If Hillary picks Tim Kaine as her VP, it proves that she is not a real progressive and you should all vote for Jill Stein. Discuss.
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Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.
Alternative history is always a weak argument. Always.
Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.
Bark louder, little dog.
Usually wrong but never in doubt
Let me file that under fuck it.
Republicans firmly believe having an abortion is a very personal, very private decision between a woman and J.D. Vance.
No one could have predicted…
Let the trolls come, and then ignore them. that’s the worst thing you can do to a troll.
President Biden is doing good where he can, and getting it done.
Meanwhile over at truth Social, the former president is busy confessing to crimes.
The lights are all blinking red.
I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.
New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.
Lick the third rail, it tastes like chocolate!
Hot air and ill-informed banter
The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.
Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.
Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.
You cannot love your country only when you win.
Celebrate the fucking wins.
“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”
“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”
You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.
Cermet
This silly logic, again! Tried of this and no one is saying it …or better not!
Baud
@Cermet:
Kos didn’t say vote for Stein but kind of said the other stuff.
Major Major Major Major
Oh, you can do better than that, Doug.
Brachiator
Jill Stein should support Hillary. Anything less is a potential return of the Nader spoiler problem.
Baud
@Brachiator: Agree, but can’t see it happening. The best we can do is ostracize her and any of her supporters.
Gin & Tonic
Now Reuters tells me that David Duke is running for U.S. Senator from LA. I’d have thought filing deadlines had passed, but the seat up this year is Diaper Dave Vitter’s.
RSR
part A–sort of; part B, no
dmsilev
Your troll-fu has grown weak, old man.
Baud
It’s Friday, so the decision has probably been made. Too late for kvetching. Kaine has been in the running for a while, so if it’s him, it shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone.
MobiusKlein
No, I won’t discuss.
karen marie
If HRC picks Kaine, it proves she’s not as smart as I thought she was. He is a greasy little weasel. He lead the DNC through its utter failure in the 2010 mid term.
FlipYrWhig
@karen marie: I’ve never heard anyone say anything unkind about Tim Kaine, much less “greasy” or “weasel.”
Shell
Lordy, I wish they would just frigging announce it already. So tired of all this phony suspense.
scav
Yeah, it is the failure of the media that it desperately fills up all available time with any BS nonsense just to amuse itself and pretend to be edgy and relevant.
el_gallo
No, it just proves she hasn’t dealt with her biggest fault: surrounding herself with nearly incompetent political opportunists, e.g. Mark Penn.
Carl W
Republicans looking forward to 2020:
“This year’s candidate wasn’t conservative enough, let’s double down next election” seems like positive genius compared to “17 primary candidates wasn’t enough, let’s have 30 next election”.
joes527
@dmsilev: This.
Yeah I know. Hating on D’s is much more fun than hating on R’s. But give it a fucking rest.
James E Powell
We should start a contest – Who can select the earliest date on which it can be claimed that Hillary has betrayed us and shown that she is
worse than Bushno better than Trump.Entries must include a specific act of betrayal plus evidence that the entrant warned us all long ago that this would happen but we laughed.
FlipYrWhig
@James E Powell: I think that date was 1964.
Baud
@James E Powell: Are past days valid entries?
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
Meh. I just signed up to volunteer for Hillary anyway.
Villago Delenda Est
@Brachiator: She doesn’t care. She’s trying to get her ego to the same bloated obscenity that Nader’s still is.
Baud
@FlipYrWhig: Ha! The whole Goldwater Girl gambit may have been the most embarrassing thing in the primary.
MomSense
@Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA:
Yes!!
Baud
@Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA: Sellout.
Short Bus Bully
This is a particularly shitty time to be hating on ANYONE wearing Dem colors.
Leading with the “No True Scotsman” fallacy? Good thinking.
catclub
@Carl W: wow.
Ted Nugent has not yet missed his chance.
Emma
Jesus Christ on a Harley. Here we go again. Let me explain it in words of one syllable: Hillary Clinton could select Vlad the Impaler as her VP and we will all work to get them elected, unless we’re willing to accept Trump as our President.
Me, I hate to say it but I won’t be much affected. I am near retirement, my retirement funds are portable, and I can rent a tiny flat in Cardiff or a small house by the seaside in Veracruz. Yes, it will mean cutting a few corners but I can manage. It’s your kids and grandkids that will inherit the shyte. So get on with the program.
James E Powell
srv:
Because the cost of the clothing worn by candidates’ family members gives us real insight into how they will govern, what their legislative priorities will be, what kind of person they will appoint to the supreme court.
The only thing more ridiculous than the article about Ivanka’s dress is your posting here as if it has some meaning.
Villago Delenda Est
@srv: All the more attractive for daddy to paw her on national TV.
Trentrunner
Obama is kicking some Trump fact-free ass at this press conference.
SiubhanDuinne
@Shell:
Needs its own news cycle. Everything in the fullness of its time. There’s no reason to make the announcement while the media are all still chewing over the Trumpvention.
Major Major Major Major
@Emma: With Vlad, at least you get the sexy vampire thing.
Baud
Just keep chanting to yourselves: “At least it wasn’t Cuomo. At least it wasn’t Cuomo…”
joes527
@James E Powell: I think you are confused.
Brachiator
@Baud:
I have been getting email from friends supporting Stein. I am having s great time engaging them over the issue.
What would be the point in trying to ostracize someone? And how would that work, anyway?
In the end, though, I think these people are as stubbornly delusional as Nader voters in 2000.
Emma
@Major Major Major Major: Not really, no.
Mike J
Today is the day for unequivocal, full throated support for Clinton. It is his birthday after all.
amk
@srv: idiot.
James E Powell
@joes527:
Sorry for the clumsy clicking joes527 – I changed it as soon as I saw it.
dogwood
@FlipYrWhig:
Oh, come on. Anyone she picks that doesn’t accommodate Karen’s feelings is a “greasy little weasel”. That’s how those kinds of people roll. Stupid and mean aren’t qualities reserved for republicans. The facts are pretty clear when it comes to Kaine. As mayor, lt.gov, governor and senator, he’s been a consistent liberal democrat.
D58826
@srv: Maybe Ivanka should be Hillary’s running mate?
:-)
joes527
Just a few days ago we had a semi-honest post about Gore and the mess he made of 2000. But fsck honesty! The “Nader cost us the election, man!” narrative is so much SIMPLER.
Facebones
I would not be a big fan of Kaine, especially after his recent calls to deregulate the banks, but I can see the logic. Swing state senator, Democratic governor would pick a replacement, white male (to assuage the dimwits who would have gender panic about two ladies.)
If Martha Coakley hadn’t screwed the pooch last election (or democrats had actually turned out) then I’d say pick Warren and rally your base. As it is, dems need every possible senate seat.
Rather have Julian Castro or Thomas Perez. Maybe she’ll surprise us.
Baud
@Brachiator:
That’s fine. They haven’t voted for Stein yet.
In any event, I just meant regard them as you would regard a libertarian. Someone who you might agree with on some things, but who are really a different political faction from you.
For me anyway, I’m going to feel more affinity for the Republican who votes for Hillary than the progressive who walks away. I can’t ignore that choice.
Jeffro
@FlipYrWhig:
Seconded…that’s just silly.
Glad to see Cruz got under der Trumpster’s skin in a BIG way…Trump’s wasting his convention ‘bounce’ (such as it is) refighting every primary tiff he had with Cruz. LUV. IT.
Baud
@Facebones:
I think he just said don’t treat smaller regional banks as tough as the biggest banks. But I could be wrong.
Erick
srv,
And now she is hawking the dress on Twitter. It’s imported by the way.
dogwood
@Facebones:
You are being disingenuous about the bank stuff. He proposed some lieniency on smaller banks, something that Elizabeth Warren agrees with.
Dadadadadadada
@Carl W: Depending on how the next 4 years go, we might see a dramatically smaller GOP field in 2020–because no one will want the job of standing in front of the HRC steamroller and losing 35+ states.
cokane
Doug we need your thoughts on Sully tho
Facebones
@joes527: Things about 2000:
1) Gore did not run a great campaign.
2) He ran away from a popular president.
3) The media created a narrative that Gore was a beta male wishy-washy doofus (“Earth tones!”) and were in the tank for Bush. Go see Bob Somersby’s blog for the last 14 years for examples of this.
4) Nader split votes with his whole “not a dime’s worth of difference!” and pulled away purity pony liberals.
Yes, it was more than just “Nader cost us the election!” but don’t pretend it had nothing to do with it.
WarMunchkin
@Baud:
I think the Republicans will end up absorbing these people in the end – and we might pick up the more socially liberal fiscons and move slightly more towards becoming the business party. I wonder if that’s just normal every election or how a long term realigning will happen.
FlipYrWhig
@Facebones:
According to Blue Virginia (formerly known as “Raising Kaine,” so perhaps not entirely impartial), that HuffPo piece was a trifle misleading. I live in Virginia and credit unions are HUGE here — and there’s a giant difference between those banks and Big Wall Street Banks, which HuffPo finessed without quite saying so.
