Here’s my favorite paragraph from last night’s State of the Union speech:
Sixty years ago, when the Russians beat us into space, we didn’t deny Sputnik was up there. We didn’t argue about the science, or shrink our research and development budget. We built a space program almost overnight, and twelve years later, we were walking on the moon.
I like it because it implicitly mocks climate change deniers, austerity bombers and chicken littles. It’s optimistic, as was the speech as a whole.
Last night, President Obama took on the doom-sayers on the right, which are the candidates with the most traction on the GOP side at the moment. But that’s arguably true on the Democratic side too; Bernie Sanders also says we’re going to hell in a handbasket, albeit one crafted by entrenched plutocracy rather than a feckless Kenyan.
Conventional wisdom has it that Americans will almost always choose an optimistic vision over doom and gloom at the ballot box, but is that true? Is it fair to say we Democratic primary voters will get to test that theory first?
ruemara
I choose optimism, even when I don’t feel it. I fear though, that is not true of most. I welcome being wrong. The only person running an optimistic campaign right now HRC, which makes sense. Claiming everything is awful has not exactly impressed us oversensitive, voting for him out of race, Obama voters. Thanks, Bernie! That cured the Bern.
Melissa
I think Barack Obama could still win the Democratic nomination, beating both Bernie and Hillary hands down.
But he’s not running. I don’t find Hillary’s vision for America any more optimistic than Bernie’s — in fact, for me (your mileage may vary) — it’s less so, because it envisions us being able to get less done about our problems.
BGinCHI
Trump Control to Major Tom:
Take your protein pills and put your tinfoil on.
Gin & Tonic
@Melissa: HRC smiles. Bernie scolds.
Germy
@BGinCHI:
Karma Man 1967
– Mike Gerber
Gussie
I think this is very true. Clinton supporters, in my experience, are far more satisfied with and optimistic about the status quo than Sanders supporters.
JPL
This was my favorite part…
Betty Cracker
@Germy: I like that.
Kropadope
Depends on your outlook.
The entire argument for Hillary seems to be (somehow) about electability. Strikes me as awful pessimistic about the American electorate.
Bernie’s campaign says if everyone gets together and votes we can change the system. We can still do big things and help a lot of struggling people. The message is optimistic, if not the delivery.
BGinCHI
@JPL: That is terrific.
In two sentences Obama does more intellectual work than all of the nation’s newspapers and TV newsidiots.
WereBear
@Gussie: I guess it depends on who you speak with… My experience has been the opposite.
I think there are plenty of things to be fixed, and Sanders is far more radical about solutions, which pleases me.
I have met HRC for a brief handshake after a speech, and she is extraordinarily well-versed; a true wonk, it seemed to me. And yet, I am not enamored of the corporate Democractic path forged by her husband, followed by her, and still looming over her shoulder. Her own child is married to a hedge fund manager. She and her husband are firmly in the very sphere that has wreaked such havoc on the nation.
Not that they are the bloodsucking kind of rich folks; they have done good with their funds, no question.
But is she an FDR? Does she “welcome their hatred”?
The Fat Kate Middleton
Yeah, I’m an optimist, too, and I’m working for HRC. But all that doom and gloom crap did contribute to mutants like Joni Ernst being voted in in the last election.
cahuenga
@Gussie:
And Wall Street is very satisfied.
Matt McIrvin
“Optimism” classically refers to the opinion that we already live in the best of possible worlds. Which can be pessimistic, in the modern sense of these words, because it means it couldn’t be any better and therefore maybe can’t get any better.
That tension is always there when people talk about optimism and pessimism. Are you optimistic in that you think things are already great, or are you optimistic in the sense of believing there’s upside to be had?
japa21
I would like to think that most people respond to optimism, though it is hard to really tell. Obama in 2008 ran a very optimistic campaign and won. But I don’t remember too many other optimistic campaigns in my lifetime (which goes back to Eisenhower, although the first campaign I really remember was Kennedy-Nixon). Kennedy’s was somewhat optimistic, but at that time I was being raised in a very Republican family in a very Republican part of Wisconsin so I naturally belittled every thing he talked about as only a 13 year old could.
Most campaigns are based upon the fact that everything is rotten or the other party will make everything rotten.
HRC, this time around, is running more on a campaign of we are doing okay and let’s build on the progress we have already made and move forward. Sanders is more of the curmudgeon who may begrudgingly admit that we are moving in the right direction but we still have to blow things up and start fresh (okay, that’s hyperbole but sometimes that is how he sounds).
Not even Obama will say we are living in a paradise but he is still optimistic about what we can do if we work together to make things happen.
I think the weakest part of his speech last night was when he said we all have the same goals, just have different ideas of how to get there. The fact is we don’t. Dems want to move forward and add to the gains we have made in just about every area. The GOP wants to destroy all those gains, put certain categories of people back in their place (like the rear of the bus), and to make this a country with an elite few at the top and everybody else being peons.
ArchTeryx
I don’t have a lot of optimism left, being a 3 year+ unemployed scientist desparately trying to hold on to my SNAP.
BUT, my pessimism is something I try not to project to the country at large. Hell, the biomedical research budget at the NIH just got a big boost. Perhaps too late to help me, but it will help the generation behind me immensely.
Saying the country is going to hell in a handbasket is a hallmark of those out of power, those that never had power and those who peddle fear, but I repeat myself. I fit in the second category, but mine is an individual tragedy, in which I am alone.
BGinCHI
@Kropadope: Electability looks pretty fucking good given the alternative, which is hideous.
I wish IL had had an electable, boring schlub who would have beaten disgusting Rauner.
Matt McIrvin
@Melissa:
Incumbents nearly always do, if they’re not term-limited out. The exceptions tend to be catastrophic situations, like 1968 in which Johnson declined to even run, though he wasn’t constitutionally barred.
Scott P.
” But I don’t remember too many other optimistic campaigns in my lifetime”
Ronald Reagan. Morning in America.
Punchy
The GOP wont stick with doom and gloom for the election. Trump will switch over to saying shit like “Elect me, and our GDP will grow by 73% y/y”. He’s brag that his leadership will increase everyone’s pay by 1100%, ponies for everyone, and unemployment will reach -3.1% (more jobs than people).
None of it true, none of it realistic, none of it possible. But the rubes dont traffic in reality, and the MSM straight refuses to call a liar a liar, so it’ll get lots of positive pub….
Kropadope
@BGinCHI: I’m just not seriously buying that she’s truly more electable. It’s just B.S., like most things coming from the Clinton camp are. General election matchup polls that include Sanders show Sanders doing better against the Republicans than Hillary does.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The same ones that showed Ben Carson beating all comers six weeks ago?
dedc79
@Scott P.: It’s a tricky thing to pull off – advocating and campaigning on a platform of drastic change, while projecting optimism. Reagan was full of it, of course.
Obama’s pitch – that we are a purple country, not red or blue, was either incredibly naive or its own kind of BS. I’m glad it got him elected though.
rikyrah
Political Animal Blog
January 13, 2016 7:15 AM
The Source of President Obama’s Optimism
By Nancy LeTourneau
On the day President Obama was first inaugurated, he faced two big challenges. The first was dealing with the mess that was left to him by his predecessor: two intractable wars, Osama bin Laden alive and reconstituting his network of terrorism, and an economy in free fall. But while taking on those issues, he also faced the challenge of Congressional Republicans who had developed a strategy to deal with the fact that their domestic and foreign policies had not only failed, but led to the Democrats controlling the White House and both both houses of Congress. That strategy was eventually articulated publicly by former Republican Congressional staffer Mike Lofgren.
A couple of years ago, a Republican committee staff director told me candidly (and proudly) what the method was to all this obstruction and disruption. Should Republicans succeed in obstructing the Senate from doing its job, it would further lower Congress’s generic favorability rating among the American people. By sabotaging the reputation of an institution of government, the party that is programmatically against government would come out the relative winner.
…There are tens of millions of low-information voters who hardly know which party controls which branch of government, let alone which party is pursuing a particular legislative tactic. These voters’ confusion over who did what allows them to form the conclusion that “they are all crooks,” and that “government is no good,” further leading them to think, “a plague on both your houses” and “the parties are like two kids in a school yard.” This ill-informed public cynicism, in its turn, further intensifies the long-term decline in public trust in government that has been taking place since the early 1960s – a distrust that has been stoked by Republican rhetoric at every turn.
We are now witnessing the relative success of that strategy in various discussions about why Americans are so angry, cynical and distrustful of government. It’s what Republicans have been working on all along. But it has also led to the fact that their two front-runners for the Republican presidential nomination are Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.
That is the arena into which President Obama stepped last night to give his final State of the Union Address. And it is why he ended his speech with some discussion about a “better politics.”
cahuenga
@Kropadope:
The latest showed Sanders did 7% better than Clinton against Trump nationally. And if she continues with the clearly transparent ‘Sanders-vows-to destroy-Obamacare’ smear her numbers are going to crater.
MazeDancer
Just this morning, watching footage of Chelsea Clinton playing “hatchet man” on Bernie – and doing it badly – telling, essentially, lies, I started to slip away from Hillary. If she decides she’s going to run an “attack Bernie” campaign, full of misleading malarky and vitriol, then as much as I want a woman in office, I may vote for Bernie.
Do not want nasty or triangulating or “do anything” to get the nomination behavior. Leave that to the Republicans.
Amir Khalid
I’m not interested in who sounds more optimistic or pessimistic. Or whose campaign talk is more on the right side of the have/have-not divide. Both Hillary and Bernie propose governing agendas that strike me as acceptable. I would want to see the Democratic nomination go to the candidate better prepared to win the election and then execute their agenda.
