Looks like the Iowa GOP is going for a ride on the crazy train:
Rep. Michele Bachmann has been gunning for the support of Iowa voters, the first in the nation to vote for their party’s presidential nominees, and it looks like her efforts may be paying off.
The conservative congresswoman finished first among the GOP presidential candidates in a poll released today by The Iowa Republican, a blog which bill itself as News for Republicans, by Republicans. Bachmann received support from 25 percent of likely Iowa caucus-goers. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney received 21 percent, putting Bachmann’s lead within the poll’s 4.4 percent margin of error.
It’s too god damned early for me to start drinking heavily, so I’m going to go back outside and carry mulch around until hopefully I die of sun stroke and will no longer need to suffer this shit. It’s either that or smash my computer and tv.
(via the GOS)
Martin
Ever the devil’s advocate here, but how can Iowa Republicans not jump on the crazy train? When all you’re offered are lunatics, you can’t help but pick one.
stuckinred
They are all fucking idiots, who cares which one they pick?
gbear
Here’s a compromise: Just smash your TV.
beltane
Please, what type of example would you be setting if you perish on account of the fact that there are multitudes of of psychopathic assholes in this county? Instead of despairing, we should seek ways to exploit and profit off of these worshippers of a crazy lady and her not-at-all gay husband. The only way to earn the respect of teabaggers is to fleece them for all their worth.
Tractarian
Now, now, take a deep breath, John, and consider this: a Bachmann nomination virtually guarantees four more years of Obama in the White House. And, with GOP crazy on full display in the presidential race, I wouldn’t bet against the Dems taking back the House either.
A Bachmann nomination would make the choices crystal-clear to American voters … it might even dawn on those voters that, for the last 30 years, the GOP has played the public for fools and that its primary goal is to sabotage the nation’s government and economy for political and pecuniary gain.
Why, I’m downright excited by the prospect.
J.W. Hamner
I don’t know why so many Dems get excited about the possibility of Michele Bachmann winning the GOP nomination. I get that there is supposed to be no chance that independents will vote for The Crazy Light Bulb Lady… but every time we assume that people won’t do something insane we seem to be proven wrong.
alwhite
I believe that the Iowa thing depends heavily on organization and money – it is basically vote buying IIRC.
That would make me think the polls are less important than raw cash, it is still possible for a slightly less insane ICP band member like mittens to come out on top.
Han's Solo
Given who we are talking about that statement seems fraught with potential danger. How is she “gunning” for voters? From a helicopter? Don’t get me wrong, with the Iowa crowd shooting a few people from the air might be good politics.
But don’t worry about it JC, she will self destruct long before the primaries. When I see her I see someone struggling to suppress the crazy; it’s like any second she will bust out with a, “I love gay people, if cooked right they taste just like chicken,” or, “I love Mexicans, I think everybody should own one.”
ira-NY
In Iowa the economy is not the primary issue. The reason is that the ag economy is booming.
As a consequence it is going to be a race to the bottom on the social issues.
The Dutch Reformed will be the key to who wins the GOP caucus. Their leader is Robert Vander Plaats. The candidate he endorses will win.
If Palin stays out, he will endorse Bachmann.
Cris (without an H)
I’m sure you’ve all seen (via Radley or TNC) that Gary Johnson is openly condemning the FAMiLY LEADER! pledge.
I know that any mention of Johnson elicits dismissal of one sort or another. I’m not saying he’s a viable candidate, I’m just saying it’s nice to see somebody willing to spell it out. (The two are undoubtedly related.)
Cris (without an H)
Also, don’t smash your computer until you give somebody the login to make that one-line fix for the Reply link.
PeakVT
Fuck the FSM-damned horse race.
catclub
Tractatarian @ 5 “it might even dawn on those voters that…”
or they elect the crazy lady and the joke is on the rest of us. ha ha.
These are people who elected George Bush AFTER he fucked up in Iraq, after he allowed the worst terrorist attack ever on US soil, but did not get Osama Bin laden when he should have.
eastriver
A Bachmann Learner Overreach nomination is a GOOD THING. It puts the crazy right out there in front. And this is what the media wants, trust me. Crazy writes its own headlines. Crazy snaps its own photographs. Crazy can interview itself.
Crazy is good. Obama can beat crazy.
Shit, I just got an erection. Back in a second…
catclub
Is it really ever too early for heavy drinking?
gbear
If it goes that far, debates between Obama and Bachmann will be bizarre. They won’t even be speaking the same language. How does Obama even respond to her in a way that lands a punch? She’s got the confidence of the insane.
jl
Everyone better start boning up on their von Mises
http://mises.org/
BTW, I have no idea how much these people resemble anything von Mises actually said. But you will find some pretty ‘interesting’ stuff there. von Mises was a gold bug, and IMVHO, was most insane when he talked about money (see Krugman blog this morning).
Looks like they are fluffing the idea that a real default can be manageable.
Now, where is my hermetically sealed bottle of nonhybrid seeds I got through the Beck show (RIP)? Gotta think about breaking that sucker out.
Linda Featheringill
Now, now, quit quoting Ozzie and CTFD.
I read somewhere [and forgot when and where] that the Iowa Republican caucus is not as significant as the Democratic one. It seems that those good folks [Iowa conservatives] are, shall we say, considered a little special, even by the rest of the Republicans in the land.
The results in Dixie are probably much more significant.
So don’t worry too much about Iowa.
NonyNony
@JW Hammer
I recall that in 1979 the Democratic powers-that-be wanted to see Reagan get the nomination because he was so batshit insane that he was sure to lose to Carter once the general public got an idea of his stances.
American politics makes a lot more sense once you realize that every election is really a referendum on “do we like the status quo vs. do we need to throw the bums out of office and change what we’re doing”. If the electorate is in a “throw the bums out of office” mode you could have a serial puppy killer as the challenger and he’ll win.
(This is also why having one of our two parties being functionally insane is really goddamn bad for our country. Because when the deck is stacked so that one party is nothing but serial puppy killers eventually you’re going to get a serial puppy killer elected into office and end up with some dead puppies.)
daveNYC
Or maybe in twelve months we’re into the double-dip recession and U-3 has gotten over 10%. The only way we definitely don’t end up with President Crazy Eyes is if she doesn’t get the nomination.
jl
If Balloon Juice drinking traditions are to be maintained, we may need a weekly thread on making home made hooch from stuff in the garden.
I know how to make souzer.
joes527
No one seems to remember Ronald Reagan.
He was a has-been actor who lost out on top billing to a chimp. Getting him nominated was what clinched Jimmy Carter’s second term.
Good times!
Tonal Crow
Um, John, I know this will come as a shock, but every Republican running for any office more important than dog-catcher is 100 percent bats-in-the-belfry stark raving nuts.
yeahyeahwhatevs (Studly Pantload, once upon a time)
@Han’s #8
I agree. In fact, I think that by the end of the primaries, she’ll be too toxic even for Mittens to tag as veep candidate. Of course, he’ll need a running mate who can turn out the nutters, but he’ll probably have to go with someone who hasn’t had enough national exposure to instantly be a David Letterman laugh line.
Derf
oh boo hoo John Galt Cole.
You are too naive to realize that Bachmann as some sort of front runner is a good thing. There are literally hours and hours of batshitcrazy video from Bachmann that the vast majority of Americans have never been exposed to. She would be an even bigger gift to the left.
Or maybe you are just upset that your libertarian hero Mr. anti child labour and civil rights laws Johnson is not in the mix. Either way, another typically naive blog post by you.
Kathleen
While I don’t doubt that Rethugs would support Bachman, I smell a possible Rovian Rat powering “The New Republican” and trying to manufacture support. I’m starting to see psy-ops campaigns at every turn.
scav
25% of a wading pool of crazy: cue the meltdown. ah, hell, any excuse for drinking on a hot day.
BO_Bill
Kicking cats is a time-honored method of relieving distress. Throwing them does not do any good as they always land on their feet. Unless, of course, you tie a balloon to their tail. Just saying. But this Michelle Bachman is pretty good for a female politician.
From a sociological perspective it is interesting to note that, in late stage democracies, it is the women who are first to publically stand up for principles. As things worsen, we will again see the rise of alpha males. In the meantime, this Michelle and Sarah are pretty good looking. It could be worse. Imagine having to look at Barbara Boxer or Diane Feinstein on the TV all day.