Jeffro
@Baud:
That’s accurate. His extended remarks noted that back in 2008, small/regional banks and credit unions didn’t cause the crash.
Dadadadadadada
@Emma:
FTFY
Erick
@Facebones:
The mild hope I have is she is reportedly announcing at a largely Latino event in Florida. Would be great optics to have the crowd going nuts as the first Latino on a major parties ticket is announced.
Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA
@Baud: That’s Ms. DINO to you, pal.
Baud
@FlipYrWhig:
@Jeffro:
Thanks. I’m getting as tired of misleading spin from the left as I am the mainstream media.
Baud
@Mingobat f/k/a Karen in GA: Heh. That would be a cool nym.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@srv: What’s Ivanka running for again? BTW, did you go with the brownshirt or the spiffy black uniform?
Mnemosyne
@srv:
Because nothing says, “woman of the people” more than wearing a dress made by a company that you own.
Next up, Trump stays in one of his own namesake hotels to show how humble and down-to-earth he is.
FlipYrWhig
@Baud: And on Facebook today it’s been the first or second most cited policy(ish) gripe about the Kaine choice, vying with his pro-life sentiments. HuffPo mission accomplished.
Jeffro
@Baud:
You too? =)
Your VA correspondents will keep you ‘in the loop’!
Villago Delenda Est
@joes527: Nader has the blood of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis on his hands.
Fuck him and anyone who makes excuses for him.
Baud
@FlipYrWhig:
Someone here said he had a 100% rating from NARAL.
Aardvark Cheeselog
Because raiding the Senate is totally the way Dems roll.
Didn’t want those Supremes confirmed anyway.
amk
@?BillinGlendaleCA: LOL. I bet brown shirt. Too cheap for spiffy.
FlipYrWhig
@Baud: I’m not surprised. He strikes me as an “I wouldn’t get an abortion but your getting yours is none of my business” kind of dude. Like Biden IIRC.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: I don’t know, there’s the entire Baud campaign. That’s pretty stiff competition there.
Dadadadadadada
@Mnemosyne: Maybe Ivanka sees lean times ahead for the family business, and cut her clothing budget accordingly.
Much like her dad might stay in his own hotels because a) he can’t afford anywhere nicer, b) no one else will take him.
joes527
@Facebones:
1) Gore ran a piss poor campaign from soup to nuts
2) He made every wrong move possible in Florida
3) Blaming his failures on the fact that there was a third party candidate in a state where 12% of Democrats voted for Bush is head-in-the-sand level craziness.
RobertDSC-iPhone 6
Kaine’s “nuance” on abortion (personally opposed, would allow choice) is an immediate disqualification. No one needs “nuance” these days. Not with the Republicans being what they are.
Mnemosyne
Also, too, I remember being less than thrilled with Obama’s pick of the Senator from MBNA, champion of the fucked-up bankruptcy bill, so I’m willing to wait and see about Hillary’s pick. It’s entirely possible for Kaine to be a terrible head of the DNC but a good VP, assuming he’s even the pick.
Emma
@Dadadadadadada: Thanks.
Baud
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Hey!
You’re not wrong.
Amanda in the South Bay
@Aardvark Cheeselog: um Virginia has a Dem governor.
FlipYrWhig
@Aardvark Cheeselog: Democratic governor appoints a replacement, so, no ground lost until the next election, and Democrats in Virginia have won those off-year elections with not-particularly-charismatic-or-compelling people like Terry McAuliffe lately.
Baud
You get a litmus test. You get a litmus test.
Everybody gets a litmus test.
Kay
@Mnemosyne:
Biden got recreated as this great populist in the last 8 years :)
I’m still not clear why. He really was the Senator from MBNA.
Carl W
@srv: I skimmed that RedState post, and I can’t imagine it being posted at Balloon Juice. Maybe you should work on your reading comprehension?
(Of course, some recent RedState posts — particularly by Leon Wolf — do have bits that sound like Balloon Juice posts. Why didn’t you link to one of those?)
cokane
@Villago Delenda Est: I blame Nader for 2000, but this is bogus rhetoric. Leave the blame for dead Iraqis at the feet of the architects of that war, never dilute where that blame belongs. No one in 2000 could have predicted what was going to happen the next year.
Jeffro
@Aardvark Cheeselog:
Kaine’s immediate replacement would be appointed by D-Gov Terry McAuliffe, who might well appoint himself to fill the seat (if that’s legal – haven’t checked). VA’s a slightly blue state turning a bit bluer by the cycle. No net loss here.
dedc79
@karen marie:
We, the voters, are responsible for the utter failure in the 2010 mid term.
joes527
@Villago Delenda Est:
FTFY I know, I know … who will think of the NARRATIVE!!!!
Jeffro
@Amanda in the South Bay: @FlipYrWhig: I see we are all doing the Vulcan mind-meld thing this afternoon…lol…
Kay
@RobertDSC-iPhone 6:
Really? That’s Marcy Kaptur’s position and she endorsed Sanders. Complete purge or just Prez and VP?
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: Didn’t that Biden guy also like vote to confirm Clarence Thomas and help co-author the original Patriot Act language in the 90s? Such a piece of non-progressive, establishment deadweight. I can’t believe Obama chose him. I’m retroactively voting for whoever was the 2008 version of Jill Stein. (Was it Jill Stein? I don’t care enough to check.)
dogwood
@FlipYrWhig:
I’m starting to get concerned about this “pro-life” stuff as well. Kaine, like many liberal Catholic democrats has been a stalwart supporter of pro-choice politics. I’m a lapsed Catholic, but many of my closest friends are still active in the Church. They are all liberal democrats, yet I doubt many of them would have ever chosen to have an abortion. I don’t consider these people to be “squishy” liberals because of this.
scav
@Baud: Well, yes, because it doesn’t matter what one’s position on the law should be, the party demands total obedience over all aspects of one’s personal belief in order to combat the authoritarianism of the other side!
Chris
@joes527:
+1
FlipYrWhig
@Jeffro: I kind of like Mark Herring.
Baud
@dogwood:
I’m perfectly OK with Tim Kaine’s decision never to have an abortion.
Mnemosyne
@joes527:
In Florida, more people voted for Nader than Bush’s margin of victory over Gore in that state, and Gore actually WON the nationwide popular vote. It was only the halted recount in Florida that allowed Bush to sue and win the presidency 5 to 4 at the Supreme Court.
But, hey, you keep trying to convince yourself that Florida didn’t make any difference even though Florida is what made George W Bush only the second president in US history to win the electoral college while losing the popular vote.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne:
Jon Stewart covered that pretty well on Colbert last night.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Just because it might not be a big surprise does not mean that it won’t be a big disappointment. Not a fan of Hillary, as you know, but her VP pick is her one big chance to get me excited and hopeful about this. I realize this isn’t all about me in particular, but there are a ton of not very enthusiastic Hillary voters who could be moved toward excitement with a good VP pick.
Kaine is totally bland, did not do a good job at the DNC, has not impressed me at all as a senator. I think that choosing Kaine will just reinforce the Hillary narrative that already exists for many “not a fan of Hillary” voters. IF she’s smart she wants more than votes, she should want more people working for her. I hope she’s smarter than that. Just what we need is another fucking bland not very impressive white male in power. And a high profile example of Hillary making the safe choice. Ugh.
edited
Brachiator
@Baud:
I kinda see your point. I regard Libertarians and Stein types as childish intellectual morons. And too much Libertarian philosophy is rooted in a smug racism for me to take them seriously. If we agree on anything, we come to it from wildly different perspectives.
Yep. This makes total sense. I will be very curious to learn how many Republicans end up voting for Clinton.
Kay
@Dadadadadadada:
Why don’t her and her dad just offer paid family leave? Try it out. They can start with the hotel staff.
les
@RobertDSC-iPhone 6:
Nah, that’s crap. How does he vote? That’s all that matters. We’re not Repubs, after all.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
I’m just saying that it’s too late to start complaining. If people really didn’t want Kaine, they should have started to stop Kaine effort earlier.
I happen to have a good impression of Kaine. Obviously, I understand his downsides too, but I won’t be disappointed if it’s him.
FlipYrWhig
@dogwood: Agreed, but I can sort of sympathize with the disappointment being expressed by some of my friends who are women for whom reproductive rights issues are extremely important personally and politically. That said, I don’t think Kaine has ever done anything to jeopardize the pro-choice status quo, and I’m pretty confident he never would.
Facebones
@Mnemosyne: This is true, but then Obama was considered the more liberal candidate and wasn’t trying to shore up the left flank. Plus Biden also had the rep as a feisty campaigner. (Rudy never recovered from that Biden quip about noun-verb-9-11) Does that apply to Kaine? I can’t think of any examples off the top of my head. Maybe Kaine will surprise, but he seems more like a good candidate on paper than an inspiring choice.
martian
@Baud: Maybe Kos is just holding a grudge for old time’s and Gilly’s sake. I almost want to link Steve Gilliard’s “Tim Kaine Is A Coward”. At least I think that was the title. Fuck the fucking Yankees!
