.
So this weekend we all got to “enjoy” a humongous display of spoilt white elitists embarrassing themselves in public… and also the Oscars. The Republican “Establishment,” such as it remains, has been gripped by the deadly horror of its unleashed Id made visible, and of course it turns out that it’s everybody’s fault but the Republicans’!
From the Washington Post, company paper of the town whose monopoly industry is national politics:
The implosion over Donald Trump’s candidacy that Republicans had hoped to avoid arrived so virulently this weekend that many party leaders vowed never to back the billionaire and openly questioned whether the GOP could come together this election year.
At a moment when Republicans had hoped to begin taking on Hillary Clinton — who is seemingly on her way to wrapping up the Democratic nomination — the GOP has instead become consumed by a crisis over its identity and core values that is almost certain to last through the July party convention, if not the rest of the year.
A campaign full of racial overtones and petty, R-rated put-downs grew even uglier Sunday after Trump declined repeatedly in a CNN interview to repudiate the endorsement of him by David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Trump had disavowed Duke at a news conference on Friday, but he stammered when asked about Duke on Sunday…
Roger Stone, a Republican consultant and longtime Trump associate who does not work for the campaign, said Sunday that he has been reaching out to fellow alumni of Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign about volunteering on Trump’s behalf at the convention.
“We’re looking at pulling together people with deep knowledge and experience at Republican conventions going back to Barry Goldwater in ’64 or Reagan in ’76,” Stone said of his efforts, which have been taking place by telephone. “If they try to change the rules to steal it from Trump, he’ll need friends who understand the rules.”…
Anybody who believes that Roger Stone, a foundational CREEPster with a Nixon tattoo on his back, stopped working with Trump after that embarrassing incident last August is too naive to be allowed to walk to the corner store with a ten-dollar bill. Neither Barry Goldwater in 1964 nor Ronald Reagan in 1976 ended up as the GOP candidates in the general election, but the ugly chaos they created at their respective conventions did guarantee that “their” party would lose to the Democrats… and, more importantly in the long run, that their separate authoritarian philosophies would permanently warp the Republican Party, to the detriment of our long-suffering nation over the past fifty years. Trump — via Stone — is setting himself up as the Next Great GOP Iconoclast. Whether he’s got the ability or the attention span to pull it off is an open question. But perhaps the pundits who wonder if Cleveland 2016 will end up as the historical counterpart to the Democratic disaster in Chicago 1968 are not merely fantasizing a return to past excitement…
***********
Apart from watching the clown show turn gladiatorial, what’s on the agenda for the start of the week?
This is what the GOP reaps for telling everyone things have already gone to hell.
— Josh Barro (@jbarro) February 29, 2016
raven
Cool to see that Mark Rylance won the Oscar over phony ass Stallone!
OzarkHillbilly
Ummmm Anne? Goldwater was the GOP candidate in 64. Remember?
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: This is one of them there autoposts.
Elizabelle
Great cartoon. Happy Monday, all.
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: I don’t pay much attention to the Oscars. What category?
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Yeah, in all likelihood.
Baud
Admittedly, the Baud! 2016! has underperformed in the early primary states. But the call had gone out to Surge the Vote on Super Wednesday. I think a lot of people are going to be surprised at the end of the day.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: I am certain that you’ll be the most surprised.
Keith G
@Baud:
In other words, Super Hump Day. Something to get behind.
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
And you’ll know you’re making your mark when the Bernistas start calling you a Republican-lite. Baud 2016!
boatboy_srq
Ability is one thing. But “attention span” no longer applies. When Trump began, everyone said he’d be bored with campaigning by August; in August, he wouldn’t last until November; and in November, he’d be fed up by the Iowa caucus. Uneven debate showings, constant attacks from Cruz and the rest, none of it has apparently lessened his appetite for the race or his attention to the campaign. It’s time to let that one go, don’t you think?
MomSense
I missed all the news yesterday and did Rubio really decide pee pee jokes was the way to seem Presidential?
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Na na na na, na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye
Kay
Megan McArdle is collecting vows from Republicans who won’t vote for Trump. They’re supposed to email her with their sad story of betrayal and heartbreak.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
During last night’s awards, the Oscar winner for best screenplay gave a big shout out to Baud!
I didn’t know our own Baud! was so popular with big Hollywood.
Mustang Bobby
Didn’t watch the Oscars, didn’t care. I’m boycotting them until Mel Brooks is nominated again. Forty-nine years is too long to ignore him. Is it because he’s Jewish?
MomSense
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
But Baud is pro-weirdo! We are his base!
Kay
And Jennifer Rubin wants to start a new party- she says Chris Christie will not be allowed to join:
boatboy_srq
@Kay:
Fixt for her.
Ultraviolet Thunder
Baud! 2016. Not insane!
Amir Khalid
@MomSense:
It seems the Republican party’s presidential politics has devolved to below the level of the typical chimpanzee troop.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Boss Christie is getting trashed
OzarkHillbilly
@boatboy_srq:
?????
Ultraviolet Thunder
I’m halfway up the east coast of Lake Huron for work today. Georgian Bay is deadsville in winter. Have to finish a job and drive back to Detroit tonight.
Looking forward to getting away from expensive gas, the metric system and road signs in 2 languages.
hueyplong
“Imagine Trump/nativists left with only a shell of old GOP vs. new party of sincere conservatives freed from stench of xenophobia.”
I’m having trouble imagining in which of those two groups Rubin sees herself. You’d have thought ditching xenophobia would be a bridge too far for her.
Kay
@boatboy_srq:
All the emails she gets will be from DougJ. Rubin is really freaking out:
OFF the invite list for the new party. I love that she thinks political parties are invitation-only. Like a party-party, not a political party :)
MomSense
@Amir Khalid:
It’s like they are trying out for junior high playground bully.
greennotGreen
Re: the second Josh Barro tweet above. People who think the country has gone to hell in the last eight years are already living in a Fox News- and Nancy Grace-generated reality. Donald Trump is a natural denizen of that alternate universe.
Kay
@hueyplong:
She’s a Rubio backer, but she apparently doesn’t listen to him. Yesterday Rubio said Obama Administration only gets sued by Christian groups not Muslim groups. Hint, hint.
Rubio is running on xenophobia too, he’s just not as blatant as Trump.
boatboy_srq
@OzarkHillbilly: HEB?, Carson, Rubio, Kasich, Walker and Fiorina all went after each other at first. Only Cruz has been so relentless (hence the especial mention).
amk
@Kay:
“new party of sincere conservatives freed from stench of xenophobia”
1%ers?
boatboy_srq
@hueyplong: Something tells me the overlap on that Venn would be around 90%.
Baud
Haha. GMA poll says Trump at 49% nationally.
Baud
@Kay:
“You mean anybody can join?!”
boatboy_srq
@Kay: Interesting how she’s engineering at least two decades of losses (by both groups) with that selection. What does she plan to do with Murdoch and the Kochs? All that “talk radio” and “Freedom Caucus” stuff is their creation…
EconWatcher
I actually don’t see much difference between Rubio and Trump, and at least some of the differences redound in Trump’s favor.
Yeah, Trump is volatile, so we can’t predict what he’d do in foreign policy. But Rubio has made it clear he’s a true-blue neocon, so we can predict what he’d do, quite accurately: Tear up the Iran deal, ratchet up the tension, leave Iran feeling cornered and forced to resume work on the bomb, then use airstrikes and start a nice new ME war. Rinse and repeat with all other potential conflict zones.
So which is better? Volatility and unpredictability, with the risk of disaster? Or certain disaster based on the candidate’s promised policy?
Advantage: Trump.
Baud
Ted Cruz goes all “Trump has mob ties.”
Rubio talks about Trump’s small hands.
Let us savor.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Romney has been trying to get Kasich to drop out. Kasich refuses. Mittens just isn’t good at this.
Now Rafael Cruz is accusing Trump of mob ties:
Man, this is gonna be some convention. HEH!
OzarkHillbilly
@hueyplong: She’s fine with xenophobia as long as it’s wearing Chanel #5.
Kay
@amk:
She’s really livid. It sounds unhinged.
I wonder how early voting changes any last minute defection from Trump. A lot of states have early voting. I don’t see his voters as “early voters” if they’re really disaffected people just now coming out to vote- you have to know the rules to early vote – but I don’t know who his voters are, really. I think everyone is guessing. They could just be fired up regular R’s instead of a new group of “Trump people”.
I was reading the SC Dem state chair on twitter and he’s worried the increased turnout on the R side is white swing voters/conservaDems. He would probably know better than anyone who they are in SC. We’ll see, I guess.
MomSense
@EconWatcher:
They are all terrifying. I’m not exaggerating. They are literally terrifying. The scariest part is thinking about all the people who actually like them.
p.a.
Saw The Witch Friday. Thumb up. It’s a psycoh-drama, not horror (at least in the current US slasher/maniac mode).
No spoiler: disagree w/critics finding fault with the ending. I didn’t interpret it literally.
Trigger warning: child abduction event & themes.
debbie
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Kasich has promised he’ll get out if he doesn’t win in Ohio. I’ve never been so tempted to cross over and vote for Trump.
boatboy_srq
@Baud: One has [presumed] ties to [milquetoast] organized crime; the other has [definite] ties to [wingnut] organized religion. Remind me again which is worse?
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
The front page of the Washington Post — PANIC!
Fear and loathing on the campaign trail has arrived.
Trump is now calling Rubio, “Lil’ Marco” and Cruz “a Canadian anchor baby”. I didn’t know he was one of our regular readers.
hueyplong
I’ve always pictured Jen with a slightly confused demeanor on her tumbrel ride. Boy did I have that wrong. It will be an angry tone and the loud crowd on each side of her path will be made up of unwashed GOPers.
It’s Schadenfreudelicious when reality exceeds imagination.
Really looking forward to the next three months or more of earnest “the center cannot hold” B.S.
Mustang Bobby
Via Oliver Willis on Twitter, Trump explains his KKK non-answer on his earpiece… not his hairpiece. Or the dog.
boatboy_srq
@EconWatcher: I don’t really see any meaningful distinction between [insert non-Trump GOTea pol] and Trump. Try it: it works for all except perhaps Kirk and Collins, and they’re comfy in the Senate.
berliner2
I seem to remember that Goldwater was the nominee in 1964.
OzarkHillbilly
@boatboy_srq: Cruz didn’t start going after the Donald until he realized Trump wasn’t going to drop out and what is more Trump just might win. Previous to that he was giving Trump sloppy wet kisses because he wanted to do some Trumpster diving** after the Donald left. Every single one of them have been afraid to attack the Donald because they know the nativist base of the GOP was leaning Trump, and they are THE base of the GOP. None of them had the balls to attack Trump until they realized their campaigns were in their death throes at which point desperation gave them the courage to do what they should have been doing all along.
** is this a STL thing? homeless people go dumpster diving after leftover/rejected food behind restaurants
BillinGlendaleCA
@boatboy_srq: I wouldn’t bet on Kirk being comfortable, he’s up for re-election.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
I wonder if Trump drops out at some point, like Perot did, and cite some family heath concern.
He spending his own money, his own party hates him, he can’t win, and he’s going to lose to a girl (nothing wrong with that but he’s a misogynist with a highly fragile ego).
Yesterday on MSNBC, life long republican Kathleen Parker was comparing him to Hitler and Mussolini and all but said she’s gonna vote for Hillz.
Iowa Old Lady
@Ultraviolet Thunder: My dad was from a little town in that neck of the woods, Southampton. It was beautiful in the summer.
BillinGlendaleCA
@OzarkHillbilly:
The paparazzi do it celebs trash out here in LA.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
Smedley Darlington Mingobat has been hurling the last few mornings when he wakes up. Nothing but thin, yellowish liquid. I tried to get some in a plastic tub to take into the vet this morning, but, of course, this is the morning he didn’t feel the need. Some farmer shot him last spring before he ended up in the shelter we got him from, and they had to take about five inches of his bowels out, so I’m hoping it only has to do with that, and not something worse. Has anybody had a dog this kind of thing has been a problem with?
greennotGreen
@MomSense: I think a lot of people who “like” Trump don’t know much about him. They’re low information voters in general who’ve probably voted for their incumbent senator for years, then want to vote for a nutcase for President to “shake up Washington.” They have the political maturity of an eight year old.
greennotGreen
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Is he still eating well?
OzarkHillbilly
@EconWatcher:
Actually, Iran would have no reason to feel cornered and even less reason to resume work on nuclear weapons. That deal was between Iran and the “United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, France, and China plus Germany), plus the European Union.” and tearing it up would only isolate us. The others would just shrug their shoulders and continue advancing business as they have been ever since it was signed.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@greennotGreen: Oh, he eats like a motherfucker. He’s happy, too. Though, he is neurotic. He doesn’t like me to be out of his sight, the more so since our two and a half week long trip to Honduras at Christmas, when he had to stay at the dog hotel.
Iowa Old Lady
I’ve been fantasizing about a general election debate between Trump and probably Clinton (though same thing with Sanders) in which there is no studio audience and mics are shut off except when a candidate is supposed to be speaking. I imagine the lost look on Trump’s face when he can’t speak over his opponent or the moderator and yell “Who will pay?” and get a rip-roaring “Mexico will pay.”
amk
@OzarkHillbilly:
Yup. With the recent elections strengthening the hands of rouhani, the iranians are ready to show the kkklowns the finger along with the rest of the world.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
There’s gonna be a riot btwn the competing Brown Shirts.
OzarkHillbilly
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Never for multiple days. I’d take him in if he starts up again.
dr. bloor
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: Fat Tony has concrete, and probably the bones of various disloyal soldiers, in the foundations of just about every building put up in NYC since forever. You can’t put up a newspaper stand without getting your hands dirty.
NorthLeft12
I believe the “crisis” over the GOP values is between what the Republicans would like it to be, and what it actually is and has been for about the last thirty years.
ie. Fantasy versus Reality
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Most read articles on WaPo
1. The Republican Party’s implosion over Donald Trump’s candidacy has arrived
2. In major blow to Ted Cruz, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama endorses Donald Trump for GOP nomination
3. Donald Trump is remarkably dangerous to the Republican Party. Here’s why.
4. In 1927, Donald Trump’s father was arrested after a Klan riot in Queens
Apocalypse Now
Kay
@Iowa Old Lady:
I do think Clinton will set Trump off balance in a way a man wouldn’t, simply because she’s female. No one has even explored Trump’s comments on women yet but they’re pretty bad. I just remember how well Biden did against Palin- people were almost waiting for him to screw it up- I think he did well because he’s comfortable dealing with women as equals at work.
Gindy51
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): We own Greater Swiss Mountain Dogs and deal with this on a regular basis. The yellow stuff is bile. You need to give him a meal of food before bed so his tummy has something in it. Split his meals into smaller ones through out the day, that helps. We feed our two 5 meals a day, fro a cup 1/4 to a cup 1/2 (depending on the dog Dany 82 pounds 23″ tall at the shoulder smaller portion, Hannibal 120 lb 30″ the larger.)
NorthLeft12
@OzarkHillbilly: Re- The Iran Deal. In Republican World, a strong LEADER would force all the other countries to follow the US no matter how insane and counter productive it would actually be.
