I didn’t have the same reaction that many of you did to Schumer’s claim that he went after Scott Brown only because Brown wouldn’t vote the way Schumer wanted on a bill. Yes, it makes Schumer look like a self-serving jerk, but that’s kind of the point: he’d like to be seen as the kind of jerk who’s built to last, you fuck with him, he puts his foot in your ass. And I like that kind of politics.
Anyway, there’s no doubt that Schumer’s style of politics — aggressive, unbelievably hard-working, shameless in its pursuit of campaign funds — has been a winning style. He will probably never be seriously challenged in a general election. As my friends in the city always say, he is probably too Brooklyn to ever be president.
But Kirsten Gillibrand, who’s very much in the same mold, could become the first female president if Hillary doesn’t do it first. There’s a great NYT article about her today:
If there were a chutzpah caucus in the United States Senate, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York would be its natural leader.
[….]Her other tactics include cornering colleagues on the Senate floor and refusing to stop talking, and popping out a news release picking apart a senator’s competing legislation as it is being announced.
[….]An outside player in her caucus, the New York Democrat is nonetheless admired for her ample fund-raising, especially by women; she has raised nearly $30 million since being appointed in 2009, a tally that has scared away potential challengers from both parties and turned her into a mentor for female candidates around the country.
[….]Seemingly always working — she has a book out next September — Ms. Gillibrand nonetheless leaves the office promptly at 5 every night to pick up her children from school. If there is a vote at that hour, she has developed a system to signal her aye or nay from a doorway off the Senate floor — where children are not permitted — so she can hold onto her 5-year-old’s hand. “She is ubiquitous,” said Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, “and I mean that as a compliment. I don’t know how she does it.”
I’m generally pretty skeptical about how northeastern politics plays nationally. People up here are more confrontational than in the midwest and south, and the overt no-shit-taking style of Christie, Giuliani, Schumer, and Cuomo II is a natural fit. My guess is that Christie flames out a la Giuliani and that Cuomo II will never go anywhere nationally. But Gillibrand has real national potential.
Xantar
You just know someone is going to start expressing concern about Senator Gillibrand’s very young sounding voice, though. I’m a big fan and her voice even threw me off the first time I heard it.
Baud
They actually don’t enforce the no-children rule out of respect for the Republican caucus.
dmsilev
Remember when True Progressives ™ insisted that the one and only qualified person to be appointed to that seat (after Clinton became SecState) was Caroline Kennedy?
Good times.
Baud
@dmsilev:
Lol. I do remember. I was just googling for examples of that.
Mullah DougJ
@dmsilev:
I wrote for a NYS political blog then. It was crazy!
c u n d gulag
I’ve lived in NY State most of my life, and if you’re going to go anywhere in NY State politics, you have to be tough and smart – and believe me, she’s plenty tough and smart enough to go all the way to the Presidency.
Amir Khalid
Is anyone really surprised to see self-serving jerkitude in a politician? There are no saints in that line of work. Senator Gillibrand seems a promising politician. She’s still young enough to build up her record and pick her time to run for President, and she’s got to be a strong possible in anyone’s reckoning. Any idea where she is on foreign policy?
WereBear
I admire the way she went after sexual assault in the military.
I understand Schumer is her mentor.
I met her at a mixer at the very start of her career, and she was warm and genuine. Absolutely a star already; she can do what she wants.
Baud
BTW, interesting take on Schumer. I hadn’t thought of that angle before.
PaulW
Cuomo or another northeasterner could work as a Vice-Presidential ballot balancer if the 2016 candidate is from the Midwest or California. That would give them a chance to diversify their skill sets to a national temperament.
But it’s still too damn early to be talking about that. Let’s focus on the 2014 midterms where we need to vote out every goddamn nihilist Republican’t in Congress and in the governorships.
Amir Khalid
@dmsilev:
I got the sense back then that Caroline herself wanted that Senate seat less than others wanted it for her. Maybe they included people too important to her to be refused outright. Like her Uncle Ted, perhaps; he knew the end was near and might have wanted to see another Kennedy in the Senate before he passed on.
schrodinger's cat
I like the idea of Gillibrand for President! I would take rudeness over hypocrisy in a heartbeat.
schrodinger's cat
Is Cuomo still with that atrocious fake chef Sandra Lee?
Baud
Of all the names I’ve heard for potential Democratic nominees, I like Cuomo the least. He seems neither all that liberal nor all that electable. (Admittedly, I don’t follow him on a day-to-day basis, so I’ll keep an open mind.)
Hunter Gathers
Former Senator Cosmo Von Truck Nutz is giving the Queen of the Iquitarod a run for her money in the contest for Dumbest Ex-Pol. His barn jacket has twice the IQ that Scotty B does. Although the barn jacket does lack Brown’s ethnicity detector.
amk
Heh, that’s my ™ .
Cacti
@schrodinger’s cat:
Not mention his atrocious “shuck and jive” comments about Obama in 2008.