Amanda in the South Bay
@WaterGirl:So defeating Benito Trump isn’t enough reason to vote, regardless of who her veep choice is? Fucking A didn’t we leave this shit back in the primaries?
Dadadadadadada
@Mnemosyne: Nader maintains that, had he not been on the ballot, those voters would not have voted, leaving the Bush margin intact.
Obviously, we can’t go back and check, but it’s entirely possible that Gore would have lost even without Nader. He did choose to run away from Clinton (the most popular departing Prez ever, with a 65% approval rating), and he did fail to win his home state (which would have rendered his Florida loss moot), and I don’t think even the staunchest Goreite knew just how awful GWB was going to be. In any case, one must not infringe on anyone’s right to run for office or vote as they please.
WaterGirl
@FlipYrWhig: If you haven’t heard anyone say anything unkind about Tim Kaine, maybe you haven’t been listening. The best I have heard is “damned with faint praise”.
Chris
@Facebones:
@joes527:
# [whatever]: Florida disenfranchised an assload of voters, disproportionately black, who were misidentified as felons just in time for the election.
# [whatever + 1]: When even that didn’t lead to clear Republican victory, the Nine handed the election to George W. Bush, in a decision that was so transparently partisan that, if I recall correctly, they actually included some sort of clause saying that the decision shouldn’t be used as precedent.
Could these things have been counteracted if Gore had fucked up less, or if the media or Nader had acted differently – maybe. But it seems hard to meaningfully discuss the 2000 election without putting those two things front and center.
Kay
@dogwood:
I’m uncomfortable with it too. It’s too much like a belief test. The policies are the thing. It starts veering toward “I used to like this author until I found out he was a gun nut”. The work is the focus here. Actions. Output. Not inner thoughts.
Brachiator
@WaterGirl:
Which narrative is that?
I guess I didn’t much care who Hillary selected as VP. I didn’t care about Obama’s choice, although I warmed to Biden later and thought that the two of them were a good and effective team.
So I guess I care more about how a President Clinton would deploy her VP, more than I care about who that person might be.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Major Major Major Major:
Cynthia McKinney.
Jeffro
@FlipYrWhig: yes – Herring’s great. Anyone willing to take on VA’s GOP crazies and stick to their Democratic principles (instead of running as GOP-lite) gets my support.
Baud
Interesting post just up at LGM
amk
so, sudden influx of purity ponies? mission accomplished, doug.
FlipYrWhig
@WaterGirl:
There may be more not very enthusiastic Republican voters who could be moved towards Hillary with a solid, comforting VP pick. But at any rate Kaine isn’t moderate, let alone conservative, he’s just white and has a pen!s.
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
I think it’s because Biden was a good VP and supported the administration’s programs 1000 percent.
Also, there is something to the notion that when you’re a senator, you have to support your particular state’s industries, but taking a nationwide office like President or VP relieves you of that responsibility. That’s why I’ve never been all that concerned about Hillary’s ties to Wall Street. As a US Senator from New York, it was her RESPONSIBILITY to advocate for one of her state’s largest employers. It doesn’t necessarily say anything about what she would do as President.
FlipYrWhig
@WaterGirl: And the worst that I have heard is “damned with faint praise.”
raven
Mrs Greenspan says Kaine, later today.
Major Major Major Major
@Brachiator:
this++
dogwood
@WaterGirl:
Can you say something specific about Kaine being so awful rather than bland generalizations? If you have to be personally excited to get out and vote, then you don’t take elections seriously. Look into Stein, Johnson, or Trump. Maybe one of them will excite you. Or write in Bernie.
joes527
@Mnemosyne: More people voted fire _all_ of the other parties than the margin of victory, including Green, Natural Law, Reform, Libertarian, Workers World, Constitution, Socialist, and Socialist Workers. But somehow this is all Nader’s fault.
More to the point , the number of Democrats who voted for Bush in Florida was almost 500x the margin of victory. If Gore could have carried .02% of those DEMOCRATS WHO VOTED FOR BUSH he would have won. But yeah, keep telling yourself it was the folks that voted for Nader, not the DEMOCRATS WHO VOTED FOR BUSH who made the difference.
Florida _absolutely_ decided the election. But it was Gore’s poor campaigning which couldn’t convince enough people in his own party NOT TO VOTE FOR THE REPUBLICAN and his inept handling of … everything … once the votes were cast that made the difference.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@WaterGirl: I posted this a couple threads down. I have no particular reason to take (or not) Krystal Ball at face value, but she’s a self-described “Bernie Broad” (with a surprising degree of Clinton-skepticism) who is an enthusiastic Kaine supporter:
glory b
@srv: Made in China!!!!
Baud
@raven: Jesus. Probably means it’s not Kaine.
Elizabelle
@WaterGirl: FWIW, Tim Kaine is a superb person and would be an excellent VP.
I think you can or could get excited about supporting a ticket with him on it.
I don’t appreciate DougJ serving up a thread like this.
Greg
@raven:
That’s the last straw. I am writing in Trump/David Duke!
Baud
@Elizabelle: Then you don’t appreciate DougJ.
FlipYrWhig
@joes527:
Of course I’d guess a pretty solid chunk of “Democrats who voted for Bush” are people like county clerk Kim Davis.
dedc79
@Kay:
It is, after-all, the Pro-Choice movement. Emphasis on choice, not abortion. That framing was deliberate so as to include within the tent those who might be personally opposed but who do not believe the government should be making these decisions for people. I expect that a considerable percentage of people in the pro-choice movement fall into that group.
Carl W
@Mnemosyne: (off-topic, open thread): Mnemosyne, check out today’s xkcd!
(ETA: Particularly the mouse-hover text.)
misterpuff
Kaine in Vain.
Is that the bonus track to the GOP’s latest release D.C’s Burning?
Anoniminous
David Brooks has a sad.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Kinda surprised Kos is anti-Kaine. It’s been a long time, but it seems to me that he’s exactly what the Markos of old would’ve been rooting for.
Major Major Major Major
@joes527: Nader was, to steal some of Nate Silver’s terminology, the tipping point cause. All other things being equal, Gore would have won if it weren’t for Nader. Gore also would have won in a world where things were done differently before election day.
We can blame the morons who put Jeb! in charge of Florida’s elections, if you’d like, or does that not diss Gore enough for your taste?
Mnemosyne
@Kay:
Yep. It’s too close to the claim that we can’t say that someone’s action was racist because we don’t know what was in their heart.
Fuck that. A well-meaning or ignorant action that hurts someone is still a hurtful action regardless of what’s in your “heart.”
If I wasn’t on my phone, I would re-post my link to the Black Beauty rant about ignorance, but I have always agreed with the author that ignorance is almost as bad as outright wickedness. Saying I didn’t know as you destroy someone’s life or career is NOT AN EXCUSE.
cokane
Third party screamers have seemed silly to me for a while now. The thing is, in most countries with a robust multi party system, there is a runoff/2nd round in prez elections. So you have a bunch of candidates, w/ diverse views in the first vote, and then just two.
At one point we had Sanders, Paul, Bush, Cruz and a bunch of others, frankly a pretty diverse group of views represented. Now we have two. It’s not precisely equivalent but it’s pretty damn similar to my eyes.
divF
@Elizabelle:
I think this is DougJ applying the flypaper theory of blog management – put up a thread likely to attract the dead-enders, and they don’t bother us elsewhere.
FlipYrWhig
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: The Markos of old was hot for Mark Warner, who is far less progressive than Kaine.
different-church-lady
Knock it off, Doug J.
May
@Villago Delenda Est: So does Hillary Clinton.
Mnemosyne
@amk:
This ain’t DougJ’s first time at the rodeo. He knows what he’s doing.
Major Major Major Major
Shots fired at shopping center in Munich, “major police operation” underway.
scav
Given that much of this is a made up micro-controvery seeming designed to fill up bandwidth, there’s a probable mass shooting in Munich that might actually count as news.
WaterGirl
@Baud: First of all, I can’t believe you said that – don’t you know that it’s never too late to start complaining???
Now that that’s out of the way… Do you think Hillary would change her VP choice because a bunch of people lobbied that it shouldn’t be Kaine (or fill in the blank)? She’s gonna pick who she wants, just like Obama did.
I have just been hoping to be pleasantly surprised by her choice, and now all I’m hearing is Kaine, Kaine, Kaine. So at this point, it’s not looking good for “pleasantly surprised”.
eric
Clinton is not selecting a VP for me; she is picking someone for the persons not yet firmly in her camp — be they Left, Middle or Right of the democratic coalition. They will assess the best pick in those terms. “Just win baby!”
different-church-lady
@Baud:
They were far too busy with the stop Hillary effort.
WaterGirl
@Amanda in the South Bay: Reading comprehension fail.
Bobby Thomson
I can tolerate Kaine. Tom Ballsack would be worse but not a deal breaker.