I believe the Republican options for doing this are;
1. Make another side deal.
2. Kick ass and take names.
3. Praying and invoking the deities.
4. Holding their breath.
5. ignoring the problem.
Davebo
@OzarkHillbilly: Many people miss the obvious. Sanctions against Iran are useless when they are only between the US and Iran.
I think it has to do with the fantasy of US supremacy.
MattF
Well, the various things the R candidates say about each other are all true– they’re being honest, for once. What’s the problem?
greennotGreen
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): I have a dog who ate well but threw up daily. On a hunch I (gradually) switched him to the low-fat food another of my dogs eats for her delicate digestion, and he hasn’t thrown up since.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Sessions is a racist fucktard, so of course he’s a senator from the Old Confederacy. Why would he NOT endorse Trump?
MattF
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: I guess I didn’t know that Sessions, in particular, was that creepy. Live and learn.
Kay
@Iowa Old Lady:
I can’t wait see what they do with Trump and the TPP and down-ticket races. All but 5 Senate Republicans voted for fast track. If GOP voters don’t want TPP the thing to do is purge Republicans in Congress, because “fast track” means the deal passes with a simple majority and it was a GOP deal in Congress. It’s theirs. I can’t imagine how Trump appears with them while screaming about that deal.
Elizabelle
Catherine Rampell in WaPost last week:
Surprise — Trump, Cruz and Rubio aren’t all that different
Somehow, this article is not getting as much play as the Oh Noes! Trump! pieces.
Why do you think that might that be?
Percysowner
@Kay: Certainly one of the few people to slow Trump down was Carly Fiorino for a week when he attacked her the way he did. Clinton has a real shot here. People are used to her being attacked on Benghazi, and lack of honesty and all the other Republican talking points. They aren’t used to her being attacked for having to go to the bathroom. It could get interesting.
C.V. Danes
It occured to me this morning that it’s not 2016 I’m worried about, but 2020.
I have absolutely no doubt that Clinton will demolish Trump in the general election. I think 2020 will be a totally different animal.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: His full name is: Jefferson Beauregard Sessions. They might as well named him Herman Goring Sessions. No difference.
OzarkHillbilly
@NorthLeft12: Your dead right. In GOPistan the Iranians will go fetal and scream “Pleeze don’ hit me Massa, pleeze don’ hit me!” But the rest of world doesn’t live in GOPistan and will ignore them while the Iranians will just stand there and give us the finger. The deal is done and everybody elsewhere is now making money off it. They are not going back.
MattF
@C.V. Danes: I think we’re seeing some turn towards ‘vulture’ candidacy now. But who knows what the so-called Republican party will look like in 2020?
Mike in DC
The Fred Trump KKK thing is interesting because it is something Trump really doesn’t want to go into or even acknowledge. It ties into the lawsuit filed against both of them in the 70s, though.
amk
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
tundra twit, sessions, le page, brewer, huckster – the racists are falling in line.
SiubhanDuinne
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
I’m not remembering that Perot dropped out of either of his presidential runs (1992 [independent] and 1996 [Reform Party]). I’ll admit he didn’t bring the same energy to his second campaign, but he didn’t suspend his candidacy.
(Subject to correction, of course. I’m going by memory and haven’t had coffee yet.)
Elmo
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): At our house we call that ETS, for Empty Tummy Syndrome. Try feeding him a small meal just before bed and another right when you get up.
Kay
@Percysowner:
Trump has really benefited from the crowded field. If Republicans want someone to blame, they should blame the grifters and egomaniacs in that Party who insisted on running and sticking around. Trump never got challenged anything substantive because they were all repeating their own talking points while he was insulting them.
I saw Rubio in a town hall last night- it was on FOX- and he can’t answer questions either. He got a specific question on his health care plan from a small business owner and he said the plan is the small business owner will pay the employee X amount and that will go into a tax-free account to purchase anything the employee wants. The small business owner looked extremely skeptical, probably because that “system” was always available. Businesses could always set up health savings accounts. The problem was their employees couldn’t find an affordable policy, or any policy, sometimes. His solution solves nothing. The guy sat down completely unimpressed.
C.V. Danes
@MattF: This is true. And this is not a knock against Clinton. I think even Bernie would have a tough time in 2020 if he were the one getting elected in 2016. After 12 years of a Democrat in the White House, people are going to be looking for something different.
greennotGreen
@Elmo: That’s a possibility, too. SDP, do you normally feed him twice a day?
MattF
@Kay: “The plan is that your employees will die in the streets.”
Sherparick
In Trump, the collective unconscious of the Republican ID is melting through the Krell metal doors of “libertarian,’ “free enterprise,” and “Burkean Conservative Principles” to destroy the Drs. Moribus who created the monster to destroy liberals and unions these last 50 years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_Planet
PS: Goldwater won the nomination in 1964 and was defeated in landslide, but that was before Vietnam and the urban riots and crime explosion of the late 1960s and early 70s..
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@C.V. Danes: yeah, but who’s out there. I don’t see anyone. It will likely be Cruz, Rubio, Aqua Buddha all over again. They’ll never nominate someone like Brian Sandoval (a pro choice mexican).
C.V. Danes
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
I’m wondering if the Trump University case is going to start growing legs. It’ll be hard to run the country from a jail cell.
OzarkHillbilly
@Davebo:
It certainly does.
I find it hilarious how for years the GOP insisted that international sanctions would never work, and then when international sanctions did work they insisted the deal would never work because the Iranians would break it at their first opportunity, but now that the Iranians have fulfilled it and for all intents and purposes would have to start over from almost zero the GOP is insisting that if we only reimpose sanctions we can get an even better deal.
Of course, the deal the GOP wants is the end of the Iranian regime. Why they think the Iranians would ever accept such a deal is beyond me.
p.a.
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Best bet is the group with the Party backing- more resources. (Assuming the Party unifies against splinter groups. Otherwise #bloodbath)
Whig party split apart on slavery issue. Repubs on whether they should openly advert their piggish ideology or try to retain plausible deniability. Truly prion disease (h/t C P Pierce)
MattF
@C.V. Danes: “My family is sick of me.”
Elizabelle
@Kay:
Yes! Thank you! That’s so totally understandable, and it’s never explained after clips of Rubio saying stuff like that. It’s not even our “objective” media taking sides. It’s factual.
What would it take? It’s 26 words, for f*ck’s sake.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
Here’s the appeal of Trum to bigoted, cranky old white conservatives and to those who marinated in the stew of being raised by bigoted, cranky old white conservatives – they have no filter, and they can let fly with every nonsensical stray bigoted thought that their stream-of-consciousness authoritarian brains churn. There is no filter and they love that – it is like every goofy chain email your weird uncle ever sent you, and we all know that the greatest oppression known to man came about when older white guys could no longer say “nigger”, “spic”, “fag”, “hebe” or “slut” in a public setting without being socially vilified for it.
Bigotry went underground to marinade in its juices, the jokes quietly muttered and giggled at, but they longed for a simpler time. Meanwhile, the corporatist leg of conservatism – “fiscal conservatism” – took more and more of the goodies while feigning disdain at the naked bigotry of lower classes.
I guess the lower classes finally want some material satisfaction after being taunted with decades of dog whistles with no treats. Palin sort of did it, but she never was a material success; topping out as a half-term governor was the best she could ever do. Trump, though, for those people, IS the real deal. He’s speaking their language.
Keith G
Catching up on vid clips from the Oscars. Gaga’s performance (combined with the reveal of those who have been victimized) was so emotionally raw.
Nothing like a thorough cry to start the week.
Matt McIrvin
@C.V. Danes: The Bernie-fan Salonpitches about how progressives should let the Republicans win if Clinton is nominated sometimes make the argument that a general catastrophe is inevitable in the next four years (unless Bernie is elected President), so by throwing 2016 we ensure that the reaction goes against the Republicans, allowing a win in the more important 2020 election.
I think this string of assumptions is far too long and fragile, and the potential collateral damage from following this plan is just too horrific. But it’s the argument.
Kay
@MattF:
It was interesting because he goes right from health savings accounts (basically- he calls them something else) to “more competition btwn insurers”. He skips the whole “can’t buy a policy” part which was literally the point of the ACA. He’s treating it like car insurance.
MattF
@Matt McIrvin: Ah, the ‘worse is better’ fallacy. Again. I’ll just note, again, that this argument has a veeerrrry bad reputation.
gene108
@Kay:
Pass some draconian anti-immigration laws to get the GOP base chearing about how he protected their jobs, while screwing them over economically in other ways.
Trump’s basically talking out of both sides of his mouth now.
Trump’s tax plan is a bigger give away to the rich than Bush, Jr.’s tax plan and the other tax plans proposed by the current crop of Republican candidates, but he has a symbolic tax on something specific to Wall Street, so that’s all the people focus on and think he’s on their side.
There is a certain level dishonesty with Trump that will be truly manifest, if he ever became President and this includes stacking the deck in favor of the rich, whether through trade deals or tax cuts, despite his current rhetoric that makes people think he’s against trade deals.
OzarkHillbilly
@C.V. Danes: Not to mention the almost certain economic downturn between now and then.
Ryan
Isn’t it hard to find old posts when every post falls into “Assholes”?
C.V. Danes
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch: It’ll be a whole new ball game by then. Clinton will win this year because Trump is astonishingly even more polarizing. In 2020, Clinton will be the polarizing one, because the Republicans will be spending the next 4 years sniping at her in the same way that they’ve been sniping at Obama for the last 8. I think that the saving grace with Clinton is that she has no allusions to what kind of pricks she’ll be dealing with, unlike the idealistic Obama in his first term. She’ll need no learning curve for that.
Elizabelle
@C.V. Danes: We haven’t gotten through 2016 yet.
A lot can happen in four years. Good things, too.
raven
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: And, as much as I hate to say it, Vietnam Vets are the worst.
PurpleGirl
@OzarkHillbilly: It happens in NYC too. Not that I’ve seen it but I know that stores close their dumpsters to keep people from getting into them.
Kay
@Elizabelle:
Especially because the guy started his question with “repeal Obamacare, okay, but we can’t go back to the old system”- that should have been a clue he wouldn’t accept the same GOP boilerplate from the last 20 years.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
@SiubhanDuinne:
Wag
Um, Barry Goldwater DidEnd up as the GOP nominee. He lost in a landslide to LBJ
EconWatcher
Here’s the thing: Every nominee of the two major parties has a realistic chance of winning. No matter how seemingly unelectable, now matter how far down in the polls, each one has a realistic chance. All it takes is for a few very plausible things to happen. If Trump is the nominee, he has a very plausible chance. Don’t kid yourself otherwise.
Let’s say European banks blow up this summer and take the world economy, including the US, into recession. Read a little about Deutsche Bank, and you’ll see this is certainly possible. Or let’s imagine that China’s slow-motion economic unravelling turns into something more dramatic, and our economy goes with it.
The national favorable/unfavorable ratings for Hillary and Trump are actually not that far apart, and RealClearPolitics at least shows a poll average that puts Hillary only three points ahead. It doesn’t take much imagination now to predict a President Trump. Think about it.
C.V. Danes
@Matt McIrvin:
I think anyone who is proposing that should be taken out and flogged. No way we give a Republican, especially Trump, the power to select the next 2 or 3 Supreme Court justices.
Docg
Having fun watching Morning Joe backpedal on their Trump enthusiasm. A 9.9 second 100 meter dash backwards! “OMG, Trump is a racist! Who knew? Southerners are OFFENDED by the Klan.”
Your corporate overlords have spoken, Joe. STFU.
amk
@EconWatcher:
I am sure there are better scare mongering tactics than oh, noez, big banks are gonna fail. Been there, done that.
magurakurin
@MattF: In fairness, it did work for half of the German communists. Of course, they had to lose WWII, be occupied and controlled by the Soviet Union as East Germany. But, after Hitler, at least in the East, it was them.
gene108
@Kay:
You cannot use a Health Savings Account to pay for insurance premium right now.
But you are right, getting covered on the individual market, without Obamacare protections, which I assume will get repealed immediately by President Rubio, would be damn near impossible for most people.
C.V. Danes
@Elizabelle: Yeah, but never underestimate the power if the American people to allow too many good things cause them to elect an a-hole to office (1980, 2000).
It seems like they just need a self-inflicted beating every 20 years or so.
Kay
@EconWatcher:
I tend to agree with you. I don’t think anyone knows who “Trump voters” are. If they’re conservaDems or Dem-leaners that’s the worst because it’s -1 D, + 1 R. It’s just hard for me to believe they would go to Trump after sticking w/Obama. One would think if they were going to go R they would have already gone.
If they’re disaffected non-voters, that’s a little better, but not much better. Best case would be if they’re regular R’s with increased turnout, because that was always going to happen.
OzarkHillbilly
@Kay:
Their exclusive “No Claim Policy” where you are covered… until you make a claim.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
Speaking of the Oscars – Mark Ruffalo’s wife Sunrise Coigney is so stylish. (photo)
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@raven:
What nobody ever gets is that about 2/3 (or more) of boomers were conservatives or at least programmed for it. It was the 1/3 that wasn’t that got the attention of the press, concentrated as it was in the cities.
Demographics have changed somewhat since then insofar as the younger are concerned. The olders tend to follow their youthful ideology.
satby
@BillinGlendaleCA: He’s up for reelection against war hero Tammy Duckworth, and hopefully she will nail his reliable Republican party lockstep votes right to his hide. The district is suburban Chicago though, full of white-flighter descendants and pretty R leaning.
But Rauner is busy ruining the Republican brand in IL, so Duckworth should have a real shot at this seat.
OzarkHillbilly
@PurpleGirl: It’s international, I was specifically referring to the phrase “dumster diving”, thought I might have been getting too cute by half.
Kay
@EconWatcher:
IF SC has a closed primary they should know by now who Trump voters are, because if they’re Dems they have to switch to get an R primary ballot (in Ohio they do).
I read that SC Dem white YOUNG voter turnout was not down- it was white older D voters didn’t come out. That kind of concerns me because I think they would be southern conservaDems. We have quite a few conservaDems where I live- it’s white working class, older, so it’s not “southern” exclusively.
EconWatcher
@amk:
Not sure what you mean by scare-mongering. I live in Europe, and I’ve been telling everyone since last summer that no way, no how would Trump be the nominee. I was going by recent history, in which the Republican establishment always seemed to get what it wanted, somehow, some way.
Well, I was wrong. Dead wrong.
Now that Trump looks very likely to be the nominee, I’ll stick with my statement above: Any nominee of either party has a plausible chance to win. All it takes is for circumstances to break his or her way, just a bit.
Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Very nice…
p.a.
@Kay: My concern is Trump’s effect on what’s left of the working class through his “fair trade not free trade” position. It’s not a main push of his yet, and like everything of his, unspecific, but not sure HRC’s probably more specific, more nuanced position will effectively counter it. And in truth, I don’t know what her position is, and don’t need to. My aim is to get her elected and begin sniping after. ;-P
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone :)
boatboy_srq
@OzarkHillbilly: True. But when they turned, they turned HARD – and it doesn’t seem to have mattered much.
raven
@Botsplainer, Cryptofascist Tool of the Oppressor Class: And that attention by the press is what really pisses them off. So many vets I know KNOW the war was bullshit but they hate the fact that we said it out loud.
