The Beard Tentacles of Sanity reach and grasp on the conventional wisdom of the elections, and even steady K-Thug admits he was a bit off as the drama has turned into a farce.
The conventional wisdom — which I too bought into — was that Democrats were going to support Obama, but grudgingly and without much enthusiasm. There had been too many disappointments; the golden aura of 2008 was long gone. Meanwhile, Republicans would show their usual unity and discipline, and at best it would be Obama by a nose.
Instead, the Republicans appear to be in a shambles — while the Democrats seem incredibly united, and increasingly, dare I say it, enthusiastic. (Mark Blumenthal sees this in the polls, but it’s also just the impression you get.)
How did that happen? Partly it’s because this has become such an ideological election — much more so than 2008. The GOP has made it clear that it has a very different vision of what America should be than that of Democrats, and Democrats have rallied around their cause. Among other things, while we weren’t looking, social issues became a source of Democratic strength, not weakness — partly because the country has changed, partly because the Democrats have finally worked up the nerve to stand squarely for things like reproductive rights.
Gosh, you mean 2010 wasn’t the beginning of the new order at the hands of the Tea Party as American voters realized that yes, the GOP was wrecking the economy on purpose in order to try to win, and that their social derpwinism was really the last gasps of a clusterfrak of nimrods playing the white hetero male privilege game in disguise? If only people had known!
And let me add a speculation: I suspect that in the end Obamacare is turning out to be a big plus, even though it has always had ambivalent polling. The fact is that Obama can point to a big achievement that will survive if he is reelected, perish if he isn’t; health insurance for 50 million or so Americans (30 million from the ACA, another 20 who would lose coverage if Romney/Ryan Medicaid cuts happen) is enough to cure people of the notion that it doesn’t matter who wins.
All of this in turn has an implication that Republicans won’t like — assuming that Rasmussen doesn’t have a special insight into the truth denied to all other pollsters, and that Obama does in fact win with a solid margin. The right is already set up to blame poor Mitt, claiming that he lost because he wasn’t conservative enough. But that’s not what we’re seeing; it looks as if voters are rejecting the right’s whole package, not just the messenger.
Now if we could only cure the Village of the stupid notion that mid-term elections always determine the Presidential ones.
Seriously, this is what I’ve been yelling about around here for a year now (along with the GOP campaign of voter suppression) that Republicans were just going to overreach and screw everything up, or at least Mitt Romney’s 47% exercise finally got through to the millions of folks who said “But Romney’s a moderate, he won’t take anything away from me, just those people.” And of course, we found out that anyone making less than a quarter mil a year is very much “those people” to Mittens. People don’t like finding out the odds are not ever in their favor. It’s a new thing to a healthy chunk of the voting populace, and no sir, they do not like it.
Camera Bartender Guy, wherever you are, America salutes you.
TenguPhule
Nuking them from orbit would the only way to be sure.
Legalize
Center-right nation!!
Napoleon
Has it come out that he is in fact the bartender? It appears from the tape that it must have been someone on the wait staff for sure.
General Stuck
This is the downside of so called ‘political movements’ and double so in the internet/blog age. An echo chamber is built, and anyone who purports to be loyal souls to such a movement, must give the conventional wisdom its due, as it is churned out, usually by a few self appointed demagogues.
Krugman and others within the self described “progressive movement” as advertised via the Netroots Nation, were deafened by the sounds of their own wanking in that echo chamber. There was a quick cure to the delusion they spoke for liberals and dems on the whole, when they could have looked at the data nationally, that shows democrats, AND ESPECIALLY SELF DESCRIBED LIBERAL DEMOCRATS have set records in their staunch unwavering approval and enthusiasm at having Obama as their president. Satisfaction can easily be misread as lack of enthusiasm in politics. It has been stated many times on this blog, and now for one more time.
Principled dissent within your own tent is very possible, but screaming into the ethers of endless repeated false memes in an adversarial manner, is not that.
? Martin
We need a ‘Real Men of Genius’ spoof ad for Obama done around him.
Ben H.
That bartender needs to monetize his hidden cam chops. If there were similar vids of every GOP Senate and House candidate shoveling red meat to their nut-sucking base… HELLO Democratic super-majority.
Uncle Cosmo
Oh, but he does.
The Diebold source code.