I’m kind of surprised Doug hasn’t been trolling (beyond the initial post) with his sock puppets.
joes527
@FlipYrWhig: But we seem fine with the assumption that if there was no Nader, all of his voters would have ben natural Gore voters. Stupid and pointless. If there was no Nader, all his voters would have done …. something. A few of them might even have voted for Gore (but there is no telling how many)
This is actually really important for 2016. It is time to learn the real lesson of 2000 and stop making excuses. The Democrats _have_ _to_ _win_ this year. Losing with someone to blame is not acceptable.
burnspbesq
@joes527:
The “Nader cost us the election” narrative has the additional advantage of being true, shit-for-brains.
divF
@eric:
+1. At this point, I am willing to believe that A-list professionals are in charge on the Dem side, and to trust what they are doing. I am not competent to second-guess them.
glory b
@Baud: Yes, he signed a letter asking that the small regional banks report once a month instead of every day. That’s it.
Dadadadadadada
@cokane: The trouble with our system is that it’s not a true meritocracy. Imagine for a moment that the top two vote-getters in the primaries were both Democrats (this nearly happened this year; Trump got 13.3 million votes to Sanders’s 12.0), and that both outperformed the leading Republican by a clear margin. The general election should be between those two Dems, but under our system it can’t be, and an undeserving, less-popular candidate now gets an unearned shot at winning it all.
Emma
This is what we could end up with. Are you happy to? Stop blathering about vice-presidents. At this point, I’d take anyone with a (D) after their name!
Bobby Thomson
@FlipYrWhig: heh. Didn’t he even want to run Warner for prez at one point?
WaterGirl
@Brachiator:
Playing it safe, poll-testing everything before she takes a position, etc.
I care very much who Hillary chooses as VP because of her age. I think 60-whatever is too old for a newly elected president these days. Regardless of party or gender. So it very much matters to me who Hillary’s VP choice is.
Dadadadadadada
@scav: Too bad Germany doesn’t have any good guys with guns, amirite?
martian
I’d rather see someone like Perez get the national exposure and set up for a future presidential run. I feel like Hillary has the room here to go in a different direction than another Southern white guy so, whether or not Kaine is personally awesome as opposed to just a Clinton buddy from way back, this would seem like a conservative, safe pick to me.
burnspbesq
@joes527:
In the CNN exit polling inFlorida, people who said they had voted for Nader were asked who they would have voted for if Nader had not been on the ballot. The responses were better than six to one for Gore. Since Nader got 97,000 votes, that would translate to a > 80,000 vote margin for Gore. No amount of Republican shenanigans could have overturned an 80,000 margin.
So, yeah, take yourself and your ahistorical delusions right the fuck out of here.
WaterGirl
@FlipYrWhig:
That’s an excellent point.
cokane
@joes527: Even if other causes contributed to Gore’s loss, you cannot use them to deny that Nader helped to contribute. In an election that close — literally one of the closest in history — even one small factor, if taken away, means Gore wins. It’s akin to every point having been important in a 1-score sportsball game
Major Major Major Major
@eric: call me crazy, but I think she’s picking somebody she wants to spend four years working closely with.
burnspbesq
Ladies and gentlemen, Donald Trump.
The Lord High Executioner
joes527
@Major Major Major Major:
The reason that it is important to learn the actual lesson of 2000, and to let the comfortable narrative go, is the it is too important that the D’s win this year.
There will _always_ be third party candidates. There will _always_ be folks trying to disenfranchise voters. Get over it and win the state.
Licking wounds and pointing fingers makes folks feel all superior, but it does fuck all for our country.
Ruckus
@Emma:
I’m retirement age and I don’t have the benefits that you enjoy. My SS number is OK but not good now, what will it be like in 10 yrs if the rat bastard republicans refuse to vote COL increases? I lost everything in the great recession, just trying to have/build a retirement fund, was looking forward to living in my car if a friend hadn’t taken me in. I’m back on my feet now, but don’t know how many more yrs I can work, but I do know how many more I have any desire to. Retire to a life of leisure? Yeah that is a long ago, burned to the ground idea. And people wonder why I’m not overjoyed these days.
Bobby Thomson
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Kos is all about the page clicks that are putting his kids through college. That’s why he allowed the Sanders crowd to rule the roost over there for so long and has been very delicate with their fee fees.
WaterGirl
@dogwood: Maybe read what I wrote again? I made it clear that she has my vote.
edit: I’m not trying to convince anyone here to not like Kaine or not want him as VP. She’s gonna pick who she’s gonna pick. I was just saying what I think about Kaine as VP and what the choice of Kaine would tell me about Hillary.
cokane
@Dadadadadadada: Huh? Our system isn’t a meritocracy because the top vote getters advanced? Is this the Bernie math I’ve been warned about?
Tom Q
@joes527: Those “Democrats” who voted for Bush had likely last voted D for president in 1964, if not earlier. They’re Wallace Democrats just keeping their old label, and were never available to Gore.
My recollection of surveys post-election 2000 was that only about half of Nader’s voters said they’d have shown up to vote with him not on the ballot, but that those who would have broken 2-1 for Gore. Given the 547 vote margin, that would have been way more than enough to reverse the state. This isn’t to ignore Gore’s many stupidities — chiefly, running full-tilt away from a president with a 60% approval rating — but pretending Nader had nothing to do with the outcome is pure denial.
As to the Jill Stein thing: my take is, Stein voters are people who are fine with Trump becoming president but want to feel morally superior to those who actually vote for him. (Which is something of an echo of Baud’s observation above: I, too, have marginally more respect for those who are just voting for the jerk.)
Mister Forkbeard
@joes527: I’m having flashbacks to the ridiculous arguments from 2001. Can someone please start screaming about butterfly ballots and democrats accidentally voting for bush, and the voter purging, and the Brooks Brothers Riot, and the Supreme Court decision, etc.
Look, the way I see it is that Gore lost by a *vanishingly small* amount of votes in Florida. Any number of factors could have changed the outcome if they’d happened slightly differently. One of the the larger factors was definitely Nader’s candidacy and his insistence that Bush and Gore were the same, and you should make a principled stand and vote for him instead.
So yeah, I would really prefer he hadn’t done that. I also would have loved for the state election office to not be run someone in the tank for Bush, or for the voting process to be such a clusterfuck. And that’s why you work on ALL of those things, not just one. A Nader-esque candidacy is a bad idea at this point in time, and we should point that out. Getting fair elections is a good thing, and we need to work for that. Getting rid of voter ID is a good thing, and we should work towards that, etc.
Davebo
@Villago Delenda Est: She pulled away quickly. It’s almost as if she’s used to it.
Not here Dad….
cokane
@Dadadadadadada: The more I think about this, the less sense it makes. Since, Sanders (and Clinton) both benefited from being in a race with substantially fewer candidates, skewing their vote totals upwards relative to the Republicans. Our system is pretty broadly meritocratic actually. Now, what the general public thinks is worthy of merit…
?BillinGlendaleCA
@Dadadadadadada: We have that system here in CA, called the “jungle primary”, it sucks.
different-church-lady
@Tom Q:
No need to over-think this.
? Martin
Democrats needs to do something to reconnect with former Democratic blue collar voters. I don’t know what that is, but it needs to get done. Maybe it’s a Kaine or a Vilsack (or anyone else for that matter). But the goal isn’t to generate more liberal bona-fides. The goal is to expand and shore up the reliable Dem votes.
Brachiator
@WaterGirl:
OK. I see where you are coming from. Thanks for the clarification.
I’m not sure how much I would try to factor in the age issue. It comes down to the overall health of the candidate, not a certain number. People were concerned about McCain living to serve out his term if elected. Not unreasonable, but I note that his cranky ass is still here.
sukabi
@Shell: not yet, Trumps not done stomping on his own dick yet.
?BillinGlendaleCA
@burnspbesq: I was going to ask if that polling had been done, thanks.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
There was a woman caller from NC on C-SPAN this morning saying that she thought Hillary should choose either Cory Booker or Ted Cruz.
That is all.
Cheers,
Scott.
germy
Whoever she picks as VP, I just wish she’d made the announcement halfway through Trump’s acceptance speech.
The Ancient Randonneur
@Dadadadadadada: Your argument is only valid if the primary is completely open and you have one ballot similar to the election in November where every party is represented that qualified to be on the ballot. In that case what is the point of having a primary season if not to pick the candidates for each of the parties?
germy
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: I remember seeing an online comment somewhere (the commenter seemed serious) that called for a Kucinich/Rand Paul ticket.
Or maybe it was Rand Paul/Dennis Kucinich, I don’t remember the order. But the commenter seemed unaware that their views on government were exactly opposite.
WaterGirl
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Thanks. I was impressed with Tim Kaine before he started at the DNC. My opinion of him took a big dive after that. But if she picks Kaine, maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised.
I haven’t actually been reading any of the hype about Kaine or any of the other VP names that are being floated. I don’t think any of us can have any influence on who she picks. I think you make a VP pick based on states they can bring (or anything else like that) at your peril. I think you have to look (almost) solely at how they can help you govern and how they would govern if something happened to you.