Matt McIrvin
@Scott P.: The Daily Show just replayed the clip of Gerald Ford in 1975 saying “The State of the Union is not good.” It’s kind of startling.
The amazing thing is that job growth and employment at that point were better than they were at Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America” moment. (Inflation was scarily high, though, and that was probably the primary thing that bothered Ford.)
Ford’s solution, of course, was tax cuts and austerity. At least in an inflation crisis that makes a little sense–and the rate came down a few points, until the end of the Carter administration when it shot up again. Both episodes followed an oil shock, which I assume is not a coincidence.
beltane
I don’t see any of the candidates running on the optimism platform this election. Perhaps we are living at a time where there are few realistic grounds for optimism, not just here but throughout the developed world.
Kropadope
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Those and the ones reported in the New York Times yesterday, the same ones showing Bernie moving ahead in Iowa. I know polls get things wrong all the time, but I’m really sick of this cock-sureness that Hillary is the only one capable of beating the Republicans in November. I also have more than the polls to go on to suggest she’s actually a weaker candidate.
tmflibrarian
This was my favorite part:
“After all, it’s not much of a stretch to say that some of the only people in America who are going to work the same job, in the same place, with a health and retirement package, for 30 years, are sitting in this chamber.”
And no one is offering most Americans hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to two board meetings per year and lunch with old colleagues on occasion on top of all that, either.
Betty Cracker
@Matt McIrvin:
That’s a great point. No one, not even Trump, is saying we’re doomed and things will never get any better — his whole pitch is elect him and make America great again because he’s awesome. The pessimism at issue is in terms of where we are right now, I guess.
Bill
This depends entirely on what you mean by “optimism.” The President’s speech clearly identified serious problems (including climate change) we have, but are refusing to deal with because of political differences. That’s not a very optimistic evaluation of the state of modern America. In fact, it’s a pretty blunt and pessimistic assessment of how bad things are.
If by “optimistic” you mean he’s proposed ideas that could fix those problems if everyone could agree with his course of action, then every single campaign is optimistic. Including Trump.
cahuenga
@Betty Cracker:
My greatest concern has become – even if a status quo candidate wins we can kiss the next 2 generations of Americans goodbye. And that is not an exaggeration.
At the moment, status quo means a slow spiral for many.
gene108
@Kropadope:
I find Bernie to be very one-note. And shout-y.
He basically says, if you live in America today your life is gonna suck and you are dooooommmmeeed, because of the income inequality.
I think Hillary is electable. I think being electable is supremely important, because Democratic control of the Presidency is the only thing holding back a Republican Senate and Republican House and Republican Supreme Court from destroying America.
@cahuenga:
Which is why Wall Street is donating to Republicans at record levels, even though Hillary – their bestest buddy – is running for President.
FlipYrWhig
@beltane: Bernie Sanders is optimistic insofar as his core solution is that there will be a “political revolution” that sweeps Republicans out of office and intimidates the remainder into bending to the will of the people, even though the last time around those same Republicans decided to refuse to do anything helpful even after losing extremely badly and not only weren’t punished for it but thrived.
I didn’t say it was a GOOD optimism.
Gin & Tonic
@cahuenga: we can kiss the next 2 generations of Americans goodbye.
Not even sure what that means.
When my parents were the age my children are now, they didn’t – couldn’t – make any plans for the future, because they didn’t know if they’d live to next week. My children are happy, successful and not expecting that they or their children will die shortly due to war, famine or disease. I’d say that’s a good thing.
Starfish
Can we talk about the Oregon Militia dudes receiving fan mail because it is funny and potentially not safe for a stuck up work place?
Betty Cracker
@Amir Khalid: Agree 100%, and I’ve got zero time for anyone who takes a “my favored candidate or no one” approach, a foolishness few people seem to be falling for this time around. I’m cool with either Hillz or Bernie; the alternative is unthinkable.
Still, I think it’ll be interesting to see to what extent the Democratic primary becomes a referendum on the Obama years. Both Hillz and Bernie rightly give PBO props for taking on the Herculean task of pulling us out of the GWB ditch, but their vision for moving forward strikes me as much further apart than past primary match-ups.
Chris
@dedc79:
I think it’s the latter. I don’t think it’s possible to have made your name as a community organizer in the less wealthy and less white parts of Chicago – or even to have lived in America while black – without having to face the fact that a very significant portion of the population really, really hates the rest of us and will go to extraordinary lengths for the sole purpose of fucking us over. Unfortunately, it’s never been possible to run a fully honest political campaign – there are things you need to say to get elected.
FlipYrWhig
What is this notion that supporting Hillary Clinton means supporting the “status quo”? Because something something Wall Street? Where in the career of Hillary Clinton is there contentment and complacency? It’s like a bonfire of burning strawmen.
J R in WV
Can Bernie Sanders hold on to win the general election after billions of dollars worth of advertisements calling him a soclalist commie? The Republicans will go after the old guy as if he were the reincarnation of Josip Stalin himself… instead of a progressive democrat.
It scares me that they will do and say anything, tell any lie, to make Sanders unelectable.
Kropadope
@gene108:
Sorry, I’m not buying it. She has few accomplishments, none of them positive, and lies as easily as a Republican, but without the MSM having her back. People see through her transparent bullshit and the Democrats will be risking a lot by nominating her.
Kropadope
@J R in WV:
I don’t know. Did Obama?
FlipYrWhig
@Betty Cracker: How do you figure? The big difference seems to be between “breaking up the banks” (somehow) and regulating the banks differently (somehow). What are the other significant divergences between them?
Starfish
@FlipYrWhig: Is there anything that leads you to believe that she will better regulate Wall Street or go after the hedge fund managers who are treating most of their income as capital gains?
Betty Cracker
@FlipYrWhig: I don’t think “status quo” is a good way to describe it either, but HRC’s campaign does seem predicated on a continuation and building upon the policies of the Obama administration rather than a call for radical change. Do you disagree?
FlipYrWhig
@Kropadope: Do people of color stand with Bernie Sanders? Because that’s what got Obama through the shitstorm.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@FlipYrWhig: the single payer health care and free college that Claire McCaskill, Chuck Schemer and Joe Mancin are dying to vote for as soon as our political revolution flips Texas, Idaho and Alabama into the D column.
FYWP autocorrects Chuck’s name and I choose to leave it as it is.
Betty Cracker
@Starfish: Here’s something.
Kropadope
@FlipYrWhig: If Bernie is the Democrats’ nominee, I would wager he pulls pretty similar numbers to Obama across all racial demographics. It’s not like Black people will suddenly start voting for Republicans en masse or Latinos and Muslims will forget the ugliness directed their way by the Republican candidates.
amk
@Kropadope: Yes. satsq.
Kropadope
@amk: Snappy answers to sarcastic questions?
amk
@Kropadope: Yes.
amk
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Chuck Schemer. Perfect.
Gin & Tonic
@Kropadope: It’s not like Black people will suddenly start voting for Republicans en masse or Latinos and Muslims will forget the ugliness directed their way by the Republican candidates.
But will they take hours or a day off work and stand in line for four hours to vote for the Democrat? That’s the worry.
Starfish
@Betty Cracker: Interesting!
Hildebrand
@Kropadope: You have to admit that the way in which they will go after Sanders as a ‘self-professed Socialist’ is going to be significantly different than they way they tried to go after Obama on his economic policies. Outside of the fever swamps of the right, nobody believed Obama was a socialist. Bernie describes himself that way. Of course it will be infinitely easier to tar him with the word.
FlipYrWhig
@Starfish: “Better” regulate? I have no idea. Willing to regulate rather than eager to let them run amok, as implicitly often alleged? Yes.
What bothers me about Sanders is that I don’t have a clear sense of how he intends to accomplish what he says he wants. The wanting part is easy. The doing part is kind of tricky, no? And saying that it can happen on the strength of greater voter participation is a non-answer. As we saw in 2009-10, just getting Democrats elected doesn’t mean getting enough liberals elected to make the median Democrat a Sanders-ish Democrat. Then what? I have more confidence that Team Hillary will move the ball down the field, while Team Bernie seems likely to get pissed off when they get stymied and not have a Plan B.
lethargytartare
@Chris:
I’m continually stunned that eight plus years on, people still try to peer deeply into Obama’s brain to tell us what he REALLY thinks.
His thing about a purple country isn’t naive, and it isn’t a ploy. First, it’s a fact, period. Second, it’s what Obama actually believes is great, or potentially great, about our political system – that it compels disparate views to come together to find solutions to real problems. That’s the lesson he learned as an organizer, and that’s the lesson he learned navigating the polluted political waters of Chicago, it’s the lesson almost everyone who actually does politics learns eventually.
The rest is projection and nonsense.
amk
@FlipYrWhig: Yup. If anything, the rethugs would be more emboldened to obstruct and block the next dem president’s agenda since they have seen that in the last 7 years they have been amply rewarded for such blackballing tactics by the american voters. Unless sanders gets a huge coattail, he is gonna be stymied from day one.
Kropadope
@Hildebrand: But it’s not pure socialism, it’s democratic socialism, which he himself defines as capitalism integrating socialist features or capitalism that works for everyone. Sounds like pretty much like most Democrats and all the best policies our country has adopted over its history.
cahuenga
@Gin & Tonic:
44% of 18 to 34 millennials are living with their parents or relatives. The DLC style of lowered expectations or invoking ‘baby steps’ is no longer practical, it’s asking for a permanent return to pre-depression conditions.