Linda Featheringill
Ad on google:
Comrade Luke
There are 16mo until the election. I’m pretty sure 16mo everyone was thinking Palin was a lock for the nomination.
Sixteen months is a LONG time.
LarsThorwald
Bachmann wins Iowa, but can’t win New Hamshire over Mittens, no matter what polling says right now. In any event, how this all plays out is months and months and months away, and things will shift 100 times over between now and then. It’s always thus.
But I think anyone gunning for Bachmann to get the nomination so we can have a better shot at keeping the White House and taking back the House is insane.
I don’t believe in guaranteed “locks,” especially in politics and campaigns, and I wouldn’t bet my country that Obama is a “lock” against Bachmann. I mean, in all respects he is, but Greece is wobbly as Hell with Portugal and Ireland right behind, unemployment stands at 9.1 percent, and pretzels get lodged in throats.
There is far too much risk to want to gun for the absolute batshittiest nominee you can get on the other side to make your guy look better. Because that insane candidate could win.
Kane
@John Cole: Would you rather have Romney in the lead?
I think it’s good news that Romney isn’t running away with the nomination, and that he will be forced to spend money and fight a long drawn out campaign against Bachmann. The last thing Romney wants to do is to get into the mud and battle with Bachmann. With the help of Ed Rollins, Bachmann will take the fight to Romney and expose him. Neither will come out smelling like a rose.
jl
@19 Nonynony is damn right. Check out the reporting post Obama presser. From what I have heard the hacks, and flacks and useless socialites are providing zero useful information to the public.
I wonder how well Obama’s quiet Mr. Reasonable act will hold up. We saw how well it held up in 2008, and it was a disaster.
I am very skeptical of the idea that when low info voters get riled, and have a choice between quiet reasonable and extreme, that they will reliably choose quiet reasonable.
Dammitall, I should closed the damn blog when Cole started talking about drinking, but I have no sense and went and read some of the comments. Now I need a drink.
Economies are robust, and it takes great effort and persistent malfeasance wrong choices and irresponsibility over years to totally mess them up. The process that took the US from financial panic to the depths of 1933 took 44 months. Counting from fall 2008, we are 33 months into this mess. Stop gap very inadequate measures halted worldwide decline that rivaled the Great Depression. But the situation is still ‘interesting’.
Poopyman
What, another “Just Kill Me Now” post? I can only conclude that you’ve been planning on spending the whole afternoon away from the computer and you’re relying on us to generate another 400+ comment thread.
Thanks for leaving us to do all the heavy lifting, pal.
jl
We can offer a very special home made booze recipe for BOB.
Edit: Cole has been very calm and collected and relaxed recently. Time for relapse into panic. Problem is that he does panic so well, that as soon as I read it get riled.
Cole: sit in your hammock in the shade and sip a mint julep and tell us about that later, OK?
different church-lady
Isn’t it like… six, seven months before Iowa?
This hot stove baseball shit can cause harm to a young lad…
Poopyman
Oh BTW, the Iowa GOP as a crazy train has been one long train runnin’.
Han's Solo
@yeahyeahwhatevs (Studly Pantload, once upon a time): So who does the GOP have out there that is A) attractive B) nuttier than a boatload of squirrel shit?
I’d say Virginia Fox, but that woman is powerful ugly (to quote Jane Cobb). Maybe one of the Fox News fools?
Geoduck
@23: No, Milt Romney is not insane. He’s an empty-suited lying flip-flopper whom I don’t ever want to see elected president, but he’s not crazy. I don’t think Huntsman is nuts either, unless he genuinely thinks he has a chance this time around, and isn’t just angling for 2016.
Thoughtcrime
Well my house is, oh, such a sad mile away,
The feeling there always hangs up my day
Oh, Cleopatra, She’s driving me insane,
She’s trying to put my body in her brain.
So just kiss me goodbye, just to ease the pain.
different church-lady
I can’t imagine it would be any worse than having to listen to crap like that all day.
jl
I am comforted by neither Romney, and after his miserable abject (and two faced) teabagger talk last month, nor Huntsman.
They are clearly willing to be as looney and irresponsible as they need to be to get the nomination, and will be ruled by the looney party in congress that would come with either of them.
At the this point, the GOP is really all the same nasty stuff. In terms of what nastiness will happen, I don’t see how much difference any GOP presidential candidates would make.
Edit: in an effort to give people something to do other than subject themselves to ColePanic, here is a good analysis of proposals to manage a real default in August.
http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2011/07/debt_ceiling_op.html
Nemesis
Is this surprising?
I thought willard decided to forego the Iowa caucus, so crazy eyes surge is not unexpected.
p.a.
I think this is close to a best case scenario, but we haven’t seen many best case scenarios come to fruition in the good ol’ US of A lately. And when approx. 30% of the voting population are whack-a-loons, it’s hard for me to be optimistic. (Interestingly, ‘whack-a-loon’ isn’t underlined as a misspelling/non word, but Obama still is.)
The Moar You Know
NonyNony: Yeah, I remember that. Dead-eye dick accurate, those folks were. Most of them were the same people that thought that we had the luxury of Ted Kennedy kneecapping the fuck out of Carter all the way to the convention, ensuring that he was getting clobbered by both the left and the right. President Carter overcame these obstacles and then beat the shit out of Reagan and went on to enjoy two full terms in the White House, discrediting the Christianist/Goldwater wing of the GOP forever.
Oh wait, no he didn’t. He got beaten like a drum.
Where have I seen this pattern of behavior recently?
Enjoy Bachmann in 2012, bitches.
yeahyeahwhatevs (Studly Pantload, once upon a time)
@Han’s #38 Not knowing is what makes it so fun!
Besides, tain’t writ in stone that the running mate need be a woman.
jl
Sorry, this is the econbrowser post that I wanted, that goes into details of proposals to manage a real default.
http://www.econbrowser.com/archives/2011/07/ron_pauls_debt.html
NamelessGenXer
NonyNony and@joes527
In 1979, The Greatest were a force to be reckoned with and The Millennials did not exist. The electorate. It changes.
Also too, I could probably do some research into the percent of Iowans who take part in the
caucusFundie Freak Popularity Contest, but why bother? No doubt that number will be 27%.Edited to fix the fucking HTML.
cyntax
Wait, maybe I’m being willfully stupid here (yeah, there’s some historical precedent for that) but how is Bachmann doing well in anyway a bad thing for Obama? Or are we conjecturing that she could actually win in the general? Now, if that’s your point of view, then it’s a dark, dark world indeed and I’m not sure there’s any such thing as “Too Early To Drink.”
Pretty sure TETD is a myth like the Loch Ness Monster anyway.
Tom Q
nonynony@19, on the one hand I agree with you that presidential elections are first and foremost up or down votes on the incumbent administration, and the mere fact of a damaged opponent is not a guarantee of victory. Reagan, as you say, looked like an opponent with flaws in 1980, but won anyway because the Carter administration was seen as so floundering. However, two things:
1) The verdict on the incumbent administration is not limited, asmany seem to feel, to the unemployment rate. I like Lichtman’s Keys system as a general if not specific guide, and, by his ranking of assorted categories, Obama has earned re-election by a considerable margin ven if you figur a return to recession (and Lichtman is stubbornly reluctant to grant Obama charisma, which seems ridiculous to me and many). Carter in 1980, by contrast, was way deficient in the rankings well before Reagan was nominated.
2) The strength of the opponent can affect the margin of victory. LBJ and Nixon, while they had rankings in Lichtman’s system to merit re-election, didn’t match FDR’s or Reagan’s numbers in their landslide years, yet achieved landslides regardless because their opposition candidates were easy to paint as extreme.
Mike in NC
Why isn’t it called “Good News for Republicans, by Republicans”?
sixers
why is this a bad thing? fuck the iowa GOP. Let them be known as fucking idiots who’s elections don’t matter in the national scheme of things.
This is a good thing for Romney. This will accelerate the sane portion of the GOP who cares about winning elections to flock to him. She’s a huge negative for the rich suburban dicks who care more about taxes than gay marriage.
yeahyeahwhatevs (Studly Pantload, once upon a time)
@p.a. #44
Spell check won’t flag perfectly legitimate words separated by hyphens. “Whackaloon,” on the other hand…
R-Jud
I’ve just returned from a vacation where I attended two unexpected funerals, and when I sat down to look at the news I thought: you know what? Fuck this.