Forum Transmitted Disease
My father, lifelong Republican voter, has been calling the stonewalling of Congressional republicans “treason”. And he means in the very real “deserving of hanging” definition thereof.
He can’t bring himself to vote for Obama. He will, however, happily sit this one out, which is realistically all I could ask for from the man.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
A fantastic bit of word play there, Zandar.
Is this what you come down with when you’re infected with herpititus?
hueyplong
Bartender camera guy for Time Person of the Year.
Randian Republicans are lamenting what happens when you allow the moochers to afford small electonic devices.
Had they been properly starved, worn down and demoralized, this never would have happened.
Violet
If he or she gets outed and people try to sue, I hope there will be a massive outcry and a big legal defense fund.
Mnemosyne
@General Stuck:
Yes, but … as far as I can tell, Krugman is the only one among those pundits who’s willing to stand up publicly, in his column, and say in front of the whole world, “I was wrong.”
I give him huge credit for that, because it’s a tough thing to do if you’re a pundit.
karen marie
Someone should give him a medal, or at least buy him a drink.
LGRooney
Lots of discussion about the Rasmussen polling. Perhaps they have no special insight into the voting public’s wishes with those numbers; rather, they are applying the discount based on the voter suppression efforts at the state (or even more local levels)?
I hate these bastards enough that I don’t want to lose to them even in the tin-foil-hat category!
JGabriel
Zandar:
Or her. I’m pretty sure the Romney 47% Video was recorded by a woman.
.
General Stuck
@Mnemosyne:
As do I.
Citizen_X
@Napoleon:
Whoever it was, seeing that tape always makes me think of the “don’t fuck with the help” scene from Fight Club.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@LGRooney: This mystifies me. Their +5 GOP bias and how they inevitably correct it in the last few pre-election polls is so well-known that even those of us who aren’t poll aggregators know pretty much when they’ll take their now famous leftward turn.
Patricia Kayden
“But that’s not what we’re seeing; it looks as if voters are rejecting the right’s whole package, not just the messenger.”
So we hope!
gorram
See, this is one other thing that’s changed. It’s not just that social issues (like racial equality, same-sex marriage, etc) are suddenly favoring the Dems at least in national elections – there’s been huge growth in class consciousness. As much as people bash Occupy, that’s been part of it. To be fair though, it seems like it was something that started before that in pop culture with books like The Hunger Games and it’s continuing on with movies like In Time. I don’t know what we can fault for this, but class consciousness is back and most voters are seeing the GOP as selling their whole family down the river.
Alex
One of the other major changing points, for me at least, was the DNC.
The strong emphasis on “You were the change” during his speech was kind of important in giving me some enthusiasm. I believe it gave mild Obama supporters a reason to support him again, even if they had issues with the first term of his Presidency.
JGabriel
__
__
Patricia Kayden:
Remember all the young voters who came out for President Obama in 2008?
Most of them are four years older now and voting for him again. And there’s another fresh cohort of young voters from the past four years ready to vote like their slightly older now compatriots.
So I think, yes, voters are rejecting the right’s whole package, particularly as younger, Democratic-leaning, voters get older and make up a greater percentage of the voting base.
.
Bruce S
Before you take a victory lap, the GOP is still likely to control Congress and there is going to be a terrible pig-fuck around the “fiscal cliff”, the absurdly skewed deficit debate and the liklihood of the piece of crap known as “Bowels Simpson” being touted, even from inside the White House, as “centrism” rather than a very conservative, albeit not totally insane and sociopathic, proposal for the budget talks moving forward. The Tea Party, while we can laugh about them, has “won” in that they have heavily tilted the Deficit discourse paradigm and hijacked one of the major parties, to the point that “moderates” are terrified and extremists are having a field day. If you think the mid-terms weren’t a disaster for the country and that the Tea Party insanity didn’t impact how the White House (Plouffe in particular) framed issues – and more to the point how this will be painful moving forward, even with an Obama win and the Dems holding the Senate by one or so, you are delusional. This is pretty fucking low-bar triumphalism.
Good Doc
“No sir, I don’t like it..” Ren and Stimpy shout-out! Yo!
