This epic smackdown of Trump and the GOP is a must read:
Since the election of Barack Obama, the Republican Party has proved that one of its central intellectual arguments was right all along. It has long claimed that evolution is a myth believed in only by whiny liberals – and it turns out it was on to something. Every six months, the party venerates a new hero, and each time it is somebody further back on the evolutionary scale.
Sarah Palin told cheering rallies that her message to the world was: “We’ll put a boot in your ass, it’s the American way!” – but that wasn’t enough. So the party found Michele Bachmann, who said darkly it was an “interesting coincidence” that swine flu only breaks out under Democratic presidents, claims the message of The Lion King is “I’m better at what I do because I’m gay”, and argues “there isn’t even one study that can be produced that shows carbon dioxide is a harmful gas.”
That wasn’t enough. I half-expected the next contender to be a lung-fish draped in the Stars and Stripes. But it wasn’t anything so sophisticated. Enter stage (far) right Donald Trump, the bewigged billionaire who has filled America with phallic symbols and plastered his name across more surfaces than the average Central Asian dictator. CNN’s polling suggests he is the most popular candidate among Republican voters. It’s not hard to see why. Trump is every trend in Republican politics over the past 35 years taken to its logical conclusion. He is the Republican id, finally entirely unleashed from all restraint and all reality.
Read the whole thing.
Corner Stone
Oh, goody.
MikeJ
Yeah, both sides do it. No different from Bush. Blah blah blah.
me
How strange that the Republican id should be revealed by Donald Trump’s ego. I guess there’s no superego to found anywhere.
BGinCHI
Leave Trump alone!
Leave Trump alone!
/imagine as YouTube video in which I’m also crying
agrippa
@MikeJ:
I noticed that paragraph as well. It was a pretty article about Trump. Then, the author comes up with paragraph.
yep blah blah blah.
BGinCHI
@me: You’re forgetting Freud’s little-known work on the stupidego.
It’s in chapter 6 of Civilization and Its Dipshits.
M. Bouffant
@MikeJ:
Relax. He admits Obama is a “few notches” better than the drooling corporate drones of the right.
jo6pac
Thanks John
Davis X. Machina
@agrippa: There is no Balance but Balance, and the Media is its Prophet.
Citizen_X
Fixticated. Now the paragraph works better.
John Cole
Oh for chrissakes you delicate wilting flowers. The only way to move things to the left is if Obama and the entire establishment is challenged from the left. The reason everything is so right wing is because the right gets crazier and crazier and centrist moves to the right with them. Yet someone points out that a challenge to Obama from the left would be good, and you all break out the fainting salts, and ignore the other 1200 words demolishing the GOP.
Pathetic.
MikeJ
@Citizen_X: Thank you. It annoys me that everyone lavishes praise on Mike Judge’s Idiocracy but nobody has any love for the spud boys.
Chuck Butcher
No, I don’t think the Obama Admin is exactlty on my side, but it is a hell of a lot more sane than “a couple notches.” If it were a matter of being on the side of most American’s economic interests it would come down to a handful of Democratic(Sanders) Congressional delegates.
We do need to elect better Democrats (cripes, and GOPpers) but I see little reason to think it’ll happen as long as someone like me is forced by reality to assume the mantle “lefty.” Whatever is in Pres Obama’s “heart” this will be the outcome. When the Blue Dog (D)s can take back their mainstream GOP label…
aw hell.
Gus diZerega
@MikeJ:
Actually, Mike, you did not read him very clearly. And John is right – the ONLY way he will act as a moderate progressive rather than a moderate Republican of years ago is if he is challenged from the left.
He is a Clinton Democrat, basically, and even conservative Republican operatives I have talked to, when they have allowed analysis to get ahead of rhetoric, have admitted the Big Dog could have been a Republican years ago. A moderate one – but to the right of the Democrats of years ago.
Linda Featheringill
Uhhh . . . . .
https://balloon-juice.com/2011/04/29/open-thread-not-laughing-with-you-donald/
JGabriel
Johann Hari:
Here’s the thing about dog-whistle politics that Republicans don’t seem to get. The dog-whistle metaphor suggests a targeted set of code words that only their base will understand.
But old people’s hearing sucks, and racists are tone deaf. Which means, GOPers, if your base can hear you, EVERYONE can. In other words, these aren’t dog whistles anymore — they’re shrill fucking factory sirens.
.
MikeJ
@John Cole: People also thought the only way to move Jimmy Carter to the left was to challenge him from the left. Look how well that turned out.
Allan
@John Cole: Move Obama to the left? Nate Silver says you and Ezra Klein don’t really know what you’re talking about.