Frankensteinbeck
I think Christie would do fine in the South. The locals don’t want ‘overt in-your-face’, but they love ‘flaming asshole’. As long as the politician takes it over the line into mean-spirited bullying, he’ll be warmly received.
EDIT – Let me put it another way. Aqua Buddha didn’t hurt Rand Paul’s poll numbers one iota. His supporters weren’t offended. His poll numbers plummeted when he refused a debate. They want an asshole, and a strong one.
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
Christie’s risk in the South is that another candidate (Santorum?) will out-God him.
@Cacti: Yeah, that too.
Cacti
@Frankensteinbeck:
OTOH, his lack of overt hostility towards President blackity-black will be tied around his neck like an anchor.
IowaOldLady
From your mouth to the FSM’s ear re Christie flaming out. He scares me. People compare nominating him to nominating Romney but Romney was a terrible politician. He was stiff and uncomfortable and condescending. Christie can fake reasonableness and he’s charismatic.
Frankensteinbeck
@Baud:
I don’t think that’s an issue. My observation has been that ‘Jesus’ is code for ‘feeling self-righteous about being an asshole.’ Deliver that, and they don’t actually care about faith. Again, see Aqua Buddha.
@Cacti:
Minutely short attention spans. If he tells them that niggers need to be put in their place, all will be forgiven and forgotten. He can even clean up the language just barely enough to not be screamingly controversial. Heck, bonus points if he does that and makes it sound like asshole racism is the mature and responsible way of thinking.
Baud
@Frankensteinbeck:
I didn’t mean necessarily God directly, but the God-issues (i.e., social issues like abortion and gays) that I think Christie wants to de-emphasize (even though he really is on all-fours with the GOP base on those issues).
ETA: I also think Christie will be hurt if the GOP has a successful mid-term in 2014. The base will be less inclined to compromise on the purity of their candidate if they think true conservatism is winning.
Cacti
@IowaOldLady:
Christie’s also thin skinned and has never had a serious challenge in his political career to date. If he blows his stack at school teachers, how will handle a smarmy little weasel like Ted Cruz or Rand Paul?
WereBear
It’s my take that Christie has Nixon-level issues that he’s avoiding in the finest wingnut manner. Of course, Nixon became President while not addressing his, but Christie has a temper problem, an eating problem, a weight problem, and now the stress of surgery piled up on him.
His own issues didn’t bother Nixon, seemingly, but from the outside, that’s not the case with Christie.
Also, does a really good Nixon biography exists? Especially one which takes a psychological perspective? I can’t find any really good ones, much less the kind I like.
Baud
@WereBear:
Cliff notes version: Nixon was an asshole.
Liberty60
@WereBear:
I’ve heard that Nixon Agonistes by Gary Wills is the definitive work.
catclub
@Cacti: I think rather than flaming out, snuffed out if Ted Cruz unites the truly crazy wing (primary voters) of the GOP before Christie can get to the big states. With McCain and Romney, they never united.
boss bitch
Senator Gillibrand? YAWN! Sorry, can’t see the base getting excited over Gillibrand.
WereBear
Well, yeah… I noticed that when I was ten years old!
It’s my opinion that most biographies devote one chapter, if that, to a person’s first two decades, yet this is when a person is actually formed and develops some of their most indelible traits. I realize this part of a person’s life is not very well documented, but some of the best biographies I’ve read take this into consideration.
For Nixon, the paranoia and manipulation and self-pity were deeply rooted and shaped everything he was and did. For a Quaker family… it strikes me funny.
Nicole
I remember when Schumer beat D’Amato and the general feeling here was that he was the first candidate willing to get right down in the gutter with D’Amato. Enthusiastically so.
TR
@WereBear:
Garry Wills, Nixon Agonistes
David Greenberg, Nixons Shadow
Tom Wicker, One of Us
mai naem
@Hunter Gathers: I am missing something in this comment. Do you mean “her” barn jacket?
Christie scares me too. I figured the weight was going to be an issue but with the surgery it’s going to turn into a People Mag cover story of “He lost 150 lbs in a year!!!” and Christie will talk about how he did it for his family lalalala….
I like Gillibrand but IMHO she’s a bit of a Wall Streeter/Third Way kind of senator. Schumer,as far as I know, has wanted to become the first Jewish Majority Senate leader.
WereBear
@Liberty60: Thanks, I’ll have to break down and get a dead tree edition.
I love books, but the past year has been a drastic slimming down because we can’t afford the extra storage unit, and we’ve given away or ditched half our living room furniture so we can create a recording & oil painting studio.
We can’t afford a bigger place, so it makes for some tough decisions. Electronic books and music lets us thread the needle :)
Dennis
Schumer shouldn’t need a reason to get a Democrat in office instead of Scott Brown, in Massachusetts, for god’s sake. That’s what the fuss was about.
WereBear
@TR: Oooh, thanks.