Bruce S
@General Stuck:
“screaming into the ethers of endless repeated false memes in an adversarial manner”
Hey – you’re the fucking expert on that. Pot meet kettle.
feebog
@ FTD:
If anything, the polls are still skewed slightly towards Republicans. I have read from several sources that most pollsters are modeling on the 2008 voter turnout, which was 74% white. But that percentage has dropped by 2 to 4% every four years for the last couple decades. More realistically, the percentage of the white vote will be closer to 72%.
A number of articles are citing the 2008 turnout numbers and saying that Democrats won’t match the number of black and latino voters who voted four years ago. That ignores the fact that they will make up a larger percentage of the voter population this compared to 2008. Personally, I’m thinking the margin in the national vote will be very close, or even slightly exceed 2008.
slag
Gotta give it up to Dems, in general, for this one. First, the camera person. Then, the assist from Mother Jones, MSNBC, and other actual liberal media. Then, the ad men.
I’ve been periodically bitching about Democrats falling behind Republicans because of many problems. Lack of party discipline…lack of spine on social issues…lack of media infrastructure…you name it. And I feel like, at almost every turn, they’ve been undermining my criticism by actually making improvements in these areas. I don’t understand it. It’s almost as if they don’t need me and my whining after all. Like I’m irrelevant or something. This must be how Peggy Noonan feels.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Great point. Of course, Krugman has that other job as a working economist and professor. And, oh yeah, that Nobel Prize thingy, which I’m sure makes ego stroking less necessary than is the case for other pundits.
@Bruce S:
You gotta start somewhere.
What else you got?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@gorram:
__
I wonder if the fall of the Soviet Union and the ripple effects thereof have gradually opened up the possibility of people thinking more in terms of class consciousness without the taint of Marxism coming along for the ride?
Bruce S
This is truly a noxious post because it tosses us back into the crap notion that electing Obama is the key to salvation. If there’s anyone who knows what a pile of lame, childish horseshit this is, it’s Obama. Obama’s serious critics on the left are doing him a favor more often than not. His loyal fan club, on the other hand, is pretty fucking worthless when it comes to any social change or long-term political strategy that doesn’t recycle the manifest failures of the Democratic Party to date.
Baud
@Bruce S:
We get it. You and your ilk were wrong, and, unlike Krugman, you can’t admit it.
Joey Maloney
I’m going to recycle a comment I made on Salon’s Table Talk long about the time Hummergate was really getting rolling: The Republicans will lose because they always bite off more than they can chew. The only problem is, in the meantime the whole country gets tooth marks and slobber all over it.
El Cid
As it appeared to me, enthusiasm among Democratic and pro-Democratic (i.e. “independent” but always voting liberally) [voters] is something which developed and which developed in response to a variety of events, including the clownish shittiness of the Republican field (OMG, can they be this bad?), the epic awful ‘stumbles’ (i.e., reveals) by Republicans (“legitimate rape”), the evil clown convention by Republicans and the amazingly bold & coherent Democratic convention.
It’s not like everyone was “enthusiastic” but that it wasn’t noticed, and it’s only the conventional wisdom dunderheads who missed how revved up everybody really was, deep down inside. I think that story is bullshit.
There’s a difference I think in how people use the term “enthusiasm” from some strong political leaning — i.e., one could be 100% committed to voting for Obama but not appear to anyone else as “enthusiastic”.
I think that seeing opening, opportunity, and a stronger and stronger perception that victory was possible has made people more enthusiastic.
General Stuck
@Baud:
Like rolling off a log getting Bruce S to lose his shit. Just mention Krugman as anything but a saint, and we’re off to the Ragetrack.
Bruce S
@Brachiator:
Getting off one’s ass over the long term and engaging in political work that isn’t essentally reduced to a spectator sport. If you think focusing on the cycle of presidential electoral politics is the key to winning anything over the long term, you haven’t paid much attention to anything. Did the marriage equality activists just sit on the sidelines waiting for “last gasps of a clusterfrak of nimrods playing the white hetero male privilege game”, or did they fight for their issue? Is anyone here old enough to even remember the civil rights movement – or participate? If you were actively part of that, most of the current liberal game looks like bullshit, frankly. Even when Obama wins, the 1% have enormous power that needs to be challenged on many fronts. Foreclosure is a continuing issue – one which the administration hasn’t done dick with, other than cave to banks and promote impotent half measures. Jump the fuck in on some of these issues, or watch the country go to hell, Obama or not. There is no “last gasp” on the horizon for these motherfuckers. Sorry kids!