Just Some Fuckhead
Maybe if we ALL challenge him from the right, it’ll scare him so badly, he’ll just reflexively jump left. I’m reaching here..
Chuck Butcher
@John Cole:
Politically the challenge would have to be harmless enough to not create General Election havoc. This would mean that the “firebagger” sobbers around here would point with glee at the fruitlessness of the left. I’ve watched this shit for way too long to not see that coming. (they’ve had different labels for a long damn time but it’s just hippie punching under whatever label) The “middle” always has an excuse for being enablers of plutocracy/theocracy.
kdaug
@Linda Featheringill: Noticed that, too. Thought I’d seen this article somewhere before…
STUCKZILLA!
@John Cole:
GODDDAM RIGHT. bLAST THE mUDDERFUCKERS OUTA THE cLOWN cANNON, AND LETT GAWD PICK UP THE cLOWN pARTS.
cUT THEM WEENY wIGNUTS OFF THEIR UNcLE sAM SUGAR tIT dIAPER sUBsUDY, AND lET em rIDE bAREBACK fER aWHILE, OvEr inn THAT c sTREET HOUSE OF whoRERS.
gIDDEEUP mup !!
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Having seen what has been passed under his presidency, with Nelson, Landrieu, Leiberman, and others who claim to be Democrats, he is far from a few notches different than the Republicans.
And I really do get tired of people thinking that challenging threatening an elected official with someone who cannot get elected is going to scare them. The only way elected officials are going to start moving left is when the left starts voting reliably, in each election, in larger numbers than those on the right. Politicians are really only going to pay attention to those that vote.
hilts
Johann Hari was also great on yesterday’s broadcast of Democracy Now
http://www.democracynow.org/2011/4/29/johann_hari_frenzy_around_britains_royal
Chuck Butcher
@efgoldman:
M. Bouffant
Backstage w/ The Trump.
Chuck Butcher
@<a href="@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Do you fuckers ever get tired of this unbacked assertion? There are a hell of a lot of reasons and this ranks at about the bottom but you just keep repeating it. It amounts to “leftist traitors…” Real handy bullshit. What “left” candidate did you ever vote for?
Just Some Fuckhead
There once was a blog owner who snuck
Cherries that others had already plucked.
When asked of this slight,
Replied, “I don’t read that site –
There’s too many ads and the comments suck.”
MattR
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): This seems to assume that either there are Democratic politicians out there who want to vote more liberally but need the political cover OR that there are more liberal Democratic politicians who will run for office if they thought the electorate would vote for someone with those liberal positions. Given the current state of the media and of money in politics, I am not sure that either of those two options are true.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Chuck Butcher: The group I am complaining about are those that don’t vote because they aren’t paying enough attention, or those that decide that not voting for a Democrat will get them what they want. And I find it interesting that those on the right keep going further right, rather than becoming more moderate, because they can count on 27% of the population voting for them no matter what. Would the Democrats ever need to appeal to corporations if virtually all of those that identified themselves as liberal actually voted all the time? Because, then, someone could challenge them from the left.
General Stuck
@Allan:
Yea, this was a good article for this post, up until the part about Obama needing a challenge from the left. That is just stupid kneejerk nutroot CW, that is heaped in ignorance of what Obama has done, and how he has done it.
The thing about a pragmatic politician is, and Obama especially with the left on the internet, is that you can cherry pick about any stage or action or spoken word out of the entire legislative history of a given bill, and make a case for him being a right winger, or left winger. or centrist.
I’m not against primary challenges, and won’t hammer anyone who supports one, but the history of those for dems has been disasterous for the general. Liberals and dems have a hard enough time coming together to win elections, by dropping their personal butthurt for their losing candidate. We saw that with the PUMAS and later, and currently the firebagger bullshit. So challenging Obama from the left, or any other direction for dems is likely to fail miserably for a general election.
I am so tired of reading analysis from liberal bloggers that only includes the tiny echo chamber of the internet activists as “the base” or anything more than a few loud voices that may be right or wrong, but overall of not much significance to dem electoral chances. Unless they get on teevee regular, then that is a problem when they claim to speak for “liberals” and “progressives”/ A very few of them, on a good day.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@MattR: I probably am assuming both of those. I’m basing it on the evidence I see of what the Tea Baggers have done to the Republicans. Now, I guess we’ll see what happens when the baggers run into the power of the corporate overlords.
But I do not believe that politics is always just a “If politicians will do the right thing, people will vote for them.” It’s more of a feedback system, that can be stimulated from either side.