Tom Q
@Matt McIrvin: Given that Nixon had resigned in disgrace only five months earlier, and the country was in the midst of a long recession with high inflation (which had up till then been considered an impossibility), people would have laughed out loud had Ford said anything different. Still, I’ll bet his advisers were begging him not to put it that way. And, today, Fox News would have run enough counter-reality stories that the GOP base would have demanded he say things were great.
randy khan
@Kropadope:
When someone starts saying things like that, I begin to wonder if we’re talking about the same person. Hillary Clinton has had a distinguished career from the start, has been a staunch supporter of policies that are central to progressive politics (hence the Planned Parenthood endorsement this week, as one example) and easily is more qualified than any of the Republicans.
And lines like she “lies as easily as a Republican” really make my blood boil. She gets accused of lying constantly, and it almost always turns out that she was telling the truth. (Or, sometimes, that she didn’t say what she was accused of saying.)
If you don’t want to support her, find some real reason, like the Iraq vote. Don’t make up things about her, or buy into stupid right-wing framing.
FlipYrWhig
@Hildebrand: And BTW what people think “socialist” means is “politician who wants to take my hard-earned stuff and give it to Those People.” I’m not sure “socialist” is a particular problem because it’s not like Republicans haven’t been running against Democrats as tax-hiking Negro-lovers for 50 years already. Paradoxically, even though Sanders has been good at connecting with young people, I think the resonant anti-Sanders message would end up being “he’s yesterday’s news, a creature of the ’60s, indistinguishable from McGovern and Mondale.” A lot of people treat Hillary as a retread but IMHO Sanders has a lot of retread about him too. And to me Hillary provokes a reaction kind of like this: “I may not like her as a person and I definitely don’t like all of her ideas, but I feel like she can Get The Job Done.” I personally don’t get that from Sanders. That’s the style/persona difference I’m hanging up on this cycle.
Kropadope
@FlipYrWhig:
One candidate has a well-established history of getting stuck on a particular plan and having legislative pushes fail due to an inflexible approach. That candidate is not Bernie Sanders.
One candidate has a history of pragmatically working from opposition, passing more amendments that became law from the minority caucus while the Republicans controlled the Senate. That candidate is not Hillary Clinton.
randy khan
@Kropadope:
In percentage terms, perhaps, although it’s interesting to note that HRC consistently does better than Sanders across those demographics. In terms of turnout, I doubt it, and turnout is what matters. HRC probably wouldn’t get PBO turnout either, but it would be closer than Sanders.
Betty Cracker
@FlipYrWhig: Seems like they have fairly significant differences on how they would handle issues like pot legality, college tuition affordability, the mess in Syria, future healthcare reform goals, Glass-Steagall and Social Security. Plus their approach to getting shit done seems pretty different.
amk
@Kropadope:
“But it’s not pure socialism, it’s democratic socialism,”
And how many voters do you think would get the nuance?
btw, I think both are great but not feasible in a self-absorbed country like US.
debbie
@JPL:
That and naming Iraq a quagmire made the address a success.
Gin & Tonic
@cahuenga: 44% of 18 to 34 millennials are living with their parents or relatives.
Link?
FlipYrWhig
@cahuenga: Why do you think this is Hillary Clinton’s prescription for anything? It feels like you’re still pissed off at Bill Clinton ’96.
gene108
@Starfish:
I think she will leave Dodd-Frank in place, which is good enough.
The 4% tax on all income – capital gains, carried interests etc. – above $5,000,000 is not “going after” hedge fund managers?
amk
@Kropadope:
“One candidate has a history of pragmatically working from opposition, passing more amendments that became law from the minority caucus while the Republicans controlled the Senate.”
sounds like bs to me. what exactly that bernie did on his own as a senator that became a law? voting alongside dems doesn’t count.
Kropadope
@randy khan:
Yeah, she supported this, she focused on that, she spoke about the other thing. What has she DONE?
So is a ham sandwich. Sorry, but Hillary might be on the wrong side of the ham sandwich divide too.
Should I begin with her dishonest campaigns against Obama and Sanders? Her vaunted experience and ability to get things done, which doesn’t stand up to her record? Her colorful exaggerations meant to make her seem braver or more likable that turned out to be false?
dogwood
Neither Bernie nor Hillary are going to implement much of an agenda. The Senate will more than likely stay in Republican control though they will probably lose a few seats. And even if the Senate flips, the House will not change in any significant way. Free college, single payer, higher taxes on mega wealthy individuals and corporations
is not going to happen. Bernie can’t deliver any of that. Neither could Hillary. Nonetheless it’s impossible for me to be pessimistic about this country. Impatient at times, yes, but pessimistic, no. I’m soon to turn 62, and I’ve seen progress. No one can tell me that this country is worse than it was 40 or 50 years ago. It’s not.
debbie
@Amir Khalid:
Then you’d have to call Obama a failure. Even he admits he hasn’t fully executed his agenda. Some things are beyond the president’s control and that can’t be held against him.
FlipYrWhig
@Betty Cracker: How they would handle them or how they talk about a vision for them? IMHO Candidate Sanders is all vision, vague on process, and Candidate Clinton is all process, no particular vision. Behind the scenes, I have no idea what they’re like.
My quick take is that I feel like a Hillary Clinton presidency would be like the Al Gore presidency we never got to have. Wonkish, careful, deliberative. I have no well-developed feeling about what a Sanders presidency would be like. Probably more dovish. Maybe more fond of the “bully pulpit” because it seems more crucial to his theory of political change (which I find foolhardy).
gene108
@Betty Cracker:
The windmill liberals love to tilt at…
The repeal of Glass-Steagall had very little to do with the financial crisis of 2008. Bear-Sterms and Lehman Brothers never got into retail banking. AIG was an insurance company and never got into banking.
At best you could argue the repeal of Glass-Steagall allowed more money to flow into various derivatives and increased the size of the money pot Wall Street set of fire, but that’s still being debated.
Reinstating Glass-Steagall would be highly disruptive to the financial markets and would not accomplish the magic protection from every having another financial crisis people attribute to Glass-Steagall.
Dodd-Frank seems to be having a positive effect, with regards to systemic risk. There’s no need to try and tear it all down for the sake of tearing it all down.
japa21
@Gin & Tonic: Did some checking and the best figure I can find, from about a year ago is 30%. However, that is not really a meaningful number. As it was pointed out, college students are considered as living at home and that definitely inflates the number.
A more accurate figure would be what percentage of 25-34 year olds are living at home. The figures I found was roughly 10%.
That is a lot and up from prior years but nowhere near 44%.
Interestingly, the economy was only considered a small part of the reason for the older millennials to be living at home. Two more important reasons were student debt (definitely critical) and people marrying later.
dogwood
@Kropadope:
I respect your passion, but what has Bernie ever done that is so spectacular? And that question is not a knock on Bernie. Representatives and Senators are part of a large body with many moving parts. There aren’t many individual opportunities to change the world in legislative body. And only abject hatred of Hillary could allow anyone to claim that the foreign policy accomplishments that have come to fruition during Obama’s second term are in no way connected to her. The groundwork on Iran, and Cuba was being laid long before John Kerry showed up at Foggy Bottom.
D58826
Interesting to read the twitter traffic about the greatest naval humiliation since thew Spanish Armada (at least on the Spanish side) i.e. the incident yesterday involving the two Navy patrol boats. The RWNJ are going ballistic as usual over an incident that no one will remember in two days. The one tweet from Francis Townsend is especially annoying. She complains about the humiliation of the naval personnel because the Iranians had them under armed guard. She seems to have forgotten that the Bush administration that she worked for took 3 weeks to get the US recon. aircrew back from the Chinese in the spring of 2001. I rather suspect if the roles were reversed American military personnel would keep Iranians under armed guard until the situation was sorted out. But everything is the fault of that weak feckless Obama who is about to take over the world.
Kropadope
@amk: Here’s an article.
Excerpt:
Immanentize
@cahuenga: Nice not-a-fact:
The rate of young adults “living independently” has moved down a bit (71%-67%) since the great recession in 2007. This is not really an anomaly historically, either. But 33% of “non-independent livers” still does not equal 44, even for math challenged millennials.
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/2015/07/29/Kids-Aren-t-Alright-More-Millennials-Are-Living-Their-Parents
(that last part is ironic snark in that it too is a non-fact).
Kropadope
@dogwood:
I didn’t say he did anything so spectacular. I’ll take pragmatic small change over spectacle any day. The problem is Clinton supporters seem confused as to which candidate represents which tendency.
The other side of that is that I can’t think of any positive accomplishment I can definitively put Hillary Clinton’s name on.
catclub
@Amir Khalid:
Me too. But even this is unrealistic this year. An honest Democrat says elect me and keep divided government,
to limit the damage caused by a united GOP President and Congress. Not a very attractive message – but I am sold on it.
cahuenga
@Gin & Tonic:
Right here (PDF)
http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/files/2013/07/SDT-millennials-living-with-parents-07-2013.pdf
Pay particular attention to chart on page 2 –
Living with parents – 36%
Living with other kin – 7%
Bill
Well yes, red and blue do make purple. And we have a whole bunch of people who strongly identify as red or blue in this country. So I suppose you could technically say we are a purple country. But when most people heard that they thought: “He means that we mostly agree and can find solutions to our problems through compromise.” And if the President believed that, he was way off the mark.
D58826
@amk: How many people will get the difference that socialism (in whatever Western European flavor) is not communism. I agree that neither Sanders or Clinton will get much done even if the Senate flips to democratic. There is one issue that overrides them all – the next set of SCOTUS appointments in particular and the federal judiciary in general. Any one of the Goopers in thje WH will appoint 2-3 more young John Roberts/Sam Alito’s that will complete the job of turning the country over lock stock and barrel to the 1%,
Calouste
@randy khan:
Kroadope doesn’t buy stupid right-wing framing, s/he is selling it.
