefully positioning himself as a populist, so we’ll have to continue to watch out for him :)
He’s auditioning for something. It’s The New Larry Summers.
Betty Cracker
@Kay: I read a CAP report awhile back that was rolled out by New Larry. I like New Larry better than the old one, for sure.
Kay
Also, Clinton may have a problem ahead of her with the trade deal and drug prices.
One of the major objections to the trade deal is that it will raise drug prices in countries that regulate drug prices and also in poor countries. It’s complicated, and there’s a protection piece for US pharma that goes the other way, but the short answer is that setting drug prices COULD be construed as a “non-trade barrier” and “free trade” (the ideological theory) opposes those.
This is going to come up, because she brought it up. It’s just a matter of time. The President blew the whole debate off but he was wrong to do that and Clinton won’t be able to. Trade deals DO affect regulatory regimes.
Matt McIrvin
@debbie: The “Indian” thing genuinely knocked Warren back for a while; she had to run a TV ad in the “explaining” mode, which, as we all know, means you’re losing. It didn’t hurt her too much in the long run mostly because the other side got so racist and gross about it with the “Fauxcahontas” attacks that it mostly reflected badly on them, but I don’t know if they’d pay a price nationally.
Neldob
Black men won the right to vote about 50 years before women. Of course we are still trying to solidify that right. Is this relevant somehow?
Peale
@Kay: Yep. I think she’s going to be handed a moment where she will be able to reject this deal because it is going to be killed by the other trade partners. She might as well oppose those parts that are unpopular if it isn’t going be signed by any of the partners, either.
Elie
@Kay:
amen to this… sigh…
I would love her to bust out and be her natural self — whatever that is. Let the effing haters do what they do… they are going to anyway. I long for her liberation….
As for Bernie — I am concerned that he gets too many passes and is not truly and would not be, a strong candidate. He is definitely too old. Sorry… he just IS. He looks old and rumpled and that is early on in the going. He is doing ok right now in the early going, but I have real concerns about his vigor in the type of punishing campaign this is going to be. I don’t care who I offend saying this, but I am truly concerned that he will damage Hillary but then won’t be able to do the job himself. I have some concerns as well about Hillary’s health and vigor…. 2008 and 2012 were tough but look at what we are dealing with now?! We cannot afford to have the Presidency end up with one of the orks running on the Republican ticket. I could give a fk whose little ego gets bruised. I expect the Democrats (and related socialists), to pay attention to the facts and not get their egos caught up in some fantasy.
Bernie Sanders can help us, but not at the top of the ticket. His job as I see it is to surface issues and pressure Hillary a little from the left. Not to damage her and through that, damage our chances to have some sort of sanity in the next Presidency. That is it. AND to know when to get out — very importantly.
Keith G
@Betty Cracker:
And, Summers was not a result of Obama’s best decision making. Didn’t Summers spend some effort trying to block Elizabeth Warren’s ideas in the White House?
I am certainly not against a Clinton presidency, but I want to have a better idea of how she intends to run the executive branch of government.
Many folks are not tired of the Clintons, they are just tired of the consequences caused by a certain Clintonian way of doing business.
Say what one will about the email story, but it does provide a bit of a call back to other decision making episodes that might lead to concern.
Although I’m not generally in favor of this formulation, Hillary Clinton is a brand. She is a brand that has a lot of baggage and a lot of possibilities. It’s her job to emphasize what she is able to bing to the table and many of those waiting for this are not being sexist, they are just ….. waiting.
Betty Cracker
@Keith G: The concerns you’ve outlined here are totally legitimate, and I share them. What I object to is the double standard, whereby if PBO does X, he’s just being realistic but if HRC does X, she’s a sell-out. I see a bit of that around here sometimes.
Thoughtful Today
[sigh]
“Why Aren’t We Inspired by Hillary Clinton?”
POLICIES and long memories.
It’s not about gender, those that were excited about Elizabeth Warren because of her policies are now some of the strongest supporters for Bernie.