General Stuck
And BTW, Nate Silver is right.
Loneoak
It sure seems to me that challenging Obama from the left is equally likely to result in 1) Obama tacking to the left to counter the challenge, or 2) moving to the right to differentiate himself, or 3) staying right where he is because who the fuck will unseat a fairly popular president with a base that you really don’t want to alienate.
I’ve never seen a good argument against 2) or 3) happening so all the talk of 1) comes across as pure wankery.
Davis X. Machina
People like compromise.
Independents like compromise, a lot.
Democrats really love compromise.
We learned that in the shutdown battle over the budget and the continuing resolution a month ago…
The nerve of a politician, going out and doing what the polls tell him the people he’s counting on to win election want him to do.
Anya
@MikeJ: Johann Hari can be forgiven for anything, besides, most people are to the right of Johann.
Sly
@John Cole:
Obama is a liberal, not a leftist. The man likely doesn’t want total societal transformation, and even if he does he’s consistently written it off as impractical or impossible. Read his observations on the aftermath of the Civil Rights Movement or, if you want something more contemporary, the Million Man March. The man is New Deal / Great Society liberalism to his core.
Thus challenging him from the left is counter-productive, because the right makes no distinctions between liberalism and leftism; just as the left makes no distinction between the right and anything else. All it does is open up a war on a second front, which nearly gave a deathblow to American liberalism in late 60s. Is that what we want? A repeat of the 1968 campaign? Really?
And its impractical because, when you look at the track record of progressive change over the course of a century, it was American liberalism that actually got shit done. Liberals were expanding voting rights, workers rights, and getting people health insurance while the left was too busy debating how many angels can stand on the head of a surplus value.
jenniebee
@John Cole: so, out of curiosity, you having had a good look at the way the other half does things, do they spend more time shouting each other down about electability than they do getting their message, however extreme, out early and often? You’ve probably noticed by now that that’s about half the Dem playbook.
hilts
Palin and Bachmann both make valiant efforts to keep up with Trump in the delusional bullshit spewing contest
Palin
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/sarah-palin-accuses-obama-of-campaign-finance-fraud-in-2008
Bachmann
http://www.mediaite.com/tv/rep-bachmann-tax-hikes-a-similar-death-and-a-similar-taking-away-as-in-the-holocaust
Which of these three will win the coveted title of America’s Next Top Knuckle Dragger?
tkogrumpy
Obama is senator Ed Brooke.
scav
So what the fuck it’s already been posted about? Is it any less true? Seriously folks, you’re up against people who recite lies ad nauseum and you spout off little polite ahem, we’ve sort of mentioned that befores from behind your lace hankies? !
handy
@Sly:
Well there you go folks. It’s been written, so shall it be. There’s nothing you DFHs can do. Pack it up and go home. I guess we’ll just have to hope a little harder for a real change in the White House. Next time.
Corner Stone
@Sly:
So you’re trolling now too? How many can this site take?
General Stuck
@Loneoak:
Most dem presidential candidates and elected officials don’t really do any of the three. That is because that portion of the dem party is very small, compared with the ideological right. So they usually do what Obama has done, with a few more direct dismissals, and that is play footsie with them and give them what he can, when he can as his pol capital goes, given the mood of the country at the time.
The right wing noise machine is a formidable force, and it has poisoned the national narrative in so many ways, that dems really can’t hope to go toe to toe with it. What they can do is slog along and pass progressive legislation that helps average people. That is about the only way I can see us moving the Overton Window to the left in this country, right now.
It is important to also give steady honest and clear messaging along the way, but getting into the game of splitting your parties factions into warring camps has never worked well for dems. The wingnuts do it because that is their base nature. They NEED to do it, even if it hurts them in some ways, while helping them in other ways.
JGabriel
@Sly:
I agree that Obama has been governing mostly like a liberal incrementalist. But Obama has repeatedly said, both before and after being elected (though maybe not so much after the GOP took the house), that he wants to be a transformative president rather than merely evolutionary.
If you recall, it was a point of contention between Obama and Bill Clinton — because Bill took offense at being called an evolutionary president, while plenty of people were perturbed by Obama naming Reagan as a transformative one.
.
General Stuck
@Corner Stone:
Obama is a pragmatic liberal as a president. I would try to explain that to you, but it would be a big waste of time.
Davis X. Machina
@tkogrumpy: Politics, like comedy, is mostly timing.
Sly
@handy:
You’ve been hoping for a hundred years, only to be disappointed by your own pigheadedness. The Roosevelts let you down. Lyndon Johnson let you down. Jimmy Carter let you down. Bill Clinton let you down. Now Obama, surprise of all fucking surprises, has let you down.