Diving into Abe Books
Great selection & free shipping, folks! They are a consolidator for booksellers across the country. Got all three for about $13.
Wonderful holiday choice. Errr, Abe Books, that is. Nixon is not a cheerful fella.
Kay
Really early 2012, it was still very cold, it may have been February, Sherrod Brown’s 2012 campaign manager (a young woman who is originally from Iowa) called us and then met with us. Brown was already organizing counties for his 2012 race, ahead of even Obama who had campaign people here shortly after that, by April. Brown has really aggressive and disciplined campaigns which may be surprising given his generally rumpled, easy-going demeanor.
She told us she had helped run Gillibrand’s 2010 campaign which is how and why she got hired. She did a great job. By June, Brown’s campaign was perfectly coordinated with Obama’s here.
schrodinger's cat
Thread needs Caturday Kitteh.
Praying Mantis update, he made it to the ICHC first pg yesterday.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I’m inclined to think Cruz crowds Santorum out from the right. There was/is a niche for Santorum as a ‘right-wing populist’, but I think he’s genuinely too stupid and erratic to hold it. He had a real shot at beating Romney last time– scared the shit out of the party–, and he stepped on his own tongue by trolling JFK, and then yesterday’s half-wit comments about Obamacare= Apartheid
aimai
@Baud: Cuomo has a constituency of what, exactly? People who remember waiting for his father to decide to run? He reminds me of Evan Bayh, whose father, Birch Bayh, was more famous and more loved and also never really made it.
geg6
I like Gillibrand quite a bit. She’s feisty and she doesn’t back down once she gets her teeth into an issue. I worry a bit about possible Wall Street ties, as I do with any New Yorker, but she has not shown any fatal Third Way tendencies as far as I’ve seen. However, that may be because I haven’t enough knowledge about her at this point. But I sure like what she’s done about rape in the military. She’s been a pit bull in the issue and that is what I like to see in a politician.
geg6
@aimai:
Yes, this exactly. He’s a very small man next to his father and I wasn’t even a big fan of the Hamlet of Albany.
Frankensteinbeck
Of course, whoever runs, 2016 will be bizarre. For conservatives, it will be all about Obama. Nothing else. Obama will still be in office, still insulting them with his skin color and worse, his success. They won’t have had time to forget. The Democratic nominee will be either a figurehead for Obama’s conspiracy or (if ethnic or female enough) the next in what is clearly an unconstitutional line of dictators keeping America in slavery.
For everyone else, that’s going to be hella confusing.
Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader
@IowaOldLady: Chris Christie is pound for pound the greatest politician to come out of New Jersey. America will fall in love with this larger than life political wunderkind. When he is sharing a stage with Scrawny Bad Hair Rand and The Christian Eddie Haskell Santorum and I’ve Still Got Two Hundred Million Dollars Mitt, America will gorge herself on Christie’s relative non-ickiness.
IowaOldLady
@Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader: You’re not making me feel any better.
WereBear
@aimai: From a local perspective, Cuomo’s not that bad. He’s passed a lot of legislation to try and clean up the cesspit of Albany, strengthen legal protections for the disabled, economic support for women owned businesses and such.
My industry, tourism, has been reinvigorated, with with money and publicity trips and new events. This is HUGE in ADK Park where there is, by law, no other industry.
schrodinger's cat
@geg6: OK Albany is small but not small enough to be a hamlet.
schrodinger's cat
@WereBear: I have always wanted to visit Adirondack Park, any suggestions of what to do?
Kay
I thought this was an interesting local take on Christie:
It’s amusing to read, because while national pundits were swooning over the force of his personality and his bold conservative leadership, Christie was passing out money and favors to strategically-placed Democrats who then backed him. If you didn’t back him, you didn’t get phone calls returned, or any money for your town or city. Machine politics! The Chicago Way!
I didn’t hear any of this “passing out gubmint money to favored Democrats” stuff on Morning Joe, I’ll tell you. Can he do the same thing nationally? I don’t know, but it may be less about his Reaganesque persuasive power and more about construction projects.
Mandalay
Jesus. I’ve nothing against Gillibrand, or shameless puff pieces, but that is just mindless drivel.
geg6
@schrodinger’s cat:
Ah but not too small to have a big ego pol who dithers whether to run or not to run, fucking with the narrative of any of his fellow party members who actually could make up their minds, unlike the great Italian hope.
Amir Khalid
@Kay:
Commenting at Balloon Juice since 1937
Patterson got some shit for appointing her to Hillary’s seat. I think he knew what he was doing. I met her at a fund raiser and she went out of her way to talk to some wing nut teatard protestors that were outside the event. Like she walked back up a very long driveway and spent a half hour with them.
Culture of Truth
Meanwhile Chris Christie continues to be engulfed by a growing scandal at the Port Authority, where his lackey fled ahead of subpeonas
schrodinger's cat
@Kay: DC journalists are the American version of the courtier overclass and are even more useless than the upper class English twits of the Edwardian era.
