The Hard Bigotry of Unreasonable Expectations
Elizabeth Warren got a lot of love the other day, and deservedly so. She has the ability to defend the traditional Democratic agenda in short declarative sentences, coupled with an aw-shucks yet extremely firm delivery. This makes people like Wil Wilkinson, who’s not used to straight talk from Democrats, uncomfortable, and prone to making statements like this:
This is precisely the sort of rhetoric Democrats need to perfect in order to hold ground in the next round of national elections. Of course, not unlike a tea-party Republican making the case for small government, Ms Warren paints in over-broad, simplifying strokes.
[...]
Sadly, it’s easier to get elected by avoiding the subtleties of these questions, instead keeping it simple and tendentious.
This is just stupid: stump speeches and Morning Joe interviews are not graduate seminars, and what makes Warren a compelling candidate is her the ability to go into far more detail about each of the arguments she lays out in abbreviated form on the campaign trail.
Unfortunately, the headline of Wilkinson’s post, “Liberal Simplification”, is a common beltway trope. When the rare Democrat finally hones down their stump speech to a few sentences that form a simple but roughly right summary of their more detailed platform, they’re accused of “avoiding subtleties” by conservative wonks like Wilkinson. It’s considered almost a moral failing and an index of the decline in the quality of our discourse when a Democratic politician does what politicians have always done and must always do: make a short-and-sweet pitch for a few of their key ideas.
Wilkinson also indulges in false equivalency by comparing a politician like Warren summarizing her position in a few pithy sentences, and a politician like Bachmann making raving lunatic claims like citizens should pay no taxes. These aren’t two flavors of the same thing, they’re completely different animals. Bachmann has no coherent plan behind her latest asinine emission, just as she knew nothing and thought little before she carelessly undermined the safe and effective HPV vaccine. To use the term “making a case” for most of what comes out of the mouth of Tea Party heroes is unearned high praise, and an insult to someone like Warren, who’s actually devoted a good part of her life to studying the best way to protect the middle-class constituency she’s trying to win over.
(via EDK, who defends Warren)
Wilkinson should learn there’s a difference between “simplification” and “being a simpleton”.
September 23rd, 2011 at 8:30 am
What the fuck is a ‘Wil Wilkinson’? Sounds like a concern troll or a quasi-Republican.
We need many, many more Elizabeth Warren style candidates.
September 23rd, 2011 at 8:30 am
yeah, yeah, we are all just the same mistermix. may i remind you that Erik “Beyond Unions” Kain defended organized labour …until he didnt? He’ll turn on Warren like a dime as soon as its in his interests.
Im charmed by your devotion to securing pageclicks for that slimy little “freed” market fucktard.
it must be love.
btw, Kain had FOUR front page posts about the wonders of GaJo when he was here. Did he even mention his name in the Warren post?
Even to say he is disenchanted?
at least AllahP is honest.
:)
September 23rd, 2011 at 8:33 am
He’s trying to Rove her. Now that she can talk to the common folk about issues, it must mean that she’s simplifying it too much, because Democrats never talk like that. And neither do Republicans, don’t you know? It’s just their positions are simpler because they’re correct.
(I can’t decide if I should be putting a snark tag on this one.)
September 23rd, 2011 at 8:36 am
Whatever it is that makes people like Will Wilkinson uncomfortable should be pursued with a vengeance.
September 23rd, 2011 at 8:37 am
@Samara Morgan: You know Samara, if we treated you the way you think EDK should be treated, then everyone would pie filter you. You ramble on for no real reason until, like a day calendar unused since 1993, it becomes right once every dozen or so years.
September 23rd, 2011 at 8:38 am
Speak broadly during stump speeches and it is too general and avoids the subtleties. Get specific, and the candidate becomes too professiorial and boring.Lose, lose situation all the time. The media has to continually pimp those stereotypes for each party. I’m frankly shocked that they have not labeled Warren a power-hungry, man-hating, harridan femi-nazi. I assume the media is just waiting for the proper time to expose her.
September 23rd, 2011 at 8:38 am
Shields up! Shit – too late.
September 23rd, 2011 at 8:40 am
But of course. You meet a progressive of any sort you can combine political ideas into an interview situation and you point out how they lack ‘particulars’
You meet a conservative who talks about how tax cuts create jobs (even after 2 decades of companies ‘right sizing employees) and you nod and agree.
This way, you don’t have to fear the cry of ‘bias’ gets above the normal ignorable sub-deafening din.
Rinse and repeat. Always repeat.
September 23rd, 2011 at 8:42 am
@Samara Morgan: Fuck EDK, rag on this Wilkinson dude.
September 23rd, 2011 at 8:44 am
Well, I think I know where this thread’s going….and it’s nowhere near Elizabeth Warren or Wil Wilkinson, that’s for sure.
September 23rd, 2011 at 8:45 am
Speaking of EDK. I think his time here did him, us, and the country – now that he’s posting on Forbes – a bit of good. I don’t want to take it too far, but that article is not the EDK we saw when he first posted here. As for us, I think we saw one of the rare almost pure libertarians…and then we corrupted him.
September 23rd, 2011 at 8:46 am
Wil sniffs:
Go eat a bag of dicks.
There was more straw in that post than the floor at a scarecrow convention. And if you slash school budgets, demand that Creationism be taught, and basically leave education to the free market, that is tantamount to arguing for “an ignorant, illiterate populace.” It’s true, Wil, no one actually comes out and says it, so here’s a fucking cookie.
September 23rd, 2011 at 8:46 am
Good grief, not to mention that it’s the years of idiotic sound bites like “job-killing” and “job creators” and “class warfare” and so forth that makes Elizabeth Warren’s punch so necessary and so satisfying. To listen to that crap for years and years and then at long last, have someone running for political office say “NO. There is no one who got rich on his own.”—it’s just heaven.