I bought one of these while I was away, Cole. I’ve just spent two hours making bubbles the size of our car. I recommend you try it.
Dennis SGMM
At times like these it’s comforting to know that the GOP could nominate a rabid skunk and, as long as it was wearing an American flag lapel pin, the skunk would get roughly forty percent of the vote. It’s also comforting to know that the corps will anonymously throw shitloads of money into advocacy ads thanks to the Supremes and the lack of follow-up by Congress. Finally, it’s ludicrous to even think that with unemployment/underemployment six feet high and rising that people will simply vote against the status quo.
Anyone who thinks that Obama will not be in the fight of his life in ’12 is cordially invited to send me a pinch of whatever they’re smoking.
TaMara (BHF)
Isn’t this how FL got their felonious governor?
Jimperson Zibb (formerly Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
I’m really hoping Bachmann wins the nomination. For one thing, I think it’ll make Obama’s reelection about as sure a thing as can be. And, bearing in mind that there’s always a chance that the Republicans might win, even with Bachmann, I’d rather our democracy’s end come quickly, as it surely will with Bachmann, than slowly, as we swirl around the drain for years before we reach the end.
Kane
As long as Bachmann remains a viable candidate for the Republican nomination, she will force the rest of the field to move further to the right to out-crazy her. She forces Romney and others to fight for the tea party crowd while preventing her opponents from moving to the center to appeal to moderates and independents that are needed in the general election.
Tom Q
Dennis SGMM @55: I’ll take the bet today. Obama by a minimum of 5% margin.
NonyNony
@NamelessGenXer
I know the electorate changes – but in the broad swath what US presidential elections for the last century have been about are referendums on the general state of the country as a whole and whether people think it’s going in the right direction or not. The shift of time taking away the Greatest Generation and adding Millenials to the mix probably isn’t going to change that (and if it does then there’s a revolution in American politics going on that I’m not seeing).
@TomQ
Oh I agree with this. There are a lot of factors. But I have seen far too many people treating a Bachmann win of the nomination as “Good news for us – Obama will be undefeatable” and that’s just not true. A lot can happen in the next year or so, and if it makes things worse then people will be looking for an alternative and with American politics just being “the alternative” is enough to pick up votes, even if people don’t actually approve of the actual alternative policies you support.
And, frankly, I would prefer a President Bachmann to a President Romney anyway. They will both, in the end, support exactly the same policies and do exactly the same things in office. The difference is that a President Bachmann will sound a lot less “reasonable” when she’s doing it and might actually generate some strong opposition. President Romney will not. Therefore Bachmann is the better choice in my mind if it really did come down between the two of them.
cyntax
@Dennis SGMM:
Sure he’ll be in for a hell of a fight, but I’m really having trouble seeing how Bachmann appeals to independents and moderate Repubs. I mean maybe she pivots to the center in a way the convinces them but…
What no dispensaries where you are?
jl
I’ll chip in to buy a bubble thing for Cole.
Hell, I’ll put up the whole ten bucks plus change, since good chance Cole will say to hell with that garbage, then I can use it.
Skippy the Wondermule
Dear John
I love this site and completely understand why you feel this way. I cannot tell you when the end of the pseudo-Christian madness will come but I can say it’s inevitable. Have you ever heard “whom the Gods would destroy, they first make great?”
It’s going to get crazier before it goes pop, don’t get discouraged, this is the path to the end of the Reign of the AntiChrist(tm). How much they destroy first remains an open question but whatchyagonnado? That’s what keeps it from being boring :)
aimai
Damn you NonyNony at 19, you are correct. I mean, i still think Bachmann can’t make it anywhere but a select circle of hell, but I agree that if the choice is binary (which it is) then eventually sheer chance and stupidity end you up with the party that promises to cannibalize grandma’s puppy while she dies on the front lawn. All we need is a depressed center/left electorate, vote suppression, and an energized and angry white motor scooter mob and we lose the presidency.
aimai
NamelessGenXer
TaMara (BHF)
Throw in a pinch of ProLeft’s incessant whining and this is also too how Jersey got the Fat Jesus
PuppyJob Killer.Culture of Truth
She was born there, in addiiton to being crazy, so if Romney can finish a close second, ahead of Pawlenty, it’s like winning.
Amanda in the South Bay
Wow, what is wrong with people? Would everyone be happier if Obama just resigned and handed the presidency over to Bachmann now? This much despair, this far out before the election, just strikes me as absurd. Why should we assume history will repeat itself, with Obama filling Carter’s/Gore’s shoes?
Tsulagi
Michele Bachmann, she has the electrolytes teabaggers crave!
Paul W.
I second Tom Q in response to @55, Bachmann is pretty much set to win the GOP nomination as far as I’m concerned (there’s no such thing as a gaffe for Republican primary voters, as long as they’re all red meat gaffes).
However, the GOP writ large does not have the appeal of the mushy middle coming out of the debt ceiling debates and how crazy their candidate will be. Obama re-election team is set to raise 150% of what they did in 2008, with a strong ground game already in place. The GOP has minimal GOTV infrastructure in place that doesn’t involve foaming at the mouth Tea-partiers… and they’re just arent enough of them to win a general election with a Presidential ticket (vs the unrepresentative off year elections).
John O
I don’t find anything comforting about the idea that even Bachmann would get 40% of the vote. Nothing at all.
No way does the GOP money let it happen, by hook or crook, literally.
She’ll win IA and probably even SC. After that, that 40% has to decide if they can vote for a Mormon. (For the record, I see MC Mitt as a less threatening alternative, since anyone who flip-flops as much as he does has to be a pragmatist, even if entirely, creepily unprincipled.)
Kane
55.Dennis SGMM
Best case scenario for the Republican presidential candidate in 2012 is to win all of the votes that McCain/Palin won in the 2008 presidential general election, which is doubtful at best if they plan to offer Romney or Bachmann.
Then there’s the question of where are they going to find the rougly 10 million more votes needed that McCain/Palin lost by. Add in the fact that Nader isn’t running to take away Democratic votes. And thanks to Republican governors, the Deomocratic base is already fired up in places like Ohio, Wisconsin, Michigan, Florida, Virginia and other key states.
Add also the fact that the latest census shows that the face of the country is changing faster than analysts had expected. The young, increasingly minority population is likely to view Democratic policies of public investment in schools, health care, and infrastructure as critical to its economic prospects.
I’m not saying that a republican can’t win the presidency, but it will definately be an uphill battle for them. I like Obama’s chances.
beltane
I am depressed that The Guardian shut off the comments section to its liveblogging of the Murdoch story. If a Murdoch falls in the woods and no one is there to comment on it, has he really fallen at all?
Tom Q
Two other things, nonynony:
Are you familiar with Lichtman’s system (which, really, takes the same view you do, only breaks it out into specific counts)? Because it’s hard to see, under his system, how things could go bad enough for Obama in the next year to put him in the Carter position — unless there was an actual intra-party challenge, which I don’t expect. Obama’s too entrenched in too many areas.
While I agree with you that the composition of the electorate wouldn’t be enough to offset an otherwise clear up or down verdict, it does change the closeness of some contests. Note that, during the height of the Nixon/Reagan coalition, even a disastrous Nixon/Ford term (long recession, Watergate, humiliating end in Vietnam, debilitating challenge from Reagan) only lost by a sliver, where Bush II’s elections were both by a hair, because Dems have increased their base share of the electorate over that time.
Dennis SGMM
@Cyntax
Is there any such animal as a moderate Republican anymore? At this point I’d say that the Republicans are more a tribe than they are a political party. As for independents, enough of them voted for George H.W. Bush’s idiot son in ’04 to elect him. I have eliminated the phrase “There’s no way they’d…” from my conversation.
jl
@17: Well, as long as Murdoch came up, looks like it will get even more interesting, disgusting, and trans-Atlantic:
Phone-hack saga spiraling out of control: 9/11 dead (possibly), British prime minister are latest victims revealed
” The British press Monday dropped two more bombshells in the News of the World phone-hacking saga.
First up: News of the World journalists, who have been accused of horrifically intrusive phone-hacking tactics in the U.K., may also have illegally accessed the cell phones of those who perished in the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks. ”
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/cutline/phone-hack-saga-spiraling-control-9-11-dead-154337461.html
9/11 families hacking charge from The Mirror, though. So, who knows about that? Seems like Murdoch did hack a lot, and I mean A LOT of personal info on Brown.
