Cillizza: Clinton remains odds on favorite with tons of money, name recogition & huge field org. But it might be time to start panicking…
— Billmon (@billmon1) September 10, 2015
I thought Hillary might be in trouble, but maybe not. Almost as reliable as the Kristol Contrary Indicator® –> pic.twitter.com/zZnTftTOVt
— Billmon (@billmon1) September 10, 2015
Translation: "I really, really want a competitive Dem race, but I might need cover later if HC ends up cakewalking."
https://t.co/acj2Drsd3H
— Billmon (@billmon1) September 10, 2015
…. somewhere in this pile of manure, cries Chris “Mad Bitch” Cillizza!
His WaPo compatriot, Karen Tumulty:
… The numbers in a new Washington Post-ABC News poll are an alarm siren: Where 71 percent of Democratic-leaning female voters said in July that they expected to vote for Clinton, only 42 percent do now, a drop of 29 percentage points in eight weeks…
The steep decline among women, which is sharpest among whites, is the main force driving the poll’s overall numbers, which show support for Hillary Clinton falling from 63 percent in July to 42 percent now among Democratic-leaning voters. Her numbers among women have declined to the point where they are about even with her share among men.
As a result, Clinton’s once-commanding national lead over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who is running to her left, and Vice President Biden, who is considering joining the race, has been cut by two-thirds. Both men are now polling in the low 20s against her.
In the survey, Clinton received markedly higher support from nonwhite Democratic-leaning women, 60 percent of whom were behind her as their party’s nominee. By comparison, only 37 percent of white Democratic women said they would vote for her.
Clinton did not dispute the drop in support when asked about it Monday at a news conference in Cedar Falls, Iowa. “I’ve been in and around enough campaigns to know that there’s an ebb and flow,” she said. “Polls go up and down; people’s attention and decision-making changes over time. I feel very confident about where we are in the campaign and very committed to doing everything I can to make my case as effectively as possible to women and men, and I think that will be successful.”…
So she’s only drawing twice as much support as either of her two “competitors”, one of whom is not actually running (as of now). And assuming Biden doesn’t jump into the race, every one of his potential voters is going to hold out for Bernie, because reasons.
At the Democratic barbecue where Sanders spoke in Amherst, Sen. Debbie Stabenow (Mich.) made a pitch for Clinton. “I want to have my granddaughter Lilly there on Inauguration Day,” Stabenow said. “We will have made history, and we will have let our grandchildren know they can do anything — not because we said it, but because they saw it.”
I stand with Stabenow. Proudly!
Baud
I stand ready to do my duty when called on by the brokered convention.
If Hillary didn’t have to fight for the nom, they would criticize her for the coronation. Screw them all. Let the process play out.
benw
And I’m crazy about Clinton!
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
Since it came up at the bottom of the other thread, David Brock came over to the Democratic side in 2001 and admitted he had lied about Anita Hill while covering for Clarence Thomas:
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/06/27/us/book-author-says-he-lied-his-attacks-anita-hill-bid-aid-justice-thomas.html
Apparently Brock is working for Hillary on this campaign. I say, if the guy who helped build the Wingnut Wurlitzer wants to help you fight it, you should let him.
Omnes Omnibus
Since it’s an open thread… Today is the 80th anniversary of the Nuremberg Laws in Germany.
Mike in NC
Karen Tumulty used to work at TIME magazine, where she specialized in puking out Center-Right Nation bullshit.
Too lazy to look up the brief Cilliza-Millbank collaboration that was laughed off the stage. Assholes at WaPo…
ETA: Mouthpiece Theatre, where they specialized in attacking Hilary Clinton.
patroclus
Karen Tumulty is supposed to be a good reporter, so I wonder why this article is all polls and horserace and money and posturing rather than, you know, issues. What are the plans of the candidates? On any issue? How does Karen contrast the Sanders, O’Malley, Webb, Chafee, Clinton (and/or Biden) plans and what they promise and what will they cost? I realize, for the Republicans, it’s the age of Trump and issues don’t seem to matter, but I wish that at least one good reporter would actually write about them in the Democratic primary coverage.
Bex
Thanks again to ruckus for responding last night to an appeal for a “wheelchair” for Cassidy, a 9-week old rescue feral kitten who is missing both back feet. Turns out Handicapped Pets Canada will provide him with wheels. If anybody had a bad day, watch this video.
https://youtu.be/40FvAmhpJRE
Schlemazel
@Mnemosyne (iPhone):
My opinion is, once a lying sack of shit always a lying sack of shit. Maybe he has reformed but I would not give him an important job. There are plenty of examples to prove me wrong but just as many proving my side.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
80 years doesn’t seem that long ago.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
Also, too, I’m not sure why I’m supposed to immediately make up my mind about who to vote for in the primary when CA’s primary is nine (9) months away right now. I’m content to wait and see how things go when the actual primary starts next year, thanks.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: I was there shortly after it opened. I understand it as recently been expanded. I have also been to Dachau.
Right to Rise
It’s early, but the trend clearly shows Hillary in a downward spiral.
What will happen if the Dems do nominate a red diaper baby Marxist? Does anyone think he could win more than five or six states against Jeb or even Rubio or Kasich?
Plus Sanders is way, way too old for office.
benw
@efgoldman: I’ve been to the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust. Very intense.
Schlemazel
Speaking of sacks of shit
EconWatcher
It’s completely silly to talk about panic; no real challenger to Clinton has yet emerged either from within her party or from the GOP. But you also can’t pretend the opinion polling says nothing at all. It says many Dems are unenthusiastic about her and wish we had a better candidate, while recognizing that Bernie is not really viable.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@efgoldman:
Los Angeles has a very good one with some cool interactive features called the Museum of Tolerance:
http://www.museumoftolerance.com
When you go through the Holocaust-specific part, they give you a card with a person’s name and picture on it and you see at the end if they survived or not. Really well-done (at least as of 10 years ago or so).