Elizabelle
@C.V. Danes: Historically. Although I think the average voter’s plight has gotten so much worse (outsourcing, downsizing, stock market crash, jobless recovery, globalization, college costs today, Obamacare that’s there but unaffordable for many without the subsidy) that — maybe — they’re less likely to gamble on voodoo.
Having turbulent and ridiculous politics is a luxury, and too many of us can no longer afford it.
I am not going to look for the cloud to accompany the silver lining. We can outwork the other side and WIN.
D58826
No the party isn’t imploding. The ugly little man (i.e. core ideas) that has been behind the GOP curtain, since at least 1964, has finally been exposed for all to see.
amk
@EconWatcher:
Sure, any final candie has a 50/50 chance to win. But I don’t see how the meme that big banks are gonna fail!!! will tilt the scale for either candie. Majority of voters from both left and right hate bankers and they don’t give a shit about them going belly up.
Elizabelle
@p.a.: Hillary did great with “make America whole again.”
I hope she’s simplifying a lot of her rhetoric and if she needs to pivot on TPP, do so eloquently.
Tim Russert is dead. Circumstances and the political environment change. So what if lazy ass reporters and TV beaver faces grill her on “But you said?”
We never get to throw that back at them.
Jeffro
@Keith G:
That. Was brilliant.
boatboy_srq
@Kay: Ain’t it amazing how Obummercare is so unConsitooshunul and awful – until the alternatives are discussed in any detail?
boatboy_srq
@amk: Somehow, “Final Candy” for the GOTea sounds interesting.
Chris
@OzarkHillbilly:
Precisely. Which would make it a disaster for us still, albeit in a different way – we’ll simply have cut ourselves out of the Iran process altogether. Heck, if the Iranians are smart, they’ll double down on their cooperation with the inspections regime, so everyone else in the world can see how reasonable they’re being and how unhinged the Americans are. Which’ll make it that much harder for us to ever get that kind of coalition together against a hostile WMD-seeking nation.
Of course, that’s basically all fine with the Republicans, since they don’t believe in any foreign policy beyond military force and the threat of military force.
Jeffro
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
We need a thread where everyone takes a shot at writing a Trump tweet.
Apparently Josh Marshall has the formula down: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/metrical-analysis-of-trump-insult-haiku
low-tech cyclist
Anyone with experience at the 1964 convention would be pretty damn old by now.
If you were a very young delegate at that convention, say 25 years old, you’d be 77 this year. And anyone who was significant enough at the time to be involved in any attempts to use convention procedure to alter the outcome would probably be well into their 80s, or in their 90s, or departed from this mortal coil.
rikyrah
To my Chicago, Suburban Cook County, and heck ALL OF ILLINOIS folks!!
EARLY VOTING BEGINS TODAY!!
In Chicago, there is an Early Voting site in EVERY WARD, plus 69 W. Washington St., Pedway.
In Suburban Cook County, there are 42 Early Voting Sites, plus 69 W. Washington St., Pedway.
IF you live in Chicago, you can walk into ANY Early Voting Site and vote.
IF you live in Suburban Cook County, you can walk into ANY Early Voting Site and vote.
Not registered to vote?
DOES.NOT.MATTER.
You can do Grace Period Registration, where you register and vote at the same time.
For info on Early Voting in Chicago:
For info on Early Voting in Suburban Cook County
Jeffro
@p.a.: It wouldn’t surprise me if the GOP cracked right in half – 50% stick with Trumpism and white supremacist politics, retaining the name “Republican Party”, while the other 50% go with Koch-style free market ideology and go with “Constitutionalist” or “Conservative” Party. It’s coming. The Kochs are not going to let themselves and their movement get dragged down by this clown show.
OzarkHillbilly
@boatboy_srq: “Too little too late” is my take. I see Trump as a very weak general election candidate who has captured the Republican Id. YMMV. This is not to say he could not win in Nov tho. If the economy takes a major shock and things start heading south, all bets are off.
FlipYrWhig
@Kay:
Do you think Rubio is one of the ones who believe the problem with health care costs is that too _many_ people have insurance? It kind of seems like what he’s describing is a world of cash-on-the-barrelhead medical treatments that reduces costs by making the expensive stuff so unaffordable that people stop buying it, which hits providers in the wallet, which makes the price come back down.
FlipYrWhig
Re: the larger Trump phenomenon, I still don’t see how it’s any different from Palin 2008.
GregB
I was told by an associate of Stone’s that the Nixon tattoo is not real.@Jeffro: Who is Josh Marshall? No reads his website. Went to a small college I hear. Bitter journalist. Sad.
Elizabelle
@low-tech cyclist: Main thing I remember about Barry Goldwater is that he saw what uncompromising jackholes the evangelical voter set was, and tried to warn his party. Didn’t he also want to kick Jerry Falwell in the ass?
Have a copy of “Conscience of a Conservative” but somehow never get around to reading it …
rikyrah
Ready or not, the Republican circus gets a new clown
02/29/16 08:40 AM
By Steve Benen
One of the more compelling concerns among Republicans worried about Donald Trump has to do with maturity: the New York developer just doesn’t have the temperament of an American president. Whatever his talents, Trump’s skill set doesn’t include displaying dignity and grace.
It was a little unsettling, then, to see what’s become of Marco Rubio’s pitch on the eve of Super Tuesday. NBC News reported overnight:
In response to the property mogul calling him “little Rubio,” Rubio conceded that Trump was taller than him. However, the Florida senator suggested Trump had small hands for his height.
“And you know what they say about guys with small hands,” Rubio said with a smile, prompting stunned laughter from the crowd. After a brief pause he added: “You can’t trust ‘em!” The crowd responded with applause.
Congratulations, Republicans. We’ve reached the point in the race for the GOP nomination in which the establishment favorite appears to be telling jokes about the size of his rival’s penis.
It helped add an exclamation point to a weekend in which Rubio thought it would be hilarious to tell jokes about Trump’s hair and skin color. “Donald Trump likes to sue people,” Rubio told an audience on Saturday. “He should sue whoever did that to his face.”
Chris
@OzarkHillbilly:
Like a lot of other things, I blame the myth of World War Two for this. Republicans, and most Americans for that matter, are convinced that it’s normal for a war – or a major international confrontation – to end with the complete and total destruction of your enemy. Never mind that historically, that’s… often not been how it works. The idea that even if you defeat your enemy today, you’ll still have to deal with him tomorrow, and the day after that, is one that I don’t think we’ve really gotten through our collective national noggin.
C.V. Danes
@Elizabelle: Historically, a populace in distress votes for autocracy. That’s what made Greece’s turn left so surprising last year. but France is turning right, and so will we if conditions don’t improve.
David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch
You built that.
OzarkHillbilly
@Chris: Absolutely right. We will get screwed. But in GOPistan that’s a feature, not a bug.
rikyrah
From Charles Pierce
Nobody Can Believe We’re Here, But We’re Here
Trump is really, truly blowing up our politics. It was a long time coming.
……………….
The problem with the Times piece is that it doesn’t take into account two obvious factors that the Republican Party itself resolutely fails to confront: first, that the prion disease that has afflicted the party since Ronald Reagan first fed it the monkeybrains in the 1980s has gotten worse, not better, and second, that the party’s three-decade courtship of the wild and the vile in our politics sooner or later was bound to leave the party open to a renegade campaign that was better at energizing that element than the cumbersome party machinery was. Anyone who thinks the Trump phenomenon is a sui generis explosion of eccentricity has forgotten the incredible collection of rodeo clowns over which Mitt Romney triumphed in 2012. Anyone who thinks He, Trump is unique in his rhetoric and his appeal never has read through Gingrich’s old Thesaurus For Ratfckers that helped fuel his rise to the Speakership. And anyone who thinks Trump’s brand of noisy, arrant bullshit is in anyway unique never has listened to a Cruz’s stump speech, like the one he unlimbered in the windy Atlanta morning, and which always contains the following passage that has no more connection to actual reality than do Trump’s fantastical Mexican drug mules slipping through the New Hampshire woods.
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.)
@greennotGreen: Yep. Once in the morning and again in the evening. I might try switching him to three or even four smaller meals, though, now that I’ve read all this.
April
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): my dog will do that but getting her to take a 10 mg famitodine and some food early has helped. The yellow slime is bile that upsets an empty tummy. Do you feed twice a day? That helps too.
EconWatcher
@amk:
When big banks blow up, they tend to take the real economy down with them. If the economy goes into recession, voters are more likely to change to a President of the other party. Simple as that. So if the economy dips before elections, Hillary will face an uphill climb, even against an orangatang like Trump.
boatboy_srq
@OzarkHillbilly: No argument on Trump the candidate’s strengths on paper. But we’ve all dismissed him for far too long – and he keeps going, and going… This election seems less about Trump the candidate and more about how fvcked the GOtea has become, with Trump merely a symptom of something incurable.
japa21
I was off the grid for the weekend, but I heard last night that Rubio was lamenting that a Trump win in the primaries could splinter the GOP apart. My assumption is that he is trying to appeal to the loyalty that Trump voters feel for the GOP and to convince them that in order to save the GOP they must stop voting for Trump.
Obviously he doesn’t get it that Trump’s supporters really feel no loyalty to the GOP as they feel the GOP has betrayed them. In their minds, Trump can rescue the GOP by turning it into what they think it should be.
Ridnik Chrome
Re the Luckovich comic strip, I’m betting that Obama is deliberately waiting until after Super Tuesday to name his Supreme Court pick. Once it’s a done deal that Trump is the Republican nominee (and I think by the end of this week it will be), Obama will call up Grassley and McConnell and say your party is going to go down in flames in November, so who would you prefer to pick the next SC justice, me or Hillary Clinton backed up by a Democratic-controlled Senate?
Rafer Janders
@amk:
If the banks fail, they take the rest of the economy with them. Systemic bank failure means, as it did back in 2008/2009, a total credit freeze – which means companies can no longer obtain credit for operating expenses, potential homeowners can’t get mortgages, etc. When companies can’t get credit, they lay off people, cancel projects, shut down, go out of business. When that happens, no one has any money.
I work on Wall Street, and few people realize how close we were back in 2008 to a total bank collapse. Had that happened, we would have had not the Great Recession, but the Great Depression 2.0. Unemployment would have been far more massive and widespread than it was. It would have been genuinely destabilizing to the entire country.
So if that happened again, yes, Trump would have a non-zero chance of winning. In times of dire emergency and chaos, people start looking around for a strongman to fix things….
SiubhanDuinne
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Okay, thanks. I had forgotten that he dropped out for a few weeks in the summer — something to do with his daughter’s wedding, I think.
Isn’t Trump’s daughter about to give birth? If The Donald is looking for an exit strategy that will still allow him to be the Yoodgest and KKKlassiest Person EVAH, perhaps he’ll declare that being a grandfather is more important than all the Presidencies money can buy.
boatboy_srq
@efgoldman: A lot will depend on how closely the GOTea Congresscritters keep to the dogwhistle, and how effective the Dems are at tying that to the failure the GOTea has become (with Trump as proof). If the Teahadis stick to the script they can get painted as wusses afraid to speak the bigoted plain language, and if they go full metal Trump…. well, that will turn off anyone who likes to pretend s/he’s NOT a bigot.
NorthLeft12
@OzarkHillbilly:
This is a perfect summation of the recent history of Republicans vs Iran. Now if only you guys had an independent media or even another political party that would point this out and publicize this so that a majority of US voters might realize how useless and stupid and wrong the Republicans and their enabling pundits are.
That would be nice!
C. Isaac
Welp, John Oliver hit it out of the park last night.
Definitely worth a watch if anyone has the time. He breaks his promise and actually has an episode on Trump and… well… evisceration would be a kind word to use.
#makedonalddrumpfagain
boatboy_srq
@japa21: Nobody in the GOTea establishment gets that. Not yet. Hence all the handwringing.
Original Lee
My current hypothesis is that about half of Trump voters are actually casting protest votes. The more the media talks about how much the Establishment GOP doesn’t want Trump as the nominee, the bigger Trump wins in the primary. I posit that quite a large number of GOP primary voters were ready and willing to vote for Jeb!, until he turned out to be a horrible campaigner, and they are so disgusted with their other choices that they’re voting for Trump in defiance of the party elites.
I’ve been hearing about Republicans for Hillary, so maybe there’s hope yet.
Jeffro
@japa21:
Exactly right. And I think the rest of the GOP is finally getting it, too.
OzarkHillbilly
@boatboy_srq:
I don’t know about all of us, but I certainly did (I prefer a nice Dijon mustard with my crow, ketchup is for trailer trash) but still, time and again I go back to the fact that this is a country that elected Obama not once but twice even with some of the worst race baiting I have seen since…. Reagan? (I don’t think even Reagan was this bad but 1980 was a long time ago) and Obama still has good approval ratings.
All of which won’t matter at all if the economy turns south or if their is a major terrorist attack. Which, I have to think the Jihadis are salivating at the thought of a Trump presidency.
FlipYrWhig
@Original Lee: I’m not even sure a lot of the people voting for Trump actually want Trump to be the president. I think they’re moping about how the next president is going to be Hillary Clinton and finding a way to say “If that’s what we’re going to have to suffer through, at least we can throw a hell of a blowout for ourselves on the way down.”
Paul in KY
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Hope nothing is wrong with him.
Chris
@MomSense:
I came to the conclusion years ago that ultimately, the reason I was voting against Republican candidates wasn’t because I was voting against them personally, or their bullshit party platform, or even the Wall Streeters and Koch brothers who own them.
At the end of the day, the person I’m really voting against is John Q. Brain-Dead Racist in the next house over, with his gun rack and faded Bush/Cheney bumper stickers, who’ll go on to anybody who listens about how Barry Soetoro is a Muslim born in Kenya who took the White House by fraud, how this is supposed to be a Christian nation and they’re becoming an oppressed minority, how he’d totally be a success story but affirmative action and Obamacare are keeping him down, and who’s now rallying to Trump or any one of the other loonies for the same reason he rallied to Palin eight years ago and Bush sixteen years ago. Forget politicians being put into office by the RNC or the Koch brothers; anybody put into office by that guy and the millions of voters like him is going to be a catastrophe for the nation and probably the world, the same way the last guy they put into office was.
@FlipYrWhig:
I don’t think Trump’s voters see any difference either.
That’s kind of why the Republican establishment is struggling so much against Trump. It’s very hard to convince your voters that what was awesome in 2008 when Palin did it and in 2000 when Bush did it and in 1980 when Reagan did it has now suddenly become horrible and bad when Trump does it in 2016.
MomSense
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
My lab had an obstruction and had to have emergency surgery. He couldn’t poop so his body was trying to evacuate the waste at the other end.
EconWatcher
By@Kay:
By the way, I’m not saying anyone’s arguing this, but I think it’s an oversimplification to say that Trump’s rise is prompted mainly by racism.