September 23rd, 2011 at 8:47 am
@Paul in KY: they are both glibertarians.
srsy, you guys dont resent mixies endless attempts to portray Kain as a “reasonable” conservative and farm pageclicks for his dying Forbes blog?
the wingnuts are having a meltdown today over the debate.
they just realized they have no candidate.
those are interesting things the wingnut pundits are saying. the glibertarians like Wilkinson and Kain and throwing radar chaff.
September 23rd, 2011 at 8:51 am
@Samara Morgan:
Christ, then go hang out over there. If you think some guy who works for Michelle Fucking Malkin is honest, you really need your goddamn head examined. That’s being a grade-A rentboi.
September 23rd, 2011 at 8:53 am
But “Drill, baby, drill!” is brilliant messaging.
Fucking Wilkinson is an idiot. He actually calls himself a Rawlsekian, the most idiotic descriptor on the planet (okay, Teabagger is worse, but presumably Wilkinson has a few working neurons). And just the fact that he calls himself this means he loves him both some Rawls and some Hayek. Which automatically makes him too stupid to live. I really don’t know how you call yourself a libertarian and subscribe to Rawls, except for the fact that Rawls talks about “moral hazard” some, but only in regard to open-ended promises of foreign aid.
September 23rd, 2011 at 8:54 am
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): i guess you missed this reversion to type then.
dont break your arm pattin yourself on the back.
Kain farmed BJ for enuff pageclicks to get the Forbes gig, and then went right back to sucking freed market cock.
September 23rd, 2011 at 8:55 am
And when she goes into detail and nuance they accuse her of being a wonk and an egghead and not being able to relate to the common man. Fortunately the opinions of Wil Wilkinson matter to the general voting populace as much as what I had for breakfast.
September 23rd, 2011 at 8:55 am
Eh, I’ve never clicked over to EDK at Forbes before, but I did just now out of sheer petulance. Would that work? Y’all have tried pretty much everything else, right?
September 23rd, 2011 at 8:56 am
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Kain rolled you juicers, and ‘specially Cole, like cheap drunks.
if you could just admit that i wouldn’t need to bring it up anymore.
:)
September 23rd, 2011 at 8:57 am
Roy Edroso takes apart Jonah Goldberg over attacks on Warren.
September 23rd, 2011 at 8:58 am
@Samara Morgan:
Sorry, no.
September 23rd, 2011 at 8:58 am
@jibeaux: like i said, you can admit that Kain rolled you guys like cheap drunks and i wouldnt have to bring it up anymore. And you just pageclicked on a dude that is trying to destroy teachers unions.
nice.
:)
September 23rd, 2011 at 8:59 am
Meh. A found nugget of idiotic commentary from a C-list pundit, and a thread about to be overrun by a self-centered teenager. I’m off to fetch myself some breakfast.
September 23rd, 2011 at 8:59 am
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): It never ceases to amaze me that there are regular lurkers here who still don’t have matoka in the pie filter…
September 23rd, 2011 at 8:59 am
Test.(new phone) :)
September 23rd, 2011 at 8:59 am
WHEN is Will Wilkinson going to LEARN? It’s almost as if he’s PAID to MAKE these kinds of statements, in order to generate BUZZ around his SHITTY weblog.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:00 am
The real question is will she roll over and assume fetal position like the other boneless dems who are hammered by the right wing.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:01 am
Knowing that rethugs will attack anything a Dem says, the ‘you’re oversimplying’ attack is pretty weak sauce. I’ll take that attack, because there is no way for repubs to avoid having to expand upon their talking points, too. I’d welcome an actual debate, and they know they’d lose it.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:01 am
@niknik: Some of have work computers that don’t allow the installation of software. Even completely innocuous, trustworthy, masterpieces o’ cleek that make us hungry. Just hit Forbes again tho.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:01 am
@Ash Can:
with a “defense” by another C-list pundit.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:01 am
@Samara Morgan: OK, but I want to see you hammer this Wilkinson asshole. I’ve read reams about teh evil that is EDK. Don’t need to read anymore of that, I think I understand your position.
Aim ‘loko-phasers’ at Wilkinson ;-)
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:02 am
@jibeaux: like i said.
this is why there are glibertarians.
because of cudlips like you.
you would rather support an anti-union Forbes glibertarian than admit the truth. Even mixie cant bear to admit that BJ got punked by a c-list glibertarian.
:)
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:03 am
@geg6:
I don’t know either, unless you’re an idiot. Rawls isn’t compatible at all with libertarianism. You might as well call yourself a Marxekian.
Then again, I never thought Ayn Rand was compatible with the teachings of Jesus. We’re really living in a Second Age of Reason.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:03 am
@Samara Morgan: He didn’t roll me, I have no control over who posts here.
To me, your comments need to be sent to John personally. 99.5% of the people who post here are like me & have no control over who starts the threads, thus no one ‘rolled’ me (or them).
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:07 am
@amk: I don’t think so. I think she relishes verbal combat.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:08 am
@arguingwithsignposts:
Beautiful.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:08 am
@Mark S.:
Seriously, right? That is more incoherent than anything I’ve heard Michele Bachmann say. Which is really saying something.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:09 am
@Samara Morgan:
What I resent is your endless pining for the destruction of EDK through the drivel you post. It’s clear that you are in love with your brilliance, wit and the sound of your own voice. I usually skip your posts but the sheer volume of them at times is ridiculous. Your obsessions are narrow, your opinions are haughty and you come across as someone I would avoid in RL.