Baud
@efgoldman:
I have. It is sobering.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): When I’ve supported a candidate early on, most of the time they’re gone before the CA primary.
Omnes Omnibus
@Right to Rise: It’s early but the trend clearly shows the Chicago Bears heading toward an 0-16 season. I also bet you couldn’t correctly define a red diaper baby if your life depended on it.
Baud
@Omnes Omnibus:
Perhaps not the best example.
Patrick
@Omnes Omnibus:
Like so many right-wingers, he also has no clue whatsoever what the words Marxism stands for.
JPL
So I’m watching the Trump show. Wink Martindale spoke and I used the google to tell me who he was. Now someone is speaking but I’m not sure who. I was out of the room when they said his name.
I need Littlebrit.. she watched last night and added insight about Trumps words.
Mike in NC
@Right to Rise: Adolph Hitler got daily vitamin shots for his low energy levels. Hopefully JEB! can find a quack down in Mexico to service his similar problem.
JEB! wants to be the first Narcoleptic-American in the White House.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud: As much as it pains me to think about it, they will win some games.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: We went to Manzanar a few years ago as a side trip up to Whitney Portal. My wife left saying, “I had no idea”(then again she wasn’t raised here in the states).
Baud
@JPL: Is MSNBC showing Trump again?
JPL
@Baud: I don’t know. Mediaite has it..
gelfling545
I will happily support Clinton or Sanders, for somewhat different reasons but clearly acknowledging that either is preferable my many orders of magnitude to any of the GOP “deep bench”.
Kathleen
@patroclus: But her job is focusing on horse races and repeating tweets, not (God forbid) actually reporting on how candidates plan to destroy Social Security, Medicare, infrastructure, education, unions, etc etc. See Todd, Chuck.
schrodinger's cat
Clinton’s going to win, MSM is just creating busy work for itself by pretending that there is a horse race.
More entertaining than the invisible horse race. Madhuri Dixit in Devdas That girl can dance.
Kathak the classical Indian dancing style is a great amalgam of Hindu and Muslim cultures of northern India.
HR Progressive
@Right to Rise:
Obvious Troll is Obvious.
Right to Rise
If worse comes to worse, and Trump even gets close to sniffing the nomination, word is all the billionaire donors will unite and by their power combined settle on a compromise establishment candidate and take down Trump.
Davis X. Machina
@EconWatcher:
Enthusiasm in elections is like you and your friend being chased by a bear.
You don’t have to outrun the bear. You just have to outrun your friend.
Republicans’ renowned tendency to fall in love, and then fall in line is going to be sorely tested this year.
I think the bear gets them this go-round.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Good christ. No matter how gobsmacked you get, you can’t keep up. I’m trying to think of an odder choice. Three years ago I would’ve said the Duck Dynasty guy, but I guess that’s old hat now. That weird young woman from the old Maher show with the rightwing talking points and the Mary-Ann-from-Gilligan’s Island affect was a general election candidate for the United States Senate. I think Jon Voigt died…. nope, I think Wink is the weirdest and most random figure I can think of.
JPL
I really don’t who these folks are. Wink introduced Tim Abell who introduced Joel someone.
jl
Should HRC start panicking, or just to pedal to the metal panic right away? It still seems very early in the election cycle, before even one Democratic debate, so maybe she should just prepare to panic? Or, following microsoft protocol, immediately get ready to prepare to start ramping up panic. I missed the beltway political pundit tutorial on the nuances of panic.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Wilfrid Grimly supported McCain, IIRC.
dmsilev
@efgoldman: I have, and I’ve also been to one of the camps. Not the sort of thing one easily forgets.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: Looks like it. He hooked up with some ‘winger veterans group and rented an old aircraft carrier, so this is his national security speech– Rachel Maddow says his first policy speech. I just now heard three incredibles, two good and one bad, before I could get my thumb on the mute button. Maybe more than a minute, less than ninety seconds.
Davis X. Machina
@efgoldman: Do you have charismatic megafauna in your dumpsters? I think not.
Baud
@efgoldman:
Maineacs are more into moose.
Patrick
@schrodinger’s cat:
It is such a repeat from 2008. The media made such a huge issue of non-issues such as the “reverend of his church” (nobody cared except for FoxNews viewers)), or his comments about gun owners (nobody cared except for the fanatics).
It is the same thing this time. Nobody except for the fanatics are even paying attention in August-September. Yet, Wash Post are treating these polls like they are the end of the world. Yup, these would be the same polls that predicted Clinton and Giuliani would be the party’s candidates in 2008. I think I just want to scream…
dmsilev
@Right to Rise: And, of course, a minimum-wage blog troller is a thoroughly reliable and dependable source of information on what ‘the billionaires’ are going to do.
JPL
Policy speech sounds like his normal speeches.
benw
@jl:
She should get little yellow buttons that say DON’T PANIC.
Helen
BWA HA HA Trump just put air quotes around the word “Obama” LOLWUT??
Roger Moore
@Omnes Omnibus:
There’s no guarantee of that. The elusive winless season is still within their reach!
Bobby Thomson
@Omnes Omnibus: bookmark it, FIBs!
Right to Rise
@Patrick:
Nobody cared about Rev. Wright? Are you fucking serious?
Were you even old enough to vote in 2008?
