This from the previous post has pissed a lot of people off:
If historians were honest, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama would be listed as the best moderate Republican Presidents of the last 100 years.
When I said that, I may not be saying it well enough to demonstrate exactly what I am thinking. I don’t mean it as an attack on Obama or Clinton or Democrats, I mean to mock Republicans. Obama and Clinton have done basically all the things that Republicans for decades have claimed they want from government. They’ve balanced budgets, turned the economy around (twice), reduced, re-written, and updated regulations and the regulatory environment, advanced free trade, cut public sector jobs, not proposed any radical legislation, etc., ad nauseum. They’ve done all the things that Republicans CLAIM fall under the good government GOP manual.
If I honestly believed that Republicans believed in doing that stuff, I might still be one. But they don’t. The GOP is currently a radical group of self-promoting nihilists who use instability to advance their day to day shifting goals. And this is all of them- look what they have done every where they have their way, whether it is Kansas or Louisiana or the US under Bush, and compare it to what the Dems have done. Look at the mess the Republicans created in California, and look at it now after a few years of Jerry Brown.
You can watch it unfold in WV and Kentucky the next few years. Neither has been a role model for what a state should be, but in WV under Tomblin and Manchin before him, our bills were paid, we were not investing as much as we should in some eras and had a lot of problems, but our credit rating was stable and we were in the black and storing money in rainy day funds. Kentucky under Bashear was similar.
Now, WV has a bunch of ignoramus Republicans running the show, and basically our state has gone from a moderate livery service to an uber driver with 6 dui convictions, a meth habit, a gun fetish, and a god complex.
That’s what I meant in the previous post. It’s amazing how dysfunctional our country has come when a competent person like Obama just doing his job is viewed as a Jedi Knight playing 12 dimensional chess.
Mike in DC
I took the original point. I would like to see a Democrat have the opportunity to govern like a liberal lefty at least 2 or 3 times before I shuffle off this mortal coil, though.
Applejinx
I most certainly took what you said in the manner that you meant it, and I agree completely.
Sorry I didn’t say anything: didn’t want to make trouble, but dammit, you’re not wrong, Mr. Cole. And there’s nothing wrong with it, either.
redshirt
Democrats are now “conservatives” in that they try and conserve the status quo, and Republicans are bomb throwing radicals. Labels have gone wacky.
Major Major Major Major
Obligatory link to Kung Fu Monkey http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com/2004/12/i-miss-republicans.html
dedc79
Case and point, today republicans proposed a law that would prohibit courts from giving some deference to a regulatory agency’s interpretation of a statute or rule. In practice this means an agency that drafts a regulation would not get deference from a court regarding its interpretation of that regulation.
rustydude
Michigan & Wisconsin wave “hello” to your examples of Kansas & Louisiana.
Derelict
John, I’d like to have this post emailed to every Republican voter in the country. Perhaps some of them (maybe as many as a dozen) would read it and wake up from conservative dreamland.
Ken
I took your original context to mean that ‘centrism’ (as I see it) looks progressive compared to how far to the right the Republicans have gone off the rails
prob50
That’s exactly what I thought you were saying. I’ve always been a Democrat, but I remember that pre-Reagan there were still a fair amount of reasonable, even thoughtful Repubs.
Obviously this is no longer the case.
schrodinger's cat
I think you are still giving Republicans too much credit. They mouth platitudes that they don’t mean about small government, deficit reduction etc. I judge them by their actions and by that token they haven’t been moderate at least since the Reagan era. Since Bush II they have become totally unhinged.
germy shoemangler
The republican munsters:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3_5rvTKewU
Roger Moore
In fairness, it wasn’t just the Republicans who created the mess in California. It was a mix of a Republican governor, a mostly Democratic legislature that still needed help from a few Republicans to pass a budget, and feckless and irresponsible voters who passed ridiculous ballot measures. The improvements came not just from a switch to a Democratic governor but also budgeting reform that stopped requiring a 2/3 majority to pass a budget, and voters who were willing to raise their own taxes to get the budget back in shape.
That’s not to give the Republicans a pass. The stupid ballot measures that blew up the budget were proposed by The Governator, while the responsible one was put on the ballot by Gov. Brown over the strenuous opposition of the Republicans in the legislature, who refused even to vote to put a tax increase on the ballot. And the major change in budgeting was important because it cut the Republicans out completely. But the Republicans still got a lot of help messing things up.
SIA
Just read your prior post and thought it was very, very good. After a few years I finally learned to trust the President. And that hasn’t changed.