The fact is, blue-collar whites have lost out badly because of neoliberal policies of free trade and relatively free immigration. (So have blue-collar native-born blacks and Latinos, of course.) Stacking the NLRB at various times with union busters has obviously hurt, but trade liberalization and mass immigration of unskilled labor were much more important in creating market conditions that destroyed decent-paying jobs for lower educated workers. And those policies were supported by Dem and Republican elites alike. The Clintons are very much a symbol of those policies.
So the anger of many Trump supporters is legitimate and not itself just a symptom of racism. They really have been screwed. They have a right to be mad. But of course, the fact that they want to listen to a charlatan like Trump, rather than join with their brothers and sisters of a different hue in fighting for more egalitarian economic policies–this is probably where the racism comes in.
Rhoda
@C.V. Danes:
I just have to comment on this; because the ignorance is breathtaking.
Barack Obama is a black man in America. He had no illusions about the Republican party which is why he’s had the most productive presidency since Johnson. Rather, he understands what Chris Rock called sorority racism of America. He has to always be perceived as the good black man. He has to always offer a hand to his enemies. He has to comfort White supporters that he’s not like *those* black people, the militant ones they move away from but he’s a special Negro. He has to do all that while remaining true to his progressive roots; which means he has to eat a lot of shit like people yelling “You lie” to him and having protesters carrying signs with him as a monkey and his wife as a gorilla and have the MSM say these tea party people aren’t racists but true economic conservatives.
Black people have to move in the world always keeping the comfort of the White Soul in mind, like Mammy, if you want to get ahead and hold power. It’s infuriating and slowly changing; but there’s a reason why Obama can’t get angry as other can and there’s a reason he has always worked to be the grown up in the room. There is a huge swath of America that doesn’t want him IN the room and doesn’t see him as a man. Similarly, he can’t just say no to things. He has to consider, discuss, and reject. Why? Because there is a huge swath of liberal whites who subconsciously rebel at the idea of a black man in charge and saying NO – flat out.
These are the truths he deals with as he tries to put together a coalition of enough whites to win the White House; fortunately demographically the number of whites needed goes down every year and he can be freeer and the next minority will as well. You’ll see, Hillary Clinton is going to face a different but similar issues as a woman holding power.
But truly, I’ve heard similar comments all the time and I simply had to post because the ignorance and privilege behind it always astounds me.
geg6
@FlipYrWhig:
I feel the same way.
Original Lee
@FlipYrWhig: I’m sure there’s a faction that thinks that. My impression (from FB, mostly) is that quite a lot of Republican voters are PISSED that the slate of candidates is so inept and awful.
OzarkHillbilly
@EconWatcher:
There is the unspoken “yeah, but…” argument there. I would bet donuts to dollars the union busting was done with their full throated approval. (not all of them, just a sizable majority)
C.V. Danes
@Rafer Janders: Yup. No finance means no commerce, which means no food and, fairly quickly, no government.
WaterGirl
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
That is most excellent!
OzarkHillbilly
@Rhoda: Well said. Hear hear.
Phylllis
@Kay: It’s not a closed primary.
father pussbucket
@Ultraviolet Thunder:
That sets him apart, all right. Pupoon for veep?
MattF
@Original Lee: I’ve been thinking that Jeb!’s failure is quite a big deal, which is consistent with what you’re saying. Jeb! was the heir presumptive– and it turned out that the crown, orb, and scepter just didn’t fit.
Elizabelle
@EconWatcher: Thank you for saying that. I concur. It’s simplistic to attribute the Trump phenomenon to race (although it plays its part with a lot of his supporters).
FlipYrWhig
@EconWatcher:
OK, but they didn’t need to go full metal Crab Bucket as a response, either. There was free trade and free immigration happening under George W. Bush and they sure didn’t have any kind of political uprising about that. Seems like it was the stimulus ( = welfare) and Obamacare ( = more welfare) that done it: “my life is shit and the black president is trying to help losers who deserve to be worse off than I am.”
Elizabelle
@Rhoda: Comment of the day, Rhoda. Well said. Thank you.
Matt McIrvin
@OzarkHillbilly:
48%, 50% approval is not good. It’s not really bad, but it’s not good.
The danger is that there’s a hidden bloc of Nazi-Americans who basically haven’t seen the point of voting for the past few decades because, post-George Wallace, nobody really gives them permission to let their freak flags fly. All the race-baiting has been coded. But Trump dispenses with the code; he retweets fascist dictators and Klansmen and dares anyone to call him on it.
Trump’s primary organization is turning out first-time voters. I think our population of unrepentant racist genocidaires is way higher than most people think it is. The wastes of skin who would otherwise be dreaming idly of shooting up nursery schools are coming out to vote.
FlipYrWhig
@Elizabelle: But there’s no good reason to respond to economic pressure by glomming onto Donald Trump, who has nothing to say about anything and hasn’t made any promises or plans for how to ameliorate that economic pressure, other than to suggest that because he’s Donald Trump his magic balls will solve everything.
rikyrah
UH HUH
UH HUH
THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW 2/26/16
New e-mails paint Snyder into corner on Flint crisis
Rachel Maddow reports on a new release of e-mails from the office of Michigan Governor Rick Snyder that show his inner circle knew about the problems in Flint before the governor claims he knew and well before he took action to help.
Rhoda
@EconWatcher: I just think of those same blue-collar whites in Kentucky voting to get rid of their health care because it was connected to Obama. The willful ignorance of them considering Kynect a different entity than Obamacare; and then turning on it when they find it’s not. Then, realizing that they would lose insurance too and not just the minorities they want to deny.
So, yes, I think all of Trump’s success is racism. It’s telling people he’ll stop the Spanish from coming across the border, kill the Muslims with bullets dipped in pigs blood, and get out of the Middle East and let them all kill themseleves – except he’ll destroy any that try to come hear and hey why should they be allowed in and why don’t we put the ones here now in a camp were we can keep an eye on them. It’s racist and it’s not new.
Most of the issues this country faces are tied to race: it’s the original sin for a reason and developed to economically protect the elite. Black people were other’d to provide whites someone to look down on and to objectively say that while their economic conditions were the same perhaps the color of their skin made them better and equal to those with true power. It’s part of the backlash we’re seeing having a black president. It’s also part of the power; a whole generation of white children are seeing a black man wield power and WIN. They may be taught to hate him at home; but they’re witnessing his equality in a profound manner and given the progress we HAVE made to make overt racism unacceptable it changes their subconscious idea of what a black person can and cannot be and that is wonderful.
boatboy_srq
@OzarkHillbilly: The problem is that they’re still using dogwhistle. They can’t speak plainly – The Original Trump has the lock on that – so they’re left with (in Rubio’s case) admitting that the primary is a d!ck-measuring contest. The base has decided they’ve had enough of dancing around the truth, and they want their real agenda out in plain sight, up close and personal. In April of last year that was unthinkable. In July it was a symptom of an outlier Teahadi cell. Now it’s front and center and the party is just NOT dealing with it. Dems really need to step up, point to Trump (and his polling numbers, and his primary wins) and ask “is THIS the United States we want?” And Republicans – the few remaining with souls and scruples – need to stop dancing around the “real Conservative” BS, and admit that Atwater fvcked them thirty-seven years ago and it’s time to own up to it; if they don’t then they’re just admitting that Trump is right, and that dogwhistle is the weak tea the squeamish feed the bigoted.
geg6
@EconWatcher:
Sorry, but I live in one of those areas filled with those so-called angry white blue collar workers and I can tell you that it was pure racism that put them where they are. These assholes were (and still are) against unions because unions gave free things like vacation time, seniority, medical/dental insurance, 40 hour weeks to blah people. They are happy to be screwed as long as they can fantasize about, maybe, getting it back one day with no blahs getting the same thing. Oh, and add women into that, too. They despise them as much as they despise the blahs. Racism underlies everything about them. I know because they are all around me and I have to hear it every fucking goddam day.
Rand Careaga
@OzarkHillbilly: In 1969 the freaking Manson family used to dumpster-dive behind the supermarket a block from where I then lived.
japa21
@Rhoda: As a old white guy, let me say I applaud both of your comments. Well said. It is amazing how many so-called progressives don’t get it.
Rhoda
@Matt McIrvin: I’m worried about the KKK vote; but I’m also really wanting to see this country as it really truly is so having Trump as the nominee does that. I want to know where I stand in this country; it’s why I wanted to see Obama run and hoped he’d win.
Sometimes, elections are about answering questions and it’s worth knowing how deep the racist rot in this country is right now. I’m betting Trump can’t win; but we’ll see.
I want to know. I am confident in surviving the fallout; black people have seen and gone through worst.
WaterGirl
@Baud: I find that frightening, not funny. I am surely missing something, I just don’t know what it is.
Matt McIrvin
@Rhoda: There is an advantage to the lifting of illusions.
WaterGirl
@David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch:
Wow, just wow. Good thing I was sitting down when I read that. Chuckles behaving almost like a journalist? Where has he been for the past 8 years? Now that Chuckles knows those words, I’m sure he start using them on all candidates who say things that are openly speculative. Right.
Iowa Old Lady
John Oliver is brilliant on Trump. You’ll want to join his Make Donald Drumpf Again campain.
geg6
@Rhoda:
I agree. It’s frightening to witness, but I prefer to have it all out in the open. But then, I’m a white woman. So I haven’t always felt comfortable saying such a thing because I was afraid it would reflect my privilege. Glad to see that my black brothers and sisters feel the same way.
japa21
@boatboy_srq: Over the weekend my wife and I were able to spend a little time with her brother and sister in-law. They live in northern Wisconsin and have 4 kids (hardly kids any more s9nce the youngest in is her late 30’s). Only one of the kids is not a hard core conservative. Before seeing us they spent a little time with their son in southern Wisconsin and he was talking about how Trump it just saying openly what so many people believe in (and he was including himself). When they started quoting Trump and asked him if he (their son) really believed in what Trump was saying, he had to admit to the fact that, no, he doesn’t;t think a wall should be built or that Muslims should not be allowed into the country, etc.
Which tells me it isn’t, in all cases, what Trump is saying, but rather he is tapping into the anger felt by a lot of people. The anger is the message. If we get too caught up in the racism (and yes that is relevant for a lot of his supporters) we can underestimate the power of anger. Anger is also what is motivating a lot of the support for Sanders.
CONGRATULATIONS!
They are coming unglued. How bad?
My dad is a lifelong Republican (Chamber of Commerce breed, not Talibangeical or TeaTard breed) and in his seventies, called me this weekend. He wanted to know if Bernie was “serious” about this “socialism stuff”. Told him, yeah, he was, although I didn’t see a legislative environment that would allow him to get through one of his proposals let alone a lot of them, and to call him a “socialist” was kind of ludicrous in the first place.
No, that wasn’t OK. Shit. Well, maybe someone will drop in or their side at the last minute, like Bloomberg. He, like most voters, doesn’t understand how parties or primaries work, but most don’t. It”s way too late for a savior. I didn’t bother to tell him, he’ll have plenty of time to figure it out. He’s a smart guy, he will.
If someone didn’t come and “save them” (his words) at the last minute, he was going to have to vote for Hillary, because not only was Trump unacceptable, he was SO unacceptable that staying at home and/or not voting the top of the ticket was not OK. He had to be voted against. The guy has to be stopped (his words, again).
My dad’s somewhat unusual for a GOP voter. Pragmatist first and foremost. No social concerns at all. He gives a shit about low taxes and pro-business policies and that’s it.
And a lot of those people are looking at Trump with utter horror and ready to go off the reservation – this time – if we can give them a reason to. And it won’t have to be caving on their platform, we don’t have to give them jack shit as they’re not expecting it, we will just have to be not do anything stupid.
rikyrah
@EconWatcher:
Well, we will disagree.
Trump doesn’t speak in dogwhistles.
And, they appreciate that.
Take out country back?
Make America great?
Really?
Seriously?
I know what it means. Maybe you don’t, but I do.
The economic insecurity that these White folks feel..
well, they voted for the people that brought about the policies.
They long for the time when all you had to be was White.
Period.
You could get a job where you could support a family, as long as you were White.
Didn’t even have to be educated and White.
Just White.
Our police, fire department and public sector jobs were full of them.
All you had to do was be White and 18. Didn’t even have to have graduated from High School.
Curious how after the suits were won, and Non-White began getting into those positions, that the requirements for those positions suddenly had to be ‘tightened’, with more and more requirements.
You can pretend that it’s not about race. That’s fine.
They long for the delusional times of Mad Men, where they pretend that it was such a meritocracy.
When, in fact, they were not big fish in a big pond.
They were fish in a pond where 90% of the rest of the folks were in sardine cans. But, now, those cans are open, and folks aren’t going back to those cans, and they will have to just compete with the rest of us.
We’re under 5% unemployment.
What the phuck are they talking about “Make America Great” again.
Phuck.outta.here.
OzarkHillbilly
@Matt McIrvin:
It is astoundingly good that a black Kenyan Muslim anti colonialist socialist who hates America, invites terrorists, is destroying our military, and apologizes for everything we have ever done, is approved by about 50% of Americans. Consider that the previous incumbant, a white, tuff talking Texas swaggering Wasp who showed those ragheads in the ME with waterboarding and bombs who was boss and cut our taxes to where they should have been all along left office with 34% approval ratings. It’s all relative, you have to allow for the FOX news effect.
I really don’t get this. Where do you live? Because I can tell you they weren’t hiding, you weren’t paying attention. They were flying their freak flag and loud and proud too, they NEVER asked for nor needed permission. They are saying the same things now that they have always said, it’s just that now Trump is saying them too. This is nothing new, it is the same racist xenophobic strain that has been running thru the American psyche since before Andy Jackson decided “killing Injuns is good sport”. Believe me, I live among these people, been living among them most of my life, one way or the other. And most of them have always voted too. They were the ones who put Reagan in office, and Pappy Bush, and Shrub.
I say again, Trump could win, but he can’t do it on the strength of the racist vote alone.
schrodinger's cat
@rikyrah: Preach it sister! Righteous rant!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Interesting…
Does anyone here manage to sit through the Sunday shows? Was anyone making the case that McConnell and Trump are basically two symptoms of the same Republican disease?
Chris
@geg6:
Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I think Obama’s assessment of the white conservative base as “bitter and clinging to their guns and religion and hatred of other people” was probably the most insightful comment on American politics that’s been made since George Wallace and Lee Atwater’s confessions.
(Which is probably more of a commentary on the state of American politics, and how far politicians and media will bend over backwards to avoid stating the plainly obvious, than on the actual insightfulness of the comment).
rikyrah
@Rhoda:
That’s how I felt when Barack Obama ran.
I just wanted the answer to the question:
Would America vote for an obviously qualified Black Candidate for President?
I didn’t know the answer. I just wanted the question answered.
I’m with Rhoda. I want this non-filtered bigot to win the nomination.
Maybe he wins. Maybe he doesn’t.
Unlike others who have the luxury of not believing that Trump wouldn’t be as bad as Rubio or Cruz…
What he says he wants to do to Muslims….
I KNOW will be done to Black folk.
I have absolutely NO ILLUSIONS.
OzarkHillbilly
@boatboy_srq: I agree.