No wonder you like the internet. You enjoy forcing yourself on people and that isn’t easy in RL.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:09 am
NPR All Things Considered did a 10 minute interview with Paul Ryan yesterday, allowing him to spew his nonsense saying things like
“all this extra government borrowing and spending … is doing damage because it is adding more uncertainty”
“for every dollar the government borrows and spends it does not necessarily translate into more than a dollar’s worth of economic activity”
This is the most /serious/ person in the republican party for economics, and he’s speaking in absolutely unfounded, moronic, simplified, and misleading claims. This is SOP for the GOP. Stupid, glib, “rebranding” ideas to the way the pleebs can understand it in a way they can support. Death Tax. Job Creators. Small Businesses.
DIAF Wil.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:09 am
@Paul in KY: dude. they are the same person with different hair. the glibertarians have these “show” fights, like freddie kangaroo slapfighting with the Sully borg for pageclicks.
its just radar chaff.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:10 am
Roubini is on Twitter sharing more of the bad economic news from today. Gold and silver down, Europe down, US futures down, oil below $80, new default rumors on Greece. We may have hit a double-dip recession at this point, I fear. And if it continues and American politics line up behind economics the way that they normally do, we were looking at the next POTUS on the Fox/Google stage last night.
Is it too early to get plastered?
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:10 am
@Odie Hugh Manatee: i just want the juicers to admit they got punked.
then ill shut up about Kain.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:11 am
@Ash Can: Yes. Well, it will either be the only post up for six hours, or there will be a new one every 8 minutes. It’s part of the peculiar charm.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:12 am
Sometimes you can’t help the feeling they are worried to see smart people elected because such people in office could might make their reporting gigs kind of challenging.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:12 am
@Joseph Nobles:
It would be irresponsible not to.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:13 am
@Joseph Nobles: everything i’ve read on the econ blogs says the germans will have to bail them out.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:13 am
@Samara Morgan: “...cudlips…”
AMG, can we please put this word into the moderation filter already?
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:13 am
Yeah, some defense:
“If you’ve listened to rightwing talk radio you’ve heard the story that they tell; if you’ve watched Fox News you’ve heard the same tale. In that story, the producers in society – the successful, hard-working, Real Americans – are fending off an assault from the losers, those who will not help themselves.
Will wants Elizabeth Warren to answer this narrative with a nuanced discussion of the proper role of government in public roads and education. This makes little sense. A compelling narrative must be answered with a compelling narrative of your own. This is how storytelling in politics works.”
Talk radio is publicly-distributed paranoid delusions and Fox is blatant lying but somehow, in EDK’s addled brain, Warren’s “simplification” is an equivalent. I think Kain probably does agree with Warren (he later says so), but this shows how internalized this false equivalence has become. I think Warren can defend herself fine without help from EDK. Who cares about Will Wilkinson, anyway. All EDK had to say is that Wilkinson is a paid flack crafting a pseudointellectual apology for rightwing nonsense. David Brooks in training.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:16 am
@Odie Hugh Manatee: Kay is the ONLY one of you that has admitted that she got fooled by Kain.
Its just unbearable isnt it?
That is another reason mixie keeps linking him….redemption.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:16 am
@Samara Morgan: We didn’t get punked. We can’t control who posts here. I never read EDK, so he might as well not existed for me (as far as Balloon Juice goes).
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:17 am
Very right, mistermix. Democrats need to lay down their republican-daddy complex. Stop trying to change yourself to make them like you more, and start doing things that work.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:18 am
Wil, did you vote for Bush? Then shut up.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:19 am
@Hoodie:
this is part of the kumbayah-we-are-all-just-the-same glibertarian alliance bulshytt that Cole and mixie and DougJ promote here.
We are not the same.
Cole supposedly said he didnt want BJ to be an echo chamber. Instead it became an incubation chamber for nasty little embryo Douthats like Kain.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:20 am
@Paul in KY: you didnt get punked then.
you are a minority. but a whole lot of the juicitariat bought into Kain’s come-to-jesus moment fake conversion reality show.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:22 am
@Agoraphobic Kleptomaniac: i think it should be in the lexicon. :)
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:24 am
Matoko will eventually vote for whoever the Republicans nominate. She’s as dedicated a liberal as Jonah Goldberg or Karl Rove. She’s just here for the trollin’.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:24 am
@Mark S.:
The second time as a farce?
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:24 am
Wil Wilkinson is a movement libertarian, and will almost always oppose any real action which would harm the elites. That is what they are for; things like concern human rights are just hobbies.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:25 am
He’s uncomfortable because her broad strokes put conservatives on defense on specifics, and conservatives never, ever have to defend their ideas specifically or in practical terms.
It isn’t Warren’s job to supply the argument for the other side. If conservatives want to have this “public conversation”, they shouldn’t be looking to the opposition to provide it for them.
They are really, really spoiled. They’ve been coddled and protected by media for so long that they are incapable of providing a specific defense. She did the broad strokes. Now it goes to them to provide specifics. When they respond with practical workable policy, she’ll present the other side. What’s she’s doing is forcing them to respond with something other than platitudes and round-table, think-tank babble. So far, crickets. No wonder they’re upset. They don’t have a response. She’s not going to negotiate with herself, either. When Brown provides a specific response, she’ll go to hers. Until he does, she won’t.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:27 am
@SRW1: I was going to say something similar. Wilkinson is terrified taht a Dem has figured out that you can keep it short and simple, say common sense things, appeal to the masses, and not get to wonky and turn the masses off. If more Dems learn that lesson, and use it, the Republicans lose one of their biggest advantages, the sound bite.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:28 am
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
LOL. EDK never crosses my mind except when mixie links him.
i just want mixie to quit linking him. its the same as approvingly linking Douthat or Brooks or any other “freed” market glibertarian.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:29 am
@Samara Morgan: But it’s not just Greece – China seems to be cooling off, and commodities are plunging. Dr. Doom is cranking it out this morning.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:29 am
@Scott: i worked on Obamas campaign, and on Bennetts. im now a registered democrat.
i gotta ax….is that you scorpy?