Damn I’ll miss him.
jackmac
I knew exactly what you meant. Moreover, I also agreed with it.
Lit3Bolt
This a googleplex times, especially that last ‘graph.
It’s amazing not hating people, doing research, showing up on time and planning for eventualities is considered evidence of sorcery.
“He shows up for work prepared everyday man. That’s INHUMAN!”
Amir Khalid
Obama does indeed have an Eisenhowerish thing about him, and it would normally be quite uncontroversial in these threads to point that out.
nominus
@rustydude: Indeed, watching Michigan’s city crises and Wisconsin’s war on the public sector unfold should be given a lot more attention – as well as how California has stabilized and how Minnesota has prospered under Dem leadership.
quakerinabasement
John, my wife has been referring to Clinton as her “favorite Republican president” for years. Your comment is on the mark.
schrodinger's cat
FWIW, I did get what you meant but I think we should stop associating calm, reasonable behavior and moderation with Republicans even hypothetical Republicans. Their actions have not been moderate even if their rhetoric was. They demagogue every issue and spend like drunken sailors. Let’s put to bed this myth of the sober and calm Republican who is also fiscally responsible.
chopper
i understand your point, john. but i still reflexively spit on the ground every time i say the word ‘republican’, so hearing that word used to describe the president raises my hackles. even if you’re speaking of some long-gone type.
Linnaeus
I knew what you meant, John, but I can see how others drew a different conclusion.
cokane
you made great points on the substance in these posts. too many people want to view everything about our politics thru this gamesmanship now, it’s kind of sad and cynical. even liberals are doing it. I agree that picking Garland isn’t some political football for Obama. Admittedly Obama is trying to pick a nominee he thinks can get thru, but he’s not trying to out maneuver the R’s here. He’s just picking an eminently qualified guy in his mind. that’s my guess anyways.
JPL
I missed the kerfuffle but Kasich during the Clinton years was considered extreme, now he’s a moderate.
msdc
This makes more sense to me. But if you’re talking about things like turning the economy around, why give moderate Republicans any credit? They sure as hell haven’t been doing it.
Better to say that today, Eisenhower would be a moderate Democrat… which he almost certainly would.
schrodinger's cat
@JPL: As a recovering Republican, John thinks that calling a Democrat a moderate Republican is high praise.
LAO
@JPL: kaisch’s tone is moderate, so he’s mistaken for a moderate. His policies; pretty extreme.
gogol's wife
@chopper:
What they’re doing about this Supreme Court nomination is making me hate them so viscerally. I didn’t use to feel that way. My mother was a Republican, after all.
NotMax
The Mesozoic don’t get no respect.
;)
gogol's wife
@msdc:
Like his granddaughter, who gave a speech for Obama at the Democratic Convention (I think in 2008, but I’m not sure).
Mnemosyne
Several people made a good point in the thread below: what you’re liking about the liberal Republicans of yesteryear and attributing to the liberal Democrats of today is that they’re all liberals. It’s not the party identification you like, it’s the underlying ideology.
Aimai
@schrodinger’s cat: yeah. I agree with SC here. In my adult lifetime (and I’m 55) the Republican Party with a few powerless exceptions has stood for low taxes no social spending, segregated schools, racism, classism, toxic misogyny and religiosity. The Whole of the supposed focus on balanced budgets was a Pete Peterson billionaire’s fever dream aimed at lowering taxes on the one percent. Everything else was a cover for that.
Eric S.
@rustydude: Illinois would wave too but we don’t have the money for a foam finger.
Stillwater
I don’t mean it as an attack on Obama or Clinton or Democrats, I mean to mock Republicans.
Well, it may not be an attack on Obama or B. Clinton, but it’s definitely an attack on Democrats. These guys are the best we can do!! It’s also a dig at the GOP, of course, but only at the expense of Democrats.
One thing you gotta give the GOP credit for is shifting the middle to the right. Nowadays a “good Democrat”, as you say, is yesterdays solid conservative. Hillary is no exception!
Tinare
“Now, WV has a bunch of ignoramus Republicans running the show, and basically our state has gone from a moderate livery service to an uber driver with 6 dui convictions, a meth habit, a gun fetish, and a god complex.”
I love that sentence so much.
Eljai
That is pure gold, dude!
eemom
@redshirt:
If I didn’t hate the stupid phrase “pet peeve,” this would be mine. As one who loves words, it drives me fucking CRAZY every time I hear these mouthfoaming maniacs referred to as “conservative”.