Amir Khalid
@Kay:
Might this not get spun by Christie’s primary opponents as consorting with teh ebil Democrats, rather than as savvy leadership?
Amir Khalid
Oh, and could someone please delete my comment #52?
Chris
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
How does Santorum’s Catholicism play in the South? I know that in public right wing Catholics and right wing fundies have buried the hatchet to concentrate on all the people they both hate, but my anecdotal experience is that there’s still quite a bit of anti-Papist bigotry bubbling beneath the surface in fundie circles.
Then again, most of them did hold their noses and vote for a Mormon.
Kay
@schrodinger’s cat:
I can never decide if it’s that they settle on a narrative because they don’t care what’s actually going on, or if they settle on a narrative because they never actually GO to these places they write and talk about. It’s a big country. I don’t know that they can reliably assess facts from a comfy stool at Morning Joe. I think one probably has to GO there, or at least speak with someone who IS there.
We’re dead if local newspapers fold, you know that right? They’ll be able to tell us anything. How will we know? They don’t know!
Culture of Truth
Santorum’s Catholicism doesn’t even play among Catholics. In Pennsylvania. In his family.
WereBear
@schrodinger’s cat: Hey, I’ll buy you lunch!
Coming up on winter, we have skiing, both alpine & cross country, snowshoeing, and ice fishing. I’m getting into snowshoeing this year and just love being out in the deep woods with the snow making everything quiet.
One of the best natural history museums in the world, The Wild Center.
Ya’ll winter haters: it’s different here. The snow is fluffy, the sky is blue and sunny, you can go around with your parka open half the time. Alpine climate!
In February there’s a big Winter Carnival in Saranac Lake that lasts a week. Ice palace. Our First Night celebration, New Year’s Eve, is walkable and voted Best in the Nation 2011. Ends with fireworks.
If you want to come indoors, we have a Ginormous Art Scene, with lots of local art, pottery, wrought iron, woodwork. Local crafts in the stores. Walkable downtowns.
All the restaurants are locally owned, no chains, really good bistro type stuff. We have three local breweries. Locally roasted coffee. Lots of local musicians performing live in the evenings.
We have one of the highest return-visitor rates in the nation. So ya’ll been warned.
Kay
@Amir Khalid:
I don’t think they’ll touch it at all because conservative governors ALL pass out government money, of course they do, 95% of their job is getting and then passing out government money. It’s just that usually they pass it out to favored Republicans. Christie has to “reach across the aisle” in NJ.
I just thought it was funny because the national meme was NJ Democratic leaders just fell in love with Chris Christie’s Bold Conservative Leadership, I don’t know, because he’s such a compelling and persuasive figure, and really he was carefully buying them all up, beginning in 2009.
He’s persuasive all right. If you don’t kiss his ass you don’t get showered with gubmint money and then you don’t get re-elected yourself.
Villago Delenda Est
One thing that Schumer did that he might someday regret was engineering the Dem nomination of Jeff Merkley to the US Senate in Oregon, who is one of the people in the Warren faction, if you will, in the Senate.
Merkley’s proving to be a quite progressive firebrand, and is one of the major movers in the filbuster fight.
Watch this guy. He’s going places.
Villago Delenda Est
@Chris:
If they’ll hold their nose and vote for a Mormon, they’ll do it for Papist scum, too.
Mandalay
@Culture of Truth:
And his lackey was also his high school buddy. I think that story has legs….
Villago Delenda Est
@Mandalay:
That’s the Village for you.
Mandalay
@Cacti:
Well that cuts both ways. How will the smarmy little weasels stand up to Christie?
Kay
@Mandalay:
Christies tenure as US attorney has a big ‘ol ethical stain on it, with a politically-motivated prosecution.
It was outrageous, and he’s never been seriously called on it. Paul Krugman is the only national opinion writer who questioned it.
James E. Powell
@boss bitch:
Senator Gillibrand? YAWN! Sorry, can’t see the base getting excited over Gillibrand.
If Hillary Clinton does not run and says she is all for Gillibrand, then the very large part of the base that loves HRC will be very excited. Also too, base excitement will depend on who else is running.
My take – 2016 is Gillibrand’s year to run for president, if she is ever going to run. You serve any length of time in the senate, and you will have votes and modifications of votes that will harm your presidential brand.
schrodinger's cat
@WereBear: Lunch date with the kitteh whisperer herself, I ar honored!
Mandalay
@James E. Powell:
Exactly. Obama voting against the Iraq war is what lost him the presidency in 2008.
mai naem
I’m wondering what the right is going to do with Pope Francis’s economic statements. Doesn’t sound like he’s going to stop anytime soon. I’m not sure if rightwinger pols dissing the pope is going to go down well with old lady catholics who seem to some of the last few GOP constituencies.