Keith G
@MazeDancer: Hearing Chelsea attack Bernie Sanders with such idiotic ammunition was very jarring this morning.
It was so badly formed and executed, that it makes me worry about who is the brain trust calling the shots. If this was just Chelsea vamping, they need to keep her away from microphones.
dogwood
@Bill:
If we did something about gerrymandering, we’d find that this country is much more amenable to responsible governing than it appears to be at present.
catclub
@gene108:
I am not as convinced. There were counter-parties to Bear, Lehman and AIG. To the extent that Glass-Steagall
repeal allowed banks to be those gambling counterparties – who were then bailed out – The repeal of Glass-Steagall has a lot to do with the crisis.
Kropadope
@Calouste: I think the Clinton crowd are the ones selling right-wing framing, “he’s a dirty socialist, it would be nice but we can’t, we should bomb Iraq/Libya/Syria.”
amk
@Kropadope: Thanks. Yes, I do see that he tacked on some good progressive amendments to spending bills. You should be campaigning on such small step progressivism instead trying to tear down hillz. Those amendments also show the inability of him (or any senator for that matter) to move them as individual bills. It’s all about bartering in DC.
cleos mom
@Kropadope:
If Sanders doesn’t get the nomination, who do you plan to vote for?
Heliopause
All of them — all of them — work from the same basic script; here’s what’s wrong and here’s how I will fix it. A candidate is only a “doom-sayer” if he or she doesn’t recite your own particular list of what’s wrong.
If you want to keep things on a positive axis you could, on the other hand, have your leading surrogate claim that Bernie is going to take away everybody’s health care. Or not.
dogwood
@Keith G:
Let’s not forget that hearing Bernie Sanders call for Obama to be primaried in 2012, was pretty jarring to many people as well.
FlipYrWhig
@Kropadope: Good on him, but at least in the enumerated examples I’m not seeing many “exclusively progressive” things. I see moves for cost savings and some momentary libertarian-ish coalitions. Also, the 1994-06 Republicans look like halcyon days of reasonableness compared to the 2010-now Republicans, and I’m not sure even left-libertarian efficiency initiatives can be counted on going forward. Good example of low-key pragmatism, though, which bodes well. I don’t think that’s how he’s running or what his biggest fans like to hear. One of the loudest knocks on Obama from the “left” has always been his seeming fetish, either rhetorically or in actuality, for bipartisanship. If that’s part of Bernie’s brand, it’s going to raise some hackles from many of his biggest fans.
Bill
@dogwood: That may or may not be true. But more importantly, what do you think the odds are we are going to do something about gerrymandering?
Calouste
@amk: I guess the bills becoming law being referred to are Sanders voting alongside the Republicans on everything the NRA told him to.
FlipYrWhig
@Kropadope: yes, everyone who supports Clinton is a ravening warmonger. Speaking of which, what’s Bernie Sanders’ take on the Middle East?
Calouste
@cleos mom: The person that Kropadope is going to vote for when Sanders doesn’t get the nomination is the same person Kropadope is going to vote for when Sanders does get the nomination, i.e. whatever hairball the GOP nomination process throws up.
WarMunchkin
This entire discussion and last night’s speech made me realize just how much I took Obama for granted.
sharl
@D58826: Yeah, the Navy-oriented sites I’ve looked at since that incident came to a conclusion – a satisfactory one IMO, given the circumstances – have a lot of apoplectic commenters. Included are photos from Iranian media, discussions of how manning has been reduced on these riverine boats in recent years, and memories of how training of riverine boat crews used to include setting up and conducting rescue towing in hostile areas of operation. That’s just a sampling of the questions and issues being brought up in those forums.
It was definitely a propaganda coup for the Iranians, conveniently dropped right into their laps. I’m guessing that the shit is really going to hit the fan inside USN (as it probably should IMO).
amk
@Calouste: Good point. That article cherry picks his amendments to skew towards showing him as a progressive. I am ok with kropadope citing that as proof. After all, all is fair in love and elections.
Kropadope
@amk:
Telling the truth about/tearing down…tomato/tomahto. She’s out there, right now, tearing down Bernie Sanders by saying he will get rid of Medicare when he literally wants to expand Medicare to everyone. I’m sorry, but Reagan’s 11th commandment doesn’t apply. Choosing one candidate over another involves decisions both about why one is better and one is worse, asking one side to ignore the latter half is like asking that side to unilaterally disarm. Hillary Clinton is a uniquely awful candidate and I will not hesitate to point that out.
Kropadope
@Calouste:
No, none of them do it for me. I’ll do what I always do when I don’t like any available candidate, write one in.
amk
@Kropadope: I don’t know if your candidate would approve of such a tactic, but hey, have at it.
tsquared2001
@Kropadope: That’s mighty white of ya!
Bill
Why do Democrats/Progressives do this dance every four years where we pick a primary favorite and then bash his/her opponent? There are differences between Hillary and Bernie. Viewing those differences as a whole, I prefer Bernie and will vote accordingly in the primary. (Unless things are sewn up on the D. side by the time my primary rolls around, in which case I will probably mess with the R. primary.) But in the larger scope of American policy positions, there just isn’t a ton of differences between the two. I’ll gladly pull the lever for Hillary if she gets the nomination, because she will be light years better than whoever the other side puts up.
We are lucky on our side of the aisle. Both our candidates are smart, thoughtful and have high quality policy positions. Both are well qualified to hold the office of President. How about we keep that in mind, and take a step back from bashing them?
Kropadope
@amk: Why not? I need to show up to vote, there’s a lot more on the ballot than just the presidential race. Why should anyone want me voting for someone I don’t legitimately want in office. Beside that, my vote for president in the general election doesn’t count anyway.
JPL
Maybe Richard will rewrite his post. aaaahhhh
Kropadope
@tsquared2001: ?????
No seriously….
?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?
amk
@Kropadope: Taking the ball and going home? My way or high way? No wonder repubs control both the houses and most of the leges.
Brachiator
To the contrary, we are not witnessing the success of this strategy at all. The flip side of the BS that there are “low information voters” is the lie that there is some mystical elite core of voters who know the score, and most of all, should be listened to and followed by low information voter sheep.
But the plain fact is that citizens have revolted against the GOP and their gridlock tactics, their lies and obfuscations, and their blatant sellout not simply to corporations, but to a small venal fringe of plutocrats who believe that they own the world. The GOP thought that they could stealthily create the Tea Party and use this fraudulent movement as a way of misdirecting and containing anger at government. They wuz wrong.
We have relative outsiders in both parties offering something different, the malignant Trump from the GOP, and the benign Sanders. HRC, the mainstream Democratic candidate is better than any Republican any freaking day of the week, and we will see whether she can continue to channel voter anger and disappointment into something positive.
On the other side, the Republicans still seem to be unable to grasp in their bones the reality that Donald the Destroyer is not just a force wreaking havoc within the GOP, disrupting their plans for a return to oligarchy, but the logical and self-devouring consequence of all their plans, hopes and dreams.
Bill
@Kropadope:
Mostly because option B will be unbearably bad.
Kropadope
@amk: So you’re completely ignoring the fact that I said I would be there voting. I didn’t say it explicitly, but yes, I will be voting for down-ballot Democrats. The ones who don’t suck.
David Fud
A link to the gun blog would be nice since we don’t want to lift his content. I read part of it and saw Betty’s comment, but didn’t record or know the blog it was from. Link, please?
Amir Khalid
What happened to Richard’s gun control post? Where did it go?
Kropadope
@Bill: Tell me, would you vote for a person who, while of your preferred party, you were reasonably certain would do more harm than good? If you thought that person has a bad track record and you don’t want that person being the face for most of your policy preferences?
JPL
@Amir Khalid: There appears to be a problem because he copied to much from someone’s post. He did have a link to it and I did read the original post, but to no avail. It’s an important topic so maybe he’ll do a post about gun control again.
Cacti
@dedc79:
If only the 2-term POTUS was as smart about national politics as every anonymous internet commenter.
different-church-lady
Today on a non-political chatboard, someone was pumping up Trump and also said “Sanders is my second choice.”
Our political zeitgeist is being controlled by incoherent idiots.
amk
@Kropadope: Gotcha. Hope at least the down ticket dems meet your expectations.
different-church-lady
@Kropadope:
Ah, so you won’t be voting then.
MomSense
@Gin & Tonic:
50% of my 18-34 year olds are.
/anecdata
Cacti
@different-church-lady:
Sanders/Trump are the opposite sides of the angry white male coin.
tsquared2001
@Kropadope: You holier than thou motherfuckers really piss me off. You have continued to make assertions throughout this thread with re: Obama’s “real feelings”, black people will vote for Sanders just like they did for Obama, Hilary Clinton (of all people) is an unaccomplished fake, etc. But if the great unwashed don’t take your advice as to who to nominate, then you will take your ball and go home.
Yup, that is mighty white of ya!
Betty Cracker
@Amir Khalid: He’s probably editing it for re-posting. I gave him a heads-up that the owner of the blog he linked and excerpted is prickly about re-posting his material without advance permission. Hopefully the post will reappear in edited form; it’s an important topic. Just didn’t want RM to incur the wrath of Stonekettle!
sharl
@JPL: Yep, in comments (the first one, I think), and without saying so directly, Betty cautioned Richard that he may have copied too much from Jim Wright’s post, and she linked to this. I remember that! Wright was genuinely pissed when major media types were taking his stuff without attribution. Although Richard would have probably been OK, Betty’s warning was justified IMO.