It nearly ended Obama’s campaign. And it could have had Hillary pressed it more. The media was also complicit in burying it after he gave that speech in which he dissed his “white typically racist” grandmother.
JPL
@Helen: Where is his plan…
Oh here it comes the wall……….
Davis X. Machina
@Baud: Moose are just flat-out ugly, and dumb. Bullwinkle is a cleaned-up moose, and the smartest one in the woods.
(They’re also roughly twice as large as you think they are. We had a deadlocked state senate a while back that was +1 Democrat till a state senator met up with a moose at speed driving home from Augusta one night. You don’t win those, not often anyways.)
People here get all psyched up about winning the lottery for a license to hunt moose. It must be as exciting as hunting barns.
Baud
@Helen:
How Palin.
Omnes Omnibus
@Davis X. Machina:
And often aggressive.
JPL
My phone app just told me that CBS is covering the policy speech also. We are so f.ked.. The only help that we have is Baud 2016
Bobby Thomson
@Right to Rise: I saw that movie. Dan Ackroyd is rescued by an implausibly altruistic hooker.
Frank Bolton
The nomination is still Hillary Clinton’s for the asking. I mean, she still has a supermajority favorability rating in Democratic primary voters as a whole even if she’s badly slipping with white women.
Unfortunately, as we can see from Right to Rise and his silly ‘NRRRGH, MCGOVERN’ posts, it appears right now that she, like most of the Democratic establishment, has yet to acknowledge how much the country has changed since 1972 — or 1992 for that matter. Maybe she will realize before the primary and especially the general election that, unlike 24 years ago, the Democratic party forms a natural majority and the party no longer needs to go hat-in-hand to the Reagan democrats and suburban Christian whites in order to win. Or maybe she won’t realize this and still thinks that this is still a world where superpredators are one missed police brutality session from raping our pure, virginal
whitedaughters, market solutions to government problems are the hot new idea, and that the religious right is triumphant and still needs to be accommodated.If she doesn’t realize that the tides have shifted, her candidacy and certainly her Presidency will go down in flames in 2016, 2018 at the latest.
JCJ
@Omnes Omnibus:
Have you ever been to the Pinkas Synagogue in Prague? Not as overwhelming as Dachau, but the synagogue has over 70,000 names of Jews from Bohemia and Moravia who were murdered.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinkas_Synagogue
Patrick
@Right to Rise:
Goodness! You are someone who only watches FoxNews, aren’t you…
Say, when are you going to give us the definition for a Marxist now that you called Bernie Sanders a Marxist?
gene108
@EconWatcher:
Based on what her platform seems to be so far, I do not get the derision. She’s saying the same things as Bernie, or close enough I can’t tell much difference, with maybe the exception of sticking with Obamacare and trying to make it better rather than tear it down and go with single payer.
mdblanche
@jl:
It’s really quite simple really. If Democrat, then panic. Repeat as necessary.
JPL
Okay.. No foreign policy stuff…. At some point the media will stop covering…
lollol
Zinsky
Digby had an interesting comparison of Trump to the rise of Mussolini in Pre-WWII Italy. Same cult of personality. Same appeal to fear of immigrants. Same fact-free bravado and egomania. Be afraid people – be very afraid. This dipshit could win.
Baud
@gene108:
Hell, O’Malley is completely on par with Bernie, and he’s invisible.
Bobby Thomson
@Right to Rise: it’s that kind of razor sharp analysis that had you convinced you were winning on Election Day in 2012.
Omnes Omnibus
@JCJ: No, I haven’t. I’ve spent very little time in Prague and most of it was in a bar.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Right to Rise: Cool, a brokered convention; can you say 3rd party run? I know you can.
Right to Rise
@Patrick:
A Marxist believes, first, that all cultural, political, philosophical, and religious beliefs are produced by material conditions. For example, a Marxist holds that the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution is not the purest expression of timeless principles and philosophical truths, but the mere product of the material forces of the late 18th Century, used as weapons in the struggle of the rising capitalist merchants of American vs. the ruling monarchy/aristocracy of Britain.
Marxists also believe that the history of humanity is the history of class struggle. Slave against master, serf against landlord, bourgeoisie against feudal lords. Through this struggle and conflict, society is propelled successively into “higher” stages through bloody class conflict. The last conflict is believed to be that of the “proletariat” or workers against the capitalists or “bourgeoisie”.
The genius of America is that it has shown an alternative to this dark, bloody, cynical take on human history, one which Jeb Bush shares.
gene108
@Frank Bolton:
For the Presidency, sure you can win with minorities, women and a few white guys.
But you cannot retake Congress without appealing to “Reagan Democrats”, i.e. white guys and married white women. Too many places in this country are 85% to 90% white. There just are not enough non-whites to win in those districts or states.
For better or worse non-Hispanic whites make up a majority of this country, and therefore will get a majority of the political attention.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Eh, it’s a battleship, carriers are flat tops.
Mike in NC
Will pick up some microwave popcorn for tomorrow night, when Trump squashes the munchkins at the Reagan Shrine & Mausoleum and JEB! is rolled away on a gurney.
BillinGlendaleCA
@benw: Baud!2016 cornered the market on those buttons.
Frank Bolton
@gene108: And stimulus spending. And cracking down on banks*. And spending a trillion dollars more on Social Security. And full-throated support for a $15 minimum wage. And family paid leave fund. And flat-out opposing the TPP (though I think that liberals are being a bit hysterical on this). And his college affordability plan spends double the amount that she’s proposing.
*There’s a lot of anger at this and I don’t think that the party leaders in either the GOP or Democratic Party realize this.
schrodinger's cat
More Madhuri, in a rather bawdy folksy song. Great number, love the chorus too!