They will, but not before Trump has it in the bag. This is why Republicans are so terrified. Trump is a big fat fish in a very small barrel.
Rhoda
@rikyrah: THIS all day.
And it’s especially ironic given how George W. Bush took a country with a surplus and basically destroyed the economic moorings of the country with two wars on a credit card. Through, to be fair, Alan Greenspan deserves his share of the blame too.
LAO
Holy crap. Walked past this on my way in to work.
Rhoda
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I don’t know about the Sunday shows; but apparently the Senate Republicans are planning to run as fast and far away from Trump as possible according to TPM; if I’m remembering the post I read properly. It’s already started w/a Nebraska Senator saying if Trump is the nominee he’ll sit out the election.
LAO
Why can’t I get links to work? Is it me? It’s probably me. https://www.dnainfo.com/new-york/20160229/midtown/passersby-lift-car-off-woman-after-midtown-crash-witnesses-say
Chris
@Rhoda:
I can relate to that. One of the reasons it had become so impossible to have a conversation with a conservative is that the entire movement is so saturated with denial, doublethink, constantly changing revisionism, and many other fallacies that normal people would simply call “bullshit” – and nowhere is that more obvious than the arguments around race and the modern GOP’s relation to the old segregationist bloc and other openly racist factions.
Not that that’s changed, exactly – talk to any anti-Trump conservative and you’ll find that they’ve never been more up to their eyeballs in all that bullshit, if anything Trump is pushing them further into denial (“but… but… we were never like that! The movement was never about this! He’s not a real conservative!”) But the Trump voter bloc is large enough that, at least for the moment, these people have been pushed aside and made irrelevant. The 2016 argument will be between Democrats and Trump supporters, who wear the racism openly and on their sleeves.
Rhoda
@rikyrah: People need to go to jail for this; they poisoned people for TWO YEARS. I mean, goddamn. You think you can’t get any angrier; and then BOOM the world provides a new horror.
gogol's wife
@raven:
I just watched his acceptance speech, which was so sweet.
Shana
@rikyrah: I saw the clip of Rubio’s “small hands” bit this morning. Right behind him and to his left was a father with two children, 10ish, who looked appalled. Good work there Marco.
amk
@EconWatcher:
“The fact is, blue-collar whites have lost out badly because of neoliberal policies of free trade and relatively free immigration.”
No, they didn’t. They lost because they repeatedly voted for the 1%ers party, which actively aided and abetted the shipping of their jobs to low cost labor markets. So, why should their ‘anger’ take precedence over everything else?
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: No one is saying this is NOT about race, rikyrah.
But putting it down solely to race is problematic too, and too simplistic. I think the major part is race, but it’s not the complete answer because it does not apply to every Trump voter.
(And I take your point about many white voters not realizing how much of a leg up they have, due to years and years of white superiority they’ve taken completely for granted. That’s ignorant, but it’s the state of it. Black families have not had years of home ownership for generations and other financial gains that whites think they “built themselves” and that were outright denied to minorities. By the law. Not as much pensions and inheritances to help the next generation too. That’s enormous, over time.)
@Chris: Yeah. It gets tiresome to see Obama assailed for what was an honest and insightful comment. Some jerks are still using that to wound him. I speak of journalists. Cuz if a Republican says something whack in private, well, look what Obama was overheard saying. Except ….
Punchy
In an article all about the craziness of the GOP, the author just couldn’t help but get in the “both sides do it!”, even thought there’s zero evidence for this in the essay.
Shitbags, the lot of ’em.
Matt McIrvin
@OzarkHillbilly:
Trust me, they live in my neighborhood. Yes, in Massachusetts. More of them live in this neighborhood than the last neighborhood I lived in, which is maybe part of what’s freaking me out. (But not as many as in the neighborhood where I grew up in Virginia.) They fly Confederate flags, I’ve even seen one dude rolling coal.
I’m just trying to figure out how many more of them there are. The candidates the Republicans nominated the last couple of times weren’t calculated to appeal to them.
rikyrah
@Elizabelle:
We, again, will agree to disagree.
The largest base for Trump is what I call ‘ clinging to the Whiteness’ White folk.
They have, for generations, voted against their own economic self-interest..
because, of the possibility that ‘ those people’ would benefit.
That’s who they are. So, they fall for the GOP bullshyt of resentment EVERY DAMN TIME.
They’re ok with folks not getting Healthcare, as long as ‘ those people’ don’t get it.
‘Those people’ are NON-WHITE PEOPLE.
If it’s not about race…when what is it about?
Elizabelle
@rikyrah: Loss of opportunity and illusions, although they don’t want to actually inform themselves and think about why and how?
Not saying there isn’t a dog klaxon on race. That’s front and center, no doubt, and the most powerful lure.
ETA: with apologies to dogs. Who are more noble creatures.
boatboy_srq
@japa21: @EconWatcher: I think it’s a lot more closely associated than that.
The middle class and WWCs have indeed been scr3w3d. But the scr3wing goes back a long way. Consider what organized labor faced a century ago – and what Irish, Italian, Slavic and other immigration waves have faced on arrival (and for generations after). All In The Family was funny – but it was pointed because Archie Bunker, while a caricature, was a caricature of someone everyone knows. And that was nearly fifty years ago. This phenomen is not new; neither is blaming Those People for the misfortunes all suffer.
What is comparatively new is the refreshing honesty from Trump. Trumpmentum may not be entirely a racist phenomenon. But there’s a very strong bigoted element to it. And the distinction between Trump voters and the rest of the GOTea isn’t racism, sexism, or any other bigotry: it’s between the ability to call things by the old names without beating around the bush about Those People and the insistence that dogwhistle is somehow polite and inoffensive. The Southern Strategy worked; what isn’t working now is the subterfuge Atwater created to make the Southern Strategy work, and that’s failing because codespeak isn’t “courageous.” Trump may not be especially brave, but he is perceived as such by people raised on an aversion to “political correctness” who see dogwhistle as just another expression of PC behavior and yearn for the days when “plain talkin'” was socially acceptable and not something to camouflage.
We’ve already seen what “he didn’t really mean that” brings to the table. Rick Scott was similarly plain-spoken, though he still tipped his hat to the dogwhistle forms. His governorship of Florida has been horrendous for everyone. I lost track of how many people I knew who had voted for him – and regretted it because they took his statements as “campaign promises [not to be honored]” and not an actual agenda. Trump is working the same game; he’s just being more direct about what he says.
And where is the anger coming from? Is it from the failure of the American Dream? Or is it from three decades of brainwashing by Limbaugh, Fauxnews and the rest that Ahmurrrca Is Going To Hell And Those People Are Responsible For It? When your job goes to Mexico or India, and you see Those People surviving while you’re nearly dumpster-diving to put food on your family™, and the TV is full of Those People either gaming the system or blowing things up just because the cops got firm with them, how likely are you to believe that Blahs and Browns and Others aren’t the source of your troubles? (I’d say pretty likely). And this is how the PTBs want it: WWCs turned against everyone else so they’re too focused on the pittance the safety net provides to notice the grand theft at the top. It’s easily explained as misinformed/disinformed voters; that doesn’t make it less racist/sexist/anti-Otherist, it just points to a different cause.
Everyone has anecdotes of people who support Trump without buying his bigotry. But those people don’t give the substantially racist/sexist/anti-Otherist GOP a pass. And they don’t explain the generations of anti-Other sentiment, prettily decorated with seemingly-disconnected code phrases, that have been a staple of Conservatist language for decades. Wisconsinites may not be aware of just how hate-filled Trump’s words sound, but there are plenty of Georgians, Alabamans, Texans, Arizonans and other New Southerners who not only hear the hatred but agree with it.
Just yesterday we were discussing how much flak HRC received for being a married professional with a career of her own. Trump’s rhetoric is the same – it’s just using shorter words. THERE IS NO CHANGE IN ATTITUDE: only in phrasing.
Nate Dawg
I posted this on a Facebook thread of some Republican friends who are horrified at the Trump ascendancy:
Keep in mind that these nuts are a small percentage of the country overall, and a lot of his success is disillusionment with establishment, and the bandwagon effect.
This is a teachable moment.
D58826
Oh my the world is coming to an end. Clarence Thomas asked multiple questions today. First timer he has asked a question during oral arguments in 10 years. Or maybe Scalia’s spirit has just transferred body’s
OzarkHillbilly
@Matt McIrvin: Ahhh…. a Masshole then, that explains everything. ;-)
My unscientific guess is not as many as the last time George Wallace ran. I think it just seems to be worse because Trump is so out and up front with it. (when was the last time somebody said he had to investigate what the KKK and one of it’s former Grand Dragons was about?) but I was seeing all of this back in the summer of 2010 when the Teahadis were invading every town hall meeting with a congress critter and screaming some of the most vile rhetoric I had heard in quite some time. That was the backlash to Obama writ large. And it worked in the low turn out mid-terms. In 2012 they all believed their own BS and got spanked for it. 2014, another low turn out election and they turned the Senate.
The lesson for them, and us, is the only way they can win is to rig the elections and deny the vote to as many low resource people as they can and wait for something bad to happen so they can blame it on the Dems. But it has to be something really bad, Benghazi didn’t work, never could have. Another major banking crises might do it, a Paris sized terror attack would do it.
PaulW
I will see you at the Florida Library Association conference this week.
rikyrah
@boatboy_srq:
Someone on another blog just wrote something that made absolute sense to me.
Donald Trump is George Wallace.
And NOBODY in the GOP is gonna ‘ Out-Nigger’ Him.
That’s it.
Chris
@boatboy_srq:
This reminds me of something I’ve always found darkly funny, and revealing, about white Baby Boomers and above (i.e. people old enough to remember Real Racism, that thing MLK supposedly ended in the sixties):
Somehow, every single one of them had a Racist Uncle, a Racist Father-in-Law, or a Racist Boss, complete with a flurry of outrageous anecdotes that they’ll chuckle about because oh my, was there really a time when people believed that?
And somehow, not a single one of them was the Racist Uncle.
Despite the fact that for segregation (“Real Racism”) to have lasted as long as it did and clung on as fiercely as it did, simple math says it would’ve had to have a hell of a lot more supporters than the few (at least pre-Trump) fruit loops who actually admitted to racism out loud.
Just another small part of the massive collective amnesia white society has on the subject.
Matt McIrvin
@OzarkHillbilly: In Massachusetts, three miles away from the border of the most deep-red, super-white portion of New Hampshire. And also close to areas with a lot of Hispanics, some of whom are also black, and are my daughter’s friends, so the stakes feel high.
geg6
@Chris:
He wasn’t talking about the white conservative base. He was talking about white Democrats. Well, nominal Democrats. The ones that are still registered Democrat but haven’t voted for one for over thirty years. And that comment was exactly right and he should never have apologized for it (though I get why he had to). Because those are the people who live right here, just outside of the People’s Republic of Pittsburgh. I know them. I help their kids when they come to my University. I drink with them on Friday nights. They’re all racists and bitter and angry and they all cling to their guns and bibles. They can’t understand why I seem so happy most of the time, when I am obviously a crazed commie hippie whose lack of racial fears will end with me being murdered in my bed by the vicious black hordes I am enabling.
C.V. Danes
@Rhoda: With all due respect, I’ve been married to a black woman for 20 years and, subsequently have been pretty well immersed in the black community for a good long while, so I really don’t need you ‘blacksplaining’ the trials and tribulations of a black president. I get it. I’ve been front row at many, many family discussions about it.
I think it is disingenuous to blame it all on some feality that Obama had to provide to the white establishment. The guy was brave enough to run for president, and he is certainly brave enough now not to take their crap. Thus, I don’t think it outlandish to suggest that someone who was relatively young at the time, and perhaps relatively inexperienced as far as the Senate goes, might have been somewhat idealistic about how things could work out. He’s certainly more pragmatic now, as is Clinton, and an Obama elected today would certainly manage Congress much differently than the Obama of eight years ago.
Shell
GOP core values? I’d like to know what those are too.
Matt McIrvin
@OzarkHillbilly:
I’m actually kind of amazed that the political effect of the back-to-back Paris and San Bernardino attacks didn’t last longer than it did. It felt like we’d reverted to the immediate post-9/11 atmosphere for a couple of weeks, then it sort of faded into the background except that the story became Trump making hay over it.
boatboy_srq
@rikyrah: @Elizabelle: Has anyone seen any studies of the political inclinations of the folks who moved South and Southwest? We’ve seen a lot about the Great Migration to Southern and Southwestern states: how people seek jobs and a lower cost of living etc. But what was the political makeup of the people making that move? I’d bet that either a lot of Conservatives made that move, or they raised their kids a lot more Conservative once they arrived.
And as for
Consider what a lock Fauxnews has on the broadcast news market. Anyone not subscribing to three thousand channels of cable/satellite and willing to watch BBC, CBC, or Al-Jazeera for their information has been stuck with Reichwingers playing Murdoch’s tune over the airwaves 24/7. And if you want local news, Fauxnews has let the marketplace – and led with red-meat shooting/stabbing/rape/pillage coverage, usually perpetrated by one of Those People. When all your information says Blahs and Browns and unXtians are to blame for all society’s ills, sooner or later it sinks in.
Neoliberalism hasn’t helped. International business models meant that Your Job could go almost anywhere – and that usually meant Your Job got taken by some Other Person (almost always in some Other Place). Free Trade has become a race to the bottom when it comes to labor costs; and there has been significant pushback against it. Has it mattered? Mostly, no: the world is still inking trade partnerships that perpetuate the worst of intellectual property ownership and of labor management. And the consumer has had a couple decades of Walmart reneging on its “Made in the USA” efforts just so people can own more (cheap, disposable) stuff – which only makes the problem worse.
Anger is inevitable: but that anger should be directed at the real culprits and not racial scapegoats. Trump may not be bellowing constantly that niCLANGs are taking over, but he is doing fvck-all to correct his backers who do – and if he does he likely loses a lot of his backing.
FWIW, Cruz, Huckabee and the rest of the Xtian Reichwingers use their own brand of dogwhistle to say exactly the same things. “Oppression of Xtians” and “religious liberty” isn’t just about recreational abortions and Teh Ghey: there’s a strong racial/ethnic component, lurking in the makeup of the FundiEvangelical sphere. How many hate preachers with national audience are POCs? How many preside over majority-white congregations? Calling it Righteous, or Xtian, or Bible-Believing doesn’t make it non-racist; it just indulges in a different dogwhistle from the folks talking about the public-sector side and it’s “entitlements” and “forced busing” and “deficits.”
Kathleen
@NorthLeft12: I think the crisis is what GOP wants to be and everyone else figuring out this is what it really wanted to be.
gvg
We are complaining about the effects of unlimited free trade on our job prospects now. 20 years ago I was reading the same complaints from other industrializing 3rd world countries and thinking I see their fear but how can you stop trade in a way that isn’t worse? And our leaders just ignored it and went ahead. Now its obvious it’s happening to us, and nobody is remembering that. Plus I still don’t know what the alternative can be.