James E. Powell
Now if we could only cure the Village of the stupid notion that mid-term elections always determine the Presidential ones.
We need to cure the Village of the stupid notion that right-wing Republican is the default position in American political thought.
I’m not as optimistic as some because even if Obama wins, even if the Democrats hold the senate, even if God in Heaven above comes down and points his hand at our side and we retake the house, all the really good looking girls will still go out with the guys from Mohawk because they’ve got all the money!
Bruce S
@General Stuck:
Better to “lose your shit” than be full of it. You’re a lame little clown. As ever. Total inability to respond with anything other than clown crap.
Forum Transmitted Disease
@gorram: I thought Hunger Games was going to be yet another typical teenage crapfest until I read it (my wife always gets and reads whatever the kids in her classes are reading). Poorly written it may be, but goddamn, that’s got to be the most subversive novel I’ve read in a long, long time. The movie got the same basic point across (rich people love watching you die in agony for shits and giggles, and will set up a government and society that does this if you let them) so good on them too.
The GOP would be urging that book be banned throughout the country if they’d ever read it.
Bruce S
@Baud:
What the fuck am I wrong about? You’re an idiot. You prove my point.
General Stuck
@Bruce S:
And it’s a special feat to achieve both.
How do you do it?
JGabriel
__
__
Bruce S:
Actually, that looks like a flip of the coin right now, but with momentum on the Democrats side. Most statistical aggregaors (like 538 and PEC) think Democrats may keep the Senate with a 1-2 seat margin, and possibly retake the house.
So I wouldn’t say either side was likely to control Congress at this point. Congressional control seems to be very much a toss-up.
.
James E. Powell
@Bruce S:
His loyal fan club, on the other hand, is pretty fucking worthless when it comes to any social change or long-term political strategy that doesn’t recycle the manifest failures of the Democratic Party to date.
Worthless? Without them we’d have president Romney and Majority Leader McConnell. Don’t shit on your own team.
catclub
@Patricia Kayden: Except in just about every state government election, and a large number
of House of representatives elections.
End of GOP celebrations were premature in 2008, also.
At least those took place AFTER the election.
Forum Transmitted Disease
Someone call Whine11, a commenter has a case of serious butthurt.
Baud
@Bruce S:
Sigh:
Obama’s critics on the left (or at least a good many of them) have been largely worthless — if not outright counterproductive — since at least Election Day 2008. His “fan club,” on the other hand, are the real drivers of change, because we’re doing more than just whining.
LD50
@Bruce S: You need to add a “Wake up sheeple!!” somewhere in there.
LD50
Some us remember Nader 2000, thankyouverymuch.
taylormattd
Yeah well. I wasn’t just the half-wit villagers. It was the genius strategists that post on the left blogs. Markos, Matt Stoller, Digby, Jane, Aravosis.
Bruce S
@James E. Powell:
I’m just shitting on the puerile fanboys-and-girls who shit on anyone who sees politics through a lens that isn’t brain-dead or shallow. I have been a major supporter of President Obama – probably worked harder and gave more than ass-clowns like Stuck – but I don’t reduce politics to simplistic nonsense and I see the administration’s positives and negatives (and there have been some significant negatives) with realtively clear eyes. (I just defended Obama on the drone strike issue on another thread.) But the level of discourse here around Krugman – and most particularly from the likes of Stuck and others of his low ilk in a lot of those ABL threads – has too often been laughable and reduced “support” for Obama to just shutting the fuck up, even when the White House was paying lip service – or worse – to deficit hysterics generated by the Tea Party (which frankly, as insane as it is, has more political gravitas in terms of strategy and committment than “General Stuck” on his best day.)
taylormattd
@Bruce S: WAKE UP SHEEPLE! Shit sandwich throw under bus hippy punch tweedle dee Lucy Linus Football slap in face.
Enhanced Mooching Techniques
Oh now Kurgamn admits he made a mistake. The man is right far to many times to be anything but a viscous scoundrel. Look at Ronald Regean, he was wrong on just about everything and everyone considered him a gentleman.