Baud
@BillinGlendaleCA:
I thought our buttons said “What, me worry?”
jl
@Right to Rise: See, RtR is DougJ. I told you people.
Hilarious, DougJ! You are slowly getting your chops back. You’ll be ready by next summer.
Davis X. Machina
@Frank Bolton:
No one will notice. That each has a plan is sufficient. Ditto family leave, and the others.
@gene108:
The health-care mandate wars in the 2008 primaries didn’t ultimately matter, but for five months, it was everything on the internet. But only on the internet.
People aren’t making dispassionate policy decisions and then casting their ballots on that basis. Last time it was literally war and peace, albeit in retrospect, and it was the closest nomination fight in decades.
Frank Bolton
@gene108: Yes. I agree. Which is why I think that 2018 will be the year that Hillary Clinton definitely goes down (for various reasons) if she continues her current path of social liberalism + economic centrism.
I’m not sure how well Sanders’ playbook will perform, but at least he’s trying to get the white working class into the fold. And honestly, even though I’m still convinced that race generally trumps economics among this contingent, we don’t have to do good or even mediocre with these people. If we can improve our numbers by 5% in the Midwest and 10% in the South and Rockies, whether slightly reduced black turnout, and get the same number of Latinos and Asians then bam! We have the House.
Since it appears that the ‘Clinton will bring in white women just by being her!’ argument looks quite shaky at this point, the Clinton Dems have been busy lowering expectations and keep trying to tell the base that we shouldn’t expect anything more than USSC appointments, upholding Obamacare such as it is (good luck expanding the Medicaid portions!), and having a Democratic Party pretty face in the hot seat for recovery that they promise is just around the corner!. Better hope that all of the USSC vacancies open up in 2017 and 2018, ne?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Baud: Those were more expensive.
Mike in NC
@Omnes Omnibus: Prague is the most beautiful city on the planet.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike in NC: Ever been to Bruges?
benw
@BillinGlendaleCA: @Baud:
Buttons!? We don’t need no stinkin’ buttons!
Mike in NC
@jl: Yup. Must be really bored at the current job.
Anoniminous
@gene108:
For heaven’s sakes that was 34 years ago. “Reagan Democrats” are either dead or Republicans.
Debbie
@Right to Rise:
I want to thank you for cracking me up every time you mention John Kasich.
Turgidson
@Right to Rise:
You’d know something about downward spirals, wouldn’t you?
Mike in NC
@Omnes Omnibus: No, but I hated the gangster movie they made there with Ralph Fiennes.
schrodinger's cat
@Debbie: I thought he dropped out, oh wait, that was Perry.
Cacti
@Right to Rise:
FSM help me, but I actually find myself sort of agreeing with you.
Of Clinton, Biden, or Sanders, I think “The Bern” would be the only one who would probably lose to an otherwise thoroughly beatable GOPer field.
The Murdoch Journal has already put out its first story about how “the socialist” is proposing 18 trillion in spending over the next 10 years.
Anoniminous
@Cacti:
The Wall St. Journal does that. They pull numbers out of their asses and then view them with alarm.
Frank Bolton
@Davis X. Machina: If it was just family leave or stimulus spending, you might have a point, but these things add up and point to a difference in political philosophy.
Clinton and Obama (and pretty much every prominent post-Mondale Democrat) are of the wing that believes that A.) Keynesianism works in practice but not in theory, B.) Ross Perot and his dumbass federal debt charts were the gospel of an economic genius and not of an economically illiterate goblin, C.) pound-for-pound inflation is just as big of a concern as unemployment, and D.) and that nothing special happened when Nixon fully took us off of the gold standard. Thus liberal economics might be more moral and politically popular and keep us from getting our asses kicked during economic downturns, but holy fucking shit 80% debt to GDP ratio. You’ll understand if we have to cut Social Security a teensy-weensy little bit, don’t you? Maybe cut back on Medicaid a wee lil’ bit? Look, it’s not like you DFHs have a better alternative with the GOP so just shut the fuck up and help us fend off
Jones and Pilkingtonthe evangelicals and plutocrats already, okay?!And it shows. None of Clinton’s proposals are by themselves remarkable, but as a whole it still shows that the hobgoblins of Friedman and Perot’s diseased brains still have Democrats like her by the taint hairs.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike in NC: No accounting for taste. I loved the movie.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Huh. MSNBC reporter suggesting Trump cut his speech short when he started getting booed about immigration. The protestors were drowning him out?
Patrick
@Cacti:
$18 Trillion, eh. How much has the needless Iraq war cost us so far?
Tom Q
Why is nobody noting that Hillary’s “collapse” in the polls is hugely enabled by the inclusion of fantasy candidate Joe Biden in the mix? If you threw in Elizabeth Warren, she’d take a big piece out of Bernie’s numbers and make him look weaker, as well. The whole thing is so transparently a press attempt to ratchet up suspense — an attempt I’m willing to bet won’t survive Super Tuesday, if it gets that far.
Frank Bolton, I agree with you that the “McGovern!” screeching fails to acknowledge the huge demographic/policy shifts of the past 40 years — if McGovern were the candidate today, he’d do considerably better (and no one seems to acknowledge he was running against a incumbent with a united party, huge foreign policy successes and a growing economy — which is tough for anybody to beat).
But I think you’re very wrong that Hillary doesn’t realize that. I don’t see any sign that she’s running Bill’s 1992 campaign, trying to siphon off Reagan Democrats. Just look at the way Terry McAuliffe ran for Governor in VA two years ago — he was all Planned Parenthood, liberal issues, not god/gays/guns. And I guarantee you Terry McAuliffe does nothing without advice from the Clinton camp. As someone said above, Hillary’s out there talking all the liberal issues every day — just because you haven’t heard it over the “Serious Questions Remain” e-mail coverage doesn’t mean it isn’t so.
