Charles Pierce, who may actually be my favorite writer in the country right now, on our media:
If you leave out the evil dumbfks who actually run the news business, the worst two things that have happened to American political journalism in the past 30 years are Maureen Dowd and Mark Halperin. Dowd, because of her relentless, obsessive need to take her own galloping Oedipal neuroses for an outing every time there’s an election, and Halperin, because he long ago invented the kind of Beltway insidery railbird bullshit that passes today for analysis. (This is, occasionally, referred to as “horse-race journalism,” but that’s unfair to people like my friend, the great Bill Nack. Actual horse-race journalism will tell you what you need to know about horse racing. The Racing Form will give you more substantive information on the sixth race at Monmouth Park today than Halperin has given you on American politics in the past two decades.) But the worst effect they both have had on the business is the influence their success has had on everyone else. Dowd, at least, can write a little. Most of her imitators can’t. And, if it weren’t for Halperin and his Drudge-mongering, his link-whoring, and his curious S&M relationship with various talk-radio hosts, there wouldn’t be Politico, and, this being the first presidential election of the Politico era, we end up with the thoroughgoing Halperinization of the process, with predictably grim results.
MARK HALPERIN’s “Between the Lines,” in the forthcoming issue of TIME: “Some Romney advisers sound especially bullish, with one positing that a big win by their side is now more likely than a narrow Obama victory.”
The front page of my local newspaper, today:
In growing numbers, once-confident Democrats now say President Barack Obama could lose the November election.
The hand-wringing reflects real worries among Democrats about Obama’s ability to beat Republican rival Mitt Romney, who has proven to be a stronger candidate than many expected. But it’s also a political strategy aimed at rallying major donors who may have become complacent.
Hypothesis, meet datum. Datum, meet hypothesis.
Just Some Fuckhead
I think Charles Pierce is on whatever Charlie Sheen was on. He Just Does Not Give a Fuck.
Baud
Isn’t that just a rehash of the WaPo trash piece the other day?
Yutsano
@Just Some Fuckhead: I think you just called Pierce a honey badger. That’s kinda awesome.
CW in LA
The talking heads keep saying Willard is proving a stronger candidate than expected. I missed when in his steady stream of oblivious Thurston Howell ashattery he managed to establish this.
MikeJ
It’s a pity that Esquire permitted over 1300 other incidences of the word “fuck” yet the delicate flower Pierce can’t bring himself to say it.
By the standards of the Taibbi defenders we should all really hate Pierce. Don’t get me wrong, I like Pierce fine, but 1) I wish he would use the word fuck when he means fuck and 2) I’ve been told over and over that I only dislike Taibbi because he *does* say fuck.
Ben Franklin
Horserace Journalism
I bet $2 to win, place and show them the fucking door.
Metrosexual Black AbeJ
I want to say this in the comments, not in an FP post…I can’t get into Pierece. He’s too long winded and too into his same old gags (“Moral Hazard” etc.). I get an unpleasant Somerby vibe from the whole thing.
Just Some Fuckhead
@MikeJ: Maybe you need to find a hobby or something.
Yutsano
@CW in LA: When Obama gaffed. The sharks smelled blood.
cathyx
How can Charles Pierce be your favorite writer? He dares to criticize Obama now and then.
AT
@Metrosexual Black AbeJ:
I wanted to say this in the comments, I can’t get into MBAJ, he always has this huge trolling vibe going.
Nah actually I love the troll
Ben Franklin
But it’s also a political strategy aimed at rallying major donors who may have become complacent.
Other than Wall Street, he has as many big donors as he did in 2008. He’s having a little more trouble with the small donors.
jl
I think Cole means ‘datums’.
Datums are needed to test hypotheses.
And the datums I see from Silver’s blog is a steady 60 plus chance of Obama win for almost a month, which by the way is continuation of Obama’s consistent slight lead over whole year.
Little sign of any statistically significant movement in electoral preference for Obama.
But here is some interesting datums, for funs:
RNC’s Dysfunctional Latino Site Posts Vote On Obama — And Loses
” The main page features a straw poll asking visitors whether they’re disappointed with President Obama,…. As of Thursday evening, however, Obama was winning the unscientific survey 55 percent to 45 percent, highly unusual on a partisan website.