Bruce S
@LD50:
Go fuck yourself. If this is where you run from my comment, you are incredibly stupid. I just took some Green asshat to task on another thread over Nader 2000. You are totally proving my point about childish “liberal” asshats who comment on this blog who have the intellectual depth of a FOX News analyst.
Bruce S
@LD50:
Go fuck yourself. If this is where you run from my comment, you are incredibly stupid. I just took some Green asshat to task on another thread over Nader 2000. You are totally proving my point about childish “liberal” asshats who comment on this blog who have the intellectual depth and political sophistication of a FOX News analyst.
Bruce S
@taylormattd:
More proof from an apparently 12-year-old intellectual giant that my comments are valid.
trollhattan
@Bruce S:
FXD for moar rantaccuracy.
LD50
@Bruce S: I bet you win over plenty of people with your charming personality, eh?
Bruce S
@General Stuck:
Stunning stuff!
General Stuck
Shit man. I got gravitas. Had to look it up but I got it. Right here it is.
Strategy and commitment? I once filled a 5 pound bag with 10 pounds of Unicorns. Swear to gawd.
Brachiator
@Bruce S:
Calm down. The point is that Obama winning is the starting point. With all the attendant obstacles, including the disappointed fury of the 1 percent. You act as though there is some other alternative.
Do you even know what the administration has done? What are these impotent half measures you speak of? What should the government be doing?
Lawnguylander
Why should I be surprised that Krugman doesn’t have any idea what’s going to happen in advance of this or any other election? What special insight into the behavior of the electorate has he proved to have that I’m not aware of? He was wrong about the Democratic primaries in 2008 too. I was right about that and right about this one too so there’s more evidence for my predictive abilities than his. And the Krugthulu and K-Thug shit is embarrassing. Justin Bieber fans sound less silly.
Also, Simpson Bowles is more good than bad.
Bruce S
@LD50:
You reap what you sow. That was an incredibly stupid response to my comment, indicative of an obvious inability to do much other than jerk one’s knee. And part of an obvious pattern of incoherence and emotional outrage on the part of the folks I described. I couldn’t have offered more convincing proof of my point. Thanks kids!
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Cripes, could you guys please take your personal vendettas and playground insults somewhere else for a change? You could sour the mood at an Irish wake.
General Stuck
Well, we haven’t had a Mount Bruce pompous eruption in quite a while now. So just file it under unnatural blog ecology . He’ll be alright tomorrow, once again strapped to the roof of the O Bus. Barreling down the Obot road to victory.
El Tiburon
As much as I Firebag Obama – as the election nears and the Republican smears sink lower and lower – I find I am getting more enthused about seeing Obama just beat the living dogshit (old Texas expression I think they say it in Tennessee as well) out of Romney and the Republicans.
Dare I say until the election we are all Obamabots?
Forum Transmitted Disease
@Bruce S: THANK YOU! The truth has been revealed; the scales have fallen from my eyes, I was blind but now I can see.
Truly, we are all in awe of you supreme intellect. Doubtless the inferior minds posting here – I am surely one – will take your penetrating insights and brilliant observations to heart. As to your witty and yet truthful insults, well, that’s just what we deserve for our blind, sheeplike ways. Personally, I think Cole should just turn the blog over to you and hightail it out of here. YOU ARE THE VOICE OF REASON AND TRUTH. WE ARE SORRY WE MADE YOU WASTE YOUR TIME CORRECTING OUR STUPID WAYS.
Or something like that.Suffern Ace
Meh. If Obama wins our enthusiasm will destroy the Democratc paty once and for all, if this thread is any indication. Maybe that’s why the Romney is losing on purpose.
ChrisB
This post is completely off base.
Don’t you recall that Rove and W. were establishing a permanent Republican majority? This is a center right country after all.
So much for that conventional wisdom as well.
Chris
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
Not the way you mean, I think. The fall of the Soviet Union emboldened neoliberals everywhere to go completely ape shit, ignoring the precautions that had been built at a time when communism was a real threat. The class consciousness you’re seeing now is the inevitable pushback against that.
Bruce S
@Lawnguylander:
“Also, Simpson Bowles is more good than bad.”
Bullshit!
titanicsailsatdawn.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-one-sided-deficit-debate.html
titanicsailsatdawn.blogspot.com/2012/07/seeing-through-simpson-bowles-consensus.html
Of course, your comment doesn’t come as a surprise, in context. Whatever your brilliant predictive powers, we sure as hell don’t need more “liberals” such as yourself. The Bowles wing of the Democratic Party is part of the problem.