NamelessGenXer
@NonyNony
Not a revolution, a predictable cyclical shift, that has been described as the Schlesinger Political Cycle. This is a well-documented swing between Conservatism and Progressivism that takes place roughly every 40 years since before the American Revolution.
Consider just the last cycle. FDR’s brand of Progressivism took hold in 1932 in the midst of a full-scale Financial Crisis, then carried on right up through LBJ and the Civil Rights Act of 1965. Then – Blam-o! Trickie Dick gets elected in 1968, Conservatism takes hold, gets exacerbated by the Raygunz crew, which leads directly, and predictably, to another full-scale Financial Crisis.
It is no fluke that Obama was elected in 2008, exactly 40 years after Nixon. The pendulum has swung and what we are now witnessing is the death throes of Raygun Conservatism. They will not go quietly, but go they will.
With the exception of the home-schooled fundie freaks who have been given no concept of reality (27%?), these kids are not stupid.The oldest Millennials are nipping at 30, many are already parents. They will not watch their children and their friends struggle to breath in the Theocratic Feudalist Society inflicted on them by The Blood-for-Oil Party Republicans.
Also too, they like their gay friends :-)
Hal
Michele Bachmann is not Ronald Reagan, Michele Bachmann is not Ronald Reagan, Michele Bachmann is not Ronald Reagan, Michele Bachmann is not Ronald Reagan, Michele Bachmann is not Ronald Reagan, Michele Bachmann is not Ronald Reagan, Michele Bachmann is not Ronald Reagan, Michele Bachmann is not Ronald Reagan, Michele Bachmann is not Ronald Reagan, Michele Bachmann is not Ronald Reagan, Michele Bachmann is not Ronald Reagan, Michele Bachmann is not Ronald Reagan, Michele Bachmann is not Ronald Reagan, Michele Bachmann is not Ronald Reagan, Michele Bachmann is not Ronald Reagan, Michele Bachmann is not Ronald Reagan……………..
Jesse Ewiak
I hate to break this to the people comparing Bachmann to Reagan, but Reagan had two terms of the Chief Executive of the 5th largest economy on Earth to point to. On the other hand, Michelle Bachmann has a bunch of foster kids and a deep-red district.
cleek
@Amanda in the South Bay:
liberalism has a pessimistic bias.
John Puma
Mr Cole,
Are you saying there IS a candidate among the GOP nothing-burger parade that DOESN’T make you want to puke?
joes527
Kane
If the centrists on this blog get their way and the messaging for 2012 is “Sit down, shut up, and vote the way you are told” then the presence/absence of an independent candidate may be irrelevant.
Fortunately, Obama seems brighter than many of his supporters.
NamelessGenXer
@Hal
Best use of copy&paste evah.
beltane
@jl If Murdoch’s people behaved the same way in the US as they did in Britain, we have an explanation of why the Democrats have no spine. Rupert Murdoch’s neo-fascist media conglomerate clearly operated like its own surveillance state within a surveillance state, using blackmail and intimidation to stifle dissent and soft-core porn to sell its message to the “mature” white male population.
Maybe we could save Social Security by auctioning off all the lovely Fox News whores to be be 3rd or 4th wives to Taliban warlords. Our media establishment is guilty of so many sins and yet will suffer so light a penalty.
jl
@77: True. And Reagan ruled CA as a relatively moderate conservative centrist, and a good moderate conservative masquerade act was part of his act (when not talking to the GOP base).
Actually, in some ways Reagan was a moderate conservative who had responsible ideas (namely, ideas about ending Cold War and arms control proposals).
What is most important is the real time schtick pols can pull off. We will have to see how well Bachmann can pull it off, which she will have to at some point.
But, all in all, this morning I also need a drink. Just something about the way Cole does panic… blind unreasoning panic out of the blue… fear of fear itself…
jl
the “mature” white male population….
in the US?
heh heh.
I can pass for part of that club, and I seen things.
Martin
Let me jump ahead of the pack here and say that it’s not pessimistic when Obama has indicated that he’s going to fix Social Security using drone missile strikes to assassinate gay senior US citizens, all without a formal declaration of war against old gay looters from Congress.
(I thought we were supposed to be embroiled in a full-on constitutional crisis over Libya by now leading to Obama’s immediate impeachment? Is he still President?)
Lojasmo
Clearly, this is good news….for zjohn McCain!
On a slightly more serious note, I like that Bachmann is surging for a few reasons.
1- it is early, and she is too stupid to maintain a lead.
2- if she is nominated, my man, Barak is a lead pipe cinch.
3- if Obama somehow loses, we have a Minnesotan in the white house, and I get to move to canukistan.
joes527
Hal
Ronald Regan is not Ronald Reagan, Ronald Regan is not Ronald Reagan, Ronald Regan is not Ronald Reagan, Ronald Regan is not Ronald Reagan, Ronald Regan is not Ronald Reagan, Ronald Regan is not Ronald Reagan, Ronald Regan is not Ronald Reagan, Ronald Regan is not Ronald Reagan, Ronald Regan is not Ronald Reagan, Ronald Regan is not Ronald Reagan, Ronald Regan is not Ronald Reagan, Ronald Regan is not Ronald Reagan, Ronald Regan is not Ronald Reagan, Ronald Regan is not Ronald Reagan, Ronald Regan is not Ronald Reagan, Ronald Regan is not Ronald Reagan……………..
Turgidson
That may be true, but the teahadist governors in several swing states been remarkably successful at quietly (thanks to our apathetic and/or supportive media) retooling the voting laws to make it hard for Democratic voters to, you know, vote. We’ll see how it shakes out. GOTV operations only succeed when the people they turn out can cast votes that will be counted.
gene108
Before or after the Iran Hostage Crisis?
That had a huge impact on Carter’s re-election.
On a side note, I think Republicans may want to nominate Bachmann, so they can show they are just as inclusive as Democrats, because they have the first female Presidential nominee ever.
Democrats usually do better with women than men. It’ll be interesting to see, if a Bachmann nomination impact this at all.
trollhattan
@28.BO_Bill
Despite his distain of black people and dismissal of teh wymens, BOB likes the looks of the first lady?!? I’m flabbergasted.
evinfuilt
@Martin:
And further into that point, if you’re a republican in this day and age, you are CRAZY, and so again, this make absolute sense.
Martin
True, but they’ve been stupendously more successful at looking like raving fucking madmen, ensuring that no moderate would ever want to vote GOP any time soon.
The tradeoff is extremely unfortunate for those who will be disenfranchised, but I think in electoral terms Dems will come out ahead. And we should hope so in order for those voting laws to get reversed.
Catsy
And as has been made abundantly clear, someone as relatively sane as Ronaldus Maximus would never make it through the purity test of today’s radicalized GOP base. And while this may be hard to believe, there have been one or two nontrivial changes in technology and the media landscape since then. So if you’re going to go for the derisive snark, how’s about sticking to comparisons that actually make some kind of sense?
Because she is absolutely, categorically, completely unelectable as president.
Period.
Bachmann doesn’t have the “likeable oaf” or “guy you’d have a beer with” appeal of Bush, nor does she have his family connections. She doesn’t have Reagan’s charisma or fame, and doesn’t have the benefit of the way we tend to elevate movie stars beyond their importance. She’s a little smarter than Palin but just as crazy, mean, and prone to gaffes–and like Palin her negatives will skyrocket the more voters get to know her. She’s a woman, which costs her a point or two right out of the starting gate in certain key GOP demographics.
Short of an Edwards-style scandal bringing down Obama–and believe me, with all the shit conservatives have been flinging at the wall to see what sticks, if they had anything on him they’d be using it–she has no chance. She’s a nightmare candidate for the GOP–beloved enough by the fanatic base to sail through the primaries on the strength of teabagger and evangelical support, but far too extreme to stand a ghost of a chance in the general.
And the moment you put her on the same stage as Obama, force her to argue with him or defend her record of lunacy, and make her own or disown the GOP’s attacks on Medicare and SS, it’s game over. She’ll get the 27-percenters, and she’ll probably get 10-15% more from the people who would vote for a retarded rutabega because of the “R”s in the name, but that’s it. She’ll be lucky to carry every state that McCain did.