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:31 am
@Joseph Nobles: its the PIGS (portugal, italy, greece, spain). Italy is 20x worse than greece.
Fareed had a segment sunday saying the big four should bail them with an IMF loan.
but most analysts think Germany and France will be forced to bail the PIGS because of the euro—they share the same currency.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:36 am
@Surly Duff: They haven’t stereotyped her because they haven’t taken her seriously yet.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:37 am
I read the author, whose name I don’t see anywhere on the linked item, a little differently. I think that he/she liked what Warren said and then proceeded to be critical not of Warren but of the system itself, which does not lend itself to the in-depth discussion of issues that the author would like to have.
The author says that Warren “states the liberal philosophy with both clarity and passion,” and that “This is precisely the sort of rhetoric Democrats need to perfect in order to hold ground in the next round of national elections,” and so is hardly being critical of Warren’s rhetoric.
The piece is rather poorly written and I suspect the author rather invites the reader to jump to a conclusion other than the one intended, to assume the author means to say that Warren is at fault rather than the intended thought that there is a systemic failure in the way our politics works.
Or maybe I’m just reading my own thoughts into the piece.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:37 am
Can someone please permanently ban this jejune bs-spouting idiot?
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:40 am
@Samara Morgan: Thank you. No, I didn’t get punked. I don’t care 2 shits about EDK.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:40 am
@kay:
this is what i saw in the debate last nite….i was following AllahP’s twitter stream. The conservative elite can only communicate with their base via slogans anymore. Like suppressing birtherism and palinism, getting rid of Perry now is going to be extremely difficult.
Brown has nothing but sloganeering. He has no policy. He cant respond.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:41 am
@jibeaux: It’s not heaven. It’s the truth. I’ll take the truth over heaven any old day.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:42 am
There is no real purpose for a wil wilkerson. I suggest extinction as B.F. Skinner would say.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:42 am
I think it’s going to be a lot of fun to watch. We all know the conservative platitudes, the broad strokes. Brown ran on them. Does Brown retreat back to those, now that she’s responded with broad strokes? If he does, all she’s going to do is repeat that opening gambit.
It looks like this:
I. Broad strokes (Brown, Warren)
II. Specific policy
He’s up. It’s his turn. He can’t just keep going back to broad strokes. We already heard that, from both sides.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:43 am
@Bex: I think they take her seriously. I guarantee Sen. Centerfold does. She is a tough candidate & they probably are still doing oppo research & focus grouping to try & find something that sticks.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:43 am
@bk: you should email Cole an ax him.
he luffs mail.
ichi! ni! san!
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:45 am
@John Weiss: As Steve Martin says in My Blue Heaven, “it’s an espression”
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:50 am
@bk:
The sad thing that she occasionally says something worthwhile. But to get to that point, one has to wade through the millions and millions of posts in her EDK/deBoer jihad. Wilkinson is about 100X more incoherent and idiotic than either Kain or deBoer, but she can’t be bothered with criticizing someone who is truly an idiot and who is never, ever going to be someone we might agree with, maybe, 50% of the time, like Kain and deBoer are.
And I won’t even get into how irritating her completely unconvincing Islamic conversion is or her disgusting comments about IQ are. Which makes me wonder if she is insecure about her own IQ because she sure is quick to call other people “retards” (or cudlips, if you will). In my experience, in cases like that, it’s usually a defense mechanism to deflect from a perceived personal lack of intellectual heft. YMMV.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:51 am
@Samara Morgan:
They’re so incredibly whiny. “I want a smart policy debate! Democrats! Where’s my smart policy debate?”
Why in the hell would she ever do their work for them? Do libertarians really expect Democrats to argue both sides?
They’re all Republicans. Why is it my job to flesh out their abstract theories?
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:52 am
@geg6: Because I watched the movie Temple Grandin last night, being called a cudlip today just puts me in mind of someone with an oddly strong affinity for cows. It was a pretty decent movie, I thought Claire Danes did a good job.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:54 am
As Zandar pointed out recently, The New York Times criticized Obama for doing exactly the opposite in some of his speeches critiquing GOP tax and deregulation policy:
The Villagers get you coming and going.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:55 am
@geg6:
Those occasions are becoming more and more rare. And her condescension to an actual Muslim poster on this board is intolerable. Until you realize she’s exactly the same as every single young person you deal with every day. Then you go through the typical head nods at hr naivete and foolishness and go about your own business.
@Steve M.:
Shorter NYT: He talks too much! He doesn’t talk enough! I WANT MY PONIES NAOW!!
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:56 am
I was traveling yesterday and caught a bit of Rush’s show, where he tied himself in knots trying to make the case that people actually do get rich all by themselves, and that Warren’s rhetoric is Sekret Marksist Code. It was an incomprehensible fail parade even by Rush’s standards.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:58 am
@kay: this is an extremely common glibertarian reacharound. they cant communicate with their base because if they tell the base the truth, they lose their votes—so they need us to do it for them.
we dont need to. its good to see Warren refusing to do it.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:58 am
@Yutsano: you never responded to any of my questions, Yut. typical get off my lawn.
I said i think Khalid is a maftoon. He even agreed with that.
you juicers say christians that dont follow the teachings of christ are not REAL christians.
we say the same thing about muslims that dont follow the teachings of the Prophet.