Cervantes
@Amir Khalid: Is anyone really surprised to see self-serving jerkitude in a politician? There are no saints in that line of work.
Gandhi?
Mullah DougJ
@Nicole:
We are all of us in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.
Roger Moore
@Villago Delenda Est:
In the general election where the other choice is a blah Democrat, maybe, but don’t count on it in the primary when there are Real Americans® running.
schrodinger's cat
@Cervantes: He too had human failings. Calling people from the untouchable castes, Harijans, condescending much?
Kay
@mai naem:
He gave a speech in Italy where he said the economic system was turning people into “slaves” which made me laugh out loud imagining the response from US conservatives. I don’t know if it was correctly translated or what, but “slaves” is rather blunt, don’t you think? He’s too shrill. He should work across the aisle more.
Roger Moore
@Kay:
Except that the guy across the aisle from him has a cloven hoof and smells of brimstone.
Amir Khalid
@Cervantes:
I suppose it defends on what the meaning of “politician” is. The Mahatma was politically active from his time in South Africa onwards, and became Congress party leader; but he never ran for or held elected public office himself.
Mandalay
@Kay:
Heh – I didn’t know about that one. It is outrageous, but I suspect that hardly anybody nobody knows about it is because it is impossible to pack into a sound bite.
OTOH, closing toll booths because a mayor wouldn’t kiss your ring is pretty easy to understand.
Baud
@Mandalay:
Cruz seems pompous enough to go toe-to-toe with Christie. Rand strikes me as a big wuss.
schrodinger's cat
@Amir Khalid: He was not above arm twisting to get his way. That does not distract from his achievements I don’t think.
Cervantes
@WereBear:
Try this.
It’s from 1970, so not a complete biography — but then again, what is?
Villago Delenda Est
@Roger Moore:
Oh, the primaries are totally a different story. Those types were actively looking for “Anyone but Romney” in a frantic effort to forestall Rmoney’s inevitable nomination. They decided to hold their nose and support Rih, the Papist, as the only viable opposition to the vile heathen, Rmoney.
Mandalay
@mai naem:
You’d think it would be as impossible as squaring the circle but Santorum already has it covered…
Just keep saying the sky isn’t blue, and hope that nobody notices you are full of shit.
James E. Powell
@Mandalay:
Exactly. Obama voting against the Iraq war is what lost him the presidency in 2008.
If Obama had been a senator in 2002, he would have voted for the AUMF-Iraq, just like every other senator who thought he or she had a shot at the White House. You let the words ‘weak’ or ‘anti-war’ get attached to your name, you cannot get elected president.
WereBear
@Cervantes: Oooh, you’re a peach!
And apparently quite the Nixon scholar.
Really, Nixonland tells anyone what they need to know, but I always try to figure out the “why.”
Cervantes
@geg6:
She’s got Republican roots on her dad’s side. As a kid, she interned for Al D’Amato in Albany. Then, fresh out of law school, she represented the tobacco companies (or maybe it was only Philip Morris).
She’s done better in the Senate than many progressives had reason to believe she would. I think Paterson’s appointing her in 2009 was not a bad decision; it was certainly a courageous one.
Mandalay
@James E. Powell:
Resorting to a hypothetical scenario to support your shaky proposition is not persuasive.
Baud
@Cervantes:
If she was fresh out of law school, then she probably just went to a big law firm and was assigned to work on a tobacco case. It’s essentially no different than a government attorney who has to work during a Republican administration.
Joel
John Oliver did a pretty good job filling in for Jon Stewart — he was better, in my mind, than Stewart has been in about two or three years at least. But he was just as feeble an interviewer when going up against a seasoned pro. I recall him trying to corner Gillibrand on taking money from Goldman Sachs et al. (more than anyone else!) and she just sailed right around him. I don’t love the NY brand of politico, but they sure are effective.
PeakVT
For haters of Cuomo the Lesser.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Hell, Oliver got rolled by Rand Paul. I’ve heard his non-Daily Show stand up is pretty aggressive, and his politics (by American standards) are pretty far left, but either because of the show’s policy or maybe he was a little nervous, he gave Rand a play-date, right down to the patented Jon Stewart high-pitched surprised-giggle when Paul made a lame-ass joke.
the fact that he made his “dumb wars” speech while he was launching his Illinois Senate campaign, and when the country was 2/3-plus in favor of invading, suggests otherwise to me. YMMV.
Cervantes
@WereBear: Really, Nixonland tells anyone what they need to know
Perlstein did a great job, no question.
But among the earlier books, I can also recommend The Strange Case of Richard Milhous Nixon. It’s by Jerry Voorhis, a name I imagine you’ll recognize. I like it for the progressive critique of Nixon’s first term as president.
(As for that Mazlish essay: it later appeared in book form. Disclaimer: Mazlish is an old friend and colleague.)
JoyfulA
Didn’t Gillibrand win a previously Republican seat in Congress to start her national career?
geg6
@Baud:
Yeah, I wouldn’t hold that against her myself. Just out of law school means she worked on whatever case she was assigned.