Darn shame though. Somewhere around the same time I hit “Post” on my comment praising our health/medical insurance expert for posting on our insane gun culture, that post went *poof* and took my (uncharacteristically brief!) comment with it.
Kropadope
@different-church-lady: Markey’s a big question mark for me, but I’m very fond of Joe Kennedy. My Democratic state senator I’ve loved long time. My Republican state rep is like a catalogue of what’s wrong with Republicans and I consistently vote against her and will vote for whomever her opponent is, legislators get a little more leeway than Presidents.
schrodinger's cat
@gene108: Two of the biggest TARP recipients were Bank of America and Citibank. If Glass-Steagall was in place they would not have been able to dabble in CDOs and CDSs.
amk
@Betty Cracker: Yup. Jim gets a bit skittish when his posts are used without his permission. A great writer.
jl
Watched the speech later. It was pretty good.
Still trying to avoid pundit BS, but the monsters who run the corporate media are mixing it in with the news, and innocent people are being exposed to it.
Heard the smarmy hack Dickerson this morning saying that if Obama tried to avoid harsh partisanship, he failed because some GOP pols he talked to said that their feelings were hurt.
Why read the Onion anymore?
Also, and example of the rank incompetence of GOP pols, I saw in earlier post that Kim Davis said that she thought the speech was good. That has to be an honest reaction, since it is blatantly violating the GOP Prime Directive. Did the fool who gave her tickets not explain the required protocol beforehand? Yeesh.
I have multitidinous severe disagreements with Kim Davis, but thanks to her for giving an honest response. She may have to back peddle on it if she wants to retain her political reality show star GOP status.
From still pics I’ve seen, Ryan acted like an ass. He can’t do a good Johnny Bones imitation, and in a couple of pics simply looked like a confused and bemused self-satisfied snot nosed punk.
dogwood
@FlipYrWhig:
I’ve been honestly surprised at how little Bernie has to say about issues other than economics. I think that’s why he seems to be trying to appeal to some old New Deal coalition. I think the Obama coalition is the way forward for democrats if you’re interested in long term change on foreign policy, energy, guns, race, etc. And it’s clear to me after listening to and watching Bernie pretty closely these last 6 months, he is not FDR or Barack Obama. It was said of FDR that he had a second class intellect and a first class temperament. I believe it was George Will who said Obama has a first class intellect and a first class temperament. At this point I couldn’t say that Berne is first class in either of those areas.
smintheus
To fix the problem you first have to identify the problem. Sanders has identified a lot of very real problems and focused on them, compared to whom Clinton often looks like she’s pecking around at a rummage sale.
Kropadope
@tsquared2001:
I have done no such thing.
Replace the word Obama with “every Democratic nominee of my lifetime” and that’s more like it.
One out of three for true statements, not bad for a Clintonista.
Cacti
@tsquared2001:
I don’t support candidate Sanders because his nomination would be the second coming of George McGovern.
The fact that so many of his supporters are self-righteous, upper middle class, wine track “revolutionaries” just makes the lack of support a lot easier.
Bill
@Kropadope:
Yes, because I have absolutely no doubt that the other side’s candidate will do more harm than that of my “preferred party.”
Kropadope
@Bill: Yeah, I guess harming the brand doesn’t matter too much when you only have two parties. Where else will you go?
Paul in KY
@Kropadope: That’ll show em!!!
Cacti
@smintheus:
And has a whole lot of nothing to show for it in a congressional career spanning 3-decades.
Paul in KY
@Kropadope: Now this: ‘ Why should anyone want me voting for someone I don’t legitimately want in office. ‘ is a really stupid line. Of course, I’ll take anyone’s vote for my candidate of choice. If Sen. Clinton is the nominee, I want any vote I can get, accidental, etc. etc. Same for Sen. Sanders.
D58826
@sharl: I’m sure there are legitimate after action questions that have to be answered. There always are. Congress can set up another select committee to spend 5 years investigating this incident (snark). But these things have been happening for as long as I can remember and sometimes with tragic results. A b29 was shot down by the Chinese over the Sea of Japan in the early 50’s with all the crew lost. KAL 007, Pueblo, the attacks on the STARK (probably by Iraq) and the Liberty (by Israel), the recon jet forced down by China in the early days of the W admin. etc, We on occasion are the ones doing the shooting. The Iranian airliner comes to mind. Nixon issued a weasel worded apology to get the Pueblo crew back and Bush did the same thing to get the air crew back.
The one thing I remember about all of these incidents was in some quarters, mostly the right, there were howls of outrage, the end of the world was at hand, American was doomed, and a week later no one even remembered the incident, except the families oof those involved.
goblue72
@Cacti: Give me a fucking break. The biggest whiners I have seen are Hillary supporters complaining ad infinitum about “Berniebros” or that Sanders supporters are all pencil-necked swells.
Sanders supporters, demographically, skew younger. Where he leads Clinton is amongst Democratic voters aged 18-30 – that is, Millenials. Which is a demographic groups which skews at LOWER incomes than older aged groups, and a demographic group that fared WORSE during the Great Recession than older groups.
So sorry, Sanders supporters are not wine drinking upper-middle class members of the professional elite.
amk
At least, iranian media are not as stupid or corrupt as murkan msm.
Paul in KY
@Kropadope: How can a modern Democrat do ‘more harm than good’ in relation to the other option (The fuckin Republican)?!?!?!??!
You are not voting in a vacuum. If ours don’t get in, their’s does.
Are you rich?
Brachiator
@Kropadope:
This is a very good question. Right now, I think that Bernie Sanders would do more harm than good if elected president. I think he has a rigidly reductive view of economics. In one recent interview about his past vote on gun control, he kept talking about a typical Vermont citizen, which is not anything that I want to hear from someone who is trying to make a splash on the national stage.
However, I think that Sanders and Clinton are superior to every Republican candidate, and that the election of a Republican president from this crop of losers would be a worse disaster than the Bush Administration.
So despite my current lack of faith in Sanders (which may change), I would vote for him in a heartbeat.
jl
My spleen wanted Obama to go Harry Truman on the GOP in the statue of the union address. I thought up some fun Truman variations beforehand that I fervently hoped crossed Obama’s mind, like “this miserable worse-than-do-nothing Congress’.
He didn’t do that. My spleen was not satisfied Probably for the best, since Obama is a master politician, and I would probably be one of the worse politicians in history.
I think history will conclude that Obama was one of our better presidents, definitely in top fifteen, definitely will be above the ‘Grover Cleveland line’ in terms of rankings, and I think Bill Clinton will struggle to stay above that, even though I think Obama and Bill Clinton have comparable political talents.
As it becomes clear that Obama is one of our better presidents, and will be discussed in history for his lasting impact, rather than for mere historical curiosity, or as a helpful detail in understanding this era, the racist subtext of how the GOP approached his presidency will become clearer. And I hope that does lasting damage to the current degraded and corrupt rump of the once great, now debauched and deformed, Republican Party.
lethargytartare
@Bill:
only people mostly do agree about most things, and what the President knows that you can’t is that most of congress agree on most things. The naivete is thinking the partisan divide in this country is based on genuine, fundamental disagreement instead of simple political cowardice.
It’s easy to write off, say, opponents of progressive economics by saying “you want poor people to starve, you’re evil!!!11!!!” But that ignores the time they volunteer at their church’s soup kitchen, and spares you the hard work of selling you economic policies to someone who thinks they won’t work.
Obama knows first hand that hard work can change minds and policies, so he’s kinda sad that people like you are giving in to the illusion of the implacable divide.
I am too.
Kropadope
@Paul in KY: How can a modern Democrat do ‘more harm than good’ in relation to the other option (The fuckin Republican)?!?!?!??!
They can give a whole lot of people a whole lot of reasons to stop supporting Democrats. Getting involved in every international conflict, failing to move the ball in a positive direction on domestic issues, and touting nothing-burger non-accomplishments as BFDs is a good start down that path.
Hillary Clinton will lead the left down a path toward becoming a mirror-image of the right. The facts won’t matter, all that will matter will be personalities and “sides.”
gene108
@schrodinger’s cat:
Bank of America received TARP money to buy Merrill Lynch, an investment bank. If Glass-Steaggal was in place, BoA could not have bought ML and ML would have gone out of business.
Why would BoA or Citigroup not be able to buy CDO’s or CDS’s, if Glass-Steagall was in place? If they could buy corporate bonds, as an investment, they should be able to buy CDO’s and CDS’s.
CDO’s and CDS’s were good ideas that got abused by the financial wizards; they went from ways to hedge against owning the corporate debt of another Enron to just a pile of chips to be gambled with on the cas$no floor.
Bobby Thomson
@Kropadope: no, it’s not just electability, it’s executive experience and competence.
Though the person writing Chelsea’s copy is undercutting the case.
Brachiator
@amk:
This time for sure. The BBC story notes a past incident involving the UK in which the Iranian media was off-the-charts with respect to stupidity and corruption.
Perhaps in this case, US and Iranian diplomats have found good reasons for downplaying belligerence. We will have to leave warmongering stupidity to the North Koreans and the Republican Party.
gene108
@schrodinger’s cat:
Bank of America received TARP money to buy Merrill Lynch, an investment bank. If Glass-Steaggal was in place, BoA could not have bought ML and ML would have gone out of business.
Why would BoA or Citigroup not be able to buy CDO’s or CDS’s, if Glass-Steagall was in place? If they could buy corporate bonds, as an investment, they should be able to buy CDO’s and CDS’s.