In another broken feature, the site’s info page, in English “Who Are We?”, is left entirely blank.
http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/06/rncs-dysfunctional-latino-site-posts-vote-on-obama—-and-loses.php?ref=fpnewsfeed
And another TPM story says RNC is using pics of Asians on their Hispanic site. Well, I guess they all look the…
Just Some Fuckhead
@Metrosexual Black AbeJ: No way. Somerby was a clown teacher Gore insider something or other. Pierce is a real live journalist. Somerby went crazy, Pierce just acts crazy to scare people.
Baud
@Ben Franklin:
That’s quite a caveat.
@jl:
LOL. Three to one, their women’s page has pictures of drag queens.
jl
@jl:
Too many dashes in that TPM link, apparently beyond my primitive linking skills.
Metrosexual Black AbeJ
@Just Some Fuckhead:
That’s a fine line, isn’t it?
mclaren
Could it be…could it possibly be… That the real problem isn’t the “dumbfk media” but Barack Obama’s systematic betrayal of every promise he ever made to his supporters?
I’m sure as hell not going to vote for Obama again. And I’ve talked with a lot of liberal friends and they’re not voting for him either. Write-ins, a vote for the Green Party, whatever…
At the end of the day, in the words of e. e. cummings:
There is some shit I will not eat. — “I sing of olaf glad and big,” 1931
Omnes Omnibus
@cathyx: Riiiight, Cole has never once criticized Obama. Aside from the drone thing and the Libya thing and the other times he criticized him. But those don’t count, right?
Baud
@mclaren:
Nope.
Cap'n Magic
Charles Pierce is the Honey Badger.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Metrosexual Black AbeJ: Somerby was only ever in it for Gore. He didn’t care about anything else, except disadvantaged kids in the ‘hood, which I’m going to write about tomorrow.
Pierce seems like a mensch, a real lefty.
I guess we’ll find out in a few years.
Hunter Gathers
@jl: Imperial Grand Moff Reince Priebus is making Michael Steele look competent by comparison.
Although I do love the smell of Republican Latino Outreach Fail in the morning. Smells like victory.
jl
Except I talked too soon about no movement in pole numbers. Polls of likely voters in the TPM tracker are showing evidence of move towards Romney in national polls. All registered voters not moving much at all, with consistent Obama lead. So, IMHO, more
datumsevidence this is going to be a turnout driven electionHeliopause
@Metrosexual Black AbeJ:
I somewhat agree, but then, put “balloon juice” and “totebagger” into Google and see what comes up.
Yutsano
@mclaren: So you’re voting for Willard then.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Metrosexual Black AbeJ: I’ll say this about Somerby. There was a time on the intertoobz when he was the only one saying what needed to be said and I loved him for it.
CW in LA
@mclaren: And you and your “lot of liberal friends” just know Rmoney would be so much better.
I am unimpressed.
Omnes Omnibus
@Heliopause: I thought the search was “balloon juice” and “skull fuck a kitten.”
Villago Delenda Est
My hatred of these vile hacks knows no bounds.
The Halperin ass needs to be publically vivisected.
Roger Moore
@CW in LA:
They really mean that Citizens United is expected to help the favored candidate of the plutocrat class more than was expected.
Hunter Gathers
@jl: Most ‘likely voter’ screens look like the 2004 election. Unless there are a lot of undead Bush/McCain voters out there, it’s nothing to worry about. It’s kind of hard for Mittens to get dead white people to the polls.
gbear
@mclaren:
No.
Raven
@mclaren: During this time out in game 2 of the NBA finals let me urge you to go fuck yourself.
Tonal Crow
@Hunter Gathers:
I know of Nine undead Bush/McCain voters who’re over-the-top enthusiastic about supporting Romney. I’m sure there are more where they came from.
Roger Moore
@mclaren:
No, since Obama has not systematically betrayed every promise he ever made to his supporters, it is not a possible cause of any real world outcome. If you are interested in counterfactual world, please troll another blog.
CW in LA
@Yutsano: And that’s the thing: Whatever exactly a gaffe is, Willard manages to produce one pretty much every time he opens his damn mouth.
Every time I think our press can’t be any more Pravda-like, I’m proved wrong.