Triassic Sands
Obama is a likable guy, while Mitt isn’t. The president has done well on some things, not so well on other things, and horribly on a few. But he’s not Mitt Romney and it is possible to be enthusiastic about the prospect of defeating Romney without being simultaneously all that enthusiastic about a second Obama term. (Realistically, who, in their right mind, would want a second term with an opposition than cares about nothing but keeping the president from being successful. Obama shouldn’t — maybe he’s nuts too. If there were a way he could legally crush the opposition, that would be one thing, but he’s going into his second term with, at best, a small majority in the Senate. I don’t know if the GOP would be so zealous if the president were a white guy, but I have no doubt that no matter who the Democratic president is, the Modern GOP will stop at nothing to prevent his/her success. They’ve morphed into scorpions ever willing to kill America to get their way. It’s in their nature.)
I think the radical nature and sheer lunacy of the Modern GOP is the prime force behind Democratic enthusiasm. That isn’t a slam at Obama, because no matter how good you think Obama has been in his first term, he’s nowhere near as good as the Republicans are bad. To be that good, Obama would have to be, hands down, the best president in US history. And as much as I wanted him to be that, he certainly hasn’t been, and probably can’t be with the opposition being as crazy and reckless as the Republicans are.
A Romney victory would be huge disaster for millions of people, especially, the poor, elderly, and disabled, but it will also hurt the middle class at the expense — yawn, what’s new? — of the rich. If that isn’t enough to get Democrats to be enthusiastic, then the party is dead and it’s all over but the nuking of Iran.
Maude
@El Tiburon:
I am not at ease unless on election night, Obama goes over the top. Even tho you are sometimes dead wrong /snark, I like the fact that you comment here.
If he wins, more history will be made.
LD50
@Bruce S: We’ll all take that as a ‘no’, then.
Bruce S
@LD50:
Just take it. You asked for it.
valency
@karen marie: If he gets outed I’m sure the Democrats will help him out, make him a staffer or in-house caterer or something, they owe him that much.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Chris:
Yes, I agree with this and have posted similar comments myself many times. But I think there is something else complementary to that going on, which is that with Marxism as an active political movement consigned to the dustbin of history, people are free to think about ecomomic class issues in ways less constrained by the political baggage of the 20th Cen. than we are accustomed to. And that is a very good thing.
LD50
@Bruce S: Yes, I’m quite intimidated by your devastating parody of an angry, belligerent leftist asshole. You almost had me there!
Fortunately, you’ve successfully demonstrated your dominance, so no worries!
gelfling545
@Bruce S: Well, you see, we are dealing here with the election that will take place in a few weeks time with already identified candidates, not some future election in which the savior of the world may be running. You have 2 choices. 1. Obama 2. Romney. Most people here, myself among them, feel that door #1 is less likely to do harm to us & ours than door #2.
Joel
@El Tiburon: Now that is Solidarity.
rb
@Forum Transmitted Disease: He can’t bring himself to vote for Obama.
I have seen some pretty shocking conversions just recently. You just never know.
low-tech cyclist
Never had to knock on wood…
Roger Moore
@James E. Powell:
Unfortunately, I think it has become necessary to destroy The Village in order to save
itthe rest of the country.karen marie
@Bruce S: Just because someone else might be wrong does not make you right. That would be 12-year-old thinking. Just saying.
Joey Giraud
@Bruce S:
Obama points this out himself when he tells lefties “make me do it,” ala FDR.
You’re right. Pressure from the left gives Obama cover for doing the right thing. His centrist supporters don’t help him in this regard.
As far as military policy is concerned, it seems pretty obvious that the military and the related princes of industry have quite a mind of their own, and any president who really wants to wind down our foreign adventures is going to have a hell of a fight on his hands.
Obama has shown an ability to focus on getting a few things done and not wasting his energy trying to do everything and failing.
Emma
@Bruce S: I’d heard you bitch but I’ve heard no solutions other than “DUMP OBAMA.” Put up or shut up.
Chris
@Joey Giraud:
“Our military industrial complex has a mind of its own”
FTFY.