And HRC used to be a Republican and came from a Republican family. I’m not anti-capitalist, so I don’t demonize some of the old school Rockefeller-type Republicans like some do. Both HRC and Gillibrand are more on my side than not, so I’m okay with them both. And I really think that the whole Third Way thing is losing steam. Populism is where it’s at. It’s time we took back the brand from those fake populists, the Teabaggers. I have sensed some swinging in the pendulum the last few months and it seems to me that a further swing has only been postponed by the ACA problems of the last few weeks. The momentum is out there for it and I think the Dems should embrace it. Even if they can’t get any legislation passed, they can keep fighting and show that they are fighting. That’s the only way I can see that they can improve their lot in 2014. Goad the wingnuts and their media lackeys into showing exactly who they really are and who they really represent by pounding away at the left of center agenda, most of which the public supports when asked but who are easily misled into voting for those who will be least likely to give them what they say they want. There is a long history of liberal populism and we need to find a way to get the message out. Make the GOP the party of no, once again. Show that Dems will fight for the poor and the middle and working classes and what they all have in common. People really do believe that it will cost them if fast food workers get $15/hour and that welfare is all about drug dealing young bucks eating steak and single mothers driving Cadillacs. We have to show them that the GOP narrative is a lie and is meant to create only two classes, the 1% who will have all the power and money and the rest of us, who they think they can set at each other’s throats while they carry out their scheme. Maybe I’m turning into a hopeless optimist in my old age. :-)
Zoot
Not sure what the NY Times definition of chutzpah is but i sure don’t see it in Gilibrand (and she’s my Senator and get her email exhortations all the time.) hardworking and dedicated yes, chutzpah no (as someone in NYC I know what chutzpah is.)
Must be yet another Times way of publicly denigrating strong women.
Cervantes
@Baud:
It’s not as simple as that. She worked for Davis Polk, a large firm with plenty of clients, where even the youngest lawyers were allowed to reject tobacco work if they found it morally repugnant. (This was true at many other firms as well.) By the time Gillibrand left Davis Polk after about a decade, she was leading its team of associates assigned to Philip Morris; and was serving on a high-level committee that decided which Philip Morris documents had to be shielded from disclosure. When she left Davis Polk, she moved to another firm where she worked five years representing Altria, corporate parent to Philip Morris.
All of these facts are uncontroversial in the sense that they are well known and were rehashed during her Congressional campaigns (pre-Senate appointment). Here’s a 2009 NYT article that you may find relevant.
Cervantes
@Zoot: I’m not sure why they used the word, either. Presumably they know what it means.
Chris
@Baud:
Agree.
And I have to root for Ted Cruz there, because I think he’s a lot more likely to go down in flames than Christie – and because no matter how Fox & co try to spin it, I think it’ll be a lot harder for teabaggers to write off that defeat the way they wrote off 2008 and 2012 as “oh, this is what happens when we run RINOs.”
Betty Cracker
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Thank you. Good lord.
Cervantes
@geg6: Just out of law school means she worked on whatever case she was assigned.
As explained above, she worked for Philip Morris (and/or Altria) for about fifteen years — in two separate law firms.
Chris
@Mandalay:
There’s a lot of that going along in right wing Catholic circles right now.
You have to appreciate the dilemma they’re in; they can’t admit any compartmentalization between religion and politics the way the left wingers do, and their religion demands an unusual degree of deference towards the Pope so they can’t simply write him off the way Limbaugh’s been doing. They really don’t have any choice other than sticking their fingers in their ears and screaming “LALALA I CAN’T HEAR YOU I CAN’T HEAR YOU!!!!”
geg6
@Cervantes:
No, she worked for two law firms who had Philip Morris as a client. That’s what lawyers do, work on behalf of clients. I, for one, support the right of everyone, even corporations, to have the benefit of counsel. What is your implication, that she’s some kind of pro-tobacco zealot?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Chris: I’m no fan of JPII, but IIRC he was pretty strongly opposed to the Iraq War, his opposition was muted by the fact that he was in extremely poor health by the summer of 2003. He had also raised some objections to the Rand-over-Smith version of capitalism spreading in the US. All of which is to recall the interview in which Scalia was asked how he reconciled his support of the death penalty with the Church’s long-standing opposition. He basically said, the Pope is infallible, except when he disagrees with me. Whole lot of American Catholics agree with that.
Cervantes
@schrodinger’s cat: Calling people from the untouchable castes, Harijans, condescending much?
On the one hand he objected to calling them “untouchables” and instead coined a term for them that means “children of god.” And on the other hand he campaigned for their rights and political inclusion — and indeed worked to rid Hinduism of the very notion of “untouchability:”
Some might find this “condescending.” I don’t.
Baud
@Cervantes:
Thanks for the clarification. I don’t know her history.
Cervantes
@geg6:
That’s nice.