Metrosexual Black AbeJ
@Heliopause:
Heh.
jl
@Hunter Gathers:
Yeah, I think that is reason that a big part of the GOP strategy will be to try to get the typical 2012 voter to look as much as possible like the average pollster’s model for a likely voter from recent elections. And mostly that will be conservatively inclined whites.
At least the upcoming voter suppression efforts will give me something better to get riled about than what the corporate media hacks say.
gbear
@Hunter Gathers:
As long as they bring a valid death certificate, no problem.
lacp
@mclaren: I think what you’re positing is rather unlikely, and you must know a most unusual collection of liberals. All the liberals I know are voting for Obama, and none of them is having a second thought, whether they like some, all, or none of his policies. The only way I see him losing is if Europe goes belly-up or he gets into a war with Iran too far in advance of the election.
Roger Moore
@Hunter Gathers:
As opposed to Obama and his evil Chicago-style Machine Politics./wingnut
lacp
@gbear: Doesn’t it have to be an American death certificate? Suppose they died in Kenya?
BGinCHI
Dear MSM,
Please murder/suicide each other.
Thanks,
A Grateful Reader
jl
@gbear:
” kind of hard for Mittens to get dead white people to the polls. ”
Judging from Mitt’s demeanor, he set an inspiring example.
Leadership counts.
mclaren
@Yutsano:
Reading comprehension fail.
Let us know when you pass your Test of English as a Foreign Language.
Omnes Omnibus
@mclaren:
@gbear:”[He] made us many promises, more than I can remember, but [he] never kept but one; [he] promised to take our land, and [he] did.”
Boy, that Red Cloud was prescient.
mclaren
@gbear:
Spoken like a born serf. You’ll enjoy the Romney presidency.
mclaren
@Roger Moore:
The voice of American decline speaks in a cringing whimper. Enjoy the Romney presidency, brought to us by craven bootlickers like you and your ilk.
Roger Moore
@jl:
Unpossible. For Mitt to be dead, he would have had to have been alive at some point. Unless you’re willing to argue fine points of AI, that excludes the Mittbot.
Hunter Gathers
@Roger Moore:
To be honest, the last guy to get the dead to show up at the polls was Richard J. Daley, and he’s been pining for the fjords for about 35 years now.
And that tactic was totally justifiable. Anything that tried to keep Dick Nixon out of office was justifiable.
Omnes Omnibus
@Roger Moore: What if we substitute lifeless for dead?
Raven
@Hunter Gathers: Before or after Jerry died?
Yutsano
@mclaren: :: pauses ::
So…you’re voting for Willard then.
(Unless you live in a safe state one way or the other, this is exactly what you’re doing. Don’t you feel like a good little Republican now?)
gbear
@lacp: Ooh, good point. Doesn’t the TSA already screen for zombies?
Redshift
@mclaren: Reality comprehension fail.
David Koch
Meh.
If Halperin was relevant, McCain wouldn’t have lost by 365 electoral votes and every swing state, save Mizzou. But he’s not relevant.
gbear
@mclaren: Not that I’m adding anything original to the conversation, but why don’t you just go fuck yourself?
Roger Moore
@mclaren:
You aren’t even pretending to make sense.
Hunter Gathers
@mclaren:
Do you know what the Angel Moroni and that comment have in common?
Neither one of them has ever, and will never, exist.
Ben Franklin
@Baud:
Mr. Obama’s campaign raised about $196 million through March, compared with $235 million at the same point in 2008 according to the NYT in April.
Of course that’s not the Billion Rmoney anticipates, but it’s not a big diff in the 2008/2012 numbers
Raven
@gbear: You watchin the game too?
jl
Let’s get some datums on what Romney is, exactly.
Some of the contrasts in this clip look so bad for Romney, I wonder if the TPM staffers hate Romney so much that they can’t help doing a hatchet job.
But, even so, clip should give some pause to anyone dreaming that Romney is going to wipe the floor with Obama on the stump or in the debates,
TPM Editor’s Blog
Dueling Speeches
Paul Werdel June 14, 2012
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/06/dueling_speeches.php
jeffreyw
new computer needs a cookie kthnxbai
Hunter Gathers
@Raven: A lot of dead people in Chicago voted for Kennedy over Nixon in 1960. Which is just peachy in my book.
WeeBey
@mclaren:
You’re clearly not a liberal and clearly a troll.
Please to be fucking off, now.