:)
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:03 am
@Montysano: It’s such an idiotic argument. Take any wildly successful entrepreneur of your choice—Bill Gates, whoever. Now make them be born in Somalia. Is there a Microsoft in this scenario? Not unless he fucking gets to America, there isn’t. Not to detract from Warren’s message or her delivery, which were awesome, but it’s completely blindingly obvious.
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:03 am
@Samara Morgan:
They communicate with their base just fine. They run into trouble when communicating with anyone other than their base.
They manage to weasel out of the next logical step over and over and over, and Democrats help them, because they do broad strokes and Democrats go to specifics. Then they attack the specifics that Democrats helpfully handed them, and Democrats defend. There’s a huge empty space in this “debate”, and it’s on the Right. Libertarians can whine all they want, but Democrats can’t fill the hole. It isn’t their job.
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:06 am
@kay: actually its the libertarians job to fill in the policy details.
instead they fake comradery with fools like mixie and Cole.
if the libertarians crit homophobia, creationism, AGW denialism, ensoulment TO THEIR BASE, they alienate their base. Kain explained this to me when he banned me from the LoOG.
do you wanna see the emails?
@geg6:
Kain and de Bore only headfake agreement with you for pageclicks. glibertarians are all basically the same. otherwise they would switch sides.
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:12 am
@Steve M.: Zander writes exactly what I’ve been saying for months
Obama does not have a bully pulpit and this is exactly why.
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:13 am
Is anyone going to ask the conservative candidates why they stood there like potted plants while their supporters attacked the American who asked a quite reasonable and polite question?
If they can’t muster the courage to defend that guy, and none of them did, they all failed a leadership test.
Each and every conservative candidate blinked, scared shitless of their voters.
The idea that any of them can defend a whole country seems ludicrous. They’re afraid of their own voters. How are the rest of us going to fare with these craven cowards in charge?
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:17 am
@kay:
Brown’s reputation at the MA State House was that he’s intellectually lazy and shows up at the end to claim credit when everyone else has done the work. He’s affable, but so is Warren, so all that being equal, he’s going to have to argue policy, and he absolutely won’t be able to. Driving a truck isn’t going to be enough this time. It’s going to be fun to watch.
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:19 am
@Paul in KY: Your second suggestion to m_c #10 is a good one, not that she’d take it up, but the first — eww.I wouldn’t wish that even on a libertarian.
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:19 am
@kay:
they’ll fight them over there so they don’t have to fight them over here
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:20 am
@kay:
None of them are near. For a surprisingly large percentage of the electorate, that’s enough to get their vote.
@Amir Khalid: What? ED’s not that bad looking. :)
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:20 am
@kay:
this is exactly right.
and that is why Obama is going to win in Nov.
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:21 am
@Amir Khalid: i told you, maftoon. glibertarians are all the same.
otherwise they would switch sides already.
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:22 am
@kay: All of their “leaders” are craven cowards. Boehner can’t even control his damn caucus. It’s pretty fucking sad to consider that John McCain might be the best of the lot, because I think he might have been the only one to stand up for that soldier. maybe.
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:23 am
It’s particularly craven and cowardly because, of course, the American who asked the reasonable question was not there to defend himself from the conservative voters who attacked him.
The cowards in the room attacked a person who could not defend himself, because he wasn’t there.
I was told Perry is a tough guy. What happened? Why did Perry run away? Michele Bachmann has a “titanium spine”. Unless a fellow American is attacked by conservative voters. Then she chokes.
Really troubling that none of them stepped up. Raises real questions on leadership ability.
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:24 am
@Samara Morgan:
’
no, I think that’s why he’ll lose. The Republican candidates pander to that crassness, Obama often does not, though times he’s forced to after going against it fails miserably.(Gitmo, Israel/Palestine, Military trials)
Americans, but in large, are not good people.
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:26 am
@kay:
The sad part is I bet that’s not what conservatives saw. Rather they took their silence as disregard for an obvious gotcha question that the librul media was using to hurt the candidates.
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:26 am
@Yutsano: Kain is a soft pudgy glibertarian white boi with an undistinguished college degree.
not my type at all.
i think Dr. Hawking is hawt.
i liek braaaaaaiiiiins.
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:27 am
@kay:
Except in the eyes of many, that WAS leadership.
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:28 am
@kay:
That is not completely fair. I think they showed leadership by burying the strong impulse to join in the booing of the soldier.
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:29 am
@Amir Khalid: I didn’t mean literally :-)
We can see where your mind is ;-)
Wallah, I wish she would verbally stomp on the ‘Gil the Glibertarian’ dude. She can, but as geg6 remarked, she can’t be bothered as his smarmy concern-trolling comments about Ms. Warren are not as important as Mistermix linking with teh evil that is EDK. Misplaced priorities, I think.
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:30 am
@OzoneR: we shall see. its hilarious relly…its the best chance in decades for the GOP to get back the WH, but all their candidates sukk ass.
:)
@kay: none of them would dare if they saw this guy.
hes pretty buff.
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:33 am
@Yutsano:
That’s why we have these debates. We hope they’ll reveal something about the candidates, in an unscripted moment.
They all failed the test. No going back now. The moment to show character came and went. Deer in the headlights, all of them.
It’s not good. Troubling. Very troubling.
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:33 am
@Paul in KY: not misplaced.
you said yourself, i take no quarter.
i will kerbstomp the pointy little head of ev’ry embryo Douthat that shows up here.
unless i get permabanned of course.
:)
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:36 am
Wilkinson is the guy that Cato threw out for lack of ideologial purity. That said, enemy of my enemy does not hold in most cases.
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:38 am
@Samara Morgan:
There hasn’t been a Republican who didn’t suck ass in 30 years. They don’t need a rockstar to win, they just need a white guy.
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:40 am
@OzoneR:
a non-mormon, non-crazy white guy.