CDO’s and CDS’s were good ideas that got abused by the financial wizards; they went from ways to hedge against owning the corporate debt of another Enron to just a pile of chips to be gambled with on the cas$no floor.
Edit: reposting I used a bad word (gambling establishment) and got into moderation.
eemom
@Paul in KY:
Seconded. And I honestly don’t care which of them gets the nomination as long as the Democrat wins. A republican in the WH next year MUST. NOT. HAPPEN. The Clinton-Sanders divide frankly makes me nervous.
Kropadope
@Bobby Thomson:
You may note that further down the thread that I argued that I don’t really think she demonstrates those attributes either.
Paul in KY
@Brachiator: I think Bernie would do more good than harm, IF he was to be elected.
cahuenga
@Kropadope:
Including, you know, supporting the biggest foreign policy failure of the new millennium, and followed that up with the Patriot Act.
Applejinx
The thing about Bernie is that he’s right about the economic thing, and people really don’t understand what that means. They can’t imagine it. To them, if they are struggling, so too must the country be struggling, and the hyper-successful must surely struggle extra hard plus they say they’re taxed so heavily, surely it must be much the same for them.
And it’s not. The economic divide is insane, mind-boggling. Even decent rich people I know seem to buy into this ‘alms for the poor’ thing where you let nearly everybody slide but buy dinner for cute puppies if they’re cute enough and lick your hand on command.
Look at this article about how big various sorts of money are: All the world’s money and markets
When Bernie says he can do some transaction taxes, take a bite out of the wealthy and give the populace everything they need to have roads, infrastructure, jobs while that’s still relevant, health care, education, he is not shitting you. You have to understand the magnitude of the problem. It’s not even remotely the same as it was in the 80s when we started to go awry. Currently, you could take a SLIVER of the big-money action going around, and run the country with it. Countries aren’t even in the game with this stuff, the organizations dealing with it are banks and consortiums and corporations.
And they can’t control themselves: the Bank of Scotland’s issuing dire warnings for people to bail the hell out before the whole thing crashes. What then? Give the bankers even more money so they can preserve their status quo, when that’s totally unstable?
If you latch onto big money like Dracula and begin feeding the people with your bitterly begrudged revenue, the whole financial sector atrophies. And THEY SHOULD as they’re inflated waaaay beyond any reasonable scope, see the article. Doing the democratic socialist thing is the only way to deflate the balloon without popping it, and the country that does it will thrive.
And that should be us! So I am hell-bent on electing Bernie Sanders, and continuing to support him in office. The public sentiment is turning his way in large numbers. We may not even NEED tumbrels.
And yes, “we may not even need tumbrels” is an optimistic vision, if you’ve been paying ANY attention to the state of our world. We can resolve this peacefully through electoral politics, and everybody benefits, even the rich (they’ll still be relatively rich. You don’t need to buy countries in order to feel okay about yourself)
randy khan
@Kropadope:
You might try this thing called search on the Internet to find about 1,000 articles on this topic.
But just to pick one example from her tenure as Secretary of State, she managed to wrangle the coalition (including Russia, which I’d say was close to a miracle) that imposed economic sanctions on Iran, which is what led to last year’s agreement. Not to mention her role in rebuilding the U.S.’s international relationships in general, which were in a shambles following the Bush Administration.
Gretchen
My favorite too
randy khan
@Calouste:
Yeah, I should have realized that someone channeling Carly Fiorina was up to no good.
Kropadope
@cahuenga: You’re ordination is a little messed up, but yeah, those are two examples of her rather poor judgment. How about her ultimately successful pushes for stricter sentencing that ultimately imprisoned enough people to make us the envy of totalitarian dictatorships everywhere?
Paul in KY
@Kropadope: As opposed to the Republican, who would keep us out of unnecessary wars, see all your domestic priorities enacted, and have substantive accomplishments that would please you.
Smug is a hell of a drug…
Kropadope
@randy khan:
Please elaborate…
Kropadope
@Paul in KY:
Hey, if I think both candidates are going to do awful things, I’d rather have those awful things associated with the Republicans than the Democrats.
Southern Beale
What happened to the “embracing the NRA on gun control” thread?
jl
@eemom:
” A republican in the WH next year MUST. NOT. HAPPEN. The Clinton-Sanders divide frankly makes me nervous. ”
The Clinton-Sanders divide irritates me, particularly when people are saying that they won’t vote if their pet candidate doesn’t win the nomination.
Let me explain in plain English what eemom was trying to say: A republican in the WH next year MUST. NOT. HAPPEN.
What part of ‘MUST. NOT. HAPPEN’ do some people not understand?
Neither Hillary Clinton nor Bernie Sanders is Obama or Bill Clinton in terms of political talent. But they don’t need to be. They need to maintain and extend accomplishments of Obama.
One advantage they both have is that they know more than Obama, because they lived through what Obama tried that did and did not work. Both their policy proposals are sound. The biggest problem is making sure that whoever is nominated wins the election, so best to concentrate on that.
The whole federal government in the hands of the vicious con men and money bags who run the GOP would be a disaster. There is chance we might start going down the road of Hungary, if the efforts at voter suppression get more federal support, and it will end up a lot uglier here much quicker.
Bobby Thomson
@cahuenga: one cherry picked poll in such she still beats Trump. In the same Q poll she does better against others, which you don’t mention.
Brachiator
@Paul in KY:
Fair enough. My main point is that I think that both candidates are superior to any Republican, especially the front runners. There could in theory, be a Democrat that I might despise, but that mythical character is not running this election cycle.
Southern Beale
@Brachiator:
I think that both candidates are superior to any Republican, especially the front runners.
I think you speak for pretty much every thinking person. Sure it’s a primary, everyone is pushing for their candidate, but I don’t know of anyone who wouldn’t vote for whomever gets the nomination over conceding to any of the GOP trolls.
I think a lot of the “if Hillary wins I’m staying home” stuff I see on Twitter is manufactured. Reminds me a lot of the “PUMA” crap we saw last time she ran.
sharl
@Southern Beale: See comments from Betty (#132) and me (#133) above; others also explained it.
smintheus
@Cacti:
Those would be the 3 decades during which the Clintons have helped to push through so many whiz-bang initiatives like NAFTA, the repeal of Glass-Steagall, and invading Iraq.
Germy
Has anyone seen the Jeb Bush attack ad against Rubio? Follow the dancing boot, complete with a Nancy Sinatra parody?
Is this what those truckloads of cash are paying for?
Emma
@jl: Forget it, JL. It’s the Democrats. We love circular firing squads…
chopper
@amk:
besides which, if those small amendments are the best he could accomplish in a long congressional career, what makes anybody think he could get any of his huge campaign promises (like single payer, free college tuition etc) implemented? that’s what he’s running on, not small incremental change.
Kropadope
@chopper:
Still more exciting than what HRC has managed to accomplish in the same time frame, which was nothing to negative.
Plus, I’m pretty sure that most people with any delusions that change is anything other than slow and incremental have had it beaten out of them after witnessing what Obama has put up with for his two terms.
Paul in KY
@Kropadope: After watching what Democrats (including Hillary) have done/have not done last 12 years and what the Republicans have done/not done, how can you say they are doing the same thing?!?!? That’s just effing crazy.
Are you talking ‘meta’?
chopper
@Kropadope:
well, if you’re not willing to pull the lever for hilz i’m sure many, if not most, of those down-ballot democrats won’t earn your vote either.
MomSense
@eemom:
Absolutely. Must. Not. Happen.
Paul in KY
@jl: But, but, but…they’re all the same, dontachaknow? Clinton, Cruz, Obama, Trump, Biden, Huckabee…All the same.
Kropadope
@Paul in KY: I’m talking about a specific class of behaviors. Playing into false conventional wisdom narratives, outright lying, and lashing out violently against scary things that happen in the world are just the tip of that iceberg.
Kropadope
@chopper: You could make blind false assertions or you could, you know, read the post where I actually discussed those races.
Keith G
@dogwood: How does one relate to the other?
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
Despite the whole “Death to America!” thing, I’ve always heard that the Iranians hold much more of a grudge towards the British for their meddling than they do towards the US since the British meddling lasted for at least a century before we stepped in. It’s a little like Vietnam, where for the most part the Vietnamese are more bitter towards the French, who did a lot more colonial stuff (like imposing their language, etc) than the US did.
chopper
@Kropadope:
it sounds more exciting, sure. but talk is cheap.
Bill
@lethargytartare: Please compare:
With
And tell me again who’s telling us what the President REALLY thinks.
The divide is real, whether you label it as philosophical, political or religious. There are (at least) two fundamentally opposing views of life, economics and government engrained in our country. That’s just the way it is. And the two just don’t align on most important issues.
Your example of people who feed the poor at their church is actually a perfect example. Yeah, we may agree that feeding the poor is a good idea, but soup kitchens by themselves are entirely inadequate to the task. If your position is that soup kitchens are the only resource that should be available to the poor, while I believe in a comprehensive government food stamp program, we don’t really agree on very much. Any “agreement” we have is purely cosmetic. Especially if you will only vote for candidates on the “soup kitchen only side of the divide.
More importantly, our Congress is so divided that it effectively can’t get anything done. I think the President is a smart man. I think he actually understood these realities while campaigning. I think he did his best to overcome them. But that doesn’t make it any less real.
Kropadope
@chopper: Talk is cheap. That’s what I’m saying. Hillary is all talk.
Geeno
@Kropadope: Kropadope is an obvious troll. I don’t why you people engage it.