Show me a plausible path to the presidency for her that doesn’t involve fantasies hypotheticals with implicit unsupported assumptions like, “if the economy sucks so bad that Obama loses key blue states he carried in 2008”.
Martin
He must have caught a peek of her with hairy armpits. Or maybe driving a tractor. Both, and I think he’d have to excuse himself for a moment.
DZ
@NamelessGenXer:
Who the fuck are the Proleft?
I take it you don’t like the left-wing of the Democratic party – you know, that 40% of the Party without which you can’t do shit. Given your handle, you probably hate boomers too.Oh, you can try to do this without us, but I guarantee you that it won’t end well.
trollhattan
@94.Catsy – July 11, 2011 | 3:40 pm
What you said. I really, really don’t think familia Bachmann can withstand the inevitable magnifying glass. Until a week or two ago I didn’t know Herr Bachmann was more batshit than even der Frau, which is really, really saying something. Of course, VP nominee Cain will really bring the gravitas to the ticket.
joes527
gene108
But that is the point. No one thinks that crazy eyes is going to beat Obama on her merits. But be careful what you wish for.
1. We get past the conventions and the nominees are Obama and Bachman (highly unlikely, but that is the situation being discussed)
2. Terrorist attack on US soil shortly before the general election.
4. Hilarity ensues.
(there is no need for a 3. ???)
Jesse Ewiak
@96 – Obama has 80% approval ratings – among liberals. You. Are. Not. Forty. Percent. Of. The. Party. GTFOY.
John O
Who among us really sees a “way out” for the economy by the end of next year? It has become consensus that we need to cut our way to prosperity, and I mean Consensus.
I think things are going to be bad well into 2013 and beyond. It’s going to take that long just to starve the sick people all around us and get them to vote their own interests.
BO_Bill
No trollhatten, the first lady is not pleasing to look at either. I would say she is worse than Barbara Boxer. Barbara Boxer does not tell me what to eat. It has gotten to the point where I can’t even watch Star Trek anymore.
Poopyman
I think too many of us are stuck on the old paradigm where Rep numbers are roughly equivalent to Dem numbers. But since 2008 folks have been deserting the GOP in favor of independence, so right now the GOP is quite a bit (any numbers anywhere?) smaller than the Democratic Party.
So when one party consists of right wingers comprising 27% of the total electorate*, there’s no cause for panic. A concern for what the independents will do, yes, but I don’t think it’s nearly as bad as folks imagine.
Tom Q
Because people keep bringing up the Reagan/Carter comparison, can we please recall exactly Carter’s situation in 1980? He was an uncharismatic, caretaker/non-activist president. He had an ongoing foreign policy humiliation with the hostage crisis, and a textbook recession (brought on by tripling oil prices) during the campaign period. He’d suffered through a debilitating intra-party challenge — one that came damn close to unseating him — and then faced a third party candidate who drew from virtually the same pool as Kennedy. He faced a candidate who, whatever we Dems thought/think of him, was viewed by many as the Great Communicator.
You guys find similarities between that and what Obama will be facing next year, I’ll start worrying about Michelle Frickin’ Bachmann.
Martin
See, I can’t buy into that (even though you might be right). My mom is a Republican. From Iowa, even. I don’t consider her crazy, but I’ll admit she’s bound up pretty tight in the Fox/GOP bubble wrap.
She sends me articles from NRO and I see how many sentences in I can get before I find a factual error, dissect it, and send it back to her. Usually it’s no more than one. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten out of the first paragraph. When she visits, I make her watch TDS/Colbert. It’s a little game we play.
DZ
@Jesse whatever:
Been here for years, not leaving. You need an education in demographics.
DZ
@Jesse whatever:
Oh yeah, forgot, up yours.
nancydarling
Don’t know where to post this, but here is an interesting tidbit. My sister flew to her home state from D.C. yesterday. Her former senator and wife were in the waiting area where she was. He wasn’t flying first class and I doubt if he would ever spring for a $350 bottle of wine.This guy, a republican, is well respected on both sides of the aisle. He has had the same kind of gaffes and lapses as any one in D.C. for over 30 years has had but was generally a good senator in representing his constituency. They struck up a conversation and while he did not use the words “bat-shit crazy” that is definitely what he had in mind in describing the current GOP and their game of Russian roulette with, not just the U.S. economy, but the whole damn world.
Get it, teabaggers? Even your own elder statesmen think you are bat-shit crazy. Not that you care.
NamelessGenXer
gene108
Survey of my tits and ovaries says FAIL! by a 4-0 final score!
Also, too, the
Good Ole Boys ClubKoch Brothers financing the nomination of a mere woman? Uh-huh. You heard it here (maybe not) first: Joey B. will be as mild-mannered toward The Batshit as he was to The Fuckwit in the only VEEP debate.Martin
Ah, but his opinions count at least twice as much as everyone else’s on the left. Probably 10x as much, because he’s a REAL liberal. You can tell a real liberal because they only thing they hate worse than Republican legislation is Democratic legislation.
Martin
Don’t forget Geordi! He was black, too!
The Snarxist Formerly Known as Kryptik
@Poopyman #102:
But how many of those newly branded independents are still GOP in practice, essentially voting party line but with the added perk of pretending to be reasonable and ‘nonpartisan’ because they have an I beside their name instead of an R?
And how many Dems will still vote for GOP candidates if only to avoid anyone considered a DFH?
Culture of Truth
Bachmann is too gaffe-ridden to go far.
Tom Q
joes527 @ 98: But that assumes — like so many people do — that one single event can turn around an election (Wag the Dog syndrome). My observation of history (and Lichtman’s) is that the preponderance of the evidence is what people go by, not just the last shiny object they see. And Obama, by virtue of having enacted major legislation, capturing bin Laden, being charismatic, etc. has points on the board that give him an edge going into next year that can’t be wiped out by one bad break.
DZ
@Martin:
Since you have decided to be an asshole like Jesse whatever, up yours also. I am quite aware that my opinion means precisely nothing, just like always. I claim nothing else, but I do have a right to say my simple piece. If you oppose that, then you are just another fascist asshole like the wingnuts.
nancydarling
I am in moderation @107, and I have no idea why. Does it sometimes pick us at random?
Anyway, I had a VERY interesting story to tell and will try again if they don’t let me out.
Dennis SGMM
Over the past few weeks many of the commenters here have proved to a mathematical certainty why any given Republican candidate will lose. Fair enough.
Now, tell me what Obama will run on to win. Will it be the economy? Foreign policy? His legislative achievements? Or will it be just not-being whoever the Republican is? The first option seems DOA, the second and third options are debatable – especially among non-Democrats. The last isn’t exactly going to galvanize voters.
catclub
Tom Q @ 103 “(brought on by tripling oil prices) ”
well, given that people now think Obama has raised taxes on them – and will think it even more so by next november,
they will also believe he has tripled gas prices.
There are a couple of strikes that put him more in the Carter class – not saying they are enough.
Gustopher
The only question in my mind is whether Romney will roll around in batshit to make himself more acceptable to the batshit insane Republicans who would otherwise vote for Bachmann. Ok, I guess that’s really not a question.
Will he try to out-batshit her, or will it just be a light dusting of batshit?
NamelessGenXer
DZ
“Ohmmmm….Obama is Bush. Stay home on election day. ohmmm… .Obama is Bush. Stay home on election day…”
Actually, the only people I have ever hated in my life are today’s Republicans. As for Boomers – I believe the blockquote above is a better argument than I could ever make about how much damage can be induced by a bunch of spoiled-brat children who have aged into stick-up-your-ass preachy fucking idealogues.
I’ll never understand how a generation whose youthful fire came from The Left, ended up letting The Right get the upper hand. Something to do with your “Greed is Good” yuppiefication in the 80s, maybe? Whatever the reason, you do deserve mad props for pushing so hard that your predecessors, The Silent Generation of my parents, are the only American generation never to have produced a President.
The good news for all is your days of political plurality are coming to an end, and it really is a shame that the generation who made such tremendous strides towards saving the earth will forever be tainted with a Presidential Legacy of:
1) Clinton’s destruction of the American manufacturing base and inability to keep it in his pants.
2) The Evil Cheney Regime and the horrors that has inflicted on America and the world.