Spaghetti Lee
Mclaren, can you please explain how you can use “Obama and Romney are the same” (not in this thread, but definitely in others), and use “Enjoy your Romney presidency” (as a threat) at the same time? That’s not making sense to me.
gbear
@Raven: Whatever game it is, I’m not watching it. Not much of a sports fan. What game are you watching?
jacypods
@mclaren:
If you combined all your liberal friends and black friends and gay friends, how many people would that be now?
Or did one liberal, gay, black guy just wait on you at a Starbucks that one time?
Yutsano
@mclaren: Nice little anti-immigrant swpie there too. Your inner racist is showing.
Raven
@Hunter Gathers: That’s just bullshit.
OzoneR
@mclaren:
Considering he’s polling at 90%+ with liberal voters, I’m going to go with no.
Spaghetti Lee
@Metrosexual Black AbeJ:
Doug, I like you, but I really don’t think you’ve got the right to accuse someone else of relying on too many in-jokes in their writing.
Raven
@gbear: Oh, it’s just the NBA finals. Nothing near as important as day after day double threads on Ubebkibekibekistan football.
RossInDetroit
I read Pierce, and hes he does get a bit formulaic and long winded. But he’s pissed off about the right things and acts pissed off. More pissed-off-ness is a win for us. It’s a personal style but it works for him.
I look forward with glee to his demolitions of Brooks, Moral Hazard and all. I also like that he’s keeping his boot on the neck of the RC Cardinals when most of their shenanigans go unnoticed.
Roger Moore
@jeffreyw:
I made you a cookie… but I eated it.
Egg Berry
@Ben Franklin: Yes, and Obama is running unopposed in the primaries this year. That’s a pretty big haul, considering.
David Koch
PPP has Obama 50-42 for 2nd week in a row. PPP also has Obama up in 10 of 11 swing states and tied in the other.
And Romney just mercilessly mocked/bullied a female coffee shop owner in Iowa; revealed that he didn’t know what a donut was; he called for the firing of the heroes of Sept 11th, and just today, he was reduced to using 7th grade snap-towel antics.
There’s something really wrong with him.
DOOOOOOM!
FuriousPhil
I think I’m going to yell very loudly at no one the next time I hear or see a comment like “they’re both the same” or “Obama is a neo-conservative who happens to be a Democrat” or “Why vote? It doesn’t matter, they’re all bought by corporations.”
Hey, I get the sentiment, but don’t be a dumb fuck and not vote, or vote for the Greens, or Socialists or whatever (note: I like the Greens and Socialists, but I’m not going to vote for them). When Romney’s coalition of ‘teh stoopid’ and monocled bankers win the election because progressive/liberals stayed home out of some sense of entitled outrage, you can feel all smug and principled I guess, and then whine for 4 years. Don’t like some of what Obama’s done? Then put the pressure on after he’s re-elected. Don’t drink the haterade just because the MSM needs to keep the election ‘exciting’ by trashing POTUS.
gbear
@Raven: My home team is the Lumberpuppies… er.. Timberwolves. Probably part of the reason I’m not that into sports.
Hunter Gathers
@Raven: What? The dead voter thing or my approval of dead people voting against Nixon?
Raven
@Hunter Gathers: I was talking about THE DEAD. It was a joke knuckle head!
Ben Cisco
@Omnes Omnibus: Or maybe mostly dead?
gbear
@David Koch:
Yes. That video that jl links to is brutal.
geg6
@mclaren:
You are sounding more stupid tonight than you usually do. Jeebus. You and all your “liberal” buddies refuse to vote for Barack “World’s Worst Monster” Obama and then try to taunt actual real-life liberals (not the ones who are voices in your head) about how you hope we enjoy a Romney presidency? Really? Are you one of those braindead idiots who are cheering Romney on because, by some mysterious process, America will suddenly become a progressive wonderland with unicorns shitting out gold coins for us all after we see the horrors of the Romney administration?
What am I saying. It’s mclaren. Of course she’s one of those idiots. FTR, I, an actual liberal for the almost forty years and eight presidential elections since I turned eighteen, do not know a single liberal who won’t enthusiastically be at the polls in November, voting for Obama and feeling good about doing so. You must run in some very small circles of liberalism if so many of your liberal acquaintances aren’t voting for Obama. Like you maybe know three people who call themselves liberals, but two of them are Jane Hamsher and Glenn Greenwald, who aren’t actual, you know, liberals.