ETA: Though “pro-life” does drive me even crazier.
Roger Moore
@LAO:
This. It’s a sign of the media attitude toward politics: everything is about presentation and the horse race, not about policy. As long as you wear a nice suit, speak in measured tones, and cloak everything in calm sounding euphemisms, you can advocate for the most heinous, inhumane, evil policies without losing your standing as a serious person. But if you don’t dress, act, and speak the way the right kind of people do, you won’t get the time of day no matter how sensible the policies you’re advocating.
Ella in New Mexico
@John Cole
I got that. I don’t really understand why so many in that last thread didn’t get it. Perhaps they were soo busy trying to find SOME way to twist the post or their response to it into YET ANOTHER WAY TO INSERT AN ANTI-SANDERS INSULT… ;-)
In any case, if I remember from my childhood, my parents were “Republicans” until Reagan, who they realized was a warmongering, race-baiting, anti-intellectual who wanted to do away with things they thought were perfectly fine, like higher education funding and unions. They supported the Civil Rights Movement and the ERA and Social Security and the separation of church and state, particularly in the public schools.
Now, in their 80’s they’re the same people, just in a different party. So yeah, we once had a liberal Republican wing.
NotMax
At the core, he’s a mensch.
humboldtblue
@NotMax: Yeah he is, we’re going to look back on 8 years dominated by one of the great men of our era.
WarMunchkin
I often hear people say they don’t like Republicans but want a party that will be for low taxes, cutting the budget, pro-free trade, etc, but also pro-science , choice and gay rights so I ask them: why aren’t you a Democrat? And I get blank stares, because they don’t get that even Democrats think we liberals are insane and need to be shut down every few years.
kc
Thank you for summing up my reasons for voting for Sanders.
Cermet
Our Dad has done a great job running this country for us; as an African-Amerikan, he tends to submit to the powers that be. As such, his actions tend to rub many of us the wrong way. Still, he really is the responsible “father figure” we need and I, as many here also say, will miss him. He really does act the “Dad”part to all of us. Will both miss and regret his leaving the not-anymore “White (only)” House.
Mary
@dedc79: I haven’t read the legislation, but as you describe it that’s not the craziest thing in the world. Current law says essentially that if statutory language is ambiguous, the court will defer to the agency’s interpretation as long as that interpretation isn’t too far-fetched. It’s a judicial precedent that you love having on your side when an agency does something you like, but that would be extremely frustrating if an agency did something you hate and you want the court to strike it down.
Gelfling545
I’m old enough to remember when it was perfectly respectable to be a Republican. We weren’t of course. My father was a union steward and we were Catholic, so Democrats but we knew perfectly nice people who were. Of course, then you were just disappointed if the Dem candidate lost, not terrified the winner was going to try to bring about Armagedon & the second coming.
Loviatar
Been saying the same thing since 2011. The reason so many don’t get it and refuse to get it is twofold:
1) It warps their idea of how Obama and Bill Clinton have governed and by extension how Hilliary will govern. Obama is the cool 11 dimensional chess strategizing moderate liberal, while Bill is the elite loving, third way DLC centrist. Again, by extension, Hilliary is seen more like Bill even though all three will end up haven governed basically the same.
2) The refusal to really internalize how far off the rails the Republican party has gone. I call it the Ahh Haa moment, that moment when you really, really get it. They know intellectually that the Republicans are batshit crazy, but they really, really don’t get it. The 2016 Republican presidential candidate will be Donald Trump. His father was credibly a member of the KKK, he has a known history as a bigot and racist, his support is mainly from the racist wing of the Republican party and he is one heartbeat/scandal/recession away from the presidency. He will destroy this country, yet we have some here still wanting to play games.
In my mind its not a game. Me personally, I would just about do anything to destroy Trump and his followers.
Ruckus
@LAO:
I’ve been trying to make this point every since this primary season started. Kasich is only semi-moderate compared to the other republicans running. He is any thing but a moderate. He just doesn’t sound like any of the others. But he really is. That’s what makes him dangerous. It is also what makes him pretty unelectable in the current republican circus. No clown makeup and funny hair and horn.
Voncey
@Mike in DC: Go to Canada! Seriously, the new PM is an unapologetic liberal and it’s incredibly refreshing and exciting!
gratuitous
I wouldn’t mind living in a United States where government works at least as well for its citizens as it does for the corporations. But that’s just lefty, beyond-the-pale radical hippie talk. I’m supposed to be happy that the environment has become so toxic that we’re all falling down dead in the streets. The best we can hope for is to stave off the most rapacious policies and ideas blurping up from the Republican Nightmare Factories.