But I don’t know… maybe the next incarnation of Huey Long will work out for you guys. You can only fail miserably so many times.
General Stuck
@JGabriel:
What? the ACA was not transformational? The Stimulus? as the single largest progressive discretionary spending bill in our history, with several hundred billion going to r and d all sorts of long term progressive initiatives from alternate energy to med research. Sounds fairly transformational to me, in a little over two years with every republican voting against him, nearly every day.
WaterGirl
@MikeJ: I read the article, then did a triple read at the end of the article to make sure i had read it correctly. I finished the article, copied the offending paragraph for a text block here so I could ask Cole what the hell he was thinking, only to find your comment #2. Yay!
Edit:
@agrippa: And comment #5. You guys rock.
juicetard(aka liberty60)
O/T but I am sitting in the California Democratic Convention and Bernie Sanders is giving a blistering speech calling out the GOP and the quisling dems. God he is getting a standing ovation with every other line
agrippa
@Davis X. Machina:
I noticed that.
quaint
handy
@Sly: Oh no. I quite agree. If you’re not cheering, you’re not trying.
scav
@BGinCHI:
Adding it to my library.
WaterGirl
@John Cole: Sorry, Cole, but I call bullshit. The comments above yours weren’t talking about his suggestion that a challenge to Obama from the left would be good.
It’s this line that’s the big problem:
There’s no truth to that at all. It’s absolute bullshit.
Edit: I see that Chuck Butcher beat me to it. Probably others, too. I usually try to read the comments before I post, but I was so angry about the end of the article that I jumped in.
Corner Stone
@handy: Some people clearly need to keep clapping harder.
Davis X. Machina
@juicetard(aka liberty60): That’s the very place where Gov. Dean’s ‘Democratic wing of the Democratic Party’ first saw the light of day. Seems to have become a tradition.
BR
@JGabriel:
The thing is, he knew what it would take for him to be transformative, but he didn’t follow through. In an interview during the election, he was asked if he had to pass only one major bill, what would it be. He said an energy bill. He was right, and Dems broadly took their eye of the ball.
And I say this as someone who still thinks he’s the best shot we have at keeping a sane country going into the future.
Basically now he’s in duck and cover mode on energy. We’re at peak oil, and no amount of going after speculators or oil companies is going to get us out. A cap-and-dividend bill would have done a lot to push us away from oil proactively. Now we’re going to have to face the consequences, which means a recession (probably a mild one) later this year, and a cycle of recessions for decades to come until we realize what’s hitting us.
agrippa
@John Cole:
John Cole, I am not a delicate wilting flower.
It is called an “affectation of false equivalency”.
I expect that sort of thing from the commentariat.
As for a challenge from the left to Obama: expending energy in the wrong place.
The issue is not, and never has been, Obama. The issue is Congress and the lack of good, strong and honest liberals in the House and Senate who are actually ready, willing and able to write and pass effective legislation.
We need 218 of those in the House and 51 in the Senate.
Get that done. Stop wasting time affecting to be Don Quixote.
Allan
Not to hijack or derail or anything, but the BBC is reporting that a NATO airstrike killed Gaddafi’s son.
Sly
@JGabriel:
I always took “Reagan was transformative” in that sense to be an intimation at breaking through ideological boundaries. Obama admired Reagan’s political skills, not his vision or his policy agenda toward reaching that vision.
I’m using word transformation with respect to the Left’s historical desire to remake the underlying social fabric; that American society is fundamentally corrupt, to its core, and must be remade from the inside-out.
BR
@agrippa:
That’s mostly true. Though on some issues, various White House agencies are pushing in the wrong direction. Take for example how Treasury fought tooth and nail against most of the financial reform bill, and even as of this past week was finding loopholes to avoid regulating certain kinds of derivatives that the bill required regulation of.
Corner Stone
@WaterGirl: Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.
handy
@Corner Stone:
Suffering leads to booze. At least in my household. So I say, bring it ON!!!
scav
Here’s something new to read about the combover if people want: Is Donald Trump the most bizarre US presidential candidate ever? which is probably an overstatement, but only slightly.
what do these idiots have with ice sculptures? Didn’t a peeing sculpture figure prominently in one of those birthday parties of the tycoons? (yup, Kozlowski & Tyco)
General Stuck
@BR:
I”d say we form a skirmish line for the political and ideological war the wingnuts want, that is all they want.