:)
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:43 am
@Samara Morgan:
no, I think any white guy will do in the end.
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:49 am
@OzoneR:
And you’re as bad as they are. You’re afraid of Mitt Romney? Really? Why?
If I assembled a random group of people and put them on a stage, I’d bet I’d get ONE who would defend the guy who was being attacked and wasn’t there to hit back. It’s playground rules.
Mitt Romney failed to intercede where a nominally well-raised 4th grader might have jumped in. Just embarrassing.
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:50 am
@Samara Morgan:
Well, that’s a losing proposition for both of them since I never, ever click on their stuff elsewhere and rarely did/do here.
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:50 am
On topic: Will Wilkerson’s complaint is only that Elizabeth Warren’s ideas, as presented in the video, aren’t argued all the way through. But would any politician, in that informal setting, present his ideas in that kind of detail? In the right forum, Warren could do that, no problem; could Scott Brown? Could the incumbent Senator Brown present his ideas to such great detail (please, not to giggle) anywhere?
If you put Brown and Warren across a table from each other to debate policy one-on-one, whose head would asplode?
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:51 am
@geg6:
Agreed. There seems to be an inverse quantity/quality problem.
m_c, this comment is directed at you personally: I’d hate to see you banned from the site but I’d love to see you put on a quota. If you had a max of something like say 3 comments per thread, those 3 comments would probably be (A) actually be worth the time taken to read them, and (B) would make a more substantive point than all of the 50+ comments you spam a typical thread with put together. Your obsessive chatter isn’t having the effect you think it is of cutting thru the fog, quite the reverse it is causing almost everyone to tune you out and ignore you, and any valid viewpoint you might have is being completely lost as a result.
Loquaciousness is not the virtue you think it is. Say less and mean more. Please, for everybody’s sake.
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:52 am
@kay:
Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush. Are we really to put our faith in the American electorate that they won’t choose a complete idiot to be their President? What we saw last night was pathetic, shameful and embarrassing, but in the past few decades, exactly how people get elected.
September 23rd, 2011 at 10:56 am
@kay:
What a long way we’ve traveled since the days of “I am paying for this microphone, Mr. Breen“. And that is one of the other thing which appalls me about the contemporary Right. They are devolving so fast that they are making me feel nostalgic for the few redeeming qualities of older politicians I so recently despised and loathed. Nixon and Reagan are looking better every day by comparison with this Clown Car of Toxic Waste Disposal that passes for a slate of candidates on the Right these days, and I hate that. Those “Do you miss me?” billboards with W on them are starting to look less like a political attack on Obama and more like a malign prophecy regarding how much worse it will get on the Right before it gets better.
September 23rd, 2011 at 11:04 am
In a perfect world where people craved nuanced political discussion that carefully weighed the pros and cons of each plank in a party platform and made adjustments based on rational argumentation and discourse, then yes, I suppose that liberal sloganeering would be something to bemoan.
That’s not the world we live in. We live in a world of conservative sound bytes. We live in a world of Bachmann’s and Perry’s and Gingrinch’s. There are very few people out there who lean left on the national stage who are playing the same game effectively of stating their policy position in terms of values and morality and things that touch base with voters.
So, more Warren’s please.
September 23rd, 2011 at 11:18 am
@Samara Morgan: Well whomp the Will dude then. I do not think they are all alike. To me, this guy is worse, because he is concern trolling a candidate we need to win in Mass.
Getting Ms. Warren in the Senate is much, much more important than whatever swill EDK is peddling wherever the Hell he is.
September 23rd, 2011 at 11:19 am
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
QFT. Jeebus, but this country sucks. At least 40% of it, anyway.
September 23rd, 2011 at 11:20 am
@geg6: Christ, yes. A few more years of these bozos and we’ll be asking to have Nixon added to Mt. Rushmore.
September 23rd, 2011 at 11:32 am
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
About the Republican presidential candidates: none of them has the knowledge that a President needs to do the job, except — maybe — Romney and Huntsman. But neither man has the spine to stand up to the extremism taking over in the Republican party; and the rest of the field, not least Perry, are actively allying themselves with that extremism. Don’t say this out loud in America, but I think we on planet Earth would much rather prefer Obama’s re-election to seeing any of the other lot take the office.
September 23rd, 2011 at 11:33 am
The Republican debates aren’t telling us anything about the candidates we didn’t already know.
But they are telling a chunk of America something about the audiences at these debates, and what they may represent.
September 23rd, 2011 at 11:35 am
Why would anyone expect one of these candidates to step up and say something positive about the gay servicemember?
Because it’s the decent human thing to do? That loses you votes among the people who you need. And it doesn’t necessarily gain you any net votes, anywhere.
For a bunch of pragmatists this doesn’t seem a very consistent critique.
September 23rd, 2011 at 11:38 am
That dude was yoked, btw.
September 23rd, 2011 at 11:38 am
@Samara Morgan:
For pity’s sake, MC, get this through your skull. Understand it. Dwell on it and learn from it.
YOU ARE NOT SMARTER THAN ANYONE HERE.
Your observations consist almost entirely of taking some simple principle that everyone else knows and pretending it’s a vast overarching rule that controls the cosmos. This is a great example. You are not a lone voice of beautiful reason who saw through EDK. You’re a spiteful child who rags on and on and ON AND ON about a poster whose posts were almost as argument-causing as ABL’s. You reduce a human being to a single word, although at least you’re not doing it this time in a blatantly racist way.
And then you publicly demand that everyone bow down to your wisdom, when you’re still operating at a 6th grade level of reasoning well below the more sophisticated arguments bouncing around.
Do you know who else thinks like you do, MC? Libertarians.
Also, you claim the mantle of science and you’re batting ABSOLUTE ZERO on your predictive models.