Satby
@randy khan: I agree with you. Invariably, when people tell me they don’t trust or dislike Hillary Clinton, they then repeat some piece of bushwa that was promulgated by the right wing noise machine first. Any other person who was both a Senator and a Secretary of State would be considered accomplished. She has advocated for women’s rights and children’s rights for her entire adult life. She has been mocked for sticking with a philandering husband she clearly loves ( and he observably loves her and it’s no one else’s business anyway). Her child was mocked viciously by Rush Limbaugh, Hillary herself was accused of involvement in a murder…. And yet people announce she’s not authentic, too staged, not someone they can respect or vote for. And I wouldn’t be surprised that most of the people who have such disregard for the woman would have spent the last 20 years curled into the fetal position whimpering if they had endured 1/2 of what Hillary Clinton had. And yeah, she’s done ok too… I know people will accuse me of being a fan girl, fine. What I am is a woman not that much younger than Hillary, who had to work through a lot of the same misogyny, who remembers the lies first put out by the right during the Clinton years and hope that she wins and makes them eat every one.
Kropadope
@Geeno: Troll does not mean someone you disagree with. Regardless of your opinion of what I’m saying, I’m doing my best to engage the arguments people are actually making. You know who was trolling on this thread? tsquared2001
Paul in KY
@Geeno: I like making logic pretzels.
Mnemosyne
@Geeno:
Kropadope used to be a reasonably normal commenter, but the whole Hillary thing has really sent them around the bend.
chopper
@Kropadope:
and bernie’s campaign promises aren’t? they seem pretty grandiose, given the lack of details and the fact that bernie has no history of passing any real legislation or trying to get anybody other than himself elected (he won’t get anything passed without a much friendlier congress).
bernie’s talk is sure exciting tho. but realistically how does any of this stuff actually become law?
this reminds me a great deal of the ron paul guys on the other side.
Kropadope
@Satby:
Such as? One of mine, please.
Anyone who was both a Senator and Secretary of State and actually used those offices to effect positive change? Sure.
Kropadope
@Mnemosyne: I felt the same way about Hillary in 2008 during those primaries and I was here talking about it then, too. This is nothing new for me. Maybe it’s something unique about Hillary.
chopper
@Satby:
this is true. the right has been savagely attacking clinton for so long that many ostensibly left-wing people have main-lined that shit as well.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Yep. Makes sense. The British and the French had more responsibility for creating the modern Middle East.
jl
@chopper: Single payer health care equals going back on the Gold Standard? Seriously? France, Australia, Sweden, and several other countries have better population health, citizens very satisfied with their health care, and much lower costs than the US. No chance of any country going back to the gold standard, except maybe the US if the nutcases and swindlers of the GOP take countrol, since it is a nutty idea.
Larry Fricking Summers gave Sanders’ approach to Federal Reserve reform a fairly positive review. So, Larry Summers I guess reminds you of Ron Paul economics?
This is the kind of silly hyperbole that makes the foolish bickering between the HRC and Sanders fanatics so irritating.
chopper
@jl:
in terms of its possibility of getting past congress, yeah.
1. elect bernie
2. ????
3. single payer!
the ACA barely passed, and that was with a democratic congress and a president who was preternaturally gifted at politics. with today’s congressional makeup and sanders in the white house, single payer is about as likely as president ron paul ‘ending the fed’.
so the question is, does bernie bring with him big democratic majorities in the house and senate? how, exactly?
Paul in KY
@chopper: Unfortunately, due to the current congress, going back to the ‘gold standard’ has a higher chance of passing than you may think.
Brachiator
@Germy:
Is this really their idea of an effective attack ad? This is beyond pathetic. And some political strategists have clearly identified a fool who needs to be separated from his money. Or a bunch of fools.
Thanks for the laugh.
Satby
@chopper: the magic of the bully pulpit and pixie dust wishes. Too many voters on both sides of the partisan divide pin all their hopes on their special candidate without any actual grasp of how laws get made and policies get enacted in this country. One strong man with the right vision will overcome all obstacles.
Bobby Thomson
@Keith G: agreed.
Germy
@Brachiator: Funny and sad.
chopper
@Satby:
it’s infuriating.
bernie’s base is disaffected liberals who are sick of the democratic party. this is not exactly a group of people who are likely to bring in tons more democrats into congress.
in 2008 obama, an actual democrat and insanely gifted campaigner, in a realignment election campaign season that was brutal for the GOP, and who campaigned on electing more democrats to congress, brought with him 21 D seats in the house and 8 in the senate. bernie would need way more than that to have a chance in hell of getting any of his policies enacted. 51 seats in the senate isn’t going to get single payer passed.
so how does this happen? how does a guy who has spent decades shitting on the democratic party stuff congress full of democrats?
i’d seriously like to know. i’d love for bernie to be president if his policies could get enacted. i’d love to see it. i just haven’t seen any real-life scenario in which it works out.
dww44
@ArchTeryx: Based on your thoughtful and insightful post, I personally hope you get lots of job offers next week.
Southern Beale
@chopper:
bernie’s base is disaffected liberals who are sick of the democratic party. this is not exactly a group of people who are likely to bring in tons more democrats into congress.
Not sure I agree with that, just in my own little world almost all of my friends are Bernie supporters and they’re longterm, loyal Democrats who will vote Dem downticket, too. And they’re also exactly the kind of people who will vote for Hillary if Bernie doesn’t get the nomination.
I’m supporting HIllary 100% BTW, I think Bernie is a little too pie-in-the-sky for me, half the shit he talks about doing will never ever happen and if he did get elected the idea of reliving another 8 years of right-wing hysteria over OMG HE’S A COMMIE WE’RE ALL GONNA DIIIIIE sickens me. I’d rather relive Monica Lewinsky jokes, so much further in the past and the GOP look like fools every time they bring that old, tired crap up.
Brachiator
@Paul in KY:
I doubt this. Rand Paul is probably the only highly visible GOP dope who might advocate a return to the gold standard.
BTW, a BBC news story about ISIS claimed that even though they take foreign currency for oil, they seem to have a medieval hangup on the idea that gold should ideally be the foundation for their ideal financial system.
Southern Beale
@sharl:
THANKS wondered what happened there …
jl
@chopper: Sanders doesn’t have an official health care plan published yet, which pisses me off greatly. But from what I have read of descriptions from the campaign, the approach is to take measures that would strengthen PPACA, even if single payer is never adopted here.
For example, move from the heavy metal bands to a uniform national basic policy, and those who want more coverage would by supplemental insurance on a separate market. I got that from a new piece reporting an interview with a Sanders’ staffer a few weeks ago.
I’ve written the old coot’s campaign to complain about his lack of specifics, which is ridiculous since it is one of his signature issues. It also opens him to attacks from GOP and HRC that will cause serious problems when he will have to put his current success on warp drive speed to catch up with HRC in the next primary states after IA and NH, which is when I think most likely Sanders campaign will flounder.
The real problem is that even minor improvements in the PPACA will be almost as difficult as moving to single payer with a GOP House, which is a problem for bot HRC and Sanders.
@chopper:
” how does a guy who has spent decades shitting on the democratic party stuff congress full of democrats?”
You got something to back up the words I put in bold?
Germy
MSNBC: Trump hits back at Nikki Haley: ‘Very weak on illegal immigration’
Bill
@Southern Beale:
This describes me and almost all the Bernie supporters I know.
If Hillary gets elected it’s going to be 8 years of OMG SHE”S A WOMAN WE”RE ALL GONNA DIIIIE! Six of one half a dozen of another.
lethargytartare
@Bill:
it’s not real. most people don’t give a shit. and if you actually talk to them, as Obama suggests, you’ll find a lot more common ground that you expect.
unsurpsisingly, you’ve missed the point entirely by focusing on difference instead of commonality and decided a hypothetical person who actually does something about poverty, however small, is a piece of shit if they don’t also agree with you.
A better approach would be to embrace the fact that you both care about people starving, and see what else you can agree to do together.
Or you could just tell them, “what you’re doing is worthless if you don’t also advocate for my ideas” and see how far that gets you.
sharl
@D58826:
~
I agree with this, and it always occurs to me that the lyrics* for that awesome Dire Straits song “Industrial Disease” can be adapted for all kind of situations like this. And commentary from self-serving dweebs like Tom Cotton (R-Nuts) and Morning Joseph (R-Dead Intern? What Dead Intern?) should of course be ignored (as usual).
One thing though, regarding Navy folks going nuts about this, is the role of professional pride. I see a lot of stupid shit coming from a lot of them, but on one level I can understand what motivates their rage and embarrassment.
*FWIW, I’m pretty sure it’s “…Betty Davis sneeze…” rather than “Betty Davis ease“, as that lyrics site claims.
chopper
@jl:
here, tho it is a politico link.
maybe i was being hyperbolic, but sanders does have a long history of slagging the democratic party.
dww44
@catclub: While by no-means an expert, I started work in the financial services industry in 1974. At that time we sold stocks and bonds and a few commodity futures. Beginning before 1980 the lobbyists for our industry began pushing Congress to allow retail/investment firms to sell bank like products, i.e. money market funds, as part of their retail offerings. Over the next decade plus, the pressure on Congress critters continued apace, resulting finally in the repeal of Glass-Stegall in 1999 and the last of the regulations separating retail/commercial banking from investment banking.