As for Republican confusion over a straightforward nomination for the Supreme Court, Republicans have disappeared up their own collective ass. They’re like James J. Angleton of the CIA, who quietly drove himself mad trying to puzzle out the unfolding of world events and fit them all into a grand communist plot out of Moscow.
TopClimber
Obama clearly has a greater vision of what government should do to advance opportunity and equity for Americans and indeed people throughout the world than Ike ever did. Eisenhower mostly catered to the desire of post-Depression, post-WWII Americans to return to normalcy. Obama wants to shape the future, not just tend the national landscape while business as usual goes on unchecked.
He is a moderate Republican in the sense that Teddy Roosevelt or Abe Lincoln were–which is to say, the rare Republican indeed.
LAO
@Ruckus: We are just going to have keep saying it!!! I worry, that if some how, he winds up the nominee, he could be elected because he seems so reasonable. But, he’s not!
Shell
More pet pictures will make everything all right.
Kathleen
Somewhat OT, but I thought the looks on the faces of the White House correspondents as President Obama was patiently explaining his philosophy and policy for reducing the debt were priceless. I could just hear the chatter of their little monkey minds: “Boooorrrring”. “Why didn’t he give me a nickname”? “Bush had better donuts”. “How can I spin this to make John McCain look good?” “He wears the same damn suit every day”.
It reminded me of the scene in Idiocracy where Luke Wilson’s character is trying to explain “water” to President Camacho’s cabinet.
Calouste
@Amir Khalid: One of the first things Eisenhower did after he was sworn in was plan to overthrow a democratically elected government at the behest of a foreign company. The whole shitshow with Iran is thanks to him.
Sad_Dem
@redshirt: Indeed.
Kathleen
John, for not officially being a “political blogger” (as opposed to a blogger who writes about politics among other interests), you produce some of the most thoughtful, best written analysis in this here blogsphere. You’ve been on fire lately (more than usual). Thank you.
LAO
O/T: Cliven Bundy denied bail today. Shocking I know. http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/17/cliven-bundy-denied-bail-nevada-government-standoff?CMP=share_btn_tw
boatboy_srq
@prob50: The current generation of Teahadi radicals has been painstakingly created by the lunatic fringe over the last several decades. They were actively recruiting when I was undergrad. It’s frightening how extreme they are now, but looking back all the same hate and bigotry existed then; it was just wrapped in prettier dogwhistle. What’s shocking is how thoroughly the Teahadi wingnutsery has consumed the old Establishment: the outlandish fantastical rhetoric has really sunk in deep, and the old Rockefeller/Eisenhower Republicans are either dead or in hiding from the foaming BSE-infected mob.
boatboy_srq
@schrodinger’s cat: The only thing modern Republicanism should get credit for is redefining hate speech. So much Atwaterian dogwhistle is all too close to Trump’s verbal diarrhea for comfort: it just sounds better because the Republicans have redefined too many common words and phrases to mean the same things. One reason Trump is doing so well is that he calls the GOTea on the dogwhistle: few people like being called wimps, but bigots hiding behind codespeak are especially vulnerable, and especially so when the people whose votes they’re courting are to this day still too accustomed to using the plain language versions of the dogwhistles to respect that language.
I suspect the rabid Reichwing tolerated Atwaterian linguistic sleight of hand because it hoodwinked those Yankee voters who thought the language was plain (“small government” meaning “reduce overhead” and not “starve the niCLANGs”, “religious liberty” meaning “tolerance” and not “stone the heathens”, etc), and are now welcoming Trump because he isn’t afraid (or isn’t sufficiently aware to care) to say “niCLANG niCLANG niCLANG”. They’re tired of being lied to and played, and they’re tired of having to decode what their pols say when they’re addressed.
Suzan
The GOP 2010 redistricting is to blame for much of what is happening now. Republicans can’t be reasonable or reach deals with dems because their districts are so overwhelming GOP they will be primaried from the right. You end up with the Freedom Caucus and a bunch or idiots afraid of their own shadow. So they over promise and the right goes nuts because “you promised you’d get rid of Obamacare and that black man in “our” White House”. Hence Trump. Who sounds sane to those people who have always been with us but now have a voice.
Ked
Yeah, this is how I feel.