Between the civilian leadership at the Pentagon, the defense contractors, the think tanks and PACs that focus on national security, I suspect the vast majority of that shit comes from people who were never in uniform.
Joey Giraud
@Emma:
I don’t know what Bruce S.’s history here is, but you and others are misunderstanding his points on this post. He’s blasting back at the childish retorts, which I understand pretty well having gotten that stuff myself.
Criticism doesn’t equal opposition.
There are some people here worth having a conversation with, and others who are just tribal snarkers.
Price of free speech. Viva la Juice.
Joey Giraud
@Chris:
Oh yeah. I mean, who thinks the grunts ( even the sooner ones :) have anything to do with making policy? Senseless to hurl blame at the pawns.
Mnemosyne
@Bruce S:
I have a sneaky feeling that you still haven’t figured out that the nickname “Krugthulu” is actually admiring and complimentary. It’s meant to convey, “Wow, did you see how Krugman chewed up those Republican talking points and then spat them out as unworthy of his digestive system? That was awesome!”
Future hint: this image is also meant to be a compliment to Krugman.
Chris
@Joey Giraud:
Oh sure, the grunts have only ever executed policy. But what I mean is, I get the sense that even the generals don’t matter that much. It’s all suits running the show.
Joey Giraud
@Mnemosyne:
Can’t speak for Bruce S, but I think he was expressing disapproval of the whole business of giving pet names to mainstream pundits.
No doubt he is in high dudgeon and annoying to the sophisticated and jaded centrist. But his core point is valid.
I’ll stop now. Tis a fool’s errand to try to change the fundamental dynamic here.
Joey Giraud
@Chris:
Probably, although I’m sure there are a few with substantial holdings in the defense industry.
Also, I know from first hand experience that very well-paying, low-stress post-retirement employment awaits the brass who develop the right kind of relationship with those suits. This might affect certain decisions.
LD50
@Joey Giraud:
Maybe some day us sheeples will wake up.
tavella
I’m really surprised the person who did the tape hasn’t been outed yet. Presumably the company who supplied the staff has personnel records, and unless they are exceptionally non-venial, a quick threat of “turn over the list or I’ll make sure you are blackballed from every rich person gala in town” no doubt would yield them. Might not even need that – presumably the other people working the function have a pretty good idea of which among them might have done it, and might talk about it.
If this was the 90s, I’d expect one of their pet cronies in the local police department or US attorney’s office to have opened an “investigation”, or someone in Congress to have issued a subpoena. They’ve been oddly… passive, for Republicans.
Joey Giraud
@LD50:
You may be a sheep, but the dynamic here isn’t sleepy or a blue-pill thing.
“wake up sheep” is an attempt to ridicule me as a conspiracy nut. I’ve offered no theories, so it seems you’re one of the snarkers.
Jebediah
Zandar –
I haven’t even finished reading the post, let alone the comments – but I had to offer you a million points for “derpwinism.” Consider it admiringly stolen!
Mnemosyne
@Joey Giraud:
Oh, is that what he meant when he whined about “victory laps” and how all us Obots have to STFU because don’t we realize that far-right conservatives have taken over the Republican Party and a good portion of the Democratic Party?
I was a kid when Reagan was president. The far-right conservatives have been in charge of the Republican Party my entire life, which is why I’ve never voted for a single one. And yet I’m the one who needs to wake up and understand that the Republicans are far-right conservatives? Seriously?
Sorry, the fact that Bruce S has only just figured out something I’ve known since I was a kid isn’t really my problem.
ETA: So, yes, I find Bruce S annoying for the same reason I find mclaren and Spatula annoying for running around with the Grand Revelation that Bush lied to us about the war! Well, no shit, Sherlock. I figured that out months before we marched into Bagdhad. Don’t blame me if it took you this long to wake the fuck up and see reality.
eyelessgame
@Citizen_X: I doubt FYWP would let me embed it, but I found it here:
Joey Giraud
@Mnemosyne:
I read “victory laps” as a warning against premature celebration.
His complaints about the right-shift of the Democratic party is pretty standard Overton Window stuff.
I just don’t see the direct attack you see. He admits that Obama is his choice.
And then he falls into the escalating trade of insults that’s a central feature of the Balloon Juice dynamic.