There is no question in my mind that the financial crisis of 2008 was a result of the liberalization of the regulations passed in the 1930’s that kept the markets and banking pretty safe for about 70 years. It is not good that the only place I can contribute to my grandkids’ college funds are in accounts investing in stocks, mutual funds and indexes. All volatile investments to one degree or another. There isn’t a truly safe alternative any longer, given the extrordinarily low interest rates that retail banking pays on cd’s and the like.
jl
Well, I swear I did not see this in the news before I posted the previous comment, but looks like Sanders lack of a published official health care plan is causing problems for his campaign. As for example, his people may not get the tax funding plan for his health care proposal out by the promised time. Which looks bad because the charge that he is an old lefty coot who does not know how to pay for his proposals is a corporate media meme.
Bernie Sanders may break health care pledge
http://edition.cnn.com/2016/01/13/politics/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-health-care-plan/index.html
I still can’t find an official health care plan on the Sanders campaign website. The Sanders campaign seems to think that citing what he has previously proposed in Congress will cut it, but it won’t. Particuarly when there are news articles out that give info that there have been some changes in his approach.
Will be sad if the Sanders campaign flounders on BS like this. I think single payer is perfectly fine option for health care financing, has worked very well in several countries, and should at least be part of serious policy debate in the US.
All I can do is send another complaint about it to his campaign, I guess.
glory b
@Kropadope: Yeah, as we black folks get gunned down, have our voting and civil rights further constricted and see children die from untreated dental problems once the repubs repeal the affordable care act (google “Deamonte Driver, who died from an abcessed tooth after his mother couldn’t afford an extraction and he died from a resulting brain infection), we will be sure to thank people like you who won’t vote unless the perfect candidate is running.
Because what better way to show the rest of us that YOU KNOW WHAT’S BEST FOR US? Spoken like someone whose trust fund will see them through the death and destruction the other side will implement.
Give the tea party credit, they showed us that VOTING is the way to get what you want. They are a reliable voting block and the repubs fell all over themselves trying to give them what they wat (or at least a reasonable facsimile).
why do so many of us, in the face of history showing us it’s wrong, decide that the way to flex political muscle is to stay at home? A repub president will ruin the next tweo generations with a few bad supreme court appointments. Three justices are over 80. vote for whatever dem is in the general. I sure am.
jl
@chopper: Thanks. Not sure that the average voter, Democratic or Independent, will care what Sanders said back in the 80s and prior, but it looks like a good summary of Sanders’ blasts against the Democrats. I will read it.
Bill
@lethargytartare:
Please point out where I said I don’t talk to people I disagree with? In fact, I’m surrounded by people I disagree with. I talk to them all the time. I often enjoy them as people. Our kids play together. I consider them friends. But we don’t agree, and it’s clear we never will. Oh yeah, and their philosophy is having profoundly negative effects on out country.
Well that escalated quickly. Again, I don’t think these people are “pieces of shit.” Quite the contrary, I think they sincerely believe they are doing the right thing for the right reasons. I also think they are profoundly wrong. As I’m sure they do about me. That’s called not agreeing.
So sure I can, and do, join my friends on the right in running food drives, but somehow they never come over and vote for politicians who provide actual solutions. See how that works, even though we can agree that doing something is better than nothing, we can never agree on a real solution. That’s no real agreement at all.
For someone who claims to not like it when people assume they know what the President thinks, you sure make a lot of assumptions about what people think.
Cacti
@jl:
I’d say it’s just as likely that he’s trying to avoid sticker shock over the cost of Berniecare. Single payer flopped in Vermont because even the lefties there found the tax costs onerous.
Brachiator
@Germy:
More! More!
I love it when Trump attacks the GOP and creates chaos and confusion within the party. He’s attacking the official GOP response. Just wonderful.
jl
@Cacti:
Forecasts showed that single payer in VT would have been cheaper in terms of real economic costs. And the savings from the original VT plan would have been greater, except for federal restrictions on state power in regulating health care (which prevents states from setting any kind of standards for employer plans) One reason for failure was that Guv Shumlin changed the plan from the original version to make it more politically attractive without performing due diligence and then got surprised when the forecasts saw less savings, especially after subsidies from PPACA he was counting on failed to occur.
And, there was sticker shock in terms of tax increases, when not accounting for far lower or no payments for private health insurance.
There is really no evidence at all that the experience of VT indicates single payer in US, if implemented at the federal level, would be more expensive, after accounting for reductions in private insurance payments. It would be a doubtful conclusion anyway, since half a dozen countries with single get better outcomes at far lower costs than the US.
See The Demise of Vermont’s Single-Payer Plan, John E. McDonough, New England Journal of Medicine, April 23, 2015
Elie
The sticker shock is even higher than the actual cost to implement berniecare. In single payer you have to remove a lot of insurance and other provider/service jobs — at least temporarily, as you transition into single payer. That means laying off a LOT of people at least temporarily until some/many could be hired back by the single payer system (or not). LOTS of people work in health care insurance and finance. That would be politically difficult and economically challenging to say the least. Yes, single payer is a great goal and I think we will end up there — but we will have to back into it as failures in the current allow the opportunity to insert. There is no way to do some sort of flip the switch to single payer solution. Also, did I miss something? Given we barely got ACA paased and keep it in place by the skin of our teeth, where is the power going to come from to “just like that” put in single payer ala Bernie? Can he just do that cause he is an old white socialist using socialist sparkle dust?
Germy
@Brachiator:
Good God, and do the Villagers still talk about “dems in disarray” or have they noticed the GOP response to the SOTU attacking the GOP frontrunner, who in turn attacks the official SOTU GOP response?
Imagine if Obama, during his SOTU, attacked Sanders or HRC? The Villagers would all be soaking wet from peeing themselves in excitement.
Matt McIrvin
I’m pretty sure some people did deny that Sputnik was up there. They weren’t driving national policy, though.
Matt McIrvin
@Germy: I’ve seen some pundits expressing surprise that Obama hasn’t endorsed a Democratic primary candidate. Since when do Presidents do that (if they’re not running themselves, of course)? It would seem like an obviously dumb thing for him to do.
glory b
@eemom: THIS!!!
Calouste
@Applejinx:
1) It’s the Royal Bank of Scotland that issued the warning, not the Bank of Scotland, they are completely different companies that only have in common that they are banks in Scotland.
2) RBS had to be bailed out by the UK government in 2008, I wouldn’t particularly have much confidence in what they are saying.
randy khan
@Kropadope:
The “what has she done?” line is Fiorina’s standard attack on Clinton. It was one of things she said during her little boomlet. (I know I shouldn’t bother, but I will at least act as if the question was asked in good faith.)
Cacti
@jl:
I’m acquainted with everything you’ve gone over, but the average voter is not. The reason single payer will remain a hard sell is because it has to be sold politically. The old saw remains true in politics that if you’re explaining, you’re losing.
Meanwhile, the other side can seize on “they want to double your payroll taxes/income taxes/etc.” and run with it all day long. There has to be a more effective response than, “yes, but in the long run, we’ll all end up saving money because when you subtract how much you already pay for insurance, and then switch that instead to…etc.”
I wish it wasn’t that way, but that’s how our national politics operate.
jl
@Cacti: Which is why the one thing I am really steamed about with the Sanders campaign is how he has handled his ideas for health care reform. Right now he is in the defensive explaining mode, which I agree with you is a bad place to be politically.
I am a mega-donor, having given him more than 30 bucks, so I don’t know why he is not listening.
Alex.S
From what I can tell–
* Sanders health care plan is a 9% tax increase
* But he’s promising it will be cheaper than the current situation since people won’t pay their current premiums (mostly true)
** Left unspoken is the idea that people and businesses with private insurance will drop their current health care and go to the government plan.
I have to believe that most people are aware of this, but that Sanders’ supporters are ok with it because they know that single payer is a better overall system. But I don’t know how it will work when it’s actually written out with specific points that people can talk about.
There’s also the strong possibility that Sanders is delaying releasing his health care plan because there’s a bunch of other stuff that needs to be dealt with in such a massive change for the health care system. The goal of having one overall system will mean that a bunch of the support framework will go away.
Kropadope
@glory b:
Not what I said, in fact I said I would certainly be voting, so let me just disregard everything else you wrote.
@randy khan:
Carly’s late to the game. I made that observation 7 or 8 years ago as a response to Hillary’s ragging on Obama’s “inexperience.”
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
Dead thread, but …
@Kropadope: Riddle me this:
You say she’s all talk. You say she hasn’t accomplished anything. You give the impression that you believe that she won’t be able to do anything as President.
Why do you think she wants to be President?
She’s not stupid, we can agree on that, right? She knows she’ll be opposed by the trolls who have demonized her for the last 20+ years on the national stage. She knows it’s a big job but it’s also pushing on a string in many cases.
She made almost $10M making speeches in the year after leaving State. She’s very popular. She could probably keep making that kind of money outside of office, and by being on corporate boards, and writing books, and being a CEO somewhere (she did run an agency with a $50B/y budget, after all). She could be very, very rich very easily.
Why do you think she wants to be President if, as you believe, she’s such a failure?
Maybe you are willfully ignoring what she has done with her life, perhaps?
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Kropadope
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Why do you think she wants to be President if, as you believe, she’s such a failure? Well, if we want to know what she hopes to accomplish, why not take a look at the initiatives she supported that have actually been implemented. It would seem that she wants to bomb foreigners, imprison as many Americans as possible, and make it easier for the financial sector to screw over working Americans. Shorter version, she wants as much money as possible for her and her rich benefactors.
Why do you think they pay so much for speeches?
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Kropadope: If you want to know what she hopes to accomplish, you could look at her web site.
Why do they pay so much for her speeches? Maybe because they want to hear what she has to say, and because they want to support what she’s doing.
She’s a piker compared to what tRump has been paid for speeches.
BTW, hyperbole doesn’t help you make your case.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.