Major Major Major Major
@? Martin: I think those blue collar voters are gone. You’ll note that the ones who left the Democratic Party have one verrrry particular thing in common.
@germy: me too.
Hal
Is Tim Kaine the one Rachel Maddow always said was really boring or was that Tim Pawlenty?
different-church-lady
@dedc79:
It’s rather more the non-voters who are responsible.
Elizabelle
@joes527: For Florida, it was the butterfly ballot in Palm Beach County, deployed without testing, which was so confusing that Pat Buchanan picked up Gore voters. We are talking like 2,000 to 3,000 misvotes. Way more than the margin.
Media and lots of other people conveniently forget that, but it’s true.
No butterfly ballot, no opportunity for Jeb! and Katherine Harris to fuck with the results.
The Gray Adder
And enjoy the rest of your life putting up with a Trump-influenced Supreme Court, secure in the knowledge that you are right while splitting a pack of ramen with your significant other because you can’t afford to go to the grocery store. That knock on the door is the Secret Nookie Police, wondering what it was you two were doing last night. The Philip K. Dick scenario made real.
Mnemosyne
@Carl W:
Ha! I mastered the art of walking with a book when I was a kid, so I don’t get the moral panic over Pokemon Go. After you fall off a few curbs, you figure it out.
D58826
OT. Somebody(s) shot up a mall in Munich Germany. Police are reporting multiple casual;ties, both dead and injured.
germy
@Brachiator:
Perhaps the stress of the presidency would have hastened his end? Heckling from the sidelines is usually more soothing than actually accepting responsibility. Also, Sarah would have had a private chat with his chef to request more fatty and salty foods.
The Gray Adder
Picking Mike Pence means Donald Trump isn’t really a libertarian. Discuss.
amk
Peter Sullivan
Tim Kaine’s voting record: Planned Parenthood: 100% Brady Campaign: 100% NARAL: 100% Human Rights Campaign: 100% AFL/CIO: 94%
p.a.
@Carl W:
2020 Republican Party: If you don’t have an oxygen tank clamped to your mobility scooter, you’re not a real Murrican and we don’t want your vote.
? Martin
@?BillinGlendaleCA: Does it? There is no republican in our senate race.
WaterGirl
@Elizabelle: I’m glad to hear you think highly of Kaine and Baud seems to share your view, so that’s encouraging.
I really liked that Biden said that in order for him to be VP he would need to be the last person in the room with Barack when making decisions. I think that’s a great relationship to have – the president surely has to have someone they trust completely. I think the days of VP not being a meaningful position are long gone.
p.a.
@amk: Only 94%!!?? Roswell! Roswell!
Mnemosyne
@joes527:
I was a Nader voter (in CA). So was Betty Cracker in FL. I can tell you from the inside that if I hadn’t stupidly fallen for Nader’s “Republicrats” line, I would have voted for Gore.
Don’t be as stupid as I was. Voting for the candidate who’s not going to fuck up the country is more important than one’s fee-fees about the system.
Dadadadadadada
@cokane: The top vote getter advanced this time, but a scenario where the #2 vote-getter is left out of the Final Two is too feasible, especially now that the GOP might well lose all its relevance. An improvement would be instant runoff voting, which offers much less chance of the 2nd-best candidate missing the Big Dance.
scav
@D58826: Nobody seems to be distractible, there’s trolling on the internet.
glory b
@WaterGirl: You know, how about we all grow up and not demand to always be excited? Can you do your civic duty, think of the Muslims and Hispanics who will get rounded up and the black men who will be “law and ordered” out of existence and just go vote?
Don’t act like you won’t eat your vegetables unless you get a piece of cake.
Captain C
@Tom Q:
As near as I can recall, Nader got around 90,000 votes in Florida (I think it was a little more). Take away half and you get 45,000 who would have still voted. At a 2-1 margin for gore, that’s 30,000 to 15,000, which would not have made much of a difference nationally, but would have given him Florida with a lot of breathing room, perhaps enough that there wouldn’t have been any reason for a recount.
Nader’s run (and specifically, Nader’s decision to try and damage Gore instead of building up the Green Party’s totals in safe states) was a necessary, but not sufficient factor in Bush’s win. Other factors include Gore’s lackluster campaign which ran away from a popular sitting president, a totally corrupt Florida political apparatus including the Governor being Candidate Bush’s brother, and a nakedly partisan Supreme Court which knew that their decision was so bad they declared that it wasn’t to be used as a precedent in the future; none of these other factors matter if Gore wins Florida by 15K votes.
glory b
@Mnemosyne: THANK YOU!!!!
?BillinGlendaleCA
@? Martin: I’ve seen it work both ways. If you have an over abundance of Dems on the ballot(due to lack of party discipline), you can end up with 2 Republicans on the general election ballot even in a heavily Democratic jurisdiction.
gene108
@Villago Delenda Est:
Can you imagine if Obama or Bill groped a daughter on stage, on national T.V., like Trump did Ivanka?
And Trump’s said some creepy stuff about wanting to date her already.
I’m surprised the near-ass grab isn’t getting more attention. It was deeply disturbing.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl:
Then shouldn’t she pick the person with whom she thinks she would work best?
Mike
@Baud:
That’s exactly what he said, but clearly the pamphlet that’s being circulated down at the bulk food co-op is claiming otherwise.
Bobby Thomson
@? Martin: yeah, no. We know who those people are and why they left, and I like the Civil Rights Act. Jim Webb and Tom Frank can go fuck themselves.
Dadadadadadada
@?BillinGlendaleCA: The jungle primary was just what I had in mind as a good alternative, so…we seem to disagree.
Perhaps I’m naive, but I think it’s better to have to choose between two Dems than to have to choose between a Dem and a gooper. Softer consequences if everyone goofs up their vote.
cokane
@Dadadadadadada: I get what you’re trying to say. But you can’t invent hypotheticals to “prove” that the reality of our system isn’t meritocratic. Moreover, an election where 2nd place was at stake would change voters’ preferences, so you cannot invent new hypotheticals and then assume identical vote counts. My only point in the OP was to note that we actually had a broad selection of viable candidates this year, and often do every prez. year.
And frankly plenty of no-name long-shot candidates have done well, at least lately, Obama and Trump for example.
Captain C
@Brachiator:
Of course, he didn’t have to spend the last 8 years dealing with the stress of the presidency (including coming into office during one of the worst economic crashes since the Great Depression) and Sarah Palin looking over his shoulder.
Mnemosyne
@WaterGirl:
I posted this yesterday and I think it’s relevant again here: it’s a story from Mormon Press (of all places) about how unconscious gender bias makes us think Hillary is less trustworthy than she actually is. It’s a really interesting read.
(Trigger warning for extreme atheists: there is a brief discussion of how this relates to Mormon theology.)
different-church-lady
@Captain C: Well, to be fair, Palin would have only been there for about the first 16 months.
Brachiator
@germy:
Also I think that McCain’s family, on his mother’s side, is noted for healthy longevity. Damn. McCain’s mother is 104. Her twin sister died in 2011.
Trollhattan
@Mnemosyne:
It doesn’t make me “smart” but I knew to steer (heh) far away from Nader in 2000; not only did he come across as a pompous windbag his “not a dime’s worth of difference” contention was on its face either a bald lie or a sign of early onset dementia. Dubya was such an obvious phony and language-strangling moron and goddamnit, Milly Ivins was alive and giving us the scoop in real time.
Mister Forkbeard
@Captain C: A much more eloquent version of what I was saying earlier on. Thank you!
WaterGirl
@glory b: You must have skimmed what I wrote. I am clearly VOTING FOR HILLARY.
I am hoping she will pick a VP that will help allay my concerns about what Hillary will be like as president AND will help set the stage for the future of our party. Tim Kaine doesn’t do that for me. If she chooses Kaine, maybe I will be pleasantly surprised. Or not, time will tell.
edited
Princess
@Davebo: I saw that. Ivanka looked creeped out by her father.
Trollhattan
Again….Spree-killing, this time in Munich.
Mnemosyne
@cokane:
After his speech in 2004, I certainly wouldn’t have called Obama a “no-name” candidate. He was very clearly a rising star and handily won his US Senate election after his opponent flamed out. Long-shot, sure, until we all got to see how well-organized he was.
Emma
@Ruckus: Then you’re one of those people that should be terrified of letting Trump and his nuts into the Oval Office.
Captain C
@different-church-lady: This is true; that’s probably about how long it would have taken her to figure out she couldn’t really grift much from the Veep spot (Cheney could, but he was infinitely more talented at that sort of thing than Palin).
Ruckus
@RobertDSC-iPhone 6:
That’s what choice is. He’s made his but doesn’t think any one should make a choice for others. That’s exactly right, it is choice. He’s allowed to not want one for himself. Now the fact that he can never need to make that choice for himself does put a little spin on it, but he is for choice.
WaterGirl
@gene108:
I missed that. Ugh.