No such implication, just the facts I cited. Plus recall that I said:
For more facts, and whatever implications you choose to draw for yourself, you can read the aforementioned NYT article if you feel it might be relevant.
Cervantes
@Baud:
So … should we work to see that they lose the mid-terms and nominate Christie?
Sounds like a plan to me.
schrodinger's cat
@Cervantes: Well, the actual untouchables found it condescending, even if you don’t. Gandhi and Ambedkar, a Dalit leader, and one of the primary framers of the Indian Constitution had many policy disagreements.
Cervantes
@IowaOldLady: Me, neither.
Cervantes
@Kay: That’s why Buono was so mad about her fellow Democrats.
Cervantes
@schrodinger’s cat: I think it’s more accurate to say that some leaders of the “untouchable” caste resented Gandhi’s activism on behalf of their community because they perceived it as a threat to their own power.
Anyhow, calling someone a “child of god” strikes me as rather an ironic barrier to sainthood.
Baud
@Cervantes:
It was an observation, not a suggestion.
Cervantes
@Kay: Maybe he meant “wage slavery” in the … wait for it … Marxist sense.
Mandalay
@Zoot:
Either you don’t know what it means, or you didn’t read the article. The word was used to praise her for her being ballsy, and taking on those in her own party.
Oh please. The entire article was gushing and effusive over Gillibrand.
schrodinger's cat
@Cervantes: The operative word here is child. That’s how Gandhi saw Dalits, as children, without agency, who he would guide. He denied them their own agency in bettering their lives. BTW Ambedkar is not just any Dalit leader. He is revered among Dalits even now.
Gandhi was a great leader but he was all too human, I don’t think it detracts from his greatness. YMMV.
ETA: Gandhi had many of the blind spots an upper caste Hindu male of his era may have had.
James E. Powell
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
the fact that he made his “dumb wars” speech while he was launching his Illinois Senate campaign, and when the country was 2/3-plus in favor of invading, suggests otherwise to me. YMMV.
It does because running for a state senate seat from Chicago is not the same being a US senator from any state who is considering a run for the White House.
Look at the list of those who voted against. Find any 2004 Democratic candidates there?
Cervantes
@Chris: You have to appreciate the dilemma they’re in
I do, I do — in much the same way that I appreciate a Ferrari Berlinetta Boxer, or a Drambuie neat, or the laughter of my good lady wife.
Cervantes
@Baud: Well, whatever it was, I liked it.
schrodinger's cat
@Cervantes: The operative word here is child. That’s how Gandhi saw Dalits, as children, without agency, who he would guide. He denied them their own agency in bettering their lives. BTW Ambedkar is not just any Dalit leader. He is revered among Dalits even now.
Gandhi was a great leader but he was all too human, I don’t think it detracts from his greatness. YMMV.
ETA: Gandhi had many of the blind spots an upper caste Hindu male of his era may have had.
low-tech cyclist
Gillibrand won my heart with this pic. My son was about the same age, and I could totally relate to both the kid crawling all over her face, and her cheerfulness as it was happening.
If she ever runs for President, I’m gonna make a button out of that pic, and wear it at every opportunity.
Cervantes
@schrodinger’s cat: Not saying Gandhi was perfect. (Does sainthood require perfection? I am not sure.)
Anyway, my point is not that Ambedkar was a nobody. It is that his grounds for clashing with Gandhi may have been more than a mere feeling of condescension. As I said, Gandhi wanted to eradicate “untouchability” — and where would this have left Ambedkar? Whereas the latter’s goal was to take “untouchables” out of the Hindu community — a goal that Gandhi found intolerable, much as he spoke against other forms of communalism and separatism, including the carving away of India’s Muslims. Speaking against this kind of segregation is what eventually led to his assassination.
Cervantes
@low-tech cyclist: That is a beautiful picture.
Baud
@Cervantes:
My bad. I misread your comment. Yes, we should definitely help Christie by winning as many seats as possible in 2014.
Mandalay
@Cervantes:
No, but being a Catholic helps a lot, and Gandhi was certainly less than perfect in that regard.
schrodinger's cat
@Cervantes: Besides some symbolic gestures like cleaning the toilets and sweeping and calling the lower caste people Harijan, what exactly did Gandhi do to empower those whom the Hindu society thought were beyond the pale? Eradicating untouchability and casteism in Indian society is as easy as ridding the US of racism. These ills are alive and well in the Indian society long after the deaths of both Gandhi and Ambedkar.
Gandhi’s attitude towards minorities was paternalistic, be they women, lower caste people or Muslims. The out groups want to determine their own destinies. Gandhi’s assassination followed after the formation of Pakistan, it had nothing to do with his stances on the caste system.