No dem president, Obama or the cadaver of FDR is going to get anything passed resembling any agenda for the foreseeable future. It is all politics now, all the time, electoral politics for control of the heart and soul of this country.
Does anyone really want to argue that Obama is losing that war of politics, and the wingnuts are winning it in the gov trenches right now? It will be for the voters to decide if the clowns Obama has been making of the tea tards, and they have made of themselves, is more desirable than having a party of competence lead them, with all the unfamiliar hues that make up the dem party. It is that simple right now.
Not Really
Haven’t been following politics for all that long, so can someone tell me (or point me to an information source) if this “challenge from the left” has worked and if so when?
BR
@General Stuck:
I agree – nothing is going to get passed for a while. But that’s a problem for Dems, not for GOPers. Energy is going to put a damper on the economy for the foreseeable future, and that usually hurts the party with the White House. It’s hard to re-elected when the country is in another recession (which it is likely to be by next year) due to high oil prices. Had we followed up the stimulus with an energy bill, it would have driven up prices early – in 2009 – choking off a little bit of the early growth we got then, but making it better now because the economy would have adjusted better to high energy prices.
WaterGirl
@Corner Stone: @handy: Sounds like the only safe thing to do is jump ahead to the part where I get to have a drink.
NobodySpecial
@WaterGirl: I took that to read ‘drinks are on Corner Stone’, myself.
WaterGirl
@Not Really: I can tell you it didn’t work out so well for us with Ted Kennedy and Jimmy Carter.
kdaug
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Faith-based voting.
Josie
@Not Really: No, the only time a Democrat actually ran from the left, McGovern got his ass handed to him. The echo chamber on the left is as divorced from reality as is that of the hard right. I’m not making a judgment on the rightness of their cause, just the viability.
NobodySpecial
I also have to say, as much as I enjoy reading Hari…
..Green Lantern is a DC character, not Marvel. Jeezus.
General Stuck
@BR:
The high oil prices is a huge problem for Obama and dems right now, and there really is little that they can do about it except to make what pol gestures they can to show they are trying. We are still 18 months out from the election, so it is not fatal electorally yet.
Obama can push to open up our reserves and demagogue wind fall profits taxes, and any number of pure politicking to deflect the blame landing on him. But it will to a large degree anyways. And that will be on the voters, to not connect dots of what happens when they give republicans even one chamber of congress to run.
BOSS BITCH
@Gus diZerega:
Obama will stay right where he is if someone from the left has the balls enough to challenge him.
You all want him to move “left”? Get him a less conservative Dem majority in the Senate. Obama could spend that primary saying all the things you want to hear but it will get a big fat “NOPE. ZERO” when conservative Democrats in the senate get their hands on those bills. We’ve seen this before.
Odie Hugh Manatee
@MikeJ:
Yes, we need another Teddy Kennedy and 1980. Only then will things get better for the far left. Ignore the House and Senate because they just don’t matter, it’s that guy at the top that’s the real problem.
Get rid of him and life will be just grand.
/wrists
tkogrumpy
@WaterGirl: Doesn’t everybody? Perhaps I should only speak for myself.
Not Really
@WaterGirl: @Josie: I have to wonder then why people keep bringing this up periodically as a viable option if they can’t show that it is or has been effective before. What’s the point of saying this if it doesn’t work?
ETA: All it does is rile people up – those that think it’s a good idea and those that think it’s a stupid idea. Maybe that’s the whole point.
Josie
@Not Really: That is an excellent question. Maybe they are too young to have experienced it and haven’t studied history carefully enough. Or maybe they think the electorate has changed enough to make it work. I seriously doubt that is the case, given the polling I have seen.
gwangung
Bottom up approach, rather than top down, hm?
ETA: A “challenge from the left” seems to be less useful if it’s just a candidate; the challenge would seem more fruitful if it’s from a large (more than a third) voting constituency.
Ty Lookwell
Johann Hari is awesome.
I highly recommend his podcast, here (usually updated once or twice a week).
He did a long interview (podcast episode 2) with Gideon Levy which was so thoughtful and moving. (although this was mostly due to Levy, I’ll say)
He’s a great journalist with solid morals and a kind but fearless heart (good taste in music and books, too) .
Villago Delenda Est
@BOSS BITCH:
This.
Guys like Franken and Merkley were a good start, but we’ll need more of them.
BR
@gwangung:
How about primarying blue dogs who are in safe Dem seats? I’d like to start with Diane Feinstein, though she’ll be tough to unseat. (I was hoping Debra Bowen would take a run.)