Keith G
I would hope that Hillary does not select a white male to be vice president, or I should say to be her running mate, same difference? Yethe, whatever feelings I have are tempered by two basic ideas. Idea number one is that the name at the bottom of the ticket very rarely contributes any movement in the polls. Idea number two was given to me from Paul Begala and seconded by another interview I saw some time later, Hillary is likely to do what Barack Obama did and select the VP nominee based on two criteria. The first is ability to govern and the second is personal chemistry. And as Begala said, she takes both of those factors as extraordinarily important. Yes although I would rather she choose someone younger and less white, as a down payment on our party’s future, I’m happy with whatever she does.
One last idea that occurred to me this morning. It seems as if important part of Hillary’s argument will be about the issue of the stability of the team running the executive branch. Therefore it seems likely that, unfortunately, a head start goes to the two white governors who have a proven track record of governance.
Captain C
@Princess: I would imagine it’s not the first time something like that has happened to her.
Dadadadadadada
@cokane: I guess I’m just hoping for a world where the GOP doesn’t automatically get to field a candidate who’s guaranteed 40% of the vote. I’d like to see that world.
gene108
@joes527:
The ultimate problem Gore had (and Kerry, too) was money. Bush, Jr. basically had a 2:1 cash advantage.
Gore (and Kerry) could not respond to everywhere that Bush & Co. were attacking them. They did not have the resources.
Obama is a fundraising juggernaut to dwarf any and all Presidential candidates. He had the resources to respond to every attack, the resources to define his opponents, the resources to run a first rate IT operation, the resources to have field offices everywhere and people to GOTV.
If Gore had won in 2000 he’d have been the first Presidential candidate to win the White House, since 1976 when they started keeping track of fundraising, to have won and raised less money than his opponent.
In American politics, usually, money talks.
cokane
@Dadadadadadada: Lemme add that the advantage of our system is actually that voters get a better shot at voting for their unicorn once. In a runoff style system, there is still tons of strategic voting, and it’s often most ppl voting for either the right-of-center or left-of-center candidate both times, depending on the country’s own politics at the time of course
kd bart
So much angst over a decision, that in the end, means so very little. Anyone of any talent is of better use in the Senate.
Jeffro
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
That’s outstanding! HRC would be equally well served there, I’m sure
Davis X. Machina
You know what? It really doesn’t matter. Not if the literature has it right.
• VP picks don’t deliver home states. unless they’re small, and very close to start with. And maybe not even then.
• Geographical balance doesn’t seem to matter.
• Neither does gender.
• Or counter-programming for ideology.
So long as the VP pick spends more time defending the top of the ticket than the presidential candidate spends explaining/defending/covering for their VP pick, it’s all good.
Kaine speaks Spanish, BTW.
Cat48
No, im voting Hillz, no matter who she picks. She will lose anyway if citizens are dumb enough to blame Obama for any shooting that occurs outside the US, sigh. A mass shooting in Munich now.
gene108
@WaterGirl:
Link to somene’s twitter feed that grabbed some pics.
Judge for yourself.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus:
I absolutely think that.
To me that’s an implicit part of having the role I talked about. The way I worded what I wrote was way too simplistic. I just don’t think they should be chosen because they are a safe choice or they can bring some state or because it will make the NRA (or whatever group) happy. It should be about trust and competence and being able to work together, and more – not a one-time trick that helps get you elected.
edited
Dadadadadadada
@gene108: And that’s why I’m not at all worried about this election. Trump is scary and disastrous, yes, but he is going to be CRUSHED on fund-raising. The Dems have the Clinton machine and the Obamas in their corner; they’ll break all the same records that have been broken in the last few elections. Trump has nothing. The big-money GOP hates him, and the rubes don’t have any money. Add to that his newfound need to play defense in super-red states like Utah and Mississippi, and we might see yet another Trump enterprise declare bankruptcy.
Shalimar
@joes527: Gore did indeed fuck up 2000. It is about 35% his fault, and 60% the fault of the media negative storylines about Gore to keep it a horse race. Still, even with all that chicken-fucking, Gore would have won and the race wouldn’t have been close enough in Florida to steal without Nader and his gang of puritans. That 5% that actually was Nader’s narcissistic fault is plenty enough to deserve lifelong scorn.
Cat48
Im not impressed by Stein at all or Johnson.
cokane
@Shalimar: Plus the important note is that Nader ran with the intention of taking away votes from Gore. This is the important detail joe is missing. Every point mattered in the double overtime game of 2000. But Gore was trying to get as many votes as he could. The national media were trying to make money. Nader was ostensibly advancing a liberal agenda while intentionally trying to peel off Gore voters. Just like in criminal law, intent matters.
WaterGirl
@Davis X. Machina:
That’s so sad, but so true. (From a getting elected point of view.)
WaterGirl
@gene108: My nostrils are flaring and I’m pretty sure my face looks like I just stepped in dog shit barefoot.
So I think we have our answer!
Cat48
@Dadadadadadada: We’ll see about big money. They seemed to be interested in Trump now, some of them, NYT article yesterday.
Hillz is going to appear in FL tonight, but paper . Didnt give time. Nominee to be named today.
Calouste
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Kos needs page clicks to pay the bills. VP diaries, which are basically rehashing the primaries, generate a lot of page clicks.
Matt McIrvin
Kaine is fine. He’s fairly liberal; he’s an experienced political operator; he’s not super-young but neither is he old enough for health to be a serious concern. Would he be a decent President if he needed to take the job? Sure. At this point it astounds me that any Democrat would be getting seriously upset about this.
I had to grit my teeth and bear it when Obama picked Biden, and he was fine. Kaine makes more sense to me than Biden did in 2008.
joes527
@Mnemosyne: Funny story. I voted for Gore, because even in 2000 you would have to be a a moron to vote for Nader.*
But this fixation on things that we can’t control (that there will always be third party candidates) and treatment of loss of 12% of registered Democrats to George fucking Bush as if it were a force of nature is how the Democrats lose elections.
* Actually, living in California, it would have just have been pointless.
Omnes Omnibus
@WaterGirl: So your pre-existing qualms about HRC are causing you to think that, unless she makes a splashy choice, she is going for the safe, poll-tested option? I would say that, to me, she seems to have become comfortable enough in her own skin that she will chose the person with whom she thinks she will work best. If it’s Kaine, I am fine with it.
hovercraft
I didn’t read the thread.
David Duke is running for David Vitters senate seat as a republican. Has this been discussed?
Villago Delenda Est
@cokane: Nader called Gore and the deserting coward “Tweedledee and Tweedledum”. He thought a deserting coward victory would bring the Revolution.
He has the blood of all those Iraqis (and over 4000 American servicemen and women) on his hands. Fuck him over and over again with the most rusty and unlubed chainsaw you can imagine.
Trollhattan
@Omnes Omnibus:
“Biden! Biden! Biden! Biden! Biden! Biden! Biden! Biden! Biden!”
Four more years of Onion Joe washing the TransAm in front of the White House would be okie-dokie by me.
David in NY
I gotta say, though my memory is a little dim, that Kaine is the only Senator, of whom I’m not the constituent, whom I ever bothered to telephone (given the uselessness of doing that). But he had engaged in such pure hippie-bashing on some relatively important issue (financial regulation maybe) that I felt it worth doing it to swear that if I every got the chance, I’d vote against him, would never give him a red cent, and would contribute to any liberal who would primary him.
So God damn it, why can’t this be like the old days, when you could vote for one person for President and not for her vice-presidential choice! I’ll be really pissed if I have to vote for him. Save me Hillary! Save me!
glory b
@WaterGirl: Actually, my post was supposed to be for any of the “unenthused” crowd, but I an see how it looks like it was directed at you personally.
Sorry for the confusion.
sherparick
Says Doug!, tongue firmly planted in cheek. Seriously though, Hilary and convention should really go all in on championing a industrial policy with with a “Green” emphasis and say that the era of trade agreements is over until the ones we have start working for the whole country.
Ruckus
@Emma:
I absolutely am. Trump, his nuts and his friends. If they all ran off a cliff into a flaming sea of gasoline, I wouldn’t lose and sleep. OK I might lose some sleep, celebrating.
I am a Clinton fan. I was not in 2008, I thought she ran a crappy campaign then, not that she was a particularly horrible candidate, but organizational chops are vital to the job. One has to really trust the people around them because you have to let them do their jobs. There is no way to micromanage the presidency (not that micromanaging works in any sized job), it’s way too big, way too many moving parts.
MuckJagger
@Anoniminous: “Let him die!!”
Trump wasn’t anywhere near the scene when those debate attendees yelled that out.
Fuck Brooks, and fuck his “compassionate conservatism.” That party was morally broke at least several years before Der Trump. He just took a stick and poked around the ashes.
GHayduke
I’ll be voting blue, but neither Vilesack nor Cain bring anything to the ticket. Their choice will not swing a single vote.
NR
Kaine will be just as bad of a pick as Pence was for Trump, if not worse. The man is actively supporting bank deregulation. Putting him on the ticket is as politically tone-deaf as it gets.
This is Gore’s Lieberman pick all over again.