September 23rd, 2011 at 11:41 am
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I read that Perry’s hack said it was “unfortunate”.
What’s “unfortunate” is that Perry, who thinks he can lead a whole country, choked when he was presented with an (easy, virtually risk-free) opportunity to do just that.
It’s fortunate we found that out.
I look forward to the next media slobber-fest over Perry’s swagger and manliness, I really do. What a joke. I noticed the maverick libertarian on the stage couldn’t find his voice when it counted, either. Oh, well. Maybe next time. We’re now up to what, three times Republicans have failed to defend people from the attacks of their rabid base? How much time do they need?
September 23rd, 2011 at 11:42 am
Warren = Sploosh
September 23rd, 2011 at 11:47 am
@Corner Stone:
Two points: first, while it won’t help in the GOP primaries it sure as hell would help in the general election. Makes me wonder if any of them (Mitt I’m looking at you esp.) actually want to beat Obama in the general election. Second, after all the “support the troops” rhetoric we’ve heard from the Right since 2003, defending a member of the armed services, any member of the armed services, from attacks by civilians ought to be as easy as falling down a flight of stairs. How hard is it to say “I support our troops who are risking their lives to defend our freedoms, regardless of whether I agree with everything a specific individual might think on a controversial matter” ? That they failed to do even that is political malpractice of the first order.
What we saw last night was a commander-in-chief threshold test which the entire GOP debate field failed and failed badly.
September 23rd, 2011 at 11:56 am
@OzoneR: Perry and Romney cant win, for the same reason Palin could never win.
They cant be galatea’d into palability by the money men sufficiently to appeal to independents, youth, and minorities.
And they cant be galatea’d because like Kay says, they are pantswetting afraid of their base.
September 23rd, 2011 at 12:03 pm
@Frankensteinbeck: bulshytt.
Cole was utterly (hehe) fooled. Cole put out the call for a new right wing pundit, because he was dim enough to think Kain converted. DougJ said Kain was a liberal LOL! mixie links Kain at Forbes once a week.
do i need to get links?
Aimai slobbered over Kain, aisiangirlman was going to be come a LoOGie.
Kay even got fooled.
At least she has the grace to admit it.
September 23rd, 2011 at 12:08 pm
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
It would have been beautiful politically. The person who stood up would have distinguished themselves from the rest, and media would have absolutely eaten it up. That’s why it’s amazing to me how cowardly they are. No risk, all reward. Even then, they can’t do it. Imagine if they were called on to do something actually risky?
I wouldn’t expect Romney, because he’s a scripted, packaged product, but Bachmann and Perry blurt out stupid, reckless word-collections all the time. One would think that propensity would work in their favor occasionally, and they’d blurt out something good or helpful. Nope. That only operates in one direction, apparently.
September 23rd, 2011 at 12:12 pm
@Frankensteinbeck:
link or it didnt happen.
no they do not. libertarians are universally first culture intellectuals.
i am a third culture intellectual, an anti-capitalist and a hacktivist.
I reject Dead White Guy Phailosophy and the “benevolence” of the “freed” market.
September 23rd, 2011 at 12:12 pm
Shorter version:
Bachmann is just a bumper sticker with nothing behind the slogan. Warren is bumper sticker with a fully realized plan as thick as a book behind her’s.
September 23rd, 2011 at 12:13 pm
@Frankensteinbeck: and again, i am NOT A RACIST unless christian and stupid are races now.
certainly, you can call me a bigot….i prefer to think of my prejudices as empirical and based on science and bayesian probabilities.
September 23rd, 2011 at 12:21 pm
@kay: the only direction they have is white christian nativism.
September 23rd, 2011 at 12:23 pm
Abbas just sent the petition to the UNSC.
Enough discussion of C-list glibertarian kangaroo slapfights!
September 23rd, 2011 at 12:30 pm
@Samara Morgan:
Independents are already supporting them over Obama and youths and minorities don’t vote.
September 23rd, 2011 at 12:34 pm
@kay: (#127)
You may have to wait a little while for that turn of the wheel, because evidently today has been declared “Rick Perry as Pinata Day” by the GOP establishment.
TPM has a satisfying summary of right-wing mouthpieces (e.g., Rove, Kristol, York) “reassessing” Rick Perry after last night’s clown act. Irving and Gertrude’s boy declared Perry’s performance as “close to disqualifying.”
“Even the liberal New York Times” and the Guardian have published articles today deriding his remarks/responses at the Orlando “debate.” Sadly, it mostly drama criticism rather than policy analysis.
But the loathsome Jennifer Rubin of Kaplan Test Prep Daily applies the most wicked razor to Governor Goodhair: “A strong night for Santorum as Perry fades.” Oh my, might this be the start of a media circle-jerk for Little Ricky? Paging Dan Savage!
September 23rd, 2011 at 12:35 pm
+1 to Frankensteinbeck. Long time lurker, infrequent poster. Samara Morgan, you are annoying, and your quixotic crusade for everyone to tell you you were right is immature and counterproductive. Post 133 is an example of Cast-Iron Cranium Technique, incidentally – What Frankensteinbeck meant is obvious, but you deliberately misunderstand so as to argue the point on your own terms.
On most forums I post on you would have been banned long ago.
September 23rd, 2011 at 12:38 pm
@OzoneR: except in Colorado and presidential elections.
:)
September 23rd, 2011 at 12:39 pm
@Shoe: i have been banned 3 or 4 times at least.
sometimes the frontpagers just give me a “timeout” or flag me as a spammer in WP.
pretty cowardly IMHO.
September 23rd, 2011 at 12:40 pm
@Shoe: i just want the juicitariat to admit they got rolled by Kain, and for mixie to stop trying to farm pageclicks for him.
its not unreasonable.