Gus diZerega
@BOSS BITCH:
I did not read “challenge from the left” as demanding a primary challenge, though in all honesty I think Obama has earned one. What I read in the article was that he needs in-house critics from the left – in the House and Senate – people who will push him to at least live up to FDR.
Consequently a “challenge from the left” needs to include primary challenges to the POS that take up safe Democratic districts but vote “moderate” meaning corporatist. Maybe more as well. Poll after poll indicates that on bread and butter issues the “left” wins, if it is framed well. Like the public option or taxing the super wealthy.
Let corporatist ‘liberals’ continue to defend Obama but let them be challenged. I am tired of their continual whining that the ‘left’ does not support them when they do not keep their damn promises. The ‘left’ did not abandon Obama – they had no choice. We vote for Obama or get Republican sociopaths. The folks who did not vote were the ones he excited as a promise of something new – “change you can believe in.” They lost their enthusiasm. I wonder why. Obama is a terrible leader and he was elected to lead.
A Clinton Democrat is better than a Republican and give that choice I’ll vote for it. But don’t expect me to do more – let his or her corporate masters fund the campaign. I’ll fund primary challenges.
You people who continually whine about the ‘left’- define what you mean by the word sometime. These days ‘left’ in this country hardly means socialist. It means a New Deal Democrat, a progressive, a genuine liberal rather than a corporatist, a Paul Krugman who is actually pretty mainstream, someone who takes the Bill of Rights seriously – a lot of very different people are “left.” Larry Summers and Tim Geithner are not. Hillary Clinton is not. Paul Rubin is not.
(an early version of this is still “in moderation” – I hope it is deleted as this version is a bit better.)
Davis X. Machina
@gwangung:
If the people lead, the leaders have no choice but to follow.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@BOSS BITCH:
Fixed like Bob Barker’s pets.
Villago Delenda Est
@The Sheriff’s A Ni-:
The problem is, the deserting coward didn’t get elected twice.
He was installed by a 5-4 majority of a Supreme Court that stated, in the majority opinion that their position should NOT be interpreted as a precedent.
Say what?
It was a coup. The Dems, to their eternal shame, went along with it.
Can’t argue with you about handing the keys of the House to teabaggers, though.
The Sheriff's A Ni-
@Villago Delenda Est: Supreme Court or not, he got 50% of the national vote and won enough states to make the Florida tie consequential. I know, uncomfortable truths are uncomfortable, but they still need to be said.
Kane
There is no coherent thread to connect the bewildering collection of birthers, Birchers, flat-earthers, Tenthers, gun-toters, Bible-thumpers, crypto-anarchists, homophobes, Islamophobes, corporatists, racists, Objectivists, neocons, pro-lifers, and science-deniers.
In twenty years, a political science final exam question will be, “What common idea united the party of Lincoln at the start of the 21st century?”
FlipYrWhig
@Not Really:
Never has. The reason is that there aren’t enough people on the left for it to work. Not now, not recently, and not for the foreseeable future. Waiting for it to happen is masturbatory. You can try to _make_ it happen, which is a great idea, and then you realize that we’re talking about a project that will take, at a minimum, 20 more years, as the peckerwoods and Democrats scarred by 1968 all start to die off. “The left,” to the degree that it _is_ in fact left, as opposed to being a bitchy bunch of backseat drivers, needs a coalition partner to have any political influence. The same thing used to be true of “the right,” and it took them basically 50 years to get where they are now: from Goldwater to now, slowly purging all moderates. That’s what the left needs to do, if it doesn’t want to be hemmed in by compromisers and internal enemies the way it is now.
Woodrowfan
remember the (perhaps apocryphal) story about FDR meeting with a left-wing group. “I agree with you, now go make me do it.” In other words, keep pressing the Democrats from the left. That doesn’t mean circular firing squads, but it does mean picking your battles. And yeah, it’s a long term project. The right wing began 50 years ago to do what’s reaching its fruition now.
Corner Stone
@Woodrowfan: There can be very little doubt this is apocryphal.
Corner Stone
FDR then told his backers to neuter any mofo that spoke out, neutralize them and gather their donation money unto him.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: I was, like, totes there. Dude, he, like, rilly, rilly said it. Fer realz.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: There ain’t been a god damned president ever made that wanted to listen to the little people telling him what he “should” do.
And there never will be.
Jay
Where and when did Palin use the Toby Keith language? It’s not that I think it’s beyond her (I don’t), I’ve just never heard that phrase from her before. Did you hear that she said “Hells no!” recently? I guess she can only get cruder.