Donut
@srv:
You are just about the dumbest motherfucker, ever. Jesus, man.
NR
@GHayduke: Not true. Kaine will swing votes away from Hillary, I guarantee it.
Trollhattan
@Donut:
And barely trailing srv for second place is right above you. It’s a collision of greatness!
Omnes Omnibus
@NR:
Bullshit.
NR
@Omnes Omnibus: Not bullshit.
Omnes Omnibus
@NR: Still bullshit.
ETA: It was covered upthread.
David in NY
@FlipYrWhig: Despite my dislike for Kaine I gather that the recent knock on him for supporting some deregulation of smaller regional banks is, at least to some degree, a bum rap. Sen. Warren supports some such action, apparently, though it may be that Kaine is asking for more than she would support. As an aside, that’s all a play for the campaign contributions of that banking group, for which the Republicans are contending mightily.
cokane
@Villago Delenda Est: It’s a juvenile kind of logic you’re exercising though. Actors are responsible for their acts. It’s akin to blaming Dixiecrats for the passage of civil rights because their lagging in joining Republicans allowed Kennedy and LBJ victories.
And it doesn’t come off as a genuine concern for Iraqi lives but rather transparent political point scoring
Davis X. Machina
@GHayduke: No choice will…., except maybe, in a small state that’s close. And even then the literature is unclear.
Percysowner
@RobertDSC-iPhone 6: Note: personally opposed to abortion, but would leave the choice to the woman is exactly what Pro-Choice means! For goodness sake, saying anything else plays right into the RTL hands. People who are pro choice are pro CHOICE, including letting people make a choice they don’t agree with. Pro Choice does not equal pro abortion. The RTLers have used that trope for years to tar the pro choice movement. JEEZE!
NR
@Omnes Omnibus: Sorry, not bullshit. He also said he can’t wait to go to war with the progressive wing of the party.
Kaine is Lieberman all over again. But hey, at least the pick will make it so you guys can yell at liberals for the next four months and blame them for Hillary’s terrible poll numbers. So there’s that at least.
Dmbeaster
@joes527:
It is also true. So what is the point of claiming that if Gore had run a better campaign, he would have overcome Nader’s toxic effect on the result?
Soylent Green
@joes527: It was also the butterfly ballot that fooled a lot of old Jewish people into voting for Buchanan. But fuck Nader and his still-to-this-day anti Democratic Party bullshit.
LanceThruster
#StillSanders
David in NY
@joes527: Gore was the only Democrat running, though, wasn’t he? And he was demonstrably better than GWB, right? So fuck anybody in a close state who voted either for Nader or Bush.
To paraphrase a famous man — you go into an election with the candidate you’ve got, not the candidate you wish you had.
ETA: It should go without saying that Nader was a ridiculous excuse for a candidate — not a realistic possibility of winning even one state.
David in NY
@NR: “Sorry, not bullshit. He also said he can’t wait to go to war with the progressive wing of the party.”
Yes, bullshit on the deregulation point. But you’ve nailed him on his worst inclinations in your second sentence.
les
@? Martin:
Jesus, is this idiocy back? Those people are the Reagan dems–if you had brains you’d know they’re racists who left after the civil rights act, and they ain’t “comin’ back.” They were never here.
NR
@Dmbeaster: Boy, I can’t wait for you guys to blame Stein for President Trump for the next sixteen years after the Kaine pick.
cokane
@les: Also I love how the phrase “blue collar voters” in these contexts always implies the exclusion of racial minorities — despite the fact that they’re the overwhelming majority of “blue collar workers” in this country. Dems have and will continue to win a majority and even overwhelming majority of people making below the median income.
patrick II
@NR:
Thanks for the heads up on Kaine’s bank deregulation position. It is even worse than I thought, for he is campainging for TPP and loosening regulations even now
After all of the “move to the progressive” positions that Hillary has claimed to make during the primaries against Bernie, picking Kaine would pretty much wipe that out.
Mister Forkbeard
@NR: If Stein purposefully goes after Hillary votes and that small margin of votes costs Hillary the election… are we supposed to congratulate her?
What are you thinking here?
Feebog
Apparently Warren is out of the running. Too bad, because naming her would immediately take all the wind (assuming there is any) out of the Republican sails. The Warren pick would dominate the weekend newscycle, and lead right into the Dem convention. OTH, I’m OK with Kaine, but its like being served oatmeal for breakfast when you were craving steak and eggs.
WaterGirl
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes, I confess that because I have not been impressed with Kaine at the DNC or as senator, my first thought was that Hillary was picking him because he was safe. My first thought was not that she has a great working relationship with him.
When we feel good about people, we tend to give them what we call the benefit of the doubt. When the opposite is true, I think we tend to jump to the less flattering option. I started calling that the “negative benefit of the doubt” years ago when I would see people doing that in work settings.
I suspect that’s what I did with Clinton and Kaine. On the positive side, I started to recognize that as the conversation went back and forth and I was agreeing that a great working relationship is a necessary component of the VP choice. Necessary, but not sufficient, in my opinion.
She has made so many poor staffing choices for her campaigns in the past that my first thought upon hearing that Kaine was on the short list was ugh. After this thread, I am feeling more resigned to the idea that if she has more of a history with Kaine and is who she is comfortable with and who she has chosen for VP, I will give Kaine a clean slate and see what I think of him in this new role.
I really liked what I saw of Kaine related to the Obama campaign in 2007/2008; then he took a big dive in my book as head of the DNC. It’s a new day; if she chooses Kaine we’ll see what he brings.
Thanks for the conversation.
NR
@Mister Forkbeard: You’re supposed to put the blame where it belongs: On Hillary Clinton, for making a stupid political move that will cost votes.
WaterGirl
@glory b: Thanks.
SFAW
@burnspbesq:
I was going to say something about it being an inconvenient truth, but, well, there are some things I will not do.
But you’re arguing with an apparent Naderite who still can’t accept that St Ralph the Pure’s vanity campaign had a specific and material effect on the 2000 results. I’m waiting for him to try the old “a study showed that Nader voters would have gone more for Bush than for Gore.” [I read that “study.” It’s not, shall we say, quite as intellectually rigorous as a talk given by Professor Irwin Corey.]
Thank FSM that Ralphie-baby was so fucking correct about there being no difference between Bush and Gore. Well, at least to the extent that there are a few-100,000 Iraqi civilians who can’t tell the difference. Anymore, that is.
MuckJagger
@les: I’ve got a friend back home who claims to be a lifelong Democrat.
I have yet to see him post even *one* pro-Democratic idea on Facebook.
Those guys are gone, gone, gone.
NR
@WaterGirl: There is no grassroots constituency who is pushing for Kaine. This push is coming entirely from campaign consultants and donors. We could be looking at the 2000 Gore campaign all over again, and that should scare the crap out of everyone.
FlipYrWhig
@NR: You are fucking horrendous. Just unbelievably hideous. Please die.
Applejinx
@Facebones: Hm. Wants to deregulate banks and HE’S the one they want to take out of the Senate, presumably making his wishes kinda toothless (the argument against taking Warren iirc)?
Interesting. And I guess it’s not like Clinton hasn’t heard that song before.
FlipYrWhig
@Mister Forkbeard: He’s thinking that he’s a malevolent stain on humanity who wants to spread his disease. Just hope he spontaneously combusts into tiny little globules that can never be traced.
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: What a shock, pitifully credulous Applejinx fell for the same shit all over again. Kaine doesn’t want to “deregulate banks.” Stop reading HuffPo and AlterNet headlines and rushing to believe the worst.
NR
@FlipYrWhig: Wow. That’s a pretty extreme reaction to what I wrote. Maybe you should take a break from the Internet for a while.
Edit: Thinking about it, it probably wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to see a therapist, either.
Aardvark Cheeselog
@Amanda in the South Bay:
@FlipYrWhig:
@Jeffro:
I sit corrected.
Elizabelle
@NR: Nasty Ratfucker weighs in.
With regard to the substance of your comment: no. Not true.
SFAW
@NR:
Sounds like someone needs a hug.
NR
@Elizabelle: Then pray tell, what grassroots constituency is pushing for Kaine? Who out there is clamoring for a white male neoliberal on the ticket?
NR
@SFAW: Me: Hey, I think this is a bad pick that’s going to cost Hillary votes.
FlipYrWhig: You are horrendous, hideous, and I want you to die!!!!!
I’m not the one who needs a hug.
Uncle Cosmo
@NR: You’re a fuckwit. Delete your life.
Applejinx
@FlipYrWhig: Gee, I remember when you carried on like that. Blast from the past. If you’re fighting for this dude, I trust him less (but not enough to be a deal-breaker; worst comes to worst, Clinton runs all Third Way and we’re just as fucked as we’d be with Trump, but with more racial/gender justice. I can live with that)
FlipYrWhig
@NR: Yeah, that was the only thing you said. It’s not like you have come around here FOR YEARS spreading gloom about how whatever one or more members of the Democratic Party just did was the worst betrayal of liberals and liberalism since the last worst betrayal ever last week.