I’ve resisted the term “moderate” for most of my life, largely because it’s become defined as “those guys in between the parties”. I’ve resisted the term “conservative”, since even in the 80s the public face of it was godtalk, veiled racism, and international apocalypticism.
But… I’m the guy who believes in moderation. I don’t think a straight jump to single-payer is practical, but I do think ACA was a smaller-than-it-should-be first step on that road. I don’t think we need to spend so much on the military, but a lot of that involves not picking stupid fights and actually following up on the weapons programs which are successful (F-22, damnit).
I believe in conservative ideas. Big deficits are bad, for real reasons, but a realistic view of the last fifty years, a CONSERVATIVE view is that transient deficits are part of healthy government. Taxes are an important part of economic balance – yes, they can be too high, but surely they can be too low. It’s conservative to believe in personal freedoms – so why are the so-called movement conservatives opposed to every single social freedom/justice issue in America? I’m conservative – change is necessary, but you when you do it your first principle is do not destroy the things you don’t want to change.
So I’m a Dem, because there doesn’t seem to be anything else out there that doesn’t seem to be predisposed to (and even openly celebrate) active/stupid. Obama, I suspect, will end up being my favorite president during my lifetime. He’s consistently been the adult in the room for the last eight years, about as steady and intelligent as I think a person can be. There were moments where Bush I almost reached that level. but usually he got dragged down into the party-line drivel. I fear that HClinton is not going to be of the same quality (Bernie isn’t any closer to reaching the Obama level), but FFS – the choice is Trump (or maaaaaybe Cruz)? Voting isn’t just duty, isn’t just self-interest, it’s become self-defense.
It’s become popular to quote Idiocracy. I haven’t seen the movie, and I’m too damn scared to now. Scared that I’m going to see a world more normal and rational than this one.
AnonPhenom
Donald Trump is the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.
schrodinger's cat
@AnonPhenom: Hi Chris, how are you?
redshirt
@Ked: Great post. I feel almost exactly the same way.
redshirt
I voted for HW Bush and I don’t even regret the vote even though I think Dukakis is a great man. Bush Sr. handled the breakup of the USSR well and that’s all I need for a takeaway. Also, a thousand points of light.
PrairieLogic
I understood exactly what you were saying, JC. And a great example of how warped and upside down (compared to history) everything is these days, get a load of Speaker Ryan’s condemnation today of the upcoming trip to Cuba by President Obama and a number of congressional members (and even a few Rs!):
Weren’t the Republicans the ones who were supposed to ignore “human rights” and work to increase trade and business/jobs/economic activity????
Chris
@redshirt:
Yeah, that’s to a large extent what the “our presidents are the reasonable status quo people the Republicans used to be” statements are about…
… but my only thing with this is that it doesn’t actually encompass the party nowadays and its latest president in particular. Obama has not been just an Eisenhower-type moderate, centrist, caretaker president. He’s less extreme than virtually every Republican in politics for sure, but he’s also a liberal and a reformer in his own right. He hasn’t simply been repairing the damage the Bushies did or holding the line against teabagger bomb-throwers, he’s also made changes to the system of the kind we had stopped seeing decades ago. Look at the country now as opposed to where it was in 2008; we’ve peacefully resolved the Iranian nuclear crisis, we’ve restored relations with Cuba, we’ve implemented the largest expansion of medical coverage since Medicare and Medicaid were invented, and we’ve made gay marriage legal in the entire nation. When was the last time a president was contemplating retirement with that kind of record? Those aren’t just generic accomplishments that everybody (in theory) agrees are good things (like the economic recovery or getting Bin Laden). Those are honest to God liberal Democratic accomplishments, which changed the country into something more like what we want it to be, which were passed in the face of fanatical Republican opposition, and while the last one can’t be credited to Obama, the first three very much can.
So, yeah. I’m happy celebrating the legacy of Barack Obama, liberal Democrat. Not just Barack Obama, the only adult in the room, not just Barack Obama, the president Republicans claim they want, but Barack Obama, the guy who ran eight years ago promising hope and change and then fucking well delivered on it.
YellowDog
It was the best post you’ve written since you dried out. The brain cells are awakening.
I knew what you meant. Since my first vote back in ’72, I have voted for one Republican–a local prosecutor–because he ran an efficient office, didn’t believe in locking everyone up, and the Democrat was flat out crazy. For one, the Democrat dressed like Frank Costanza’s lawyer. That was just the outward manifestation of the crazy. In any other town, the prosecutor would have been a Democrat, but the local Republicans actually believed in good government. I miss those days, when the discussion was about service to the public, not whose hands are bigger.