Oh, and before you make the usual preachy Boomer blunder and start whining about how Obama being born in ’61 makes him a Boomer:
I was also born in ’61 (just celebrated my 50th – yeah for me, and unlike Boomers, there will be no liposuction or botox)) That means I was I was six years-old during the Summer of Love in 1967. If that doesn’t convince you, I was nineteen (and majorly hot) when Steely Dan released Hey Nineteen in 1980.
John O
@Dennis 115:
He’ll get credit for his legislative accomplishments in the middle of the electorate, since the health care legislation hasn’t shown anyone to be what the GOP said it would be. But mostly, I think most people prefer the devil they know, and Obama is clearly the designated Adult in the Room as of now.
That helps, too. People vote personalities in Presidential elections.
Lojasmo
@Dennis #115
How about saving the world from economic destruction.
I would vote for him based on that. Yup.
ETA; banhammer BOB.
Turgidson
The GOP has been saying and doing crazy shit that should make them toxic for my entire life (I’m in my early 30s). I’ve ceased to believe there is anything they can say that will alienate the moderates and indies for more than a few months, before it is forgotten in favor of a new shiny ball of resentments and fearmongering.
So, while I hope you’re right, and in a sane world you should be right, I still worry that there will be block-long lines of potentially decisive voters in swing states, unable to do so, thanks to this teabagging bullshit.
Hal
Fools! You will rue the day you vastly underestimated
Sarah PalinBobby JindalTim PawlentyChris ChristieDonald TrumpHerman CainJon HuntsmanMitt RomneyMichele Bachmann…joes527
Tom Q
Two points.
1) The next election will be stupidly close. This does not depend on who is running. We are a country split down the middle. This makes me sick, but even if something as insane as a Bachman nomination happens, the R’s will still get forty-something percent of the vote in the general. No. Matter. What. There is no need to turn around a whole election, just swing enough in the margin.
2) Fear is not rationally worked into the equation. It sends formerly sane people off the deep end and will swing a large fraction of the electorate. (see: United States, History of. 2000-2007)
I don’t think that MB can win the general (I don’t think she can win the primary)
But the whole idea that having the bat-shittiest candidate win the other side is a Good Thing (TM) gives me the willies.
trollhattan
@101.BO_Bill
Welp, then may I offer this pro tip:
“Michelle”=FLOTUS, J.D. Harvard
“Michele”=saucer-eyed congresswoman, J.D. Oral Roberts
Tom Q
Well, I don’t agree with the term “stupidly close” — Barack won by 7.25% last time; Clinton by nearly 9 in ’96. The only elections that are stupidly close these days are the ones Republicans win.
The fact that most opposition party candidates gets 40+% isn’t a guarantee of respectability — Mondale got 41% and Dukakis 45%, and to hear people talk you’d think they were the ’62 Mets.
I simply don’t believe that the electorate is that fickle that it will reject the rational verdict on an administration (based on preponderance of evidence) in favor of a panic vote. Find me me any instance of it in American history.
jl
Just heard some ‘political analyst’ on the radio say Obama proposed raising Medicare eligibility to 67 as part of his $4T Grand Deal.
That is bad politics, and also bad policy, both in terms human welfare, the sound principle of not stealing the peoples’ money, and long run deficit reduction plans. Seems to leave him open to same kind of dishonest attacks the GOP used to make such gains in 2008.
Did Obama really do that?
When I think about the next election, it’s stuff like that that gives me the willies.
I don’t know the analyst’s name. Ears didn’t perk up until I heard ‘Medicare’.
I had thought the Medicare cuts, or reforms, or whatever meaningless terms were being used were supposed to be expenditure cuts that would reduce costs and increase efficiency, while not being out and out harmful in your face benefit cuts ’cause somebody wants to lose a dollar in order to save two bits.
So, now I do need a drink.
Anyone know about this, please provide a link or source.
trollhattan
@117.Gustopher – July 11, 2011 | 4:09 pm · Link
We observed this phenomenon last year in California when Megs went righty-tighy in the primaries to fend off Poizner and a scattering of loonies, then having done so tried to haul the Great Ship Whitman back to the semi-sane center for the general. One of the greatest political failures I’ve seen, ever.
joes527
Tom Q
2004?
Or are you arguing that by 2004 the rational verdict on Bush II based on the preponderance of the evidence wasn’t: please god … not him again.
NamelessGenXer
the Cuervo Gold, the fine Columbian…
THX, DZ! That song always makes me smile.
gene108
A couple of points in the Reagan comparison (1) Reagan was a two term governor of the most populace state (or second most populace, I’m not sure when New York lost the #1 spot) in the country, almost guaranteeing him a bunch of electoral votes from CA and (2) we have not elected a President, who did not hold at least state wide office in a long, long, long time.
I agree something unexpected could hurt President Obama. I was just pointing out to people that in 1979, President Carter probably matched up well with Reagan.
After the Iran Hostage Crisis the political climate changed.
I’m sure Bush, Sr. probably thought he could beat then Gov. Clinton or anyone the Democrats may nominate, but as the economy slid and he did not respond aggressively, the political climate changed.
I think Republicans want to be perceived as inclusive. They lost some “buzz” to Obama, in 2008, because his nomination was historic.
The African-American turn out and enthusiasm, in 2008, was very high because of Obama.
I’m just putting forth a conjecture that some women, who may break Democratic in most elections, may vote for Bachmann because of her tits and ovaries.
It’d be interesting to see how female GOP candidates do in garnering the female vote versus male GOP candidates.
artem1s
Reagan won the GOP nomination ’cause they got his people to take Bush I as his VP. IMHO Poppy and his gang ran things all along. So unless the money brokers have someone like Bush I hanging in the wings and a Rumsfeld or Cheney backing them up, I don’t see how Bachmann can get the nomination even with the 27% crazy factor. She just doesn’t have the money base to pull it off. So if Romney can’t pull his head out of his ass, start looking around to see who the GOP puppet master is going to be.
Turgidson
Geez, I hope not. It would be mindnumbingly dumb for any Democratic politician, much less Obama, to even bring that up as a joke, much less seriously consider it.
Catsy
Yeah. Amounting to about as many votes, from what I see in my crystal ball, as the ones she would lose from the more extreme Talibangelicals who still think she ought to be in the kitchen.
Turgidson
Agreed, she was some kind of awful. Although, while this state I live in does some pretty wacky things in election season (Ahnold x2, Prop Hate, etc.), the red flu did not infect us in 2010, not even a little. Trusty ol’ Moonbeam thrashed Whitman while spending a fraction of the money and Boxer beat crazy Carly to an unrecognizable pulp when the dust settled. The one silver lining of the 2010 elections was the sanity California showed, overall.
NamelessGenXer
gene108
Agreed that a woman at the top of the ticket will be historic. If Hillary got the nod in ’08, I would have worked as hard for her as I did for Obama (and no doubt that she would be up against an equally vile hate machine as he is).
That said, Batshit is no Hillary, and the women I know vote with their brains, not their T&A. Of course, me and my girls are east coast urban elitists…
catclub
Turgidson @ 133 Given that the GOP ran successfully in 2010 on “the Democrats have cut $500B from medicare”, I wonder who would be pushing such a story now?
Someone else suggested that the GOP will run on ‘We refused the debt limit deal to protect Medicare!”
It sounds completely plausible to me.
Jeffro
Lots of talk about Bachman when Romney is the one sucking up all the $$$, has the organization and experience from 2008, is the R’s ‘heir apparent’, looks presidential, etc. He also appears to be the consensus choice of the GOP establishment. Put Rubio or Haley on the ticket as VP to try and shore up the Teabagger vote (w/ the added ‘hail mary’ attempt to drag in Latinos or women) and there’s their ticket.
So there’s that.
Add in a lousy economy/bad mood in the country, but then subtract for obvious crazy on the right, and you’re probably looking at a national 51%/48% PV Obama/Romney election as opposed to 53%/45% Obama/McCain. I don’t know how that plays out in EVs, but I am thinking Obama will end up right around 300 EVs.
So…Obama wins but certainly not by the margin he did in 2008, and we get to spend thread after thread (and hour after hour of cable TV gasbag time) talking about mandate/no mandate come January 2013. Fun times!
Turgidson
Agreed. And the Ryan fail parade will be forgotten once the Wurlitzer pushes that message hard enough. Ugh.
John O
It wouldn’t bother me, and I think it would be actuarially responsible, if the age was raised to 67 for about everyone under say, 30 now. I wouldn’t love it; I think people should get to retire without medical worries on principle at any age, but this is what we call “compromise” in the GOP-wired world we live in.