It seems to me we need a tougher tax code that takes some from the top just so they don’t take all of it and prevent anyone else from ever challanging them even with a better business product. But I think it could only really work of it was pretty widespread among the big countries of the world? Anybody know of any well developed ideas on how it could work?
boatboy_srq
@OzarkHillbilly: Oh, that waits for the general election. For now, it’s far more entertaining – and useful – to sit back and watch the Reichwing eat itself.
boatboy_srq
@gvg:
Fair Pay and a Living Wage makes for a good start. Germany isn’t suffering, and they have a significantly higher wage, more (and better) benefits. VAG is in trouble – but trouble of their own making in the market and not trouble with workers. Pay better and the company does better. The problem is that “trade” has been used as an excuse to keep wages suppressed and benefits meagre. THAT has to stop.
WarMunchkin
@C.V. Danes:
Seconded. @Rhoda, I hear you loud and clear, and I’m very aware of what President Obama has had to deal with. The infamous Joe Biden “articulate” comment was made for a reason, and that reason is dripping in privilege. But the man himself does exist, too, outside of the abstraction, and he has a large body of written work prior to running for President that shows that yes, he – and his staff – did actually believe in the possibility of his personal charisma uniting the parties.
Kay
We got Marci Kaptur for the rural- county Dem dinner. The date is designed to bring people out for the primary and she’s very popular here so we’ll see if people show up. If the older conservaDems don’t show up for that I’ll start to worry.
Not that all older Dems are conservaDems! They just are here :)
I will look for Trump defectors!
Matt McIrvin
@boatboy_srq:
And this is a significant point: if American jobs are going to be taken by Other People, it’s actually much better for us that they come over here and do it rather than staying in their own countries. Because if they’re here, especially if they stay and settle down and become American, they spend most of their money here. The pie grows; they make jobs rather than just taking them. If they’re over there, forget it.
But to the people who are full of resentment about this, it feels the other way around.
Origuy
Nate Silver tweeted this yesterday:
In other words, we’ve really only heard from a few people where it counts, in the voting booth or the caucus room.
C.V. Danes
@gvg: Ideally, you would want free flow of labor to challenge the free flow of capital, but in reality, and for a lot of reasons, labor movement is much stickier than capital. In that case, what you need are trade agreements that have real teeth when it comes to worker protections, but that also take into consideration the real differences in cost of living between counties. The cost of living in the US is high in relative terms, for example, in no small part because we have better roads and infrastructure to maintain.
SiubhanDuinne
Just watching the Navy Seal receive the Medal of Honor, and it suddenly struck me, watching President Obama speak and then fasten the medal ribbon around Edward Byers’ neck, that he (Obama) is always present. He is fully and wholly present in an almost Zen-like way. You never once get the idea that he’d really rather be golfing or shooting hoops right then, or that his mind has wandered off to the latest crisis in the Middle East, or that he’s mentally rehearsing the speech he’s scheduled to give the next day, or where Malia is planning to go to college. He is nearly always in the moment, bringing his full attention to the task at hand.
I guess I’ve been somewhat aware of this for years, but the televised ceremony a few minutes ago really crystallized it for me. I don’t think I’ve ever observed anyone — certainly not for as sustained a period of time — who brought this quality to bear as consistently as Obama does. What a great attribute for a President.
geg6
Meanwhile, Bernie Sanders’ surrogate Cornell West is making damn sure he’ll never be received in polite black company ever again
Jesus. He’s lost his damn mind.
schrodinger's cat
@Shell: Tax cuts for the rich and a boot on everyone else’s throat.
boatboy_srq
@Kathleen: I think it’s as simple as the GOTea being forced to admit that it is what Trump has shown the nation it is. It’s “Southern nice” taking a beating from brutal Nyawkah honesty, and it’s uncomfortable even as it’s necessary – and long overdue. If there’s any hope here, it’s that the Establishment comes to terms with the damage decades of Southern Strategy has done, and that their politesse in sticking to innocuous-sounding dogwhistle hasn’t made the problem better (just nicer-sounding). Maybe they’ll start leading instead of merely whipping up resentment. (I know, I know, but one can hope…)
Matt McIrvin
@C.V. Danes: And big economic disruptions can actually make labor even less mobile, by, for instance, tying people to houses with underwater mortgages.
Kay
This is the “missing white voters” theory from 2012, in case anyone is interested.
Republicans where I live believe this- it was their theory for why Romney lost- but it would be because it makes white rural voters more important than they (maybe) are:
It’s always a little sketchy to rely on “missing voters”- obviously one would rather have, I don’t know, voters who have been found and are sure to show up, but it is part of why they think Trump can win.
schrodinger's cat
@OzarkHillbilly:
I disagree, I have to challenge this bit of CW that I have seen floating in the comment section for sometime now. Obama was elected in a large part because of the ineptitude McCain displayed after the 2008 banking crisis. After a major catastrophe you want someone who is cool under pressure and capable. Even those who are thinking of casting a protest vote for Trump will reconsider.
C.V. Danes
@WarMunchkin: Thank you. Perhaps what got lost in the commentary is that Clinton had her own idealism handed to her the first time we tried to pass healthcare reform, and I believe she learned a lot from that moment, as well as decades being the focus of the wingnut machine. I think if Obama knew eight years ago what he knows now, he would have given Congress much less benefit of the doubt.
J R in WV
There are testers ready to test, but there’s more waiting while Alain and a friend of his work on stuff the friend is expert in but that Alain wasn’t as up to speed on. Actual programming language work as opposed to web page organization etc.
So now looking towards the end of the week.
C.V. Danes
@geg6:
I do believe that the Sanders-Clinton divide has the potential to cause real and lasting damage between progressive groups, when the differences are MUCH smaller than with those truly scary individuals across the aisle.
Nate Dawg
@boatboy_srq: Yup.
And the neoliberalism argument was always that “yes, free trade will create losers” but the system will subsidize them via redistribution programs (social safety programs, job retraining, infrastructure projects, etc.).
So we got the free trade without the redistribution, and no sooner had the effects really start to set in than the economy collapses, with a corresponding drop in government revenue.
So what do our leaders do? They do the sensible thing, I suppose, in that they bail out the banks, and stimulate the economy. This was necessary, but far from sufficient to ensure that the situation wouldn’t develop again.
The ultimate problem is that our democracy is too slow to react, too restricted by Constitutional and sub-Constitutional norms, in a modern era with a global economy. Legislators have little reason to show solidarity with the people who support them, because the vast amounts of wealth at the top will come to their aid, and they are in no real danger of losing power.
It’s a witches brew of problems, and I don’t see an easy way out.
As Charlies Pierce noted in his most recent column, the sickening thing is that Ted Cruz is *just* as awful as Donald Trump, and no one in the GOP seems to care. They are perfectly content to act like Trump is the monster in the closet, rather than their inner demon finally being unleashed.
O. Felix Culpa
@rikyrah: Amen to that! I’ve early voted at the 69 W. Washington location several times (typically only once per election, contrary to Chicago rumors) and it’s fast and easy. GOTV, and early where possible!
C.V. Danes
@Matt McIrvin: Exactly. The economic theory behind globalization is that workers would just adapt to changing conditions. Tell that to a 50 year old steel worker with a mortgage.
rikyrah
From Benen:
New CNN poll
1. Donald Trump: 49% (up from 41% in CNN’s poll in January)
2. Marco Rubio: 16% (up from 8%)
3. Ted Cruz: 15% (down from 19%)
4. Ben Carson: 10% (up from 6%)
5. John Kasich: 6% (up from 1%)
Note, this poll was conducted from Wednesday to Saturday, so it includes the days following last week’s debate, which was held on Thursday.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@rikyrah: Pure raw rage.
Elizabelle
@schrodinger’s cat: From your wise lips to the FSM’s, er, whatever …. I agree and hope that will prove true in 2016 too.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
What Senate or House votes, Republican or Democrat, would Obama having been more “pragmatic” have changed? How would he have “managed Congress” differently?
boatboy_srq
@SiubhanDuinne: After eight years of an Alzheimer’s sufferer, and later on eight more years of a spoiled frat boy bully who’d rather do anything than govern, it’s hardly surprising that Obama’s present-ness would be noticeable.
@Matt McIrvin: IIRC the original idea was that trained professionals could go home and do for their own countries what the US and Europe did for themselves (but at a fraction of the cost). What’s happened instead is those professionals coming here, which lowers pay scales (when you’re used to 100,000 rupees, $70,000 sounds like a LOT). And US salaries are deceptive – especially when you consider most civilised countries’ employment offers are posted with after-tax figures where the US’ ones aren’t. The original model was prepared for competition between businesses; what it wasn’t prepared for was the competitiveness of immediate business costs, especially but not exclusively labor costs, in the short term. Bringing skilled labor to the US does have the benefits you cite; but bringing unskilled labor is necessary as well, as more US citizens move toward higher-skill occupations and away from agricultural labor, domestic labor, basic service industries and the like. The biggest problem remaining is how to encourage skilled labor to stay while making sure labor already in country isn’t neglected. The US has done a p!ss-poor job of that on both fronts, and short-term MBA thinking has driven much of that: lower wages reduce costs this quarter but translate to lower earnings in a few years, and reduced benefits save on the bottom line today but cost more when retirees try to cash in. And pension funds have always been targets for raiding. THIS is the problem that needs fixing: respect for labor, both in the absolute and in terms of compensation. Fix that and a lot of the rest will subside. But it’s easier to punch down and complain about your tax dollars going to the Undeserving when you worked so hard for your paycheck.
Calouste
@Origuy: Silver is completely off the rails now about the possibility of Trump winning. His comment suggests that somehow pollsters also interview more passionate Trump supporters than others, because Trump’s results are pretty well in line with the polls. He would have a case with that comment if Trump did significantly better at the primaries than the polls show, but he doesn’t. Nate Silver doesn’t have any credibility any more, he just completely wants to deny the reality that the numbers in front of his eyes tell him exists.
C.V. Danes
@Nate Dawg:
Except that the only way to really speed things up is to institute an autocracy and hope bloody hell that the autocrat is on your side.
The deeper issue, I think, is the growing gap between the rich and everyone else. The rich will always have more influence in government. But as long as they go to the same stores, go to the same schools, drive the same roads as the rest of us, and so on, then their concerns will be fairly close to our concerns. But when they begin to live radically different lives isolated from the rest of us, then their concerns will be very much different from ours and, subsequently the government through their control.
maeve
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.):
I had a dog (named Maeve) who would vomit like that (not much and egg-yolk yellow) if we went on a walk before she ate in the morning. (she was a fussy eater and didn’t chow down immediately). She lived to be 16 with no stomach related health issues.
Elizabelle
I remember Andrew Sullivan, excitable boy with a blog, wondering what would happen when Republican voters woke up and realized W’s administration had lied them into Iraq, killing their kids (among uncounted others). He was writing especially of the southern states and lower income communities, which send more of their kids into the service for lack of other opportunity.
W never really got that comeuppance, full on, but maybe it’s what’s finally happening in FoxNewsNation and LimbaughLand.
Fox and rightwing radio have radicalized a lot of the country, a lot of the white working class — on purpose, because it’s a good business model for them — and now the radical beast is angry. But what to turn that anger on?
I truly would like to see a Democratic president and more liberal Supreme Court take a fresh look at what media consolidation and letting outlets like Fox out there to spew lies and make the country ungovernable (on purpose) does to us. Fox is propaganda and a worldview that endangers democracy. As is corporate media, rushing behind Fox to scoop up its share of cash too. (I despise NBC. Note that their mask is falling off as well.)
I don’t know what one does; what remedies are there. Bringing back the Fairness Doctrine? Maybe so.
Peale
@Kay: I think there is some truth to that. But I’m also certain that those missing voters are going to have to find their way to vote on the own. Since 2004, the Republicans may have lost the edge they had in using the churches to register voters and get them to the polls. These missing voters might be outside the church goer to voting system. In 2004, the progressives were trumpeting this massive GOTV organization but it turned out that while Kerry got millions of more voters than Gore, Bush got even more voters to the polls using the churches. I don’t know if that process is something that someone can turn on and off quickly. The republican Missing voters, though, I don’t think are part of the churchy crowd (or they would be voting already).
Amir Khalid
@geg6:
It might also be (this is pure speculation on my part, I admit) that Cornel West’s star as a public intellectual has begun to wane: people are starting to consider him passé — of some historical importance, but not longer in the vanguard. I do know he’s been on the outs with Obama since that business over the inauguration tickets in ’09, and with Melissa Harris-Perry because she said West’s criticisms of Obama were really about his own thin skin.
Fair Economist
@schrodinger’s cat:
That’s an argument for Rubio among the Republicans because you could at least breathe if you could get your throat in the space between the heel and the rest of the shoe.
boatboy_srq
@Nate Dawg: Living Wage is a start. Encouraging better employee benefits would be good too. Kicking the mindset that each quarter has to be better than the one before or you’re a failure, that CEOs deserve obscene compensation no matter how they perform, and that the Global Free Market is in some way moral, are going to take time. And you’re forgetting that the Great Recession was the second major downturn in less than seven years – and the prior one was worsened by GOTea policies. Nobody seems to remember the “Jobless Recovery” of 2002-04, or that real estate became in that time the last great speculation segment after the dot-bomb tanked stocks, but there was plenty of downside to well-intentioned agreements of the 90s that could be afforded with minimal investment thanks to the boom that began under WJC.
Peale
@Origuy:
LOL. Well I guess the 98.2% of non-trump voters in Nevada should sit down if they aren’t going to vote or show up to caucusi.
Rhoda
@C.V. Danes: I think your comment was ignorant and it’s not one limited by race; lot of black academics out there talking about how Obama hasn’t been a president for black people. I’m sorry for any personal harshness in my tone; but this is such a common and in my mind utterly wrong idea for reasons I stated.
When Mitch McConnell met with his band of merry treasonous Republicans they chose the strategy of NO for one reason; any consideration of an Obama idea, any signal of any possibility he may have a point, reinforced an idea of his legitimacy. By saying NO, the conversation became why can’t Obama compromise, make a deal, reach out to a party of obstructionists. Why? Because, the default position of the black man or woman is supposed to be one of accommodation.
I’m sorry I don’t have the time to go into it further; but I really do find this aggravatingly wrong on every level.
Team Obama made plenty of mistakes; but it wasn’t because they didn’t know how unscrupulous their opposition was but rather being the first black man in the position he and his team didn’t know how far they could push and win reelection.
Trump vindicated their caution; as did the MSM circling the FOX bandwagon at the start of the administration.
Applejinx
@father pussbucket: There will be a mudslide for Papoon!
Calouste
@boatboy_srq:
I don’t know where you get that from, but I have worked in two European countries, applied for jobs in two more, and have got emails from recruiters about jobs in another three or four, and no, they don’t. All salaries posted in job listings and employment contracts are before tax.
Paul in KY
@Nate Dawg: The only stimulation that matters is people getting more in their paychecks. That only comes (in private sector) from the big boss. They haven’t been giving them out, cause they feel they don’t have to.
Paul in KY
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Wouldn’t have wasted time trying to reach across to be ‘bipartisan’ with the tire rims & anthrax crowd (I assume).
C.V. Danes
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Just look around. Are you suggesting that the Obama who is currently looking to hang the Supreme Court idiocy around the Senate Republicans’ neck is the same one who tried to negotiate with them in good faith during his first term?