General Stuck
Every politician in our society is “corporate” to one degree or another, even Bernie Sanders. We live in a hyper capitalist society pretty much top to bottom. It is a question of how we treat those among us with the least, and those who can’t otherwise help themselves. A liberal is simply someone who values this as a worthy and righteous goal of government to do these things folks can’t do for themselves, and to try and defuse the natural tendency of wealth to beget more wealth at he hands of the wealthy. And to use that financial wealth to wield political power for that singular purpose . But being a corporatist in a capitalist society is no sin in and of itself, as most of our jobs and means to create lives is corporate based.
Dems have let us down only to the extent the voting public has made their choices to side up with right wing greed delivered from the greedy politicians they put into power. And most of that has come from addiction to unlimited credit, at the expense of real capital based economy.
Citizens United guarantees this will become much worse, before it has any chance of getting better. imo
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: I always understood lesson of the story as FDR saying go make enough noise that I can use your noise as an explanation to other groups as to why I am doing this thing that I actually want to do.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: You’re a white guy, so what do you know about it?
Rommie
I like the tone of the article, but the blatant error about the Green Lantern Theory is just a Really? moment. It was cool to bring it up, until the author threw it away like Jay Cutler on a sugar high by getting the description totally WRONG. Don’t let the pesky facts get in the way of a good rant.
drkrick
This.
In the Spring of 1968, the idea of a President Reagan was a laugh line for the most of the country, Norman Lear was getting ready to launch a TV series built around making fun of a hopelessly anachronistic white bigot, and Barry Goldwater was considered a principled right wing nutcase. Despite some Vietnam-inspired infighting, the liberal consensus appeared to be in place to stay.
Then came McCarthy-Humphrey, McGovern-Humphrey and Kennedy-Carter. Those efforts to substitute the more reliably liberal perfect with the moderately liberal good helped give us President Reagan as tragedy instead of farce. Now we have a world where both of the other former extremist laugh lines – Goldwater and Archie Bunker – would be too far left attract the support of a GOP that just won back control of the House and has a better than even chance of controlling the Senate in 21 months.
This is not a strategy that has a great track record. By all means, let’s find the Dems who are to the right of their constituencies and primary the hell out of them. Make the case so that the persuadable parts of the public are less likely to fall for the next iteration of “death panel” style foolishness. But primary challenges for Dems who are vulnerable to GOP challengers is self-defeating. Leave aside the political needs of the Dems – the country doesn’t have the luxury of the sane party fooling around with purity tests right now.
Southern Beale
Newsweek’s Karen Tumulty, just now on Twitter
And therein lies the problem.
Tom Q
@Corner Stone: Yet the quote yields over 5 million hits on Google. Nice showing for apocrypha.
Tom Q
@Southern Beale: Given the events of the past few days — and even the surprisingly fierce response from parts of the media — it’s incredible to read that tweet. And I even thought Tumulty was among the less stupid.
Corner Stone
@Tom Q: The greatest trick the propagandist ever pulled…
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: A lot. [/sniff]
Southern Beale
@Tom Q:
My thoughts exactly. Kinda makes you think the whole thing is just so much theater, don’t it?
Yutsano
@Rommie:
I saw what you did there.
@Southern Beale: I lurve her. Even after going full-throated Wapo Villager at her heart she’s still a Longhorn.
David Fud
@Allan: Thanks for this pointer – Nate liberally referred to the voteview information and I found it particularly interesting to see the technical/academic treatment of politics.
hilts
@Southern Beale:
The White House Correspondents’ Assn needs a new name. Perhaps the White House Courtiers Assn.
Anne Laurie
@Josie:
… after Republican ratfvckers deliberately targetted the “leading” Democratic candidate (Muskie) and McGovern decided winning the primary was so important that letting his old-school handlers shiv “new” Democratic-voters’ candidates like Shirley Chisholm, and her supporters, was the right way to go.
Read NIXONLAND, and see if the 1972 election doesn’t give you that here-we-go-again-feeling…
Dan
A primary challenge of the first black president would destroy the democratic party. Nobody’s that stupid.
Southern Beale
I’m not watching the White House Correspondents dinner because my hockey team is playing Vancouver tonight in the Stanley Cup playoffs but I just saw on Twitter that Obama said he was releasing his birth video and then showed a clip from “The Lion King.” OMG.
Anne Laurie
@efgoldman:
And Sirhan Sirhan still claims — as recently as this March — that he ‘doesn’t remember’ what happened that night, or why he would want to kill Bobby. Thank the white Republican’s god for lone gunmen!
I couldn’t vote for President then, but the 1972 Dem primary was the earliest I paid conscious attention to. George McGovern is a good man, but the more we find out about what was going on behind the scene between 1968 and 1972, the more I wish he’d never had the chance to move beyond South Dakota.