Another Holocene Human
@Cervantes: You realize this whole argument sounds like “Malcolm X sucks because he was a knee-jerk opposer of any representative of the white power structure, even JFK, etc, and only cared about gathering more Nation of Islam converts. But on the other hand, JFK sucks because it was condescending to Black Nationalists to force whites to allow Black children into their schools since argle bargle who wants access to opportunities anyway, and forcing–not to mention shaming–the caste in power to change doesn’t count because reasons.” The point is that both arguments are dumb.
Jay C
@Kay:
That stuff about Chris Christie ladling out the gravy in construction contracts now makes sense of what I’ve thought was always one his main asshole moves: i.e. turning down Federal aid for a new Hudson tunnel to NYC – which would not only have generated big bucks for the construction industry but is actually necessary – I guess he figured it was better to keep his own paws on the money spigot rather than have the Feds involved: can’t say it didn’t work out….
And anyway, as for Kirsten Gillibrand, I’ll just say that she has turned out to be a source of pride for NY as the junior Senator (and if nothing else, Gov. David Paterson’s main/only enduring legacy!) – I remember the industrial-strength bitching and whining that went on at dKos when she was appointed over their favorite, Caroline Kennedy (who didn’t want the position, and had no specific qualification for it, but that’s the online Left for you): they assumed Gillibrand was a sort of Democratic Sarah Palin: just a gun-girl rube from the sticks: of course, now she’s a hero there…
schrodinger's cat
@Another Holocene Human: I don’t think Gandhi sucks at all.
Just that he was a politician and a good one at that, not some second coming of the Christ or the eleventh avatar or Vishnu.
Cervantes
@Another Holocene Human: If you’re talking about something I wrote, you’d have to be more specific before I could comment.
Kay
@Cervantes:
Here is why I love the commie pope, and admittedly it’s ungenerous and purely political. I think there is a section of wealthy conservatives who pretended to be “concerned” about social issues because they could put together a political coalition with actual religious conservatives that ALSO advanced monied interests. One of my brother in laws is an example of this group. He is a (younger) banker, lives in Darien CT and is a staunch “Catholic” conservative. He adopted this whole Catholic persona AFTER he became a banker. He actually has contempt for rank and file religious conservatives, makes fun of them as “Wal Mart shoppers”, etc.. He’s embarrassed of them, but they are really useful politically because there aren’t enough bankers to win a national election so he sort of suffered his association with them.
He could do this as long as the Pope focussed exclusively on “social” issues, because he doesn’t give a shit about social issues. As long as the economic agenda was humming along, he doesn’t care what happens with abortion or ss marriage.
Now he gets a Pope who will KEEP the social issues, but is not on The Team economically. The coalition that includes real religious people won’t work for him politically anymore. I think there are a lot of people like him.
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat: I’ve come to be very annoyed at the habit people have of building someone up as a saint or a savior and then the subsequent need for revisionists to tear the person down. Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR. JFK, HRC, Obama, and now I see people building Warren up. There are no saviors. Everyone is flawed or makes compromises. Looking for the perfect person is a great way to live in disappointed anger.
Cervantes
@schrodinger’s cat:
After all that back-and-forth, now you ask me what exactly the man did? I thought you knew. If not, please at least refer to the article I linked earlier, by Ramachandra Guha, who writes:
Does that help?
As for:
I really can’t comment more than I already have, other than to recommend Guha again:
So … was Gandhi “paternalistic”? Perhaps, but lots of saints were — as you may know.
Cervantes
@Another Holocene Human:
If you’re referring to your attempted paraphrases, then I agree.
schrodinger's cat
@Cervantes: It was a rhetorical question. You do condescending rather well, yourself. Your view, Gandhi was a saint, my view, he was not.
ETA: Will take a look at your links and read them later, thanks.
Cervantes
@schrodinger’s cat: It is my view that a person can’t be condescended to unless he (or she) allows it.
Cervantes
@schrodinger’s cat: Your view, Gandhi was a saint, my view, he was not.
Actually, I have not stated a view as to whether he was a saint or not.
schrodinger's cat
@Cervantes:
From comment #73, your reply to Amir Khalid.
Cervantes
@schrodinger’s cat: That’s not stating a view. That’s raising a possibility — quite a different thing.
Cervantes
@Kay: What does your brother-in-law in Darien make of the Tea Party?
Mandalay
@Cervantes:
Seriously? Then you are just employing a variant of the old “some say…” approach: throwing out a position, yet also disowning it.
Cervantes
@Mandalay: What on earth are you talking about?
As for the question of whether Gandhi was a saintly politician (or a political saint), it’s one I have pondered for many years — decades, actually — and I still don’t have an answer. Does this somehow strike you as incredible?
Sophist
Am I the only one who caught the reference?
Rich Gardner
Interested to see that she leaves on time every day. I was impressed by what I considered a good management manual once and their closing advice was to leave on time. Don’t try to stay at the office all day as your efficiency is going to drag after awhile anyway. Get some home life in. Good to see Gillibrand taking that advice.
Nickws
@Mandalay:
@Mandalay:
Heh indeedy.