Cole admitted he was WRONG about Libya on the twitter.
Why cant he admit he was WRONG about Kain?
September 23rd, 2011 at 12:45 pm
@handsmile: yeah…Nate and the Villagers were predicting Huntsman would come out the winner.
i think they dont understand the GOP base at all at this point.
September 23rd, 2011 at 12:48 pm
@Belafon (formerly anonevent):
Well, maybe becoming a father could have also been part of it?
September 23rd, 2011 at 1:01 pm
@handsmile:
I don’t read any of them anymore. It’s a joke. Pundits delivered a stern lecture to liberals to take Michele Bachmann seriously, and if we don’t, we’re elitists.
Nonsense. Why should I take her seriously? She’s a clown. As a matter of fact, she’s now proven herself to be a clown in front of the whole country, so I was right not to take her seriously, and they were wrong. I saved a lot of time not listening to them.
September 23rd, 2011 at 1:13 pm
@Samara Morgan:
This is the post of a whiny, ineffectual bully. And there’s nothing more pathetic than a bully who never, ever succeeds at bullying anyone but instead garners nothing but annoyance and perhaps empathetic embarrassment. It’s just sad.
As for the bulk of Samara’s posts, I’ll say what I say to those overconfident, underprepared, faux-intellectual college freshmen who sometimes appear in my classes: Hush. Listen. Learn. Then speak.
(On second thought, they’re more often sophomores than freshmen, which just confirms the precise utility of the word “sophomoric.”)
September 23rd, 2011 at 1:18 pm
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
I just disagree. If Mitt had stepped up and offered a bland rejoinder ALL of the pub this am would have been about nothing but that. And it would not have been pretty.
As it is, all the pub is about Perry stepping on his own dick and looking bewildered all night.
Which do you think Mitt cares more about?
And the GE is months and months and months and…away. Not one voter who would consider voting R is going to remember that.
September 23rd, 2011 at 1:28 pm
In case any one was wondering…
they will never, ever, like you. They are conservatives and you aren’t. Doesn’t matter what you say or if you try and meet them in the “middle”, they will always hate your guts.
Live your life doing and saying what you believe in, not trying to please someone else.
September 23rd, 2011 at 1:28 pm
@Smiling Mortician:
Sophomoric. You nailed it, that’s the word that most often comes to mind when m_c comments.
September 23rd, 2011 at 1:36 pm
@SiubhanDuinne: I’ve been looking for the appropriate synonym for “certain”.
September 23rd, 2011 at 1:38 pm
@Samara Morgan:
And the colorless green ideas continue to sleep, furiously.
September 23rd, 2011 at 2:00 pm
Are you and Wilkinson are discussing Warren’s argument that no one created wealth (or jobs) all by himself ? I have read a brief transcript of her arguing to that effect. Maybe I’m a simpleton, but I didn’t see any simplification.
My impression is that she had completely refuted the argument in “Anarchy State and Utopia.” Her argument was not original (I think it’s an undergraduate exercise or at least it should be).
I think Wilkinson’s problem is that he can’t respond to Warren’s arguments so he pretends they aren’t there. She is undoubtedly responding to arguments made by libertarians (Nozick manages to dance through the whole book without saying whether he agrees with the views he ascribes to Locke and Hayek). Her argument is instantly recognizable as, well, what practically everyone at Harvard says.
Wilkinson being a not totally unrality based libertarian has been trying to argue with Warren’s argument for years (more likely decades). Having a very high opinion of himself, he probably thinks he has made some good points which Warren didn’t consider (probably because she hasn’t heard them having something to do other than argue about libertarian theories).
I am not going to click the link or read his arguments, but I would like to ask those who did whether they think he had a convincing response to Warren. I don’t think she left anything worth saying out of her answer.
September 23rd, 2011 at 4:45 pm
@Robert Waldmann:
I don’t believe Wilkinson did. He ignores entirely the beginning of the video, where she talks about “how we got in this hole.” He argues as though the “class warfare — no” part, pitched at a level appropriate to an informal meeting with potential voters, were the extent of her thinking on the subject. He sets up a straw man, accusing her of suggesting that
and garnishing it with a dash of “both sides do it”.
Then he lays a red herring across the trail by arguing for a debate on how government revenues should be spent, as though such a debate were something Warren would oppose.
He doesn’t end up refuting Warren or even really disagreeing with anything she said in the soundbite. Just with a grump about her not raising the level of discourse as high as he’d like.
September 23rd, 2011 at 5:53 pm
@Smiling Mortician:
To be fair, you’re a pompous ass.
Most likely one with a compensating mean streak.
September 23rd, 2011 at 6:22 pm
@opal: I would say s/he has a halfway decent handle on the pest to whom he is commenting. m_c, under whatever name, fits that description.
September 23rd, 2011 at 6:52 pm
Synthesizing ideas and communicating in plain language (something E. Warren does)is a skill that requires intelligence.
It isn’t the same as being a simple-minded thoughtless buffoon, which is what tea party Republicans are.
September 23rd, 2011 at 7:29 pm
This argument by Wilkerson wouldn’t bother me if it wasn’t hypocritical. But people like Wilkerson used to hail Bush’s short declarative speaking style.
September 23rd, 2011 at 9:53 pm
m_c serves as a great example of the sad fact that if you never let an argument die, and never admit you are wrong on anything, you can win every argument in your own mind.
It’s like the Dunning-Kruger effect meets John Gabriel’s Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory.
September 23rd, 2011 at 11:10 pm
@stevie314: “[T]he difference between being simplification and being a simpleton”. Or as William Shakespeare put it, “Be thou familiar, but by no means vulgar”.
September 26th, 2011 at 9:11 pm