Chris
@Gelfling545:
Right. It really is a loss not to have an opposition party anymore fulfilling the role that many local Republican parties, especially in the Northeast, used to: the “other” party that you could vote for as a check on complacency or corruption in the Democratic machines, while still trusting that they weren’t going to use the office to shred the safety net, declare war on unions, and break the budget with tax cuts.
You sometimes hear, especially from professional centrists, the notion that it’s too bad about the teabaggers because America needs a reasonable conservative party as a check on the liberals… But no, it really doesn’t. What it really needs is two reasonably liberal parties as a check on each other. We used to have that, at least in many parts of the country, and don’t anymore.
Chris
@TopClimber:
Well, sonofabitch. You said what I said, but you said it first and more concisely. Well played.
I really should read everything before posting.
@boatboy_srq:
What’s vaguely saddening to me is watching the East Coast dynasties that used to be a big part of that Republican “establishment” turn into rabid loonies themselves. George Romney was no Mitt Romney, by all accounts. George H. W. Bush, while there is plenty there to complain about, was still no George W. Bush.
redshirt
@Chris: Well said. Today’s real “conservatives” seek to conserve the Earth, the New Deal, and all the other progressive achievements we’ve made as a nation. Making incremental progress on these prior achievements is part of this “conservatism”.
I contrast that with Naderites who are unhappy with everything because there is not a unicorn in every car shed, metaphorically.
Scotian
@Voncey:
Unless you listen to our leftists/progressives, aka the NDP and Tom Mulcair, who seem to view Trudeau not as a real liberal/”progressive” (a lot like how many Sanders folks and Sanders himself apparently sees HRC as not being a real “progressive”/liberal/Democrat) but Harper in drag (Harper being our Ted Cruz equivalent, well he’s the closest comparable American example in my view but that still does not fully explain the foulness and evil that is/was Stephen Harper) so far in how he is running our government. Just goes to underscore the nature of relativity in how things get seen, and how context is always a critical component of definition/meaning. Still though, I’d agree that Justin Trudeau is a real liberal as well as a real Liberal, but then I live in the reality based world unlike alas those that prefer to be members of purity police be they right or left in nature, and in this case left.
It will be so much fun watching Trudeau undo so much of the right wing insanity and anti-government destruction Harper spent his decade as PM doing, and if nothing else I suspect Harper has poisoned the Conservative political brand federally for a long time to come. One can hope, anyway.
Marc McKenzie
Understood, John. Thanks for clearing that up–and you are right about the GOP being incompetent at governing compared to the Democrats.
The problem is that many in the media do not see that, and there are too many on our side wailing about how both parties are the same.
WarMunchkin
@redshirt: My history teacher used to say that George H.W. Bush was a moderate Democrat and Bill Clinton was a moderate Republican.
But.
Right here is why we will never have socialistic policies in America, or anything close to economic liberalism. There will always be a reason to regard liberals as just not good enough – if it’s not you, it’s someone else. Liberals will always be silly and unserious. The country is still center-right, it’s just that the center-right people are now the vast majority of Democrats instead of the vast majority of Republicans.
John D.
@WarMunchkin: That … seems to be reading a whole lot into someone commenting on two very specific people.
WarMunchkin
@John D.: I’ve seen it way too many times not to be scarred by it.
Uncle Cosmo
@Marc McKenzie:
For the Greedy Old Plutocrats, “governing” means distracting the electorate well enough for long enough to loot the commonwealth & dump the swag into the moneybins of the 0.01%. By that standard they have been spectacularly competent.
sherparick
@rustydude: I was going to point out that JC forgot to add Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Michigan to his list.
sherparick
@Uncle Cosmo: Yes, there is a method in their madness. Of course the pursuit of their goal, articulated by Grover Norquist, to shrink Government and then drown it in a bath tub, creates the situation that is ripe for a Donald Trump, who may blow up the whole thing.
sherparick
@Scotian: The irony is that Trudeau won the election because he rejected the “austerity” mode and promised Keynesian deficit spending to respond to the Canadian slump in demand as the price of oil plunged, while the New Democrats promised to be “responsible” and carry on with austerity, much like “New Labor” in the last election in the U.K.
pluege
.
nice construct.
it is also true that calling Clinton and Obama moderate republicans is a knock on both. While they are immensely better than any republican, they are are not in anyway sufficiently progressive to be called “good” presidents. Doing not as bad as a republican should not be an acceptable measure.