I’d gladly vote for Sanders were he the nominee, but I think Hillary’s a considerably stronger candidate, and I’ll vote for her in the primaries with enthusiasm.
Regnad Kcin
@Omnes Omnibus: it’s like a fookin’ fairytale
Omnes Omnibus
@Regnad Kcin: It’s in Belgium.
Cckids
@BillinGlendaleCA:
My spouse & kids did the same thing (Manzanar after Whitney) 4 years ago. That & the Heard museum in Phoenix are the two my now-adult kids still talk about as really staying with them.
At the Heard, they were to assume the identity of a Native American child & read their diary entries about being taken from their families & “educated”. It was a sobering lesson for them.
mdblanche
@Tom Q:
The narrative can never fail, the narrative can only be failed. Stop failing the narrative!
Turgidson
@Cacti:
That’s pretty shameless (even for the knuckledraggers at WSJ) since they arrived at that number by implicitly claiming that health care in this country is currently free, which is how they get their “Bernie’s Single Payer Plan Costs $15 TRILLION in the next decade” claim. But the idiots who want to think Bernie is a crackpot will believe it, no questions asked. Fits their demented preconceptions about liberal policies.
Frank Bolton
@Tom Q:
http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/10/politics/hillary-clinton-democrat-progressive/index.html
Davis X. Machina
@Frank Bolton: “Post-Mondale” ignores the fact that Mondale was every bit as centrist as the others. There would have been no support for the Rainbow Coalition, or the two Jackson candidacies, outside the AA community if that were not the case.
The 1984 party platform is worth a read.
You want a social democracy, the firs thing you’ll need is a social democratic party, and for that, you’ll need a lot more social democrats.
Where they’re all coming from, in a relatively short period of time, I do not see…
And I say this with some sadness as a member since the early 80’s of DSA-USA…
Regnad Kcin
@Omnes Omnibus: disagreeing w Mike in NC @ 92 (NSFW) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wp50aAVNc-U
Mike in NC
@Omnes Omnibus: We keep looking at trips to Paris and Normandy, but I’d love to see Liege and other parts of Belgium that largely cost the Germans from a quick win in WW1. Some day. Our next vacation is a Main River cruise in Germany where I’m forbidden from wearing any of the t-shirts I got last year in Russia.
Cacti
@Tom Q:
About those demographic changes…
I think there’s little chance that Dem candidate Bernie would run up the same sort of margins with Hispanic voters as Obama. His record on immigration issues is a bit, complicated.
Omnes Omnibus
@Regnad Kcin:
Frank Bolton
@Davis X. Machina:
So what? I’m one of the super-liberals who think that Clinton’s Presidency and the compromises needed to get said Presidency was a necessary (if flawed) vanguard against the onslaught of Christofascist revanchism, but once again: the tides have shifted. It’s not 1984 or even 1996 anymore. The Obama Coalition won with 8% unemployment and it’s much more liberal and ideologically coherent than the New Deal Democrats and the New Democrats; it’s time to stop fighting the battles of 2000 and it’s time to adapt and advance.
The Democratic Party is pretty damn close to having the numbers for a social democratic party by brute demographic inertia. It’s not quite there yet since the Obama Coalition is going to have trouble winning midterms in unfavorable political scenarios with its current composition until around 2028 — but that’s why I’m willing to give Sanders a chance, to see if he can speed up the timetable by kinging in a sliver of the white working class. I’m not expecting miracles here, but if we can improve by around 10% then it’s game over for the Republican Party.
Tom Q
@Frank Bolton: Read The Passage of Power — how LBJ talked about the importance of “talk conservative but govern liberal” (which he thought was the key to Ike’s success, and his own — in an era we think of as liberal-dominant).
The fact is, a lot of people — Democratic voters — LIKE the lip service to balancing the budget and other bromides that we think of as moderate/centrist. It doesn’t mean they demand them in action; in fact, they’ll gladly take the fruits of more liberal rule.
I feel like for many of the Sanders people, what they want most of all to have a candidate shouting “We’re right/they’re wrong” all day. Obama (and Clinton to follow) are more concentrated on the results, and will put up a show of centrism to get there.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Mnemosyne (iPhone): Brock also founded Media Matters for America. He seems to have had a genuine change of heart from the Anita Hill days.
Cheers,
Scott.
Frank Bolton
@Cacti: Why do you say that? Obama’s record is less complicated, but it’s also a lot worse. Yet I don’t doubt that he’d get at least 70% of the Latino vote in 2016 if he got to run for a third term.
If your enemies are awful enough, you get to be on the side of heroes by default. Even Churchill got to call himself a good guy while he was fighting Hitler.
gwangung
@Right to Rise:
Yup.
Unlike you, most of us are familiar with black Christians.
Frank Bolton
@Tom Q:
Show? What do you mean show? Obama pushed that Bowles-Simpson idiocy and until the fiscal cliff talks proved to be conclusively intractable was trying to get buy-in into chained-CPI. Was Obama just putting on a show of centrism then, too?
Cacti
@Frank Bolton:
Yeah, no. Not at all.
Unless you consider voting “aye” on Chuck Grassley drafted immigration legislation to be a credibility enhancer for Bernie. Or his thoroughly nativist position on unskilled immigrants.
ETA: or his vote with the Republicans to protect the Minutemen.
Omnes Omnibus
@Frank Bolton: Are we now going to refight every domestic policy dispute from the last six years?