Obama is a very smart guy. He has obviously learned his lesson. Clinton is a very smart lady. She has learned her lesson, too. The whole point that started this discussion is that Clinton will be walking into the presidency having already learned this lesson: there is no good faith in dealing with the Republicans.
It would be awesome to have Obama for a third term. But a seasoned Clinton will do, too.
boatboy_srq
@C.V. Danes:
The “rest of us” are stuck with Walmart; their schools have been distinct from ours for generations, and their roads are either toll roads they never worry about paying or conveniently isolated from their posteriors by Hummer and Bentley suspensions. Their concerns haven’t been ours for a while, and they’re getting even more isolated. And the problem is spreading: didn’t Yglesias (a normally reasonable writer) tweet just last week that he doesn’t understand the “crumbling infrastructure” complaint, because the infrastructure he encounters isn’t crumbling? If anything the isolation factor is spreading.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Rhoda:
Thanks for this – it’s really fucking way past time for some of these so called progressives to put that shit about Obama’s naivete down. It’s so condescending it makes my teeth hurt.
Rhoda
@WarMunchkin: I think a lot of that was signaling to White voters that their support would bring a seismic change; similar to his signaling black voters. That was turned in both sides to end of racism and a black president for black America being BLACK as a blackberry in ceartin circles. I’m probably not being clear; but the mistake is mirrored on both sides IMO.
boatboy_srq
@Calouste: The three offers I received (one in Brussels with the EU) were presented in after-tax euros. Not after US taxes, of course. And those were a few years ago: hiring procedures may have changed.
john w casey
@Rhoda: This. So well said, and it expresses what I’ve been thinking far better than I’ve ever been able to do.
And I’m part of what seems to be a vanishingly small minority: A white man in his mid-60’s who loves Obama’s presidency, and looks forward to HRC’s.
Kay
@Peale:
That was exactly my experience here in 2004- I was doing voter protection and part of that is driving to polling locations and reporting the votes that have been recorded to the Dem campaign lawyers in Toledo- in Ohio they have to post vote totals periodically. We have a lot of fundie Republicans and they were out in droves. I felt like I knew Kerry would lose by 3 o clock. I had all these people at my house making GOTV phone calls and I didn’t want to go home because I was seeing this turnout- it was too depressing to see them working so hard if he was going to lose.
I didn’t “read the internet” regularly then so I didn’t know about exit polls, ect. I wasn’t surprised at all when he lost. There’s a Christian radio station here “YES”- all the fans have window stickers in their cars. It was like a sea of minivans with YES stickers. Not our voters :)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Paul in KY: too vague. One of the big hold ups in health care was Max Baucus holding up the bill in committee because he didn’t want to damage his great friendship with Chuck Grassley. Was that Obama’s fault?
Claire McCaskill and Ben Nelson were just as much (if not more) obstacles to the Stimulus bill as Olympia Snowe or Arlen Specter. Who was the “tire rims and anthrax crowd” then?
Joe Lieberman and Blanche Lincoln were a drag on health care right up to the end. Would they have been for the public option if Obama had somehow made them stand in the Oval Office while he took a shit with the door open?
Cckids
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): Very late to the talk here because West coast; but my dog did that regularly & we found out he has chronic pancreatitis. It’s controlled now with the low-fat food & more frequent (3 a day) feedings others have mentioned, but we really watch him now in case he has a flare-up.
Oh, and NO people food. Ever ?
C.V. Danes
@Rhoda: I agree that Obama had to be careful of coming across as an angry black man, in the way the Clinton has to be careful coming across as shrill. My only point is that Clinton, at 70 with most of her life in politics, is not the same as Obama was at 47. Obama now is not the same as Obama was at 47. That’s it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Yes, it’s a different Senate.
Also: too vague, again. What “negotiations” are you referring to? What bills? When in his first term? Was Nancy Pelosi or John Boehner Speaker? Are you talking about two month (IIRC) window of “we had sixty votes!”, or the Scott Brown days?
C.V. Danes
@boatboy_srq: Yes. It didn’t all happen in a day.
Nate Dawg
@C.V. Danes:
A Constitutional convention would do the trick as well. Fat chance that will ever happen. We’d rather risk a coup than rewrite the Bible, after all.
This is such an important point. Thanks for making it. But we are at a stalemate, because redistribution is the only way to solve the problem (and it has to be a significant redistribution to offset the gains in the .01%), and they can spend a serious amount of money to stop that from happening.
@boatboy_srq:
This has always bothered me. The idea that you have to constantly improve seems antithetical to the “Small Business Owner” model of free market capitalism that everyone preaches during election year. But how to stop it without causing massive problems? Remember, it’s always the people at the bottom that ultimately suffer . . .
Calouste
@boatboy_srq: The EU would be different, because EU employees have their own tax regime, different from either their country of residence or their country of origin.
Kay
This is why every working person should support labor unions:
People used to understand this- it’s part of what “collective action” means. I don’t care how fabulous you are- you are not a special snowflake and you need leverage :)
All those other people will benefit, and they will not pay one penny and they can all proudly boast about their special-snowflake-ness. Actually, they are free riders on someone else’s deal.
Elizabelle
Ms. Cracker has put up a spanking new thread.
Applejinx
@Matt McIrvin: 9/11 was almost fifteen years ago, in 2001.
Two years after ‘Fight Club’ came out and seemed very bold with all its ‘yaaah, screw your job, screw the boring comfort of America! Down with stability!’
Bill Clinton had been President since 1993. The Third Way stuff had business booming, and fifteen years ago the consequences of this hadn’t obliterated the middle class and the American populace NEARLY as much as they have fifteen years later.
Between 9/11 and now there was TWO terms of Dubya Bush, and nearly two terms of Obama being able to accomplish very little beyond civil liberties stuff and Obamacare, which itself is a defensive action. All this time, the obliteration of America continued in places like Kansas and Wisconsin.
The reason people aren’t scared of terrorism like they were in 2001 is that back then they still had something, and fifteen years later they have nothing left to lose and no security to endanger, and nobody to blame (except, typically, the government, and/or black people).
Sudden loss of security only works as a threat when people start off secure. I don’t think there can be a terrorist attack that’d work like 9/11 at this point. People’s concerns are too immediate and their expectations are comically low.
Elizabelle
@Kay: Thanks for that.
We should make a list of things that “people used to understand” that they got trained out of.
WarMunchkin
@Elizabelle:
Thank you for this.
Bill
@japa21: The anger is the message.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@SiubhanDuinne:
President Black Ninja
J R in WV
@Keith G:
GaGa has turned into a very successful performer with great pipes. She also plays the piano very well, and was a student at Juilliard School before she decided to use weirdness as a way to break out into the big time. That worked, and now she doesn’t need to be so out-there weird and can just belt out the song.
Much respect for her command of her art! And those pipes! Last night it was WOW at any point in her huge range.
rikyrah
@CONGRATULATIONS!:
Rage about what?
rikyrah
@Kay:
Tell that truth, Kay.
TELL IT!!
Kay
@Elizabelle:
They can relearn it. My middle son was not college-bound so when he finished high school he worked at a Japanese auto component maker here. By the time he had been there six months he knew the UAW shop 25 miles away was propping up his wage and he was only 18- they have to compete for workers. He was an admitted free rider. I think the “industry standard” plus unionization threat added 2 dollars an hour and a decent 401k to his wage.
It’s like …. magic. Now he’s in the IBEW, so he learned quickly and well :)
O. Felix Culpa
@rikyrah: I’m with rikyrah’s analysis on the race vs. economics issue, although the two are intertwined. The bosses could get lower-class white folk to feel better about themselves and their meager lot, as long as they were better than “those people.”
This was deliberate strategy, including in Chicago, where political leaders pitted the nominally white Irish immigrants – remember “no dogs or Irish need apply”? – against the black immigrants from the traitor states. Race riots ensued, so instead of the two oppressed, job-hungry minorities uniting and challenging the 1% of their day, they fought each other. Divide and conquer, with the “lesser” white folk being assuaged by their putative superiority to at least the blacks. Economics are involved, but race is the driver.
Elizabelle
@Kay: From Kay’s Guardian link:
I like how they tailored the contract for a creative field; it’s nimble. Because a lot of idjits will tell you about the heavy hand of govt or of unions, but it does not have to be so. Gawker employees got a seat at the table.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@schrodinger’s cat:
I agree with this assessment too – the crisis in 2008 actually served to have most people overlook PBO’s skin color and foreign sounding name. He was the only adult, and conveyed understanding and a steady hand. McCain didn’t seem to have a clue as to what to do with himself, forget about the crisis.
As I said in an earlier thread, this election is going to come down to, “Daddy’s really scary, I want Mommy”. Seriously.
Nate Dawg
This Twitter Rant from Al Giordano is amazing:
…
Read the whole thing!
C.V. Danes
@john w casey:
Remind me to ask you that in a year, after she signs the TPP into law. Obama has been a good president, perhaps the best we could have gotten under the circumstances, but there was considerable hippie punching too, especially back in the Rahm Emanuel days.
I look forward to Clinton kicking the shit out of Trump, and I will gladly vote for her over him. But she’s also a hawk with neoliberal leanings. Once she takes the oath of office, there is going to be a lot of work keeping her facing left.
Applejinx
@geg6: I can’t gripe about his larger points but even I have to say, yeesh, tonedeaf much?
What a horrible spokesman, and what a terrible angle to take. It’s like saying ‘they just turned evil because they wanted to be evil, so let’s shame them’. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
It’s not that hard to make a coherent case for why the neoliberal thing was popular in the Clinton days, most of the heavy lifting was actually done by Bush, and that we’ve learned our lesson. Nobody has to behave like neoliberalism is some genetic thing, a taint that just has to be quarantined. It’s a set of policy ideas with various assumptions and outcomes, and like any trend of policy it can go out of fashion when the problems with it become apparent, which happens when it’s earnestly tried for a while.
Treating it like a zombie apocalypse is a horrible way to make that argument.
Elizabelle
@Kay: Good to hear! And it’s what FoxKochWorld fears.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I always think the key to understanding John McCain was the moment he “suspended his campaign!” to return to Washington to solve the crisis. He didn’t have an idea in his head, didn’t and doesn’t understand economics, but (IMHO) firmly believed that his noble, embiggening presence would lead others to rise above partisanship to something larger than themselves, and find that bipartisan common sense solution he just knows is out there somewhere! David Broder told him so! Then he sat there like the potted plant he is while Obama and Cheney started making fun of him.
Come to think of it, John McCain may be the ultimate Green Lanternist.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@rikyrah:
I agree with this too – race comes before all else as the legacy of colonialism and slavery. As long as whites insist on voting out of resentment of government giving “those people” free stuff and opportunities, they’ll vote for the politicians who work for the oligarchs, who damn well know this basic fact. The oligarchy will not be dismantled until racism is dismantled. Every single white person has to accept this fact, and get to work.
Kay
@Elizabelle:
The whole point is they get a say in the contract, so that worked. Maybe younger people will reinvent it. They should. There’s no reason they have to accept what worked 50 years ago. They can write their own rules.
I would accept no unions if something had come along to take their place but nothing did. You need a non-state lever, a force outside state action. No one has ever come up with another idea of how to do without a union or union-like entity.
Paul in KY
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I’m not necessarily talking about ACA fight.
Applejinx
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: It has NOTHING TO DO with naivete: that was always complete and utter nonsense. It’s the Presidential equivalent of Chris Rock’s ‘How Not To Get Your Ass Kicked By The Police’, and I will never stop being proud of how well Obama did in spite of all that. Talk about an unreasonable obstacle to contend with.
The reason the ‘Luther the Anger Translator’ bit is so funny, is it’s absolutely and chillingly true. Any white man is allowed to express a range of reactions. Obama hasn’t had nearly that freedom, and he knew it from day one and was completely correct every step of the way. How is that naive? It’s the opposite of naive.
Naive is thinking the country would ever allow him to govern as more than 3/5 of a President. That’s why I got off my white ass and went to sweep floors and shuffle papers for him twice, something I would not do for anybody other than (more recently) Bernie. It was my little way of saying ‘in your faaace, fuckers’ to those people Obama always knew were there, bitterly clinging.
I would do it again in a heartbeat.
FlipYrWhig
@geg6: I think Cornel West got Don Quixote’d by his appearance in The Matrix sequels.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
McCain suspended his campaign then went on Letterman that same night, IIRC. That was the most WTF part of that whole 2 week shit show, and Letterman was even all WTF are you doing? Obama won the election that week.
Rhoda
@C.V. Danes: You’re right. The ideas, life, experiences, and talents are different. But you seem to believe Barack Obama thought the Republicans would be nice, that he held a hand out to them in naïveté rather than as a political act. I completely disagree with your analysis and views of the situation and will go further in saying that part of Hillary’s problems have been in not recognizing the kabuki between DC and America at large; for example with her email issue. That kabuki was why Obama has a reputation of throwing people under the bus; he recognized the black tax he has to pay and has organized his White House to avoid any appearance of impropriety.
That understanding was part of the reason Barack Obama won in 2008. He is a superlative political actor; but then when you are black, brown, a woman, or out as gay you have to be better to go higher since the world is wired for white men.
C.V. Danes
@Nate Dawg:
Agreed. I think we’re too far down the rabbit hole for the system to right itself. And maybe there is no system in which the rich will ultimately not prevail over time. It took destruction of capital on a massive scale to give us the great expansion, after all. My guess is that global warming is going to change things faster than our democracy can adapt, and mass demonstrations of the hungry and homeless from coast to coast towards the end of this century are going to make things quite exciting for a while.
El Caganer
@geg6: There’s a ton of the same types here in Philly, too – both the city and the suburbs.
Nate Dawg
@Applejinx: THIS! This^nth.
Steve in the ATL
@Elizabelle:
That would be fantastic. I encounter very few of the brainwashed masses IRL but when I do they are always the product of RW and “Christian” radio and TV.
I was reminded this weekend that the fairness doctrine is no longer, as Showtime was showing the movie “Zodiac.”
Nate Dawg
@C.V. Danes: This is true.
Nothing last forever. No system is impervious to change. The more brittle our democratic Republic becomes, the more likely it will fail.
The Constitution is due for an overhaul. Things moved much more slowly in the 18th/19th Centuries, but we can no longer afford to have a small minority of the population thwart all progress for decades on end. Globalization will reward fast-adapting systems–China & India–while penalizing the conservative stalwart that stands still to measure the rising water rather than moving quickly to escape it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@the Conster, la Citoyenne: Letterman was fucking hilarious on that whole thing. I miss him.
Even I had to admit it was a bit unfair to make fun of the video of McCain getting made up for Katie Couric down on the news floor– I’m sure Letterman was wearing the same powder they were putting on McCain, but I laughed my ass off anyway.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
.
McCain cancelled a scheduled appearance on Letterman, announcing he was flying down to Washington to set the world a’right. Then during Letterman’s taping they found out he was down in Katie Couric’s studio, still in NYC, in the same building. Letterman was merciless.