Baud
@David Koch:
But is that really meaningful if Obama doesn’t have the support of the right kind of people?
Davis X. Machina
Data. People who say ‘datums’ are recta.
Hunter Gathers
@Raven: My snark-o-meter needs adjusting.
jl
@Davis X. Machina: That’s a joke, son. I am getting in my quota of Cole razzing.
On other hand, a datum is all a reasonable person person should need for Halperin, so Cole might have been in the ballpark.
samuel
I suspect by Sept when the polls tighten up even more (and they will) Cole will be spewing on about how if only Obama had listened to Greenwald and not shot missles from Drones. If only he had helped in Winsconson.
Mark my words. Cole is that dumb. All he needs is Greenwald to tell him to think that and it’s only a matter of time till Greenwald goes there.
Villago Delenda Est
@Davis X. Machina:
I see what you did there.
samuel
I suspect by Sept when the polls tighten up even more (and they will) Cole will be spewing on about how if only Obama had listened to Greenwald and not shot missles from Drones. If only he had helped in Wisconson. If only he had been more progressive or whatever horseshit he pulls from his sphincter.
Mark my words. Cole is that dumb. All he needs is someone like Greenwald to tell him to think that and it’s only a matter of time till Greenwald goes there.
arguingwithsignposts
Oh, look, its derfus AND mclaren in one thread. A troll-twofer!
rikyrah
Charles Pierce is hilarious damn near everyday
Cromagnon
@WeeBey:
mclaren, and all the greenwaldites in general, are no different than the teabaggers. They just fall for a different line of bullshit… They both live in fantasy worlds that don’t exist.
Come back to the real world mclaren… Its messy, chaotic, and far more grey than black and white, but hey at least its real
RossInDetroit
I just watched the TPM dueling speeches clip. Mitt has the body language of a very good actor playing a super awkward person struggling to stay 30 seconds ahead of flopsweat. I can see Steve Carell playing him in a movie. He does that cringeworthy charisma fail so perfectly.
chopper
@mclaren:
hey, it worked in 2000.
NobodySpecial
Obama is in severe danger of only winning 35 states instead of 40. Anything a journalist has to say otherwise is trying to make a horserace out of it – where one side has a horse and the other has an old dude with a walker.
Sly
@mclaren:
Obama ain’t no second string betrayer… he uses a fuckin’ system!
freelancer
@gbear:
That video is from the Fox affiliate in Omaha. Their local news is the worst quality in that market, but I guarantee everyone in Eastern Nebraska and Western Iowa who has a TV has now probably seen that video.
Cacti
And I repeat, for the (lost track of #) time…
George W. Bush needed 48% of women and 40% of Hispanics to pull out a victory in 2004.
Romney has consistently polled below 30% in every survey of Hispanic voters.
Gwangung
Jeezus, mclaren…take an extra dose of stupid pills tonight? Would explain why you let you inner racist out again…
John Cole
@samuel: You are a fucking idiot. Support for drone attacks was last measured at 62 percent in the United States. If Obama loses, it won’t be because of drone strikes, and I would never suggest it. I live on planet earth, and am well aware I am an outlier on civil rights issues and drone attacks, etc.
Fucking lunatics defying objective reality to push their own agenda.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Ben Franklin: ”
Horserace Journalism”
More like Horseshit Journalism.
Pat In Massachusetts
To The Presidential Contenders:
Would you like to know what wakes me up in the middle of the night and keeps me awake?
It is not the deficit. It is not same sex marriage. It is not women getting free contraception (more power to them, I say!). It’s none of those “wedge” issues. Just exactly who they think they are wedging is unclear to me.
I, too will steal the slogan from Charles P. Pierce’s Daily Politics Blog at Esquire Magazine that repeats over and over again: “I’ve got no job, and I’ve got no fucking money” is what is keeping me up at night and I honestly do not know where my next nickel is coming from or if I’ll ever draw a paycheck from this once great nation again.
So Barack, keep talking about the deficit and pour over your “kill list”, and you, Mitt, can continue your little pranks on the man who should never have been president while you piss away millions of dollars on ads I will not watch.
Go for it assholes, because I know this election is not about me and mine.