Tom Q
@Frank Bolton: Ah, I see — you’re part of the “Obama was dying to sell us out” crowd.
Nope; I thought it was all dumb-show. Obama knew the GOPers would never vote for increased taxes, and he could sit there as The Reasonable One while they imploded. I didn’t take one moment of that negotiation seriously.
Ruckus
@gelfling545:
The gop bench is wide. It’s about as deep as the paint on the bench. IOW very, very shallow.
mdblanche
@efgoldman: When I lived in an apartment complex in South County the building manager was always complaining about how somebody was leaving the dumpster open for the raccoons to get into it. One night my neighbor and I were taking our trash out and saw who it was. The raccoons had taught themselves how to manipulate the side hatch on the dumpster and were letting themselves in.
Frank Bolton
@Cacti: This ignores the fact that Obama has by far deported more immigrants than any other administration. If W. Bush had Obama’s deportation numbers the Trumpenproletariat would be lauding him as a tragic hero instead of another quisling cuckservative. All that, and I still think that Obama would get at least 70% of the Latino vote in 2016 as long as the GOP continues to run Walker and Rubio types. Let alone Trump types.
@Tom Q: I don’t buy that eleven-dimensional chess crap. The Tea Partiers derailing Bowles-Simpson was a surprise, not some kind of master gambit.
@Omnes Omnibus: Why shouldn’t we?
Davis X. Machina
@Tom Q:
“Think of” can’t be stressed enough. This is part of the Democratic Myth of the Fall. This ‘liberal-dominant ‘ era featured, e.g., a Senate Dempcratic caucus where Teddy Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy sat next to John Stennis and James Eastland.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Omnes Omnibus: I guess so, sigh. Also to note, none of these things happened, Simpson-Bowles, chained-CPI, etc.
Cacti
@Frank Bolton:
Hey that’s great.
So you really think that’s going to carry water when Bernie gets asked the inevitable question about why he joined the Republicans in giving cover to the Hispanic-murdering border vigilantes?
Omnes Omnibus
@Frank Bolton:
It’s rather tiresome.
Tom Q
@Davis X. Machina: I actually read somewhere that even during the height of FDR’s administrations, the word “conservative” polled way better than “liberal”. That doesn’t mean Americans don’t want liberal POLICIES; they just like to think of themselves as staid and sensible.
Frank Bolton
@BillinGlendaleCA: And they didn’t happen because Obama underestimated the sheer irrational hate the Tea People had for him. Which is more parsimonious: that Obama really does believe in the horrors of scary deficits and saw the debt ceiling debacle as a chance to tame them — but underestimated the sheer power of the super-conservative wing? Or that Obama is some kind of chessmaster who predicted, above the heads of the blue dogs and GOP establishment, that the Teabags would’ve scuttled the deal. And if that was Obama’s thinking, what exactly was he supposed to gain from all of that crap? He was still excoriated in the media as being a weak negotiator and a reckless deficit fiend. And he was still saddled with that fucking fiscal cliff crap — and at the time, it was unknown whether he’d actually win his 2012 re-election or whether he’d be able to get the House. As it turns out, Obama won in 2012 but didn’t get the House and now he’s struggling with an economic boat anchor.
It just makes more sense to believe that Obama and the Democratic establishment really and truly did want something like Bowles-Simpson — but was unknowingly undone by the Tea Party who did the right thing for the wrong reasons.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
?
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Omnes Omnibus:
I know the conversation is long past this point, but I actually used to work with a red diaper baby. His family would spend summers in Cuba in the 1970s, but he wasn’t supposed to tell his American schoolmates that when they got back.
Frank Bolton
@Cacti: If Obama’s record deportation numbers wouldn’t have sunk him, this won’t sink Sanders. Clinton and Biden (especially Clinton) have their own skeletons vis-a-vis immigration so I don’t think they would be able to gain much traction with this line of attack either, because the obvious follow-up for them are pointed questions on their policies and rhetoric towards refugees.
I’ll never defend Sanders’ record on immigration in more than a ‘I might be proposing that you roll in poison ivy, but my opponent is proposing that you roll around in fire ants!’ sense, but there isn’t much room for Clinton or Biden (let alone a Republican) to hit him on this.
The only person I think who could credibly run this line of attack is O’Malley. In fact I predicted back in May that his pro-Latino record would be his trump card with Sanders and Clinton. Unfortunately for him, the Baltimore riots and Brown getting clobbered destroyed his campaign before it could even began. C’est la vie.
Frank Bolton
@Jim, Foolish Literalist, @efgoldman:
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Parsimony
FlipYrWhig
@Frank Bolton: it makes sense to believe that from time to time Obama likes to throw a sop to the moderates and deficit hawks in his own party. Because the proportion of Democrats in the Senate who believe in these things is, you know, half.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Frank Bolton: have you thought about decaf?
Omnes Omnibus
@Frank Bolton: Let’s go with Newton’s flaming laser sword.
Frank Bolton
@FlipYrWhig: I can generally ignore most of the dumbass rhetoric about deficit hawkery and taxes and spending and whatnot (and even Sanders by-and-large buys into the whole ‘taxes pay for spending!’ canard), but Bowles-Simpson went pretty damn far for a centrist-deceiving milksop that we liberals were not supposed to take seriously.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Frank Bolton:
All the evidence over the years shows that Boehner couldn’t deliver his side of the bargain and Obama knew that at the time. Obama wanted a deal, but not at any price.
Corn at MJ:
I think Obama believed, rightly IMO, if he could get Republicans to negotiate in good faith and agree to sensible increases in revenue, the the Teabagger fever would break and the government would approach acting like a functioning institution again. And that would do the country a tremendous service.