C.V. Danes
@Rhoda:
That much is very true. But I would counter that the world is wired for the very rich, and in America that translates to being white. I believe it was Chris Rock who once said there’s still a vast difference between being a rich black football star and the wealthy white guy who owns the team.
Being white and male is an advantage in innumerable ways without doubt, but there are corridors even in America where bloodline means more than skin color. That’s where we need to direct the fight, because that old money continues to be the source of much of the poison in this country.
Applejinx
@C.V. Danes: I don’t know about that. Or rather, if I earnestly believed that was true I would never have been working for Bernie. There’s a reason I’ve found his movement plausible.
The system (of concentration towards the 0.00001%) is UNSTABLE. I don’t think there’s anywhere in history that it’s lasted for long. Some rich people have been pointedly warning about how the peasants are gonna break out the tumbrels.
Now, these days they have more finely tuned propaganda machines than ever: the Goebbels of today is Twitter and Facebook, technocrats capable of statistically swinging the populace through boosting some memes and squishing others. I’m sensitive to that being a computer nerd who understands those systems, and through reading Jaron Lanier on the subject.
But it’s STILL unstable, even with megacorporations trying to manipulate the masses. It becomes like Starbucks forcing employees to write on every cup ‘let’s all compromise OK?’, you can see the strings being pulled when it’s egregious enough.
Rather, there is no system in which the rich will not push their luck too far and get clobbered by peasant uprising, simply BECAUSE they will always push their luck too far, insulated from reality until it’s too late. That uprising can look like Trump, or it can look like Bernie, or somebody we don’t even know yet, but it’s just as much part of the system as the pushing of the luck.
My fondest hope for a President Hillary is that she figures this out and wants to be the Robespierre, not the Antoinette. If she doesn’t, we’ll get a Cruz as the Robespierre.
(in that light: “YASQUEEN”? Worst framing EVER :P )
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Good god.
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
LOL. COSPLAY revolution. I miss General Stuck in these threads.
chopper
@geg6:
jesus, cornell, that’s about the thinnest complement you can give someone. ‘i respect that he is a living, breathing human’.
C.V. Danes
@Applejinx:
One techie to another, I believe that to be the source of the current push for AI. The rich are still dependent on their guards, but when the robots become the guards, then they can feel that much safe in their ivory towers. Or so they think.
CONGRATULATIONS!
@rikyrah: If a person is charging at you with a length of steel pipe in their hands screaming “I’m going to kill every motherfucker I see”, does it really matter what they’re pissed about?
That’s where we are. And the line of people waiting for their steel pipes is getting longer.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@boatboy_srq:
I’ll admit, I was one of the people who believed Trump would fizzle out before the actual voting began.
I couldn’t be more happy to be wrong. These last couple of months have been some of the most exciting I’ve ever seen in national politics. I saw Jeb! crushed like an insect, Cruz rendered irrelevant, and freaking Marco Rubio become the Great White Hope (heh) of the Red Staters. My cup runneth over, indeed.
Sure, it’s not outside the realm of possibility that Trump could win the whole thing, and that would be Bad. But, I kind of feel like Major Kong at the end of Dr. Strangelove; even though you know what happens when it’s over, you might as well enjoy the ride down.
Paul in KY
@chopper: I’m a well wisher, in that I wish you no specific harm…
singfoom
@Rhoda: @rikyrah:
The down page open thread has migrated here and I read all the comments. I just wanted to chime in that the idea of The Other has been firmly entrenched in the American psyche from the very beginning of the Republic.
First it was the British.
Then it was the Natives.
Then it was the slaves (concurrent with the Native Americans some of the time)
Then it was the non-protestant Europeans
Then it was the communists.
After the USSR fell, we had no more other to define ourselves against. The other has become “Islamic Terrorists/Muslims” since 9/11.
That said, the otherness of our African American fellow citizens has continued to this day. I think that rikyrah and rhoda and others are absolutely right when they say Trump and the issues of this primary/presidential contest is about race.
But it’s race as the other. And it’s not just black people that these reactionaries want to get rid of, it’s ALL THE OTHERS that have stopped their weird white 50s mythical daydream.
Gay people. Atheists. Poor people. The other for our current GOP is ANYONE that is outside their club which in general is middle or upper-middle heterosexual christian white males. So yes, it’s about race, but that’s not the only group they want to get rid of.
ETA: And then poor white heterosexual christian males can always look down on the others that are even more othery (southern strategy / giant racial component)
Of course, as always I could be talking straight out of my ass and be wronger than Bill Kristol.
Cheers!
geg6
@Applejinx:
I used to think West was provocative and provided needed criticism of the left from the left. But his remarks about Obama over the last few years and now this? He respects the personhood of Clyburn and Lewis? Seriously? They’re sell outs and he’s somehow pure? This from the guy who is so self-centered that he’s still whining about not getting a gold-plated inauguration invite and has never said no to any invitation to be featured on any tv program whatsoever? Fuck him. If Bernie was smart, he’d have never let him latch onto his campaign. If Bernie was even marginally smart, he’d have shitcanned him from the campaign a couple of weeks ago. I have come to the conclusion that Bernie really just isn’t very smart. A nice guy, a kind person whose heart is in the right place, but just not very smart.
J R in WV
@boatboy_srq:
I’m going to show my lack of web sophistication here, but when you say “And this is how the PTBs want it: WWCs turned against everyone else…” I need a definition of “PTBs” and “WWCs”.
Google gives me German for post-traumatic stress syndrome [Posttraumatische Belastungsstörung] OR the sticker symbol for Potomac Bancshares !
And for WWCs I get a famous AM radio station near Pittsburgh, PA. So help me out here.
C.V. Danes
@singfoom: The ‘other’ yes, but blacks hold a special place there.
For example, after watching The Walking Dead last week, both me and my wife commented how sad it is going to be that Michonne is undoubtedly going to get killed off now that she and Rick slept together, because nothing gets you killed faster on TV than crossing the black-white relationship line.
I never had that concern with Glenn and Maggie.
Grumpy Code Monkey
@J R in WV:
PTBs = Powers That Be
WWC = White Working Class
WaterGirl
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (formerly Mumphrey, et al.): My dog does that when he has eaten something that won’t digest. He does 3-5 days of the yellow/green liquid puke thing either first thing in the morning or in the middle of the night. The day after that, he throws up whatever disgusting thing that has been rotting in his stomach, or whatever plastic piece won’t digest. I do think there might even be one day in between when he doesn’t do the liquid puke thing before he throws it up the following day.
Don’t panic just yet!
Miss Bianca
@geg6:
Cornel West cannot fail; he can only be failed.
WaterGirl
@WaterGirl: FYWP wouldn’t let me edit my comment. I also second the thoughts on empty tummies and feeding a meal later. I had to do that with a different dog.
Elie
@geg6:
I agree with you. I am always suspicious of elitist opinions that hold that there is one perfect way of believing or being. People forget that the Khmer Rouge came out of such leftist elitist pretensions and resulted in wiping out millions of people to purge the “wrong thinkers”. There are other examples as well….
Applejinx
@geg6: Some of that, perhaps. But I also think Cornel West really wants to be speaking for Bernie, and for that reason… Bernie can’t possibly shitcan him.
Get rid of an inconvenient black? Bernie doesn’t have the capacity or standing to make the argument that Cornel isn’t helping him, so he’s gotta accept the boat-anchor for fear he ends up with no black friends at all. So I don’t think he’s going to ditch Cornel West anytime soon, and I guess that has consequences.
I don’t think it’s that dumb, but it’s sort of a sad acknowledgement that Bernie doesn’t have better options there.
Matt McIrvin
@C.V. Danes:
You can do better than the US system. Parliamentary governments have fewer veto points: a governing majority can basically do whatever it wants, and if a majority coalition breaks apart and gridlocks, there’s an automatic election to shuffle the deck.
If the majority is evil or delusional, that’s a bad thing. But it does mean that a minority can’t just obstruct everything and then blame the government for getting nothing done. There’s some accountability, and an intolerance for paralysis.
These systems are not magic, though. It’s not as if most of these European parliamentary democracies dealt better with the post-2008 recession than we did; a lot of them were hit worse because they elected majorities that really believed in expansionary austerity. But they do generally have better safety nets to begin with.
El Caganer
@Matt McIrvin: One thing that might help promote greater citizen participation that doesn’t require a Constitutional amendment would be to increase the size of the House of Representatives. Germany has a quarter of our population, and its parliament is almost 50% larger than the House..
Archon
@Miss Bianca:
I still don’t understand why Bernie Sanders thought it was a good idea to have Cornel West as a surrogate.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Archon: Everyone-Bernie-knows thinks Cornel West’s criticisms of Obama are spot-on….
But apparently there are limits:
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Archon:
He’s a 74 year old white guy from white Vermont, who really hasn’t been active in either the Democratic party or any other organized bloc of voters or constituents that included PoC. He took any help he could get for minority outreach and probably didn’t really do much vetting, or get much insight from his other white buddies. He’s clearly blinkered by his own misunderstanding of how his own criticism of Obama has hurt him with the AA community, and doubling down by finding a cranky old black guy to criticize Obama just shows how much he doesn’t get it.
D58826
@FlipYrWhig:
And I can take comfort in the fact that there is still someone that I am better off then, even if only by a hairsbreadth.
Elie
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
THIS… and his unwillingness to work for or support downticket Democrats. I think he is just clueless and his political intelligence just aint there. He’s never needed it till now.. he was always the independent doing his own thing and p—-ing into the tent from the outside. You can’t win this sort of campaign that way and you also cannot govern a country of this scale and diversity that way.
C.V. Danes
@Matt McIrvin: @El Caganer: True, and also utilizing technology that didn’t exist 200+ years ago to speed some things up. The biggest problem, in my opinion, is the Senate, where Utah has the same voting power as California.
KS in MA
@amk: This.
singfoom
@C.V. Danes: Dunno about Michonne, but you’re absolutely right. Probably has to do with the 30 years of dogwhistles and the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. A special kind of otherness.
Will keep hoping the larger part of the USA won’t vote for hate.
Cheers
Ruckus
@Chris:
Those boomers, like me, who have these stories of racist relatives tell them because we can’t believe that they existed and because we hope that it brings into focus that this country is a hell of a lot more racist than many whites will admit. Yes we grew up with it, many of us realized that it was wrong and were glad that it at least seemed like it was getting better. We were not wrong, it has gotten better, but the improvement has been too little, taken too long and has way too far to go. The only thing even remotely positive about drumpf is that it is being brought out into the open for people who were trying to not see it.
Calouste
@singfoom: It started even before the Republic. You should read what Benjamin Franklin had to say about Germans (and Native- and African-Americans of course).
J R in WV
@john w casey: Me too, John – 65, white as wonder bread, happy I voted for Obama in both primaries and in both general elections. Already worked for Hillary, going to continue working for her.
Just spoke to a friend in GA who voted early for Hilliary, her whole family did. She is electable, she will be Presidential. A gift in uncertain times!
the Conster, la Citoyenne
@Elie:
If he does as poorly as I think he’s going to do tomorrow, he really should be sued for political malpractice by his supporters. He’s been in a small white liberal state waaaaaaaay too long, and he’s too old and out of touch. He has no supporters, except his bots who don’t vote in near the numbers for his phony baloney revolution.
Calouste
@C.V. Danes: My idea for reforming Congress is as follows:
– Senate becomes proportional using party lists, but keeps 6 year terms and staggered elections every 2 years. Mid term vacancies are filled from the party list at the last elections.
– Increase the size of the House to about 700. Each state gets three Representatives minimum (to offset the loss of the Senators). House districts are multi seat, with between 3 and 5 Representatives.
Elie
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
I didn’t catch that he thought he would not do well but agree with your assessment of his not being politically ready for prime time. Its great to have a vision and an ego but someone close to you should always keep you anchored to reality. That he could so miss that blacks particularly are very proud and protective of Obama and how that would have to be managed to cut into Clinton’s strategy is just a major strategy blunder. Sure, Clinton hugged up on Obama early on, but he could have peeled away more of the black and Hispanic vote with a less tone deaf approach. And shit, it isn’t as though people didn’t let him know — “hey, this is not going to come off well”… he heard it then quickly dismissed it and then hired Cornell West of all people. Its just stupid.
Betty Cracker
@C.V. Danes: They better not kill Michonne off. I will be PISSED!
Elie
@the Conster, la Citoyenne:
Sorry I misread your comment — you said as You thought he would…
Amir Khalid
@Applejinx:
Why would Bernie need “standing” to shitcan Cornel West? It’s his campaign that West is supposed to be helping; he and his advisers should be able to tell if West’s words are indeed helping. If they determine that, by badmouthing a President whom black Americans revere, West isn’t helping, Bernie should have it in him to thank West for his services and cut him loose. If Bernie can’t do that, he’s not a leader.
Alternatively, if Bernie agrees with West about Obama, he might want to think about why most black Americans disagree. And maybe, who knows, reconsider his opinion.
prob50
@Rhoda: Excellent post!
Kathleen
@boatboy_srq: Sorry to be so late to respond (just saw your post) but yes, you captured it perfectly.
Kathleen
@Rhoda: I’m way late to the party but I wanted to tell you how insightful I thought your posts are (particularly your first one about the tight line PBO has had to walk). I get so angry when I hear how Obama “failed” different groups. I’m sick and tired of him being disrespected.
Chris
@Nate Dawg:
I don’t particularly insist that a constitutional convention is the solution to our problems or that we’d like what came out of it today any better than what we have now, but I do think it’s a flaw in the American mindset that we can’t even conceive of such a thing as writing a new constitution. In any country, that would be considered a huge step, something you save for really grave circumstances, but in America I don’t think it’s conceivable at all, because the constitution is, as you say, basically the Bible as far as we’re concerned. And if you start from the basic principle that anything mankind creates will inevitably be flawed…
Uncle Cosmo
@Elie, @the Conster, la Citoyenne: The Sanders campaign puts me in mind of one of those food specialties that’s always been produced by a few small family-owned-&-operated business & distributed in a fairly small region of the country. Visitors from the outside world stumble across it & many fall in love (or at least “serious like”) with it. Eventually one of them with access to the necessary resources says Hey, let’s take this stuff national! And for various reasons, most of those regional products gone out to the wider world never make the anticipated splash. (Maybe I’ve seen too much recent hype in the local supermarkets for “maple bacon ice cream”…)
I’m a “democratic socialist” at heart but I’m distressed by how Bernie’s handled national rollout of the brand. He has no bench (tell me who takes over the leadership of the DemSocs if the Senator from Vermont is suddenly taken ill), no downticket support (in either direction) & no national organization worth the name, just a bunch of Old Believers trying to ride herd on a Children’s Crusade.
The Sanders boomlet reminds me of the antiwar movement ca. 1968–expressing a real yearning for a change in the political conversation that eventually will have to be addressed–but not as well organized. (And I want to be clear, I don’t blame the young’uns for wanting to give those yearnings a form; that’s what the young should be doing. I blame my contemporaries, the Boomer Baby Bolsheviks, for shoving a half-arsed movement onto the national stage hoping to conjure up the pink “democratic socialist” unicorn of their teenage dreams before disease & dementia shove them out the stage door…)