I’m a boomer and was shocked when Reagan won in 80. The relatively sane and liberal 70’s I grew up in left me ill prepared for the Return of the Right Wing Crazy.
So I feel for you. Some days I wonder how deep the rabbit hole goes. Pretty far I bet.
LD50
@Joey Giraud: You’re so right. Do tell us more about how we should all change to make you happy.
Joey Giraud
@LD50:
Be more serious. That’s all.
LD50
@Joey Giraud: Should I reply “go fuck yourself” here, like Bruce would?
jefft452
“Gosh, you mean 2010 wasn’t the beginning of the new order at the hands of the Tea Party…”
Something that I’ve noticed, here in the NE anyway: Every D ad I’ve seen for Senate, House, or State offices, refers to the R as “Teaparty Congressmen Joe Smith”
Warms the cockles of me heart, it does
Paula
@Mnemosyne:
Speshul points for pointing out that War is teh Suxxorz. Nobel Peace Prize candidates, all.
(And yet in the same breath many of them praise FDR.)
Mnemosyne
@Joey Giraud:
Yes, and what’s frustrating is that to people who have eyes, Obama is very clearly the start of the shift back to the left. His domestic policies are all very clearly to the left of Bill Clinton’s, our last Democratic president.
Bruce S is so focused on the last battle that he has no clue at all that we’re winning this one, and it’s frustrating as hell to try and deal with someone like that, especially when they start hurling abuse right out of the gate.
I was 11 when Reagan was first elected, so this is the world I grew up with. Believe me, I can see the incremental changes that have happened in the last 4-6 years even if the people who remember the 1960s don’t.
Joey Giraud
@Mnemosyne:
Agreed. Don’t know if you’ll see this, but it’s nice to have a real convo.
I might have more sympathy for Bruce as I used to get quite angry about things too.
Now I just work on my angst.
Bruce S
@Emma: @Emma:
You’re a total fucking idiot and more proof of exactly what I’ve been saying about dimwits such as yourself. If you read “Dump Obama” into my comments, you need professional help. Or a new IQ that isn’t below room temperature.
While one of the BJ frontpagers was implying some equivalence between Bush and Obama’s foreign policy, I DEFENDED THE FUCKING DRONE STRIKES. Which is what I believe. But I also have criticisms of Obama, and if puerile Dems such as yourself aren’t competent to push back after election day, Simpson-fucking-Bowles will be the default START POSITION for the White House. WHich is pathetic.
Read a little. Think a little. Your response to my comment is totally inane. Indicative of intellectual incompetence, for starters.
Bruce S
@Brachiator:
Yeah, I do. HAMP. HARP. A “settlement” that rewards servicers for short sales as much as principal reduction that keeps people in their homes. Check it out. Total fucking failure. You’re just demonstrating abysmal ignorance.
Bruce S
@Mnemosyne:
This is just dumb stuff. I don’t think the last four years have been “incremental changes.” In some respects they have been very significant. But that’s not enough because we’re in the midst of a crisis that Obama didn’t even begin to anticipate when I got on board his campaign very early on. I was a precinct captain for him during the primaries. Spent thousands of dollars that didn’t come easy supporting his campaign when it wasn’t all that popular among mainstream Dems. I’m glad I did.
As for the rest of it, I remember the ’60s and they are over-rated – especially in the latter days when white folks took the stage and largely wrote the script. That was then, etc. etc. But we can learn from the most successful social movement in my lifetime, which was led by MLK. We didn’t win what we did because we assumed the White House was the center of change. Just saying. Also, some folks need to recognize that their personal (narrow) historical window may not be as definitive as they assume it is. Stretch a bit. Grow. Learn.
Bruce S
“I was 11 when Reagan was first elected”
And I was working to produce the first substantive critique of supply-side economics and Reaganite ideology that got an airing on national television. This when Krugman was working for Martin Feldstein, Reagan’s head of Council of Economic Advisors.
No wonder I’m not impressed with your puerile BS.
Bruce S
@gelfling545:
Do you really think this is telling me anything I don’t know. Or that anything I’ve said here is counter to strong support of Obama in November? You fuckers are truly idiotic. Knee-jerk assholes who apparently can’t even read with any precision or coherence. This thread should be embarrassing to some of you, but of course, it’s not.
althechemist
I find this discussion tying and telling
althechemist
Sorry. Trying