He was willing to accept some pain in the form of some social program cuts to get there.
But they didn’t, so we’ll never really know.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
FlipYrWhig
@Frank Bolton: not the way I remember it, where it was a bipartisan commission that had to have a supermajority for its recommendations to amount to anything and couldn’t achieve that, so its two chairmen issued their own report that had no force. I think the whole thing wasn’t designed to fail, pace Tom Q, but was designed to create a thousand to one shot of an idea so good it would persuade multiple people from the other side. It’s a wonkish blue ribbon commission. If the point were to sell out Democratic ideals, it would have been easy enough to rig it to do so, no? You think Obama was trying to throw the fight but failed? That’s not particularly “parsimonious” as an explanation, IMHO. YMMV.
truegster
@Right to Rise: we already elected the worst Marxist ever, where have you been living? And if you were truly in the know on the right, you already know Obama Marxist Usurper was fathered by the commie….blah blah blah…that’s all that sounds like to the younger generation and they actually DO like Sanders, because he wipes the floor, intellectually speaking, when debating fools like Jerb¡ and that dunce Rubio. Sanders would old-man professor chew them up and spit them out in a debate.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mnemosyne (tablet): I’ve met a few real RDBs in my time.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
@Frank Bolton:
You need to define what you’re talking about when you say “Bowles-Simpson,” because there was the actual report from the actual deficit committee (which did not gain enough votes from that committee to go to Congress), and then there was the PowerPoint presentation that B/S did for the press prior to the report being released because they felt the official report didn’t punish people enough.
So which “Bowles-Simpson” report are you referring to?
stinger
@schrodinger’s cat: What a beautiful voice she has!
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
@Right to Rise: what happened to jeb! ? You sound frightened.
Mike E
I think I’d visit Bruges, and just because of the movie.
Prague is a jewel box. Great beer, too.
I had to visit Dachau because, reasons. My sister recently donated our grandfather’s dentist kit to the Holocaust museum, so I had better go there. Also.
kindness
I prefer Bernie to Hillary but I really like Hillary. Hillary I know will beat the beJesus out of any Republican running. Bernie…..I’m not so sure about that. Bernie could be beat with a sizable Karl Rove experience I think.
Between the two Hillary is more corporate friendly than I am & probably a bit hawkier than me. Bernie and I agree on just about everything. But that winning thing. That tops everything. I thought the horrors of 8 years of Reagan could never be breached. Till I got 8 years of dubya & Darth. Any one of the Repub twits running would be worse than dubya. I don’t think I could take that. Not sure. So if I end up having to support Hillary in the general I won’t have a problem with it.
dww44
@Schlemazel: i truly wish there was a like button!
divF
@Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937:
Yeah, I was just thinking that in reading his comments above. R2R is slowly walking back his support for JEB? by acknowledging the possibility of Rubio or Kasich as alternatives.
Omnes Omnibus
@Mike E:
Bruges is so pretty that an accidental pressing of the button on a camera results in something postcard worthy.
Mike E
@Omnes Omnibus: Sounds like my kinda photo op! My niece’s 3 year old is beginning to take better pictures than me these days, sadly.
TriassicSands
Chris Cillizza — a man so stupid he demands to be ignored. Just one more sign that there is no meritocracy in American journalism.
Frank Bolton
@Mnemosyne (tablet):
How does it even matter? Both the idealized proposal and what actually made it to committee would’ve inflicted austerity.
@FlipYrWhig:
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet:
Obama shouldn’t have pushed even the so-called ‘sensible’ deal. He should’ve told the Republican Party to fuck off for using the debt ceiling for spending decreases even if it would’ve meant taking a beating in the Press. The Republican Party wanted to cut spending during a recession; look at the EU to see how well that works. And they wouldn’t be the ones who’d be paying the piper for the economic pain it would’ve inflicted. The correct response to that wasn’t to go ‘hrm, it’s a start, but let’s further remove money from the private sector with revenue increases!’ Because it would’ve made things worse. Hell, even after the significantly more gentle fiscal-cliff (which concentrates spending cuts/revenue increases to the wealthy and MiC at least) it’s still not clear if we’re not on course to a surplus-induced recession between now and 2020.
You’re still futzing around with the tactics and optics of the deal. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was that, thanks to Obama’s economic centrism, he thought that the debt was sooooo scaaaary that he was willing to risk destroying his Presidency by cutting spending/raising taxes during a recession. Who cares about the particulars of the final deal as long as he was proposing austerity? What matters is that he was willing to push austerity at all.
Let’s make this clear: I don’t think that Obama looked to sell-out the Democratic base or anything. I think that he really and truly believed that he was doing what was best for the country because, like most economic centrists, the centrality of debts and deficits often override more prosaic concerns such as wages and employment and economic growth. He was not trying to punch hippies, he was trying to give the DFHs the gift of a balanced budget!
What’s more, Obama’s thinking is not unique. It’s a disease of thought that has infected most establishment Dems. I’m sure that if Clinton or Biden were in a similar situation, they would’ve done much the same thing. Maybe the particulars of the austerity scheme would be different, but the idea that we have to get this goddamn deficit under control somehow even if it involves short-term pain remains principal. This really worries me going forward, especially because it looks like that any Democrat in 2016-2020 is going to have to face the very real probability of being forced to deal with Republicans WRT budget policy.
Mike E
Who cut off mclaren’s head? Two just sprouted up in its place.