SFAW
@NR:
There, there … I understand that you’re afraid that getting a hug will make you appear … weak, somehow. Or perhaps unmanly. Or left-wing. But we will still care for you as much as we ever have.
WaterGirl
@Applejinx:
Not possible.
Elizabelle
@NR: Believe we decided a few threads back that anyone who loads “neo” into a description is full of shit.
Get with the program, NR.
To answer your question more kindly: Tim is a coalition builder and was quite popular as mayor of Richmond. Also as senator from Virginia. He’s a capable and compassionate person. He’ll do fine. He was also on board early with Barack Obama.
I think Tim would have crossover appeal. He’s also smart on his feet. (Although how smart do you have to be when you are up against Mike Pence? Seeing the pic of him and Trump. Combination laugh-shudder.)
Mike in DC
We need to balance Clinton with a moderate centrist. Wait, what?
FlipYrWhig
@Applejinx: No, that makes perfect sense, it’s best to decide whether you like Tim Kaine or not based on a two-days-ago HuffPo headline about BANKS and OUTRAGED LIBERALS and the byzantine wheels-within-wheels power dynamics you carry in your head like Glenn Beck.
NR
@FlipYrWhig: Dude, I am being 100% serious when I say this: Seek professional help. Really. If a relatively innocuous comment like the one I wrote is all it takes to set you off like that, you need it.
FlipYrWhig
@Mike in DC: How is Tim Kaine a “moderate centrist”? Liberal-minded people are just bursting at the seams with bullshit today.
SFAW
@Applejinx:
And THIS is why, when the Balloon Juice commentariat is unsure of how to parse a particular political situation, we always ask ourselves “Selves — what would Applejinx ‘think’?” Because we know that your record of deep thought on vexing issues is second only to that of Bill Kristol, and that knowledge exerts a certain calming influence on our turbulent thoughts.
NR
@Elizabelle: He also oversaw the 2010 electoral disaster for the Democrats, will confirm every suspicion liberals have about Hillary Clinton’s “evolution” on the issues, and has shit like this working against him.
If Kaine is the pick, we’ll see Stein polling around 5% in a few weeks, if not higher. Mark my words.
FlipYrWhig
@NR: You’re not relatively innocuous. You are uniquely, personally, horrible. Everything you write is horrible. Everything you feel is horrible. Everything that touches you probably wasn’t horrible before but definitely is afterwards.
NR
@FlipYrWhig: Like I said, dude: seek professional help. You need it. Badly.
SFAW
Will you two get a fucking room already?
Trollhattan
@SFAW:
Just want you to know I do read that in a Rodney voice. You’re adjusting your tie as you type.
Mike in DC
@FlipYrWhig:
41st most liberal based on voting record.
patroclus
I’m not “against” Kaine, but I think there are better options – like Franken, Becerra, Perez, the Castros, Booker and others. After firing Shirley Sherrod based on nothing, though, I’m definitely not for Vilsack, so if it’s between Kaine and him, I’m for Kaine. I like that Kaine is from Virginia, which gives us a better chance of carrying that state. But Biden had been Chairman of both Judiciary and Foreign Relations, had major legislative achievements and had run twice before, was nationally known (and, importantly, had been through the wringer with the Thomas hearings and his own Kinnock “plagiarism” story) – virtually no one has even heard of Kaine. I know I’ll get some disagreements, but I actually think Bernie would be a better choice.
SFAW
@Trollhattan:
Movie, or stand-up? All I could think of was maybe Caddyshack.
Miss Bianca
@RobertDSC-iPhone 6:
Um…I personally own guns, and I’m in favor of strict gun legislation. Is that too “nuanced” for you? Would that disqualify me for running for office as a Democrat, in your (obviously very qualified) opinion? Speaking as someone who used to work at an abortion clinic, I’ll take someone who is “personally opposed to but professionally supportive of” abortion access ANY DAMN DAY OF THE WEEK, THANK YOU, if that person is capable of winning elections and KEEPING ACCESS TO ABORTION AVAILABLE. Jesus, Mary and Bride – spare me from purity pony politics!!
SFAW
@Miss Bianca:
No, but being a Balloon Juice commenter would.
Trollhattan
@SFAW:
He used the line in Caddyshack but I can’t think of Rodney without picturing his standup, with the twitching and fidgeting and tugging at his tie, eyes threatening to burst from their sockets.
Miss Bianca
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I liked that article. I hadn’t known anything at all about Tim Kaine, and it made me think he’d be a pretty solid pick. In any case, I’ve decided I don’t fucking care – I actually (gasp!) trust HRC’s judgement on who she thinks would be a good VP pick.
Miss Bianca
@SFAW: giggle-snort.
burnspbesq
@NR:
Asshole, knowing what you’re talking about before opening your pie-hole is a feature, not a bug. Kaine is in favor of a small-scale relaxation of reporting requirements for small, local banks and credit unions. Warren is also in favor of it. It makes sense. It might even have bipartisan support, and get done.
Barkeep, Southern Comfort and Drano for this man.
Soylent Green
Since that day, Vilsack who is secretary of my department has been annoying us with endless initiatives and pronouncements trying to live down that blunder. I forgive him.
beef
I think Kos’ dislike of Kaine stems from his takeover of the RNC after Obama took office. Kos was a big supporter of Howard Dean’s 50 state strategy, which was largely abandoned under Kaine.
SFAW
@Miss Bianca:
Isn’t that the Trump “verbal” (so to speak) tic that people were commenting on?
I’m going to have to start checking your comments for certain key phrases, like Yuuuuuge” and “classy” and “pathetic.” Just in case.
singfoom
Honestly, haven’t read the entire thread, but have a question. What does Tim Kaine add to the ticket? It seems to me that he detracts from the ticket by his support for the TPP.
If you’re trying for party unity, given the unpopularity of the TPP within much of the party, and given the primary that’s gone beforehand, wouldn’t another person be a better pick?
Vlad
Hillary isn’t a real progressive, but she’s a lot closer to one than Trump is, so you should vote for her anyway. Even if it kills you a little bit inside.
Miss Bianca
@SFAW: Blame Mnemosyne. I got the “giggle-snort” thing from her.
NR
@Vlad: I’ve made that calculation, but don’t be surprised when a lot of other people don’t after she picks Kaine.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@NR: Then they will be responsible for Trump, very simple really.
Omnes Omnibus
@shomi: Read the fucking thread, dipshit.
Elizabelle
@singfoom: I honest to Dog do not understand why people are frenetic about TPP when we’re looking at Trump-Pence and disastrous appointments to the Supreme Court.
You must live in a rarified atmosphere, my dear singfoom. (And I don’t mind if the TPP is renegotiated.)
Miss Bianca
@Vlad: “kills you a little bit inside.” oh, FFS. Yes, and please don’t forget a nice little wake for your little killed bit, too.
NR
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: No they won’t. Hillary will be.
singfoom
@Elizabelle: Hey, my comment wasn’t “OH MY GOD IF SHE PICKS TIM KAINE, THE WORLD HAS ENDED AND I WONT VOTE FOR HER BECAUSE TPP ELEVENTYONEONE!!!”
Yeah, the SCOTUS is more important. Stopping Trump is the most important, but still…
I simply asked what positives Tim Kaine brings to the ticket because in my view his support for the TPP makes the case for party unity harder IMHO. It validates all of the preconceived notions that those on the lefter side of the party already have and I don’t think that’s a good thing. It’s not going to change who I pull the lever for. But it’s valid to ask is this wise tactically….
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
Hey, we should be glad that he didn’t just pop in to write some variation of his usual “Hey, [the FPer who posted this] FUCKING SUCKS! I MEAN REALLY FUCKING SUCKS!”
Baby steps, Omnes.
Tilda Swinton's Bald Cap
@NR: Whatever makes you feel good sunshine.
NR
@Tilda Swinton’s Bald Cap: The truth always makes me feel good.
mike in dc
The 160 grand in gifts thing doesn’t help fight the corruption narrative, either. 41st most liberal senator, supports TPP, bank deregulation, “personally pro-life but pro-choice politically”, not a progressive, safe, boring pick. The next bold, mildly risky thing Hillary does will be the first thing, apparently.
I will support and work for the ticket regardless, but Jesus Christ, it’s okay for progressives to be disappointed by this.
Brachiator
@mike in dc:
It’s always OK for progressives to be disappointed. It’s as though they want a VP pick because it will personally validate them, not because there are specific policies they want to see supported.
NR
@Brachiator: What bullshit. It’s not about wanting validation, it’s about not wanting a VP that supports the TPP and thinks the government is too tough on the banks.
Vlad
@Miss Bianca: Sounds like a plan. I’ll invite the ghost of Ricky Ray Rector, too. Maybe he can bring some pecan pie!
Irony Abounds
If Tim Kaine isn’t progressive enough for you, tough shit. The guy is a decent human being, has a good intellect, a good heart and is 5,000 times better than Trump or Pence. Only an obnoxious purity monger is going to have heartburn with him.