Sly
@Dan:
Are you claiming that African Americans are a more viable and important constituency to the Democratic Party than a bunch of random people on the internet who have no political clout?
I think this is the point where the pod people start screaming.
t jasper parnell
@Not Really: It’s not so much that challenges from the left to the center didn’t work as it is offers of alliances between the left and the center against the right have been consistently rejected, with the exception of the Popular Fronts of the middle 30s and even then the center was happy to leave when the going got tough.
Why this is has to do with the notion that all of the left is either Robespierre or Lenin, which isn’t true and ignores the fact that “all” of the right is actually Nicholas I or Paul Ryan at least when it comes to operational matters in the tactical alliance. If you see what I mean.
t jasper parnell
@Corner Stone: Oddly enough, I keep thinking about TR who did lots of great things for little people over their objections. The egg and feather hunters, for example, would have gladly exterminated all manner of species and yet TR’s decisions concerning bird and other wild things made life better for all of us. Ditto, at least it seems to me, the pure food and drug act and his other related whatnottery. It’s in Wilderness Warrior, I think, but TR did lots of what he did to reign in the trusts and generally refocus the state on protecting the least among us not because he was “radical” but because he thought it was the right thing to do. So, I think I want to argue, what we need is not someone who will “listen” to the common man and women but rather someone who is deaf to the special pleading of the plutocrats and their servants.
JGabriel
@General Stuck:
Actually, I think the ACA is, or will be, transformational. That’s the single reason I said “mostly like a liberal incrementalist”.
I don’t think the stimulus was transformational. It probably prevented us from going into a depression, but it was too small to prevent massive unemployment or put people back to work. So I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree there.
.
Bob Loblaw
Figures that an article about Republicans by Johann Hari, who is apparently:
a. Not American.
b. Still not American.
c. Not American.
d. Writing for The Independent, a British newspaper.
would be immediately seized by the usual juicer circle-jerkers having their 8,276th slapfight over whether Obama should be primaried. Because it had been three days since the last one and withdrawal was setting in…
JGabriel
Sly:
I don’t think it was really admiring, just categorical.
Obama wasn’t making a value judgement, but noting that Reagan’s pro-market, pro-rich, screw-the-rest, Ayn Rand-with-a-smile philosophy had transformed America, whereas he thought Clinton improved on, but worked within, the existing paradigm.
.
Spike
“I will motivate you, Private Pyle, if it short-dicks every cannibal on the Congo!”
Nellcote
You have got to see the WH Correspondents Dinner on cspan or youtube. It’s fucking amazing. Half of it is basically a Trump roast! Some really funny stuff by the Prez and Seth.
General Stuck
@JGabriel:
This is the CW from the left. The ‘transformational” part of the Stimulus Bill was not it’s shot term ability to stimulate the economy, it was the other half of the 800 billion designated for longer term liberal projects as I mentioned. Research and Dev. that is going on right now that is unnoticed, but exists toward creating new technologies and markets and economic activity, longer term. It is why the wingnuts hated and hate it so much. It was a giant progressive bag of tax payer money for all sorts of things the wingnuts and the plutocrats opposed and had blocked for years.
JGabriel
Bob Loblaw:
Just can’t get over the fact that a dirty foreigner might have an opinion, about the country with the world’s largest GDP and military, that he wants to share with his readership, Bah Blah Blaw?
Or that said writer might even be correct?
No, of course not, he’s a
dirty foreignerBrit.That’s called something … what is it? Dammit, I know I learned this in school… ooh, got it!
It’s a logical fallacy called ad hominem: marked by or being an attack on an opponent’s character rather than by an answer to the contentions made.
Whew. So glad I remembered that.
.
JGabriel
@General Stuck:
Only if you think a Nobel-prize winning pro-free-market economist who was warning about the the stimulus being too small, even as it was passed, constitutes the left.
Fair enough. I don’t think enough was allocated for such R&D to become transformative, but I could be wrong. And if the day comes that it clearly has transformed our approach to energy, economic activity, et. al., I’ll be more than happy to concede the point. Overjoyed, probably. I’d love to see that happen.
Doesn’t look likely to me, though.
.
Bob Loblaw
@JGabriel:
I often go to British leftists to get a bead on American domestic political considerations.
Cor blimey, a Brit thinks Democrats are too corporatist? And that Republicans are insane? Mind. Blown.
Corner Stone
@Bob Loblaw: I thought it was “Gor blimey!”
Uriel
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
I see what you did there.