Omnes Omnibus
@efgoldman: And A Good Year to you too. But, really, thank you for that. You said it perfectly.
stinger
@Tom Q: Nor did I. Anyone who’s raised a teenager should have recognized the “negotiations” for what they were. Teenager: I can’t? Why can’t I? Whyyyyyy? Can’t we even TALK about it? Parent (finally): All right, we’ll TALK about. (Ain’t never gonna happen, but we’ll talk about it.)
Obama knew he could put pretty much anything on the table, as the Repubs had already said they would never agree with him, no matter what. His chips were safe.
And I don’t think of it as eleven-dimensional chess. He just knew who he was dealing with.
Omnes Omnibus
@stinger: My view as well.
Mike E
@stinger: You can do well in poker if your opponent keeps on tipping his hand. Too.
Frank Bolton
@efgoldman: What the hell does that have to do with anything I said?
What does any of that crap have to do with my assertion that: A.) Obama tried to push for austerity in a recession. B.) The Tea-Partiers blew up the deal, causing him to have to settle for quarter-loaf austerity. C.) While we (narrowly) avoided disaster, the kind of thinking that could’ve led to that disaster hasn’t been discredited. And finally D.) the idea that Obama was just pretending to be a deficit hawk is really reaching, considering the stakes and alternatives.
Look, I’ll give you the standard neurosis-soothing spiel: I plan to vote for whomever the 2016 Democratic Party nominee is, even if they’re caught snorting crack off of the ass-crack of an elderly hooker of the same-sex. However, I do so with the knowledge that if it’s a sufficiently economically unbowed Clinton or Biden, they’re not going to win the House and thus are going to dither around on the economy until the next disaster comes. Hence my repeated snark that the Democrats better hope that the USSC retirements come in 2017 or 2018, because from what I can see the Democratic Party doesn’t have a fucking clue what to do for the 2020 and especially 2018 elections other than sticking their thumbs up their asses and hoping for the best.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Frank Bolton:
Obama was trying to do many, many things at once. Remember him trying to get increased infrastructure spending? Remember him trying to get unemployment benefits extended? Remember him trying to increase the miminum wage?
Obama wasn’t a defict and debt fetishist. He talked it up and tried to get a deal done with it because he knew it was important to a big part of the country as well as a cudgel used by the Republicans. He was trying to get something to benefit the country in return.
Corn at MJ again about the 2010 fiscal cliff arguments:
(Emphasis added.)
Someone who only cares about the deficit wouldn’t do that.
Obama sees the big picture and works for the greater good for people as he sees it – not feeding a deficit fetish.
FWIW.
Cheers,
Scott.
Omnes Omnibus
@Frank Bolton: Okay. You seem rather new here. These fights over these issues have happened time and time again. efg’s comment is where a lot of people’s opinions here seems to have coalesced.
Frank Bolton
@I’mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet: Then Obama was or is heavily confused, because austerity is not economic assistance no matter how much he deeply and truly wanted to help the American people. I’m sure that a lot of technocrats in the EU really and truly want the eurozone to economically recover and to return to the salad days, but as long as their proposals are wrong it’s not going to happen.
A stimulus is not going to do jack shit if it’s paired with equal-or-greater spending cuts. David Corn rather conveniently left that part out — of course, this is only if we agree to the premise that this deal was only possible because of the fallout from the 2011 debt ceiling crisis. Which is still kind of perverse and relies on that hoary chestnut that Obama really knew what he was doing with this ridiculously circuitous plan.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Frank Bolton: Bowles-Simpson was gonna wipe out the ARRA? or the Detroit bail-out?
(seriously: herbal tea? a nice glass of pinot, noir or gris? metamucil? masturbation? I’m trying to help)
Omnes Omnibus
@Frank Bolton: Honestly, I don’t think everyone is going to be willing to discuss the fights of the last six years blow by blow again.
You think that Sanders introduces something new. Others disagree or think that he is so unlikely to get the nomination that it doesn’t matter. Me, I think that is useful as a pull to the left. I don’t think he is a real viable candidate. You aren’t going to convince me and I am not likely to convince you. Would you like to revisit other past actions by Democratic presidents who disappointed you (which Bernie would never do).
Major Major Major Major
I know this doesn’t exactly count as a troll fight but let me just say that it’s been tremendously amusing reading y’all.
Major Major Major Major
@efgoldman: We replaced everything with Lamotrigine, which seems to be helping, but I’ll keep you guys posted over the next few weeks. I am pleased to report that it’s currently a Couch of Mild Discomfort +1 though :)
Major Major Major Major
@efgoldman: Laugh, cough, stand up, but not think! Finally back to writing too. Should be good to get back to work in a few… weeks…bleh
mclaren
@Omnes Omnibus:
TRANSLATION: You still care about things in America. You still believe there’s hope for change. We in the Balloon-Juice commentariat will disabuse of that silly illusion…
mclaren
@efgoldman:
TRANSLATION: Your annoying facts and inappropriate logic threaten the Balloon-Juice commentariat’s learned helplessness. That is irritating, so shut up and go away.
Thoughtful Today
FRANK!
If you’re still reading, don’t let the trolls annoy you.
You’re points are (mostly;-) valid.
Thoughtful Today
lol
Bonus: Trolls that don’t want FACTUAL HISTORY mentioned.
Ignore them.
Thoughtful Today
McLaren:
http://Bernie2016events.org
^ Very useful list of events around the country. Organizing events will make or break the campaign.
brantl
I will vote for her over ANY Republican, but I’d rather have Sanders, or Biden, really,
brantl
@Right to Rise: I’m curious, is the sky in your world at mid-day orange? Or florescent purple?.
brantl
@Right to Rise: You have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.
Just One More Canuck
@JPL: Help us Obi Wan Baud! You’re our only hope!