I would take it in a heartbeat for a couple of tax increases at $500,000 and $1M annual income too. Also.
Tom Q
joes527: Actually, one of the sad aspects of using a system like Lichtman’s Keys to the Presidency is it forces you to look at an election like 2004 not through the partisan lens you’d like but a less appealing reality.
I’m certainly with you, that Bush was the worst president in my lifetime. But, by the system, he had House of Representatives gains in the midterms, no intra-party challenge, incumbency, no third party opposition, a growing election year economy, absence of scandal, an uncharismatic opponent, and (hard as it is to believe now) a perception that the early events in Afghanistan amounted to a foreign policy success. He still had to deal with long term slow economic growth, the failure on 9/11 and his own lack of charisma, but they weren’t enough to offset his plausible re-election.
By 2008, it was different: his party had lost the House, the economy was crap long and short term, Iraq had gone to hell, his would-be successor was bland and going up against a great orator. They were very different elections.
And 2012 for Obama, despite the economy, looks even better than 2004 did for Bush. His only negatives are the House losses and long-term economy. That’s why I say no single event will be close to enough to dislodge him.
jl
And from what I have seen from our useless innumerate and illiterate press, analysis of any GOP lie that requires any effort at all to look up and any knowledge of, you know, pointy headed fact stuff, will be transmitted uncritically.
So, if Obama even proposed outright bad politics, and objectively bad policy, on Medicare, that is a way bad sign.
OK, note down need for another drink, later.
Edit: I heard Sessions talking outright fantasy on a news talky on Sunday. The goofball Nelson RETREATED and temporized, in the face of Session’s obvious nonsense (that personal income tax receipt increases every year since first Bush II tax cut. Jeez. Courtly and gracious ol’ Schief just sat there for that whopper).
Origuy
@115.nancydarling: Moderation probably triggered by the word after “Russian”. WP doesn’t like online gambling.
artem1s
@NamelessGenXer:
I’ve been seeing an organized effort by the GOP to reach women they think might swing over to their side. Push polls by T-Paw and Huckabee and calls from Portman and other local Repugs. Maybe it will work if they nominate someone legit, but I think Bachmann is as likely to swing older women as Palin did in 2008. It’s just another failed white guy GOP wonk theory on how to get the brown people and voters with lady bits to do what they are suppose to do not what will actually be good for them.
Martin
Um…
Have you seen the polling on these issues on the right?
Turgidson
There won’t be any discussion of this in the media. There will be nearly unanimous agreement that Obama is a lame duck from day 1 because he clearly has a [insert x type of voter] problem, so he doesn’t have the legitimacy to lead. I mean, his convincing victory in ’08 only meant that we’re a center-right nation, after all. While Bush’s 04 squeaker that came down to Blackwell’s voter suppression efforts in Ohio was a mandate to….privatize SS.
Obama could win 49 states and the narrative would probably be “if he can’t win Oklahoma, is he really our president?”
Turgidson
I don’t follow you – I’m kinda dense and/or suffering from a food coma.
Having a Democrat make the first move in dismantling the safety net is exactly what the teatards want – then it becomes a bipartisan consensus that that’s what ‘real Murka’ wants. What upside is there to Obama proposing to raise the age limit? Or am I totally misunderstanding your reply?
srv
Was this covered last week? I missed it:
jl
Obama Offered To Raise Medicare Eligibility Age As Part Of Grand Debt Deal
Sam Stein
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/11/obama-medicare-eligibility-age_n_894833.html
I don’t see the sense of that even as a ploy. It is very very very bad policy. To bad to even risk them taking it. That one horrible move would put a very serious dent in anything achieved by the health care reform. And as for politics….
As a long time door knocker and vote getter outer, that is the kind of in your face stuff that comes up. And what could I say. Seriously. Any Obots have advice?
I can explain multiuniverse parallel world hyperchess to some aging guy scared shitless? While the GOP claims that their magic pony ‘Medicare’ plan will unleash something wonderful, and he’ll get treatments for nickels that will score him hot coeds on the beach, all the while the press sits around and talks BS?
I don’t like it.
NamelessGenXer
artem1s
This. The RNC’s cynical VP selection of The Christian Dominionist Fuckwit Who Gives Women a Bad Name caused me to write a $500 check.
Also too, I constantly get “Surveys” from The League of Women Voters (an old hag organization if there ever was one) about Political Priorities. I grab my red Sharpie, cross out their list, and write “The Utter Destruction of the Republican Party”. I would even pay for the stamps if they weren’t post-paid.
jl
@148: Even today’s wealthy are weak, what would they do in the 1930s?
They better get on breaking police unions real quick, otherwise the needed police state muscle may not be there.
Chris
People thought that about Palin too. Turns out it may’ve had the opposite effect, as quite a few women felt insulted that the Republicans actually thought they’d vote for such a shockingly unqualified idiot simply because of her two X chromosomes.
Bachmann might be a better bet. She doesn’t project quite the level of stupidity, laziness and incompetence that Palin does, but she’s still not much of a prize, and being Republican is a handicap right out the door when dealing outside of the white/Christian/male democraphic.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
I’m not even as worried about the 2012 presidentials as I probably should be. I mean, I’m raising caution about considering the whole thing a done deal, but I know that Obama is probably one of the few Dems with some electoral slack to spare. My concern is that even if he does win, the rest of the election pitches hard fucking right because again, people hate the hippies too goddamn much to want to actually fix anything as long as it’s a hippie suggesting it. The numbers alone feel disastrous for the Dems just for the fact that they’ve got more seats to defend in the Senate than the GOP does.
I’m terrified and braced for them to successfully blame the entire left for fucking over the economy and riding that to huge numbers on the state level and in Congress to where we’ll end up having only Obama’s veto between us and the kind of scorched earth bullshit we’re already seeing in Maine, Florida, Michigan, Wisconsin, et. al.
dogwood
I don’t think a lot of us realized how clueless many Americans are about this issue. I hesitate to tell this story because it sounds so far-fetched but it’s the honest to god truth. Two years ago a teacher in my department was discussing her desire to retire,and her concerns about health care coverage; She was shocked when we informed her that her unused sick leave would be converted to dollars she could use to stay on the district plan. She was relieved and indicated she would look into how much sick leave she had banked. I like her and didn’t want to cause her any further embarrassment so I stopped by her classroom after school. I knew she was 65 because I was on the team that hired her. She had no idea she was eligible for Medicare; her husband is 68, self-employed and has never signed up. She thought Medicare was for poor people. These people are out there and they vote.
Martin
Proposing something that your party will NEVER go along with has no real downside in American politics. You might look like a sellout to your own party, but that’ll only last if it passes. How many centrist things that Clinton proposed people actually remember? DOMA, DADT, NAFTA – yeah, all the stuff that actually passed. The other stuff? Nobody cares.
The opposition will only care if their party refuses it – which the GOP will have to. They don’t have the votes to raise the minimum age. Sure, they’ll advocate for it, but they’ll never actually produce the votes for it. So they get beat up by at least part of their base for letting an opportunity pass.
Moderates will give you credit for being willing to compromise and be an adult and not being captured by your base all of that other bullshit. Doesn’t matter whether it’s completely pie-in-the-sky (which this is – neither party will support it), they love the grand gesture because it gives them something to talk about.
That’s what wedge issues do – they force your opponents to oppose (or support) something that a significant part of their base want due to electoral realities. Ideally, it’s something whose outcome you control because of known support (or opposition) on your side. So it’s an empty gesture that carries real costs because you’re forcing your opponent to take a hard position that they want to be vague about – like demanding entitlement reform while promising to protect Medicare and Social Security, which the GOP does constantly.
Turgidson
@ Martin –
I see where you’re coming from, but I also just saw with my own lying eyes how the GOP, whose party platform for decades has included destroying the New Deal/Great Society – did a 180 in ’10 and scare seniors shitless that the Demonrats were trying to kill Medicare with their $500b cuts as part of the ACA (nevermind it was to wasteful transfer payments, etc.), and actually succeed. The GOP as the principled protectors of Medicare? That is an absurdity so profound that anyone with an IQ above 0.1 should have laughed in their faces. But, it worked. Then they turned around and supported the Ryan plan shit sandwich, which is already starting to fade from the voters’ consciousness. They have plenty of time to bullshit their way through this issue yet again before Nov. 2012.
I am just not sure the distinction that this “offer” won’t ever pass will matter much if the right wing gasbags decide to demagogue it to death. But I do hope you’re right.
Just Some Fuckhead
Shorter Martin: In twenty years when Obama is a memory, none of this will matter.
Dennis SGMM
@Martin
The GOP will have to? Maybe in a sane political universe, but not in this one. This is the party that touted the Ryan plan. This is also the party where numbers of the pols don’t think that there’s anything wrong with hitting the debt ceiling. If just enough of them vote to pass the thing they can still hang it around Obama’s neck. If nothing else, they can use the tried-and-true Republican excuse that they were for it before they were against it.
bemused
I’m trying to imagine how many women, even conservative women other than extreme righties, would be enthusiastic about supporting Bachmann who has said women should submit to their husbands. If I knew nothing else about her, that would make me hurl.
jl
@155, 156, 157
I would agree with Martin, except, a proposal of increasing Medicare age to 67 is not really stuff like DOMA, DADT, NAFTA that might maybe be something reasonable and centrist on some issue people see in the news that would be nice to settle in way that made everyone happy, but doesn’t directly affect most of them.
Raising Medicare age is an in your face no question about it effing taking benefits away, big important benefits away that the vast majority of voters paid for, and now they are not getting. The time table for the damn thing starting would be 4 or 5 years.
Try explaining that to a 63 year old guy who is hoping he can keep peeing over the next 2 years, or similarly aged woman who can’t afford to get funny stuff in her chest looked at. Tell them it’s like DOMA or whatnot.
And, can martin defend it as good policy?
I can’t see it. Unless, at heart Obama really believes the Very Serious People have sounder advice that dirty hippies like Stiglitz, who, only saw the financial mess from over ten years ago, and was calling the financial crisis imminent in spring early summer 2008. If, so that is very bad news for the country.
dogwood
I have but one request for future historians who will comb through the Congressional Records, Presidential papers, newspaper records and the archives of political blogs in order to find the truth of what happened:
Years from now when you talk about this – and you will – be kind.
Tea and Sympathy
Turgidson
That’s how I feel too. It’s just not an issue to triangulate with, even if it is all for an exercise.
Saying out loud that you’re willing to raise the age, whether you mean it or not, has no positive outcome. You infuriate your own party (and not just the vocal minority firebagger types this time, but the whole party, including congressional allies) and you give the GOP a chance to say, “hey, that Kenyanazi sockulist usurper even thinks we need to dismantle Medicare! Now that there’s bipartisan agreement that the American people want this, let’s do it Paul Ryan’s way” if they want to, and it sounds considerably less heinous than it did before. The fact that they’ll reflexively oppose anything Obama says will make things even more interesting, as they may be forced to defend the Medicare status quo from Obama’s tyranny. Chuckle.
Not to mention, indies and moderates love them some Medicare too – being willing to fuck with it to try to looke reasonable isn’t going to endear you to them either.
jl
as they may be forced to defend the Medicare status quo from Obama’s tyranny.. [until after the election…]
Martin
Touted, sure. But is anyone talking about Ryan now? That backfired big on the GOP, and Ryan has been relegated to the weeds. He was their go-to guy on budget issues – but he’s nowhere to be seen in this situation.
Oh, no, it’s horrible policy. Maybe if it was proposed only for those just starting to pay into SS and grandfathered in extra slowly like the SS changes were, and there was some data supporting that there was good reason for doing it, but I’ve never seen such data. One of the biggest problems with Medicare is that the timing of it is decoupled from SS. You can start drawing SS prior to 65, but you can’t start drawing Medicare early, even with a penalty on premiums. So really, it needs to go the other way around – allow people younger than 65 to pay in – maybe with higher part B,C,D premiums during the bridge years to cover drawing out of A early, but since we’re putting a mandate on them anyway, a plan that’s favorable to seniors and the program shouldn’t be hard to do.
But has Obama even proposed this? From the link:
Sounds like a ‘what would you guys be willing to give up in exchange for raising Medicare to 67’ as a feeler question, not an actual offer. If there’s a real proposal to do it, you’ll hear about it soon enough, and officially.
jl
@martin,
Well, we agree on policy, at least!
Problem with the politics is that, unless the Democratic party is willing and able (?) to push back strongly on this, the GOP will lie and scare monger about it successfully without a quibble from the press, and lie about their magic solution again without a quibble from the press. Like they did in 2008.
I am sure this proposal will come up sooner rather than later. Let’s see what Obama has to say about it. I hope he says something definite and strong.
Fooling this way with Medicare benefits is far worse than the Social Security COLA, which is relatively trivia.
dogwood
And Democrats are the party that called it the Ryan plan. It should have been called the Republican Plan. When the president responded to it he actually called it a rep. plan, but the rest of the party didn’t follow suit. When you put a name on something you send a message that if you get rid of the person, you get rid of the plan. Thus, Obamacare. I’m sure the republicans were very happy to let Ryan take all the heat. To keep talking about the Ryan plan without ever mentioning the word “republican” is so obviously lame.
Martin
Never pass the Senate.
And the Dems don’t need to push back strongly on this, the GOP base will. They don’t want Medicare fucked with – at all. That’s the point of bringing it up – to wedge the GOP between Norquist and the hoverround brigade. What’s extra awesome about the GOPs situation, is the teatards advocate for both policies simultaneously – eliminate entitlements but don’t cut Medicare or Social Security. The GOP wants to have it both way – to call for the entitlement cuts, but not to actually vote for them. They’re assuming the Dems will block any effort at voting for or against them. Obama is forcing their hand. And so long as it doesn’t happen, it works for Obama.
Again, what centrist policies did Clinton support that never passed? I doubt anyone can name any. We just don’t remember that kind of stuff because it never actually affects anyone, nor does it need to be repaired later. A couple of news cycles and everyone has forgotten. We remember the missed opportunities like HCR under Clinton, or closing Gitmo under Obama, but the failed trial balloons that we don’t want? Pff.
jl
@167:
Thanks for explaining you reasoning in more detail I will let those who understand the high strategic politics of it debate from now on.
My main worry is a replay of 2008 with regard to average voter getting scared shitless over mysterious machinations to deny them vital benefits that they paid their good wages for. I saw it first hand, and IMHO the GOP won that easily.
So far today, the GOP seems to be trying to squeeze another win out their very creaky wedge issue that those dirty poor people are wrecking it for everybody, and how hard the 250K a year people have it.
So, what is up with that? Everyone has gone mad, and cannot even say anything that makes sense to me.
Note to self for yet another drink later.
jl
The GOPers put up a pic of the rich guy from Gilligan’s Island to explain how awful raising taxes on rich people would be. The media will be very impressed.
I think a brain eating parasite has infected the leadership of both parties and we are all going to die.
Turgidson
You mean 2010, right? Dems did kinda OK in 2008.
jl
@170: yeah, right. I meant 2010. Sorry. I am disoriented today. That mean ol’ Cole scared me so bad.
PanurgeATL
Anyone who thinks only Boomers are getting lipos and Botox is clearly too in love with his/her own “realism” for his/her own good. But then that’s GenX for you. GenX “realism” hasn’t done a lick better than Boomer romanticism–in fact it’s probably done worse. Both generations have a hell of a lot to answer for. But at least the Boomers had a dream of some sort. “Wake up”, sí; “stop dreaming”, hell, no.
Brachiator
So, is going for a ride on the crazy train anything like going for a walk on the Appalachian trail?
Just asking.
SiubhanDuinne
Why is everyone even talking about Michele Batshit? I just saw the cover of Newsweek where Bible Snooki says “I Can Win” and, you know, there’s no arguing with that.
Mrs. My-Husband-Is-Not-Gay, guess what: it’s all over. The Snowbilly, she has spoken.
bisquits
A part of me says, yeah, you go with cuckoo bananas! Only good for our side..then I remember this country elected Cheney/bush …twice. Oy
West of the Rockies (formerly Frank W.)
I think in another five years and 25 pounds, Michelle becomes Dolores Umbridge.
Frankensteinbeck
Now the inside word is that Obama is offering to raise Medicare elligibility age? Well, I remember how things turned our when the inside word was he’d endorse Simpson-Bowles at the debt speech. I may be paraphrasing, but that endorsement ran ‘the rich need to pay more damn taxes.’